It was the murder cellar, though everything had been removed and every surface scrubbed back to expose the bare stone of the ceiling and walls. Before being profaned by treachery and murder, this chamber had been one of the oldest and most sacred places in ancient Cythe — the private temple of the kings.
What was Lyf doing? He was alone save for a group of greybeard ghosts — Tali recognised some of them from the ancestor’s gallery he had created long ago in the wrythen’s caverns. Lyf had a furtive air, lifting stones up and putting them down, then checking over his shoulder as though afraid he was being watched.
“Hurry!” said a spectre so ancient that he had faded to a transparent wisp, though his voice was strong and urgent. “The key must be found. Without it, all you’ve done is for nothing.”
What key? What could be so vital that without it everything Lyf had done — saving his people and capturing the great city at the heart of Hightspall — was as nothing? And who was this ancient spectre who was telling the king what to do?
The blood-loss vision faded and she saw nothing more.
“You shouldn’t bait her, Tali. Madam Dibly is just doing what I ordered her to do.”
Tali was so weak that she could not open her eyes, but she recognised the voice coming from the folding chair beside the camp bed. The chancellor.
“Ugh!” she said.
She tried to form words but they would not come, and that frightened her. She had been robbed of far more than two pints of blood. Part of her life and health had been taken from her. She was enslaved again, but this was far worse than the enslavement she had endured in Cython. There she’d had a degree of freedom, and vigorous health. There, those who worked hard and never caused trouble were relatively safe.
But the chancellor was using her like a prized cow — she was fed and looked after to ensure she could be milked of the maximum amount of blood. And once her body gave out, would she be discarded like a milkless cow?
There was also Rannilt to consider. If the blood-taking could weaken Tali so drastically, what must it be doing to the skinny little child who had been near death only days ago?
“You can stop all this,” said the chancellor. For such a small, ugly, hunchbacked man, his voice was surprisingly deep and authoritative.
“How?” she managed to whisper.
Her eyes fluttered open. She was in his tent, the largest of all, and she saw the shadow of a guard outside the flap. The man was not needed; Tali lacked the strength to raise her head.
The side of her neck throbbed. She felt bruised from shoulder bone to ear.
“I know you’re holding out on me,” said the chancellor. “Tell me what I need to know and I’ll order Madam Dibly to stop.”
Had Tali not been so weak, she would have started and given her secret away. If he guessed that she hosted the fifth pearl inside her, the master pearl that could magnify his chief magian’s wizardry tenfold, how could the chancellor resist cutting it out?
Hightspall was losing the war because its magery had dwindled drastically over the centuries. With the master pearl the chancellor could have it back. With the master pearl, his adepts might even command the four pearls that Lyf held. He might win the war, and even undo some of the harm Lyf’s corrupt sorcery had done to Hightspall. Such as the shifters that Lyf had created for one purpose only — to spread terror and ruin throughout the land, and turn good people into ravening monsters like themselves.
Like Tobry, her first and only love turned into the kind of beast he had dreaded becoming all his life. But Tobry’s suffering was over.
Should she give up the master pearl? It wasn’t that simple. According to Deroe, ebony pearls could not be used properly within — or by — the women who hosted them, though he might have been lying. She could not tell. To gain their full strength, the pearls had to be cut out and healed in the host’s blood, which was invariably fatal. Tali could only give up the pearl by sacrificing her own life.
Someone nobler than her might have made that sacrifice for her country, but Tali could not. Before escaping from Cython she had sworn a binding blood oath, and until she had fulfilled it she did not have the freedom to consider any other course.
“Don’t know… what you’re talking about,” she said at last.
“You’re lying,” said the chancellor. “But I can wait.”
“You’re a failure, Chancellor. You’ve lost the centre of Hightspall and you’re losing the war.”
He winced. “I admit it, though only to you. According to my spies, Lyf is already tearing down Caulderon, the greatest city in the known world, and rounding up a long list of enemies.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “What’s he going to do to them?”
“Put them to death, of course.”
“But that’s… evil!”
The chancellor sighed. “No, just practical. It’s what you do when you capture a city — you hunt down the troublemakers and make sure they can’t cause any trouble.”
“Does that include Rix?” said Tali.
“I’m told he’s number one on Lyf’s list.” The chancellor smiled wryly. “I feel a little hurt — why aren’t I on top?”
“I wish you were!” she snapped, then added, “I couldn’t bear it if Rix was killed as well.”
Though the chancellor despised Rix, he had the decency not to show it this time. “He’s a resourceful man. He could have escaped.”
“You chopped his hand off!” she said furiously. “How’s he supposed to fight without a right hand?”
“To escape a besieged city you need to avoid attention, not attract it.”
After a lengthy pause, he continued as though her problems, her tragedies, were irrelevant. Which, to him, they were.
“The enemy hold all of central Hightspall — the wealthy, fertile part. Now I’m limping like a three-legged hound to the fringes. But where am I to go, Tali, when the ice sheets are closing around the land from three sides? What am I to do?”
This was the strangest aspect of their relationship. One minute he was the ruthless master and she the helpless victim; the next he was confiding in her and seeking her advice as though she were his one true friend.
The chancellor was not, and could never be, her friend. He was a ruthless man who surrounded himself in surreal, twisted artworks, and with beautiful young women he never laid a finger on. He was not a kind man, or even a good one, but he had two virtues: he held to his word and he loved his country. He would do almost anything, sacrifice almost anyone, to save it, and if she wasn’t strong enough, if she didn’t fight him all the way, he would sacrifice her too.
“Why ask me? Where are you running to, Chancellor, with your tail between your crooked little legs?”
His smile was crooked, too. “I’ve been insulted by the best in the land. Do you think your second-rate jibes can scratch my corrugated hide?”
Tali slumped. She was so weak that five minutes of verbal jousting was all she could manage.
“Is all lost, then?” she said faintly.
He took her hand, which was even more surprising. The chancellor was not given to touching.
“Not yet, but it could soon be. I fear the worst, Tali, I’m not afraid to tell you. If you know anything that can help us, anything at all…”
She had to distract him from that line of thought. “Do you have a plan? For the war, I mean?”
“Rebuild my army and forge alliances, so when the time comes…”
“For a bold stroke?”
“Or a last desperate gamble. Possibly using you.”
Tali froze. Did he know about the ebony pearl? She turned to the brazier, afraid that her eyes would give her away.