My people, it boomed, I am Lyf, your last, lost king. Two thousand years ago the enemy’s Five Heroes betrayed and murdered me, but even in death I could not leave my people unprotected. As a wrythen I have watched over you all this time, guiding your matriarchs via the secret books called the Solaces.
Tali started. ‘I forgot the iron book. We can’t let him get it back.’
‘Forget it,’ said Rix. ‘It’s over.’
Lyf’s shattered shinbones were still smoking. See how they treat your king, as foully as they have brutalised our beautiful Cythe. Yet the very land rebels. The earth rains fire down on them, the waters rise to tear down their filthy shanty towns. Even the eternal ice draws in all around to crush them into oblivion.
Cythe is close to ruin and will need much healing. We must take it back before it’s too late.The invaders deserve no mercy and will be given none. Take Caulderon, now!
The top of Tali’s head, where she had touched the needle point to it, throbbed. She rubbed it and her finger came back bloody. Memories stirred, of blood and alkoyl, and those fleeting words on the iron book.
‘I know how to stop him. Rix, come on!’
She ran for the roof door, yelling over her shoulder. ‘Look after Rannilt. We won’t be long.’
‘What are we doing?’ said Rix as he caught her on the stairs.
She hurtled down. ‘I saw it, but I didn’t take it in.’
‘Saw what?’
‘The iron book was written with alkoyl that he distilled drop by drop from the Abysm. Remember that tube of alkoyl Wil dropped in the cellar? We can write our own ending.’
‘How? We can’t read the damned book.’
The flood of hope was choking her; Tali could barely speak. ‘Blood,’ she gasped.
‘You’re making even less sense than usual.’
She stopped on the fourth landing to catch her breath. ‘Last night a drop of my blood fell on the book and for an instant I saw words there, but I was too exhausted to take anything in. Blood must decode the book and, if we write our own ending, it’ll stop Lyf.’
‘Even if that were true,’ said Rix dubiously, ‘he’s got four pearls. Why does he still need the book?’
They ran on. ‘Because his magery is bound up with everything he’s written in the Solaces. Everything he’s done in the past thousand years has been directed towards his ending, but he never got the chance to write it. If we write our own ending, it’s got to be a powerful blow to him. It could change everything.’
‘But it’s just a book.’
‘If your paintings can divine the future, why can’t a book written with powerful magery change it?’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
They reached the dimly lit chaos of Rix’s salon. ‘Run down and grab the alkoyl tube,’ said Tali. ‘I’ll look for the book — ’
‘It’s found,’ said Rix.
A white-faced Wil was crouched on the far side of the salon, hugging the iron book to his hollow chest. ‘Wil’s book now,’ he whimpered. ‘Wil’s got to be the Scribe.’
He turned his raw eye sockets on her, jumped, then squeezed through a ragged crack in the wall, squirted alkoyl around its edges and was gone.
‘After him!’ Tali yelled.
Rix held her back. ‘Nothing can get through there now.’ He put a brawny arm around her waist and turned her back to the steps. ‘We tried.’
‘Not hard enough,’ she said bitterly. Why hadn’t she listened to the inner voice last night, when it had whispered about the book?
He was still holding her, lifting her so her feet skipped over each step. ‘What more could anyone have done?’
‘I don’t know,’ she wailed. ‘Everything I’ve tried has gone wrong. I’m useless.’
Rix smiled, the first she had seen from him in days. ‘You broke out of Cython where no other Pale ever had.’
Tali sniffed.
‘And you saved Rannilt’s life. You can’t dismiss that so easily.’
‘All I gave her was one lousy week.’
‘Rannilt would say it was the best week of her life.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But my quest has failed. I’m — ’
‘The killers are all dead,’ said Rix.
‘But I don’t feel any better.’ She turned to look up at him. ‘What’s the matter with me? I thought the pain would go away once they’d been punished, but it’s as bad as ever.’
‘You’re asking me for advice,’ Rix said wryly.
‘Yes.’
‘The pain has nothing to do with the killers, only with the crime you and I witnessed. The pain is inside you, and only you can deal with it.’
‘Lyf’s not dead!’ said Tali. ‘That’s why it still hurts.’
‘And you’re determined to ignore the truth,’ said Rix, restraining himself with an effort. ‘You found his weakness, you hurt him badly, and he’s lost the iron book. You’ve done more than you could have hoped for. Isn’t it enough?’
Tali had to think about that. ‘It’s more than I ever expected, but nothing will be enough until Lyf pays for his crimes. And he never will, now.’
‘He’ll pay,’ said Rix. ‘But not today.’
As they reached the top, the sun tipped the horizon and a cascade of bombast blasts rippled along the south-eastern wall of the city, half a mile from the main gates where the First Army waited in its ranks. When the dust and smoke blew away, a section of wall a quarter of a mile long was gone and the enemy soldiers were scrambling over the rubble. Another great force was attacking from the unwalled lake shore.
‘They’re encircling the First Army on three sides,’ said Rix directly, reporting on the scene through his telescope. ‘They’ve pinned our soldiers between the gates and the buildings along the avenue. They’re blocking all the side streets …’
‘But our soldiers are better than theirs,’ said Benn. Even standing on the bench, he only came up to Rix’s shoulders. ‘We’ll beat ’em, Lord, won’t we?’ His voice went shrill and he fought to hold back tears.
Rix put an arm across the boy’s shoulders. ‘I wish I could say so. Hop down, lad. You don’t need to watch.’
But Benn, though white-faced and trembling, shook his head. ‘Got to see what they do to us, Lord. Got to know.’
The enemy began to cut the First Army down, rank by rank, for the soldiers had no defence against Cythonian ferocity, their unusual tactics or their strange, chymical weaponry. From other breaches in the wall, more enemy streamed in to trap the Second and Third Armies.
‘If House Ricinus hadn’t paid for the Third Army,’ said Rix, ‘would those men be dying now?’
‘Yes, they would,’ said Tobry, whose eyes never left Rannilt’s blanched face.
‘Caulderon will fall within the hour,’ said Rix.
‘Is there no hope?’ Tali was still praying for a miracle.
‘None,’ said Tobry. ‘And little for you, if Rix still retains his suicidal urge. If anyone can get you across the mountains to plan the counterattack, he can.’
‘We’re going to fight,’ said Rix. ‘And win Caulderon back. Gather your gear. We’ll take the chancellor’s secret way.’
Before they could move, a squad of burly troops burst through the tower door, wearing the livery of the chancellor’s personal guard, and the chancellor followed. The tubby, balding chief magian was there too.
The chancellor inspected Rix, the servants, Tali, then Tobry’s cat-like ears, and smiled. ‘I told you to leave this place and never return,’ he said to Glynnie and Benn.
Rix stepped forwards, carrying his sword, with light-footed menace. ‘I ordered them home,’ he lied. ‘I protect my servants with my own life, sir. Every one of them.’
The chancellor shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ He turned towards Tali, his eyes glittering.
‘I did what you asked of me,’ she said defensively.
His voice was ice smashing on an anvil. ‘You neglected to mention the most vital secret — that the wrythen was Lyf.’
She had not dared, knowing that he would ask dangerous questions.