Ian Irvine - Rebellion

“What about my other enemies?”

“We can’t find Rixium Ricinus,” said Rochlis.

Lyf let out a bellow of fury. “You told me the shifters had him trapped way down under the palace.”

“He killed them and disappeared.”

“One man killed a whole pack of shifters? How?”

“With that underground explosion we felt earlier. We believe he set off a sump full of stink-damp and burned them alive.”

“But not himself?”

“It’s thought that he crawled through a freshly opened fissure and found a way down into the ancient tunnels. We haven’t mapped them all yet.”

“He’s too quick, too clever,” said Lyf. “He must not escape.”

Not just because Rix was descended from that treacherous swine, Axil Grandys, who had betrayed, mutilated and murdered Lyf so long ago. And not just because Rix bore the cursed sword, Maloch, that had caused Lyf an aeon of pain and torment. Rix had fought Lyf twice, and twice had wounded him. He had a genius for escaping; he was an intuitive fighter and a leader who inspired loyalty. That made him a most dangerous man.

“Find him. And if he looks like getting away, kill him.”

Regg carried Tali down three flights of an age-blackened stairway to a once grand, ornately decorated chamber with a carved ceiling and elaborate cornices. One half was now a fifteen-foot-wide corridor with an iron door at the far end. The other half had been divided into a dozen large, cold cells. The guard opened the fifth cell, dropped her on the bunk and locked her in.

The bunk was a mouldy palliasse, the toilet a filthy wooden bucket; the floor was puddled with water oozing from every crack in the ceiling and walls. The side and rear walls were stone, but the front wall was made of wrought-iron bars that writhed and twisted like a lunatic’s nightmare. Large portholes had been carved through the side walls and she could see into the adjoining cells, though the portholes were also meshed with tormented iron bars.

It was a struggle to stand up, but she had to know where she was. Tali tottered across to the right porthole and clung to the bars. Five or six cells away, a bent old man was shuffling back and forth. She called out several times but he did not look up. None of the other cells were occupied.

She wrapped her coat around her and lay on the palliasse. How long before the chancellor sent another healer to take her blood? He was a vengeful man, and how better to punish Tali than by rendering her so weak that she could not cause any more trouble?

She closed her eyes, longing for the oblivion of sleep, but it would not come. Enslaved again, and it was all her fault. Everything was her fault.

“Tali?” said a shrill little voice she had not heard in more than a week.

She looked up. “Rannilt?”

Two of the chancellor’s personal guards were at the door, one working the massive lock while the other held the child by the arm. She was a skinny, knock-kneed little thing, though not as skinny as the last time Tali had seen her.

Rannilt turned to her, frowned, looked up at the guards questioningly, then back.

“Where’s Tali?” she said, taking a dragging step through the door. The guards locked it and turned away.

“I’m right here,” said Tali. What was the matter?

Rannilt stretched out a skinny finger. A little golden bubble formed at her fingertip, some product of her unfathomable gift for magery. It separated, drifted towards Tali and burst on the tip of her nose with a small, cold pop, and Tali felt something stir inside her, her own buried magery. But it subsided again.

“Ah!” sighed Rannilt. “Chief magian put a glamour on, to hide you.”

She bolted across the cell and threw herself at Tali so hard that she was knocked back against the wall. Rannilt hauled Tali to her feet and danced her around the cell until her head whirled.

“Enough, child,” she said, groping back for the bed. “If I don’t sit down, I’m going to throw up.”

Rannilt sat beside Tali, holding her right arm with both hands and staring hungrily at her.

“I didn’t know there was a glamour,” Tali said hoarsely. She hadn’t seen her face since leaving Caulderon. “Can you see the real me?”

“Of course not, silly,” said Rannilt.

Tali’s shoulders slumped. “Then how do you know it’s me?”

“Checked your aura, of course.”

“Didn’t know I had one.”

“Don’t worry.” Rannilt patted Tali’s shoulder condescendingly. “You’re still Tali on the inside.”

“You can’t call me by name,” said Tali. “Lyf’s after me.”

“I know. Old Chancellor said to call you Grizel.”

An ugly name, thought Tali. He’s doing it to punish me.

“Someone’s comin’, Grizel,” said Rannilt.

They squatted in the corner while orderlies bustled in and out, sweeping the puddles down a drain hole, exchanging Tali’s mouldy mattress for a fresh one and bringing in another bunk for Rannilt, providing a table and two chairs and, finally, a steaming bowl of stew, two plates, cutlery and a third of a loaf of grainy bread. All was done under the watchful eyes of the chancellor’s guards, then the cell was relocked and they were alone.

“You’re shakin’,” said Rannilt, helping Tali across to her bunk. “Are you sick?”

Tali leaned back against the cold wall. Rannilt snuggled up against her. The child, starved of human contact most of her life, had always been clingy, but Tali needed the contact now. She put an arm around her.

“They’ve taken pints and pints of my blood,” she said dully. “I’m so weak I can barely walk. Aren’t they taking yours?”

“Healer Dibly took some on the first day out of Caulderon. But only half a cup, and she was really cross about it. She called the old chancellor some wicked names, I can tell you.”

“Really?” said Tali, revising her opinion of Madam Dibly.

“I’m sorry she’s dead,” said Rannilt. “I liked her.”

“Did they only take your blood the once?”

“Yes, Dibly said it didn’t heal. But she kept feedin’ me just as much. Said I needed feedin’ up.”

“And so you do,” said Tali, feeling ravenous herself. “Could you get me something to eat?”

Rannilt went to the table, spooned stew onto the plates and brought them back. When Tali had first met her, Rannilt had been as skinny as a stick and covered in bruises, for the other slave girls had picked on her constantly.

Tali lowered her voice. “We’re in trouble, child. Did you hear — ”

“About the gauntlin’? Yes.”

Tali ate some stew. “We’ve got to escape, like we did from Cython. Can you wake my gift again?”

Without Rannilt’s last-minute intervention that had, in some inexplicable way, roused Tali’s gift, she would have died in the sunstone shaft within sight of her destination, beheaded by Overseer Banj’s Living Blade, and Rannilt, too.

“No,” said Rannilt. “Chancellor told me to make sure you don’t escape.”

Tali pulled away. “I thought you were on my side.”

Rannilt put her plate down, snuggled up and curled Tali’s arm around her. “I am, Grizel. The only place you’re safe is here, under guard.”

If only you knew, thought Tali.

“I’m no good to you anyway,” said Rannilt. “As soon as it’s dark…” She shuddered. “Things get bad when it’s dark.”

“What kind of things?”

“It was really bad after we went to Precipitous Crag and fought Lyf’s wicked old wrythen.”

“I was sure you were going to die,” said Tali, realising that she needed to know what had happened. “What did he do to you?”

Lyf had made some kind of connection to Rannilt’s gift and had started drawing it out of her. He had fed on it to strengthen himself so he could escape his intangible wrythen form and get back a real, physical body that would make him so much more powerful — and free him from the caverns the wrythen was bound to.