Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

“Why?” she croaked.

Flydd replied. “Drinking lives is considered shameful; and the Merdrun’s magiz, and his few dozen sus-magizes, only ever had one reason to do it: when they had no other source of magical power.”

“But was it a suicide pact, or mass murder?” I said.

“How can it be mass murder? They’re all dead.”

“Yet the life-drinking spell was cast, and powerfully,” I replied. “Where’s the adept who cast it?”

“And his or her magical focus,” said Malien. “Merdrun can’t cast spells with their bare hands. But we searched them intimately after they were imprisoned here, and destroyed every device they had.”

Flydd paled. “You must have missed one.”

“You haven’t asked the two most important questions,” I said. “ Why were all those lives drunk? And what happened to all that magical power?”

“We’d better check the rest of the bodies,” said Flydd.

As we trudged along the rows, I realized that I was looking for one particular corpse. A huge Merdrun male—a former warrior captain who had become a junior sus-magiz. A hero who had subsequently betrayed the Merdrun nation and destroyed their hope of going home. He had been ritually mutilated afterwards, and I would know him instantly.

“Skald isn’t among the dead,” I said when I met Flydd at the end of the last row.

“He was here at the last roll check, three days ago,” said Malien.

“Come away,” said Flydd. He led us through a patch of forest until the dead were out of sight, then lowered his voice. “Skald was the most determined man I ever met. He once drank part of his own life to escape capture. He, almost single-handedly, made it possible for the Merdrun’s dreams to be fulfilled.”

“Until his forbidden love for a human slave, Uletta, ruined their plans,” I said. “Then, in the thrall of his life-drinking addiction, he drank the life of the woman he had been trying to save.”

“And with her dying breath, she laid an unbreakable curse on him and the Merdrun nation.”

“She cursed the whole of Santhenar. Nothing has gone right for us since.”

“You were his prisoner, and you knew him better than anyone,” said Flydd. “What are you thinking, Sulien?”

“I liked Skald at first. He was a tormented man, the son of a coward, and the magiz persecuted him mercilessly. I sensed Skald’s pain.”

“Go on.”

“He was desperate to restore his family’s tainted name. He drove himself to the limits of human endurance to do his duty.”

“And after he destroyed his people’s hopes and it led to their imprisonment here? After he became the lowest of the low?”

I felt a sickening dread. “I… I don’t think he would have changed. He would still have schemed to restore his name. And there’s only one way he could have done that.”

“By completing the Merdrun’s plan after all,” said Flydd. “ He’s not dead!”

“Then where’s he gone?”

“They always build a cubic temple. Where is it, Malien?”

She took us there. It was a perfect cube built from black, volcanic rock, about forty feet square, with no doors or windows. Flydd pointed his ring finger at the wall, blasted a hole through it, and we went in. The temple was empty apart from a central stone altar, on which lay a big, ruddy body. I generously let Flydd go first.

“It’s him, but turned to stone,” he said.

“I’m sensing a magical device,” I said. “One I’ve touched before.”

I went closer. Dare I? I reached out, my stomach throbbing, and gingerly pulled aside the eye patch covering the petrified Skald’s empty eye socket. And at the very back, something glowed green.

“What’s that?” said Flydd.

“After his betrayal was exposed,” I said, squirming at the memories, “and he was ritually mutilated, his magical focus, called a rue-har , was thrust through his right eye. Part of it must have broken off, leaving that shard embedded in bone. It was missed in the search—and it’s glowing with power.”

“What is a rue-har?” said Malien.

“A fragment from the Crimson Gate that corrupted the Merdrun an eon ago. Every sus-magiz had one.”

“So,” said Flydd, looking hard at Malien, “unknown to the Aachim, and perhaps to his own people, Skald has always been able to do magic here by using this ancient, corrupt relic. And, by secretly drinking lives, he could have become very powerful.”

My throat felt as though it had closed over; it was a struggle to draw breath. “In all the time the Merdrun were lost in the void,” I said, “more than ten thousand years, they never once changed their plans. They were betrayed and cast from their home-world into the void, long ago. All they wanted was to return to Tallallame—and take revenge on every one of their enemies.” I glanced up at Flydd. “So why would they end their lives, now?”

“You’ll be on their list, Sulien,” said Malien. “You too, Xervish. And me, I dare say.”

My heart hammered, panic rising. I fought it down. We had to work this out, and quickly. “The rest of Skald’s enemies, including my family, are at the reunion back home.”

“And it can’t be a coincidence that he drank his people’s lives last night,” said Flydd.

“But are they really dead?” I said. “ Or does he just want us to think so? ”

“What are you saying?”

“People whose lives have been drunk look a lot more shrunken than the bodies we checked. They’re hardly withered at all. What if Skald only partly drank his people’s lives, to get the massive power he needed to escape, leaving them apparently dead but actually under a stasis spell? So they could be reawakened afterwards, to carry out their plan?”

“It wouldn’t be easy to partly drink a life. It’s addictive and, once started, it’s hard to stop. And why would they trust the man who had so betrayed them?”

“Because Skald needed the plan to work even more than they did. Besides, they had nothing more to lose—and everything to gain.”

“Was there any hint of a stasis spell on the bodies?” said Malien.

“I couldn’t tell,” said Flydd.

“When the Merdrun held me prisoner,” I said, “Skald and I were mind-linked for a time. Could he have learned about the reunion through me?”

“Perhaps,” said Flydd, idly fingering the Waystone. Then he cried, “He wants the Waystone, more than anything! If he gets it, he’ll open a portal to Tallallame and take his people home. It would erase the taint on his name—he’d be a hero again.”

“But where is he? Here, turned to stone?”

We all stared at the petrified corpse.

“No, that’s just a shell.” Flydd walked around the altar, and again. “He’s gone to Tullymool. To the reunion! To get the Waystone, and take revenge on his enemies. ”

“Take us there!” snapped Malien.

I felt sick. With that much power, how could anyone resist him?

But something else was wrong here.

“Why would he leave the shard?” I said shakily. “It’s the last of their magical relics, the one thing they have left from their victorious past.”

“Maybe he couldn’t take it with him.” Flydd reached into the red eye socket and pulled it out, and his finger and thumb were smoking. “It’s bursting with power.”

“Don’t touch it with your bare skin.” Malien took it, slipped it into a little, round metal case like a pill box and handed it back. We raced out. “One last adventure,” she said. “Hurry!”

I grabbed Flydd’s wrist and Malien caught mine. Flydd touched the Waystone to his platinum ring and the portal hurled us away so violently that I felt Malien lose her grip. I tried to grab her in the darkness but she was gone.