The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) Read online

  Tales of the Three Worlds

  THE SONG OF THE TEARS TRILOGY

  Book 2 – The Curse on the Chosen

  Ian Irvine

  THE SONG OF THE TEARS TRILOGY

  Book 2 – The Curse on the Chosen

  Copyright 2007, 2014 Ian Irvine

  (First published by Penguin Books Australia, 2007)

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my editor, Nan McNab, and my agent, Selwa Anthony, for their hard work and support over many years. Thanks to Janet Raunjak and Laura Harris at Penguin Books and Tim Holman, Bella Pagan and Darren Nash at Orbit Books for support, encouragement and assistance. I would like to thank everyone at Penguin Books and Orbit Books for working so hard on the ten books of this series to date, and for doing so well with them.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MAP

  The Continent of Lauralin

  PART ONE – THE CHTHONIC FLAME

  PART TWO – THE TOWER OF A THOUSAND STEPS

  PART THREE – THE RANGE OF RUIN

  First Chapters of Book 3, The Destiny of the Dead

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Other Books by Ian Irvine

  PART ONE

  THE CHTHONIC FLAME

  ONE

  Maelys stood frozen in the centre of the cave, glaring at the rigid back of her enemy. The nightmare had come to pass. That monster, Jal-Nish Hlar, God-Emperor of all Santhenar, held her mother, aunts and her little sister Fyllis, the only family Maelys had left, in the festering dungeons of Mazurhize. Now they were going to pay for her failure; they would die in unspeakable agony for helping Nish escape his father’s prison, and it had all been for nothing.

  ‘Uurgh! Gahh!’

  Xervish Flydd was on his knees, throwing up on the floor, and she blamed herself for that as well. She had pressured him to renew his aged, failing body, but the mighty spell had gone wrong and the God-Emperor had appeared before Flydd could recover from the trauma. Though he now had the body of a man in middle age, he had lost his gift for the Secret Art. Without it they could not hope to escape through the sealed door into the perilous shadow realm as they had planned, then back to a distant part of Lauralin where they could hide in safety while Flydd regained his strength.

  Huge, gentle Zham stood by the columns carved into the rear wall, sword in hand, but he could do nothing to save them. Neither could her friend Colm, beside him. They were also going to die.

  And then there was Nish, slumped against the side wall. Maelys had once looked up to him as the Deliverer, the one man who could overthrow the tyrant God-Emperor, break his cruel grip on the world and relieve the suffering of Santhenar’s downtrodden people. Nish had made that promise and all Santhenar looked to him to keep it, but he never would. Ten years in Mazurhize had broken him; he wasn’t a shadow of the hero he’d once been.

  Jal-Nish, secure in the power of his Profane Tear, Reaper, stood nonchalantly on the sill of the cave, at the brink of the thousand-span-high precipice of Mistmurk Mountain, gazing out. The twin bands of his platinum half-mask circled the back of his head, one high, the other low, and his good hand fondled the sorcerous quicksilver tear that hung from a chain about his neck. And well he might, for Reaper and its absent twin, Gatherer, gave him the power to control the world.

  His sky palace ground its way towards them on the thigh-thick cables anchoring it to the plateau. In a few minutes it would be within reach; his Imperial Guard would come down the gangplank and all hope would be lost.

  Maelys’s stomach knotted at the thought of what Jal-Nish’s torturers would do to her little sister, a slender, pretty, blonde-haired girl of nine – no, she would be ten now. Fyllis wasn’t clever, but she possessed a gift that had saved her family several times, when the God-Emperor’s scriers had come searching ruined Nifferlin Manor armed with uncanny spying devices. Jal-Nish wanted to eradicate all stray gifts for the Secret Art, and did not hesitate to kill children to ensure that he succeeded.

  Her jaw was clenched so tight that her teeth hurt. A stray breeze swirled through the entrance, icing the sweat on her brow. She must save her family, whatever it took, or die trying. No, she could not die. Failure was unthinkable; she couldn’t give up, even if everyone else had, but how was she to defeat the most powerful man in the world?

  Jal-Nish had deliberately turned his back to show his utter contempt for them, and drive home their helplessness. And she was helpless, for Maelys was a small, demure woman, only nineteen, with no training in the warrior’s arts. Moreover, she’d been brought up to be truthful, polite, gentle and respectful, and her stern aunts had taught her obedience with a leather strap. How could she hope to match wits with this cunning and merciless man; to defy his authority over them all?

  She had to find a way. Jal-Nish wasn’t as powerful as the world believed him to be, yet he had easily overcome everyone in this cavern. Nonetheless, he had a secret fear that someone would find the antithesis to his Profane Tears – the one thing that could nullify their power – and lead an army to overthrow him. Maelys had foolishly pressured the old, feeble Flydd to cast that terrible renewal spell upon himself in the hope that he could help her find the antithesis to the tears, and she had to answer for the consequences.

  Only one person might know if the antithesis existed, and that was the Numinator, the shadowy figure who had established and controlled the former Council of Scrutators during the one hundred and fifty year war against the lyrinx. The Numinator dwelt in the Tower of a Thousand Steps, on the Island of Noom in the frozen Antarctic wastes, a thousand leagues – a year’s march – to the south of here. It was an impossible distance in a world whose every ell was monitored by the God-Emperor’s human, and inhuman, spies.

  The sky palace crept ever closer. It was connected to the mouth of the cave by a long but narrow metal plank which swayed and flexed in the ferocious updraught rushing up the sides of the plateau. Jal-Nish watched the approach, not bothering to check on his prisoners. What if she ran and thrust him over the cliff? Any normal man would be smashed to pulp at the bottom, but Jal-Nish was not a normal man; she felt sure he could save himself with Reaper. Besides, she was no murderer; it wasn’t in her to kill a man from behind, not even him.

  She knew he dreaded that everything he’d done would be undone once he grew old and died. He sought immortality with the tears, yet feared that he would never find it. But Maelys did not know how to exploit that weakness, either.

  So much for his fears; what about his hopes? Family was everything to Jal-Nish, though his wife had repudiated him many years ago, after a lyrinx’s claws turned him into a monstrosity. His daughter and three older sons had died without issue and he had no living relatives apart from Nish, who had just rejected his father’s offer and all he stood for. Though Jal-Nish felt desperately alone, he was too proud to ask for his only son’s help again.

  ‘Flames,’ slurred Flydd. ‘White, cold flames, burning but never consuming.’

  He had been talking nonsense for ages, always about fire and darkness. He groaned and slumped back to sit on his heels, threads of vomit and blood-stained saliva hanging from his open mouth. Jal-Nish’s head shot around, his fingers working instinctively on the shimmering surface of Reaper, only to let out a short, barking laugh. Flydd heaved up a black clot onto the dry moss; Jal-Nish, bouncing on the balls of his feet, resumed his vigil.

  ‘Darkness aflame,’ choked Flydd. ‘Never the same; forever in pain; the flame to regain.’ He spat out another clot and began to mumble incoherently.

  And Maelys had helped to do this to him. Guilt-ridde
n, she tried to shut out his groans, for the sky palace would be here in a minute. Family was her only lever and Nish was all the God-Emperor had left – or was he? What if she could convince Jal-Nish otherwise?

  Her heart began to thunder. Dare she try? Jal-Nish had been a scrutator, and possessed all their arts of interrogation and torture; he was practised at extracting secrets from even the most hardened opponents. He must be even more skilled now, for Gatherer controlled his wisp-watchers, loop-listeners, snoop-sniffers and all the other instruments, public and secret, with which he maintained control over the world. No one could resist Gatherer, with the possible exception of little Fyllis.

  But Gatherer was on his sky palace, and that gave Maelys a slender chance. Could she pull it off, all alone? She quailed at the thought of trying, for deceit was foreign to her nature, but she had to, no matter what it cost her. She knew there would be a cost; she’d discovered that the first time she’d been forced to act against her principles.

  Somewhere below the entrance to the cavern, rock crunched. Jal-Nish held up his hand and the grinding stopped as the winch cables were halted. He leaned out, peering down at the gigantic anchor embedded in the precipice below the cavern, which sounded as if it were tearing free.

  ‘Slowly,’ he said to Reaper. ‘Take it slowly now.’

  The grinding resumed; the sky palace inched closer. Flydd was raving about wraiths and darkness, and a woman dressed in red, but his eyes were empty. She began to fear that his old self was lost inside his renewed body and he was sinking into insanity, but she couldn’t worry about that now. It was all up to her and she had to do two impossible things: first, find a way to save her family from Jal-Nish, and second, discover a means of escape.

  The glimmerings of a plan came to her, so reckless that it just might work, though if she were caught he would put her to such agonies that the chroniclers would still be telling the tale in a thousand years. She looked away, struggling to curb her panic. How could a shy, bookish country girl even think to deceive the God-Emperor and his Profane Tears?

  She had to find a way. Maelys glanced through the swaying curtains of moss and lichen that partly closed off the entrance. Jal-Nish was still looking out. She made up her mind; she would not give up on her family while she lived. She would do whatever it took, and pay the price later.

  Taking a deep breath, conscious that she might not have many left, she called, ‘Jal-Nish?’ She could not bring herself to use the title God-Emperor.

  He turned and put his head through the moss curtain, frowning at her. Maelys’s knees went weak at the thought of what she was about to do. It couldn’t possibly succeed; he would see through her instantly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. The platinum half-mask covered the ruined left and central parts of his face, including his nose and chin, but left his right eye, brow and cheek exposed. ‘What do you want, girl?’

  Maelys couldn’t bear to look at him, or Nish, who had previously rejected her so humiliatingly; or least of all, Colm, who she felt sure was in love with her. She cared for him too, and admired him even more, since Colm, honourable man that he was, had previously declined to press his suit at such a difficult time for her. After this, he never would. What she was about to do would cost her all her friends, and mean the death of any hopes she held for Colm and herself.

  ‘I’m pregnant!’ she said hoarsely. ‘By Nish.’

  TWO

  Colm choked. Nish jerked upright. The dead moss rustled where Flydd knelt, bloody strings swinging from his lips. Even the gentle giant, Zham, looked shocked.

  Maelys couldn’t afford to look any of them in the face. This meant life or death; nothing else mattered. She kept staring at Jal-Nish, and his one eye lit up for an instant, enough to give him away. Oh yes, he wanted what she could bear him – he wanted it more than anything in his empire. But then his face hardened.

  ‘Cryl-Nish said, only half an hour ago, that he’s not had congress with any woman since escaping from Mazurhize. Are you calling my son a liar?’

  ‘No,’ Maelys said faintly.

  His cheek went purple. ‘If he’s not lying, you must be.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ she gasped. This was much harder than she’d thought; she couldn’t do it.

  Jal-Nish turned to Nish. Say nothing, Nish, Maelys prayed. Leave it to me.

  ‘Well, Cryl-Nish?’ said his father.

  ‘I have not had relations with her. As far as I know, Maelys is a virgin.’ Nish’s jaw clenched and his eyes flicked towards Colm.

  No, Maelys prayed. Please don’t say it, Nish. You’ll ruin everything. If you ever cared about me at all, please keep quiet.

  He said thickly, ‘Though he may have taken her on the way here – they were close enough when they arrived.’

  Out of the corner of her eye Maelys saw Colm’s look of outrage. ‘I may be just a humble woodcutter to you, Deliverer, but I’ve behaved as a gentleman with Maelys, as I have with all women. While you, surr, are nothing but scum, no matter who your father is.’

  Jal-Nish’s fingers stroked Reaper, hooked through its silvery surface and Colm doubled over, gasping for air.

  ‘Despite his manifest failings,’ he grated, ‘Cryl-Nish is my only son, and the chosen one. You will treat him with the respect due to his station.’

  Colm collapsed, clawing at the dead moss covering the floor. Jal-Nish looked away indifferently and spoke to Maelys. ‘Virginity is easily tested, girl. Think carefully before you say any more, for every untrue word earns you a deeper excruciation.’

  Maelys had thought very carefully, but the story was already spinning out of her control. Besides, she had always been a modest girl, and in her family people did not talk about such matters, especially not to strangers; but there was no going back now.

  ‘You may have me tested,’ she said, flushing at the thought of it, even at speaking of such an intimate test, ‘and you will discover that I am a virgin still. Colm does not lie. He is a gentleman.’

  ‘Then you’re a lying slut,’ spat Jal-Nish. ‘You’ve proven it out of your own mouth.’

  The sky palace loomed into view, its white stone sails shining in a fleeting ray of sunlight. He stopped it with a backwards gesture.

  ‘I’m neither a liar nor a slut.’ Maelys felt her cheeks going even redder. ‘I am pregnant, to Nish.’

  ‘Why do you insist on this vicious falsehood?’ Jal-Nish’s flesh-formed hand gripped a rock at the entrance, crushing it to dust. ‘Faugh! I’ve had enough of this.’ He turned to step out onto the plank and Maelys could not think how to stop him.

  ‘There is – a way,’ Flydd said hoarsely from the floor. ‘We both know – it can be done, Jal-Nish.’

  Jal-Nish spun on his boot heel on the swaying plank, strode back to Maelys and lifted her by the front of her shirt, staring into her eyes. She forced herself to meet his one eye, and again she saw that fleeting spark of hope in it.

  ‘Well, girl?’ he said, letting her down again. ‘I have to know. And you must understand that, once I have Gatherer in my hands again, I can sort truth from falsehood in an instant.’

  Yet you want this grandchild so desperately you can’t bear to wait until the sky palace arrives. It was his weakness and her opportunity, though only if she could capitalise on it once she’d told her story, and Maelys still hadn’t thought of a way to do that.

  ‘Your son is a passionate man,’ she said, ‘a lusty man who had been deprived for ten years.’

  ‘I know my son,’ he said thickly. ‘I was like that myself, before the tears raised me above such animal appetites. Get on with it.’

  The cavern was perfectly still; there was no sound apart from the swishing of the moss curtain in the wind and the creaking of the monstrous mooring cables as the sky palace moved in the updraughts.

  ‘I nursed Nish after he was wounded leading the Defiance in their victory over your army,’ said Maelys. So far, so good, but she hadn’t begun the real lie yet. Her eyes met Nish’s, and it looked as thou
gh he was trying to say something, but she couldn’t tell what.

  ‘It was no victory at all,’ sneered Jal-Nish. ‘I was directing my troops via Gatherer. I let him win.’

  No difficulty reading Nish’s face now. He was a man stripped naked to the world, his anguish showing in the shards of his cheekbones, the fingers like fishhooks; the raw, running eyes.

  Maelys felt acid rising up into her throat, burning her. Jal-Nish was an even bigger monster than she’d thought. ‘You deliberately sent thousands of men to their deaths, and left the rest of your own army dying in agony in that slaughter heap? Why?’

  Jal-Nish chuckled. ‘It amused me to let the so-called Defiance think they could win, for it will make their ultimate defeat all the more crushing. How did you do it, girl?’

  Maelys could barely breathe. She couldn’t speak for a moment, but she had to master herself. The soldiers were long dead; she had to take care of the living.

  ‘Nish …’ It was so difficult to say it; she felt a scarlet blush spreading up her neck and across her cheeks. ‘Your – your son is such a lusty man that, even while recovering from that terrible arrow wound, he was … subject to an, er, nocturnal, um, flux.’

  ‘Nocturnal flux?’ Jal-Nish cried. ‘Speak in a plain tongue, girl, and be swift about it, or Reaper will sear it out of your living mouth.’

  ‘Even in the most terrible fever, and half dead, Nish became so aroused each night that he spilled his seed upon the sheets.’ Her cheeks were so inflamed that they stung. ‘I had to have him, any way I could, but Nish would not have me at any price.’