by Ian Irvine
'I can't kill a living animal,' she whispered.
If you don't, youil starve and your baby will go unavenged. Pick up the stone.
Ullii bent her knees, ever so slowly, until she could reach the stone. The bracelet slipped on her wrist and for a moment she could not remember what she was doing, or why. She shook herself, it locked again, she recalled, and her fingers closed around the stone. Warm from the sun, it felt smooth, hard and heavy.
The voice was there again. Draw back your arm, slowly.
'I've never thrown a rock in my life. I won't even hit it.'
at was a comfort.
just do as I say. Don't aim at the hare, for it will dart away.
that tussock just to the left? Aim for the very centre of that, then throw with all your strength.
Ullii sighted on the tussock.
That's good. Now throw hard!
She hurled the stone. It went cleanly from her hand, exactly where she had aimed. The hare was slow to move, then darted to its right, directly into the path of the stone, and fell dead.
Animals did not show in her lattice, as a rule, but as the hare expired, Ullii felt a flare of pain. She ran across to the small creature, hating herself and regretting its death. She picked it up, stroking its fur. It was still warm, the eyes still bright. She had no idea what to do with it. She rarely ate meat, and then only the smallest amounts.
'What do you want me to do?' She had no knife to skin it, no flint and tinder with which to kindle a fire.
Tear off the skin with your teeth. Drink the blood before it congeals, then eat the meat and the organs. The very idea made her want to vomit.
This is your first test, Ullii, and if you fail it, you won't succeed in anything and Yllii will lie in torment for eternity.
'But it was a living creature.'
Is it wrong for the lion to kill the lamb when her cubs are hungry? Of course not. Eat it, that you may survive, that poor Yllii may be revenged, and the world saved.
Ullii put her sharp teeth to the creature's throat and began to tear at the fur.
She did not hear the voice for days after that. Ullii wandered across the plains, sheltering from the sun in the day, moving at night. She learned to hunt and kill small animals with her bare hands, or with sticks, stones, pits or snares, drinking their blood and eating their flesh raw. She did not think at all, for thinking led to all sorts of mad thoughts that she could not bear, and grief that overwhelmed her. She simply became an animal.
Then, one morning, maybe a week later, she was snapped back to full consciousness.
Wake, said the voice, and this time there was an inexorability about it that made her afraid. The voice had grown more powerful, and bleaker. It no longer sounded like Flammas. It reminded her of the evil scrutator, the dumpy- old woman. It's time!
'Time for what?' Ullii shuddered, but now she was afraid to disobey.
Time to begin your retribution. Time to set the world to rights.
'I don't understand.'
Look in your lattice. Look for the knot of Chief Scrutator Ghorr.
She searched the lattice and found it at the very limit, a long way to the south. 'I can see it.'
Call him to you.
'I don't know how.'
Change his knot. You can do that.
'I don't dare. He'll attack me.'
He's looking for you. Change it so he knows where you are, and he will come.
'I'm afraid. He's a cruel man.'
Ah, but now you can give him what he wants, he'll do.anything for you.
'What does he want?'
He wants Scrutator Flydd, Cryl-Nish Him and Irisis Stirm, and you can find them. You must, for they've all betrayed you.
'I don't know where they are.'
You can find them.
'Flydd and Irisis aren't in my lattice any more. Nish never has been.'
Ghorr will help you find them. Wherever Flydd is, there Nish will be. Call Ghorr to you.
Ullii reached into her lattice, traced out Ghorr's jagged, angry knot and began to tug at the ends. As soon as she did, a feeling of dread crept over her, a cold shivering of the flesh.
He was a wicked man, even worse than Jal-Nish. Just looking closely at his knot made her shudder with terror.
He's not the worst. Cryl-Nish is the worst, for he pretends to be.’
‘Yes,’ she thought. Nish is worse, and I'll use these evil people to punish him. She plucked at the knot again, and all at once felt an alertness searching for her.
Withdraw.
She drew back, shivering, though the day was warm.
Reach out again, carefully. Don't alarm him and he won't strike at you like an enemy; just make him know that you're here.
Ullii reached out, touched the knot and turned it around, and as she did so she felt Ghorr thinking, Aaahhhhhh! There she is.
Withdraw and shut down the lattice. Go out into the open. See where that great tree has fallen and the wind has piled scrub and dead glass against it? Burn it.
'I've nothing to light it with.'
‘I will show you how.’
The voice had her collect dry grass and crush it between two stones until it was a bone-dry powder. Then it led Ullii around the fallen tree, picking up sticks and putting them down again until she found two different kinds of wood, one hard, the other softer, that were just right. She rubbed the hard stick back and forth across the softer one, pressing firmly, with a steady motion that she could keep up for a long time.
Eventually Ullii was rewarded by smoking wood-dust that set the grass powder ablaze. Lighting a handful of twigs, she thrust it into her prepared nest of kindling, and within minutes the timber was roaring. She stood back and waited for Ghorr's air-floater to find her. The voice in her head had gone. Ullii felt that she had taken command of her life at last.
The air-floater landed just before dusk, well away from the fire, which had consumed the centre of the vast trunk and was now creeping along the length of it. Ghorr got out. Ullii remained standing in front of the blaze, in full view. Her gut tightened as he headed towards her, robes flapping, followed by Fusshte and the dumpy old woman with the balding head.
Ghorr could have picked Ullii up in one hand; he was her peer. And yet, halfway to the fire, his stride faltered and he stopped, stung in ha.
Ullii did not meet his gaze. She did not have the strength for that kind of connection – he knew the balance had changed between them. She might be little and weak, but she had called him, and he had come. It made all the difference. Furthermore, she knew he was remembering those strange things she had done in Nennifer, that no one else on Santhenar could have explained, much less duplicated.
'I knew I'd find you,' Ghorr said.
'I summoned you.'
He smiled at her use of that word. 'Did you really? Why?'
She caught her breath. 'My brother, Mylii, is dead! The word sent a spasm through her bowel. 'Nish killed him. My baby is dead and that's Nish's fault too. He is evil and must be punished. I will find him for you.'
Chief Scrutator Ghorr's eyes narrowed. 'What about Ex-Scrutator Xervish Flydd, the greatest enemy of them all?'
'He lied to me, betrayed and abandoned me.'
'Will you find him for me?'
'I will find him,' said Ullii. 'Wherever he goes. There is nowhere on Santhenar that he can hide.'
'And Crafter Irisis Stirm?' He bared his hyena teeth.
After a considerable pause, for Irisis had not betrayed her as badly as the others had, she whispered, 'Her too.'
Ghorr raised his hands to the sky and roared in exultation. She had to stop her ears until he was done.
'I'll put it about that you're dead,' Ghorr said after some reflection. 'That way Flydd won't try to hide from your talent. Is that acceptable?'
'No one cares whether I live or die,' she said softly, sadly.
Ullii stood watching him, hating him almost as much as the others, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered but that she f
ind the three who had tormented her, and bring them to justice:
'Well done, Scrutator T'Lisp,' Ghorr purred to the old man.
‘I never would have believed it possible, even with your talent, but you've excelled yourself.'
T'Lisp smiled and caressed a bracelet on her arm, identical to the one that now strangled Ullii's wrist. She said nothing at all.
'It was a stroke of genius, trapping her with Mylii's bracelet,'
Ghorr went on. 'She didn't realise for a second.'
Ullii looked from one to the other, her guts crawling with horror as she understood what they'd done. They'd set the snare and she'd put her head right in it. From the instant she'd slipped on the bracelet she'd been under their control, just as they must have controlled Mylii before. It hadn't been Flammas in her head at all, but wicked Scrutator T'Lisp. Ullii hadn't taken charge of her life; she'd simply done their bidding.
'Oh yes,' said Ghorr, sneering at her distress, her futile struggle to wrench the bracelet off. 'You're mine, Ullii, just as your brother was, and there's nothing you can do about it.'
Twenty-five
The race to Gumby Marth had been plagued by breakdowns and mechanical problems that could not be allowed to delay the army. Where these could not be fixed at once, the affected clankers and their cargo of soldiers were left behind with an artificer, to catch up when they could. Troist fought furiously with the scrutator about it, for the general did not care to leave the least of his soldiers behind, but if they were to save Jal-Nish's army it had to be done. He had abandoned the idea of travelling at night, instead rousing the army before dawn so they could begin at first light, but still they were behind schedule.
Flydd spent most of his waking hours closeted in another twelve-legged clanker with the army's chief mancer, who went by the absurd name of Nutrid. He was an elongated stick of a man, quite meagre apart from an improbably round, quivering belly, like a jelly moulded in a bowl. His head was the shape of a hatchet, his eyes huge and glassy, and his fluted, constantly pursed lips had the look of an insect's proboscis.
Nish never spoke to Nutrid, nor even went close to his clanker. Mancers were particularly irritable when at work and Flydd's natural irascibility was growing as he recovered. Nish did glean, however, that the two mancers were trying to modify a cloaking spell to conceal the entire clanker fleet from sight and hearing, for the last day of travel. Camp gossip told him that Nutrid was dubious. Such spells had had limited success previously, and had never been attempted for an army as big as this one. The strain on the mancers, not to mention the field, would be prodigious. Twice on the first day of travel, and three times on the second, the entire column had to be stopped so the two mancers could test their makeshift spell. During the first three stops, nothing happened, though Flydd was so exhausted afterwards he had to lie down.
On the fourth attempt, as Nish was climbing out of Troist's clanker, the air turned a shimmering green and every anthill within two hundred paces of the column exploded, deluging the army with red clay and little green ants. Nish was still picking them out of his hair an hour later — and so, unfortunately, was the cook from his cauldrons. Lunch reeked so pungently of crushed ants that not even the hardiest soldiers could force it down.
The mancers tried again at sunset, as camp was being set up for the evening. Nish was taking his turn on watch when a burst of purple flame set fire to a row of canvas privies, sending the occupants hopping, trousers about their ankles, in fear of their lives. Unfortunately the chief cook was one of them and took it personally. He locked himself in his supply clanker and not even Troist could coax him out in time to supervise the preparation of dinner. That task fell to the under-cook, a good assistant but a disorganised supervisor, and the food he served three hours late was worse than lunch had been. A grim Troist, whose belly was giving him more trouble than usual, ordered the chief cook to his post at once, and the troublesome mancers to get it right or desist forthwith, before the soldiers mutinied.
On the following morning, the fourth, a loud bang from Nutrid's clanker was followed by puffs of orange smoke and the two mancers hurling themselves out of the rear hatch.
'Another failure, surr?' called Nish, keeping a safe distance away. He couldn't resist getting a little of his own back. Whenever Nutrid and Flydd went to work, the wags among the soldiers had begun to snigger behind their hands.
'Nothing that compares to your gross and repeated incompetence' Flydd said coldly, beating out acrid yellow fumes issuing from the seat of his pants. 'Now clear out.'
The fleet stopped in the imddle of the fifth day, a good few leagues from their destination, to give Nutrid and Flydd one last chance to master their cloaking spell. The sky was clear and Troist was afraid of being spotted by flying spies.
Nish went for a walk across a plain covered in long grass, and studded with orange anthills twice the height of his head. He was thinking and fretting about Ullii when a hot breath of air stirred the hair on the back of his head. That was odd, for the cool breeze in his face was blowing from the sea.
He turned, frowning, to see an air lens form all around the fleet. The whole camp seemed to rise off the ground, and then the ground with it, as if the light had been bent upwards. A mirrored wall appeared, there came a shrill whistle, rising to a whip crack, Nish blinked and the fleet was gone. The plain seemed to be empty but for the anthills and the gently waving grass.
He paced back, a hollow core of fear in his belly. The army could not have vanished just like that, spell or no. But everyone had heard stories about squadrons of clankers overloading a node and disappearing into nothingness. Could Flydd and Nutrid — ridiculous name! — have taken too much from the node? From a hundred paces he could see nothing but grass and the depressions where the clankers had stood. They were simply gone. He raced back. Fifty paces away the air began to shimmer and he ran right over Flydd, who was lying flat on his back in the grass, observing the effectiveness of the cloaker. As Nish sprawled on the ground, looking up, the fleet appeared out of nowhere.
'I knew we could do it,' Flydd said cheerfully. 'Now we'll give the enemy something to put in their dispatches.'
It was mid-afternoon and they were going slowly over rough ground, in open forest that ran most of the way to their destination. After much tinkering the cloaker was working well, though Flydd was concerned about its massive drain on the field, not to mention Nutrid's ability to maintain the spell while Flydd was recuperating. The cloaker required constant attention and maintenance, and was a strain on everyone who lay within its umbrella, especially the clanker operators and Flydd himself. He was far from recovered and, after an hour supporting the cloaker spell, had to lie down for four hours.
The inside of the clanker was dark but for a conjured ghost light at Flydd's right shoulder. He was deep in a small, thick volume bound in maroon calf, its title inlaid in platinum leaf.
'What's that you're reading?' asked Nish. 'Yet another tome on the Secret Art?'
Over the past days, able to walk only with great discomfort, Flydd had gone through every volume in Nutrid's small library. He was in a fine humour, now that the spell was working.
Wordlessly, the scrutator lifted the volume. The Great Tales, 23: The Tale of the Mirror. No chronicler's name was listed.
'Reading a story!' Nish said with mock sarcasm. 'You really are relaxed.'
'Every human should know the Great Tales,' Flydd said pompously. 'They are the very foundation of the Histories.'
'You're old enough to be in them!'
'Choose your words with care, Nish,' growled the scrutator. 'I'm no older than I look.'
'Two hundred and fifty?' Nish ducked out of the way as Flydd swatted at him.
'I'm sixty-four. A good, round age. An important number too, if you care for such things.'
'Only sixty-four?' Nish said seriously. 'I thought you mancers could extend your life forever.'
'This one has been hard enough; don't inflict another on me.'
'
But didn't some of the great mancers live for a thousand years?' Nish bit his tongue, in case Flydd took offence. Perhaps he felt himself to be a great mancer.
Flydd chuckled at Nish's embarrassment Only two, to my knowledge. Extending one 's life is a hazardous process, and more mancers have died in the attempt than have survived it.
Mendark, the long-time magister of Thurkad did it many times but he was a very great mancer, the like of whom we will not see again. And in the end he died, as we all must.
Yggur was also long lived, but in his case it was natural longevity: no one knows why. All those who extended their lives, male or female, were motivated by greed. They wanted what only the other human species — Aachim, Faellem and Charon — had a right to. I've many failings, Nish, but greed isn't one of them.' He pointedly took up his book.
'What part are you up to?'
Flydd sighed, but laid the book aside. 'I was reading the final section of the tale, where Rulke the Charon opened a gate between the worlds and tried to bring the remnant of his people to Santhenar.'
'I .., don't recall that,' said Nish.
'I thought you knew the Great Tales well?' Flydd's continuous eyebrow formed a knot in the middle of his forehead.
'I thought I did.'
'Well, to cut this story to its basics, just a hundred Charon survived the void and the taking of Aachan, many thousands of years ago. The Hundred, they were called, but for some reason they could not reproduce on that world. It seemed as though they would live forever, but theirs was an increasingly bitter, lonely existence, as one by one they became infertile. The Charon were on a one-way road to extinction.
'To save them, Rulke brought the handful of fertile ones through the gate to Santhenar. But Faelamor, the leader of the Faellem, who had always feared the Charon, opened a gate into the void and brought forth several thranx, intelligent winged creatures akin to lyrinx …I think the lyrinx may have flesh-formed themselves to resemble thranx, actually.' He reflected on that for a moment, before continuing. 'While Rulke struggled with Faelamor's illusions the thranx slew the Charon, every fertile one. From that moment, Rulke's species was doomed. Noble Rulke was killed soon after, and the remaimder of the Hundred went back to the void to die.' 'I'm surprised you don't know that part of the story,' Flydd concluded. 'It is, to my mind, the greatest tragedy in all the Histories, and the most poignant tale. Not even the fall of Tar Gaarn can compare to it.'