by Ian Irvine
His lips twitched and Irisis felt as though he could read her mind, the bad as well as the good. In truth, she had no idea why she had done it, though it was not attraction to Yggur. She'd chosen her man and had no interest in any other.
'Very well. Put it on the table. Your own dinner will be getting cold.'
She bowed and turned to the door, feeling his eyes boring into her back and resisting the urge to run away. A disturbing man. And then, sitting down at the trestle with the others, she ate the entire glorious meal without tasting a thing.
They slept the sleep of the truly exhausted that night, and not even Flydd noticed when Yggur slipped into their chamber in the pre-dawn hours. Conjuring ghost light with his fingers, he inspected each in turn. His gaze lingered longest on three: the scrutator, Nish and Irisis. As he turned to go, Yggur almost stumbled over the little pilot, who lay by herself in her sleeping pouch, tossing and groaning. Bending down, he placed the glowing light to her temples, left and right. She rolled over onto her side and slept soundly, and Yggur withdrew.
They went to the machine at dawn and began to repair the tear in the airbag. 'Work slowly,' said Flydd. 'We don't want to leave today.'
Though they dawdled as much as they reasonably could, the airbag was repaired before midday. Inouye installed her controller and Flydd sent Nish to find Yggur and recover the floater-gas generator.
Nish went to the room at the end of the corridor where Yggur sat at the table, writing. The reassembled generator was at his right hand.
'Take it,' said Yggur, his nib looping across the page.
Nish reached out, rather gingerly, and lifted the heavy generator in both hands.
As he turned to go Yggur said, 'You are Cryl-Nish Hlar, weapons artificer, son of Jal-Nish Hlar. Your life is now at a crossroads. Women have been your weakness and you believe that lack of courage is mine.'
Nish flushed. 'I'm sorry, surr. Last night I was tired and hungry and afraid. Sometimes I speak without thinking.'
'Honest, at least,' Yggur said grudgingly. 'Put the generator down for a moment. Cryl-Nish, why have you come here?'
Nish sat it on the table and rubbed his aching arms. 'Scrutator Flydd brought us, surr. I don't know his reasons, though he's looking for help and can't find it anywhere else.'
'Not surprising, since he's a renegade who has been cast out and condemned.'
'The scrutators are fools, surr, who cannot —’
The black brows knitted. 'Who are you to judge the mighty, lowly artificer that you are?' Yggur thundered.
Once Nish would have slunk away, but he stood fast. 'I have eyes to see, surr. And, since you've been listening to our talk, you'll know that I've seen many great deeds done, and terrible ones too, on both sides of the world. My late father —’
'Do you tell me that Jal-Nish Hlar is dead?'
'He was killed at the great battle near Gnulp Landing, a few weeks ago. Killed and eaten by the lyrinx.'
'I'm out of touch, living here,' said Yggur. News travels slowly to Meldorin, if at all.'
'I'm a dutiful son, surr. I mourn my father, though he was an evil man who was prepared to do anything to gain a position as scrutator on the Council, including sentencing his youngest son to a miserable death as a slave.'
Yggur sat up at that. 'Oh?'
Nish briefly related that tale.
'A severe punishment for a father to inflict on a son, even for so great a blunder.' Yggur weighed Nish up. 'And yet, such qualities as your father had may be required to win this interminable war.'
'With respect, surr, I disagree. My father was corrupt, I'm sorry to say, and many on the Council, including Ghorr, are just as depraved. They could have won the war long ago, but it gave them the excuse to maintain their own power.’
'Tell me more, Artificer.'
Perhaps Yggur was more interested in the outside world than he pretended. He questioned Nish for the best part of an hour, more incisively than any interrogation by Flydd, Vithis or even his own father. All the more surprising that Yggur hid himself away from the world.
Finally Flydd came looking for Nish. Yggur dismissed him and Flydd accompanied him back to the machine; they carried the floater-gas generator between them. Nish felt quite drained.
'You seemed to be having a merry chat,' said Flydd, after an uncomfortable pause. 'I thought I told you to say as little as possible.'
'If you can stay quiet when he questions you, you're a better man than I am,' Nish snapped. He added hastily, 'Which of course you are.'
'Indeed I am,' chuckled Flydd, and left it at that.
The generator was fitted and its barrel filled with water to which a little salt had been added. Flydd cocked a glance at the sky. 'We'll break for lunch. I don't want to finish it too early.'
'Not much chance of that,' said Irisis. 'It'll take a good ten hours to fill the airbag from empty.'
'Even so.'
They were sitting around, taking a leisurely meal in the watery sun, when Yggur strode down the steps. 'Better get moving' he said. 'You're to be out of here by nightfall.'
'I don't see how we can be,' said Flydd. 'It'll take —’
'That's your lookout.' Yggur strode off, the wings of his coat flying out behind him. 'And once you're gone, you won't mention me by name.'
'What are we going to do?' said Irisis after he had gone.
'I have no idea.'
As soon as Inouye drew power into the floater-gas generator, it let out a shrieking whistle and began to hiss loudly.
'I don't like the way that sounds,' said Irisis but, on checking, found it to be working perfectly. She frowned at the mechanism. 'In fact —’
'What?' Flydd called.
'It seems to be working better than before. He must have done something to it.'
'Damn him!' Flydd paced furiously across the yard.
The bag was full an hour before dark. 'Get the blasted gear aboard,' Flydd said. It was not only that Fiz Gorgo had been his last hope. Even more vexing, Yggur had contrived to speak alone with Nish, Irisis, Muss, Fyn-Mah, Flangers and even little Inouye, but had refused to talk to Flydd. He felt neglected and insulted.
'I've got to do something,' he said. 'This is our last chance.'
'What if…?' Irisis began. 'No, that wouldn't work.'
'What?' he snapped.
'What if I were to speak to him again?' she said softly.
'What could you possibly say? He's more than a thousand years old. He's seen everything and heard everything.'
'If he's spent the last two hundred years here by himself . . , there may be things he hasn't seen, for a quite a while.'
'What do you mean?'
'You know,' she said.
'Oh, very well. There's nothing I wouldn't do to get him on my side, so if you can seduce him —’
'I didn't mean that', she said coldly. 'What do you take me for?'
Flydd looked embarrassed. 'Someone who's not quite as corrupt as a scrutator, obviously.'
'I'll take that as an apology, but don't expect to be warming my bed again.'
'I had a feeling it was over' he said. 'I suppose it's Nish, is it?'
'I have no idea what you're talking about,' she dissembled.
'I'm sure! I'll go with you' said Flydd. 'I've an idea. And if we ever get out of here, you'll repeat nothing of what you hear inside.'
'I understand.' She hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.
Yggur was not in his room but, as they crisscrossed the halls of the ground floor, Irisis heard the mancer's bootsteps on the stair of the front tower.
Yggur thrust his head over the edge. 'No need to say goodbye, or to thank me. Just go.'
'I must talk to you first' said Flydd. 'The scrutators are losing the war and I —’
'There's always a war being lost somewhere' Yggur said indifferently.
'You must help us!' cried Flydd. 'The very fate of humanity-'
'I don't care for your war, Scrutator Flydd, nor for you. You c
ome to my door a beggar, sabotage your flying machine so I can't get rid of you, then presume to tell me that I have to help you. I've nothing more to say to you.'
'But surely, for the war …'
'I live in harmony with my neighbours, including lyrinx. Go and make peace with yours.'
'The enemy don't want peace.'
'Small wonder, the way your Council has treated them these past hundred and fifty years. I may not know what's going on at the present, but I'm well informed about the origins of this war and I want no part of it. Good day.' Yggur turned and went back up.
Flydd cursed under his breath. He looked old, meagre and bitter, and, Irisis thought, did not like the comparison with a hale, confident Yggur.
'Let me try,' Irisis muttered. 'Go down, Xervish.'
Before he could say anything she began to run up the stairs. 'Yggur, surr! If you please?'
Yggur climbed to the next landing, sighed audibly and turned to wait for her.
Irisis knew she was an enchanting sight, with her generous bosom bouncing, her yellow hair streaming out behind her and her cheeks flushed prettily. She had no idea what she was going to say, but he would listen. Only a dead man could have turned her away.
'Yes?' he said coolly. Maybe he was made of stone after all. After living more than a thousand years, perhaps such passions were quite extinct in him.
She stopped at the far edge of the landing, three paces from him. Her chest was still heaving. Irisis caught her breath. 'Xervish Flydd is a good man, surr. An honest man.'
'He's a scrutator and the very name means stinking corruption. I should have burned him out of the sky.'
'The scrutators cast him out,' she said desperately. 'They condemned him to slavery.'
'He must have been too rotten even for them.'
'He's always treated me —’
'He's your lover, isn't he? Stinking old hypocrite.'
'Not for months,' she said softly. And Flydd isn't old; barely sixty.'
'And you're what? Twenty? Twenty-one? He's a filthy old pervert.'
Irisis might have mentioned Yggur's own liaison with a much younger Maigraith, but that would not have been helpful. She changed tack. 'I've read the Histories, surr.'
Everyone has read the Histories. The world is obsessed with them, much to its detriment.'
I know the Tale of the Mirror, surr. The true tale; my uncle had a private copy hidden away.' Oh?'
And I know your story. How you were betrayed by the Council of Santhenar a thousand years ago.' She reached up and put a hand on his arm. He looked down sharply but did not shake it off. 'In times long past, you were tormented by Rulke the Charon and driven into madness. You wandered the world for hundreds of years, neither ageing nor using your powers, before making the ancient Aachim fortress of Fiz Gorgo your own, and plotting your revenge. You found Maigraith, the love of your thousand-year life. And I know you're a noble man, surr. You destroyed Rulke's deadly construct, which threatened the Three Worlds, even though in doing so it left Maigraith trapped in Aachan. You did that because you loved our world more than anything.'
'I did it because it was the only way to save her,' he said, staring into nothingness.
She went on as if he had never spoken. And then, after she miraculously returned, you abandoned all claim on her and on your empire, rather than plunge the world into war.'
'Not so,' he murmured, still trapped in the past. 'She would not have me. She'd had the best, Rulke himself, and after him I came a distant second. I abandoned my empire because without her it meant nothing. I came home to Fiz Gorgo to die, but I endure, scarcely changed, while she is but a memory. A dream.' 'Then surely it's time to move on.'
He scanned her from her feet to her face. 'You're a beautiful woman, Irisis, but you don't move me. Make your point, whatever it is, then go.'
She lowered her voice, so Flydd would not hear. 'Did you see how scarred and battered Flydd is, how the very flesh was gouged from his broken bones? The scrutators did that to him thirty years ago, because he dared inquire too deeply into the doings of their master.'
That caught his attention. 'What master?' he said sharply. She left that question hanging and continued. 'And recently they cast him out and condemned him to a cruel death as a slave on the clanker-hauling teams.' 'Which I'm sure he deserved.'
'They ordered him to destroy the lyrinx node-drainer at Snizort, gave him a flawed device to do the job, then blamed him for its failure. It destroyed the node and all its fields with it, and a good part of Snizort.'
'What?' he cried. 'I've heard none of this.' 'The clankers and constructs stalled on the battlefield and the lyrinx overran them. Flydd was blamed for the disaster, though he did everything possible to avoid the battle.'
'A node was destroyed?' Yggur said incredulously, pushing past her down the steps and stalking towards the scrutator. 'Is this true, Flydd?'
'It made the most colossal explosion you can imagine,' said Flydd, his eyes alight. 'We were in an air-floater, five hundred spans above the ground, and the blast went up past us as high as a small thunderhead.'
Yggur stared down at him. 'And afterwards? Did anyone go to the node and look in, to see what had come of it?'
'I did, and Nish, and Ullii the seeker, who is no longer with us.'
'What did you see?' cried Yggur.
'Two metal tears, each larger than a grapefruit, and as shiny as quicksilver. I could not get to them —’
Yggur let out a sigh. 'So it can happen! What became of the tears?'
'Scrutator Jal-Nish Hlar took them, though we did not discover it was him for many weeks. He left the bodies of his guards in the pit, so that no one would ever know. He had the tears with him before the battle of Gumby Marth, near Gnulp Landing, for he forced Nish to touch them, and Nish was changed by it. It gave him a special sight afterwards, for half a day, though Nish has never had a talent for the Art.'
'Is that so?' said Yggur. Go on.'
'Jal-Nish used the tears to enhance his alchymical Art, but a mancer-lyrinx broke the spell. Jal-Nish was slain and eaten, and the tears disappeared. It is believed that the lyrinx took them.'
'I see,' said Yggur. 'Tell me, what were your doings thirty years ago, scrutator, that the Council did such mischief to you?'
'Surely your spies have told you?'
'I no longer have spies. The only news I hear from across the water comes from traders and wandering vagabonds as disreputable as yourselves, and it's usually months old.'
'I pried into forbidden secrets,' said Flydd. 'That's why they punished me.'
'For uncovering the scrutators' master?'
'Where did you hear that?' cried Flydd. 'It puts the lie to —’
'I told him, surr,' said Irisis.
'That secret was not yours to reveal,' Flydd said furiously.
'Then you shouldn't have told me about it in your cups,' she retorted.
'Well, Flydd?' said Yggur.
Flydd shook his head. 'I cannot speak of the secrets of the scrutators, surr, even to you. I am sworn and do not lightly break my oath.'
'I don't break sworn word for any reason,' Yggur said scornfully. 'I won't trouble your conscience further, for I can see it a fragile thing it is. Come down, Artisan. Have you given your sworn word to say nothing? Your sacred oath?'
'I said I wouldn't tell,' she said weakly.
'Oath or no oath?'
'No oath.'
'Then, since you boast about how well you know the Tale of the Mirror, and my part in it, you know that you will tell me.
Not even your scrutator can resist me, though I won't force him to break his oath to his corrupt masters.'
Flydd stood staring at her, gnarled hands by his sides. Just give the word, she thought, and I'll resist him with all the strength in my body. But Flydd said nothing. Perhaps he wanted her to reveal what he could not.
'The only thing I know,' said Irisis, 'and that was mentioned several times in .., extremis . . '.
'An excess
of wine!' said Yggur. 'What price your oath now, Scrutator? Two cups? Three?'
'. . , it was a reference to the Numinator,' Irisis finished.
'The Numinator?' Yggur said, puzzled.
'The person who gives the scrutators their orders, surr. The one for whom they have shaped our world.'
'Ahh!' He let his breath out. 'I've often wondered how such a collection of fools and incompetents came to gain such power; and how they maintained it for so long. Who is this Numinator?'
'That's all I know, surr,' said Irisis.
'It's enough. You've bought your master a refuge.'
'No man is my master,' said Irisis.
'Whatever you say. Well, Flydd, you may stay for a few days. We'll speak more about these matters tonight. Are you happy, now that you've gained what you wanted?'
'Time will tell if it was worth the price,' said Flydd.
Forty-six
Ghorr's air-floater carried Ullii back to the main camp. She did not say a word the whole way — she was overcome by a crawling horror of him and the scrutators, and her own folly. They'd trapped her with the bracelet and now controlled her utterly.
Ullii tried to retreat to her inner refuge by cutting off all her senses, as she'd often done in the past, but Ghorr just dragged her out again. She could find no comfort in her lattice, either, for it seemed to be fading. What had once been brilliantly clear was hardly there, and when she tried to make the lattice anew, her mind's eye was empty. It was one blow too many. She collapsed and lay on her sickbed for a week, raving with a brain fever.
As soon as she began to recover, Ghorr dragged her out of bed. Flydd and Nish had disappeared and she had to find them. Ullii looked for her lattice and it was back, though not as strong or clear as before. For days she sought in vain; Flydd was beyond its reach.
The search went on and, many troubled days later, high in the air-floater, she detected a faint trace of him at the battlefield of Gumby Marth. By the time Ghorr had assembled a force strong enough to brave that lyrinx-infested place, Flydd was gone again. Subsequently the news came that his ship had been lost and Flydd drowned. Ghorr refused to believe it and ordered a search of the entire Karama Malama, by ship and air-floater.