by Ian Irvine
And if that fails?'
Attempt it at Snizort, where there are hundreds to choose from.'
And once you have your flying machine, what then?'
Flydd studied his adversary. It was hard to overcome this instinctive rivalry, not to mention his dislike of a man who seemed so much more than he, in every respect, yet was reluctant to use his talents for the war.
With an effort, he put the feelings aside. 'Nennifer, the scrutators' secret bastion, isn't designed for defence against flying constructs. They'd never expect us to have one, or to attack them. I plan to go in at night, through the roof, and take them by surprise. In half an hour it could all be over.’
'Just you against eleven Council members and their thousands of guards and mancers?'
'I'll go alone, if no one will come with me,' said Flydd. 'The Council must be overthrown and I've sworn to do it, whatever it costs.'
Yggur regarded him, smiling faintly. 'You took your sweet time about it, but for once I agree. I will work with you, after all. First we must have flight. Once we have it, we bring down the Council and replace it. Only then can we plan how to end the war.’
Flydd stood up and shook his hand. 'I'll send Flangers out in the air-floater, to contact Muss …' His eyes met Irisis's. 'Yes, Muss. If anybody can find Tiaan, he can.' If he's still working for me he thought.
And I'll send skeets to my factors, with the same message.’
said Yggur. 'It seems that we have the beginnings of a plan.
While we wait to hear from our spies, I'll keep working on the construct mechanism. Nish will assist me and Flangers will be our labourer. Irisis and Inouye will work with me on a flight controller. You, Flydd, will refine your plan to take Nennifer and consider what you will do afterwards. If Malien or Tiaan is abroad in a flying construct, half the world will know of it.'
'What about the Numinator, surr?' Irisis said quietly to Flydd as they went back to the fire. 'Since he controls the Council, he won't appreciate you overthrowing it.'
'A masterly understatement,' said Flydd. 'Know your enemy, and I don't, so there's no way to prepare for him. But he dwells a long way south, so it'll be a while before he realises what has happened. I'll have that time to deal with him.'
'Or be dealt with,' Irisis added gloomily.
'Quite.'
A month went by. Though they made no secret of their dislike for each other, Flydd and Yggur had managed to achieve a working truce. At the end of that period they met to report progress.
'I haven't come up with much, I'm afraid.' Yggur touched the little beetle-shaped device that he had demonstrated before. With a faint hum it rose into the air. He moved his hands before him, sending the device whizzing down the room. It curved around in a series of spirals then floated back just below the ceiling. Another wave of his hands and it settled to the table without a sound. Yggur went pale and abruptly sat down.
'It flies,' he said hoarsely, 'but only for a few moments, and takes a great deal out of the user. What have you to report, Irisis?'
Irisis demonstrated her progress on a flight controller, but the could do no more without testing it in a full-sized flying machine.
And you, Flydd?'
'The plan to attack Nennifer is coming along. I'll go through it with you in private later.'
'Did you manage to contact Muss, surr?' said Irisis.
'He's disappeared,' said Flydd with knotted jaw. 'Flangers could find no trace of him and he didn't reply to messages left at any of his rendezvous.'
'He's left you,' said Yggur. 'Muss has struck out on his own.'
By the scrutator's expression he thought so too, though he did not appreciate Yggur's pointing it out.
'Has either of you had news of the war?' Irisis asked.
'It's not much worse than before,' said Yggur. 'And with the coming of winter we can expect the situation to ease. The lyrinx breed at that time, avoiding conflict if they can.'
'They attacked our manufactory in winter, over and again,' said Irisis.
'Just small bands, I'll warrant, made up of lyrinx who had not yet mated.'
'Then let's pray for a long winter' said Nish, 'and a vigorous mating season.'
'Judging by the early snowfalls,' said Yggur, 'it's going to be a hard winter. There'll be famine in Lauralin before spring.'
'Is it better to starve to death in the cold or be eaten by the enemy?' said Flydd. 'I think I'd probably choose the latter. If that's all, I'll go back to my work.'
'Ah!' Yggur held up a long finger. 'One more thing. A skeet came in the other day, bearing a message that's come in relays all the way from the east.' He looked pleased about it.
'Well?' Flydd snapped, not liking his own tricks being used on him.
A flying construct was sighted over Stassor last week.'
'What!'
'It's true. It was seen on more than one occasion.'
'So Tiaan has gone to the Aachim.'
it would appear so …'
Yggur looked as if he was holding something back, and Nash thought he knew what it was. 'I happened to be up on the wall at dawn this morning,' Nish said; 'I couldn't sleep. I saw another skeet come in.'
It brought even better news. Just two days ago a second flying construct was seen above Stassor. It was a new design, quite different from Vithis's constructs.'
'So the secret is out!' breathed Flydd. 'If they can make two, they can make a thousand. And so, hopefully, can we.'
'What were they doing?' asked Nish.
'Good question,' said Yggur. 'The original one was flying a regular pattern over the mountains surrounding Stassor.'
'Really?' frowned Flydd.
'It flew slowly along a line, east-west, further than my informant could see, turned south for a league and flew back along a line parallel to the first. It did that all night. My spy was not able to find out what the flying construct was doing, though he did learn the identity of one of the people inside, as it turned for home in the morning. It was Tiaan.'
'She's surveying the nodes,' Irisis burst out. 'Even when she was a child, Tiaan used to map fields.'
'Interesting,' said Yggur, and there was a strange gleam in his eye. 'I'm getting an idea.'
They scarcely saw Yggur after that. He spent day and night in his workroom, labouring frantically on a project that he would not talk about, and rebuffed everyone who came to the door.
Irisis was insatiably curious. One day, being at an impasse in her work, she decided to find out what he was up to. She cooked another of her glorious meals, loaded up a tray and knocked at the door.
'Go away!' he roared, sounding more frosty than usual.
Irisis faltered, but she had not got this far without being strong of will and thick of hide, so she turned the handle and went in.
'Get out!' he said without looking up.
'I brought you something to eat,' she said softly. 'It'll be a change from the gruel your cook provides, the same thing day after day.'
I like the same thing day after day.' He glanced at the tray, at her, back at the tray. He moistened his lips. 'Oh, very well, bring it here.'
She pushed the door shut with her foot and put the tray on the table, careful not to disturb his work. 'I've made—' she began.
'I can see! What do you want, Irisis?'
'I don't want anything …'
'I'm not stupid.'
'All right,' she said quietly. 'Let me be honest with you.'
'Why do those words always make me think I'm about to be conned?'
'I want to know what you're working on.'
And I don't want to tell you.'
'Don't you trust me?'
'I don't trust anyone except the one person who has never let me down. Myself.'
'I've never let you down.'
'Ah, but you will. Everyone does, in the end.'
She laughed. 'You're a sad man, Yggur.'
And you're making me sadder.'
'I'm doing you good. Anyway, I know what you'
re up to.'
Yggur selected a freshly baked roll, bit into it and leaned back in his chair, chewing reflectively. His black boots rested on the edge of the table. 'Go on.' He smiled, as if knowing she was going to make a fool of herself.
Perhaps she was. 'Until our last council of war, your door was always open and everyone could see what you were working on — either your little flying beetle, or the construct mechanism. You haven't touched them in weeks.'
'How do you know?'
She ran a fingertip over the iridescent surface of the beetle. 'Dust! The only devices free of it are the sphere of Golias the Mad, and this controller apparatus we took from the construct. And judging by the way you've rebuilt the controller, I can tell what you're doing.'
'Really?' he said mockingly.
'You're trying to combine the two so you can seize control of a flying construct, should one ever come this way.' It was just a hunch, but a good one.
The chair fell forwards and his eyes met hers. 'Go to the door, check that there's no one outside, and lock it.'
She did so.
'Sit down,' he said fiercely. 'Who else knows?'
'No one.' Irisis took the chair at the end of the table, not entirely comfortable. She knew his reputation of long ago. Yggur was a hard man, not averse to riding over others to get what he wanted. If she was a threat to him, he might even decide to be rid of her. She didn't think so — Irisis was a good judge of character — but you could never tell with mancers. 'I worked it out just then. It was a flash of insight, really.'
'Explain!'
'When you first showed us Golias's sphere, your eyes were positively glowing with yearning. I've not seen you that inspired about anything else, not even your little flier. You want Golias's secret more than anything.'
'I've wanted it from the moment I saw the device.' He took the glass sphere in his big hands, turning it this way and that, staring through its outer layer at her.
Irisis had a momentary loss of confidence. Yggur had lived more than a thousand years, had seen everything this world had to offer, yet he looked no older than a hale and powerful fifty. All her life and experience were no more than the blink of an eye to him. But she must go on. 'And then, when you told us about Tiaan surveying the nodes the other day, I saw that look again.'
'Continue,' he said softly.
'The clincher is the way you've rebuilt this construct controller. Controllers are my life, Yggur. My mother had me pulling them to pieces and putting them back together before I could walk. See here and here and here,' she touched in turn the flat coils of metal that whorled out from the cup holding the powering crystal, and the reciprocating rods that extended in six directions, 'these are surely to channel power from the crystal to the controlling levers, and these to convey it to various parts of the construct—'
'You can tell all that so quickly? I've spent weeks puzzling it out.'
'I've been working with fields since I was an infant.' Even so …'
'A construct controller is nothing like the controllers I'm used to, but it does the same thing — it draws on the field and uses that force to power and control the machine.' She indicated other parts, where the reciprocating rods were surrounded by red concretions and a network of glass filaments. 'These modifications of yours have no place in a normal construct. They can only be for one purpose — to seize control of a flying construct from its operator.'
He nodded. 'That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Do you think it will work?'
She thought for a minute or two. 'No, because this array of crystals will cancel out the effect of this one, here. But if you were to network these crystals in this kind of arrangement, tightly coil these filaments around them thus …'
Irisis began to sketch swiftly on a large piece of paper with a stick of charcoal, covering it with lines, shapes and symbols. Yggur leaned forward, watching the design grow. She smeared out a number of lines with a fingertip, cocking her head as she redrew them. Finally satisfied, without a by-your-leave she took tools from his bench and began to pull his controller apart.
Yggur said nothing during the next hour, just watched the deft movement of her fingers as she completely rebuilt it, adding in new sections from the boxes of crystals and silver wires on his table. Finally she laid the controller down, brushed her yellow hair out of her eyes and looked up. He studied the new arrangement for a good while, then suddenly smiled; it lit up his stern and craggy face. 'You're right, of course. Why couldn't I see that? You were going to say?'
'It'll work, assuming you've solved the other problem. How to communicate at a distance.' She rolled Golias's onion globe into her hand. It was as unfathomable as ever.
'I'm no further advanced than I was two hundred years ago. Do you have any ideas?'
She closed her hands over the globe. 'No. I can only think of one person who might, but—'
'Would that Tiaan were here,' he said shrewdly, 'rather than on the other side of the continent.'
Irisis pursed her lips, still feeling the rivalry after all this time. An idea occurred to her. 'Fyn-Mah scried out the scrutator in the middle of the Karama Malama, using only a crystal and a bowl of quicksilver—'
"To be correct, she scried out a special kind of lodestone he was carrying.'
'We might attune this controller to a flying construct's hedron in the same way.'
'I doubt it.'
'Let's ask Flydd.'
'What does Flydd know, pray?' Yggur said coolly.
'He knows more about the field, and devices to shape and use it, than anyone. For seven years he was in charge of the scrutators' secret project to develop new devices powered by the field.'
Yggur sat back with his eyes closed and fingers pressed to his temples. 'I can't bring myself to trust any scrutator, but in this emergency I suppose I must.' He put the globe away. 'Very well. On your say-so I'll ask to him. Anyone else?'
'Only me.'
Irisis was lying awake that night when she had another idea. She brought it up the following morning, as the group sat staring glumly at the controller.
'There are crystals,' she said thoughtfully, 'that can induce an aura around a hedron from some distance.'
And some are natural,' Flydd added. 'Certain ore deposits caused problems with clanker controllers, back when they were first invented, until we discovered a way to shield them.'
'We're not getting anywhere with Golias's globe,' said Irisis. 'We might be better off trying to discover how such auras are generated, and how they can affect hedrons, and at what distance.'
'Let me see if I'm following your train of thought,' said Yggur. 'You're thinking that we should try to deliberately create such auras, even magnify them.'
'Yes. If we can find ones that work at a distance, perhaps we can imprint your controller aura onto them. I may be able to change your controller to do that.'
'Hmn,' Yggur said doubtfully. 'If by some chance we did manage to send such a signal, how would we take command of the controller of the flying construct? How would we control it? And how stop its operator from taking it back? The most likely result would be no effect at all. If it did work, the construct would doubtless fall out of the air, and all in it be destroyed.'
'We'll never know unless we try.'
The next couple of weeks were spent in the most tedious of labour, investigating hedrons of various types, and other kinds of crystals, to determine the nature of auras that could be induced from them. Irisis did most of this work, assisted somewhat uncomfortably by Fyn-Mah. And every time Flydd entered the room, she turned her dark eyes on him, gazing at him with that deferential longing that Irisis found so irritating. If you want him, she thought, go after him!
None of the rock crystals proved good enough, but one day Irisis discovered, in forgotten vats of brine in Yggur's cellars, crystals of various coloured salts that had grown slowly over a hundred years. One particular crystal had the most powerful aura of all. Using similar crystals grown painstakingly from special salt solu
tions, with layers of a second and third crystal grown over the top, she built a controller which, through a kind of ethyric transfer no one understood, would cause an ordinary controller in the next room to mimic it. Even Xervish Flydd was impressed.
But will it work in the real world?' asked Yggur. 'That's the question.'
'We won't know until we try,' said Flydd. 'I'll have the air-floater loaded with supplies. We'll fly direct to Stassor, find Tiaan or the other flying construct, and test it.'
'What if the transfer controller fails?' said Yggur. 'The construct will fall out of the sky, destroying itself and everyone in it. We must test it here first, and know it will work perfectly every time.'
Fifty-seven
Several days later, Yggur came striding down the hall, his stern face alive. 'Come into my workroom,' he said to Flydd, Nish and Irisis, who were warming their hands on mugs of tea beside an inadequate fire. 'I've something to show you.'
'What's the matter?' snapped the scrutator, whose own work was going badly. 'Surely you're not asking us for help?'
The chilly dignity took over again. 'Come inside.' Yggur caught Flydd by the arm, gesturing to Nish and Irisis with his other hand.
They followed him into his workroom. 'Flydd, would you operate this for me?' Yggur handed him the little beetle flier. It's much improved from the one I had when you came to Fiz Gorgo.'
The scrutator touched the device, which hummed to life and rose unsteadily in the air.
'Fly it around the room, any way you choose.' Yggur put the transfer controller in his pocket and went into the adjoining room. 'When I try to take over, fight hard against it.'
'It'll be a pleasure,' Flydd said with a wicked gleam in his eye. He moved his hands. The flier shot just over Nish's head, ruffling his hair. Flydd made a hasty gesture; it turned the other way. 'Stupid thing!' the scrutator said.
'Gentle movements,' said Irisis, who had spent long hours watching Yggur master the art of controlling the flier. 'You've got to have a calm mind.'