by Ian Irvine
On her tenth day of travel she saw the fleet in the distance, running north toward a rich land ringed by forest and mountain. The map named it as Borgistry, and just south of Borgistry she found their camp. The deciduous trees of the Borgis Woods were already springing into leaf.
It was night when she drew near, keeping low to the ground to avoid being seen, though that was unlikely. The passage of the fleet had raised a dust cloud five spans high. On the other hand, they might have sensing devices that she knew nothing about.
Tiaan flew east then north along the Great Chain of Lakes, to the point where a scattered line of volcanoes thrust up through the skirts of the forest. Judging by the luxuriance of the vegetation, it was a long time since any of them had erupted, though several were smoking. Setting down her craft halfway up the slope of the nearest peak, Tiaan checked her surroundings, made a campfire and prepared dinner. From here she could soon tell if the fleet moved.
She did not sleep that night. The promise, or threat, of tomorrow kept her awake. And also, though she suppressed the thought each instant she had it, of Minis. He was a lying, treacherous man whose word meant nothing to him. He had betrayed her. And still the memory sent her heart pounding.
Before dawn broke she was in the air, meaning to conduct a reconnaissance over the fleet. Tiaan hoped that, at this time of the day, and high enough up, she could do that undetected. If she did nothing else, she could learn valuable information about the disposition of their forces.
Her hand shook on the controller trumpet. She wanted to render the constructs useless. Wanted to see the Aachim left helpless, abandoned, bereft. And she wanted Minis to suffer. Or was she following Minis because, despite what he had done to her, she could not keep away from him? Was she truly that weak, that pathetic?
Yes, she was. She was bound to him by hatred now, because breaking free would be even more painful. And she would never be free until she felt neither love nor hate, only indifference.
That realisation was a release of sorts, though she was not strong enough to put Minis behind her. With her emotions fluttering like a butterfly in a cage, she cruised across the camp, high in the dark sky.
The machines were drawn up in a seven-sided array around an open space, in the middle of which several large tents, and dozens of smaller ones, had been erected. The larger tents touched each other, leaving a shadowed space in the middle. The area was lit by globes on poles and she saw vast selections of weapons, piles of supplies, and ranks of soldiers practising battle manoeuvres or firing at targets. They were preparing for war.
As she passed across the centre, Tiaan sensed a great distortion in the field, as if it was being warped by something centred on the array of constructs. Some device there was drawing mighty amounts of power, even more than the gate had taken. They must be testing some new kind of weapon. She had to get a better look.
Five larger constructs were near the main tents but the warping was not coming from them. Perhaps from one of the tents? The field distortion was spiralling in like a whirlpool. Was it some terrible weapon they had developed on their own world?
The whirlpool pulled her in one direction as she passed over the large tents, then pushed her hard the other way. Incredibly, it seemed to be interfering with the controller. She looked down into the space walled around by the tents. What was that?
Spinning the thapter around, she headed back, aiming to go right over the walled space. Again the warp wrenched her off course, though this time she managed to correct enough to see down. Peering through her fingers, she looked into a whirling red hell, like a captured tornado, that distorted everything around it. As she went over it, a rod of blue light burst forth from the centre of the red hell, like a searchlight.
For an instant she thought she was being attacked, but the light angled away into the heavens as if searching the very void. It blinked on and off many times, then vanished. Were they signalling the other fleets to war? She had to go to the scrutators now.
Tiaan turned the thapter away from the camp, climbing toward the safety of a ridge of cloud. As she did, the sun rose and its first bright ray highlighted the thapter, a spark curving across the pale sky. She prayed that no one would notice, but a crowd of Aachim ran into the open, pointing to the sky, and a series of streaks rose up. Before they even knew who she was, they were shooting at her.
Since she’d been discovered, she might as well learn as much as she could about that strange device. Such intelligence could be vital. Flinging the front of the thapter down, she headed towards the largest tent, which was rapidly emptying. More glowing spheres came on, lighting up the clear area as bright as day.
A group of Aachim converged on a tall lean man, the last to exit the tent. Tiaan recognised Vithis instantly. He had a spyglass trained on her. Vithis reeled backwards, gesturing furiously to the guards behind him. He must have recognised her. Two soldiers raised a kind of heavy crossbow to their shoulders and fired. Tiaan hurled the controller sideways, skidding across the sky.
A bolt slammed into the machine just behind her head. Others struck the outside with a clatter like hail on metal. She had done nothing to them, yet they were trying to kill her, just as they had killed Haani. Bloody rage exploded and all her resolutions, her promises to Malien, went over the side. Vithis or her, it was time to end it. Flinging the thapter about, she went low to the ground and hurtled up between the rows of constructs. Aachim, running everywhere, threw themselves out of the way.
She roared through the open centre, coming at Vithis’s command tent from the rear. Guards were shouting and loading weapons. More bolts struck the thapter. Tiaan went left, right, left, then saw Vithis straight ahead. She slammed the trumpet lever forward as far as it would go. Acceleration thrust her backwards and the thapter hurtled straight toward the leader of Clan Inthis.
Just before she hit, Tiaan realised that Minis was behind him. Vithis hurled Minis to his left and tried to go the other way, but the slick metal skin of the thapter caught the clan leader on the hip, sending him tumbling across the ground. She tried to turn but the tent came up too quickly. The thapter crashed through it, fabric wrapping itself around the machine. All she could do was pull up on the knob and pray.
The thapter soared, fabric flapping, ropes lashing the sides, then the wind tore it away. She looked back but could not tell whether Vithis was dead or alive. Alive, she felt sure. Directly below, she caught a last glimpse of that hellish tornado, and the searchlight spinning like a top. Its blinking blue light struck the machine, a blast of heat and dazzle. Her mental control failed, the controller slipped off-plane and suddenly she was falling in silence.
Tiaan waggled the lever but nothing happened. The machine arced down toward a patch of trees on the far side of the camp. The impact would turn her to jelly. She could not see the strong force at all. Tiaan reached under the binnacle and popped the cap, thrusting her hand in until her index finger touched the amplimet. The field flashed before her eyes and the thapter whined into life. She climbed away from the camp while she tried to work out what had happened. The blue ray fingered the sky as if they were trying to cook her alive. She hurled the thapter around to avoid it.
The mechanism stuttered but came to life again. Was that ray interfering with the machine, or the field? She couldn’t think straight. Why, why hadn’t she slipped quietly away as soon as she was seen? Her attack had been an insult to the pride and might of the Aachim, and to Vithis personally. She had brought disaster upon herself, risked everything for a moment of self-indulgence.
This thapter, and the secret of how it worked, was worth a nation. Flight could win the war; the world. What warlord, general, scrutator or Aachim would not kill to get it? She was friendless in a desperate world, and every time she set down to sleep or buy supplies, she would be in peril.
The first priority was to get well away and pray she did not lose the field again. Then, find a general or scrutator, and give him the thapter as well as her intelligence about what the Aac
him were up to. That was her duty and she must do it. And then plead for her life. What she knew might be enough to save her.
She headed north along the Great Chain of Lakes, which ran up through the Borgis Woods before curving north-west to the Sea of Thurkad, a couple of hundred leagues away. To her right loomed the southern arm of the Great Mountains. To her left, up ahead, stood the jagged white pinnacles of the Peaks of Borg. Between them she made out the vast elongation of Parnggi, second-greatest of the lakes. Cloud covered this area and she passed into it gratefully, guided only by the thin disc of the sun above.
Tiaan felt numb. They had tried to kill her. Now that Vithis knew about the thapter, he would hunt her to the four corners of the globe. Everyone else would do the same. She was doomed. Why, why had she been so foolish as to let him see her? Why hadn’t she heeded Malien’s warnings? Every time she allowed her emotions to govern her, it made things worse.
The Aachim had shown that Haani’s death was not accident, but policy. She wanted to hurt Vithis and Minis, to humiliate them and, beyond all else, to thwart them in their plans for Santhenar. Most of all, she wanted to repay Malien’s confidence in her.
But first she had to find a scrutator and work out what to say. Tiaan flew on, making plans and rejecting each. All foundered on the same reef – how to find the right person, and tell her story, without being attacked or seized as a renegade.
She finally passed beyond Parnggi around the middle of the night. Moonlight showed her the way. Forest still clothed the hills in all directions, though through a gap in the clouds she saw clear land well ahead and, some way to her left, a cluster of volcanoes dominated by one much larger and taller than the rest. Its flanks were covered in dense forest, part of the endless Worm Wood. She checked the map. It was Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain. It seemed to call to her, but she would not find a scrutator there.
Further back and to her left she made out a road – the Great North Road again – cutting through a rich and fertile land that must be Borgistry. Its principal city was Lybing. Surely it would have a scrutator.
There was no way out of it. Time to give up the thapter, and herself. She moved the controller to turn left. It moved back to centre. She tried again but the thapter was set on its course and would not turn the way she wanted.
It was flying north-west, quite slowly, for as the day passed it had grown ever more sluggish. Dense forest passed beneath. The thapter seemed to be heading for the cluster of volcanoes; for Booreah Ngurle. What was the amplimet up to now? Whatever it was doing, she could not prevent it, for there was no place to land. Nothing but forest in every direction.
The moon was hidden now. At least no one could see her. Unfortunately she could not see either. She dropped low over the shadowy trees, still flying toward the distant mountain.
Twice more she tried to turn away, and twice the controls refused to answer her. Just after dawn, the thapter approached the peak of Booreah Ngurle. She saw a great building off to her left, on the inner rim of the crater, and tried to turn towards it. The controls jammed. Why had it brought her all this way only to thwart her again? The node, of course – an unusual one here, a double with one centre larger than the other.
Her fury flared again. She was not going to allow it to master her this time, or ever again. Tiaan looked for a place to set down, planning to take out the treacherous amplimet and smash it against a rock, and curse the consequences!
The ground was steep here, extremely rugged and clothed in dense forest – the worst possible place to land. Spotting a tiny clearing, Tiaan hovered above the trees, planning her route down. As she nudged the lever forward, the field vanished. The thapter fell like a rock and crashed through the treetops in a cloud of leaves and shattered branches. It bounced off a leaning tree and hit a fallen trunk with an almighty thump. Tiaan was hurled against the binnacle and after that felt nothing, not the fall down the ladder, nor the impact with the floor below.
A long while later she came to. Something was running into her eye. She wiped blood off her forehead. It did not feel like a major injury, though her head had begun to throb and her ears were ringing. She could not work out what had happened, but she had an alarming suspicion that the amplimet had cut off the field. She prayed that the construct could still be made to hover.
Tiaan tried to get up, and that was when she realised that things were badly wrong. She could not move her legs. Tiaan lifted her head. Her pants were torn from hip to ankle and there was a long gash on her thigh, but she could not feel a thing. Again she tried to move her leg. She could not even wiggle her toes.
Her back was broken.
PART TWO
REFUGEE
FOURTEEN
Nish checked the balloon, which was nearly inflated. He crammed in as much fuel as would fit and opened the damper all the way. Flames roared up the flue. Racing down the ladder he began hacking at the cane floor where it encircled the trunk.
‘What is the matter, Nish?’
‘Someone’s coming!’ He pointed in the direction of the yellow floater. ‘Can you sense anything about it?’
‘No, Nish,’ she said, giving him sweet and loving looks.
He was too panicky to reciprocate. ‘It can’t be lyrinx, or you would see them in your lattice.’
‘I can’t see anything in my lattice.’
‘What!’ he roared.
Ullii slapped her hands over her ears, her face screwed up in pain.
He lowered his voice. ‘What do you mean? Is it gone?’ Had their lovemaking destroyed her talent? There were folktales about that kind of thing but he had always sneered at them.
‘My lattice isn’t gone.’ She smiled a secret smile. ‘I just can’t see it. I’ll have to make a new lattice.’
Nish cursed, but under his breath. What a time to lose the only talent that could help them. He looked up. The balloon was taut. The danger would come when it lifted, for the stripped trunk went up through the neck. If anything caught, it would tear the flimsy fabric apart.
The air-floater was getting closer every minute. Nish leapt out and gave the basket a heave. It lifted but stuck. He climbed in and rocked the basket from side to side. It freed itself from a snag and shot up; he had to brake it with S’lound’s sword against the trunk.
The balloon rose steadily, the trunk slid from the neck and they were free, rising above the treetops. Nish could have wept. Their survival was truly a miracle; a series of miracles. He held his breath, staring at the patch. Let the wind not be too strong. Let the patch hold.
The patch held and there was no wind at this level. They simply drifted above the forest, slowly rising. The air-floater altered course, heading directly for them. How could it do that?
The minutes went by with agonising slowness. The balloon caught the gentlest of breezes and sailed beyond the forest. The air-floater approached. Nish could make out people standing in the smaller compartment underneath. Human, or Aachim? If human, were they friend or foe?
Nish picked up S’lound’s sword, not that it would be any good against archers. He rubbed his chin, which hurt. It was blistered from the nylatl venom. The air-floater closed the gap, swung side-on, and at least a dozen soldiers, armed with spears and crossbows, stood along the side. Nish swallowed.
‘What the blazes are you doing?’ bellowed a familiar voice across the gap.
Nish searched the faces. A lean, gaunt-looking man forced his way between the ranks. ‘Don’t hang there like a bloody fool. Go down.’ It was Xervish Flydd, the scrutator.
Nish yanked the release rope and the balloon drifted down. What was the scrutator doing here? Nish had no idea what he was going to say to him.
He rehearsed his lines all the way to the ground. The scrutator was the most powerful man in the land, and the most feared. A combination of secret policeman, spy and inquisitor, he could do just about anything he wanted. He had sent Nish out on this suicide mission, to bring back Tiaan, and the crystal. Nish had recovered neither.
<
br /> The balloon slowly reached to the ground. Nish jumped out, closed the valve and tied the tethers to a log. He stood waiting as the air-floater slid to earth not a hundred paces away. Soldiers sprang over the rails, hammered stakes into the ground and roped the vessel down fore and aft.
The craft held sixteen soldiers. He counted them off, as well as the scrutator and Mechanician M’lainte, who looked like a squat scrubwoman and did not appear to have changed her clothes since he’d last seen her. The mechanician was a genius and it did not matter how she looked, but Nish was conscious of his own shabbiness. Appearances had always been important to him, as if to make up for his short stature and indifferent looks.
The whirring, that had been in the background ever since the craft approached, slowed to a gentle tick. Some kind of mechanical contraption at the rear was attached to a twelve-bladed rotor similar to those he had seen on windmills, though this one was driven by the field. It enabled the air-floater to go where it pleased, even against the wind as long as it was not too strong. The cabin of the craft was built of canvas reinforced with light timbers, to weigh as little as possible. Sandbags hung on the sides, for ballast.
‘Well, artificer?’ The scrutator, a small man who looked as though every scrap of flesh had been pared from his bones, clambered over the side. He walked awkwardly, as if those bones had been broken in a torture chamber and put back together wrongly, and they had. Taking Nish’s arm, Flydd led him back toward the balloon. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘Er …’ said Nish.
‘Did you recover the precious crystal?’
‘No – I mean, I did recover it, surr, back there at Tirthrax, but a witch-woman took it from me and gave it back to Tiaan.’
‘A witch-woman? What bloody nonsense is this? Explain yourself, artificer.’