by Ian Irvine
‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan was afraid she’d broken his leg.
He sat up and rolled the walker off. ‘Just bruised.’ He rubbed his thigh and winced.
Merryl was lifting Tiaan up when a storm of wind roared down the tunnel outside, banging the door of the storeroom. Dust whirled in the air. ‘I don’t like that, Tiaan. You’d better go.’
‘What about you?’ She wanted to run, to skip. After weeks when she could do nothing at all, she wanted to race down the tunnels like a child.
‘I’ve one more person to find.’
‘Can I help?’
‘You probably couldn’t get through, in the walker. If you go that way,’ he pointed right, ‘then left, left, right and left, you’ll be on the long passage to the exit into the main pit. I’m afraid for you, Tiaan. I’d go with you but I must look for another friend, and swiftly. Are you sure you can find the way?’
‘I’ve a perfect memory for directions.’
Merryl smiled. His eyes seemed to be summing her up. He gave her his hand. ‘After all I’ve heard about you, I expect you will. Good luck!’
‘And you. I hope you find what your heart desires.’
He closed those dark eyes. ‘An illusion, I expect, after so long as a slave. But freedom beckons.’ He turned away.
Tiaan kept on, following his directions with an increasing sense of foreboding. The air was thicker and hotter here. She wondered how Gilhaelith was faring. He had always looked after himself, and no doubt the lyrinx would take good care of him. But at least he hadn’t got the amplimet. Flawed and dangerous though it was, she had it still, and it was going to get her out of here.
She stopped the walker, suddenly uncertain if she was going in the right direction. The strangeness that had pervaded everything for days was stronger than ever here. The air was full of floating bubbles of tar, which was impossible, and the whole world seemed to be shaking.
Quite suddenly the strangeness vanished and she stood in a black tunnel where the tar was soft under the feet of the walker. Tiaan flexed her toes, just for the pleasure of feeling them. The tension grew – she could feel it in her knotted stomach muscles; the prickling in the backs of her hands; the dryness in her mouth.
Boom! The walker was hurled against the wall. Had it not been so soft she would have cracked her skull. A gale of sand blasted down the corridor. The rock, solid with tar, emitted tortured groans and with a booming crackle a slab slid across the corridor, partly blocking it.
An even mightier explosion occurred inside her head, so bright that she almost passed out. Coils of the field wrapped themselves around her skull, dancing in her eyes.
She groaned and shook her head, which was full of cobwebby mirages. Tearing the walker out of the wall, Tiaan continued but before long the air on her face grew warm, the stink of hot tar unbearable. She forced herself around the next corner. Ahead, a red glow danced on the walls. Black, deadly fumes crept along the floor. The tar was on fire.
She fled, retracing the walker’s steps as fast as it would go. That was not very fast – it was increasingly difficult to draw from the field. As she reached the place where the wall had fractured, red fire flickered in the fissures. Molten tar dripped in her path. Flame roared forth like the exhalations of a dragon. Forward or back, there was nowhere to go. Then she lost the field, and the walker died.
SIXTY-ONE
Several nights after the scrutator’s visit, Nish was lying in his tent, listening to a gentle rain pattering on the canvas, when a signal whistle piped. He did not move. The Aachim were constantly signalling to each other. It did not concern him. The brief hope he’d felt when the scrutator appeared was gone. He was still a prisoner, a pawn in a global struggle. His great plans had failed through no fault of his own.
There seemed to be a lot of activity outside, including the whine of hundreds of constructs. Something was going on. He was just slipping back to sleep when Minis crashed through the opening of the tent. ‘Nish! Get up!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘We march to war against the lyrinx.’
Nish sat up. At last! ‘How did this come about?’
‘Last night your scrutator agreed to all our demands.’
Nish was shocked. For Flydd to capitulate, after that bitter scene with Vithis, humanity’s position must have been hopeless. How Vithis must be crowing.
‘Including giving up Tiaan?’
‘Yes. Apparently your seeker has located her underground, within the eastern quarter of Snizort.’ Minis began to unfasten the manacles.
‘And Vithis has agreed to free me?’
‘A long hesitation. ‘Not exactly, though I’m sure if he thought about it …’
‘What is he going to do in return?’ Nish was wondering what he could make out of the situation.
‘Attack Snizort.’
‘If the lyrinx learn he is after Tiaan,’ Nish said carefully, ‘and surely they must, it will not go well for her.’
Minis faded to white. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They will kill her, rather than allow anyone to gain the secret of flight.’
Minis pressed his head into his hands and shook it violently. In times of stress he was given to exaggerated gestures. ‘We must save her, Nish.’
‘I’m sure Vithis will be careful. Tiaan is no good to him dead.’
Minis’s face cracked. Hurling himself across the tent, he wrung Nish’s hands. ‘Please, Nish. I’m desperate.’
Nish reached for his boots. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Help me get her out of Snizort.’
The man was such a fool. ‘Minis, Snizort is the most carefully guarded fortress in this land. There are twenty-five thousand lyrinx there. It can’t be done.’
‘I love Tiaan,’ Minis said simply. ‘I know that now. Foster-father has brought me dozens of partners, all of noble Aachim blood, but none mean anything to me. I look at them and I see Tiaan, only Tiaan. I must find a way, Nish.’
‘Vithis has ordered you to take no risks. Would you defy his direct order?’
‘To save her life I would do anything.’ Savage eyes glared out of that young, blanched face. ‘I’ll hide her away; bargain with foster-father for her.’ Minis tried to look implacable but did not succeed.
Nish sighed. Even if they could rescue her, Minis had not considered the most important part of the equation – how Tiaan would react. Whether Minis found her, or Vithis did, he did not want to be there.
By dawn, half of the constructs were gone, and more moved out that morning. The battle was set to begin as soon as they were in position.
The camp was now just a skeleton of its former self. More than four thousand of Vithis’s six thousand constructs had gone to Snizort, plus two thousand more from the other fleets. Vithis had accompanied them after many exhortations to his foster-son to take care of himself. The remaining five thousand constructs protected women, children and those too old to go to war. If necessary they would be evacuated to safety in the east.
The Aachim camp was a model of military organisation and no one could move without being checked off a dozen lists. Minis, the only other survivor of Clan Inthis, was not permitted to go near the battlefield. He had promised faithfully that he would not, but planned to break that promise as soon as he was able. The opportunity did not come for days.
On the third night of the siege, Minis and Nish slipped away under cover of a wild thunderstorm, heading for the human headquarters east of Snizort. Nish stood beside the tall Aachim as they floated across the undulating land the following morning. It was summer now and a dry one. The grass was bent and brown; most of the creeks carried no more than a trickle, even after last night’s storm. The land was empty. The people who once dwelt here had fled long ago and their mud and thatch huts were crumbling.
Minis consulted a map. ‘Your scrutator, and his command post, are here.’ He indicated a flyspeck just east of Snizort.
They were moving quickly now and thei
r passage left a furrow in the dry grass. Nish was looking back at it when Minis said, ‘I see smoke.’
Smudges of black were rising beyond the hill. ‘That’s burning tar, not grass. Perhaps they’ve set fire to Snizort.’
Minis looked around wildly. The construct veered towards a cluster of boulders fallen from a flat-topped hill.
‘Look out!’ Nish yelled.
Minis jerked the controller and the construct lurched the other way.
‘I’ve heard there’s nearly as much tar outside Snizort as in,’ Nish said hastily. ‘Maybe the enemy set fire to it to make the battle more difficult.’
They approached the battlefield, which formed a ring around Snizort. Minis took the construct to the top of another of those flat-topped hills. The belching black fumes rose from half a dozen places outside the walls. Vicious struggles were going on all over, though from here it was not possible to tell who had the upper hand. The ground shook from the pounding of mighty catapult balls, many of them tar-coated and blazing.
Nish could imagine what it must be like down there – the dust turning to bloody mud, the shrieks of the dying, and those who could not die quickly enough.
‘What is your plan?’ Nish asked.
‘I was hoping you could advise me. You’re so resourceful, Nish.’
‘But Minis, I don’t know anything about Snizort. This is the first time I’ve seen the place.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Minis said miserably.
Nish knew what he’d like to do. Run, as far and fast as he could. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘I know you can think of a way. I’m relying on you.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t!’ Nish snapped. ‘Look how strong the walls are.’
‘Please, Nish. You’re all I have.’
Nish looked over the side. He did want to do something, if only because the son of the most powerful man on Santhenar was begging him. If he could remain in Minis’s favour, one day that could be worth the world to him. ‘Let’s go and talk to the scrutator, if he’s not too busy to see us. Which he surely is.’
Minis headed for the army headquarters, on a higher hill closer to Snizort. They passed through five sets of guards but none hindered the son of Vithis. Unfortunately the scrutator was not at the command tent. He had left in the air-floater earlier that morning.
Nish, walking around the edge of the hill by himself, noticed a pair of officers staring – there was a war on yet he wore no uniform. They began to move toward him. He hurried back to the construct, afraid of being conscripted.
‘Come on,’ Nish said. ‘You’ll do no good here.’
They spent the day circling Snizort, well out of catapult range, and at sunset a despairing Minis turned the construct back toward the Aachim camp.
‘Let’s try the scrutator again,’ said Nish.
‘You’ve just missed him,’ said Fyn-Mah as the construct pulled up. The air-floater was whirring away to the south.
Minis began to gasp and tear at his hair. Falling to his knees, he reached out to the sky with both arms. His pupils dilated until only the whites of his eyes could be seen. ‘I can see the future, Nish, and it’s black and red. Blood-red!’
‘What is it, Minis?’ Was he seeing Nish’s future, or his friend’s death?
‘A great bursting!’ His staring eyes fixed on Nish.
‘What do you mean?’
His eyes rolled up into his head, Minis went stiff and without a sound toppled backwards onto the dry grass, where he lay like a slab of petrified wood.
Fyn-Mah came running back with a bucket of water, which she flung in his face. ‘Best cure for hysteria,’ she said.
With a gurgling sound, a bubble formed in Minis’s mouth. Forcing his jaws open, it squeezed out and drifted away. A rumbling belch followed, Minis’s heels drummed on the ground and he opened his eyes. He shuddered, blinked and his eyes rolled down to their normal position. He gave Nish a wan smile. ‘It has to do with them.’
‘Them?’
The air-floater was now just a speck in the south. ‘Your friends – Flydd, the crafter and the seeker. And Snizort.’
‘Is that where they’ve gone?’ Nish asked Fyn-Mah.
The perquisitor seemed moved by the young man’s distress. ‘We believe that the lyrinx have a node-drainer there. Flydd is trying to destroy it.’
It looked as if Minis was going to have another fit. ‘What about Tiaan?’
No one said anything.
‘I’ll go after her, by myself,’ said Minis. ‘if you don’t have the courage to help me.’
‘You’d better tell your father, Minis,’ said Nish.
‘Ha!’ said Minis wildly. ‘He would be pleased to see Tiaan dead. The only person I trust is Tirior, but …’
‘What?’
‘She’s always sneered at my foretellings.’
Nish was fed up with Minis’s frailties. ‘Are you so afraid that it’ll stop you saving the woman you love?’
Tirior was in her tent, reading a despatch. ‘It’s our first message from Stassor,’ she said to Minis, before she was asked. ‘At last.’
‘Why has it taken so long?’ Nish wondered.
‘Stassor lies among mountains too rugged for our constructs. Our messengers had to seek it out on foot. The city proved … difficult to find.’
‘What do the Stassor Aachim say?’
She did not answer. Tirior put the paper aside with a heavy sigh. ‘What have you come for, Minis?’
He told her.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Your foretellings are no more accurate than tossing a coin.’
‘Only when I’ve allowed my head to rule my heart!’ he said angrily. ‘When others have tried to force me.’
‘Very well! Tell me exactly what you saw.’
‘A great, blood-red bursting!’ he exclaimed. ‘Even before I heard that Scrutator Flydd had gone to block the node-drainer –’
‘What?’ Tirior leapt to her feet, scattering papers across the floor of the tent. She gripped Minis by the arm. ‘Where did you hear this?’
‘At the human-army command tent. Perquisitor Fyn-Mah told us,’ said Nish. ‘What’s the matter?’
Tirior sat down and put her head in her hands. ‘When the node-drainer is blocked, it will be like blocking the end of a hose but pumping as hard as ever. Something must give.’
‘And when it does?’ asked Nish.
‘A great bursting,’ said Tirior. ‘It could take half of Snizort with it.’
‘Tiaan will be killed,’ wept Minis.
‘And the secret of her flying construct lost. And that’s not the worst that can happen,’ said Tirior.
‘What is?’ said Nish, but she did not reply.
‘We must save Tiaan.’ Tears were streaming down Minis’s cheeks. ‘We must, Tirior. Please.’
‘We must try,’ she said, ‘though I do not see how we can.’
Tirior sent urgent messages to Vithis but received no reply. ‘He’s right across the battlefield, and sore pressed,’ said the messenger. ‘I couldn’t get through to him.’
‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Tirior.
‘Please, Tirior,’ begged Minis.
‘Be quiet!’ She was smoothing down a scroll with her long fingers. The end curled up; she smoothed it down again. ‘If I go in, I probably won’t come out again. But who among us would have a better chance?’
She inspected Nish dispassionately. ‘I must go, whatever the consequences. Nish, you may come with me, if you dare. I’d sooner not risk one of my own. And, after all, you bear some responsibility for this situation.’
‘How do you work that out?’ said Nish.
‘Your scrutator has gone in to commit this insane act. Minis, you will stay behind to advise your father what I have done. I would not have him accuse my clan of wilfully risking his only heir.’
‘I must come,’ Minis cried. ‘You cannot leave me behind.’
Tirior smoothed her scroll again, and for an instant
a secret smile played on her full lips. Nish noted it, and wondered. Tirior, it seemed, would not be displeased to see the end of First Clan. But was there more to it? He could almost see her manipulating Minis. What else had she done? Could she have made the gate go wrong? Did the clans hate each other that much?
‘If you insist, I cannot prevent it. But you must state, in front of two witnesses not of my clan, that you have rejected my advice. And what your intention is.’
Witnesses were called. Tirior formally told Minis that she would not take him into Snizort. Minis just as formally insisted that he was going, and that because of his rank she could not refuse him. The witnesses recorded the statements and took them away, and again there came that satisfied smile.
‘We will take my construct,’ said Tirior. ‘It is … more suited to the task.’
‘Why is that?’ Nish asked, ever curious.
‘It’s … well, you will see.’
The construct, barely half the size of Minis’s, made hardly any noise. Even inside, Nish could scarcely hear it. As Tirior touched the controller, a panel in front of them, that Nish had thought was solid metal, became transparent. Outside he could see the lights of battle, a blaze off to their left and others to the right.
Tirior turned a coin-sized dial. The front of the machine, visible see through the transparent panel, faded from sight. Even the reflections of the flames disappeared. Nish gaped.
‘I use it on … covert missions,’ she said.
‘So you’re a spy! Just like I was, once.’
‘If you like.’ Her distaste for the word was evident.
‘Are you planning to drive through the front gate?’
‘The concealment is not that perfect. It serves on a dark night, as long as the lyrinx don’t come too close, but it can still be seen in bright light.’
‘What are you going to do?’ said Nish.
‘Take your cue from Minis, who just listens,’ she snapped. ‘I have spent much time circling Snizort, watching what the enemy do. I know their secret places.’