by Ian Irvine
84
A MOST IMPERTINENT QUESTION
The craft raced up, and it was the weirdest thing Karan had ever seen. It had the deep keel and curving sides of a seagoing galleon, save that they were sheathed in brass interleaved with some black metal intricately decorated with silver. Its bow was high and pointed, with flaring metal shields extending along the sides of the deck in place of rails, while several white hoop-like structures rose above the deck like the frames for wagon covers. But it had no airbags, so what was holding it up?
A big spear-throwing device set in a box-like wooden frame was mounted behind the bow shields, and a catapult on a swivelling mount stood on a platform at the stern. An inscription in flowing writing on the bow read, Three Reckless Old Ladies.
“Has the future gone mad?” said Llian.
“Either it has or we have,” Karan muttered.
The sky galleon turned so sharply that it slewed sideways through the air, then it hovered, and a skinny, scarred and incredibly ugly man appeared at the bow, looking down at them.
“Is that them?” he said to a small white-haired old lady.
She was staring at them, then she leapt up and down, waving furiously. “It’s them. They made it. Karan, Llian, it’s me!”
“It’s … Lilis!” cried Sulien.
“How can it be Lilis?” said Llian in alarm. “What year is it?”
Sick horror crept over Karan. Lilis had been twenty-five when they left and she looked in her sixties now. If they’d only gone forty years into the future they would not be safe at all.
“Today is the eighth day of Criffin, 3325,” said the ugly man.
“Then … two hundred and fourteen years have passed,” said Llian. He looked at Lilis. “How have you—”
“Lived so long?” said Lilis, pursing her lips. “A most impertinent question to put to an old lady, Llian.” Then she smiled. “When I succeeded Nadiril as librarian he bestowed the Librarian’s Gift on me, and it extended my life, as it had done his.”
“What are you doing in that … contraption?”
“After working day and night with books for a couple of centuries I felt a trifle desiccated. So I threw it in and went adventuring.”
She looked sideways at the ugly little man. “This is Xervish Flydd. He was once a mighty scrutator, and one of our leaders in the great war, but you don’t know anything about that.”
“Great war?” said Llian. “Did the Merdrun get through after all?”
“No, they haven’t been seen since we beat them on Gwine.”
The sky galleon settled on the ground with a crunch. Lilis introduced everyone to Flydd.
“You look worn out,” said Flydd. “Hop in.”
Karan did not move. Nothing added up. Was this an elaborate trap? “Why were you looking for us?”
“Your friends told us you were coming two years ago, and we’ve been keeping watch.”
“What friends?” she said warily.
“Yggur and Malien.”
Karan’s heart leapt. “Are they here, then?”
“Yggur is in Crandor. Roros, I believe,” said Flydd. “He doesn’t have long to live, I’m afraid. Malien was well when we last saw her. She returned to Aachan two years ago with many of her people. Come aboard.”
Karan felt dazed; it was too much to take in. “Why have you been searching for us? What are we to you?”
“Unfinished business.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Another time,” said Flydd.
“But this land is abandoned, and even the sea has gone down. What’s happened? Where have you come from?”
“Most recently, Guffeons.”
Karan struggled to remember where Guffeons was. She had to imagine it on her beautiful old map, shredded on the tiles of Shazmak. “But that’s on the north-east coast of Lauralin, two thousand miles away. You flew all the way across Lauralin just to find us?”
“Yes,” said Flydd, “but it’ll soon be dark and we can’t talk here. Get in.”
“Why can’t we talk here?”
“You’re in great danger.”
“Karan,” said Lilis, “we need to hurry.”
Karan shivered and rubbed her arms. In this strange and unnerving world their fate depended on what she did now. How could she decide? “What do you say, Sulien? You can always tell if people are good or bad.”
Sulien had not spoken all the while. She studied Flydd, her head to one side, her red hair streaming in the wind, then Lilis, then Flydd again.
“He’s … mostly good,” she said after a long interval. “But he’s got some … dark bits.”
Flydd took a step back, staring at her and rubbing his twisted fingers. They looked as though they had all been broken, then healed badly.
“Dark bits!” he said, smiling grimly. “Indeed I have, Sulien, very dark. In my time as scrutator I made some harsh decisions, some bad ones, and some that turned out to be utter disasters. But your mother doesn’t trust me as far as she can spit; she needs a clearer answer.”
“He’s good enough,” said Sulien with a look that said, but I’ll be watching you.
She had been right before, but could Karan really entrust their lives to the intuition of a nine-year-old girl? Yet was staying here any better? Whatever had caused a whole country to be abandoned, she did not want to come face to face with it.
“All right,” she said.
Sulien climbed into the sky galleon, and Karan and Llian followed, then Wilm and Aviel.
“There’s something about you,” said Flydd, studying Aviel, his head to one side.
“Aviel made the scent potion that allowed Karan to … find this future,” said Wilm.
“Did she now? And you?” he said to Wilm. “What’s special about you, Wilm?”
“Nothing, we only came by accident. The black sword …”
Flydd held out his hand and, after a slight hesitation, Wilm passed him the weapon. “It was Mendark’s.”
“Ahh!” sighed Flydd, and pressed his gnarled hands to the blade. “And yet it adopted you. I wonder why.”
“Wilm’s a hero!” cried Aviel. “He’s the bravest man I know … and the kindest.”
“Santhenar has need of brave men, and kind ones.” Flydd studied Aviel from her shining, flyaway hair to the toes of her battered boots, then his gaze fixed on her lumpy right ankle. She put it behind the left. “I see great courage in you; I think you’re also a hero.”
“I’m lost,” she whispered. “I have nothing left.”
“You’re the only scent-potion maker in a troubled world—we’ll soon find work for you, and a workshop.”
Aviel brightened a little. “Thank you.”
He turned to Karan and Llian. “Where were you headed?”
“Alcifer,” said Llian.
He still seemed dazed; Karan had never known him to be so economical with the words that were his trade, or so uninterested in finding out what had happened here.
“As safe a place to spend the night as any,” said Flydd.
“But what’s happened to the world?” said Karan.
“We’ll talk when we get there.”
He signalled to a plump untidy woman with thinning hair who stood in the wheelhouse, holding a knob where the wheel of a ship would normally have been mounted. “This is Mechanician M’Lainte,” he said. “She can make anything.”
M’Lainte nodded, twisted the knob, and the galleon soared into the sky and raced north, far faster than any sky ship Karan had ever been in. Was it a kind of construct? It had to be, but where had it come from?
Ten minutes later it was hovering over the once magnificent city of Alcifer, between two of its many clusters of slender red or black towers. When Karan had last been here there had been bowl-shaped lakes set on the tops of towers, and tall, narrow spires without windows or stairs, and domes, some hundreds of yards across and roofed with glass, covering wonderful gardens or splendid spaces. The towers had been linked b
y a variety of aerial walkways, some in red metal and others in black.
But Alcifer, which had endured unchanged for many centuries after Rulke had it built, was decaying. Several of the slender towers had fallen, crashing through domed roofs and smashing what lay beneath, and most of the self-maintaining gardens were withered.
The craft edged through a broken dome that had been whole when Karan and Llian had left Alcifer in Malien’s sky ship seventy-two days ago. No, two hundred and fourteen years ago. It still seemed impossible.
M’lainte settled the big vessel by a long pool, the very one Karan and Llian had landed in after the gate carried them from Carcharon, though now the water was a greenish-brown. What had changed? And why wouldn’t Flydd say?
“Dinner first, then we’ll talk.” He had taken charge as if born to it. “I’m sure you have many questions.”
Karan scowled. How dare he assume that they would meekly follow his orders? But she felt lost, disorientated and very afraid. Before she took him on she had to understand the world they had come to.
“Who’s the third lady?” said Sulien.
“What?” said Flydd.
“The ship is called Three Reckless Old Ladies. There’s only two here.”
His snaggle-toothed smile was a fearsome sight. “The third is Yulla Zaeff, but she’s too busy to go adventuring right now.” He looked up at M’Lainte. “How long will dinner be?”
“Thirty-two minutes.” M’Lainte, whose ability to “make anything” evidently extended to cooking for a multitude, busied herself in the galley of the sky galleon.
“This way, everyone.” Flydd, who clearly knew his way around Alcifer, led them through a bronze door into a circular chamber sixty feet across. Its dome was still intact, as was everything inside. There was a dusty oval blackwood table near the eastern wall, surrounded by sixteen carved blackwood chairs. Doors led out at the four points of the compass.
Flydd and Lilis wiped down the table and chairs. Llian and Wilm carried baskets of crockery and cutlery from the sky galleon and set out plates, bowls and cutlery. When dinner was ready, they sat at the table. M’Lainte had prepared a tureen of spicy yellow chowder, thick with chunks of fish and crab, and a platter of dried meats with cheeses, preserved fruits and vegetables, plus assorted pickles in lurid colours.
“All right,” said Llian. “Tell us the Histories. What happened to—”
“The Lyrinx War happened,” said Flydd. “You may not know this, but lyrinx got into Santhenar when the Way Between the Worlds was opened back in your time. They hid in the wilderness for many years, increasing their numbers and growing strong—”
“They offered to help us in the war with the Merdrun,” cried Sulien. “But the Whelm slaughtered them and they blamed us. That’s why the lyrinx hated us.”
“What war?” said Flydd, frowning as if trying to remember some minor detail. “Ah, yes, there is something in the old Histories about the Merdrun, though I wouldn’t call it a war. There was a skirmish in some out-of-the-way place … Gwine, wasn’t it? But the Merdrun threat never came to anything.”
“How dare you call it a skirmish?” cried Karan, leaping to her feet so violently that she knocked her plate of cheese and pickles off the table. “Thousands of good people were killed in that battle, and Sulien and Llian and I nearly died.”
“Our war with the lyrinx lasted a hundred and fifty years,” said Flydd quietly, “and took at least a million of our lives. It utterly transformed Santhenar, and we lost large parts of it, including Meldorin, for a hundred years. And the lyrinx very nearly won.”
“So that’s why the land is empty,” said Karan. “But if they didn’t win …”
“The war ended twelve years ago, but with so many lives lost and so much ruin there’s far more land than there are people to work it. Santhenar is a much poorer place than it was. We don’t have the coin to rebuild all the roads and bridges and viaducts, the cities and ports, and all the other things destroyed in the war. It may take a hundred years to get back to where things were before the war began.”
“But if the lyrinx are still out there …” said Llian.
“They’re gone but plenty of other predators remain, two-legged as well as four, which is why we’re spending the night in the safety of Alcifer.”
“If Meldorin was abandoned and occupied by the lyrinx,” Llian said slowly, “what happened to places like Thurkad and Sith? And the Great Library and the College of the Histories. Did the lyrinx destroy everything?”
“What about Gothryme?” said Karan, quivering.
“Thurkad was abandoned and partly burned, and is still largely ruined,” said Flydd. “A few thousand people have gone back, but it’s now a small town in the ruins of a city that once held a million people. Sith is still largely intact, but also nearly empty. The College of the Histories was abandoned eighty years ago and most of its treasures were lost, though some of them ended up at the Great Library.”
“Which still exists,” said Lilis. “The lyrinx, unlike the Merdrun, aren’t vandals. They have a great love of culture and books; they left the library untouched.”
“What about Gothryme?”
“I have no idea.”
“You were saying about the Histories?” said Llian.
“Where was I?” said Flydd. “Ah yes. After the Trihorn Peaks blocking the Hornrace were destroyed, and the Dry Sea started to fill again—”
“So that’s why the sea level has fallen,” said Karan.
“Quite. We managed to turn the tables on the lyrinx and trapped them on the bed of the Dry Sea, robbed of their mancery and unable to fly, as it flooded. Our leaders, in their ‘wisdom,’ wanted to drown the lot of them, but a number of us rebelled. We could not countenance genocide and reached a secret deal with the lyrinx, then made a gate and offered them Tallallame, the most beautiful of all worlds.”
“But it’s the Faellem’s world,” said Karan.
“Not any more. Tallallame was infested by savage creatures from the void when the Way Between the Worlds was opened, and they had hunted the Faellem almost to extinction. The lyrinx, also faced with extinction, were prepared to take on Tallallame, and they’ve since had some success.”
“So they’re gone.” Karan let out a great sigh. “We’re safe at last.”
Flydd frowned. “Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
Lilis spoke. “Maigraith—now known as the Numinator—is still alive, still vengeful and still determined to complete her plan.”
“But she believes we’re dead!” said Karan. Chills crackled through her. Had it all been for nothing?
“She did for a long time. We—Malien, Yggur, Shand and myself—laid down all manner of false trails and red herrings, and told many outright lies to prevent her discovering the truth. But we think she did. We think she now suspects you went to the future.”
Karan choked. “Then she’ll hunt us down,” she said limply. “She never gives up.”
She took Llian’s hand. It was as sweaty as her own. Sulien got up from the table, trembling. Her eyes were as big as teacups. She spun on the soles of her boots, the gritty floor squeaking underfoot, then ran out through the eastern door of the circular chamber.
“Where are you going?” yelled Karan, starting after her but falling over her own chair. “Come back!”
“She can’t come to any harm down there,” said Llian.
“How would you know?” she snapped. “We haven’t been here for two hundred and fourteen years.”
“If there was danger here, we would know,” said Flydd.
Karan picked up her cheese and pickles, which were still scattered across the floor. As she finished, Sulien’s voice echoed across the chamber. “Daddy? Mummy? Come here.”
“What’s the matter?” cried Karan.
“Nothing. Just come.”
Karan and Llian went after Sulien, and Flydd followed. They entered a vast white cubic chamber, empty apart from an eighteen-foot-high statue—a m
ale nude carved from a single block of granite—on a broad, stepped platform. The hard, granular stone had been polished to a silky smooth finish and, apart from a little dust, the years had not diminished its perfection. The man’s stone eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, which was covered in intricately embossed silver, at the point where Llian had discovered Rulke’s Histories last time he was here.
“It’s modelled on Rulke,” said Llian. “It’s a fine likeness.”
Sulien was staring up at the carved wound in the man’s side. The wound that had killed him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Karan.
“There’s something inside it,” said Sulien.
“How can there be? It’s carved from a single block of granite.”
Sulien shrugged and walked over to the platform, her unfocused eyes sweeping back and forth. Karan knew that look: Sulien was seeing, and no one saw further or deeper. Suddenly Karan felt a shivery premonition. Something was wrong here. Could the statue be a trap?
“Sulien!” she said sharply. “Come away!”
Sulien crouched down. Her small hand appeared to slip right into the stone platform near the base, then she pulled on something.
Crack, crack, crack.
“Look out in front,” bellowed Flydd. “And behind!”
They scattered. The statue split from one side to the other, then the front half toppled forward, struck the floor with a shattering impact and broke into pieces. The vast room shook. The back half rocked on its heels, fell the other way and the head came off, though the rest of the half-statue remained intact.
“What’s that?” cried Flydd pointing at something shimmering among the rising dust at the centre of the platform. Dust plumes rose like fast-growing mushrooms. “A stasis spell? Why would there be …”
The shimmer faded, the dust settled, and Karan’s scalp developed goose pimples as the stasis spell died. Shivers spread down her back and all over her, for a huge man lay there. A naked, black-bearded man with a massive scar in his side.
And then he moved.
“But … you’re dead!” whispered Llian. “We all saw you die.”