by Ian Irvine
Nish was continuing to run outlandish schemes through his mind, like a schoolboy daydreaming about being a hero, when a shrill cry rang out. He got up and twisted his head out the embrasure. He saw nothing but the sixteen air-dreadnoughts hanging in the air above the canvas amphitheatre.
He looked down. No sign of Ullii either. She must have been taken, in which case his hopes were gone. He was trapped until the tower eventually collapsed and took him with it.
There was no point waiting tamely for his death. Weaving across to the other side, he climbed into the narrow embrasure and crouched there, looking down. Was there a chance, if he jumped? He didn’t think so. The roof had only a gentle slope below him and, though the slabs were thick, they were also old. Even from here he could see that they were cracked and pieces had flaked off. He wouldn’t slide – the slab would crumble under the impact and he’d go right through.
Nish crouched, then stood up straight. He chose his point, bent his knees and prepared to spring. He straightened up again.
‘What are you doing, Nish?’
He turned hastily, slipped and had to clutch at the edge. Nish’s knees were shaking as he stepped down. He felt a fool. Ullii had a coil of rope looped over her shoulder.
‘What took you so long?’ Nish snapped. He couldn’t help it, but he regretted the outburst at once.
In the olden days Ullii would have curled up and gone into one of her states, and he would have got nothing out of her for hours. Something had changed. She simply said, ‘The shed was locked. I had to search Fiz Gorgo.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought they’d caught you.’
‘Ghorr will never touch me again,’ she said with such intensity that Nish shivered. It was hard to believe that she was the same person as the cringing Ullii he remembered.
‘What do we do now?’ he said.
‘I don’t know.’
Nish hadn’t expected a positive response; he had only spoken aloud because it gave him the illusion of not being so desperately alone.
‘Is there anything you can do?’
She stared at him blankly.
‘With your talent, Ullii?’
‘No,’ she said.
Nish couldn’t, wouldn’t give up his friends. He had to believe there was a way out. ‘Ullii,’ he said carefully. He moved closer, but not so close that she would feel he was using her, though of course he planned to. ‘Do you remember how you got Irisis out of Nennifer?’
She leaned away, almost touching one of the remaining glass blades. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Xervish Flydd told me. And I’ve talked to Irisis about it, too.’
‘What of it?’ she said mulishly.
‘I just thought you might be able to use that talent again …’
‘Can’t!’
‘Why not?’
‘Lost my lattice.’
‘When did that happen?’
Ullii turned away, looking down at the floor.
‘If you don’t tell me, Ullii, how can I help you?’
‘No one can help me.’
She said it with a remote edge of despair that tore at his heart. It was almost as if it didn’t matter any more. He couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind.
‘Then please, please help me, Ullii. No one else can. Do you want all the good people up there to die at the hands of Ghorr?’
‘No one can save them.’
‘And Scrutator T’Lisp, who murdered Yllii?’
‘Our son,’ she said dreamily. ‘Our son, Nish. How could anyone do such a wicked thing?’
He couldn’t think of anything to say, but he put his good arm around her and held her close. It didn’t help him but it might help her.
Ullii shuddered, a wrenching spasm that shook her from head to foot, then turned his way, staring at Nish with wide, colourless eyes, shiny with tears. The light was hurting her but she would not put on her mask.
‘And she’ll murder other little babies if you don’t stop her,’ he said brutally.
Nish was acting on a hunch that Ullii hadn’t lost the lattice permanently. In the past her talent had come and gone, but it had always been available when she’d really needed it. Could he draw it out of her now? Or if not, could he get her into a situation where she had to use it to survive?
Nish was aware that he was manipulating her again, but there was little he wouldn’t do to save his friends. Time was running out and he’d worry about the consequences later.
The tower shook and pieces of heat-scarred rock crumbled off the walls. ‘Try your talent again, Ullii. Can you see anything in your lattice now?’
She strained, rather obviously. ‘No.’ The word was just a breath. ‘Can’t see past it.’
‘Past what?’
She looked down at the floor. ‘Blocking me.’
Nish scratched his head. ‘Do you mean there’s something down there below us that’s stopping you seeing the lattice?’
‘Don’t know where it is. Could be anywhere.’
He sighed. ‘Perhaps you’d better give me the rope.’
After much trouble – for he had to swing back and forth along the rough stone of the tower and was worried that it would rasp through the rope – Nish caught the edge of an embrasure below the bend in the tower. The stone was warm to the touch. He pulled himself onto the ledge and peered in. He could see the ash-littered stairs and, if he craned his neck up to the left, the point where they were blocked with a glassy slag of melted rock.
They climbed in. Ullii cut off the remainder of the rope and coiled it over her shoulder.
‘We have to get up onto the outer wall without anyone seeing us,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t see how –’
Ullii pushed past him and trotted down to the ground floor, where she crept through the empty halls of Fiz Gorgo.
‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ he said after they’d been wandering for a good ten minutes, apparently aimlessly.
Ullii didn’t deign to answer. Nish followed, more despairing with every step. Irisis’s time could already have run out. Now they were going up again, along a dark and narrow stair that Nish hadn’t known existed. Yggur hadn’t encouraged exploration of Fiz Gorgo. After several turns they entered an open chamber topped with a cupola made of copper crusted with verdigris. Ullii peered out and up. Nish joined her.
They were not far from the outer wall of Fiz Gorgo, a section bordered by swamp forest. Some ten spans to his right, one of the huge rope cables, thicker than Nish’s upper arm, anchored the amphitheatre to the wall. Forty or fifty spans to his left was another, and so they went all the way around the fortress. The cables ran vertically up to the floor of the amphitheatre, a good thirty spans above his head here, then continued to the circle of air-dreadnoughts even further above that.
‘Can you see anyone?’ he said.
Ullii shook her head. Nish stood edgewise at the opening and searched the walls. He couldn’t see a solitary guard, though that wasn’t surprising. Ghorr believed Fiz Gorgo to be empty, and the air-dreadnought guards would see anyone coming from Old Hripton a league before they could get here. There were no lyrinx in this part of Meldorin and, given their fear of water, no risk of an attack on foot through twenty leagues of swamp forest. The only risk was from the air, and the sixteenth air-dreadnought had been placed on high to keep watch.
‘I meant with your talent,’ said Nish. ‘Has it come back at all?’
She didn’t answer. Whatever Ullii was thinking, she didn’t want to share it with him. She hugged her little triumphs to herself, while problems simply made her close down. She was the most frustrating human being on the planet.
He moved away a couple of steps then glanced at her, covertly. The haggard, haunted look was gone. She did have the lattice back, he was sure of it. She just wasn’t going to tell him until it suited her.
‘What can you see, Ullii?’ he said ever so softly, trying to be no more than a whisper in her ear. It took all the self-control he h
ad. He wanted to scream at her – my friends are being tortured up there. Your friends, too. Do something!
Again she pretended to strain, screwing up her eyes, clenching her jaw until the sinews of her neck stood out, knotting her little fists.
He wanted to slap her. Was she mocking him? But it was fruitless to go down that path, and it reminded Nish that he was as much to blame for her state of mind as anyone.
SIX
‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ Nish said, taking her in his arms.
‘No,’ she said, her voice muffled. She went rigid but made no attempt to pull away.
‘Where did the lattice come from, Ullii? It really is the most marvellous thing …’
‘I made it!’ she snapped. ‘It’s mine.’ Then, plaintively, ‘No one else can understand.’
‘Of course they can’t. There isn’t anyone like you in the world, Ullii. You’re unique.’ He wasn’t just cajoling or flattering her. She was unique.
She rubbed her cheek against his chest, not in any suggestive way, but as if it comforted her. In times past she wouldn’t have been able to bear the coarse cloth against her skin. Was she losing her sensitivity as well?
‘When did you make the lattice?’ he murmured to the top of her head.
‘When I was five. To look for Myllii.’
‘And now that he’s gone, you don’t need it any longer.’ Nish could have kicked himself as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was too late to take them back.
‘I don’t need it,’ she said wonderingly, then with resolve: ‘I don’t need the lattice any more. I know where Myllii and Yllii are.’ She pulled away and sat down, her back against the stone wall, staring into some inner space as if Nish didn’t matter either.
Nish knew she meant it. He’d been clinging to the hope that Ullii could somehow perform a miracle, as she’d done to break Irisis out of Nennifer, but it wasn’t going to happen.
He couldn’t take on hundreds of alert soldiers, all those watching mancers and the scrutators themselves, except by dying with his friends in a symbolic act of defiance. And that would only make the scrutators’ victory complete. If they didn’t get him, it would be one tiny flaw in their control of the world, he rationalised. He would devote his life to finishing the job Flydd had started – bringing the Council down.
But it wasn’t any comfort, and the thought of his friends’ approaching torment brought to mind those dying soldiers at Gumby Marth, begging Nish to put them out of their misery. He hadn’t been able to; he simply hadn’t had the courage, if you could call it that, to put a knife to their throats and end their suffering. Just so had his father begged for death after he’d been maimed by the lyrinx, and Nish had failed him too. He couldn’t bear to let his father go, monster though Jal-Nish had become – and look at the misery that failure had produced.
Nish couldn’t save his friends, but he might be able to give them a quick and merciful death, and spoil the scrutators’ victory. Would that be good for the morale of the common people, or a fatal blow in the endless war against the lyrinx? There was no way to tell. He could only try to make the best decision, and leave the world to fate.
Either way, it was something else he’d have to atone for, but it wouldn’t be another reckless folly. Recklessness had been burned out of him. He would coolly plan the deaths of his friends and weep for them afterwards. He would find the courage this time. But how was he to do it, and how much time did he have? He had to know what was going on in the amphitheatre.
Leaving Ullii to her inner contemplation, Nish fastened her rope to the opening, climbed down to the roof and scuttled across to the outer wall. Clots of mist drifted in the air but he could still be seen if an alert guard chanced to look down. Or if they realised he was missing.
Sooner or later, someone must discover that Nish was not among the prisoners, and Ghorr would send a squad into Fiz Gorgo to hunt for him. Nish knew he was, relatively speaking, a minor criminal. Nonetheless, his execution would serve as another lesson to all – not even the son of a scrutator was immune from the justice of the Council.
Nish raised his head. There was no one in sight. Voices echoed down from the amphitheatre, though he couldn’t tell what was being said. Slight depressions in the taut canvas marked points where groups of people were standing to witness the trials. Unfortunately, he couldn’t establish the positions of individuals.
Nish crept to the nearest vertical cable, reached up as far as he could and heaved. He managed to pull himself up a couple of body lengths before his fingers slipped and he slid down again, burning his hands. The cable was thick, taut and smooth, and damp as well; he couldn’t grip it tightly enough to hold his weight. He’d never climb it this way.
He went down the inner stairs of the wall to the yard, thence to one of the equipment sheds for an axe. The edge hadn’t been sharpened for a while but he couldn’t hone it on the wheel without making a racket. It would have to do.
Up on the wall again Nish judged his mark, drew the axe back over his shoulder and swung it with all his strength. The blade bounced off – the cable was as taut as stretched wire. Besides, he realised belatedly, chopping one cable wouldn’t make any difference, since the amphitheatre was held up by fifteen of them, each solidly braced with cross-stays.
If he could collapse one side of the amphitheatre, his friends would fall to a merciful death, though that would require the simultaneous failure of at least three adjacent vertical cables. Once that happened the highly tensioned ropes would spring back, tearing the canvas deck apart or forming a slope too steep to stand on. Quick-thinking people near the edges might survive if they caught hold of the remaining ropes, but all those in the centre would fall to the ground or the roofs of the fortress. Not a pleasant way to die, and it wouldn’t just be the prisoners, either. Hundreds of soldiers and witnesses might be killed as well.
Nish couldn’t dwell on that or he’d never be able to do it. This was war, and there were always casualties. It was the only way to save his friends from their barbaric fate, and at least it would be quick. Neither could he worry about the scrutators being wiped out, leaving the world leaderless at this critical stage of the war. Ghorr left nothing to chance; he’d always have a way out.
How to put his plan into effect? He couldn’t do it from the wall – the instant he hacked through the first cable, the soldiers would shoot him down. In any case, cutting the cables down here wouldn’t collapse this side of the amphitheatre. Since the cables ran up from the deck to the air-dreadnoughts, they would float up, lifting this side of the deck.
It had to be done just below the deck. If he could climb up, soak three or four cables and their accompanying cross-stays with oil, then set fire to them simultaneously, it could work. If the blazes were big enough, the cables might burn through before the guards could put out the fires.
If, if, if. The plan was outlandish and couldn’t succeed. It also left unanswered one vital question – how was he to get away afterwards? Nish gave no further thought to that either. After such a crime, it seemed fitting that he’d given himself no way out.
There was a great roar from above and the amphitheatre deck shook as though hundreds of people were stamping their feet. Were the trials over? Were they torturing Flydd already – or flaying Irisis alive?
Nish forced himself to stay calm, to ignore what was happening up there. All that mattered was what he did down here, and only cool thinking could deliver his friends now.
He ran down to Yggur’s great coolrooms and larders, where the provisions for Fiz Gorgo were kept. In the second pantry, he discovered what he was looking for: a set of meat hooks hanging from a rail. He selected two that looked suitable, then hacked a slab off a ham and tore at it like a savage while he headed for his room. There he strapped a knife to his belt, his crossbow to his back and filled a deep pocket with quarrels. A flint and steel went in as well.
Tearing a bedsheet into strips he thrust them into another pocket, a pair of leather straps in af
ter, then went down to the lower storerooms where the barrels of whale oil and naphtha were stacked. Though Yggur was capable of making glowing globes powered by the Art, the lamps in Fiz Gorgo generally burned oil. Nish filled a silver wine flagon with distilled naphtha which had probably come all the way from the tar pits of Snizort. After stoppering it carefully, he slipped it into a basket made of woven leather and threw it over his shoulder. Lastly he rummaged in the tool room until he found a clamp shaped like a thumbscrew for a giant. Nish spun the screw out and gauged the space. It was just large enough to fit over one of the vertical cables. He tied it to his belt with a length of cord.
Feeling like a wandering tinker with his load, Nish returned to the wall, laid out his meat hooks and straps and considered how best to bind them on.
‘What are you doing, Nish?’
Nish jumped. He’d thought Ullii was still up in the cupola, but her voice came from right behind him. He explained.
Ullii’s eyes, which were still unmasked, grew large. She put her hand over her mouth. ‘You’ll be killed.’
‘I expect so,’ he said more calmly than he felt. ‘But all my friends, save you, are up there. Even if it costs me my life, I won’t let Ghorr torture them to death.’
She looked up at the amphitheatre and the colourless hair stirred on her head, as if she could see right through the deck to what the scrutators were doing there. Nish imagined that she could feel the anguish of the prisoners – Ullii had always been sensitive to that kind of thing.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he said, astounded by the offer, so uncharacteristic of her. ‘Though I don’t see how you can.’
‘I can climb the cable without hooks.’
Since Ullii never exaggerated, he believed her. ‘Could you give me a hand with these?’
She strapped the hooks to his wrists more securely than he could have done himself. He took a deep breath and turned to the cable.
Reaching up as high as he could, Nish dug the hook on his right wrist into the strands of the cable. He had to force it in. He put all his weight on the hook and it held. He pulled himself up, which made his gashed arms throb, and stabbed the other hook at the cable, half an arm’s length higher. It skated off the taut fibres. He tried again, carefully judging the angle, and this time the hook dug in. Already his muscles were aching and he’d only gone half a span. Twenty-nine and a half to go.