by Ian Irvine
‘We all must do …’ Rustina began.
‘He can’t do it, sergeant!’ snapped Irisis.
‘Then the perquisitor will die, and it’s probably best. If he did survive, he’d be in torment for the rest of his life, and a horror to look at. Would he want to live?’
‘My father can’t die!’ cried Nish. ‘Give me the knife.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Irisis. They all stared at her. ‘It’s the leg that’s broken, not my arm. I have a steady hand and a good eye.’
Those who had seen her coolly take the shard from Nish’s neck knew that. And her metal work was the best anyone had ever seen. Half the women of the manufactory wore jewellery Irisis had made in her spare time.
She had to perform the operation sitting, with her splinted leg out straight before her. It was rather awkward. Nish knelt on the other side, holding his father still, for even in his unconscious state Jal-Nish jerked and twitched.
It took surprisingly little time to remove the arm at the shoulder. Rahnd cauterised the wound with a metal plate off the clanker, heated over a fire of scrub branches. The smell was horrible. Worse, the searing shocked Jal-Nish back to consciousness. His screams could have been heard across the plateau, especially when Irisis began to sew his face back together. Three people had to hold him down.
‘Let me die!’ he kept shouting, his one eye staring at them, unblinking.
Finally the ghastly operation was done, the wounds painted with warm tar and bound up. They put Jal-Nish in the clanker with Irisis and Rustina, who had collapsed, moaning and holding her belly.
‘The beast struck her in the middle,’ said Nish. ‘Maybe it’s burst her belly.’ He pulled her clothes up and went still.
‘What is it?’ said Irisis.
Rustina was unmarked but for a set of old scars that carved all the way across her midriff. ‘Lyrinx claws. How did she ever survive? She must have been torn right open.’
‘She was only a child when it happened,’ said Fyn-Mah. ‘There was no possibility of her having children so she was allowed to join the army. All she’s ever wanted since was to kill the enemy.’
Ullii was still crouched behind her rock. Nish could get no response out of her, no matter what he did. He carried her to the clanker, whereupon she came to life and sprang out again.
‘He’s screaming!’ she moaned, though Jal-Nish, sedated with a heavy dose of nigah, was silent.
Nish let her go. He had no energy left for her.
On the way back they managed to right the crashed clanker, but the flywheels had torn from their mountings and the machine had to be abandoned. Ky-Ara sat beside it, weeping silently. The death of Pur-Did seemed a far lesser tragedy than the loss of his machine. Clanker operators rarely bonded with their shooters.
They buried Pur-Did in the gravel and put Ky-Ara in the good machine, but as soon as they clattered away he began to scream and wail, and had to be held to keep him from leaping out.
‘I can still see the clanker,’ said Ullii.
‘Of course you …’ Nish began, trudging beside her, before realising that she had her mask on. Besides, she was looking the other way. They had left the controller behind.
He ran back for it and, reaching in through the back hatch, passed the controller to Irisis. ‘Give him this.’
Cradling the controller in his arms, Ky-Ara fell silent. The bond between operator and clanker went through the controller, which was specifically attuned to both. A clanker whose operator was dead was just scrap metal until another controller could be fitted, or a new operator trained to use the old one.
It was a major handicap in battle, though better than the alternative, which would have allowed the enemy to turn a captured clanker on its own troops.
Ullii began to scream as soon as they crested the hill, even before they set sight on the dreadful scene at the snilau. ‘Waves through the body!’ she kept saying. ‘Waves of flesh.’
There they found carnage such as Nish had never seen before. More than forty human bodies lay strewn all around, clawed and rent worse than any Hürn bear would have done, as well as a dozen of the enemy. Fyn-Mah called Nish down to help check that all the lyrinx were dead, and to see if any of their troops remained alive.
‘Wait!’ cried a weak voice. Rustina climbed shakily out of the hatch.
‘I don’t think …’ Nish began.
‘They are my troops, artificer.’
There was no arguing with that. They checked the bodies one by one. Rustina called out the details of each, including the way they had died, Fyn-Mah wrote it down and they collected any valuables for the families. All the troops were dead and all their sergeants except for Rustina. The operators and shooters of the other clankers had also been slain. Gi-Had lay behind a low wall of ice blocks, where he had been defending a group of injured soldiers. As overseer, the man had been such a powerful presence. Now he lay lifeless on the red-stained snow and Nish was startled to realise what a small man Gi-Had had been, not much larger than Nish himself. Nish closed the half-frozen eyes and stood with head bowed, profoundly sorry. Despite the whipping, the overseer had been the best of men, in his way.
As he walked off, all Nish could think of was the parting scene at the manufactory: the pale wife, the five girls in a line, and the littlest one, with the red ribbons, crying. Daddy was not coming home.
Several soldiers had died recently, as much of the cold as their injuries. Arple, though suffering a dozen wounds, could not have been dead more than a few minutes. He had dragged himself to one of his troops, leaving a bloody trail, and his body was still warm. The most decorated soldier in Glynninar had met his match.
‘What were the lyrinx doing here?’ Nish said when the work was done and all the enemy bodies had been checked, warily.
Fyn-Mah looked around, lowered her voice and said, ‘We don’t know, but …’
‘Yes?’ Nish prompted.
‘It’s not the first time we’ve come across small groups inhabiting the most hostile places. Locations with no strategic value whatsoever, though usually at a powerful node.’
‘And it’s a most strange node here.’
‘Indeed. A double. We think …’ She broke off and walked rapidly toward the largest snilau, a multi-chambered one around which the others spiralled like the whorl of a snail shell. The side and roof of the main chamber had fallen in. They went through the hole, Nish with his sword at the ready as Fyn-Mah searched through the debris of ice blocks.
They found nothing in the larger chambers except rugs and furs, some laid over blocks of ice to form rude benches, chunks of frozen meat (not human), several leather buckets and a few other tools. However, in side rooms the querist discovered a series of cages. Some were empty; others contained small, unearthly-looking creatures. All appeared to be dead, yet Fyn-Mah inspected and described every one with meticulous care.
In a cage at the back they found a live creature the size of a mouse, though shaped like no animal Nish had ever seen. It had a long slanted head with protruding sabre teeth, a spined backbone and a clubbed tail. As they approached, it pushed itself up on spindly legs, let out a mewling cry then fell down again.
‘What are these beasts?’ Nish asked.
Fyn-Mah kept writing. ‘Finish that, would you.’
Putting his sword in through the bars, Nish crushed the creature.
‘They’ve been flesh-formed,’ Fyn-Mah said. ‘Certain lyrinx have the talent to force small creatures to grow differently, to a pattern they make in their minds. But it can only be done in certain places; at nodes. That’s all we know. Why do they do it? Is it for food, or culture, or worship? Are they toys, or art? We know so little about the lyrinx. But it may also be – ’
Flesh-formers! Nish shuddered. ‘That’s what Ullii was trying to tell us. “Waves through the body,” she said.’ He felt his own flesh crawling. ‘Or maybe,’ he mused, teasing the logic together, ‘they’re trying to create a weapon. One we’ll have no defence against.’
>
‘Maybe they are, artificer. We would very much like to know.’
He came to an instantaneous decision. ‘I’d like to find out.’
She looked surprised, the first time he’d seen such a reaction from her. ‘Are you man enough for it?’
‘Probably not.’ A rare admission, for him. ‘Though I know languages, and people, and machines. Flesh-forming may have similarities to metal-working.’
‘And many differences too.’
‘I’ve grown up with examiners and perquisitors. I’m as qualified as most people.’
‘You lack what may be the most important qualification of all,’ she said. ‘You have no talent for the Secret Art.’
‘But I have been working with the seeker, and she can sense out the Art.’
‘Not the same thing at all.’
‘And there is Irisis.’
‘A fraud,’ said Fyn-Mah, ‘without the talent of the artisan she pretends to be.’
Nish turned away so she would not see his shock. Was there no secret the querist did not know?
‘She is brilliant at getting her people to work together and bringing out of them more than they know. She is already a master crafter. She had to become one, to survive.’
‘Whatever!’ Fyn-Mah said disinterestedly. ‘Your own capacity for hard work is undoubted, artificer. And your intelligence. Your judgment can be faulty, however, and there is a question-mark over your integrity. Do you have the guts to keep going, whatever it takes?’
‘Did you see what they did to my father?’ he said in an almost inaudible voice. ‘If Jal-Nish does not die, he will never be a whole man again. For all our differences, he is still my father. He has many faults, as do I, but lack of loyalty is not one of them. I will make up for this affront to him, whatever it takes.’
The querist looked him in the eye. ‘I believe you will, Cryl-Nish. Very well, as leader of this force, you have my warrant to follow this question through. You have three months. After that, it will be at the discretion of Jal-Nish’s replacement as perquisitor – or of your father, if he recovers.’
With a last look around at the devastation she headed back to the clanker. Nish studied the small corpses, and the cages, wondering what he had let himself in for. Then, thinking about what lay ahead, he doubted if it would matter. Such a small, battered force as they now were might not get the clanker down the cliff. And if they did not, they would all die.
FORTY
Tiaan and Ryll soon left the plateau far behind. With Besant’s great wings thudding rhythmically above, in less than an hour they had cleared the mountains and were gliding over a hummocky land, largely treeless, which contained one enormous lake after another. Burlahp, she knew the place to be, though only as a name. Beyond the southern end of the lake was a city. Comparing its location with a map in her head, she deduced it to be Nox.
Ahead loomed another range, the second and shorter tine of the fork, though equally wide and high. The sun was heading down and Tiaan could feel the cold seeping into her core.
‘Ryll?’ she said weakly.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m freezing. Is there far to go?’
‘Many hours.’
‘I’ll be dead by then.’
He hauled her up and bound her to his chest, face out, with her coat double-thickness at the front. He must have opened his skin plates a little, for she could feel the warmth seeping from his chest and belly, like a hotplate running down her back. It felt wonderful. Disturbing too, though she did not want to think about that.
Before the sun had set she was able to catch some of the thrill of flying, or gliding – the silent movement through the air, their almost imperceptible progress against the mottled lands below, the strange viewpoint that flattened the world into an embroidered bedcover.
It was dark before they reached the second range. The cold intensified and the night became a struggle to keep warm, even with Ryll against her. She worked her fingers and toes constantly, warmed her nose and cheeks with the palms of her hands, but it was never enough. Neither was Ryll as warm as he had been.
The night, nearly fifteen hours long, was an eternity. Her shoulder hurt at the least movement. Tiaan desperately wanted to sleep but knew she risked frostbite if she so much as dozed. That desperate craving for sleep and warmth dragged every minute into an hour. Another craving was even worse – her longing for the amplimet. She could see it in her mind’s eye, bound to Besant’s chest, too far away to give her any comfort. She wanted it badly and could not have it.
Sometime during the night her frigid daze was disturbed by Ryll tugging on the lines. They jerked back and he went forward in his harness, tilting the front of the flier down. Again Tiaan felt the fizzing behind her temples that indicated Besant’s Art. Down they went, so steeply that the wind tried to pluck her from Ryll’s chilly embrace.
Eventually he levelled out. It was warmer here. Another eternity passed. Ryll felt cold against her back now and scarcely moved. How must he be suffering from that bolt in the shoulder? Perhaps he was dying. Had he given the warmth of his body to save her, at the cost of his own life?
The fizzing had faded long ago. Had Besant’s mancing burnt her out too, on this monumental journey?
A low red sun tipped the horizon. A thin ray touched Tiaan’s face, warming her out of all proportion to its power. She shook herself. Ryll gave a frosty groan and ice fell from his nostrils.
Light touched the clouds below them. They were flying above a dense overcast, an infinite layer of grey. Shortly a circular gap appeared to their right. Ryll headed toward an opening like the eye of a hurricane.
As they came over the hole, Tiaan saw far below a circular lake with rivers flowing into it like spokes of a wheel. In the centre stood a rocky peak, strangely bare, though the landscape around the lake was covered in snow and forest. They headed in plunging spirals toward the peak. Below the clouds they entered a rising column of warm air that buffeted the wing violently. Without warning it tilted up, a long fluttering strip of fabric tore free and the wing stalled.
Besant screamed something, her Art fizzed momentarily, then went out. Tiaan looked up to see the lyrinx’s wings collapse under her weight. She fell out of the air, plummeting towards them.
‘Cut free!’ she cried, a harsh croak as she shot past so close that the flier rippled.
Ryll was reaching out with a blade to cut the traces when Tiaan gasped, ‘No! She’s got the crystal!’
Making a violent manoeuvre that dragged the front of the wing down, Ryll plunged after her. As Besant’s weight came on the lines, the wing structure groaned. Ryll gripped the struts under the greatest strain, holding them together. The loose fabric cracked like a whip as they went into a vertical dive toward the peak.
Ryll shifted backwards, trying to compensate for Besant’s dead weight. The dive became shallower. He aimed the wing toward the top of the peak but it kept crabbing sideways. Besant was not moving, though the leathery material of her wings was extended.
They drifted over the peak, again passing through hot air that rocked the wing, though this time Ryll did not lose control. Not far to go now. They swept across the water, still going incredibly fast. He wrenched them back on course. The peak was a jumbled mass that looked like welded rock and metal, oily green-black and rusty-red, quite devoid of vegetation. Ryll seemed to be aiming for a smooth area pitted with holes and clotted rock mounds, surrounded by spires.
Besant, hanging five or six spans below them, would hit and pull them head-first into the ground. Ryll tried to haul her up but the wing creaked and cracked. Below, figures issued from a hole in the rock, small from this distance but recognisable as lyrinx.
‘Besant!’ he roared. ‘Besant, wake! Thylymyyx fushrr!’
She did not respond. He shouted the same words again, jerking on the lines as hard as he dared. No answer. The top of the peak came up, too quickly. They were drifting right at the spires.
‘Besant!’ he screamed, so loudl
y that it hurt Tiaan’s ears. ‘Wake or we are ended and the war is lost.’
Besant gave a faint convulsion. One leg kicked. She raised her head and her left wing extended, clawing them round the main peak straight toward a smaller spire of iron.
Ryll flung his weight sideways. The wing flier banked, shot past the spire, just skimmed another; and then Besant’s wings flapped twice, lifting her weight. They soared up and over, slowing rapidly. They were going to make it.
But Besant was finished. One wing tore, she struck the edge of a third spire and fell thumping all the way down. The wing flier turned upside down and broke in two. They plummeted a couple of spans to the ground, Ryll landing on his back with Tiaan on top of him.
She lay there, stunned and aching all over. Three lyrinx came bounding up. Slashing her free, they hauled her off Ryll, who was unconscious. The largest lyrinx spoke to Tiaan in a language she did not know. Another ran to the crumpled figure of Besant.
‘I do not understand you,’ Tiaan said carefully, using the common speech of the south-east.
Ryll sat up, shaking his head. A horrible groan rent the air. It was Besant. The lyrinx turned to her. She tried to roll over but purple blood ran out of her mouth. As they attempted to lift her she gave a wracking cry.
One lyrinx began stripping the broken flier down to its wooden members. Another carried several struts and a piece of fabric across and lashed them into the shape of a stretcher. A third wiped blood from Besant’s mouth, gibbering at her in that strange tongue. Her hand pointed to a small pack bound between her breast plates. Someone unfastened it, drawing out a leather case. The lashings were untied. A female gasped, her crest went a luminous green and she held the amplimet high. It glowed much more brightly than usual. Light was positively flooding from it.
Besant choked out a few sentences, in one of which Tiaan heard her name, somewhat mangled, ‘Tee-yarrrn.’ The lyrinx swung around, all staring at her. Besant continued, her voice rising.
‘Myllixyn thrruppa harrh, ghos tirri Ryll!’ She screamed out the last three words, flung an accusing arm at him and slumped sideways, coughing purple bubbles.