by Ian Irvine
Sulien was gone, and Karan could not reach her. What have I done? she thought. She turned towards Flydd, then stopped. She knew what he would say.
16
The Right Person For The Job
Every day was the same here. A cool night lit by thousands of stars, brighter than Wilm had ever seen them, was followed by a blazing red dawn, a cloudless sky then, by mid-morning, baking heat that lasted until sundown. The dark rocks radiated it back at them until he felt like a piece of meat sizzling on a hotplate. From the moment the sun rose he counted the minutes until it would set.
Two days had passed. He was trudging up another ridge, this time with Klarm who had been baiting him mercilessly all afternoon, when grey smoke billowed up to his left.
‘It’s the signal!’ he cried. ‘It’s been found.’
‘Well done, laddie. There’s no keeping anything from you.’
Wilm still had no idea why the dwarf had taken such a set against him. He ran down into the gully, slipping on flat pieces of yellow shale, up the other side and over the ridge.
‘Stop!’ hissed Ilisial, holding up both arms.
Will skidded to a stop. ‘Where is it?’
‘Down there. M’Lainte said to stay well away.’
She was on her knees beside a solitary mound of grey sand, scraping it away with the blade of a triangular knife. The afternoon shadows were long and Wilm could not make anything out. He went down a few feet, desperate to see the spellcaster.
M’Lainte looked up. ‘Ah, Wilm. Come here.’
Ilisial cried out, ‘I’m the apprentice.’
Wilm went down, stepping carefully, and saw a black metal rod, funnel-shaped on the end, protruding from the sand.
‘You remember the warnings?’ M’Lainte said quietly.
‘Yes, but surely Ilisial –’
‘You’ve been blooded, lad, and she hasn’t.’
‘Blooded?’
‘You’ve shown, in desperate situations, that you have a cool head and a steady hand. That’s what I need right now.’
‘Not always,’ he muttered. ‘When Unick –’
‘Are you arguing with me?’
‘No,’ he said hastily.
Ilisial’s long face was a storm cloud. ‘Killer!’ she mouthed.
Why did she despise him? He’d done nothing to her. Or was she afraid of him? That was even worse.
‘Wilm!’ M’Lainte hissed. ‘Pay attention.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Looks as though the spellcaster has been buried here for years. That might mean it’s dead –’
‘How do you mean, dead?’
‘Drained of power and unable to draw more. But it might also mean that it felt no need to move until something happened. It’s a deadly device, lad, and we need to be careful – and respectful.’
Wilm wasn’t sure he knew how to be respectful to a machine.
‘Dig the sand away on your side, and I’ll do the same here,’ said M’Lainte. ‘Make no sudden moves. Don’t speak unless there’s something I need to know.’
They worked in silence. In the distance, Wilm saw the guards climbing the gully, answering the signal. Shortly Klarm crested the ridge, stopped and came down slowly.
‘You sure he’s the right person for the job?’ said Klarm.
‘Absolutely,’ said M’Lainte.
For a moment, Wilm soared. Klarm made a rude noise.
Wilm kept excavating carefully until he had exposed the right side of the spellcaster. It was a metal disc five feet across and a foot and a half deep in the centre, with six stubby arms spaced along metal bands around its equator. Each arm ended in a funnel, black on the outside and an eerie blue within. A cylindrical metal skirt projected down from its circumference for another foot.
M’Lainte had almost cleared the left side now. She carved away the last of the sand, flicked aside a small brown scorpion with her knife and put an ear to the side of the spellcaster.
‘Nothing,’ she said shortly. ‘I think it’s safe to move.’
She slung a web of straps under it. As Wilm, Ilisial and two of the guards began to lift it, something went tick-click inside.
‘Drop it!’ hissed M’Lainte. ‘Lay flat!’
Wilm, used to obeying orders instantly, let go of his strap and threw himself down, as did the guards. M’Lainte and Klarm did too, but Ilisial was still holding her strap as the spellcaster tilted and hit the ground. It seethed like a boiling kettle, the equatorial bands rotated, click-click-click, and one funnel-tipped arm stopped, pointing at Ilisial’s face.
‘Down!’ shrieked M’Lainte.
Without thinking, Wilm swung a leg at Ilisial’s ankles and swept her off her feet. Blue fire howled from the funnel, through the space her head had occupied moments before, and blew a dead tree fifty yards away to blazing fragments.
Ilisial fell hard. M’Lainte threw herself at the spellcaster and thumped a protrusion on top with her fist. A metal cover flipped up. She reached inside and wrenched out a dark green crystal. The seething stopped. The spellcaster rocked on its metal skirt, then settled.
‘That’s why I asked Wilm,’ M’Lainte said quietly. ‘You all right, girl?’
Ilisial lay where she had fallen, rubbing her right wrist; she had broken her fall on it. She shuddered and let out a low, howling sound that raised the hairs on the back of Wilm’s neck. Her eyes were vacant.
M’Lainte crawled across and slapped her across the face. Ilisial broke off.
‘S-sorry,’ she said, rubbing her cheek. ‘Took me back … a bad time.’
The guards were gaping at one another, and Wilm’s skin was crawling. He shuddered. Another second and Ilisial’s head – he suppressed the ghastly image.
He caught her eye and it burned with hostility. He had just saved her life, yet she looked as though she hated him. What was the matter with her?
‘Is it safe now?’ he said quietly to M’Lainte.
‘Hope so.’
They carried the spellcaster across to some shade, a safe distance above their camp. M’Lainte brushed the dirt off a flat slab of rock and directed them to put the secret weapon down.
The guards set up camp. M’Lainte and Wilm cleaned the sand and dust off the spellcaster. Klarm sat a few yards away, silently observing.
‘Got your workbook?’ M’Lainte said to Ilisial. ‘Sketch everything.’
Ilisial took a square book from her bag, sat cross-legged next to M’Lainte and drew the spellcaster from various angles. Her drawings, labelled in a small, beautifully formed hand, might have been done by a master drafter, and for the first time since Wilm had met her she looked at peace.
Slowly and carefully, M’Lainte began to take the spellcaster apart, laying each piece on a sheet of canvas. Wilm’s stomach knotted. What if it was booby-trapped?
Ilisial turned the page and sketched each part, and how it fitted into the device.
‘Have you ever done this before?’ said Wilm to M’Lainte, fascinated.
‘I’ve never even seen one before.’
‘Then how do you know how –?’
‘Don’t you ever stop jawboning?’ said Klarm.
Wilm kept his mouth shut after that. As the light waned, Klarm set up glowglobes on sticks. The guards cooked dinner and made tea, then kindled a small fire at their backs. M’Lainte, totally focused on the perilous job of disassembly, did not even look at her plate.
The evening passed. The guards went to their sleeping pouches and so did Klarm. M’Lainte worked on and Wilm sat by her, not speaking, watching everything she did with eager eyes. Ilisial scowled at him whenever he looked her way. Why, why?
‘Done,’ M’Lainte said when it must have been close to midnight. She laid the last part, a tiny hourglass filled with glittering powder and set in a clockwork mechanism, on the canvas. ‘It’s safe now. Get to bed.’
Ilisial, who had filled a dozen pages with sketches, went to her tent, snapping the flap closed like a whipcrack.
Will fed
the fire behind them; it was cold now. ‘It’s all right. I want to see everything.’
‘I was the same when I was young,’ she said approvingly.
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Clean everything up and put it back together.’
‘Is that dangerous?’
‘Could be.’
She yawned, looked down at the stew of meat and vegetables and mashed grains congealed on her plate, then began to spoon it down, washed down by gulps of cold tea.
‘I’ll make a fresh brew,’ said Wilm.
‘That would be nice.’
Her painstaking work continued through the night. Wilm dozed and woke, dozed and woke, and each time M’Lainte was in the same position, utterly focused, reassembling the spellcaster from memory. Finally, as the sun tipped the eastern horizon, it was complete, though to his relief she had not put the dark green crystal back.
‘Now I understand it,’ she said, rubbing her fingers together. ‘I could use a warming mug of tea, Wilm.’
He was heading down to the camp, yawning and stretching cramped muscles, when he heard a faint, rhythmic thup-thup, thup-thup.
M’Lainte swore. ‘Put the campfire out and get everyone up. Quick, quick!’
Wilm hurtled down the slope, skidded to a stop beside the camp, sending stones skidding in all directions, and roared, ‘Get up!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Klarm was out so quickly that he must have slept with his wooden foot on.
‘I don’t know.’ Wilm kicked the embers of the campfire apart and stamped on them. ‘We heard a thup-thup, thup-thup sound.’ Everyone was talking at once and he could hear nothing now.
‘Quiet!’ bellowed Klarm.
M’Lainte had tossed the canvas over the reassembled spellcaster and was crushing out the embers of her fire.
‘Get into cover,’ said Klarm.
They crept in under the scrub.
He was staring at the eastern sky. The thup-thup, thup-thup was louder now. ‘Air-floater, and it can only be looking for us.’
‘Could Flydd have sent it to pick us up?’ asked Ilisial in a small voice.
‘I haven’t called him yet.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be the Merdrun. We have air-floaters too.’
‘Not coming from that direction. Wilm, that bloody fire is still smoking. Can’t you do anything properly?’
Wilm scurried to grind the last ember out under his boot, then slipped back into hiding, gripping the hilt of the black sword.
M’Lainte joined them. The brass curves of Klarm’s knoblaggie bulged between his fingers. Four of the guards had drawn their swords and the two archers had loaded their crossbows.
Wilm was about to unsheathe his blade when Klarm said, ‘No! Shove it well down.’
Wilm did so.
‘Don’t use it unless you have to, laddie. We’ve got to be able to trust our weapons.’
The sound of the rotors steadily grew louder, though it was another ten minutes before Wilm could make out the air-floater. M’Lainte focused her spyglass on it.
‘Merdrun glyph on the airbag.’ She handed it to Klarm. ‘Do you think they’re looking for us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have we been betrayed?’
He did not reply.
The air-floater was small, with a long, sleek airbag and a streamlined cabin. Go past, Wilm prayed. Don’t see us.
Memories rose, from his time as a slave on Gwine. The bone-cracking labour, the enemy’s casual brutality, sleeping in stinking mud and filth, dragging the dead out each morning … Every effort to steady his hammering heart failed.
The air-floater cruised by a couple of miles away and several thousand feet below them, tracking along the edge of the Sink of Despair.
‘They’ve missed us,’ whispered Ilisial.
‘They’ll spot the wreckage of the air-dreadnought,’ said Klarm. ‘It’s less than four miles away; they could be here within hours.’
‘I’ll call Flydd,’ said M’Lainte.
‘I tried last night. Couldn’t reach him. Go back to the spellcaster. If they find us, and we can’t escape, destroy it.’
‘I’m not sure I know how.’
‘Wilm’s black sword will cut through anything. Hack the, er ... core of the spellcaster – you know what I’m talking about – to bits.’
‘Yes,’ she said grimly. ‘But that could be apocalyptic.’
‘Not as bad as the enemy getting it. Your affairs are in order, aren’t they?’
‘More or less.’
‘If they get it, they’ll kill the lot of us anyway.’
‘Yes. Come on, Wilm.’
He followed her up, keeping to the shrubbery in the bottom of the gully. I’m going to die, he thought. Slaughtered by the enemy or blown to blazing bits by the spellcaster. There’s no way out.
‘You got what Klarm said?’ said M’Lainte.
‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely.
‘And you’re not tempted to run and hide?’
‘I – I’m terrified. But we have a job to do.’
‘I’m glad you’re by my side, Wilm. But it may not come to that.’
As she spoke, the air-floater turned up the slope and hovered.
‘They’ve spotted the wreckage,’ said Wilm.
‘Yes.’
It settled, and through M’Lainte’s spyglass Wilm saw tiny figures moving about. After half an hour the Merdrun reboarded their craft, which began to fly in a spiral.
‘Difficult to track us in such hard, stony country,’ said M’Lainte. ‘We haven’t left a lot of traces.’
‘Apart from the ashes of our campfires.’
‘True,’ she said gloomily.
He watched breathlessly, wishing he had made it up with Aviel. She was stuck with Maigraith, who did not have a kind bone in her body. He ached for Aviel, feared for her.
Another ten or fifteen minutes passed, the little air-floater following its widening spiral, then it turned, climbed rapidly and headed back the way it had come.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘It was just a scout. But if they have far-speakers, or other ways of communicating at a distance –’
‘They’ll soon be back,’ Wilm said.
Down below, Ilisial screamed.
17
Stupid Old Bag!
Ilisial was as rigid as a post, fists clenched by her sides. ‘Leave them alone!’ she shrilled. ‘Leave – them – Noooooo!’
Klarm reached up to her. She lashed out, catching him across the side of the head and knocking him sideways, then bolted, moaning and flailing her long arms.
‘Stop her!’ said M’lainte.
Wilm raced down the slope, intersected Ilisial and caught her by the shoulder. She whirled, punched him in the mouth, then clutched her wrist, the one she had twisted earlier, and stumbled away.
He reached her in a few strides. She head-butted him under the jaw so hard that it knocked him onto his back. She looked out of her mind. She picked up a rock in both hands and raised it above her head; she was going to brain him! Wilm tried to get out of the way, knew he could not.
‘No!’ bellowed Klarm.
He must have used a Command because she froze, the rock slid from her hands and she fell to her knees, wailing. Wilm got up, spitting out blood, and took a careful step towards her.
M’Lainte panted up. ‘Stay back, Wilm.’
She went to Ilisial. ‘Before we left Thurkad,’ M’Lainte said in a rigidly controlled voice, ‘I asked if there was any reason you couldn’t go into danger. And you said there wasn’t.’
‘I – I can’t talk about it.’
‘You will talk about it. Or you’ll never work with me again.’
Ilisial remained on her knees, gaze fixed on the ground, racked by shudders. Her mouth opened but nothing came out.
‘Speak,’ said M’Lainte.
‘I – I was a little girl. Five.’
‘And?’ said M’Lainte when
she did not go on.
‘Whole family was murdered. At the end of the Lyrinx War,’ she said in a halting whisper, as if she could not bear to say it aloud. She directed a hate-filled glare at Wilm.
‘Don’t look at Wilm. When you were five, he wasn’t even born. Look at me.’ M’Lainte went to her knees in front of Ilisial.
Wilm knew what went on in war and didn’t want to hear her story. He started to back away.
‘Stay!’ Klarm murmured.
It burst out of Ilisial. ‘They were killed by soldiers from our own side. Filthy renegades! I hid. Saw it all. Father was hacked to pieces. Mother was … I can’t say it, I can’t say it, I can’t –’
‘You don’t have to say it.’ M’Lainte took her hand. ‘But you do have to get it out.’
‘They stabbed her and left her to die while they did – the same – to my sisters.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I was sure they were going to find me too,’ Ilisial said shrilly. ‘After they left, I was too scared to come out. Three days I hid there, just me and my dead.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this in Thurkad?’
‘I grew up with nothing. I’ve worked so hard … I couldn’t bear to give up my only chance. Then he comes along, sucking up to you.’ She gestured wildly at Wilm. ‘A common soldier! A stinking killer, trying to rob me of the one thing I have left.’
Wilm had to defend himself. He took a deep breath but Klarm grabbed his arm, saying quietly, ‘Don’t move. Don’t speak.’
‘Wilm has no gift for the Art,’ said M’Lainte. ‘He could never take your place.’
‘You chose him over me,’ said Ilisial.
‘Not for artisan’s work. And he saved your life.’
She scowled.
She can’t see a single good thing in me, Wilm thought. This is hopeless.
M’Lainte sighed. ‘Ilisial, if I’d asked you to help me disassemble the spellcaster, and you’d had a panic attack, we might all be dead. I can’t work with someone who conceals information from me.’
All the fury drained out of Ilisial. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t cast me out. I’ll work day and night.’
