by Ian Irvine
‘Hold on,’ said Irisis, taking him by the arm. ‘Flydd wants to say something.’
‘Why didn’t he say it inside?’ Nish grumbled, for his breath was already freezing on his moustache.
The dullest of glows appeared, lighting up the faces of the group. She pulled him into the circle, facing the wind. Nish’s eyes began to water and the tears to freeze.
‘Fusshte knows we have the thapter,’ Flydd reminded them. ‘He probably isn’t expecting an airborne attack but he’ll certainly be prepared for one. The only thing he can’t be expecting is an attack on foot.’
‘Because only the biggest fools on Santhenar would think of it,’ said Yggur sourly. ‘If we are to go for this folly, let’s get moving.’
‘Once we approach, we must be exquisitely careful,’ said Flydd. ‘The guards are always watching. Always waiting.’
Nish gathered his cloak around him, feeling out of his depth. There had been a long debate as to the safest method of waking the amplimet, or threatening it, most of which had been so arcane as to be incomprehensible. He wished he’d slept instead. His head throbbed from the stale air in the thapter and he had a leaden feeling behind his temples.
‘Flydd must be out of his mind,’ he muttered to Irisis. ‘Lust for revenge has blinded him to reality.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Malien is afraid,’ he went on. ‘Even Yggur is against it. I –’
‘We voted,’ she said in a dead voice. ‘We’re going in.’
‘But I –’
‘Shut up, Nish!’ Irisis hissed in his ear. ‘We’ve got a long march ahead and you’re not helping.’
‘And a horrible end when we get there.’
She must have picked up his despair, for Irisis turned and put her hands on his cheeks, looking into his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Nish,’ she said more kindly. ‘You’ve been working towards this day since you escaped from Snizort.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m not terrified,’ he muttered.
‘We all are. Anyway, I’m supposed to be the doom merchant. Don’t push me into the caring role – you know I’m not comfortable with it.’ Giving the lie to her words, she linked her arm through his and they set off.
It was a long and miserable trudge across the slopes of the mountain, as cold as anything he’d experienced, though nothing happened to distinguish one gritty, sliding step from another. Because of the altitude, walking was hard work and he was soon so short of breath that talking at the same time wasn’t worth the effort.
Near the tail end of that exhausting night they ran into a steep ridge of quartz that puckered the mountainside vertically like a badly healed sword slash. Klarm had noted it from afar, from the thapter. They felt their way up it in the dark, eventually finding a fissure large enough for the fifteen of them to hide in. Nennifer lay below and to the east, little more than a league away. They could go no further until Malien had done her work on the amplimet.
They put up a pair of tents, set out the guards and crawled in for whatever rest they could steal before the attack.
Malien cleared her end of the tent by the simple expedient of creating a golden bubble from her fingertips and allowing it to expand until it enveloped her completely. Whatever else it touched was pushed out of the way.
‘What’s she doing?’ whispered an awed Inouye.
Malien was dimly visible inside, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed and her long fingers extended along her thighs. The shimmering luminescence of the globe cast moving lights and shadows across her face and body. She looked ageless, cunning, fey.
‘She has her own unique form of the Art,’ Yggur said quietly. ‘As do I. Hers doesn’t rely on the field, so she can scry without the scrutators detecting her.’
‘At least, we hope so,’ said Irisis.
Yggur glared at her, then went on. ‘We can, of course, draw on the field at need.’
‘How long is it going to take?’ said Nish.
‘However long it takes,’ snapped Flydd from his sleeping pouch. ‘Now keep your trap shut. I need my sleep.’
Flydd must be in constant pain, Nish thought charitably. He’d always been irascible, but now he was angry all the time. Nish wriggled around against the side of the tent, trying to find a comfortable position. Irisis elbowed him in the ribs. He sighed.
The golden bubble popped. ‘I’ve located the amplimet,’ said Malien.
‘What, already?’ The words burst out of Nish.
Everyone turned to stare at him. He flushed. ‘I thought it would take hours,’ he mumbled. ‘Thought there’d be time for sleep.’
No one said anything, which was worse than if they had.
‘It’s not sealed away,’ Malien said. ‘And, judging by the peculiar orientation of the field, the scrutators are working on it now. They must have barriers up to prevent the amplimet taking more than a trickle of power.’
‘Then they know the danger it represents?’ asked Yggur.
‘We have to assume that they’ve discovered everything Tiaan knows about it,’ said Flydd.
‘Tiaan has a way of revealing only what she wants to,’ said Malien. ‘But I agree – it’s safer to assume that.’
‘Then you’d better get to work,’ said Flydd.
Malien took several deep breaths, knitting and unknitting her fingers, but didn’t move.
‘You can wake it?’ said Flydd roughly.
She nodded stiffly. ‘I just don’t think I should.’
‘We’ve been through all that. Just get on with it!’
Nish had never heard anyone speak to Malien that way before. Her lip curled as she looked at the meagre old man. ‘In the circumstances, I will forgive that. Ah, but you know so little of what you’re asking.’
She regenerated her bubble, though this time it took on an opalescent translucency that reduced her to a hunched shape inside.
‘You can have your precious sleep now, Artificer,’ said Flydd.
Nish lay down and dozed off at once, only to be woken by a mutter from the other side of the tent. As he began to sit up, Irisis gripped his arm, warningly.
‘It worries me that the field is so strained,’ said Yggur. ‘One misjudgment –’
‘Let’s not speculate about that,’ Flydd said. ‘Get some sleep. You too, Klarm. You’ll need it before this is over.’
‘As will you,’ said Klarm. ‘We’re relying on you, Flydd.’
‘I don’t need much sleep these days. Master Flenser pruned me of all that was superfluous. Perhaps he did me a favour.’ He laughed harshly.
Yggur made no reply.
Nish closed his eyes and tried to get back to sleep, though now an image kept recurring – the red ruin which Flydd’s healer had revealed so fleetingly, and with such rage at man’s inhumanity to his own.
A long time later Yggur put his head out of the tent, looking up at the dark sky. A high overcast blotted out the stars and moon. ‘It’s coming dawn.’ He rubbed his stubbled cheeks. ‘Aah, it’s cold out.’
Flydd was sitting with his hands on his knees, exactly as he had been hours earlier, watching Malien.
‘Doesn’t look as though she’s having any success,’ said Yggur.
‘It’s taking too long,’ said Flydd, ‘and there’s nothing we can do to help her. This is Malien’s great task and if she can’t do it, no one can.’
Before dawn the sentries were drawn back inside the ends of the fissure. Everyone else spent the day cooped in the tents. This close to Nennifer they dared not go outside, for the risk of being seen was too great.
In mid-morning, Malien dissolved the bubble and crawled across to the food bag, where she made a scant meal of mouldy bread and hard cheese, and another of the knobbly fruits. She had trouble eating it; her hands and arms shook unceasingly. Washing the morsel down with gulps of water that spilled down her front and froze instantly, she flopped onto her sleeping pouch and fell into sleep.
Yggur and Flydd exchanged glances. Yggur jerked his head at the tent
flap and went out. Flydd followed. They could be heard conversing in the fissure, though Nish didn’t catch a word.
‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ he said quietly to Irisis.
She rolled over, irritably pulling the sleeping pouch up around her ears. Nish turned onto his back, staring at the roof of the tent. Ice crystals were growing down from the ridgepole. He shivered and drew his fingers down the canvas wall. They left trails in the growing frost.
‘This is too big for any of us.’
Klarm’s voice, though soft, came from just behind Nish’s ear. He jumped. ‘What do you mean … er, Scrutator?’ Nish still wasn’t sure how to address the dwarf. In truth, despite Klarm having saved his life, Nish still felt uncomfortable with him. He rotated so he could see Klarm’s face.
‘Malien has just realised that what she’s trying to do isn’t possible. It’s too much for any mancer, or all of us together. Go to sleep,’ Klarm said abruptly. ‘It’s what you wanted.’ He got up and went out. The tent flap, stiff with ice, crackled as it fell back into place.
Nish, feeling vaguely uneasy, said softly, ‘Irisis?’
She didn’t reply. Irisis was asleep; Malien too, judging by the gentle snores issuing from the other end of the tent. There was no one to share his fears with. Inouye and Evee had been sent to the other, larger tent, occupied by Flangers and the soldiers.
He went across the litter of gear and sleeping pouches on knees and elbows. A buzz of conversation came from outside. Nish eased his head through the flap. Klarm sat hunched in his cloak just before the bend in the fissure, head tilted to one side as if listening.
Flydd and Yggur must be just around the corner – Nish could see the edge of Yggur’s long cloak draped over the rock. Unfortunately Nish still couldn’t hear. And what was Klarm up to? Had everything just been a plot to lure them here? Did he plan to betray them as the price of admission to the Council?
Long fingers wrapped around Nish’s ankle. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Malien said, soft and low.
He whirled, cracking his ear on the tent pole. A stalactite of ice fell on his head and shattered. Nish sat down, picking ice out of his hair. ‘Klarm’s up to something.’
She let go. ‘Do you think of Yggur and Flydd as fools?’
There was ice in his ear as well. He tried to get the fragment out but it melted, sending an icy trickle down to sear his eardrum. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then leave the worrying to them.’
‘What if the Council’s quest succeeds, and they learn to control the amplimet?’
‘They’ll have enough power to annihilate us.’
‘And if they fail and the amplimet gets … whatever it’s looking for?’
She looked him in the eye and for an instant Nish saw beyond the stern, almost ageless face. What was she thinking? Did she pity him?
‘Worse,’ she said almost inaudibly, and turned away.
TWENTY-THREE
Two frustrating days dragged by, and Malien spent most of that time isolated in the bubble, working at her incomprehensible task of locking onto the amplimet and forcing it to wake. When not doing that she lay in her pouch, panting or tossing in a restless sleep.
The conferences in the fissure became longer and more harried, Yggur more remote and imperious, Flydd more insanely driven. He would not be talked out of the attack, though after all this time no one saw any chance of it succeeding. To get away from them, Klarm had taken to climbing up the rocks in the dark. At least, that was what he’d said he was doing, though Nish wasn’t sure any more. He didn’t have any good reason to suspect the dwarf scrutator, but with so much time to fill in he’d come to doubt everything. And every hour the probability of chance discovery grew greater, as did the risk that the scrutators would master the amplimet first. Or the amplimet master them.
As the third night fell Malien was still going, but when she broke for a brief rest Yggur had to lift her into her sleeping pouch. Her skin had begun to wrinkle like a dried olive, and her shrunken eyes had a dull opacity as if she were developing cataracts.
‘Why is she so worn out?’ said Nish to Irisis, after Flydd and Yggur had just slipped out again.
‘Because she daren’t take power from the field. Malien is using an older Art but she has to draw it from herself, and she’s at her limit.’
‘I can’t do it,’ Malien said an hour later, pushing away the mug of honeyed tea Irisis was holding out for her. ‘Aftersickness is wearing me down and there’s no time to recover from it.’
‘Get some more sleep,’ said Yggur. ‘Flydd and I have been discussing another way.’
‘One that doesn’t require me?’ she said, lying down and closing her eyes.
‘We’ll still need you but we’ll be taking some of the load.’
They went out to discuss their plan. Klarm wasn’t there either. He’d gone climbing up the quartz ridge at dusk and still wasn’t back. He could have walked all the way to Nennifer by now, Nish thought.
‘Now I’m really worried,’ he said to Irisis.
She was sitting in the corner, sleeping pouch up around her waist, weaving a couple of dozen silver and gold wires into a complicated braid, part of a piece of jewellery she’d been working on for days. Being a jeweller had been her life’s ambition, stifled when she was a little girl by a mother who had invested the Stirm family’s future in her clever daughter. Irisis still planned to become a jeweller, ‘after the war is over.’
‘You started worrying the day you were born, Nish. Have a nap or something.’
‘I’ve had about forty naps since we’ve been stuck here. I couldn’t sleep to save my life.’
‘Then be quiet. I’m trying to work.’
‘Your fingers do the work by themselves,’ he observed. ‘You don’t need to think about it.’
‘That doesn’t mean I don’t work better without interruptions.’
‘I’m really worried.’
Irisis cast a glance over her shoulder at Malien, who was twitching in her sleep, and set her work aside with, charitably, just the gentlest of sighs.
‘What about?’
‘I think Klarm’s leading us into a trap.’
‘But he’s not leading us; Flydd and Yggur are.’
‘They call upon his knowledge of Nennifer all the time.’
‘I’m sure Flydd and Yggur are keeping an eye on him.’
‘They’re too distracted.’ Nish, realising that he was panting, took a deep breath. It didn’t help; he could feel panic rising and it was worse than he’d felt in other tight situations, because he was so helpless to do anything. ‘It’s out of control, Irisis, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it.’
‘In which case there’s no point worrying.’
She was almost supernaturally calm these days, or fatalistic. ‘That’s not like you,’ he said accusingly, as if she were letting the side down. ‘You hate waiting for things to happen, and you hate –’
‘Well, I’m sorry if I’m acting out of character!’ Irisis turned her back, pointedly taking up her braid again.
‘Sorry,’ Nish said automatically. ‘I – I’m out of my depth. This idea about waking the amplimet … it’s bound to go wrong.’
‘It’s the only plan we have, Nish.’
The flap was thrust open, scattering ice across the floor. Yggur came in, bent low, followed by Flydd and Klarm.
‘Time to go,’ said Yggur, going to his knees to shake Malien’s shoulder.
She sat up, bleary-eyed. ‘Already?’
‘I’m afraid so. We’ve got about half a league to go. We go over the ridge and down into the little valley where they grow their crops. We’ll get a bit of cover there. When we’re in place, we’ll work together. It’ll be easier down there, closer to the amplimet. If you seek it as before, I’ll lend you my shoulder when you need it.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s the idea, anyhow.’
‘Great,’ Nish muttered when they had gone out. ‘Now when it goes wrong
we’ll lose them all.’
‘It’s no use,’ said Yggur a couple of hours after midnight, wiping hard granules of blown snow off his brow. He’d been working with Malien for ages, without success. ‘It’s hopeless.’
‘Let’s give it one last try,’ said Flydd.
‘The moon’s up. We’ll have to leave it until tonight.’
‘We must go on,’ said Flydd.
‘We’ve got to have darkness.’
‘Another day and neither you nor Malien will have the strength. And I’m not turning my back on the Council again.’
This time they were just above the valley floor, which was networked in dark and light greys by its dry irrigation ditches and the tufted remnants of the harvested autumn crop. They huddled in the long moon-shadow behind a cluster of hip-high boulders, while the wind shrieked all around them. To their left, a frozen stream in the bottom of the valley disappeared over the precipice into the abyss of the Desolation Sink.
‘Aftersickness is killing me,’ croaked Malien.
‘One more time,’ Flydd said grimly.
Malien grew the golden bubble around her and became a blurred outline. Yggur stood facing her, his hands at his sides. He whistled under his breath and a series of golden threads extended from the sphere towards his face.
Malien shifted her weight, Yggur threw up his arms as if off-balance, and for a moment the rock Nish crouched behind faded to translucency. His vision blurred then returned to normal, but his anxiety only intensified. He let out his breath in a loud hiss.
Flydd jabbed him in the ribs. ‘What’s the matter with you tonight?’
‘The amplimet is waiting for us,’ Nish burst out, ‘and it’s angry.’
Malien stood up on tiptoe, shuddering with the strain. Yggur turned his head as far as the filaments would allow. He seemed to be holding his breath.
‘It’s just a mineral,’ said Flydd. ‘It can’t feel anything. You’re projecting your own fears onto it.’
Malien seemed to be beckoning to Nish, as if saying, ‘Go on.’
‘It’s real,’ said Nish.
