Chimaera twoe-4

by Ian Irvine

  Someone took him by the arm from behind and a deep male voice said, ‘Come this way, please.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Nish.

  ‘Vithis would like to see you again.’

  ‘What about?’

  The Aachim didn’t answer. In Vithis’s room, the same spherical one as before, the Aachim left him and closed the door.

  ‘What’s going on, Cryl-Nish?’ Vithis was deadly cold now.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I take you for. Those two tremblers weren’t like the normal ones we have here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nish’s voice had gone squeaky.

  ‘Someone is sending me a warning. Who among your kind hates me the most, Cryl-Nish?’

  ‘I don’t know that anyone hates you,’ said Nish desperately. Had Vithis finally cracked?

  ‘One of your great powers is trying to bring me down. Who is it – Flydd? Yggur? Gilhaelith?’

  ‘Maybe it’s one of your own,’ Nish snapped. He was taking a risk, but knew Vithis couldn’t respect anyone who didn’t stand up to him. He also knew of the longstanding bitterness between Vithis and Tirior of Clan Nataz.

  ‘I have the full support of my people,’ snarled Vithis, and Nish wondered if his guess had struck the mark. ‘Come on; which one is it?’

  ‘We’re fighting for our lives, surr. No one has time to think about you.’

  ‘What about Gilhaelith?’ Vithis said menacingly.

  ‘I hardly know the man.’

  ‘He’s a geomancer, is he not?’

  ‘As I understand it,’ said Nish, ‘he wishes to comprehend the roots of the world and all the secrets that go with it.’ He didn’t see any point in mentioning the theft of the relics.

  ‘Does he now?’ There was a glint in Vithis’s eye. ‘And should he succeed in that impossible aim, what then?’

  ‘Gilhaelith seeks knowledge and understanding for its own sake.’ That may have been true once. Nish didn’t have a clue what Gilhaelith wanted now.

  ‘So pure a motive does not exist,’ said Vithis. ‘In my long life, there’s one thing I can be sure of – once people have tasted real power, there are few who can give it up.’

  Nish shrugged. ‘Gilhaelith is an enigma.’

  ‘Even more dangerous,’ said Vithis. ‘Leave now.’

  Nish went.

  That night he was lying in bed when the stones of the tower let out a groan like a ghost in torment and the room gave a long, sideways shudder. Nish’s wiry hair stood up. He got out of bed, staring at the roof. The room shook the other way but this time it kept shaking. It felt as if the tower had been set vibrating and each oscillation plucked at the foundations of the Span.

  Slowly the vibrations died away and did not resume, but sleep had fled. Nish went barefoot down the stairs, drawn to the slot above the Hornrace. The floor was dark but lights from the lower floors illuminated mist rising up through the slot.

  He edged to the brink, fascinated by the torrent yet terrified of it. He went down on his belly and crept forward over the last distance.

  ‘It compels, doesn’t it?’ said a low voice from the darkness. ‘I come here every night, to think and to dream. To wonder if this will be the night when I take that way out.’

  Vithis was sitting up the other end of the slot, his long legs dangling over the edge. The tone of his voice frightened Nish, who came to his feet and began to back away.

  ‘Stay, Cryl-Nish. I mean no harm to you. Come and sit down.’

  Nish did so, as far away as he reasonably could. His heart was thudding.

  ‘They’re trying to destroy me, you know.’

  Mad and paranoid. Nish attempted to speak but nothing came out. He swallowed and tried again. ‘Who?’

  ‘Everyone. Yggur, Flydd, Gilhaelith –’

  Nish wondered how the other clans allowed Vithis to remain leader. But then, from what he knew of Aachim Histories, insane obsessiveness was an all too common trait.

  ‘You think I’m mad,’ Vithis went on, softly. ‘You think the loss of my clan has broken me. It hasn’t, Cryl-Nish. I’m going to bring them back.’

  ‘What if you can’t find them, surr?’

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Vithis’s eyes caught the light and again Nish felt an urge to run away. ‘I still have Minis,’ he grated, ‘despite what that little bitch did to him. He’s pure First Clan. He’ll build us up again.’

  ‘Does Minis want to?’ said Nish.

  ‘Minis wants what I want.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He always has. He’s never once tried to make his own life.’

  ‘He’s tried, but you would never allow it.’

  ‘That proves that he never really wanted it.’

  ‘You’ve broken his spirit,’ said Nish.

  ‘He didn’t have any to begin with.’

  ‘Then why did you adopt him?’

  Vithis jumped up, swaying at the other side of the slot, his big hands held up as if he planned to leap it and throttle Nish. ‘His parents were dead and I … could not have children of my own. Why was I so robbed?’ he cried. ‘My children would have been as strong as the founders of First Clan. Why am I cursed with this weakling who can never do anything right? Minis could have had his choice of a dozen women – all noble, all beautiful, all clever – but he wouldn’t have them. He still pines after that sad little creature who brought him to ruin. Who would mate with him now?’

  ‘Tiaan is a brilliant artisan and geomancer,’ said Nish. ‘She’s brave and kind, loyal and generous.’

  ‘She’s an ugly, wretched little sow and no noble Aachim could see anything in her.’

  ‘Among our own kind, Tiaan is considered a beauty. I think her –’

  ‘An insipid kind of beauty, at best, and she has no family. Her mother is a breeding-factory slut; she has no father at all.’

  ‘I’ve always thought the qualities of the person to be more important than the lineage of the family.’ That was a lie. Until recently Nish had been as proud of his family’s wealth and status as he’d been ashamed of his father’s lowly ancestors.

  ‘Considering your own lineage, I’m not surprised.’

  ‘My mother and father –’ Nish protested.

  ‘Now you change your song. And who, I ask, were your father’s parents, or your mother’s? Nobodies! Minis can trace his lineage back ten thousand years. No old human on Santhenar can claim a quarter of that. Not one single person.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right,’ said Nish, annoyed because he was sure it was true.

  ‘Of course I am. I took the trouble to find out –’

  The earth gave another wrenching groan, the building a grinding shudder. Vithis broke off and came around the slot. Taking Nish by the arm, he hauled him all the way up to the spherical room. By that time, Aachim were running everywhere in silent efficiency. Divided they might be over the construction of the Span and the great search, but a crisis instantly united them.

  Tirior and Luxor appeared at the door. ‘I see the Art in this,’ Tirior said. She was in a blue nightgown which swept the floor, and her black hair formed a cloud of ringlets. Luxor was dressed but barefooted. He had extremely long and hairy toes, like brown caterpillars.

  ‘Indeed,’ Vithis said grimly. ‘Do you know who it is?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Bring up the miasmin at once.’

  Directly, an underling carried in an object roughly the size of a port barrel, shrouded in a green cloth. Tirior removed the cloth, revealing a glass bell jar mounted on an ebony base. There was something inside, obscured by fog. Tirior and Luxor worked their hands, eyes closed, with evident strain. The fog cleared and the object, the size of a large round melon, began to glow. The miasmin became brighter and brighter until it resembled the sun as Nish had once seen it through a smoked-glass spyglass. Its surface roiled and dark spots broke through, emitting flares and promin
ences that looped partway around it before plunging back into the surface.

  Luxor whipped the bell jar off its base and the miasmin drifted up towards the ceiling, swelling to many times its size and boiling like a thunderhead. Red and black streamers were plucked out of it in one direction, then another, only to be resorbed. Tirior moved back, holding her arms spread above her head and making little movements with one hand or another. Luxor stood at right-angles to her and did the same, their hand movements seeming to keep the sphere away from the walls.

  Vithis touched the lights on the wall to darkness. The surface of the miasmin smoothed, though it still roiled inside. A glowing filament arced from the top, twisted like a thread in the air and plunged back in halfway down the right side. Other filaments arose, whirled about and sank back into the mass. Dark, fringed spots appeared on the surface, slowly rotating.

  ‘There are too many powers,’ said Tirior with a shake of her black curls.

  ‘I think not. That would be the scrutator, Flydd,’ said Vithis, indicating a large spot from which the glowing filaments arose like sparks from a firework. ‘And this, his chief lyrinx opponent. They seem too preoccupied with each other to be attacking us, though … the scrutator is cunning.’

  ‘But not that powerful,’ said Tirior. ‘It’s someone else, Vithis.’

  ‘What’s that one?’ said Nish, pointing to another fringed spot that pulsed and spat black filaments, arcing out only to be sucked straight back in.

  He shouldn’t have interrupted. Vithis looked at Nish as if he’d just discovered a servant’s nose hair in his wine.

  ‘It’s a node that’s been sucked dry,’ said Luxor. ‘Not what we want to see, so close to our principal node.’

  ‘It’s being attacked, so as to drain our node,’ said Tirior.

  ‘Who by?’ asked Nish.

  Luxor consulted the miasmin, which was smaller than it had been. ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘Vithis,’ said Tirior urgently, ‘the field is falling faster than I’ve ever seen it. It’s as if our node is being drained.’

  ‘This reeks of the way Nennifer was destroyed.’ Vithis’s eyes were unfocussed.

  ‘The field is collapsing around us,’ Tirior said. ‘We’re being attacked from the Foshorn.’

  ‘It’s the Council, but I have their measure.’ Whipping an emerald rod from his belt, Vithis pointed it at the black fringed spot they’d just been discussing.

  ‘No, Vithis,’ cried Tirior. ‘Not that one.’

  Vithis spun the rod in the air, caught it, pointed it again. Momentarily a tight green beam burst from one end and illuminated the fringed spot, which sent out filaments in all directions before collapsing in on itself and disappearing. ‘That’s the end of them.’

  While Nish stared, his mouth agape, Vithis slipped the rod back in his pocket. With the air of a man who had just succeeded at an impossible task, he walked out and closed the door behind him.

  ‘But …’ cried Nish, horrified.

  ‘It wasn’t them,’ said Luxor. The fringed spot reappeared. Prominences arced from it and it grew until it covered the visible hemisphere of the miasmin. ‘Whoever it was, he was just testing our defences. But now he’s threatened and may hit back.’

  The sphere shrank further, but the fringed spot stayed the same size until it covered the entire surface.

  ‘Vithis has finally broken,’ said Tirior. ‘Let him go. Run for our strongest adepts, Luxor. I’ll hold the miasmin until you get back, but …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Whoever is attacking us, they’ve drawn the field so low that I don’t think we can defend ourselves.’

  ‘We’ll have to rely on charged devices,’ said Luxor.

  They exchanged glances. ‘And we both know how that’s going to end.’

  Luxor ran out, shortly to return with six Aachim, four women and two men. They assembled in a circle around the miasmin and it grew a little.

  Without warning the earth rumbled and went on rumbling. Masonry ground together and a crack began to snake across the open floor outside. Nish stood by the glass for a while, staring down at the Hornrace, which looked as though it was boiling.

  Vithis’s door banged shut. Tirior and Luxor still had their arms in the air but the miasmin had shrunk almost to nothing.

  ‘We can’t hold it,’ gasped Tirior. ‘Sound the alarm.’

  Someone lifted the glass bell jar, the miasmin was directed beneath and the bell jar clamped to its base.

  ‘The tower is empty, apart from those keeping Vithis’s watch,’ said Luxor.

  ‘Tell them to come down. It isn’t safe.’

  ‘They’re under his direct orders.’

  ‘Then send someone to find the lunatic!’ said Tirior. ‘I’ve had enough. I won’t see one more Aachim die in pursuit of this folly. If you’d supported me against him at the beginning –’

  ‘Not now!’ snapped Luxor.

  ‘Should I run outside?’ called Nish, looking anxiously at the roof.

  ‘The Span was built to resist the strongest earth tremblers,’ said Tirior.

  ‘But this isn’t an earth trembler,’ said Luxor. ‘It’s an attack directed at the Span itself.’

  A grinding scream, so loud that it cobwebbed the glass of Vithis’s room, rose up the register. Concentric fractures formed in the ceilings outside, rapidly grew larger; then, with a roar even more deafening, the centre of the ceiling collapsed. Nish caught a momentary glimpse of something massive hurtling down and smashing through the slit above the Hornrace, before boiling dust blotted out the scene.

  Pieces of stone crashed against the glass wall, which starred in dozens of places but did not break. The floor went up and down, throwing Nish off his feet. The miasmin shrank to a glowing point and vanished. Dust poured in under the door.

  Nish lay on the floor, his sleeve over his eyes and nose, expecting the roof to fall on him, or the whole of the Span to collapse into the Hornrace, but after a minute or two the crashing and grinding ceased. Outside, the dust clouds slowly began to settle.

  Tirior sat up, her hair grey with dust. She shoved the door open, having to push against heaped rubble.

  The Span still stood, though the needle-shaped watch-tower that had once reared above it had fallen right through the building into the Hornrace, leaving a ragged hole where the slot had been. They crept across the gritty floor, which was littered with crumbled and shattered stone. Cracks radiated out from the hole.

  ‘Come this way,’ said Tirior.

  Nish looked over the edge. The debris had formed a dam in the Hornrace, out of which the twisted spire from the top of the tower extended like a dead flower in a vase. Above, the roughly circular holes went up at least a dozen floors.

  ‘I always knew it was a folly,’ said Tirior, and led the way outside.

  Nish followed. The episode also reminded him of the way Nennifer had been destroyed. And if the amplimet had woken again, what had it done to Tiaan and Malien?

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Malien was at the controller, Tiaan beside her with her chart as they cruised low across the emptiness. The Dry Sea unrolled before them, a featureless, lifeless land two thousand spans below the level of the Sea of Thurkad. Its bed was covered in an icing of crusted salt tens of spans in thickness, formed when the Sea of Perion dried up. The heat was unrelenting in daytime, despite the lateness of the season. No cloud marred the deep purple of the sky, darker than any sky Tiaan had seen before. Even the air was thicker down here. Each breath felt measurably heavier and the tang of salt dust was always in her nostrils.

  Tiaan took a sip from her water bottle and settled back with her chart, glad to be away from Flydd and the field controller. Though she understood why he wanted it, it represented another escalation of a war that was already out of control. On the positive side, it was going to take at least two weeks to make a rough map of the fields and nodes of the Dry Sea. She was looking forward to the solitude.

  Malien glanced back at t
he chart and set the lodestone in its brass bowl. ‘Is this heading all right?’

  ‘A little further east of north. I thought we might fly across the length of the Dry Sea in the direction of Taranta.’

  Malien squinted into the white glare ahead, made the necessary adjustment to her course and closed her eyes. ‘We’ll have to make some slit goggles. I’d forgotten how bad the reflection off the salt was.’

  After an hour or two Tiaan said, ‘Malien?’

  ‘Yes, Tiaan?’

  ‘Has something happened between you and Flydd? You don’t speak up in his councils anymore.’

  ‘I’ve begun to have reservations about what the Council is doing.’

  She did not go on and Tiaan didn’t feel any need to question her. She simply gave silent thanks that she wasn’t the only one.

  They worked in a companionable silence for the remainder of the day. As dusk approached, Malien looked for a place to camp. The seabed below them was featureless, apart from a ridge of broken salt in the distance. She set the thapter down on the crusted surface, which revealed not the slightest sign of life. A breeze blew strongly from the west and it was no longer warm.

  ‘It looks as if it could get cold here at night,’ said Tiaan, pulling on a coat.

  ‘It does. Let’s have a look behind the salt ridge. It’ll break the wind.’

  She hovered across and they found a sheltered spot between iron-stained bergs of salt, their orange and yellow layers fretted by the wind into bizarre shapes. Tiaan hauled lumps of salt and hacked them into shape with a hatchet to make rude seats and a table.

  ‘We should fly east tomorrow and fill the racks with wood,’ said Malien. ‘We’ll need it.’

  ‘Have you been out here before?’

  Malien seemed to find that amusing. ‘I’ve walked across the Dry Sea and back again, and survived it. Not many can say that.’

  Tiaan couldn’t believe she’d asked such a stupid question. ‘Of course! You were in the Tale of the Mirror. After all the time I’ve known you it still doesn’t seem real, to be sitting here with you knowing that two hundred years ago you lived through a Great Tale.’