Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

  His tower gave another, smaller shudder and rock spalled off the walls. It couldn’t last long. Nish scanned the air-dreadnought, keeping his head below the embrasure. The mancer was watching the drama on the amphitheatre. Nish prayed that he hadn’t seen Ullii climbing down, or she’d have walked into a trap. He couldn’t see her in the yard.

  Nish’s thoughts went to his friends. The trials would soon be getting underway and they wouldn’t take over-long. Long enough for the theatre and the lavish spectacle, and long enough for the artists, recorders and tale-tellers to get each victim’s story down, but not long enough for anyone to receive a fair trial. The scrutators did not believe in fair trials.

  Come on, Ullii. What’s keeping you? Ghorr might have tried Irisis first, for she’d once discovered a secret that threatened every mancer, and the chief scrutator didn’t want it to get out. If the punishment was carried out after each trial they might be readying her now. Before she was tortured and slain, Irisis would be stripped naked and exposed to the icy wind and the leers of the witnesses. The artists and tale-tellers would be ordered to capture every detail of her magnificent body before the punishment, and afterwards. In this prudish world the human form was rarely depicted unclothed, but where criminals were concerned nothing was left to the prurient imagination. If such a beauty could be brought low, it could happen to anyone, and few people would fail to take the lesson.

  And then, the flaying knives … Nish ground his fists into his eyes but couldn’t keep the hideous images at bay. How could they do that to anyone, much less to Irisis?

  There was still no sign of Ullii. He paced back and forth in the narrow space between the glass spears. It was as confining as any dungeon cell, though at least the floor was cooling down.

  Nish stepped onto a chunk of stone, which ground underfoot. He picked it up and, without thinking, hurled it into the network of glass blades, bringing down a good half of them. It made a colossal racket but he felt better for it. It was good to smash something, and it gave him more space to move in.

  The drizzle began to turn to cold rain which would make Ullii’s climb even slower. But it might speed up the trial; the scrutators liked their comforts.

  Across he went, and back, having to tread carefully on the tilted slabs, then around the glass-clotted hole in the centre that was still too hot to approach. Nish kept going until, suddenly, his knees gave out. He’d been too anxious to eat dinner last night, and there had been nothing since. He was ravenous, and so very tired. He found a relatively cool perch by the cracked embrasure and squatted down with his back against the wall. Resting his cheek on his arms, he tried to think of a way out.

  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 a
nd 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 had. 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.