Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

  The squeaks rose and fell, died away and began again until they swelled into an eerie, continuous moan. The soldier came running down the ladder, took in Nish on the far side of the room, his mouth open and eyes wide, and turned towards the source of the sound. It took him some time to find the hatch.

  ‘Larg? Come down here. The Aachim bitch must have made it go.’

  ‘Not allowed to leave my post,’ said the other. ‘You know that, Aln. The prisoner might have done it.’

  ‘Him?’ Aln’s voice was a sneer. ‘Remember what Ghorr said? Only Aachim can operate the cursed thing. And Tiaan the artisan.’

  ‘See what the matter is,’ said Larg, ‘and get a move on. There could be others coming.’

  Aln fiddled with the latch, trying to discover how it worked. The moaning from the thyrimode grew louder, as if it were grinding itself to pieces. He glanced over his shoulder at Nish, who hadn’t moved.

  ‘I can smell something burning,’ Aln called.

  Larg did not answer. Aln lifted the hatch of the mechanism, releasing thick clouds of brown, acrid smoke. The shrilling grew so loud that it made Nish’s ears ache.

  ‘Larg, Larg, we’re afire!’ Aln was on his knees, staring into the hole, but made no attempt to lower the hatch. He had no idea what to do.

  Larg came thumping down the ladder and ran across the chamber. He took one look into the cavity, which was still belching fumes, then banged the hatch down.

  ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ said Aln. ‘If it’s destroyed, Ghorr will blame us. We’re dead men, Larg.’

  Larg paled. He stared around the chamber, his larynx working. ‘We’ll have to put it out. See if you can find some water –’

  The room was thick with smoke. Nish slowly rose to his feet, trying to appear frightened. Neither of the soldiers took any notice.

  ‘Water’s no good,’ said Aln. ‘We’ll need to smother it with sand or something.’ He began to pull out the drawers, feverishly.

  ‘Sand will ruin the mechanism,’ said Larg, heading towards the ladder. ‘See if you can find a rug or a blanket.’

  Aln stared at the fuming hatch despairingly, then followed, evidently unwilling to remain below on his own. Nish tensed. This might be the only chance he got. When Aln came by, Nish rotated on the ball of one foot, swinging the heavy prise-bar hard and low with his bound hands.

  It struck the soldier on the kneecap with a nauseating crack, he went down and Nish fell on him from behind, driving his knees into the fellow’s back. As Aln hit the floor, Nish managed to fumble the knife from his belt.

  He went backwards, trying to manipulate the blade with his bound hands so as to cut his bonds. It was an awkward operation, almost impossible.

  ‘Larg!’ cried Aln. ‘Help.’

  Nish slipped the knife through his fingers until he could touch his wrist ropes with the tip of the blade, though he couldn’t exert much force. He pushed the tip across his ropes, pulled it back then pushed it again.

  Larg appeared, feet first. He drew his own blade and began to come down, one step at a time. Nish pushed again and again. The ropes did not give. He forced harder and the point of the blade dug into his wrist, drawing blood.

  ‘Drop it!’ said Larg, reaching the bottom of the ladder.

  Nish pushed too hard and the knife slipped from his fingers and skidded across the floor. He looked up at the soldier in desperation. He didn’t bother to go after the blade – Larg could cut his throat before he reached it and, with bound hands, he couldn’t possibly attack an able-bodied soldier armed with a knife.

  Larg smiled evilly, sprang onto the floor and kept going down. What was the matter with him? A thread of blood began to ooze from the side of the soldier’s neck, where a tiny knife had been embedded to the hilt.

  Nish went to the ladder. Malien stood at the top, the gag around her throat, swaying.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I used the control levers to tear off the gag, then employed my Art to loosen my bonds. Take his knife and come up.’

  Nish did so. She freed his wrists and he carefully fastened the lower hatch. Cracking the upper hatch, he peered out through the gap.

  ‘I can’t see anyone on the air-dreadnought.’

  ‘That’s bad. They must all be dead.’

  Nish blanched.

  ‘Or round the other side,’ she added hastily.

  He opened the hatch a fraction more. ‘No, I can see Irisis, at the controller. It looks as though she’s trying to pilot the air-dreadnought. Trying to turn it.’

  ‘Find out why,’ said Malien, polishing a blue-green striated crystal on her sleeve and inserting it into its socket. ‘She was supposed to follow me.’ Gripping the controller levers with both hands, she strained until her face went red. Nothing happened.

  Nish climbed up through the hatch and let out a yelp. ‘Malien, we’re heading directly for another air-dreadnought. Its rope is tangled in the trees.’

  ‘The thapter doesn’t want to go,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Do you think it could be because I put the mechanism into test mode?’ said Nish.

  ‘You did what?’

  He explained. ‘It was all I could think of to distract the soldiers.’

  ‘Run down and stop it, quick as you can!’

  He hurtled down the ladder and leapt the body at the bottom, not even thinking about the second soldier.

  Nish lifted the cover, reached in through the fumes and shut off the thyrimode and the gyrolapp. The shrilling groans stopped at once. He was rubbing his stinging eyes when Aln fell on him, beating him about the head and shoulders with his fists.

  Had the soldier been armed, Nish would have died. He went down but managed to roll out of the way. The soldier lurched after him on his battered knee, his face contorted in agony. Nish couldn’t feel sorry for him – Aln had been happy to joke about Nish’s fate. He kicked out, caught the soldier in the side of the knee and he collapsed next to the dead man, crying in pain. Nish scrambled to his feet.

  ‘It’s done, Malien!’

  ‘I heard. Come up, quickly!’

  He pulled himself up the ladder and fastened the hatch again. The mechanism groaned then roared to life.

  ‘Put your head out of the hatch,’ Malien snapped, taking a firm grip on the levers. ‘Get ready to cut the ropes holding us in the nets. But not till I say so.’

  Larg’s keen blade in hand, Nish cracked the hatch open and looked forward. The other air-dreadnought loomed up, directly ahead.

  ‘We’re getting very close,’ he cried.

  ‘I know. Ready?’

  He caught hold of one of the main ropes. ‘Yes. Go, quickly!’

  Malien jerked the levers. The thapter didn’t move. She began muttering to herself.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nish said, watching the air-dreadnought come ever closer. He could hardly bear to look.

  ‘Ghorr must have locked the controls. Now, how would he have done that?’

  ‘They use scrutator magic, a special form of the Art …’ he began.

  Malien knew that, of course. She had closed her eyes and was passing her hands across the controls, moving them in circular sweeping motions. Shaking her head, she began checking the glass plates, on which patterns moved in coloured lines and swirls.

  Cocking her head to one side, she said ‘Ah!’ Her long Aachim fingers danced on the glass, then she jerked out an agate knob, banged in several others with a sweep of her hand and spun an insignificant thumb wheel below the binnacle.

  ‘We’re going to hit!’ Nish cried. ‘Do I cut?’

  She didn’t answer. Malien was too engrossed. Her other hand caressed the knob that made the thapter fly but she still didn’t move it.

  The two air-dreadnoughts merged with stately inevitability. The leading airbags touched, flattened against each other and slid past with silky hisses. The port and starboard airbags of Ghorr’s craft struck their counterparts full on, pushed by, and their
support cables tangled. The cables thrummed as they snapped taut, stopping the airbags within a few spans. The suspended vessel of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought kept moving, curving in an arc towards the side of the other machine.

  ‘Malien, can’t you do anything?’

  People on the other craft were screaming and running from the point of impact, though the pilot stood at her controls, her face frozen into a mask of horror. Her precious air-dreadnought, the mainstay of her existence, was going to be destroyed.

  Malien’s eyes remained closed though her fingers were still dancing. Now her eyes snapped open. ‘I have it,’ she said softly. ‘Cut the ropes.’

  She pulled up on the flight knob and the thapter jerked. Nish had just put his knife to the first rope when the bow of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought drove right through the side of the other vessel amidships, snapping its keel and breaking it in two. One of the rope slings broke above his head and before he could cut the other the thapter rolled in the remaining net until it was tilted on its side.

  It began to slide down.

  FIFTEEN

  After a desperate couple of minutes during which the two air-dreadnoughts came ever closer, Irisis was forced to abandon the controller, which was too different from the kind she’d spent her life crafting. She had no doubt that, given time, she could make it work, but time had run out.

  With only twenty or thirty seconds to impact, she ran along the port deck, looking down at the thapter. It still hung in the nets but she was relieved to hear the sound of its flight mechanism, and to see Nish reaching out of the top hatch. He had a knife in his hand and looked set to cut the ropes. They’d done it.

  He had his back to her. Irisis didn’t call out, not wanting to distract him in those last vital seconds. She took a firm hold of the ropes and held her breath – why didn’t they go? What was the matter? She braced herself for the impact, which was not as bad as she’d expected – at least, not to Ghorr’s craft. The other vessel was smashed in two, hurling its crew everywhere.

  Irisis hung onto the side ropes while Ghorr’s craft came to a shuddering halt, the airbags lashing about wildly. She expected them to tear open, or even one to explode in a cataclysm that would spread to all the airbags and send the flaming wreckage into the swamp forest. It didn’t happen. The airbags held and so did the ropes. The cable of the wrecked vessel, still tangled in one of the swamp forest trees, anchored them in place.

  The thapter was gone, though Irisis didn’t remember hearing the song of its mechanism. Had Malien got it moving in time, or had it fallen into the mist-wreathed swamp? Irisis couldn’t tell.

  Malien and Nish were beyond her helping, one way or the other, which reduced her options to one. She headed back the way she had come, looking up for Flangers, Klarm or Yggur. It occurred to her that they might all be dead and she’d be more usefully employed saving her own life. Irisis didn’t give that any further consideration, for it wasn’t in her nature, though she didn’t see what she could do where the mighty had failed.

  She circumnavigated the outer deck without seeing a soul, apart from a few battered survivors clinging desperately to the dangling wreckage of the other air-dreadnought. One, a woman Irisis could not see, called out piteously, ‘Help me.’

  Irisis turned away. She was still seeing an occasional flash from above, which meant that either Yggur or Klarm must have survived. She clutched at her pliance, a momentary comfort, then tucked it back inside her shirt. Best if no one knew she’d recovered it.

  ‘Help me, please help me.’

  She climbed onto the roof of the cabin, tied a length of rope to the rigging and swung across the gap onto the stern section of the other air-dreadnought, which now hung vertically from a single airbag.

  The pilot, a little woman who rather resembled Ullii in her pale hair and blanched skin, had her arms and legs wrapped around the steering arm of the vessel and was crooning softly to herself. She didn’t look up as Irisis landed catlike just above her. The cry must have come from further down.

  Irisis fastened her line to the rail so she could get back to Ghorr’s vessel, and went down the vertical side, using the meshed rails like a rope ladder. The woman who had cried out was lying on what had been the rear wall of one of the cabins, and she had two broken legs. She was middle-aged, thin, with lank dark hair and a cast in her left eye.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Irisis, making her as comfortable as she could. ‘The best thing is for you to stay here until it’s all over.’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ the woman screamed, throwing her arms around Irisis’s neck in a crushing grip.

  ‘I can’t get you to the other craft by myself. You’ll be safe here.’ As safe as anyone else, she added silently.

  The woman began to wail. Irisis disengaged herself as gently as she could and went out the now horizontal door, closing it behind her. The cries followed her all the way back up the rail. Coming across had been the wrong thing to do. She should have kept on with her own work.

  The pilot was now standing up on the stern, wild-eyed. She’d removed her precious controller from the steering arm and hung it around her neck.

  ‘It’ll be over soon,’ Irisis said, trying to sound reassuring as she unfastened her rope from the rail.

  ‘It’s over,’ said the pilot, and stepped out into space.

  Irisis was so shocked that she had to hang on to the rail for a moment. She looked down and wished she hadn’t.

  Get on with it, she told herself. Yggur and Klarm may need your help. Ignoring the cries from the wreckage, she swung back onto the roof of Ghorr’s cabin.

  Down the other end a series of ladders and knotted ropes led up to the four main airbags, which were distributed at the points of a diamond, and to the smaller central airbag high above them. They were held in place by a vast network of ropes, and it was no wonder the craft needed a crew as big as a sailing ship. The airbags and ropes became blurry outlines halfway up – Yggur must have carried his mist up with him. Irisis touched her pliance and could see power being drained from the field up there. Yggur and Ghorr were still at it.

  She unfastened her line and looped it around her waist, then rested her foot on the forward cabin roof while she caught her breath. The roof, which was about fourteen spans by four, was stacked with rolls of canvas and airbag silk, barrels of tar, coils of rope, and boxes, chests and barrels of supplies, all tightly roped down. The supplies were covered in tarpaulins but spaces between them made ideal hiding places for guards who could shoot her in the back as she climbed.

  Don’t be paranoid, she told herself. The guards are dead or up attacking Yggur. But where were the crew? It was like a ghost ship. No doubt some hadn’t been lifted from the amphitheatre, and others had been killed in the fighting, but she couldn’t see a soul. Irisis eased into the first alley, probing ahead of her with the tip of the weapon, lifting the tarpaulins and feeling between the crates and barrels.

  She didn’t discover anyone, but as she went aft Irisis realised that what she’d thought was another crate was in fact a square cage. She could see the bars through the stretched canvas. She tapped on the canvas and heard a faint, mewling cry, a very familiar sound.

  ‘Ullii?’ she said, carefully cutting across and down, then peeling the canvas away.

  The little seeker lay on the floor of the cage, though not scrunched up into a ball, as was her wont when distressed. She lay stretched out with her hands gripping the bars in front of her and her toes clenched onto the bars on the far side of the cage. Her colourless hair was a wild tangle, her eyes red and staring.

  Crouching down, Irisis reached through the bars. Ullii did not like to be touched, as a rule, but she didn’t react when Irisis’s hand met her bare shoulder.

  ‘Ullii, what has Ghorr done to you?’

  Ullii made no reply.

  ‘Why didn’t you free yourself?’ said Irisis. ‘The way you freed me that time in Nennifer.’

  Ullii turned those tragic eyes on her. ‘Lattice gone.’
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  ‘It’ll come back,’ Irisis said lightly. ‘Now, let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘Gone forever,’ said Ullii. ‘Nothing left. Want to die.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Irisis said briskly. She couldn’t deal with that after the pilot’s shocking suicide. She smashed the lock off with the butt of her sword and wrenched the door open. ‘Come on.’

  Ullii followed lethargically, evincing no curiosity, though Irisis was used to that. She turned to the rope ladder that led up into the rigging. An occasional flash still came from the nebulosity above, though weaker than before.

  She climbed up into the mist, which thickened until she could only see a few of the rungs of the ladder above her, and just the top of Ullii’s head below. There was something up here, more than mist and smoke. She touched her pliance. Power was being drawn in dozens of places, though Irisis could not tell what it was being used for.

  She began to sense a structure to the mist. It was like a series of scalloped platforms connected by stairs and ladders, though that could hardly be a part of the air-dreadnought. It was a creation of the Art, but Irisis couldn’t tell whether it was Yggur’s strange Art or Ghorr’s scrutator magic.

  As they reached the level of the four main airbags, the air-bags appeared transparently in the distance, as if this place were only partly of the real world. Rigging ran between them, holding them in place, though here it appeared like strands drawn out of cloud or webs spangled with dewdrops. Tenuous paths led down and up, into nebulous cloud chambers. Between them, staircases ran to airy pavilions, arches and gates that had no part in an air-dreadnought’s rigging.

  The flashes, now blue and red, came from higher up. Irisis put one foot out towards the first of the staircases.

  Ullii snatched at her arm. ‘Not there!’

  Irisis stepped back onto firmness then probed ahead with her sword. It went straight through what had appeared to be solid matter. The staircase was a deceit. Were any of the stairs and pavilions real, or was it a snare as cunningly designed as a spider’s web?

  ‘How did you know?’ she said, shaken.