Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

  ‘No decision has been taken,’ said Ryll. ‘Shall we begin?’

  He had told Gilhaelith all he needed to know. Oellyll surely would be abandoned, either because lyrinx were being infected with the fungus, or for fear that they would be. This was the crisis – the moment upon which the fate of both lyrinx and humanity hinged. He had to take advantage of the first chance he got, for the instant he gave Ryll what he wanted, Ryll would put him to death.

  That knowledge quite concentrated the mind, and Gilhaelith rehearsed once again the attack he’d been planning for months now. He was ready; all he needed was the opportunity.

  Ryll went to the flisnadr, though he left the canvas over it so Gilhaelith couldn’t see how it was used. They worked for a night and a day, then slept for a few hours. Gilhaelith was bound hand and foot and watched over by four lyrinx guards, then untied and they worked on. Ryll was methodical and took no chances. Neither did he allow Gilhaelith any.

  On the afternoon of the following day, Gilhaelith heard the whine of a thapter not far above. ‘What’s that?’ he said, hoping to distract Ryll.

  Ryll cocked his head. ‘Thapter. Go and see,’ he said to one of the guards, and the lyrinx ran off.

  ‘Perhaps they’re going to attack with more spores,’ Gilhaelith said.

  ‘They’ll get a surprise if they try,’ said Ryll, pretending indifference, though his skin colours told otherwise.

  They continued, Gilhaelith sliding the brass pointers on their circumferential rings as he tuned the geomantic globe to the field, while Ryll worked under the canvas. Gilhaelith couldn’t see what he was doing, though he could feel the effects on the field, which kept drawing down then flaring up. So the flisnadr is working, Gilhaelith thought. And if Ryll can control this dark and dangerous field, formed around the perilous Alcifer node-within-a-node, he can control just about any field in the world. He can take all the power from it, to deprive the enemy, or give it all to his own kind. He can do anything he wants with it. How can humanity counter that?

  Surprisingly, Gilhaelith cared. The knowledge that he truly was doomed had come like a blinding revelation. His own selfish interests, which had sustained him all his life, would never be satisfied, but somehow that did not matter any more. What did matter was the fate of humanity, and he might hold the key to saving them. It seemed it was time to throw in his lot with his own kind after all.

  The lyrinx came running back. ‘It’s the same thapter that attacked the air shaft last week,’ he said. ‘It’s not attacking, though; just circling.’

  Tiaan’s thapter, Gilhaelith thought. This is my chance. If I can just get free and signal her, she can take me away from here. He suppressed the thought that, after his previous behaviour, she might refuse.

  He glanced up at Ryll, gauging whether it was the right moment, only to realise that Ryll had seen an entirely different possibility. With the flisnadr he could withdraw all the power from the thapter, no matter what node Tiaan tried to use. He could cause it to crash or bring it to ground just where he wanted it.

  Ryll hurled the canvas out of the way and his big hands danced over the recesses and protrusions of the warty, chameleon-skinned flisnadr. He thrust his arms into two of the slits, up to the elbows, and the note of the thapter dropped sharply. Gilhaelith knew his opportunity had come.

  He wasn’t going to be rash about it, though. One word from Ryll, even a gesture, and the mancer or the guards would slay him out of hand. Gilhaelith continued moving the pointers exactly as before, and kept the geomantic globe turning gently underneath them on its cushion of freezing mist.

  The pattern of the fields – for the node-within-a-node produced two fields here – came into view, slightly blurred in his enfeebled mind. He had to focus the fields, and then, right here in this most perfectly designed place in all the world, wake the sleeping construct that was Alcifer itself. If he could correctly align the geomantic globe to do that, he would have power to blast his enemies into oblivion, drag the thapter to himself and make good his escape in it.

  The thapter’s mechanism screamed, died away and screamed again as Tiaan tried desperately to escape. She was jumping from one field to another, trying to preserve her power, as Ryll took command of the fields. Her strategy had worked when she’d escaped from Alcifer the first time, almost a year ago, but it could not work now. Tiaan could not hope to defeat the power patterner in the hands of the lyrinx who had designed it.

  Hurry! Gilhaelith told himself. If Ryll takes the thapter, or crashes it, all is lost. Gilhaelith ignored his own imperative. He must stay calm and, above all, be controlled. His mind was far less than it had been but his unquenchable will was as strong as ever. He could still do it. Focus. Focus the field!

  Its grainy strands sharpened but then dissolved into a blur again. He could feel control slipping. With a supreme effort of will, Gilhaelith wrenched it back in place. The field came perfectly into focus and, the instant it did, he reached down to Alcifer’s core that had lain sleeping for over a thousand years, waiting for a master who would never return.

  Gilhaelith reached out and down, deeper and deeper, and suddenly there it was. It faded; then, without any warning, the faint nodes beneath the glass surface of the geomantic globe lit up.

  Gilhaelith drew a deep breath and willed himself to calm as Ryll spun around, staring at the globe.

  ‘What have you done?’ Gilhaelith cried, to forestall Ryll and make him wonder if he had done it himself, with the power patterner.

  Ryll gave him a suspicious glance, withdrew one arm from the flisnadr and beckoned the watching lyrinx mancer over. The male came at a run, close enough to see into the bowl, then froze. The nodes were glowing more brightly than before, each according to its true nature. Now a slender thread of orange light began to extend from Alcifer’s node-within-a-node to another node, a quarter of the way across the globe.

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Gilhaelith. Tiaan had previously told him that nodes could be linked. He’d thought a lot about that but had never been able to work out how. At last he began to understand. The thread had now touched the second node, and other threads began to extend out from it towards yet more distant nodes. If he could duplicate in the world what he’d done on the globe, could the power of all the nodes become available to him? His mind reeled with the possibilities – survival, even reversal of the brain damage after all? He didn’t know – it was too much for anyone to take in.

  ‘Step away from the globe,’ snapped Ryll. ‘Then don’t move.’

  Gilhaelith wasn’t quite ready, but it had to be now. He could feel power flowing into the globe and he drew on it to strike his enemies down.

  Something low down in the bowels of Alcifer throbbed; he heard a low grinding note. To his geomantic ear it sounded like basalt grating across obsidian. The nodes grew brighter, the threads of light raced between them and suddenly Gilhaelith woke to something that had happened to him a long time ago.

  He began to feel the tiny, invisible thread that the amplimet had drawn to the back of his skull when he’d been working for the lyrinx in the tar tunnel in Snizort. He’d forgotten it during the escape, but now he could feel it tugging at him. Abruptly it also seemed to light up, a fiery pulse ran up it into the ethyr and then he felt – oh, horrible, horrible! He actually felt it – the sleeping amplimet in Tiaan’s thapter was driven over the threshold to the second stage of awakening.

  ‘No!’ he cried aloud. ‘Not that!’ and hurled every iota of power he could at the thread to sever it. He succeeded, but then the strangest thing happened.

  All the lights went out, though it was daylight. The world and even the lyrinx faded to frozen translucency, and Gilhaelith shifted. Everything went dull and dim except the geomantic globe; the roused core of Alcifer, which now glowed a baleful red; and somewhere above, frozen in flight, a tiny winking gleam that was the woken amplimet.

  He moved a hand. It appeared real, solid, though when he dropped it on the stone table it sank partway into it before
enough resistance built up to stop it. Gilhaelith had been shifted outside the dimensions of the world. Or almost out.

  Free, he exulted. I’m free.

  First of all, he would make his escape from this accursed place. No, before anything, he must exact retribution on Gyrull, for holding him against his will and for refusing him what was rightfully his. Gilhaelith looked around and then down, tracing through the layers of Oellyll as if it were a translucent cake. The matriarch wouldn’t be hard to find, even among so many lyrinx, for few held such power as she did. She would stand out among the lesser lyrinx like a ruby in a tray of grey glass.

  Ah, there she was, deep down, in a secluded little chamber, frozen in the act of bending over what appeared to be a coffin. Gilhaelith looked more closely. It was one of the relics she’d retrieved from Snizort, and they were more valuable than the whole city of Snizort had been. Behind her, two other lyrinx, no more than grey shadows, had coffins on their shoulders. They were moving the relics. They must be evacuating Snizort.

  Time to be going. Gilhaelith reached out and exerted his new-found power. It was easy here, outside the real world. With no more effort than the wiggling of a fingertip, he pulled down the roof of the tunnel in front of Gyrull, then collapsed it for a few hundred spans, to make sure she would never get out. You did everything for those relics, he thought, including kidnapping and enslaving me. Now you’ll have what remains of your life to regret it.

  The floor shook beneath him, reminding Gilhaelith that he knew little about the power he was using, or what the consequences would be. A sharp pang struck him in the heart, and by the time he’d recovered from it, he was back in his body in the glass-domed chamber. All remained as it had been, except that Ryll was now moving in extreme slow-motion. Whatever power had shifted Gilhaelith outside of normal space and time was lapsing. Time and reality would soon resume.

  Gilhaelith raised his hand and drew power to blast Ryll and the flisnadr to pulp, but that pain stabbed him in the chest again. He must have taken too much already. Revenge would have to wait. He picked up the globe and staggered with it out to the main door of the palace, then outside. By the time he reached the intersection of the boulevards, the world was almost as solid as it had ever been.

  He looked up, thinking that he could at least use power to pull the thapter down to him, but whatever he’d woken in Alcifer’s core slipped beyond his reach. One minute the thapter was frozen in the air above him, the next it had streaked away and vanished. Perhaps he’d taken the globe too far from the centre, but there was no time to think it through. He couldn’t go back; the lyrinx would kill him on sight. Hefting the globe in his arms, Gilhaelith ran for the port, praying that there would be some kind of boat available when he got there. If he made it across the sea, Flydd would be most interested to hear about the power patterner. It gave him something to bargain with.

  Ryll.

  Ryll was frantically searching for Gilhaelith, who had inexplicably vanished from the glass-domed chamber. Now he stopped abruptly, for it had sounded like the matriarch speaking inside his head. Ryll had little talent for mindspeech – few but the strongest lyrinx did – but he had occasionally picked up fragments of the mindspeech of others, and knew what it was like. This was far stronger, for it came from the greatest mindspeaker of all.

  Ryll, I know you can’t answer me. Don’t worry – I can tell you’re hearing what I have to say. Alas, Gilhaelith is free and is now on his way across the sea to rejoin humankind. His knowledge of our flisnadr will strengthen them immeasurably, if we allow them time to understand it. The moment has come that we have long been dreading, but at least we’re prepared for it, and we have the flisnadr at last. Humanity is strong; maybe stronger than we are. Only time and courage will tell.

  Our cities are lost and, with winter coming, we’ve nowhere to go. We can’t allow humanity to defeat us. No lyrinx could submit to the enslavement and degradation it visits on its unhuman enemies. We will die before we become caged beasts for their amusement. Liett was right. Now is the time for every one of us – woman, man and child – to go to war. We will have victory or annihilation! And you must lead us, Ryll.

  ‘Matriarch,’ he cried. ‘What’s going on? Where are you?’

  Gilhaelith pulled the roof in on me. I’m trapped with two companions, and the relics. We’re unharmed, and we have food and water, but it will take weeks to dig ourselves out, and nearly as long for anyone to tunnel in to us. The war cannot wait else the advantage of the flisnadr will be lost. You must take charge of it and go over the sea at once. Safeguard it at all costs, for it’s the key to victory. Take it to our secret lair in the caves of Llurr, do the final tests and master it. Liett and the advance guard will carry you, and when the tests are done, get ready for the final battle.

  ‘Matriarch, why me?’

  It was as if she’d heard him. I’ve prepared you well, Ryll. This is the first battle of the new lyrinx, and we need new leadership. If anyone can do it, you can. You will be well supported by Liett, and Great Anabyng, when he has time from his special duties, and all the others.

  Leave a detachment of volunteers here, to dig us out. When we get out – if we get out – and have taken the relics to safety, we will join you for the final battle. But if the disease claims us, someone else must retrieve and guard the relics. Should that happen, Anabyng has my orders for the succession.

  Go at once, Ryll. There is much to be done. Farewell. I’ve already spoken to the other matriarchs and they’re agreed that this is our only course.

  ‘What about the children?’ said Ryll. ‘Surely you cannot think to take them to war?’

  We have no home now, nowhere to shelter our young ones, and I will not leave them behind to the cruellest of all fates – enslavement and degradation by the old humans. Far kinder that they live or die with us. We’ll shelter them to the end, but if the end comes, we will die together.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ryll. ‘Better that we all die than exist only as their beasts or slaves.’

  And so the entirety of our kind will go to war. That is the Matriarchal Edict and everyone will follow it – to victory or annihilation.

  ‘Victory or annihilation,’ he said with furious resolve, and turned to get ready for war.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  They returned to Fiz Gorgo only to discover that Yggur, Flydd and the others had just gone to Lybing. Tiaan didn’t follow immediately, for Irisis’s leg was infected and needed a healer’s attention. By the time they reached Lybing a week later, the news from the east coast was immeasurably worse. Attacking the underground cities had proven the most disastrous blunder of the war. The dispossessed lyrinx had gone to war and fought with unparalleled ferocity, annihilating the human army at Gosport. Less than fifteen thousand of its fifty thousand had survived, and none of them uninjured. The armies at Guffeons and Maksmord had capitulated after similarly bitter fighting that had reduced them to half their number in little more than a day.

  Smaller armies, protecting human settlements all the way up and down the east coast, had suffered similar fates. Many towns had been overwhelmed, their people killed or forced to flee into the countryside where they would be easy targets. The walls of the principal cities, greatly reinforced over the past six months, now sheltered huge numbers of refugees but would soon be besieged. Of all the nations of the east only populous Crandor had managed to stay the lyrinx tide. Its armies had fought the attacking hordes to a standstill but Governor Zaeff held little hope. Roros and the other cities of Crandor would soon be islands in a sea of the enemy. With no possibility of outside aid, in the end even proud Roros, the greatest city in the world since Thurkad had been overrun, must fall.

  The west had seen little action thus far, but regular flights over Almadin showed that the lyrinx hordes had crossed the Sea of Thurkad and were advancing ever closer. Battle was only days away, but this battle could not be won. The enemy were simply too many.

  Tiaan’s thapter landed on the lawn of the White Pal
ace after dark and they went straight to conclave. It was an open meeting and the extravagantly over-decorated audience chamber was packed with people, standing in little groups waiting for the proceedings to begin. Few were talking. Everyone seemed too stunned.

  Irisis had never seen such luxury as was displayed in the hall, though she paid little attention to it. It seemed like a sad folly that would soon be gone. She threaded her way through the groups, looking for Flydd. He was not up on the dais with Governor Nisbeth and the other dignitaries.

  Painfully standing on tiptoe, she saw Yggur over in the far corner and headed for him. Flydd was standing beside him, talking to Klarm. They made the oddest of trios: tall, broad-shouldered Yggur, his ageless features as though frozen in ice; withered, scrawny little Flydd who barely came up to his chin; and handsome, unflappable Klarm, not even chest-high to the scrutator.

  Flydd didn’t look as though he’d eaten since they’d left Fiz Gorgo weeks ago. Bone and gristle were all there was left of him. He nodded as Irisis approached, with Nish and Tiaan close behind, but kept speaking.

  ‘I promised our people in the east that if we all worked together we had a chance,’ Flydd said bitterly. ‘Then I took this ruinous gamble, and lost.’

  ‘Not you alone,’ said Klarm, twisting strands of his beard together. ‘Our Council voted on the attack, as did the eastern governors, and to take the blame on yourself devalues everyone else.’

  ‘I did my best to talk you into it,’ said Flydd.

  ‘You’re an overly proud man, Flydd, for such a meagre one,’ Yggur said waspishly. ‘You know we didn’t have a choice. We had to destroy the threat of the uggnatl and I believe we’ve done that.’

  ‘We can’t resist this tide,’ said Flydd in anguish. ‘All my life I’ve fought to save humanity. Now I’ve brought about its destruction.’