Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

  There he’d hidden in the Golden Terraces, an ancient village honeycombed into a layer of yellow chalk between two sets of the Grey Cliffs above the empty sea. The Golden Terraces had been abandoned when the Sea of Perion dried up two thousand years ago, and since then had only been inhabited by bats. Gilhaelith planned to hide there until the lyrinx had assembled their armies at Ashmode, and would have succeeded but for an unfortunate accident.

  A metal panel at the back of his thapter, torn loose by the lyrinx that had leapt onto the racks, fell off as the thapter flew high over one of the impoverished villages not far from the Golden Terraces. It landed in a pigsty, killing the village chief’s prized porker, and the chief was so incensed he insisted that his outrage be communicated to Flydd himself.

  It took a week for the messenger to find someone with a farspeaker, and another day to convince him to send the message, but Irisis, who received it, understood its significance at once. After that it was a relatively simple matter to trace Gilhaelith’s possible destinations along the rim of the Dry Sea and search them one by one. If he had gone much further west he would have had to cross into Aachim lands, which were so tightly patrolled that not even a bat could have entered unnoticed.

  Somehow Orgestre got wind of the discovery and insisted on coming, whereupon Yggur, whom Irisis hadn’t seen for a week, decided that he had to be there as well. Flydd didn’t say anything but Irisis could feel the tension between the three of them all the way.

  Three weeks after Gilhaelith escaped with the relics, Flydd’s thapter dropped without warning over the upper cliffs and settled onto the highest of the Golden Terraces, which was covered in powdery dust of yellow chalk.

  By the time everyone got out, Gilhaelith’s guards had their crossbows trained on them. ‘Put your weapons on the ground, then your hands in the air,’ the captain said.

  Irisis laid her sword on the ground and raised her hands, scanning the guards for a short, stocky, achingly familiar figure. She didn’t see Nish anywhere.

  A guard collected the weapons, everyone was ordered to remove their coats, and their bodies were patted down carefully. The guard took a number of exotic items from Flydd’s pockets.

  ‘You may come in now,’ the captain said.

  They followed, except for Flydd, who had sat down and was taking his boot off.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ the captain said.

  ‘Gravel in my boot. I won’t be a minute.’

  They went inside, Flydd put his boot on and followed.

  ‘Surr?’ began Irisis, desperate to discover what had happened to Nish.

  ‘Not now!’ he hissed. They were led down dusty halls excavated deep into the chalk, and into a chamber lit by lamps that were just lighted wicks floating in bowls of oil. ‘What game are you playing, Gilhaelith?’ Flydd said as Gilhaelith turned away from his geomantic globe and came to meet them. If he was shocked at being discovered, he didn’t show it.

  ‘My own,’ he replied with an almost uncanny serenity, ‘and it will do you no good to threaten me. I’m beyond all threats now.’

  Flydd considered that for a moment, head to one side. ‘Why so?’

  ‘As you should know by now, I’m dying. I plan to make amends with what time I have left, and you can neither bribe nor threaten me.’

  Flydd regarded him sceptically. ‘You can begin by handing over the relics.’

  Gilhaelith smiled thinly. ‘I’ve made sure that your Art won’t avail you here. Anyway, I’ve won your war for you, without a life being lost, so I don’t see what you’re complaining about.’

  ‘We’re outnumbered three to one by a superior enemy, who are closing in on Ashmode even now. Where’s the victory?’

  ‘They’ll do anything – even agree to peace – to get the relics back. I’ve already demonstrated that.’

  ‘Ah, but can you hold onto them long enough to strike your bargain?’ said Flydd. ‘And once it’s struck, what then? They’ll have us at their mercy, and mercy isn’t a quality associated with lyrinx.’

  ‘Nor with the scrutators,’ said Gilhaelith pointedly. ‘I intend to have the lyrinx swear, on their sacred relics, to cease hostilities and not attack humanity, unless humanity strikes the first blow. Then you can negotiate for peace and I’m sure they’ll agree, since they’ve lost everything else.’

  Flydd laughed aloud. ‘The damage you suffered must have been to your wits. There are few humans I’d entrust the world to on the security of an oath. As for lyrinx, none at all.’

  ‘I’ve found lyrinx honour to be superior to the human kind,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘These relics are sacred to them.’

  ‘Surr?’ said Irisis.

  Flydd trod on her toe. ‘Then you’d better tell us why, Gilhaelith.’

  ‘I intend to. Come this way.’ Gilhaelith led them upstairs and along a corridor that was ankle-deep in the yellow chalk dust. He eased open a borer-riddled door into a small room cleaned of dust. On the floor were three long crates. He levered the top off the first.

  They crowded around, Irisis looking over the top of Flydd’s head. The crate contained the perfectly preserved body of a man and a woman. Their skin was stained dark by tar but the flesh had shrunk only a little. Both wore necklaces of silver, gold and semi-precious stones. A bound book rested on its spine between them. The first few pages had been separated, revealing illuminations of great delicacy.

  In the second crate were the bodies of three children, equally well preserved. At their feet were items of clothing, leather boots, three more books, and bowls, knives and other personal items.

  The third crate held more books and manuscripts; a pair of unstained, woven tapestries; small carvings in wood and amber; a stringed instrument; a kind of wooden flute with nine finger-holes; scrolls covered in musical notations; painted timber panels, so tar-stained that the images were indecipherable; as well as a wooden case containing crystals of yellow brimstone, including a large, perfect one. Most items bore the marks of the tar, though the contents of the second crate were clean.

  Flydd surveyed the crates again. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re so used to war you can’t see beyond it,’ said Gilhaelith.

  Irisis studied the faces in the crates. There was something about the eyes. ‘Xervish –?’

  Gilhaelith held up his hand and she did not go on. ‘Lyrinx, it has often been remarked, are similar to us in many ways. People have noted – Tiaan for one – that some of the enemy display more humanity than humanity itself. There’s good reason for it. They’re just as human as we are.’

  Flydd laughed in his face. ‘You’ve been eating your poisonous caterpillars again.’

  ‘Take another look at them, surr,’ said Irisis. ‘Look at the eyes. They do resemble lyrinx eyes.’

  Gilhaelith shot her a keen glance. ‘More than eight thousand years ago, a village was established near Snizort to harvest tar, naphtha and brimstone from the vast tar deposits there. In time the village became a town, and then a wealthy one, whose philosophers had the gold and the leisure to devote themselves to the study of arcane arts. They uncovered glimmerings of the Secret Art and were probably the first people on Santhenar to do so. In the records that have passed down through the Histories the town was named Ric Rints, but the kings’ chroniclers who made those records used a different alphabet to ours and the name was written down incorrectly. The people of that town called it Lyr Rinx.

  ‘The town grew ever wealthier from its people’s restrained use of the Art, eventually attracting the attention of distant powers who saw that the Art might also be used to subdue unruly neighbours. Lyr Rinx’s philosophers, or mancers as we would now call them, refused to sell their secrets or go into employment. In consequence, an edict was passed, making it a capital crime to use their Art in any way.

  ’The philosophers had the support of the townspeople and continued to practise their Art in secret as they sought a way to escape to a better place. However, after decades of persecution, t
he wrath of the great powers came down on them. Many of the philosophers were put to the sword, Lyr Rinx was razed and the fields surrounding it sowed with salt.

  ‘But still the people would not give up their Art, for it was the keystone of their culture now, and they were close to completing the ark which would allow them to escape their persecutors. They built a floating village in the middle of the Great Seep and continued to practise their Arts for some weeks before they were discovered. Their enemies came, destroying everything, but the surviving philosophers had found the way. They used their power to tear open a hole into the void. It wasn’t such a feat back then, long before the Forbidding.

  ‘The philosophers and half the villagers fled to safety, as they thought, in the void, for its savage nature was not then known. The remainder were slain, and the living and the dead, and all their goods, were dumped into the Great Seep to disappear forever.’

  Gilhaelith paused for a sip from a metal bowl. Irisis glanced at Flydd. His face was inscrutable, but she felt sure the tale was true. Yggur seemed to think so too, despite his antipathy to Gilhaelith.

  ‘But those who’d escaped into the void did not find the haven they’d expected. It was a savage place where the only rule was eat or be eaten. Their only hope was to transform themselves from weak humans into fierce, terrible creatures, totally dedicated to survival. And that is what those gentle philosophers did. They used the Art to flesh-form their unborn children. Such magic was possible in the void, where all things are mutable. They modelled themselves on fierce winged humanoids called thranx, but called themselves lyrinx so they would never forget where they had come from. And each succeeding generation changed themselves more, until they were more like thranx than the thranx themselves, and had lost all semblance of their former human selves.

  ‘With their big, tough bodies, their fierce dispositions and unconquerable will to survive, not to mention their Art, the lyrinx survived and even prospered in the void. But they weren’t content there, as they had been at home.

  ‘They were never completely comfortable in those huge bodies, which didn’t quite fit. And many were unhappy with what they had become: a savage warrior race lacking art, culture or philosophy. But they had to be warriors to survive, and in their eight thousand years in the void they eventually lost all trace of their human culture. They knew where they had come from: Lyr Rinx, on Santhenar, and that they had fled to escape persecution. They knew they had lost their souls, and longed to go home and discover who they truly were. But not even the matriarchs knew that they had once been human.

  ‘With time, their longing became unbearable and, when the Way between the Worlds was opened, they seized the opportunity to come home. They came in peace, offering friendship, but the people of Santhenar saw them as monsters just as brutal and vicious as the thranx. The lyrinx were attacked the instant they appeared and many were slain. They tried to explain, to negotiate, but their emissaries were slaughtered. They were persecuted, hated and reviled, just as they had been in the distant past.’

  ‘What a load of rubbish!’ said Orgestre. ‘You can’t believe a word he’s saying, Flydd.’

  ‘But the lyrinx were survivors now,’ Gilhaelith went on, unfazed. ‘They took refuge in the deepest forests and the wildest mountains of Meldorin, and bided their time until they could come to terms with their new world. It wasn’t easy, for their bodies were even more uncomfortable on this heavy world than they had been in the void. They stayed in hiding for more than fifty years, until they’d replaced those who’d been slain and their numbers began to increase, and then set out to take back a portion of their former world. It was only then, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the war began. It was a war for freedom, yet all the while they had one objective in mind, to go home to Lyr Rinx and discover their past.

  ‘When they eventually tracked down the lost town to Snizort, there was not a trace of Lyr Rinx, and the peasants who now dwelt in the area, still living off the tar deposits, knew nothing of the impossibly distant past. The lyrinx set out to uncover it themselves. It proved a far greater task than they’d expected, even after they’d established their underground city at Snizort. Finally, with my help, they froze the molten tar of the Great Seep, tunnelled in and recovered these bodies and these relics.

  ‘It turned them upside down to look upon their ancient selves, to see the relics of their proud culture – the music, the books, the art, the Histories – and compare it to what they had become. On the outside they were lyrinx; within, they longed to be human again. For a hundred and fifty years these once gentle, peace-loving philosophers had been waging war on their own kind.

  ‘Matriarch Gyrull was transformed by the discovery, and where she led, her people followed. Flesh-forming had allowed them to survive in the void, but back on Santhenar it caused physical discomfort and mental anguish. They had gained powerful bodies, but at the expense of their spirit, their soul, their culture and their Histories.’

  ‘Gyrull realised that they looked on themselves through the wrong side of the glass. They’d seen their winged, clawed and fanged selves as the peak of perfection, and in the void they had been. Now she realised that the imperfect ones – the wingless, those lacking skin armour or the ability to skin-speak – were closest to their true selves. Before they could regain what they had lost, they would have to return to the semblance of the Sacred Ones. Their ancestors!’ He indicated the people in the boxes.

  ‘And with this realisation, last winter, came another: that they were vile cannibals who had been living on their own kind. Most gave up eating human flesh. In the battle for Borgistry, if you recall, they no longer fed on our fallen. They could not stop the war, for humanity would not rest until the lyrinx had been wiped out, but they were losing heart.’

  ‘When did you realise all this?’ said Flydd.

  ‘I discovered part of the story before Tiaan shanghaied me to Fiz Gorgo,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘though it wasn’t until I stole the relics, and demanded that they abandon their sieges in return for them, that I began to put the final picture together. The lyrinx would only accede to my demands if the relics mattered more than the war, and so it proved. We thought they came for conquest, but that story never fitted what I knew of them.’

  ‘A pretty tale,’ said General Orgestre, ‘but even if it were true it doesn’t change our situation. Just thirty leagues away at Ashmode are hundreds of thousands of lyrinx, each the equal of two of our finest soldiers, and more are coming all the time. We only have eighty thousand men to put against them. If they could turn themselves into humans and abandon their warlike ways, I might be prepared to listen. In the meantime, humanity stands in peril of being wiped out. We have to proceed with the plan.’

  ‘What plan is that?’ said Gilhaelith.

  ‘Our troops are now moving, under cloaking shields, to the high ground. We will attack without warning, using Flydd’s mind-shockers mounted on our thapters and air-floaters, to drive the enemy over the cliffs.’

  ‘They can climb cliffs as easily as we walk down the garden path,’ said Gilhaelith.

  ‘Then we drive them down,’ gritted Orgestre, ‘and out to the Dry Sea. Once we get them there, we force them into the salt lakes to drown, or onto the salt to die of thirst. Any that try to break free, we annihilate with our massed clankers.’

  ‘I won’t allow it,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘And while my Art holds, you shall not have the relics.’

  Flydd, who had manoeuvred himself behind Gilhaelith, withdrew a sock full of wet chalk dust from his pocket and thumped Gilhaelith over the back of the head with it.

  ‘Your Art no longer holds. Bring the crates, troops, and let’s get on with it.’

  ‘At last he acts,’ said Orgestre. ‘Well done, Flydd. Now let’s deal with the enemy in the only way they can understand.’

  Yggur said nothing, but his eyes showed such contempt that Irisis had to look away.

  As they were leaving Flydd pointed to the geomantic globe. ‘Put that in its
box and bring it as well. You never know when it might come in handy.’

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  The poorly trained guards quickly surrendered once they saw that their master had fallen. They were herded into Kimli’s thapter, which had been concealed in one of the caverns. A distraught Kimli was found, reunited with her machine and told to take the soldiers to the army camp, which had been set up some leagues south of Ashmode. Yggur went with them. Daesmie and Merryl were also discovered in makeshift cells and freed. Flydd’s troops loaded the crates into Kattiloe’s thapter and they shot up from the terrace in clouds of yellow chalk.

  ‘We didn’t ask him about Nish,’ she said miserably.

  ‘I had more urgent business to attend to than your bloody love life,’ said Flydd. ‘You can ask him yourself when he comes round.’

  They flew high above the cliffs towards Ashmode, but long before they reached it she saw the lyrinx camps, extending like dark ink blotches for leagues along the brink of the uppermost cliffs.

  ‘Fly over them,’ said Flydd. ‘A trifle lower, Kattiloe. Let’s find out exactly what we’re up against.’

  Kattiloe put the nose of the thapter down and headed towards the nearest of the camps, but shortly the noise of the mechanism cut out. She drew a sharp breath and her fingers danced over the controls.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Flydd.

  The thapter was falling, gathering speed, the wind whistling around it. ‘I can’t draw any power. The field is gone.’

  Gilhaelith, who was slumped against the side wall fingering the bump on his head, gave a thin smile. ‘What a pickle.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ cried Flydd. ‘Gilhaelith?’

  ‘The lyrinx have walled themselves off with a dead zone. You can’t approach them in any contrivance that needs power.’

  ‘How have they done that?’

  The whistling was now so loud that Irisis could hardly hear. She went up on tiptoes, looked over the side and blanched. The ground was approaching at frightening speed and, in what was obviously a game of bluff, she hoped Flydd would show sense and give in quickly.