Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

  ‘Why would they bother?’ Ryll said patiently.

  ‘To salve their precious consciences. Truly these weaklings would not survive a day there. Not even an hour!’

  ‘Not even the void would be as bad as being herded here, like beasts in our own ordure, until we die of thirst,’ said Ryll, whose skin showed truce-blue again. ‘We survived in the void before; if we must, we can do so again. But Tallallame, Liett.’ He reached out to her. ‘Just think of it! A beautiful world all for ourselves. For that, I would take the chance.’

  ‘And I,’ said H’nant.

  Plyyr hesitated. ‘There are places in the void of unimaginable savagery; places that are worse than dying here. I mistrust this offer. They don’t want to salve their consciences; they seek the bitterest revenge they can inflict on us.’

  Ryll looked to Great Anabyng as if for guidance. He glanced at the silent women, who nodded as one. ‘The former matriarchs do not vote, and neither do I. Our time has passed,’ Anabyng said in a deep growl. ‘For myself, my beloved consort, Gyrull, is dead and I will soon join her. I would not have our bones sundered by the void. You must decide – that is why you’ve been appointed.’

  ‘And swiftly,’ said Ryll. ‘We have little water left. Already our little children are suffering. In three days they’ll start to die. In five, only the hardiest will be alive. In seven days, none of us.’

  ‘You have been appointed leader, in defiance of all convention,’ snarled Liett with another snap of her magnificent wings. ‘You boasted of all the marvels you would do. Then lead us!’

  ‘What convention is that?’ Tiaan asked curiously.

  ‘That we be led by a revered matriarch, not an unmated, wingless monstrosity of a male.’

  ‘Matriarch Gyrull appointed me before she died,’ he said mildly. ‘Your own mother. You yourself told me so.’

  ‘She was out of her mind with pain,’ Liett said.

  ‘Great Anabyng confirmed her intentions. Besides, I did not boast. Matriarch asked me what I would do if I were leader, and I told her. I had no desire to be patriarch. We’ve not had one in three thousand years.’

  ‘So that’s how you see yourself, you unmated male dog!’ cried Liett in a passion. ‘The last patriarch was a disaster; that’s why we never took another. And you will be even worse.’

  Ryll turned his back on her, saying to the others, ‘I know Tiaan and I trust her. Malien, too, I know to be a woman of honour.’

  ‘They’re the only two in all humanity!’ hissed Liett.

  Ryll ignored her. ‘I will go through the gate, and if it leads me asunder, even to the most desperate recesses of the void, I will do all I can to lead us out again.’ His eyes shone in his fervour. ‘What about you, Liett?’

  ‘I will not follow any unmated male unless the vote is entirely against me.’

  ‘Since when do lyrinx vote?’ said Ryll mildly. ‘We do what our leaders, in their wisdom, have decided.’

  ‘You broke the custom,’ she snapped. ‘I demand a vote.’

  Ryll’s gaze rested on each of the lyrinx, then he nodded. ‘And how do you vote?’

  ‘The past must not bind the future,’ said Great Anabyng. ‘I will not vote.’

  The former matriarchs also declined. The other three lyrinx gave Ryll their vote. Liett did not.

  ‘Not just us,’ said Liett. ‘All the lyrinx must vote.’ She swept around the circle of lyrinx with one arm.

  ‘We are over half a million,’ Ryll said. ‘It would take days to count.’

  ‘So be it.’ Liett folded her arms across her breast.

  ‘Do you want the small children to die, and the old folk, because of this delay?’

  ‘In the absence of our matriarchs, I demand that convention be followed.’

  ‘Come with me. Look at the state of the children.’ Taking Liett’s arm, he led her away from the other lyrinx. He had to drag her for the first three steps, whereupon she cuffed him hard over the side of the head and, mollified by the display of aggression, went willingly.

  As they reached the surrounding circle, Ryll’s truce-blue faded and they disappeared into the crowd. They were gone almost an hour. When they returned, Ryll said without preamble, ‘We will do it.’ He clasped Tiaan’s hand, then each of the others’. ‘But first you must break the mind-shock circle, if you can.’

  ‘I can,’ said Tiaan, ‘since I know how it was made. How long will it take you to get to Nithmak?’

  ‘We can run forty leagues in two days and nights,’ said Daodand. ‘Though, running with so little water …’

  ‘The children will die of thirst,’ said Tiaan.

  ‘Most will,’ said Liett. ‘Unless you allow us sufficient power to fly them there.’

  ‘We can’t, Tiaan,’ said Nish. ‘What if they break free and begin the war over?’

  ‘You expect us to trust you,’ cried Liett, ‘yet you do not trust us in return.’

  ‘That is the privilege of the victors,’ said Nish.

  Malien shushed him and conferred with Tiaan for a moment, then called Irisis. ‘Is there a way to cut off the field controller on one side only?’

  Irisis had to think for a minute. ‘You might do it this way, with the amplimet …’

  After listening to the explanation Tiaan said, ‘It won’t work for long, but it should last long enough for them to break out. And once they’re going full speed in the dark, the mind-shockers won’t be able to encircle them again.’

  ‘What about us?’ said Irisis.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if Orgestre orders the field controller directed against us?’

  ‘They’ll be far too busy trying to contain the enemy,’ said Malien. ‘They can’t do both.’

  ‘We wouldn’t see the children die,’ said Tiaan to Ryll. ‘We’ll allow you power for flight, but should anyone abuse this offer, I’ll withdraw that power while you’re flying. From all of you.’

  Liett’s yellow eyes glowed. ‘I think that I like you after all, little human! You have my word.’

  ‘And mine. Let it be done,’ said Ryll.

  ‘And done swiftly,’ Irisis added. ‘While our opponents are sleeping.’

  They went up in the thapter. It was well after midnight and the night still overcast. Shortly the agreed signal was flashed vertically from the lyrinx camp. Tiaan used the amplimet to break the mind-shock circle on the western side. The lyrinx burst out and the clankers retreated in terror. Soon the fliers among the lyrinx, perhaps a tenth of their number, took to the air carrying the children.

  ‘We’re taking an almighty risk,’ said Nish. ‘If they break their word and the war begins again, we’ll be the most reviled names in all the Histories. Our best choice will be to go straight to the Well, for there’ll be no hiding on Santhenar.’

  ‘They won’t break their word,’ said Tiaan, but her hand shook on the controller and the thapter dipped. She steadied it and flew west into the night.

  ‘Tiaan,’ said Gilhaelith from the base of the ladder, ‘did Tirior really take your field map?’

  She flushed. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My globe is in error in some small respects. I’d like it to be perfect before … you know.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m a geomancer too – I understand perfectly.’ Withdrawing the folded map from the lining of her coat she passed it to him.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  Nish was sitting miserably on the floor of the thapter, which was lurching and bouncing all over the sky. It had been harried by two thapters since dawn, and now a third machine had joined them.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he heard Malien say to Tiaan.

  ‘I think I can manage for a while yet.’

  ‘Use the amplimet to keep above them.’

  ‘I’m trying to.’

  A crossbow bolt spanged off the side. Nish glanced at Irisis, who was sitting cross-legged, apparently unconcerned, making another of her piec
es of jewellery. This one was a brooch in silver filigree, like two figure-eights joined at the centre. She didn’t look up.

  ‘How did we get ourselves into this mess?’ said Nish. ‘What if the lyrinx escape and attack our defenceless cities –?’

  ‘Will you shut up!’ she hissed. ‘We made our choice, so don’t start whining and wringing your hands like a third-rate Minis.’ She worked for a few more minutes, then exclaimed, ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ and slammed the brooch down on the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nish said at once. ‘You seemed so calm.’

  ‘Of course I’m not calm! We may have made the biggest mistake of our lives, and we’re bound to pay for it. I’ve been regretting it since the moment I opened my mouth, but –’

  ‘But what else could we have done? Come here.’ She sat beside him, taking his hand. ‘You’re right,’ Nish said. ‘Let’s not waste the time we have left on useless regrets. We did what was right and we’ll face the consequences.’

  It didn’t appear as though the other thapters were trying to destroy Malien’s machine, but only to force it down on the salt. Tiaan kept just ahead of them for hours as she followed a roundabout course south and west, trying to draw their fire away from the lyrinx. Thus far she’d always managed to get away, through the superior range of the amplimet.

  Gilhaelith was sitting up the other end, Tiaan’s map spread out on the floor before him while he made minute alterations to the geomantic globe. It was like watching grass grow.

  From the heights, after the sun came up, Nish had seen terrible sights. Early on, a fleet of Orgestre’s constructs had torn straight through a band of running lyrinx, trampling them under the iron feet, smashing flesh and bones to jelly. There had been children among them.

  Not long after that, the field had been whipped away from a group of flying lyrinx. They had done everything they could to keep aloft: their limbs went like bellows, their great wings thrashed, but without the aid of the Secret Art no effort could keep them in the air. Males, females and children all plummeted to the bed of the Dry Sea, their impacts making little purple marks that were swallowed by the white immensity of the salt. Nish had gone below after that. It had seemed better not to know, or at least not to see it. But it confirmed that he’d made the right decision.

  The sound of the mechanism cut off abruptly. Nish scrambled to his feet but it started again at once as Tiaan tapped into another field.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he said hoarsely, looking up the ladder.

  ‘So far,’ replied Malien in a strained voice.

  ‘I just hope they know what they’re doing,’ said Nish to Irisis.

  ‘They’ve fought this kind of battle before,’ said Irisis, intent on a new brooch.

  Several hours afterwards Malien called down. ‘One of the thapters has turned away towards the Foshorn. I think Flydd’s in it. I wonder what he’s up to?’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find out before too long,’ said Irisis.

  Tiaan went higher and shortly the other two craft turned back. By the time they reached Nithmak in mid-afternoon, the first of the fliers were already there. A narrow stair wound around the peak from top to bottom. Though the mighty winches were still in place, the five constructs Tiaan and Malien had seen previously were gone.

  Most of the fliers were spread out around the base of the peak, or hanging from the sides, though several hundred had assembled on the flat top, Liett among them, when the thapter landed. They were assembling javelards and catapults for the inevitable attack. Tiaan remained where she was, slumped in her seat, eyes closed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Irisis.

  ‘Just clearing my mind before we begin on the gate.’

  ‘You’d better have a sleep first,’ said Malien.

  ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘The runners won’t be here for a day and a half. Remember your first gate, Tiaan. You wouldn’t want anything to go wrong this time.’

  When Nish rose late the following morning after the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks, Tiaan was walking around and around the tower, as if trying to find courage after the disaster of her previous gate. Everything rested on her. What if she couldn’t make it work, or it went wrong again?

  He was eating breakfast when he felt a shudder that made the red-topped tower sway back and forth. Rock cracked off one edge of Nithmak, taking five lyrinx with it, though three managed to flap to safety. Hundreds more flew up in a flapping of leathery wings and circled the tower.

  ‘What was that?’ said Nish, uncomfortably recalling the fall of Vithis’s watch-tower.

  ‘If it was an earth trembler, it was a mighty one,’ said Malien. ‘But they do have big earth tremblers around here. We’d better find out. Just in case …’

  In case of what? Nish thought, as they headed for the thapter. It curved around Nithmak tower, rising slowly, before heading south-west. After some time, Irisis, who was peering over the side with her spyglass, sang out.

  ‘There’s smoke rising above the Hornrace. No, it’s dust. It looks like a gigantic dust storm.’

  ‘The rest of Vithis’s arch must have collapsed,’ said Nish from below. ‘Can we take a look?’

  Tiaan turned the thapter that way and climbed until it was high enough to get a good view. ‘The whole of the Hornrace, leagues long, is covered by a vast line of dust,’ she called down the hatch. ‘It must have been the arch. It’s not going to do us any harm –’

  ‘The Trihorn Falls are flowing again,’ cried Irisis. ‘Oh, just look at that! Have you ever seen anything like it?’

  Irisis was not given to hyperbole. Nish came scrambling up the ladder and pulled himself up onto the side next to her. Gilhaelith followed, though he was tall enough to see over. Vast arching streams of water were pouring out from the thunderhead of dust enveloping the Trihorn Falls.

  ‘There’s more water coming over than there was when I first saw them,’ said Tiaan. ‘Much more.’

  By the time they were above the falls, the dust had begun to settle. The deluge had doubled and tripled by then. A torrent was pouring through the Hornrace, unimaginably greater than before.

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Nish, whose heart was hammering. ‘That’s more than the blockage in the Hornrace breaking open.’

  As the dust was blown away into the Sea of Thurkad, the scale of the cataclysm became evident. ‘A great slab has cracked off the end of the Foshorn,’ said Irisis.

  ‘There must be ten times the flow there was before,’ said Nish.

  ‘More like a hundred,’ said Tiaan. ‘Just look at it.’

  The flood was massive, awesome, prodigious; there were not words to describe it. And then it exploded in size again. ‘The other side of the Hornrace is collapsing as well,’ said Irisis. ‘Nish, look!’ She was on her knees, shaking his arm. ‘Oh, this is unbelievable. Half of one of the Trihorns is falling down. Now the other one is going as well. They’re being washed away.’

  Those mighty peaks, that had split the flow of the Hornrace for thousands of years, were undermined in less than an hour. Peaks almost a thousand spans high tilted, toppled, rolled over and over and broke into pieces the size of hills before thundering to the bed of the Dry Sea, or into the salt lakes which were already overflowing. They could hear the roaring from on high, and even see the ground shake. Fissures zigzagged out across the salt for leagues.

  The flow doubled and redoubled, until even from their height the noise was deafening. No one said a word. Even Gilhaelith was awed by the power of nature, so much greater than his greatest geomancy.

  ‘It’s not going to stop, is it?’ shouted Nish.

  ‘Not until it fills the Dry Sea –’ Irisis stopped with her mouth open. ‘They must have used the field controller to explode the node under the Foshorn.’

  ‘Neither Flydd nor Yggur would have done this, even if Orgestre put a sword to their necks,’ said Irisis.

  ‘No geomancer has the power to do what’s been do
ne here,’ said Gilhaelith.

  ‘Then who has?’

  ‘Earth tremblers happen for their own reasons.’

  He didn’t sound convinced and neither was Nish, who wasn’t a believer in coincidences.

  ‘It’s the end of the Dry Sea. It’s going to be the Sea of Perion again,’ said Tiaan.

  ‘And that too was foretold,’ said Malien.

  ‘How long will it take to fill?’ said Irisis.

  ‘Weeks, I should think,’ said Tiaan in a wisp of a voice. ‘But as soon as the water is two spans deep in this corner of the sea, all the lyrinx will drown, and Ryll will think I planned it all along. He’ll think it’s humanity’s perfect revenge – to offer them hope, then snatch it away at the last minute. There’s no death the lyrinx fear more than drowning.’

  ‘Liett will certainly think that,’ said Irisis.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ cried Tiaan, looking around wildly.

  ‘Don’t panic. There’s time yet,’ said Malien.

  ‘How much?’ she wailed.

  ‘It will depend on which point of the sea is lowest, and whether they have to cross it to get to Nithmak.’

  ‘We’d better warn them,’ said Tiaan, turning out towards the lyrinx. ‘Perhaps they can run a bit faster.’

  The thapter raced from one end of the running horde, now stretched out over fifteen leagues of salt, to the other, though it seemed clear from their pace that the lyrinx knew what had happened. By the time they’d done that, the water was threading the bed of the Dry Sea and Tiaan was in a panic. Tiaan hurtled back to Nithmak, setting down right at the base of the tower in the middle of the afternoon, and running to the doors. They were still locked.

  ‘I wish I’d gone in before,’ she said. Tiaan threw herself back in and drove the thapter straight at the doors.

  ‘Stop! You don’t know how strongly it’s built,’ yelled Malien.

  It was too late. The front of the thapter struck the doors with a crash that threw them all forward. The front crumpled and Malien cried out in dismay. The metal doors had buckled but still held. Tiaan pushed again and the doors tore from their hinges.