Chimaera (31 page)

Flydd was sitting with his hands on his knees, exactly as he had been hours earlier, watching Malien.

‘Doesn’t look as though she’s having any success,’ said Yggur.

‘It’s taking too long,’ said Flydd, ‘and there’s nothing we can do to help her. This is Malien’s great task and if she can’t do it, no one can.’

Before dawn the sentries were drawn back inside the ends of the fissure. Everyone else spent the day cooped in the tents. This close to Nennifer they dared not go outside, for the risk of being seen was too great.

In mid-morning, Malien dissolved the bubble and crawled across to the food bag, where she made a scant meal of mouldy bread and hard cheese, and another of the knobbly fruits. She had trouble eating it; her hands and arms shook unceasingly. Washing the morsel down with gulps of water that spilled down her front and froze instantly, she flopped onto her sleeping pouch and fell into sleep.

Yggur and Flydd exchanged glances. Yggur jerked his head at the tent flap and went out. Flydd followed. They could be heard conversing in the fissure, though Nish didn’t catch a word.

‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ he said quietly to Irisis.

She rolled over, irritably pulling the sleeping pouch up around her ears. Nish turned onto his back, staring at the roof of the tent. Ice crystals were growing down from the ridgepole. He shivered and drew his fingers down the canvas wall. They left trails in the growing frost.

‘This is too big for any of us.’

Klarm’s voice, though soft, came from just behind Nish’s ear. He jumped. ‘What do you mean … er, Scrutator?’ Nish still wasn’t sure how to address the dwarf. In truth, despite Klarm having saved his life, Nish still felt uncomfortable with him. He rotated so he could see Klarm’s face.

‘Malien has just realised that what she’s trying to do isn’t possible. It’s too much for any mancer, or all of us together. Go to sleep,’ Klarm said abruptly. ‘It’s what you wanted.’ He got up and went out. The tent flap, stiff with ice, crackled as it fell back into place.

Nish, feeling vaguely uneasy, said softly, ‘Irisis?’

She didn’t reply. Irisis was asleep; Malien too, judging by the gentle snores issuing from the other end of the tent. There was no one to share his fears with. Inouye and Evee had been sent to the other, larger tent, occupied by Flangers and the soldiers.

He went across the litter of gear and sleeping pouches on knees and elbows. A buzz of conversation came from outside. Nish eased his head through the flap. Klarm sat hunched in his cloak just before the bend in the fissure, head tilted to one side as if listening.

Flydd and Yggur must be just around the corner – Nish could see the edge of Yggur’s long cloak draped over the rock. Unfortunately Nish still couldn’t hear. And what was Klarm up to? Had everything just been a plot to lure them here? Did he plan to betray them as the price of admission to the Council?

Long fingers wrapped around Nish’s ankle. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Malien said, soft and low.

He whirled, cracking his ear on the tent pole. A stalactite of ice fell on his head and shattered. Nish sat down, picking ice out of his hair. ‘Klarm’s up to something.’

She let go. ‘Do you think of Yggur and Flydd as fools?’

There was ice in his ear as well. He tried to get the fragment out but it melted, sending an icy trickle down to sear his eardrum. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then leave the worrying to them.’

‘What if the Council’s quest succeeds, and they learn to control the amplimet?’

‘They’ll have enough power to annihilate us.’

‘And if they fail and the amplimet gets … whatever it’s looking for?’

She looked him in the eye and for an instant Nish saw beyond the stern, almost ageless face. What was she thinking? Did she pity him?

‘Worse,’ she said almost inaudibly, and turned away.

T
wo frustrating days dragged by, and Malien spent most of that time isolated in the bubble, working at her incomprehensible task of locking onto the amplimet and forcing it to wake. When not doing that she lay in her pouch, panting or tossing in a restless sleep.

The conferences in the fissure became longer and more harried, Yggur more remote and imperious, Flydd more insanely driven. He would not be talked out of the attack, though after all this time no one saw any chance of it succeeding. To get away from them, Klarm had taken to climbing up the rocks in the dark. At least, that was what he’d said he was doing, though Nish wasn’t sure any more. He didn’t have any good reason to suspect the dwarf scrutator, but with so much time to fill in he’d come to doubt everything. And every hour the probability of chance discovery grew greater, as did the risk that the scrutators would master the amplimet first. Or the amplimet master them.

As the third night fell Malien was still going, but when she broke for a brief rest Yggur had to lift her into her sleeping pouch. Her skin had begun to wrinkle like a dried olive, and her shrunken eyes had a dull opacity as if she were developing cataracts.

‘Why is she so worn out?’ said Nish to Irisis, after Flydd and Yggur had just slipped out again.

‘Because she daren’t take power from the field. Malien is using an older Art but she has to draw it from herself, and she’s at her limit.’

‘I can’t do it,’ Malien said an hour later, pushing away the mug of honeyed tea Irisis was holding out for her. ‘Aftersickness is wearing me down and there’s no time to recover from it.’

‘Get some more sleep,’ said Yggur. ‘Flydd and I have been discussing another way.’

‘One that doesn’t require me?’ she said, lying down and closing her eyes.

‘We’ll still need you but we’ll be taking some of the load.’

They went out to discuss their plan. Klarm wasn’t there either. He’d gone climbing up the quartz ridge at dusk and still wasn’t back. He could have walked all the way to Nennifer by now, Nish thought.

‘Now I’m really worried,’ he said to Irisis.

She was sitting in the corner, sleeping pouch up around her waist, weaving a couple of dozen silver and gold wires into a complicated braid, part of a piece of jewellery she’d been working on for days. Being a jeweller had been her life’s ambition, stifled when she was a little girl by a mother who had invested the Stirm family’s future in her clever daughter. Irisis still planned to become a jeweller, ‘after the war is over.’

‘You started worrying the day you were born, Nish. Have a nap or something.’

‘I’ve had about forty naps since we’ve been stuck here. I couldn’t sleep to save my life.’

‘Then be quiet. I’m trying to work.’

‘Your fingers do the work by themselves,’ he observed. ‘You don’t need to think about it.’

‘That doesn’t mean I don’t work better without interruptions.’

‘I’m
really
worried.’

Irisis cast a glance over her shoulder at Malien, who was twitching in her sleep, and set her work aside with, charitably, just the gentlest of sighs.

‘What about?’

‘I think Klarm’s leading us into a trap.’

‘But he’s not leading us; Flydd and Yggur are.’

‘They call upon his knowledge of Nennifer all the time.’

‘I’m sure Flydd and Yggur are keeping an eye on him.’

‘They’re too distracted.’ Nish, realising that he was panting, took a deep breath. It didn’t help; he could feel panic rising and it was worse than he’d felt in other tight situations, because he was so helpless to do anything. ‘It’s out of control, Irisis, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it.’

‘In which case there’s no point worrying.’

She was almost supernaturally calm these days, or fatalistic. ‘That’s not like you,’ he said accusingly, as if she were letting the side down. ‘You hate waiting for things to happen, and you hate –’

‘Well, I’m sorry if I’m acting out of character!’ Irisis turned her back, pointedly taking up her braid again.

‘Sorry,’ Nish said automatically. ‘I – I’m out of my depth. This idea about waking the amplimet … it’s bound to go wrong.’

‘It’s the only plan we have, Nish.’

The flap was thrust open, scattering ice across the floor. Yggur came in, bent low, followed by Flydd and Klarm.

‘Time to go,’ said Yggur, going to his knees to shake Malien’s shoulder.

She sat up, bleary-eyed. ‘Already?’

‘I’m afraid so. We’ve got about half a league to go. We go over the ridge and down into the little valley where they grow their crops. We’ll get a bit of cover there. When we’re in place, we’ll work together. It’ll be easier down there, closer to the amplimet. If you seek it as before, I’ll lend you my shoulder when you need it.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s the idea, anyhow.’

‘Great,’ Nish muttered when they had gone out. ‘Now when it goes wrong we’ll lose them all.’

‘It’s no use,’ said Yggur a couple of hours after midnight, wiping hard granules of blown snow off his brow. He’d been working with Malien for ages, without success. ‘It’s hopeless.’

‘Let’s give it one last try,’ said Flydd.

‘The moon’s up. We’ll have to leave it until tonight.’

‘We must go on,’ said Flydd.

‘We’ve got to have darkness.’

‘Another day and neither you nor Malien will have the strength. And I’m not turning my back on the Council again.’

This time they were just above the valley floor, which was networked in dark and light greys by its dry irrigation ditches and the tufted remnants of the harvested autumn crop. They huddled in the long moon-shadow behind a cluster of hip-high boulders, while the wind shrieked all around them. To their left, a frozen stream in the bottom of the valley disappeared over the precipice into the abyss of the Desolation Sink.

‘Aftersickness is killing me,’ croaked Malien.

‘One more time,’ Flydd said grimly.

Malien grew the golden bubble around her and became a blurred outline. Yggur stood facing her, his hands at his sides. He whistled under his breath and a series of golden threads extended from the sphere towards his face.

Malien shifted her weight, Yggur threw up his arms as if off-balance, and for a moment the rock Nish crouched behind faded to translucency. His vision blurred then returned to normal, but his anxiety only intensified. He let out his breath in a loud hiss.

Flydd jabbed him in the ribs. ‘What’s the matter with you tonight?’

‘The amplimet is waiting for us,’ Nish burst out, ‘and it’s angry.’

Malien stood up on tiptoe, shuddering with the strain. Yggur turned his head as far as the filaments would allow. He seemed to be holding his breath.

‘It’s just a mineral,’ said Flydd. ‘It can’t feel anything. You’re projecting your own fears onto it.’

Malien seemed to be beckoning to Nish, as if saying, ‘Go on.’

‘It’s real,’ said Nish.

Everyone stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ Flydd rasped.

Nish had no idea how he knew it, until the words formed and he spoke them aloud. ‘I can sense something … just as I did that night above Gumby Marth, after Father cast his alchymical spell on me and I saw the lyrinx stone-formed into the pinnacles. It’s a … a brittle rage, a
crackling
fury like a box of crystals being ground underfoot. The amplimet is tormented, and it hates the scrutators for shackling and probing it, and for blocking it from the field it so desperately needs. They’ve fenced it in with ice and now they’re forcing it …’

‘To what end?’ said Flydd.

‘I can’t tell.’ Nish slumped to the ground and it was all gone. He was just his normal prosaic self, with not a trace of the Art in him.

‘Ice,’ Yggur muttered, the golden threads twanging as his jaw moved. He swayed on his feet and nearly fell.

‘Heat quickly destroys any kind of hedron,’ said Irisis. ‘Cold never can, but it can slow it to a murmur. Why didn’t I think of that? That’s how they’ve made it safe to use.’

Flydd gave a mirthless snort. ‘And to think we’ve spent days trying to wake it without killing ourselves. To unshackle it, all we have to do is warm it up. It’ll lash out at the scrutators and then we go in.’

‘It may lash out at us,’ said Malien, slumping to the ground. ‘You can never tell what an amplimet will do.’

‘We don’t have any other option,’ said Flydd. ‘We must go on, no matter what the risk.’

‘You’re insane,’ she said in a wisp of a voice.

‘We – go – on!’ he ground out.

Another still silence.

‘If Malien can find it again I
might
be able to warm it up,’ said Yggur finally. ‘Though I’d have to be closer. I’ve not got much strength left.’

‘How close?’ said Malien, lying on her back on the frozen ground with her arms flopped by her sides.

Yggur joined her, breathing heavily. ‘Ideally, against the outside wall of Nennifer.’

‘The sentinels would pick you up before you got within a hundred spans,’ said Klarm.

‘How close can we get?’ said Flydd.

‘Five hundred spans is the closest I’d dare,’ replied Klarm, ‘and even that’s …’

‘Not good enough,’ said Yggur. ‘I can’t do it from so far away.’

‘Then we risk everything and go on,’ said Flydd in tones that would not be denied.

‘No closer,’ Malien begged as they crawled up the edge of the shallow valley towards the flat-topped promontory, out of which the foundations of Nennifer had been carved. Here there had been enough moisture to freeze the gravelly soil into an iron-hard aggregate, brutal on their hands and knees. ‘Please.’