Chimaera (38 page)

They moved off the stairs into a narrow space, a sliver of green-tiled floor between two moss-covered outer walls. ‘How are we supposed to find Muss?’ said Nish.

‘I imagine he’ll find us. I didn’t believe his story for an instant. He left Flydd months ago because he was no longer useful. Then, when Flydd turned up here and the scrutators’ downfall looked likely, Muss changed sides again. He does it as easily as he changes his shape. He led us in because he wanted something that he couldn’t get himself. The amplimet, presumably.’

‘Why would he want it?’ said Nish. ‘He’s not –’

‘For decades he concealed that he was a powerful adept,’ she said in a low voice. ‘What else is he? No one knows. Muss will be close by, waiting to see who gets the upper hand and working out how he can use them to his advantage.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He’ll tell us where to find Tiaan. The stalemate won’t suit him any more than it does us. But the
instant
he tells us, we grab him.’

Grabbing a morphmancer didn’t seem like a very good idea to Nish. ‘What then?’

‘We bind his hands and stop his mouth so he can’t morph into another shape, and take him with us. I want the wretch where I can see him for the rest of our time here.’

‘He could be rather a handful.’

‘Then club him over the head! Whoever isn’t with us is against us, Nish.’

They were nearing the warding chamber when Nish heard the sound of massed footsteps, below and to their left. ‘That must be Fusshte’s reinforcements.’

Irisis pulled him into a rubble-choked cavern where two walls had fallen against each other to form a space shaped like a tent. While they waited, Nish couldn’t help wondering how solid the structure was.

A squad came tramping along the gritty corridor, ten men led by a stocky captain, followed a minute later by a second squad and then a third. The captain stopped, looking around in puzzlement at the dislocated walls and the stair which patently had crashed through the roof. ‘Which way?’

No one seemed to know. They turned back down the corridor, stopped again and the captain called, ‘Master Muss?’

He came towards them, reluctantly, and after a brief exchange pointed back the way they had come. The soldiers tramped off and Muss came on, stopping directly outside Nish and Irisis’s hiding place. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘It’s a stalemate,’ said Irisis. ‘Flydd and Klarm are pinned down. They can’t get to the scrutators’ turret and the scrutators can’t reach them. They’re afraid to use power.’

Muss stared into her eyes as if he suspected her of holding something back. ‘Then Fusshte will take them sooner or later.’

‘And that doesn’t suit you, Muss?’ said Irisis.

‘We’ve got to find Tiaan,’ Nish burst out. ‘She may be able to control the amplimet.’

‘Tiaan …’ Muss stared into the dusty distance. ‘I don’t think – she’s not been treated well. Unless she trusts you, you may not get anything out of her.’ His eyes seemed to look into Nish’s head.

Nish coloured. ‘Well, she’s all we have left.’

Taking the eidoscope out from under his cloak, Muss turned away. Nish peered around him. The morphmancer pushed in one spangled lens and rotated it, pulled out another, spun a third and peered through the end. He scratched his ear, performed more rotations with his eye and cheek to the end lens, then said, ‘Follow me.’

After some minutes of trekking quite as dangerous as the trip in, and rather more crowded with wailing spectres, they reached the solid wooden door of what, from the dank smell, had been a basement dungeon cell. It now lay two floors above ground level.

‘Tiaan’s cell,’ said Eiryn Muss.

Nish tried the door but it didn’t budge.

‘It’s held fast by scrutator magic,’ said Muss. ‘You’ll have to break the door to get inside.’

‘It’s solid ironwood,’ said Irisis. ‘It’d take half an hour to get through it with an axe. And we don’t have an axe.’ She stared at him expectantly.

After a long hesitation, Muss used his eidoscope again, this time not seeming to care that they saw it. Nish didn’t think that was a good sign. Muss frowned, shape-shifted a couple of times, returned to his normal form, then reached out and seemed to put his arm right through the stone beside the door. He did something on the other side and the door came open.

They pushed in. Tiaan lay on a straw-filled palliasse, staring at the ceiling. She was filthy, her clothes even filthier, and her black hair formed a tangled mass. Her arms and legs were shaking. Nish approached her tentatively, for Tiaan mistrusted him, and with good reason. And she felt the same way about Irisis.

‘Tiaan?’ he said softly.

She turned her eyes toward him, without recognition, then looked back at the ceiling. A louse the length of Nish’s fingernail crawled up her neck into her hair. She didn’t appear to notice.

‘Tiaan?’

She turned, and this time her eyes widened. She lurched to her feet, batted feebly at a point to the right of Nish, gave a gasp of horror and tried to climb the wall behind her.

Nish caught her as she fell back on the palliasse. ‘It’s like she’s seeing ghosts.’

‘Perhaps she thinks we
are
ghosts.’

‘What do we do with her?’ said Nish.

‘I have no idea. And to add to our troubles, bloody Muss has disappeared again.’

T
hey carried Tiaan back through the spectre-infested chaos, taking turns. She did not resist. Indeed, Tiaan hardly knew they were there.

‘What’s the matter with her?’

Nish had stopped for a breather on a floor made of smashed slabs of pink gneiss that crunched and crackled underfoot. In the distance, a segment of Nennifer crumbled with a roar that shook the walls. Glass objects, warped like figures in a torture chamber, fell off a shelf. Collapses were happening all the time now.

‘She’s been in the depraved hands of Fusshte,’ said Irisis, frowning at the three corridors that led on. ‘It would drive anyone out of their mind.’

‘He’s slimy and squalid, but he’s not a fool. Tiaan can do things no one else has ever been able to, and he wouldn’t break her and lose that talent.’

‘I’ll take her now.’ Nish hefted Tiaan off his shoulder onto Irisis’s. Irisis grimaced. ‘She stinks.’

‘And that’s not all.’ Raking his fingers though his short hair, Nish plucked off a fat louse which he flicked away with his thumb. He scratched under his arm. ‘I think she’s given me fleas as well.’

‘Poor Nish. How you must be suffering.’ She looked around. ‘Surely we’re getting close to the warding chamber?’

‘I think so. It’s not easy to remember the way.’

They continued on, struggling between head-high piles of rubble, or over them. Confronted by a particularly large heap, with beams sticking out of it like the spines of a sea urchin, Nish said, ‘This wasn’t here when we came through.’

She picked her way around to the left, Tiaan flopping on her shoulder. ‘There’s not much holding Nennifer up. Once any slice fails, the ones on either side of it are doomed to follow. The whole lot could come down without warning.’

He stayed where he was, unsure if they were going in the right direction. ‘You don’t have to be so damned cheerful about it.’

‘The joys of fatalism, Nish. When you have no expectations, every extra moment of life is a blessing and a wonder.’ She gave him a beatific smile over her shoulder.

‘Humbug!’

‘I think it’s this way,’ she said, moving around the other side of the rubble pile.

Nish climbed up onto the heap and peered over into the gloom. Their path was blocked by tilted slabs of floor and ceiling which had collapsed on one another like a deck of cards. ‘No, we’ll have to go back to that junction where we went right, and take the middle way. Do you need a hand?’

Irisis hefted Tiaan higher onto her shoulder and turned back. At the junction she checked the other corridors. ‘I don’t think it was either of these. Bloody Muss! What’s he up to?’

Nish was too weary to answer. He put his hand on the wall and a small section collapsed, revealing a cavity than ran in to the limit of sight. He hopped backwards in case the rest came down, but the wall didn’t move. Once the dust had settled he sniffed the air coming from the hole. ‘I can smell that stink again. The warding chamber must be this way.’

‘Surprised you can smell anything over Tiaan,’ Irisis grumbled, coming up to the cavity. ‘Can you take her?’

Nish hauled Tiaan through, heaved her onto his shoulder and set off, following his nose.

Tiaan let out a low moan and began to thrash. Nish, who was negotiating a pile of rubble higher than his head, landed hard on one knee on a broken piece of stone and cried out. Tiaan jerked herself out of his arms. Crouching on all fours, she gave him a strange sideways glance and scuttled up the pile.

‘No you don’t!’ Irisis threw herself after Tiaan and caught her by the ankle.

Tiaan let out a thin squeal and kicked furiously. Irisis clamped her other hand around the smaller woman’s calf, holding her until Nish twisted one arm behind her back, whereupon Tiaan ceased to struggle and her eyes fluttered closed.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ he panted.

Irisis shrugged. ‘Do you think we should tie her up?’

He shook his head. ‘We need her to cooperate when we get there and … you know how she feels about us.’

‘We’d better keep moving. We’ve taken too long already …’

Time may well have run out, Nish thought. A small war could have been fought at the other end of Nennifer and they wouldn’t have been aware of it.

They struggled on. Tiaan wasn’t a big woman but the strain of carrying her was telling. Nish ached in every muscle.

‘We must be nearly there,’ said Irisis as they stopped briefly, ‘though I don’t recognise this place.’ The burnt-flesh smell was sickening.

‘I think we’re approaching the warding chamber from the other side.’ What were they supposed to do once they got there?

‘So the scrutators’ workroom and turret must be above us. Now what?’ said Irisis as if she’d read his thought. ‘Did Flydd want us to take Tiaan to him, or to the warding chamber?’

‘The chamber, surely? We’ve no way of getting to him.’

‘Inouye was trying to tell us something,’ Irisis recalled. ‘But she couldn’t get it out. Should I go up and ask her?’

‘She’s probably unconscious,’ said Nish, guilt rising up to overwhelm him. What had Inouye ever done to harm anyone?

They were pressing on towards the final door into the amplimet chamber when Tiaan’s eyes sprang open. She quivered in Nish’s arms then said clearly, ‘Put me down.’

Nish did so gladly. Tiaan wavered on her feet, steadied herself and looked around, as alert as she had previously been apathetic. She glanced at Irisis, then Nish, without seeming to recognise either of them. Tiaan faced the door, cocking her head as if listening, then smiled.

What’s going on?
Nish mouthed to Irisis. She signed that she didn’t have a clue. He pointed to the door. Irisis puffed out her cheeks, looked back the other way, then ruefully scratched herself.

A stub of wall collapsed behind them, sending a cloud of dust billowing in their direction. Someone called out in the indeterminate distance. Tiaan started.

‘That sounded like Flydd,’ said Irisis.

‘I don’t think we’d hear him from here.’

They listened but the cry was not repeated. A crystalline crackle came from inside the chamber and Nish suddenly knew that they’d made the wrong choice.

‘It’s waiting for us!’ he hissed. ‘We’ve got to go up to –’

The crackle sounded again, peremptory this time. Tiaan stopped quivering; a joyous smile spread across her dirty face and she bolted for the last door.

Irisis threw herself forward and got two fingers into Tiaan’s collar. Tiaan swung around, clenched her two hands into a mallet and clubbed Irisis across the side of the head. Tiaan tore free and darted through the door into the warding chamber.

Nish cursed and raced after her. ‘That’s what Inouye was trying to tell us. To keep Tiaan away from the warding chamber.’

He crashed through the door. Tiaan was nowhere to be seen.

‘All the signs were there,’ said Irisis, ‘and we missed them. Fusshte hadn’t mistreated Tiaan, he’d only neglected her. Tiaan was suffering withdrawal from the amplimet and the first thing she’d do would be to go for it.’

The room was noticeably warmer than before, and the reek of burnt flesh and hair even more overpowering, if that was possible.

‘I don’t see her,’ said Nish, taking a couple of steps.

Irisis dragged him back. ‘Remember what happened to the inner ring of mancers.’

‘But if we don’t stop her –’

‘Tiaan may be suffering withdrawal, but she’s seen other people die through the amplimet. She’ll make sure it recognises her before she goes too close.’

‘There’s no saying it will allow her near. What are we supposed to do?’

‘I – I’ve got no idea, Nish. I can’t make sense out of anything.’

Irisis had always been a leader and her indecision dismayed him. ‘I’ll stay here and see if I can catch her. Run up to the dome chamber and shout a warning to Flydd.’

She smiled at that. ‘Don’t be silly, Nish. There’s nothing
you
can do here, but I may be able to. Go up. Run as though all our lives depend on it. And … be careful. You’ve got the most dangerous job.’