Chimaera (74 page)

‘What about Nish?’ she said softly. ‘How did he look?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Irisis, who had overcome her injuries enough to pull herself up onto the side. ‘But he hasn’t moved.’ There was such a stricken look in her eyes that Tiaan had to turn away. She didn’t feel very good either.

‘I’ll go and see. Keep watch.’

‘I’m coming too,’ said Irisis. ‘I’m so afraid. I – I love him, Tiaan. I swore I’d never submit to such a folly. Not me; I was too strong for it. But I do love the little squirt, with every cell of my body, and now I’m terrified that I’ve lost him.’

‘Did … does he know?’

‘Of course not,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s the thickest man on Santhenar. He understands nothing.’

Tiaan smiled at that. Nish understood a great deal. ‘Then perhaps you should spell it out for him.’

‘And perhaps you should mind your own business,’ said Irisis. ‘If you could give me a hand.’

Tiaan wasn’t offended, though once she would have been. She was beginning to understand people too.

She helped Irisis up onto the back platform. The hood was flattened around Nish’s body and head, squashing him face down against the deck, leaving only the top of his head exposed. The hood was deeply dented in four places from crossbow bolts. Moreover, two javelard spears had pinned it in place, one angling in towards his left side, the other between his knees. If either had gone through him he could have bled to death.

Irisis slid a hand under the hood onto Nish’s cheek. ‘He’s icy cold. He’s
dead
!’

Tiaan eased her out of the way. ‘Of course he’s cold. He’s soaking wet and we’ve been flying fast. It’s lucky he hasn’t got frostbite. Nish?’

He didn’t answer, so she felt his cheek. He was so cold that it was hard to believe that he could be alive. She forced her hand through the narrow space and down to his neck, which proved just as chilly. Tiaan wriggled her fingers underneath his shirt, where his skin was protected from the wind. She found a trace of warmth there. Was that a pulse? She couldn’t be sure.

‘I think he’s alive, Irisis. Talk to him; hold him. I’ll get something to prise the hood off.’

When she returned with a bar, Irisis was crouched down, her hand on Nish’s cheek, her forehead touching the top of his head. Her eyes were screwed shut.

Tiaan began to lever from the side. It was hard work. The black Aachan metal, although thin, was intensely strong and inflexible. It proved impossible to bend out of the way. In the end Tiaan had to whack the spears one way and then the other with the bar until they came free, knowing that if either had gone into Nish she would be greatly aggravating the wound.

The second spear came out. Tiaan tossed it over the side and lifted the sheet of metal, which sprang back to its original shape. Nish gave a groan and turned his head. His nose was running with a mixture of blood and mucus and his lower face was wet with half-frozen saliva.

‘You took your bloody time,’ he said through bruised and swollen lips.

‘Are you all right?’ Irisis said, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You look disgusting.’

‘
Thanks
.’

‘If you were all right, why the hell didn’t you say so! I thought you were dead.’

‘I couldn’t move a fingertip. Couldn’t open my mouth, or close it. Do you think you could wipe my nose?’

‘The things I do for your dignity.’ Irisis took off her shirt and began to clean him up with it.

Tiaan walked away across the wet tussock grass and left them to their cheerful bickering.

Once Irisis’s twisted ankle had been immobilised by strapping it to shaped pieces of wood, her wrist bandaged and Nish’s bodylength bruises marvelled over, Tiaan said, ‘What now?’

‘Flydd wants us to check on the cities again, to see what’s happened,’ Nish reminded her. ‘If we go back to Alcifer in three or four days, we should be able to see if the spores have had any effect. In the meantime, let’s find somewhere to hide. With no lyrinx.’

‘Somewhere tranquil,’ said Irisis. ‘With decent food.’

‘And wine,’ said Nish.

‘Neither will be easy to come by,’ said Tiaan, ‘in a land that’s been empty of humans for years. I’ll see what I can find.’

They flew south-west, skirting along the foothills of the mountains. Below, they saw many manors and fastnesses, once sited to protect the fertile valleys from mountain marauders, but now abandoned and some already falling into ruin.

‘What about that one?’ said Irisis.

It was a small manor set on the edge of a grassy upland plateau. A stream meandered across the sward, passed by the rear of the manor then curled around like a sickle before tinkling over a waterfall, five or six spans high, in a crystalline shower. The grass was green, fragrant herbs grew on the edge of the plateau and in the distance a forest barred the way to the higher mountains. Stock grazed on the grass: cattle with long, twisting horns and sheep whose fine crinkly wool was a purple black. Goats stood sentinel on rock stacks here and there. The Sea of Thurkad was just visible in the east. They hid the thapter in a stone barn, pushed the doors closed and hobbled off to look for something better than the hard tack they had in the thapter.

‘I wonder who lived here, and what happened to them?’ said Tiaan. The place had a melancholy air. ‘Whoever they were, they lost everything, and probably their lives as well.’

‘A story that’s been repeated a hundred thousand times across Santhenar since the lyrinx came,’ said Nish, supporting Irisis with his shoulder.

The front door was closed but not locked. They went inside. The owners had either been killed or had fled carrying only what would fit on their backs, for the manor was full of precious things. Silverware, cloisonné lamps of the most exquisite workmanship, silken tapestries and other fineries remained in place as though the house was still occupied, though there was a film of dust over everything.

‘How long ago would this place have been abandoned?’ Tiaan wondered.

‘It must have been one of the last, since it’s not been looted,’ said Irisis, hopping across to a leather chair and sitting down. ‘No more than three years, I’d say. I’m going to stay right here. You can wait on me for a change, Nish.’

‘There could still be food in the pantries, and drink in the cellars,’ said Nish. ‘Beer wouldn’t be much good after three years, but wine should have lasted, and cheese.’

‘You keep talking about food,’ smiled Irisis.

‘I haven’t had anything decent to eat since you went east at the end of the winter. Cooking is a lost art at Fiz Gorgo.’

‘Yggur’s food is a little stodgy, I’ll agree, but it’s a damn sight better than I’ve been eating in the eastern manufactories.’

Nish and Tiaan found a larder with a vermin-proof door, and there was food in it: hanging hams, cheeses, pickled onions and other preserved vegetables and fruits. He found wine in a cellar too: an immensely strong red wine, as well as small barrels of fruit liqueurs. Nish lugged one of each up and outside, while Tiaan carried out the most comfortable chairs. Irisis was carving herself a crutch from a forked stick.

They had a picnic on the terrace, overlooking the lands of Iagador, while the sun went down behind them. It hadn’t stormed here and they lingered outside in the balmy evening.

Tiaan toyed with a mug of wine, then put it aside. It was too strong, and wine did uncomfortable things to her head. She lay back and studied the stars.

Nish and Irisis had gone inside, Irisis hopping on her crutch. Tiaan knew what they were up to. Good luck to them; they might as well enjoy what little time they had left.

She was thirsty but felt too lethargic to go all the way to the well for water. Irisis had decanted part of the liqueur barrel into a jug so Tiaan took a sip. It was thick and sweet, more to her taste. She had another, then lay back in her armchair again, pulled her coat about her and watched the stars wheel across the sky.

She woke as a crescent moon rose over the distant sea. All was quiet inside the manor and her bare hands were cold. Somewhere behind her, an owl hooted. Moonbeams lit up the mist above the falls like a fairy veil drifting in the wind. Dew glittered on the grass. It was so peaceful; so beautiful. It must often have been like this, before the war began.

She felt a tear in the corner of her eye. This place would always be as lovely, but there would be no one to appreciate it. These attacks were a folly, and suddenly she felt sure that they were going to lose the war.

Tiaan had an urge to call Flydd and tell him so. She considered it, but the drink had left her lethargic. It was easier to snuggle up in the chair and close her eyes again.

Despite having unlocked Golias’s globe all those months ago, she still didn’t understand how a message could travel from one field to another. Even less, how it could loop and whorl its way across lands a dozen nodes apart one day, yet on the next, not even reach someone in a nearby town.

Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Tiaan wondered if the erratic performance of farspeakers could have anything to do with the interlinking, or failing, of the nodes. Could she put farspeaker globes at each end to study how the signals changed as power was drawn from the nodes?

What if?
There were too many questions and never enough answers, while each answer raised new questions. In a lifetime she wouldn’t be able to answer a fraction of them.

The moon travelled higher; the illuminated veils of mist danced over the waterfall like the restless spirits of those who once lived here. She wished she knew who they’d been, and what had happened to them. Did they still pine for this place and long to come home once the war was over? Or were they dead and eaten by the enemy long ago?

The morbid thoughts disturbed her. As a distraction, Tiaan went over the events of the past few days, still marvelling how they’d survived the attack at Alcifer. Had it not been for the lyrinx suddenly checking as they raced for Irisis and Nish at the bellows … Now, why had they done that?

For a few seconds, they’d all acted as though they’d been in pain. Could it have something to do with the way she’d been operating the thapter? She’d often flown it near lyrinx and never seen such a reaction before.

Tiaan replayed the scene, back and forth. It had happened just as she had screamed into the farspeaker at Flydd. Could that have hurt them? She’d not encountered anything like it. Or had she?

Nearly two years ago, when Besant had carried her off to Kalissin, Tiaan had felt a strange sensation whenever Besant drew powerfully on the Secret Art. It had been like sherbet dissolving and fizzing behind her temples, and Tiaan had experienced it a number of times.

Poor Ullii had felt it much more strongly: Tiaan could still recall her anguished screams as Besant took off. It was equally possible that lyrinx could be affected when humans used the Art in certain ways.

Had anyone else noticed? She went inside, intending to ask Irisis and Nish. The lamp had burned low in the front room but its dying flickers showed them lying together on a rug on the floor, fast asleep. Tiaan looked down at Nish’s scarred back, which he had been so anxious to conceal. It was worse than Irisis’s. How it must have hurt. Pulling a fold of the rug over them, she blew out the lamp.

She went into the barn and sat in the thapter, in the dark. It was the closest thing she had to home and a place of her own, though it still stank of lyrinx blood. Tiaan wanted to talk to Flydd or Yggur about her observations, but her slave farspeaker could only call when Flydd’s master globe had been set to speak to her.

Setting up the farspeaker, she leaned back in her seat. What would Flydd and Yggur do if the lyrinx did come out of their underground cities? It now struck Tiaan as an absurd plan – surely the enemy would fight twice as hard if they had no home to return to. Using the spores now seemed reckless and she wished she hadn’t been talked into it, though, if she hadn’t, one of the other pilots would have done it.

She felt so isolated and alone that it was easy to imagine the world had already ended, for humanity. What if the only humans left alive were herself and the snoring pair inside?

In need of comfort, Tiaan took the amplimet out of its socket under the smashed binnacle. Flydd had given it back to her for the duration of this mission, after which it was to return to the platinum box. Tiaan didn’t mind – since Nennifer she’d been purged of that tormenting withdrawal. Nonetheless, the amplimet was a comfort and reminded her of her first real friend, old Joeyn.

A tiny spark drifted slowly down the centre of the crystal. It was dull, which meant that there wasn’t a strong node nearby. Tiaan knew that already – the fields were always in her inner eye now. She cupped the amplimet in her cold hands and warmth spread through her, out of all proportion to its size.

She focussed on her slave farspeaker, wondering yet again about the force that made such things work. Bringing up her mental image of Golias’s globe, Tiaan revolved its inner spheres as if tuning it to speak with her farspeaker. The spheres turned as if coated in oil. Golias’s globe had been so well made that the best artisans had not been able to equal it, and it still worked better than any of the copies. Messages went further and were just that little bit clearer.

The farspeaker burped, startling her. An uncanny coincidence, that the scrutator should call her just as she was thinking about him. She imagined him sitting at the long table, papers and maps all around. She waited for him to speak but he did not.

‘Hello?’ she said after a decent interval. ‘This is Tiaan.’

‘Tiaan?’ Flydd cried in astonishment. ‘What …?’

‘What do you want, Scrutator?’

‘I didn’t call you. My globe was set to speak to someone else.’

‘But, that’s impossible.’

‘It’s supposed to be. What have you done, Tiaan?’

She didn’t know. ‘I was just sitting in the thapter with the amplimet in my hands, wondering what was happening back east. Thinking about your globe, and the settings needed for you to contact me, I just moved the spheres in my mind.’

‘You did more than that. You actually changed the settings of my globe.’