Chimaera (80 page)

N
ish watched his friends fly away, unable to speak.

Once the last refugees reported that they’d met Orgestre’s army and no longer needed Troist’s protection, his infantry and its escort of clankers set off up the Great North Road, which here ran north-west. Worm Wood was about twenty leagues away, the edge of the forest curving east until it ran into the northern extremity of the Borgis Woods, a forest just as dark and tangled, and with a more dubious reputation, than Worm Wood itself. The road ran through the forest for twenty leagues, then beside it and the lands between the Great Chain of Lakes, before finally passing into the flat drylands to the north. In all, the army had to cross more than forty leagues of rugged country, ripe for ambushing, before they reached the relative security of the plains of Tacnah. Nish knew they would be lucky to get that far.

‘Nish,’ said Gilhaelith as they camped on the fringe of the forest, ‘you’re a resourceful fellow. Come with me.’

Nish wondered why Gilhaelith had remained behind with the rearguard instead of flying to safety with the Council. Was it because Yggur was so hostile to him? Whatever the reason, Troist wasn’t bothered about it. He’d invited Gilhaelith to travel with him in his twelve-legged command clanker, often consulting him about the lyrinx’s mancery and how they might use it to hinder the army’s progress.

Nish followed the woolly-headed mancer down through the rows of tents and clankers to a larger tent, guarded by two soldiers, set in an isolated spot under the trees. They went inside. It was dark apart from a glowing globe with a bowl of smoked glass over the top, reducing the light to a glimmer. A folding table had been set up in the middle. Merryl sat on one side, a writing tablet before him, a pen in his hand. A young, dark-haired woman on the other side of the table had her hands around a master farspeaker whose interior globes were spinning. Her head was bent so far that Nish couldn’t see her face, only a long, pointed nose.

Nish turned to Gilhaelith but he put a finger across his lips. ‘Later.’

Nothing happened for some minutes, when there came a whisper from the farspeaker. The dark young woman froze the globes. Again the whisper. Merryl wrote something on his pad. They waited. Eventually, another whisper. Another wait, interminable this time.

‘All right,’ said Gilhaelith after more than an hour had passed. ‘Take a break.’

They went outside. ‘You’re spying on the lyrinx,’ said Nish.

Gilhaelith raised an interrogative eyebrow.

‘Merryl’s the only one who speaks their language,’ he added.

‘Very good, artificer.’

Nish had an uncomfortable feeling that the mancer was laughing at him. He’d never worked Gilhaelith out; he did not fit any of the kinds of people Nish had met before.

‘Daesmie,’ Gilhaelith indicated the young woman through the tent flap, ‘has a talent akin to Tiaan’s, though undeveloped by comparison. She was only discovered recently – one of many projects the Council has going behind the scenes, Flydd tells me. Daesmie is able to sense lyrinx mindspeech and tune the master farspeaker to pull it out of the ethyr. There’s one problem, of course.’

‘There are half a million lyrinx,’ said Nish, ‘and they’d be using mindspeech all the time. How can you pick out what’s important in all that racket?’

‘On the contrary, few lyrinx have the talent and it’s exhausting to use. They employ it on the battlefield, or to signal danger or cry for help, so everything they say is of interest to us. And only the most powerful lyrinx can call for long distances, so if the lesser ones are mindspeaking further away, we don’t hear it.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘They seldom identify themselves or where they are. It limits the usefulness of spying on them.’

‘Have you learned anything interesting yet?’

‘Indeed. Twice we’ve had warning of attacks before they occurred. Only a minute or two, but it makes a difference. The attack this morning would have cut the army in half if I hadn’t alerted Troist to it.’

Nish had wondered why Troist seemed so happy with Gilhaelith. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Read everything Merryl and the other listeners write down.’

‘What others?’

‘There are five tents down here, all listening on different globe settings. Merryl has taught the listeners the most common words of the lyrinx language, and each listener is recording pages of messages every hour. I don’t have the time to read it all, so you can do it for me.’

‘I’m Troist’s adjutant, surr, and I’ve a lot to do.’

‘And he’s made you over to me for the time being.’

‘Really?’ said Nish, unconvinced.

‘Go and ask him,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘The work I’m doing is vital to the survival of this army.’

‘All right,’ said Nish. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Excellent. If you see something strange, or something you don’t understand, call me.’

Gilhaelith hurried away. ‘But what are you looking for?’ Nish called.

‘Something they don’t want us to know,’ Gilhaelith said over his shoulder.

The next day was tedious and long. Nish sat in the tent, listening to the whispers in the background, which meant nothing to him, and reading though the pages as Merryl handed them to him. They were just a series of words, with annotations by Merryl, that did not make much sense.

Nish puzzled over the exchange. Were they planning an attack in the morning, as the army passed by a smaller lake between the two largest of the Great Chain of Lakes? Did it involve fire, or was that a completely separate remark? He scribbled two notes and sent them with the waiting runner to Troist and Gilhaelith. Let them agonise over it.

His pages were piling up. He wondered about the other cry – about the node failing – but not for long. Node failures were increasingly common these days. He made a note on his summary sheet and got on with his work.

Rubbing sore eyes, Nish shuffled his papers and stacked them in the pile. He’d been reading for eighteen hours without a break and every time he shifted his head vertigo made him feel as though he was falling off his seat. It had been hard enough in the tent, for one recorder’s writing could have been made by a spider crawling out of an inkwell, and another’s was so tiny Nish had to squint to read it. In a jouncing, rattling clanker on a winding mountain road it was almost impossible. He prayed that the column would stop soon. He was desperate for sleep but would be lucky to get an hour. Even here, the pages were coming in faster than he could read them.

He had dozed off, in spite of the vibration, when the clanker stopped suddenly. There were shouts and screams outside, while a red glow lit up the sky ahead. The operator thrust up the top hatch, shouting to the shooter.

‘What is it, shooter? Are we under attack?’

The shooter did not answer at once. The threaded rods of his javelard whirred and the mechanism creaked as he turned it this way and that.

‘There’s a big fire up ahead,’ he said.

Nish reached for the rear hatch but Merryl put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Remember what Gilhaelith said. We’re to keep away from the fighting unless our lives are directly threatened.’

‘I can’t hide while soldiers are dying.’

‘Their job is to fight, and if necessary to die. Ours is to do this work which may save many lives.’

Nish slid back into his seat. ‘What’s going on?’ he said softly, with a glance at the farspeaker operator. Daesmie was asleep, her head pillowed on her small hands. She looked like a child. ‘What’s Gilhaelith really looking for?’

‘I don’t know.’

A roar echoed down the road from up ahead and flames billowed into the sky. The clanker’s shooter cried out in terror. Nish felt the wash of heat through the front porthole, until the operator lurched his clanker forward, sideways and around. The clanker ahead of them was covered in what looked like burning pitch. Nish could hear the agonised screams of those trapped inside.

‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘We’ve got to get them out.’

The clanker kept going. ‘I have my orders, surr,’ said the operator.

Nish wrestled with the handle of the rear hatch but Merryl caught him by the arm. ‘There’s nothing you can do, Nish. Their rear hatch is covered in burning pitch; you’d never get it open.’

The sounds, and the smell, lingered long in Nish’s nostrils. It reminded him of that awful night in the slave team at Snizort, when he’d salivated over the smell of the burning dead.

‘That was a timely warning,’ Gilhaelith said later that night, when the army had found a safe camp. ‘Troist asked me to personally thank each of you. It saved countless lives.’

Nish nodded absently, his mind still on the horrors of the attack, which had gone on for an hour before the enemy had silently withdrawn. ‘Did we lose many?’

‘Hundreds,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘But it could easily have been thousands. Now, back to work.’

Two days later, in the sunken lands between the two great lakes, Nish was again in Merryl’s tent, completing his summary of the day’s listening, when he heard a shouted message. It had an urgency he’d not heard from the lyrinx before.

Merryl sat up, cocking his ear at the farspeaker. His hand was scribbling furiously.

Nish knew the word ‘Ing’. It was a cry for help. ‘What –?’ he began, but broke off. He could not afford to distract Merryl.

Nish moved around behind Merryl so he could read the words over his shoulder.

Dark-haired, demure little Daesmie swore an oath so vile that not even Nish would have used it in public, and spun the globes. ‘Lost it,’ she said.

Nish resisted the urge to yell at her to get it back. She was doing her best. Anything that troubled a lyrinx matriarch was of interest to them. There were only six as far as he knew; one for each of their cities.

‘Skin bursting?’ he said. ‘Does that mean the spore disease?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Merryl. ‘There have been cries about it before. But this is different. If it’s affected a matriarch …’ He trailed off, deep in thought.

The globes froze in place. ‘I think I have it,’ said Daesmie.

‘Get Gilhaelith,’ snapped Merryl.

Nish did not move.

‘Now, Nish!’

Nish hesitated, wanting to know what they were going to say next. He ran out and around each of the other listeners. Gilhaelith was not with them. As Nish turned back, intending to look for him at the command tent, he ran past Merryl’s tent and now heard Gilhaelith’s voice inside.

The mancer was positively glowing. ‘This is it. Gather your gear,’ he said to Merryl and Daesmie. ‘Bring all the record sheets. Meet me by the thapter in five minutes. You too, Nish.’ He disappeared.

Nish looked down at the sheet. Nothing further had been written on it. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘I can’t tell you, Nish.’ Merryl stuffed the papers in his pack and hurried out.

Daesmie was doing the same with the globe and the rest of her apparatus. Nish put the paper down, hoisted his pack and headed for Kimli’s thapter, which stood behind the command tent. It had come in only an hour ago, after studying the enemy’s movements from the air.

When he arrived, the others were already inside. He passed up his pack and was just climbing over the side when Troist came running around the tent. He had Nish’s sheet in his hand.

‘Hey? What are you doing?’ Troist cried.

‘Go, Kimli,’ Gilhaelith hissed, heaving Nish in.

She hesitated. ‘But he’s the general, surr.’

‘And I’m your superior and a mancer of dreadful power. Do as I say!’

‘Guards!’ roared Troist.

‘
Now!
’ Gilhaelith screamed in her face.

Kimli’s arm jerked on the flight knob and the thapter leapt in the air. The guards came running, arming their crossbows, but by the time they took aim it was too late. The thapter was out of range.

‘Go north until we’re out of sight,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘then sweep around to the west.’

‘Where are we going?’ she quavered.

‘First to Nyriandiol, my former fortress atop Booreah Ngurle, if anything remains of it. And then, we shall see. Go swiftly.’