Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (62 page)

‘I imagine the price on my head is almost the equal of your own.’

‘It isn’t, but you will die a most miserable death when they catch you.’

‘
When
?’ A chill settled over her. She had never heard him talk like that before.

‘The scrutators can’t afford to be humiliated. They will hunt us down and bring us to justice if it takes the rest of our lives. They never give up.’

‘Oh well,’ she said casually, ‘nothing we can do. Better get on with it. This is ready.’

‘I’ll call the others.’

She heard him moving away. Irisis began to take deep breaths, calming herself and getting into the right state for sensing. This would be harder than anything she had done before, and she could not afford a mistake. Flydd’s life depended on it. She clung to the hope that he could somehow save them, in spite of what he had said. But if he died, they were all doomed.

The party came crunching up the hill, chattering. Flydd gave them their orders. ‘Zoyl, I want you to stand here. Oon-Mie, over there. Irisis, stay where you are but get into a comfortable position. This could take a while.’

They moved to their places. ‘Shall we begin?’ said the scrutator. Despite his demotion, Irisis could not think of Flydd as anything else.

‘I’m ready.’ Irisis held the reader out.

‘I’ll take that.’ He plucked it from her hands.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She felt around in the air for it.

‘You know what I’m doing,’ he said, ‘
and
why.’ He crunched up to the back wall of the cavern. ‘Your turn will come.’

‘What am
I
supposed to do?’

‘Just keep a close eye on things.
In case
.’

He tossed the dragonfly into the air. It rotated and when it came down again, Zoyl cried out, ‘The eyes are glowing.’

‘Pipe down, boy,’ snapped Flydd. ‘You’re not at the circus now. Irisis, find the field.’

Taking her pliance between her palms, she visualised. Sight was not required for that. ‘I can see it.’

‘Tell me what it looks like.’

‘The individual wisps are moving faster than before, and there are more of them. They form an almost complete figure-eight now, like two crowns joined at the side.’

‘Better, but a long way to go. Keep hold of that image. Oon-Mie?’

‘Ready, willing and able, surr,’ she said and Irisis could almost see the grin.

There was no humour in Flydd’s voice now. ‘You will control the flow of power,
very carefully
. If it starts to feed back on itself, it will quickly get out of control and there won’t be anything I can do about it. Just trickle it to me. If it starts to flood, clamp down hard.’

‘I understand, surr.’

‘Aarp, you have the most difficult task of all. I hope you’re up to it.’

The lad’s chest swelled with pride. ‘I won’t let you down, Mister Scrutator.’

‘See that you don’t, or I’ll feed you to that lyrinx. Balls first!’

Flydd moved around the cavern and, as he went past Irisis, put his lips to her ear. ‘Keep an eye on the boy!’

‘I would, if you hadn’t destroyed them.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Flydd growled.

‘You haven’t told me what to do, surr,’ piped Zoyl Aarp. Though a big lad, his voice had not yet broken.

‘Haven’t I? With this reader I will force power back into the node. That will, I hope, create a faint aura. You are to focus on that, for it is the key to the problem of all failed nodes. Begin!’

Irisis heard the faint tinkle of gold and silver foil. The field brightened, though it was not growing stronger. She was just seeing it more clearly.

‘Trickle power to me, Oon-Mie.’

Such a simple skill, and vital for an artisan, yet Irisis could not do it. She envied Oon-Mie; perhaps hated her for it at that instant; then the power began to flow and the feeling was gone.

‘I can’t see anything,’ sang out Zoyl. ‘Are you sure –?’

‘Shut up, boy!’ snapped the scrutator. ‘We haven’t started yet. I’ll tell you –’

Zoyl whimpered. Irisis cleared her throat and Flydd broke off. The boy being highly strung, a little criticism went a long way.

‘A trace more, Oon-Mie.’

So it went on, the scrutator calling for more power, working his unspecified magic, Zoyl Aarp looking, ‘Still no aura,’ then trying harder next time.

‘I can’t do much more,’ said Oon-Mie after half an hour. Her voice was tight, strained. ‘It’s getting harder to control the flow.’

‘Another step, Oon-Mie,’ said Flydd. ‘We’re not getting anything at all.’

‘Maybe there’s nothing to get,’ Irisis mumbled. ‘Or maybe it will take more power than the node has in it. What will happen then?’

‘Don’t tell me my job! I’m not a complete idiot.’

Oon-Mie gave the scrutator another increment of power. ‘Anything?’ she gasped.

‘Not a thing. Zoyl?’

‘Nothing, surr.’

‘I can’t increase it,’ said Oon-Mie. ‘With the very greatest respect, I’m at my limit, surr.’

‘Again!’ roared the scrutator. ‘Remember we’re all under a death sentence.’

Zoyl choked.

‘What do you mean?’ cried Oon-Mie.

‘The scrutator is saying,’ Irisis said hastily, ‘that Jal-Nish is hunting us. If we do this right, he can’t touch us. But if we fail, we will all fall with Scrutator Flydd.’ She put one hand on the lad’s shoulder.

‘Let’s make sure we don’t fail!’ said Flydd. ‘Can I rely on you or not, Zoyl?’

‘Yes, surr.’ There was a quaver in the lad’s voice.

‘Dare you try one last time, Oon-Mie?’ said Flydd. ‘I should point out that
I
am the one at most risk.’

‘I will try, surr,’ she said faintly.

Irisis did not like it. Oon-Mie was her most reliable artisan because she knew her limits and never went beyond them.

‘Keep it flowing till I tell you to stop,’ said Flydd.

That made Irisis even more uneasy. It was a dangerous escalation of unpredictability.

The power flowed, increased and kept flowing.

‘Anything, Aarp?’ panted the scrutator.

‘No – I mean, there was the very faintest aura but it disappeared right away.’

‘Keep it going, Oon-Mie.’

Oon-Mie said nothing but Irisis could feel her tension distorting the field. She did not like what she felt.

‘More!’ cried the scrutator. ‘More, Oon-Mie, damn it!’

The power went up again. Now there was a definite tremor in it. Drops of sweat ran down Irisis’s forehead. ‘Surr,’ she hissed, ‘that’s enough.’

‘Keep it coming!’

Irisis’s foreboding grew. The tremor became a shuddering vibration that would have torn a clanker apart.

Zoyl moaned. ‘My head hurts. Stop it. Stop it!’

Irisis reached out to him. ‘It’s all right, Zoyl. The scrutator will look after us.’

Without warning that vibration swelled to gigantic proportions. Oon-Mie tried to clamp down but it was out of control, feeding back on itself and growing catastrophically stronger.

Oon-Mie gave a gurgling, clotted gasp. Zoyl Aarp fell down, wailing. The glow grew so bright that Irisis could feel it on her skin.

The scrutator was just to her left; she could see the distortion in the field. His breath crackled in his sinuses. Irisis caught a whiff of burning hair. ‘Flydd?’ He did not answer, nor could he. Power coiled around him like a serpent.
Into
him. If she did not do something, they were all going to die.

She thrashed around with her arms and one hand touched the reader, which was burning-hot. Wrenching it from his grasp, she slammed it against the wall of the cave, breaking the metal back of the dragonfly. Delicate silver wires tore. A crystal tinkled to the rocky floor.

The flow stopped at once, the glow faded and all she could hear was Zoyl’s stifled moans.

‘Oon-Mie?’ she called.

‘I’m all right,’ the artisan rasped, coughing up gobs of phlegm the size of oysters.

‘Scrutator?’

His tongue made a series of clicks as if he was having trouble moving it. ‘I’ll live,’ he said thickly.

‘Zoyl?
Zoyl!
’

Irisis crawled across to where the lad had been sitting. He lay on his side, knees drawn up.

‘Looks like he’s had a seizure,’ said Oon-Mie.

‘Just what we need,’ muttered the scrutator, restored to waspish ill-humour.

‘Well,
you
caused it,’ Irisis flashed.

‘We fail, we
die
,’ said the scrutator savagely. ‘We succeed, we
may
live. Those are the most selfish terms I can put it in. Good enough for you?’

‘But you ordered him to risk his life; and Oon-Mie hers.’

‘So? Boys his age risk their lives every day in the army.’

‘But Zoyl is not in the army.’

‘Only because he’s got a skill we need. If we fail, everyone will be fighting for their lives, including people like you and Oon-Mie. And me!’

‘He’s recovering,’ said Oon-Mie.

‘About time! Sit up, boy, and tell us what you saw.’

‘An aura, surr,’ Zoyl croaked. ‘It was not there long but I saw it clearly.’

‘What did you see?’

‘The field. And something else. Two planes lay at the centre, one passing through the other at right-angles.’

‘Planes?’

‘Yes, and they had wiggles all across them.’

‘
Is that so?
’ breathed the scrutator. ‘What about the core of the aura?’

‘It was strange, surr. Just for an instant I saw the shadow of a lyrinx, etched in lightning, and behind it the field seemed to flow into a pit. As though it was being sucked into a whirlpool.’

‘The
field
?’ cried the scrutator.

‘Yes,’ said Zoyl.

‘Someone’s coming,’ called a guard.

‘What is it?’ asked Flydd.

‘A lyrinx. No, more than one. Two, three. They’re heading directly towards us.’

The scrutator cursed. ‘To be expected, after the power we’ve used here. How long till dark?’

‘The best part of an hour,’ said the guard.

‘We can’t signal the air-floater till then. Can we defend this place?’

‘Not against three, unless you’ve the power to do it by yourself.’

‘At the moment I’d have trouble fighting off a butterfly,’ said Flydd. ‘We’ll head for the top of this peak. They’ll have to come at us from below.’

‘Unless they’ve a flier among them,’ said Irisis.

‘It’s the best we can do.’

They headed up, Irisis led by the hand by Oon-Mie.

‘That was brave work,’ Irisis said to the artisan.

‘I thought my brains were going to boil out my ears.’

‘But you held your nerve, and that’s what made the difference.’

‘Had it not been for you –’

‘Let’s not talk about that. What are the enemy doing?’

Oon-Mie stopped to look. ‘Still heading for our cave.’

‘Are you sure our work led them to us, scrutator?’ Irisis called.

His voice came from just behind her. ‘I am.’

‘How could they do that?’

‘They once had a way of detecting clankers by the aura from the controller. Tiaan fixed that, brilliantly.’

‘Bloody Tiaan again,’ muttered Irisis.

‘But of course you would know that, Irisis,’ Flydd said in frosty tones. ‘After her crystal madness, you tried to take the credit for it.’

Irisis felt a flush creeping up her cheeks. What fit of stupidity had led her to do that?

Flydd went on. ‘I’d say they have a watching device here somewhere, waiting in case we came to investigate.’

It was a considerable climb to the top of the pinnacle and the sun had gone down before they reached it. Irisis was hauled up the last few spans on a rope, dragging roughly across a gritty rock face before being stood on her feet on a mounded surface. A dank wind blew down the back of her neck.

‘Don’t move,’ said Flydd. ‘We’re standing on top of the pinnacle, a stack of rock whose tip is not much bigger than a bedsheet. Take three steps in any direction and you’re over the edge. Zoyl, what the blazes do you think you’re doing? Put that rock down.’

Thud.

‘Not on my foot, you bloody fool!’

‘I was just trying to help, surr.’

‘Leave it to those who know how.’

Irisis could
feel
the edge of the drop. Her teeth began to chatter.

One of the soldiers lit a signal lantern. The scrutator held it high, facing across the valley towards the range. He gave a series of flashes, shuttered it completely, then opened it and gave the same sequence again. Irisis could hear the click of the shutter.

‘No reply,’ he said after a long wait. ‘What are the enemy doing?’

‘Coming after us,’ said Oon-Mie. ‘They’re nearly within crossbow range.’

‘Get your weapons out.’

Swords scraped on scabbards. Someone wound the crank of a crossbow. She felt useless, especially when the enemy were so close that she could hear their claws scraping on the rock. If only she could see. With a crossbow in her hands she’d make them jump.

A crossbow twanged. ‘Missed!’ the soldier cursed.

‘How near do you need to be?’ the scrutator said derisively. ‘Any closer and you could have picked his nose with it.’

‘The light’s deceptive, surr.’

‘Then hold off until you can see up their nostrils.’

‘I don’t
ever
want to see up a lyrinx’s nostrils,’ said Irisis. ‘Are any of them fliers, Xervish?’

‘Doesn’t look like it, but once it’s fully dark they’ll come up the sides without us ever seeing them. And then, my friends, it’s dinnertime.’ He chuckled grimly.

No one else joined in.

‘Look out!’ Oon-Mie cried. ‘They’re throwing rocks!’

Someone pulled Irisis down. There was another thud, a man’s cry of pain, then someone went off the side. Irisis heard every pulpy impact until he finally came to rest a long way below.

‘Who …?’ she said fearfully.

‘Jarle,’ said Flydd. ‘A good man. Don’t look, Zoyl.’

The sound of rending and feeding began. Bones crunched; gobbets of flesh were swallowed noisily. ‘Poor devil,’ said Oon-Mie.

‘At least he was dead first,’ said Flydd heavily. ‘Stay down. They’ll try again.’