Ian Irvine - Chimaera

She studied the structure as they went by. ‘And you designed it to reach anywhere in the void?’ she said thoughtfully.

‘I wouldn’t say anywhere, for the void is limitless. But anywhere my people could have ended up.’

‘Could you go back to Aachan?’

‘We have gone back,’ he said grimly. ‘We clan leaders have been there a dozen times, visiting all the havens and searching for survivors of any clan. We found none. Our beloved Aachan is a volcanic hell.’

Tiaan dwelt on that as they left the tower behind. And all because of choices made thousands of years ago, by Aachim desperate to have the power that mastery of an amplimet could bring.

‘Whenever the way into the void has been opened, trouble has come out of it,’ said Malien from the top of the ladder. ‘I dread what will come through this gate if it’s left for the future’s fools to play with.’

‘Do what you wish with it,’ said Vithis. ‘Destroy it! I care not. Here is the key.’ From a chain around his neck he took a hexagonal rod carved from a single sapphire, whose corners were rounded from aeons of handling. He gave it to Malien.

Malien studied it for a moment, nodded and put it in her scrip. ‘I will see to it.’

No one spoke for hours afterwards. Tiaan held on to her controller like a lifeline, longing for the journey to be over, though not for what lay at the end of it. In the immensity of the Dry Sea the thapter did not seem to be moving.

She flew through the night and soon after dawn began to descend. ‘We saw the first construct not far ahead,’ Tiaan said.

Vithis was the first to spot the wreckage. He showed no expression, apart from a hardening of the corners of his mouth.

‘There’s one. Go lower. I would count their number first, and make sure none have been overlooked.’

Tiaan went back and forth as he directed. As many of the Aachim as could fit came up, until the compartment was so crammed that she was hard pressed to work the levers.

Vithis’s lips moved. ‘Some constructs hit so hard that they were smashed to pieces, yet others are hardly damaged. Why didn’t they repair one and send for help?’

‘This country is so rugged that not even a construct could hover across it,’ said Malien. ‘You’ll see what I mean when we set down.’

His mouth shut like a trap. ‘I’ve seen enough. Go down now.’

The heat radiating from the black rocks hit them like a furnace. They visited the isolated machines, and their dead, before turning to the stone tombs. For Minis, having to pick his way on crutches across the jagged rocks must have been another kind of torture, but he neither complained nor faltered.

Vithis examined the bodies in the mausoleums, exclaiming as he recognised one, and another. ‘My clan, oh my clan.’

It took all day and night, for there were many, many bodies. He checked each one, named it without hesitation; mourned over each, too. Each name seemed to take a little more from him. The lines of his face lengthened and deepened, his eyes became more sunken, his back more bent as the terrible night wore on. Tiaan had to sleep at last, but he was still going when she got up.

‘Ah, Sulien,’ he said, bent over the desiccated rags of a small, black-haired woman. ‘You were the greatest beauty of our times. I once thought to match you with my foster-son. Would that I had.’ Vithis stood up, wiped dust from his eye and shuffled to the next. ‘And you, Orthis – sage, philosopher, dear friend and counsellor, how I need your wise guidance now.’

So it went on – poet, architect, Mother of the Clan, beloved niece – he mourned over every one, as the sun rose higher and sucked up the last drops of perspiration.

‘You survived all this time,’ he said at the last stone mausoleum. ‘If only I had known to look here. Why did you not call? Did you not see my beacon?’

Vithis shuffled out like an old man. His skin had taken on a grey tinge and Minis, beside him, looked even worse. The dried paths of tears streaked his salt-crusted face.

‘Is that all?’ Vithis said hoarsely. ‘There are many missing. Very many that I would have expected to find accompanying these.’

‘There’s still the building constructed from the skins of the wrecked constructs,’ said Malien. ‘Perhaps some you’re looking for lie within.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could I have forgotten it? Or is it that I dread what I will see inside?’

They went up the path to the metal building and began to go through each of the rooms, Vithis leading, Minis struggling along behind. Tiaan noticed that Irisis and Nish were not following and was glad. It didn’t concern them.

Vithis turned into a compartment that Tiaan and Malien had missed previously. On pallets on the floor lay an old man and an old woman, their dark robes covered in a dusting of windblown salt. They were thin to the point of emaciation and the woman’s arms were folded across her breast; the man’s lay by his sides. They too looked as if they were sleeping.

Vithis looked down, saying nothing. A single tear welled in his left eye. He ignored it. ‘Uncle Mumis, Aunt Zefren. Why didn’t I hear your cries?’

Luxor tapped Tiaan on the shoulder and jerked his head at the entrance. She went out, followed by Malien and all but Vithis and Minis.

‘Clan mourning,’ said Malien to the clan leader beside her. ‘What comes after, Tayel?’

‘I can scarcely bear to think.’

A good while later Vithis emerged, more stooped than before, and more haggard. His eyes sought Tiaan out among the gathering.

‘There are more.’ It was a statement.

‘Upstairs.’ She hesitated, unsure what he wanted, then pointed.

‘You will take me there.’

Tiaan led the way. This time only Minis followed, leaving his crutches at the bottom and hauling himself up the steps. At the top, by the children’s room, she stood aside to let Vithis past. The doorway was no higher than her head but he was so bowed that he passed through freely.

He walked to the centre of the room, looked at the beds, and gave forth a cry of anguish such as Tiaan had never heard from a human throat. She turned to leave him but his arm shot out and caught her hand.

‘Stay! See what you’ve wrought by debauching my foster-son with your alien allure.’ Tears coursed down his cratered cheeks. ‘You seduced him with your charms and your deadly stone, and for that First Clan is no more. Ah, the children, the children!’

‘Foster-father,’ cried Minis. ‘Have you lost your wits? We called out for help, remember, and when she answered we used her innocent infatuation –’

‘Be silent!’

‘You approved every action we took, Foster-father, and if the gate went wrong that was due to what you did with it after it opened.’

‘It had already gone wrong. I was trying to put it right.’

‘If it did go wrong,’ said Malien, who had come up quietly, ‘and I know it did, then you must look to your own enemies, Lord Vithis. Ask yourself who wanted to see the end of First Clan. And who seized that opportunity, when Inthis were first into the gate, to be rid of them?’

‘No!’ cried Vithis, putting his hands over his ears. ‘I will not hear this. It is Aachim first and clan second, as it has always been. No one would attack another clan at such a desperate time. No one!’

He turned to Minis, who was leaning against the wall, panting. ‘And you are just as culpable. Why could you not cleave to your own? What was so wrong with the women of First Clan that you had to call out across the void for an old human mate ?’ The very words were a curse.

‘You know it wasn’t like that,’ began Minis. ‘I was asked to join the call.’

‘For help. Not for a mate . You could have had anyone, even beautiful Sulien who now lies out there, shrivelled like a piece of dried meat. Our clan, the greatest and oldest of all, is dying, yet you have not produced so much as a half-Inthis child. What have I done to make you hate me so?’