Ian Irvine - Chimaera

‘Your mention of the fate of the Faellem gave me an idea, Malien,’ said Tiaan.

‘I thought it might,’ said Malien.

Tiaan regarded her with a thoughtful smile. ‘Shall we go down and talk to the lyrinx?’

‘But we’ll be branded as traitors!’ said Nish. ‘Flydd will be apoplectic.’

‘I’ll take you back if you like,’ said Tiaan. ‘But I simply can’t stand by and see the lyrinx destroyed.’

Nish and Irisis exchanged glances. ‘I’ve seen enough killing to last me a lifetime,’ said Nish. ‘But …’

‘There’ll be no going back,’ said Irisis. ‘What do we do, Nish?’

‘Now that the war is over, and we’ve miraculously survived it, I just want to go home.’

‘So do I,’ said Irisis. ‘But we can’t. How would we live with ourselves?’

‘You’re right,’ said Nish. ‘Take us down, Tiaan.’

The thapter drifted low above the lyrinx prison, if prison it could be called, for it had no walls. A circle of clankers were drawn up half a league further out, and mind-shocks struck the enemy if they tried to pass beyond boundaries marked by lines carved into the salt. It was a black night and the area close to the clankers was lit, though the camp lay in almost complete darkness. Just a lantern winked here and there to show the shape of the half a million lyrinx – their great army plus all the old, the young and others who would not normally fight.

‘Can we be seen from the clankers?’ Tiaan said quietly.

‘Surely not,’ said Malien. She called down. ‘Bring up the flag.’

Irisis hung a blue truce flag out on a pole, Nish directed the light from a lantern on it and shortly a lyrinx appeared in an open space in the centre of the camp, skin-changed to brilliant, luminous blue. Javelards and crossbows were trained on the thapter as they approached.

‘This could go very wrong,’ said Malien. ‘You do realise that?’

‘Minis found the courage to atone for his failings,’ said Tiaan. ‘How can I do less?’

She set the thapter down a little way from the blue lyrinx, who immediately changed to the black of coal. He was huge and had a golden crest, the only one Irisis had ever seen. He folded his arms and waited. A wall of lyrinx surrounded them, and their colours and patterns were threatening.

Gilhaelith lifted one leg over the side. ‘Do you think showing your face is a good idea?’ said Malien.

‘I’m dying. What do I have to lose?’

Gilhaelith went down and planted the truce flag deep in the salt. The lyrinx made a collective ratchetting sound, perhaps representing a hiss, and surged forward as one. A female voice called a command, they stopped and the circle parted to admit five more lyrinx, two males and three females, carrying lanterns. Four lacked wings but showed blue truce colours. The fifth had thin, colourless, unarmoured skin and translucent, soaring wings. The surrounding lyrinx retreated until the circle around the thapter was about two hundred paces across.

The five joined the golden-crested male, twenty paces away from the thapter.

‘The leading wingless male is Ryll,’ said Tiaan. ‘The colourless female is Liett. I don’t know the others.’

Irisis wondered if they could possibly be the leaders of this vast gathering. They seemed too young. Anyway, the lyrinx were led by matriarchs, so they must be here as translators.

A group of five weathered females moved across from the other side of the circle, but stopped twenty paces away, arms folded. The remaining matriarchs, Irisis assumed.

After a long interval of silence Ryll held out a hand. ‘Tiaan.’ He gave what passed for a smile. ‘Nish; you lead a busy life. I don’t know your name,’ he said to Irisis, ‘though I do remember you. We fought, once, on the other side of the world.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Irisis, taking his leathery hand. ‘And this is Malien, Matah of the Aachim of Santhenar.’

‘Malien from the time the Forbidding was broken?’ said Ryll.

‘The same,’ said Malien. ‘You know the Histories, then?’

‘We know everything we’ve been able to learn about humanity – our Histories that might have been.’

Malien bowed and he did too, then extended his hand. She took it.

Ryll turned to Gilhaelith. ‘In the circumstances, Tetrarch, I won’t shake hands with you.’

Gilhaelith bowed, although with his odd-shaped, elongated frame and woolly head it was not a dignified gesture. ‘In the circumstances, I had not thought you would.’

‘Here is Great Anabyng,’ said Ryll. The black male did not offer to shake hands.

‘My negotiators are Liett,’ said Ryll, ‘whom some of you know.’ Liett shook hands with ostentatious reluctance. ‘Also Daodand, H’nant and Plyyr.’ Ryll indicated, in turn, the other male and the two females, one larger than him, the other smaller than Liett and also lacking skin armour. Plyyr looked almost human. The matriarchs said nothing.

Daodand carried a leather box which he opened to produce ten drinking horns, a large skin and a smaller box containing some kind of crusted delicacy. He squeezed fluid from the skin into the horns. H’nant and Plyyr passed them around, then the morsels.

Irisis surreptitiously sniffed the liquor, which was thick and had a faint citrus odour, a cross between lime and grapefruit.

‘If you don’t like strong drink,’ said Ryll, ‘take only a taste. This hurrj is old and very potent.’

Irisis tasted it with her tongue. It was sweet, strongly flavoured and the spirits burned her nose. She took a small sip, then one of the delicacies, which had the crumbly texture of a sweet biscuit but with a creamy tartness.

‘Why have you come?’ said Ryll.

‘To talk about your situation,’ said Malien.

‘What is there to talk about?’ said Liett savagely. ‘Just get it over with; don’t come here to gloat first.’

Ryll shook his head at her. Liett snapped her wings in his face. Great Anabyng made a peremptory noise in his throat and Liett folded her wings at once.

‘Scrutator Flydd has been outvoted,’ said Malien. ‘The governors have decided that your people are to be expunged. We’re here because we cannot agree to genocide. Yet neither do we want another war the like of which the world has suffered. Accordingly, we have a proposal.’

When she did not go on, Liett said, ‘What is it?’

‘Tiaan?’ Malien prompted.

‘Vithis the Aachim built a tower on the pinnacle of Nithmak,’ said Tiaan, ‘some forty leagues south-west of here.’

‘We’ve seen this watch-tower from the air,’ said Liett. ‘What of it?’

‘It’s not a watch-tower. It was designed to create a portal, to bring Vithis’s lost First Clan home from the void.’

‘The decadent Aachim could not survive there,’ said H’nant in a purring growl.

‘Not even in their constructs?’ said Malien in a frosty voice.

H’nant sneered at the very idea.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘They were found in the middle of the Dry Sea – dead! However, the portal remains.’

‘Get on with it,’ said Liett.

‘There is a world called Tallallame,’ said Tiaan. ‘The third of the Three Worlds.’

‘We know of it.’ Ryll shifted uncomfortably, then glanced at Great Anabyng, who remained expressionless.

Irisis couldn’t help wondering why neither the matriarchs nor their truly great mancer were taking part in the meeting.

‘It is a paradise of forest, lake and meadow,’ Tiaan went on, ‘the most beautiful world that ever was, according to the Faellem. The Tale of the Mirror tells that Tallallame was also … invaded by creatures from the void when the Forbidding was broken. Thranx went there, as well as lorrsk and other savage creatures. Its native people, the Faellem, are no more. Or at least, they are civilised no more.’