Ian Irvine - Chimaera

The globe stopped while Ghorr inspected the new arrival, then whirled away to orbit Yggur’s limping, failing sphere. White light forked out, once, twice, and two more inner globes exploded. Ghorr raised his good arm and a treacly brown fan of light touched Yggur’s outer sphere, which dissolved from the base like sugar in the rain. The last surviving globe, with Yggur still inside, fell to the milky floor where it stuck fast in the gooey remnants of the sphere.

Nish ran towards it, pulling out his sword as if he could break the sphere and free Yggur from his magical confinement. As he came close Yggur sagged against the wall, then stood up straight and forced out his arm, sending a final blast at his nemesis.

Had it been a ruse to lure the chief scrutator close? Nish allowed himself to hope so. Surely Yggur had been playing with Ghorr, just waiting for this moment, and was now going to destroy him.

Red lightning forked out from Yggur’s fingers but a counter-blast turned the surface of his globe into a mirror, outside and in, that reflected the blast back on him. Nish didn’t see what happened inside, though he could imagine the effect on human flesh of so much power expending itself in such a tiny space. The mirrored sphere turned black, then white and silver again, only to burst around its equator, emitting a circumferential blast of steam.

It fell in two halves, which spun like tops across the floor. The empty half went whizzing by Nish. The other spiralled directly towards Ghorr’s sphere, stopping just a few spans away.

Ghorr stepped through his inner sphere, then the outer, though the opening closed behind him at once, leaving Irisis trapped inside. He walked up to the slowly rotating hemisphere, which was still steaming.

Nish ran, though he knew it was all over. Even had Yggur survived that terrible back-blast he would be helpless against Ghorr, who seemed to be growing stronger as the battle went on. He would reassert control over the Council, attack Fiz Gorgo a second time and regain the thapter as well as all the prisoners. Victory was within his grasp.

Nish skidded to a stop beside the hemisphere. Yggur lay inside, his long frame clenched into a ball, his hair a frizzy mass of black. His clothes had been turned to char while his exposed skin was coated with soot. He lay unmoving.

Ghorr prodded Yggur with the platinum-shod tip of his staff. Yggur did not move. Ghorr jabbed it hard into his ribs. Nothing.

‘A pity,’ Ghorr said dispassionately. ‘A great man and a great mancer – probably the greatest of all, before me . I could have learned much from him. But, like many a great mancer down the aeons, hubris was his downfall. He fought me all the way but neglected to protect himself against his own power.’

He turned to Nish. ‘My guards let me down last night, in failing to ensure that you were taken. They will pay for it.’ He raised his hand.

Nish’s sword grew too hot to hold. He dropped it and it fell straight through the white floor. Nish rubbed his burning palm.

‘But not nearly as much as you, Cryl-Nish. Oh, how you’re going to suffer.’

Irisis had watched despairingly as Yggur’s defences were broken, globe by globe, but she plunged to the depths of the abyss when Nish suddenly appeared on the edge of the platform. Why had she been so reckless? How could she have imagined she could overcome Ghorr? She’d assumed, because he’d previously fled like a craven cur, that he was a broken man. A cur he undoubtedly was, but he was still the strongest and best-equipped mancer on Santhenar.

Yggur was beaten, broken and probably dead. The burning sword fell from Nish’s fingers and disappeared through the floor. Ghorr had everything except the thapter and soon he would have that as well. Oh Nish, why didn’t you stay away? She couldn’t bear to think of Ghorr torturing him. She’d sooner take the pain on herself.

She felt all hot and congested; her face was bloated from hanging upside down. Irisis pushed against the wall and found that she could move a little. She heaved and thrust until she got herself right way up, but could go no further.

Irisis couldn’t hear what Ghorr was saying, though she’d spent enough time in his hands to imagine it. He would be treating Nish to a picturesque description of the excruciations to come. Ghorr would torture Nish on the spot to discover the whereabouts of Malien, the thapter, and his last remaining enemy, Xervish Flydd.

And Nish couldn’t hold out, for he felt pain keenly. Then, as Ghorr gestured over his shoulder in her direction, Irisis realised that Nish’s torture would only be the first act. He’d soon switch to torturing her in front of Nish, and Nish would snap. He’d tell Ghorr everything rather than be the cause of a friend’s agony.

There had to be a way out. If Ullii had been stronger-minded, she might have saved them, but even at the best of times Ullii could only perform her wonders to save herself. She’d rescued Irisis back in Nennifer purely because Ullii had felt so threatened. Unfortunately, Ullii wasn’t directly threatened now.

And then a possibility popped into her head. What if she, Irisis, were to attack Ghorr the way she’d killed Jal-Nish’s mancer on the aqueduct a year ago?

Under the most desperate duress, Irisis had constructed a concealed packet of pure force and manipulated it to the place from which Jal-Nish’s mancer had been drawing power from the field. The power had been too much for the mancer to bear. It had blown her to pieces and Ghorr had been so threatened by what Irisis had stumbled upon, all unwittingly, that he’d tortured her in fruitless attempts to uncover the secret. Fortunately Ullii had spirited her away from Nennifer first.

Yet Jal-Nish’s mancer, strong though she had been, could be no more than a novice compared to Ghorr. Moreover, Ghorr could have gleaned enough from Irisis’s tormented ramblings to fashion a protection for himself. If he had, attacking him this way was tantamount to suicide. But she had to try.

Taking her pliance from around her neck, Irisis clasped her hands around it, careful not to let Ghorr see that she’d recovered it. Hands in front of her as if begging, or praying, she sought for the field. It was all around her, and very strong here, swirling in threads and streaks of red and blue, plunging into fringed sinkholes, and arching out again. The sinkholes were the draw points that supported this whole phantom architecture in the sky.

Nish cried out. Irisis couldn’t hear it through the wall of the sphere, though she saw his face contorting in agony. The field vanished and she couldn’t find it again. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look upon his torment and do what she had to do. Wrenching the field back into her inner eye, Irisis scanned it for the place from which Ghorr was drawing power.

Ah, he was clever. Yggur had created this phantom labyrinth, but Ghorr maintained it by drawing from five or six parts of the field at once. That would make it difficult to do what she had done before – perhaps impossible. Moreover, he did not draw power through a simple object like a crystal or pliance, as all mancers she knew did. Ghorr used a myriad of such devices linked together on a belt studded with crystals and linked by threads of wire. It spread the load throughout his body and protected him from overloading – though, in truth, he was such a powerful mancer that it might not be possible to overload him.

Defeating him was as far beyond her as reaching to the moon. Irisis unclenched her fists, opened her eyes and Nish doubled up in such agony that she could feel it. How could that be?

Nish fell forward and Irisis saw Ullii contorted behind him. Nish’s pain was hurting her and she was broadcasting it throughout her lattice. So Ullii hadn’t completely lost it.