Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

‘What is it?’

Ghorr drew Flydd away from Irisis’s hearing. ‘The lyrinx have dug a great system of tunnels into the stone surrounding the tar pits and seeps of Snizort. The area is walled and heavily defended, but the locale has a natural vulnerability –’

‘To fire!’ said Flydd. ‘You plan to set fire to the tar seeps and burn the lyrinx out, straight onto our spears and javelards.’

‘Just so.’ Ghorr showed his irritation. ‘But it will not be easy, even with a mighty army. To get close enough to bombard them with flaming catapult balls will take every man of the sixty thousand we can muster in the west, and the seven thousand clankers that support them. And even that may not be enough. The lyrinx know how susceptible Snizort is, yet they continue to expand it. It does not make sense.’

‘Unless it’s so vital to them that it’s worth any risk. In which case they probably have secret defences,’ said Flydd.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of using air-floaters to attack the place?’

‘They can’t carry enough weight to be useful in an attack. And they’re too vulnerable.’

‘I thought as much.’ Ghorr walked away, then came back. He seemed more tentative now.

‘You want something of me?’ said Flydd.

Ghorr was staring at the paving stones. ‘Your coming is, er, at an opportune moment. The news you bring, even more so. We have a problem. Rather, a fatal flaw in our plan.’

Flydd waited for him to go on.

‘The node at Snizort appears to be weakening,’ said Ghorr.

‘Snizort has one of the greatest of all nodes. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Unless they are drawing more from the field than the node can replenish. If so, what are they doing there? Nothing to our advantage, you can be sure.’

‘Or they may have a node-drainer in place,’ said Flydd.

‘Why would they drain their own node?’

‘To siphon power directly, for other purposes. Snizort is known to be a centre for flesh-forming. Perhaps they’re flesh-forming an army there.’

‘We may suppose any outlandish idea at all, but it won’t help us to win the war. We’ve been planning this assault for months. It was to be the greatest battle of the war, but without a secure field to drive our clankers we dare not move. We’ve discussed this and …’

‘You want me to go there?’ said Flydd. He did not look surprised.

‘As soon as the buoyant air in your floater can be replenished. You will take charge and find out what is happening at the node. Base yourself at Gospett. We have people there. Halie will give you the details. Your main task, which is more vital than all others, will be to make contact with Vithis and bring the Aachim into the war on our side.’

Flydd nodded. ‘At any cost?’

After a long silence, with Ghorr consulting his colleagues, he said, ‘Yes, at any cost, if there is no other option. You must use your discretion. Don’t give up our –’

‘I will give away nothing but what it takes to secure the alliance,’ said Flydd. ‘What else do you require of me?’

‘One more task,’ said Ghorr. ‘If the enemy have put a node-drainer in place …’

‘Yes?’

‘Find it, and destroy it.’

Five simple words, so easy to say, but they were his death sentence. No human could get into such a heavily guarded place – Ghorr knew that as well as he did. It was Ghorr’s revenge, and it was perfect. Destroying the node-drainer was vital to the war and the chief scrutator had given a direct order. Flydd could not refuse.

He looked into Ghorr’s eyes. The man hoped he would refuse, so he could dismiss him as a scrutator. A death sentence either way. Flydd was not going to give him the satisfaction.

‘If I destroy the node-drainer, if there is one, they will simply replace it.’

‘If they were easy to make, the lyrinx would have dealt with every node on the planet by now. Since they’ve only attacked five or six, we must assume that’s all the devices they have.’

‘Assumptions are perilous things,’ said Flydd.

‘Destroy it!’ said Ghorr.

‘That may be … difficult .’

‘I’m sure it will be, but we all have our duty to do and it is frequently difficult. If you are having second thoughts; if you don’t have the courage –’

Flydd’s eyes met those of Irisis. She read nothing there.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I will take it on, surr .’

Ghorr smiled for the first time. Prominent teeth gave him the look of a hyena. ‘Good. We’ll have dinner inside, brief you fully and then it will be time for you to go. But not you, Irisis. You and Ullii will stay behind.’ His smile broadened. ‘There is much you two can teach us.’

Ullii gave a terrified squawk and scuttled under Irisis’s arm.

The seeker had been escorted to her own room, away down the other end of Nennifer from Irisis’s. It was a cold, shabby little place, suited only for the lowest of servants. That did not bother Ullii, for she took no account of her surroundings. It had a door that kept the sound out, and that was all she cared about. It allowed her to take off the earmuffs she wore everywhere. They were as comfortable as human ingenuity could make them, but still irritated her.

Ullii undressed and washed in a bucket of cold water. She rinsed her spider-silk undergarments, carefully spread a clean set on the bed and lay down on them. She could not bear anything else against her skin. Closing her eyes, she retreated to the security of her mental lattice, a matrix in which she tried to fit all the world within range of her strange talent.

Security would not come. Nennifer was not a pleasant place. It had whole floors of mancers, artisans, artificers and other craft workers, all labouring on devices for spying, control, domination or war. They created such aggressive knots in her lattice that Ullii had to build walls around them, for her own sanity.

And now the scrutator was being sent away. Despite the grudge she held against Flydd for forcing her to search for crystal, months ago, Ullii relied on him. He had been a friend, before he was mean to her. He was still her protector and treated her more kindly than anyone ever had, except her beloved Nish. But Nish was lost and now the scrutator was going away. She relied on Irisis too, but Irisis was being held by wicked Scrutator Ghorr, who was surely going to do something dreadful to her. Who would look after Ullii then?

Who had ever looked after her? In all her previous life, only old Mancer Flammas, who had put her in his dungeon and forgotten all about her. She still thought kindly of him for that. In the cool dark she had found peace from the noise, the sight and smell of humanity, not to mention the world that had so tormented her. In his dungeon no one had troubled her. They gave her food and drink, hosed out her cell at intervals, and left her be.

But that had changed one day when she was sixteen. She had disturbed something unpleasant in her lattice, began to scream and Flammas remembered her. Jal-Nish Hlar took her away and the nightmare of the world resumed. He had treated her kindly at first, though only because he wanted to use her talent. She knew what he was really like. She could read the knot he made in her lattice all too clearly.

Ullii’s thoughts went back to the years before Flammas’s dungeon: that terrible time, beginning just before she was four, when something had woken her hypersensitivity. Life had become such a nightmare that her family, unable to understand what the matter was, or beat it out of her, had cast Ullii out.