Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

Tiaan might have gone down to ground, as she had done before, disabled the flying controls and hovered to Lybing. It was the sensible and responsible thing to do. She hesitated over the choice, but only for a second. The capricious amplimet was all the excuse she needed. Hope triumphed over despair and she turned south-south-east, towards Snizort. She felt guilty about it, but if there was a chance to repair her back … Was it so terribly wrong to take it?

As Tiaan vanished from sight, Vithis turned away from the window hole, so angry that he had to sit down. Minis was white and shaking. Despite everything, Nish felt like cheering.

‘Watch where she goes,’ Vithis screamed. ‘Track her! Offer mighty rewards for true information, and dire threats for false. Hunt down the people who once served here. The survivors can’t be far away. Take the names of all informants. Han, bring my fleet here and signal to the others. We are going after her with every construct we have.’

He hunted down Gilhaelith’s servants, in their cave hideouts, and tortured them. They told him nothing, for no one knew what Tiaan was up to, and Nixx, the only one who might have had an inkling, could not be found.

More than two weeks went by before they discovered their first lead, for Tiaan had flown into thick overcast and her path away from the mountain was unknown. Now they knew that she had gone west and south. The fleet flowed down the Great North Road through Borgistry, to the alarm of its citizens. They had to go that way – there were few paths through Worm Wood and none were suitable for carts, much less constructs.

The convoy swelled as other detachments rejoined Vithis’s force. Beyond Clew’s Top and The Elbow, his fleet broke into a dozen fronts that spread across a hundred leagues, some going west to Taltid and the lands north of there, some south to Nihilnor and Oolo, and others back east by Saludith and the Moonpath to cover the Borgis Woods and Three Knobs, and even the passage through the mountains to the Misty Meres. A system of flags by day, and flashes by night, enabled communication from unit to unit across that distance. Vithis was determined to find Tiaan no matter which way she fled, though she could be anywhere by now, even over the Sea of Thurkad.

At the end of the third week, an old sighting placed her in the vicinity of Gospett, a town in southern Taltid, not far from Gnulp Forest. The main force headed that way, but near Gospett the trail went cold. Vithis called in the informers and questioned them personally, but could learn nothing more.

‘The lyrinx may have her,’ he said.

‘Send an embassy to the gates of Snizort,’ said Tirior. ‘Offer a reward for her, and another for the thapter.’

‘What reward?’ Nish piped up, and immediately regretted it.

Vithis turned a cold eye on him. ‘What the blazes are you doing here? Get out!’

As Nish scurried for the door, Vithis said, ‘There’s only one reward they’d be interested in.’

Nish went cold all over. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘I implore you –’

Vithis strode to the door and hurled him through. ‘If the lyrinx do have my flying construct, offer them alliance!’ he said. ‘Against the old humans. And lock up Cryl-Nish Hlar. He is an enemy alien now.’

Tiaan flew all night and through the following day, taking it slowly and keeping to the clouds. She was afraid that the amplimet would take command, or cut off the force entirely, but it gave her no more trouble. The euphoria of her escape had faded, replaced by an overwhelming worry – how could she possibly find Gilhaelith once she got there? And by irrepressible feelings of guilt – that again she had put self before duty.

It was nearly dusk when she reached Snizort, which lay in the centre of the land called Taltid. From a great height, the tar pits looked like the dark face of the moon. She could see figures moving around on the ground, and some in the air, which meant they were lyrinx. It appeared that Snizort was possessed by the enemy. Nixx had not told her that. What was down there? Walls enclosed a number of tar pits, an area about a league square, though she saw no buildings inside. She dared go no lower before dark.

Taltid proved to be an undulating land whose sandy soils supported only grass, scrub and occasional patches of thorny forest or sand dunes. The flats of a meandering river had once been cultivated but the pattern of fields and hedges was reverting to wasteland. Either the inhabitants had been eaten years ago, or they had fled. Many small, isolated hilltops were capped with round boulders and outcrops of grey stone that might make useful hiding places, if she could get down onto one safely. The area around Snizort was speckled with seeps and boiling springs that stood out from the air in this dry land, surrounded by scrubby forest with blue-grey leaves.

She tried to reconcile what she saw below with what she had read in Nixx’s notes. She had to know what she was facing and there were only minutes of daylight left.

In the zone of seeps and pits, the soil, and the sandstone below it, was saturated with seeping tar driven up from some vast underground reservoir. Over aeons the black, reeking muck had spread away from the vents and set hard, though not so hard that it could not be hacked out with spades or, in the winter months, hammer and chisel. The people of Snizort had been digging solidified tar for eight thousand years, until the lyrinx came. In that time they had excavated a series of ragged pits into the sandstone, the deepest of which was more than ninety spans. One pit lay directly below her. Even from this height the bituminous odour tickled Tiaan’s nostrils.

In the centre of this desolation, within the walls of Snizort, she made out a vast black cauldron of tar, slightly longer than it was wide – the Great Seep. Its surface was streaked with dust and it had a sullen, ominous liquidity. Wisps of vapour touched the seep. It appeared cold, but Tiaan knew the tar was warm enough to flow.

Smaller seeps, pits and bogs of tar ringed the Great Seep for a league around and she would have to be careful of them, in the dark. Warm tar had spread away from the seeps for several leagues more, turning the land into a sterile wilderness. Tar oozed out of the sides of hills and down the watercourses, taking as much as a week to go a single span. In the winter it did not move at all, but once it went somewhere it was there forever, becoming increasingly brittle and cracked. At least, it remained until ingenious humans found a use for it; gradually, the most accessible supplies had been mined.

Many were not accessible. The larger seeps formed tarry lakes from which the hardened material could be taken from the edges, but no matter how much was removed the level never changed, for warm tar kept seeping from below. Thirsty animals, and the odd reckless child, sometimes ventured onto the crusted surface. Their bodies were never recovered. The clinging tar sucked them under, preserving them perfectly, forever …

Tiaan shook herself and came back to the task at hand – to find a hiding place for the night. She had not thought any further ahead. If she had, she would not have dared come at all. What could an unarmed cripple do against a fortress full of lyrinx?

As soon as it was dark, she drifted the thapter towards a cluster of grey boulders, like giant’s juggling balls, that topped a hill a good league from the nearest part of the wall of Snizort. Trees stuck up between the rocks: stubble on a shaven head. It was slow and tricky work bringing the thapter down in the gloom, and Tiaan was sweating by the time she eased it in between the boulders.