Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

Ryll bellowed. A small lyrinx came up the row and Tiaan recognised her too. Her thin, translucent skin and the magnificent, colourless wings distinguished her from every other lyrinx. Liett had never liked Tiaan.

‘Take her clothes, please,’ said Ryll.

Liett, recognising Tiaan, roared with laughter. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘She’s broken her back.’

The smile vanished. Liett examined Tiaan, then pulled Ryll away and spoke rapidly to him in their own tongue. Tiaan could read his expressions well enough to know that he was troubled. They debated for some minutes, after which Liett began to strip her.

One hand sufficed to hold Tiaan while the other deftly unfastened her coat and shirt down the front. Soon the boots, trousers and underwear had gone the same way.

The lyrinx looked her up and down. ‘What pale, helpless creatures you are without your clothes. Shall I put her in?’

‘Be quick!’ Ryll looked ill-at-ease.

Liett lifted Tiaan in one hand, her useless legs flopping back and forth, carried her to the cube and poked her feet into the top opening. The surface resembled gnarled bark dotted with brown nodules like wooden eyeballs. The peppery smell grew stronger, as did that other, uncomfortable odour.

The cube contained a thick yellow-brown mass. Liett let Tiaan go and she slid into it. It was cool with the texture of jelly, and rose to the level of her armpits. It felt horrible, clinging but slippery. Her skin began to tingle.

‘What are you doing?’ she cried. ‘What is this thing?’

‘ You might call it a patterner,’ said Ryll, putting the amplimet around her neck and adjusting it so it hung lower, between her breasts.

‘It is going to pattern you,’ said Liett with a toothy smile.

‘No!’ screamed Tiaan, and kept screaming until the patterner next to her began to shudder and quake.

Tiaan saw an eye looking at her. Two eyes; another woman, no older than herself. The woman’s eyes went wide and she began to scream, a higher, more shrill sound than Tiaan’s. The same thing happened on the right.

Shortly the whole room was shuddering and screaming. The patterners must have been sensitive to it, for they began to judder violently.

Ryll ran to Tiaan and shook her by her bare shoulders. ‘Stop it!’

She broke off momentarily, but the other women kept on, and soon Tiaan found it easier to scream with them.

‘What are we going to do?’ Ryll shouted.

Liett yelled back at him but the racket was too loud. She ran out, returning with a bucket whose contents sloshed from side to side. Taking a dipper, she forced some through the bared teeth of the woman at the end of the line. She choked, stopped screaming and her head sagged to one side. Liett did the same to the next and all the others, up the line to Tiaan.

The room was quiet again. Tiaan looked Liett in the eye; Liett looked her back. ‘Well?’ said Liett.

‘I want to see Gilhaelith,’ Tiaan said miserably. ‘Unless he’s being patterned as well.’

‘He’s a male !’ Liett said scornfully.

‘Females are better for patterning,’ Ryll explained. ‘Only rarely have we found a useful male. If I bring him, will you cooperate?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiaan. For the moment .

Liett resumed her work, whatever that was. Ryll was away a long time. Tiaan resisted the impulse to scream as the jelly slid back and forth across her skin. Small sucker-like objects attached themselves all over, tugging at her skin as the gunk moved in slow swirls.

The door opened. Ryll had Gilhaelith by one arm; he looked frail beside the lyrinx. They came up the row. Tiaan’s heart beat wildly. What had he been going to tell her before the lyrinx captured him?

‘ Tiaan! ’ Gilhaelith staggered and fell against the patterner. ‘They caught you after all.’

‘I came after you. I’m a fool, aren’t I?’

He touched her cheek. Coming from him, it was more powerful than an embrace. ‘Why didn’t you flee when you had the chance?’

There was no sensible answer to that. ‘What are they doing to you, Gilhaelith?’ she said softly, expecting to hear some story as horrible as her own.

‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘They want me too much.’

‘What for?’

‘They’ve lost something in the Great Seep and I must find it.’

‘ Don’t! I know the price of aiding them.’

‘Ah, Tiaan,’ he said, ‘if only you had not come.’

‘You were going to tell me something about my back.’

‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned it,’ he said bitterly. ‘I can’t do anything for you. You’ve given yourself into the hands of the enemy for nothing.’

‘I must know, Gilhaelith.’

‘All right, but it won’t do you any good. Far off, across the sea, dwells a great mancer who has devoted his life to the healing Arts. I thought he might be able to do something for you …’

‘At what price?’

‘Seven years service.’

‘It would have been worth it.’

‘That would depend on what kind of master he was,’ said Ryll from the background, ‘and what sort of service.’

‘It could hardly be worse than what you require of me, for no return,’ she flashed.

‘It could be very much worse.’

‘The matter is irrelevant,’ Gilhaelith interrupted. ‘Neither you nor I will ever be in a position to meet him.’

He was tall enough to look down into the aperture of the patterner and Tiaan saw that he was staring at her bare chest, only partly concealed by the jelly. It made her angry – even at a time like this, he could not see beyond the physical. The longing in Gilhaelith’s eyes was a painful thing to behold. He was practically shaking with desire. Had he really missed her that much?

Then she realised, with utter mortification, that he was not staring at her chest at all. It was the amplimet he wanted, and was determined to have.

Even as Ryll led him away, Gilhaelith kept looking back for it.

Ullii woke with a headache and a profound feeling of loss. Somehow the fleeting touch of her brother had made things worse. It had been a touch, she felt sure. It was not just a dream. Ullii trusted her instincts. Myllii was out there somewhere and she was going to be reunited with him.

She wandered the echoing halls of Nennifer wearing her earmuffs, and her earplugs and noseplugs, all day. Her sensitivities seemed particularly acute in this place. No one hindered her. They were not troubled by the ‘little mouse’, as Ghorr so sneeringly referred to her.

Ullii liked the name. Mice knew how to hide and protect their secrets, and the secret of Myllii was one she particularly hugged to herself. Her brother was alive and looking for her. And he had her seeker’s talent. She was glad to know that. She wanted him to be just like her. Lacking her supersensitivity, he did not have the talent as strongly as she did. That pleased her selfish heart; a tiny reward for all she had suffered.

She could not find the scrutator or Irisis, though they were both still in Nennifer. She would have known had they been gone. The thought of Xervish Flydd leaving her in this place filled her with terror, and not only because of the Council, who would use her talent then cast her aside. If she remained here, Ullii knew she would never find her brother. She had searched the lattice as far as it reached, but could see no sign of him. He must be far away, and only Flydd and Irisis could take her there.

As she wandered the corridors that evening, a stone’s throw down the long hall the Council were trooping into their dining room for dinner. She heard Scrutator Halie mention Irisis’s name. The door slammed.