Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

‘Ullii, is there any way you can signal the air-floater with your lattice?’ On the way, Ullii had attempted to explain what she’d done. It had made no sense to Irisis.

‘No one else can see it,’ said Ullii, as if she were talking to a fool.

‘What if you moved it around Flydd, the way you got me out of my cell?’ Irisis knew she was talking nonsense as soon as the words left her mouth.

‘Can’t,’ said Ullii, quivering. She looked like she was going to have one of her fits.

‘Where is your little mouse?’

Ullii felt in her pocket and some of the strain faded. ‘He’s here.’

‘Can I see him?’

Ullii brought him out. The little creature gazed steadily at her. Its whiskers twitched.

‘He’s smiling at you,’ Irisis said. ‘What a brave little mouse he is.’

Ullii managed a smile of her own as she returned the mouse to her pocket.

People were running above, along the cliff edge, calling out to each other. ‘Down there,’ Irisis heard someone shout.

‘Do you think you can do anything to call Flydd?’ Irisis said softly.

‘Don’t know how.’

‘Look in your lattice, Ullii. Can you see the air-floater, and Xervish?’

‘Yes.’

Why was the seeker so changeable and difficult? ‘Do what you did to the door. It may make Flydd realise we’re here.’

‘Won’t,’ Ullii said. ‘You don’t know the lattice.’

‘Please try.’

‘Can’t.’

Ullii’s talent was as stubborn as she was. Maybe it, like her courage, appeared only when she had no other option. That was not necessarily when she was threatened; in such cases she normally put her head in the sand. But when someone she cared deeply about was threatened, Ullii could be a tiger. Was her lost brother the key?

‘Where is your brother, Ullii?’

‘Don’t know,’ she said sullenly. ‘Left me. Hate him.’

‘You don’t hate him,’ said Irisis, waving the lantern with her free hand. The air-floater rose ever higher, well out over the depression of Kalithras. In a few minutes it would be beyond sight or signal. And minutes after that, Ghorr would have soldiers down here on ropes. ‘You miss him terribly.’

‘Don’t!’

‘If Myllii has your talent,’ Irisis chose her words very carefully, ‘the scrutators might be using him too, now that he is grown up. He might be in danger.’

Ullii gasped and shook her head from side to side.

‘If we can just get away, in the air-floater we can fly across half of Lauralin. If he’s in the east, you’ll surely see him in your lattice.’

The seeker was silent. Tears ran down her face.

‘Ullii, do something. Try to call the scrutator. He will find your brother, I promise.’

Ullii closed her eyes. A knot appeared on her delicate jaw-line. Irisis held on to her pliance and tried to follow what she was doing. For an instant faint marks appeared in her mind, surely the lattice, with the colours of the field sweeping through them. One tiny pair of spots among thousands flared bright, the lattice rotated sickeningly and then the glimpse was gone.

There was a roar and blast just outside. Irisis, who also had her eyes closed, thought that Ghorr had dropped some exploding device. A gale of wind slammed her back into the wall of the pipe. Her eyes sprang open as the air-floater materialised beside them, ripples racing across its airbag like waves on the sea. The cabin was right next to her, shuddering violently under the force that had translated it instantly across a thousand spans of space. Flydd stood just a span away, his eyes wide with an expression she had never seen on his face before: sheer, naked terror.

He swore a series of oaths, looked up and saw her there with her mouth open. Reacting instantly, he threw one of the grappling ropes. She grabbed it.

‘Ullii,’ she screamed. ‘Get aboard.’

Ullii was across in an instant, leaping right into the scrutator’s arms.

‘Spear Irisis!’ roared Ghorr from above. ‘Don’t let her get away.’

‘Jump!’ yelled Flydd.

Irisis went across in a great leap that took her over the rail, to slam into the canvas wall of the cabin.

Flydd pushed her to one side, threw his arm up and fire roared forth, perilously close to the airbag and its explosive contents. Irisis did not see what happened on the clifftop, for the air-floater gave a mighty lurch, shot away from the cliff and up. As they rose above the edge, soldiers came running across the paved area with spears and crossbows, but by then it was too late. The air-floater was swiftly rising out of range.

Irisis sketched Ghorr an ironic salute, then had to go inside and sit down. Her knees folded up as she reached the bench. Ullii was underneath, in her favourite corner, rolled into an armadillo-like ball.

‘I don’t know what you just did,’ Flydd began, ‘but –’

‘I didn’t do anything, Xervish. Ullii did it. With her lattice.’

‘But …’ Flydd stared at the motionless seeker, ‘that’s not possible.’

‘I know, but she got me out of my cell without breaking Ghorr’s spell.’

‘ Or setting off the alarm,’ said Flydd, bemused. ‘And now this. How was it possible?’

Had Irisis not been so exhausted, she would have laughed at his expression. ‘You’ll have to ask her yourself, but don’t expect to make anything of it. She did it under duress. I forced her, to save her brother.’

‘Ah, her brother.’

‘You know about Myllii?’

‘Of course. As soon as Ullii’s talent became apparent, the scrutators went looking for him.’

‘And did they find him?’

‘I don’t know. I was out of favour by then. But if they haven’t, they’ll spare no effort after this.’

‘And to get Ullii back too.’

‘Indeed. They’ll put our little seeker to very good use if they get their hands on her.’

The flight took six days. They curved west then south around the edge of the Great Mountains, since the air-floater could not rise high enough to pass above them. They floated over the plains and braided outwash streams flowing from a hundred glaciers; then, leaving the mountains behind, drifted south-west across the rift valley with its Great Chain of Lakes and its lines of volcanoes. Beyond, they passed south of a smoking Booreah Ngurle. The Great North Road was on their left, running across the downs of Borgistry. The southern section of the Worm Wood curved round in front of them, taking many hours to pass below, before finally they were over the undulating grasslands and scrub of Taltid.

The pilot took them across the fuming pits of Snizort at a great height while the scrutator looked down with his spyglass. Navigator Nivulee stood beside him with her own, preparing a map for later use.

‘Precisely where is the node here?’ asked Irisis.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Should I wake Ullii and ask her to look for it?’

‘Let her sleep. When we’ve seen enough we’ll go on to Gospett, which is about twenty leagues south of here, over the River Zort and the Westway. The perquisitor there will tell us what we need to know.’

The pilot came running. ‘Lyrinx taking to the air, surr.’

Flydd focussed his spyglass. ‘So they are. Go higher than they can fly. Head for Gospett.’

They were there in a couple of hours. Gospett turned out to be a walled town built of brown stone and orange brick, heavily fortified against attack by lyrinx. Wicked-looking javelards were mounted along the walls, and others set in tall towers clustered inside. The surrounding land was cultivated, though there were signs that more distant holdings had been abandoned.

‘How long can Gospett last, with Snizort so near?’ said Irisis.

No one bothered to answer.