Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

She often saw other humans: prisoners who did menial duties like cleaning, carrying and feeding. Tiaan now recognised a dozen, mostly men, defeated soldiers taken prisoner and afterwards kept because they had some value. They rarely spoke and few knew her language. All seemed beaten down by their servitude.

One was coming now, a slender man of middle age with straight white hair and skin as pallid as a mushroom. He had brought food to her several times, spooning the green muck into her mouth but never meeting her eyes. His left shoulder was missing a chunk of muscle, doubtless an old war wound. The arm hung limp.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name is Tiaan. What’s yours?’

‘Not allowed – talk,’ he muttered in an atrocious accent.

‘I’ll talk to whoever I want. Hey, come back.’

That was the last she saw of him, or her lunch.

Liett checked the growth and lifted the glass bucket down. Tiaan was about to remark about her missed lunch but thought better of it. The lyrinx looked particularly ferocious today and Tiaan did not want to get the prisoner into trouble.

Not long afterwards the old lyrinx reappeared, along with his bevy of attendants. The torgnadr was set down next to Tiaan. He adjusted his spectacles, pulled something onto the top of his head that rather resembled Tiaan’s jellyfish mask, and frowned. At least, she interpreted it as a frown.

Abruptly he wrenched the mask off and spoke to Ryll in an imperative rasp. Ryll answered, again in submissive posture.

‘ Jjyikk myrr; priffiy tzzukk!’ snarled the old fellow.

Ryll sprang up and lifted Tiaan out, holding her with her legs dangling while the old lyrinx examined them, prodding and poking. He snapped at Ryll, who hefted Tiaan and carried her, dripping muck, along many tunnels before going into a long, narrow room shaped like an amputated finger. He laid her on a central table with a bright light above it, face-down. More probing and prodding went on in the middle of her back. She thought they were probing her legs too, though she could feel nothing down there.

Suddenly the room was empty except for Ryll. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered, very afraid.

He looked away.

Tiaan caught at his hand. ‘Please, Ryll. I saved your life, remember?’

‘And I allowed you to escape from Kalissin. The debt is paid.’

‘Not the debt of friendship!’

‘What?’ he exclaimed.

‘We worked together for months, Ryll. I was your prisoner, yet there were times when we were friends, were we not? Or were you just pretending, so as to get what you wanted from me?’

He seemed … she could not quite say what, perhaps a combination of hurt, embarrassment and revelation. ‘You’re right. We were friends.’

‘Then tell me what is going on. Please?’

Again he glanced over his shoulder. ‘The torgnadr has a flaw. Old Hyull, Husband of the Matriarch, believes it has developed wrongly because of your broken back.’

Did this mean she was useless to them, except to be eaten? ‘What is he going to do?’

‘I don’t know. The torgnadr is strong; the best yet, but because of the flaw we cannot use it. He is furious. I cannot say any more.’

‘But what’s going to happen to me?’ she cried.

Ryll shook his head and walked away.

‘Are we going to look for Myllii today?’ The eagerness shone in Ullii’s eyes. She had asked the same question every day for a week, usually at the most inopportune times. She searched her lattice for him every night but found nothing. She thought about Nish too, but had no way of looking for him; he did not show in her lattice.

‘Not today, Ullii,’ the scrutator said in that absent way a parent uses with a nagging child. ‘I’m busy with the war right now.’

Ullii was not a child and resented being treated like one. Something died in her eyes. She gave Flydd a bitter glare and turned up the hall. The door of her room was closed without a sound.

‘She feels betrayed,’ said Irisis. ‘And I feel I’ve betrayed her. I gave her my word.’

‘I understand what she’s going through, but what can I do? I can’t go cruising across Lauralin for a month in the hope she’ll find him. I haven’t time to scratch myself.’

‘I know that, Xervish. Even so …’

‘You’ve walked the streets all week, asking after him. I’ve asked Muss to put Myllii on his list. For the moment, that’s all I can do.’

And Ullii could be most uncooperative when thwarted. Irisis hoped they would not have to rely on her for anything important, before Myllii could be found.

Everyone was so frantically busy that Irisis hardly saw the scrutator from one day to the next. The Council had been moving their forces in for weeks. They now had sixty thousand troops within a few days’ march of Snizort, escorted by seven thousand clankers. Many of these carried better weapons than before, and were more strongly built, but if the node failed they would be worthless. And without clankers, even that army could not match the twenty-five thousand lyrinx known to be at Snizort.

‘And that’s not even considering the Aachim.’ Flydd was ratcheting back and forth across the veranda, grabbing a tiny break from the endless meetings and messages. She had never seen him so stressed. He could not sit still for an instant. ‘If they join up with the enemy we’re finished. We probably are anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s something wrong, though …’

‘What?’

‘I think Snizort is a trap and we’ve put both feet into it.’

‘It’s not too late to pull back.’

‘I’ve done everything I can to avoid this battle, but Ghorr’s orders are specific and I have no discretion. Even if I disobeyed him and retreated, the blow to morale would be disastrous. And the enemy may have an attack plan for that, too.’

‘Where are the Aachim now?’ Irisis asked.

‘Moving down through Borgistry and Almadin, and in from Oolo and Nihilnor, according to our latest intelligence.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Learn all you can about the node and how its fields are changing. Perquisitor, would you get the Snizort chart?’

Fyn-Mar unrolled it on the boards. ‘The node is not actually at Snizort, but several leagues to the south, well underground.’

‘Underground?’ He frowned.

‘My predecessor mapped it a few years ago, along with others in the area. Usually nodes are associated with some prominent geographic feature: a hill or volcano, a faultline or canyon. This one is not.’

‘What kind of country is it?’

‘Rolling hills.’

‘Is there limestone?’

‘Some.’

‘Mines or caves?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know of any.’

‘Not much help,’ said the scrutator. ‘Go to the location of the node, Irisis. Take Ullii and see what you can find. The field is weaker than when we arrived, so they must be taking out more power than ever. See if you can find any sign of a node-drainer.’

‘That’s lyrinx country. How are we going to get there?’

‘The air-floater will drop you there tonight. Signal when you’re ready to be picked up but be prepared to come back on your own. Just in case.’

Irisis hoped there would be no such eventuality. The node lay twenty leagues north of Gospett, at least five days’ march in this country, even supposing that Ullii would walk at all. She was more sullen and withdrawn than ever.

Irisis and Ullii spent half the night, under a bright full moon, slogging back and forth across the location of the node. Though there was nothing on the surface to indicate its presence, it was one of the strongest Irisis had encountered. Its field extended for nearly twenty leagues in all directions before being overwhelmed by overlapping fields from smaller, more distant nodes. The node itself was compact, little more than a thousand paces across, like the yolk of a fried egg, surrounded by an increasingly tenuous halo of field, the white.