Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

‘What are you doing?’ Tiaan asked.

Gurteys fitted the rows of straps around Tiaan’s chest, belly and hips and pulled them tight until they pinched the skin. She adjusted the position of the wooden spars. ‘The brace will ensure the bones set in place.’

The brace was uncomfortable lying down. Tiaan could not imagine what it would be like sitting up. ‘How long will I have to wear it?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Well, you’re supposed to be the healer.’

‘A month. Two? Until your back is healed.’ A bell rang and Gurteys hurried out, leaving Tiaan’s garments around her waist.

Gilhaelith thrust the door open. He had been in several times today, but this time, realising that she was half-undressed, he spun on one foot and dashed from the room, shouting orders. Gurteys reappeared, roughly jerking Tiaan’s gown over her shoulders. ‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth!’ she said between clenched teeth.

‘I didn’t say a thing,’ cried Tiaan, but the healer had gone. Why had Gilhaelith reacted that way?

The balloon, carrying no more weight than Nish and the brazier, drifted high and fast. The streaming winds carried it across the Filallor Range, which ran south from the western end of the Great Mountains, separating frigid Mirrilladell from the more equable western lands. The forests of central Lauralin passed beneath unseen. Still out of it, Nish drifted north of Booreah Ngurle in the dark, slowly descending. The brazier had gone out hours ago and the air in the balloon was cooling rapidly. The craft skimmed the top of a solitary tree, floating over scrub towards a broad, sluggish river.

As the sun rose, the balloon just cleared a palisade around a vast encampment crowded with the meanest of dwellings, a refugee camp for some of the millions who had fled the fall of the great and wealthy island of Meldorin. From the top of the hill the Sea of Thurkad could barely be seen. It had rained in the night and the bare earth was an ocean of mud. Nish drifted between two decrepit dwellings before his dangling boots struck the earth and the balloon lay on its side, the last air sighing out of it. Its long voyage had ended.

Nish, roused by his impact with the mud, groaned. Though he was half-frozen, his injuries throbbed. Within a minute he was surrounded by people, all dirty, hungry and staring. Paying him no heed, they took the balloon and brazier apart with ruthless efficiency. In ten minutes every scrap had disappeared, even the scorched rope ladder he had tied himself to. They went through his pockets, removing everything but the lint. The coat vanished from his back but they left him the rest of his clothes. Then the crowd evaporated.

He sat up, still dazed. He had no idea where he was, though it was not cold enough to be Mirrilladell. The place stank of sour water and human waste.

Someone shouted. Drums rattled. He was about to call for help when a small figure came flying out from behind the nearest hut.

‘Quick!’ hissed a young voice. It was a boy of eleven or twelve, a skinny lad. He used the common tongue of the west, in which Nish had become fluent during his days as a merchant’s scribe. ‘Guards coming.’

‘That’s just as well,’ said Nish. ‘I’ve been robbed and I –’

‘Come on!’ The boy hauled him by the hand. ‘If they find you, they’ll beat you senseless.’

‘But I don’t come from here,’ Nish began. Prudence overcame outrage. He staggered after the boy, around the corner, down between the rows and into a sodden space underneath one of the huts. It was barely high enough to crawl through. When he was well inside, the boy shoved a rotting piece of timber against the entry.

‘Shh!’ he said.

‘But –’ Nish began.

‘Wait!’

Nish peered through the crack. The rattle of drums came closer and shortly a squad of guards passed by. Two of them kicked open the door of a hut and stormed inside. Dragging an elderly man from the hovel, they began beating him about the back and body with their sticks. ‘Get to work, you lazy swine! No work, no eat!’

The other soldier made a mark on his slate. They proceeded to the next hut, and the one after, all the way down the line. The old man reeled off in the other direction.

‘What is this place?’ Nish asked. It was all too much to take in.

‘It’s supposed to be a refugee camp,’ said the boy. ‘It’s really a slave city. We work fourteen hours a day, every day of the week, and all we get for it is pig swill.’ The boy seemed older than his years. No doubt kids grew up quickly here, those that survived.

A hundred questions swirled in his head but Nish was too dazed to ask them. ‘My name is Cryl-Nish Hlar, son of Jal-Nish Hlar. He is the perquisitor for Einunar.’ It could not hurt to establish that at the beginning.

‘A perquisitor!’ whispered the boy.

‘I’m just an artificer. I fix weapons, and clankers.’

The boy seemed, if anything, even more impressed. ‘Back home, I used to watch the clankers go by. I always wanted to ride up on top with the shooter. Can you get me a ride?’

‘I will, when I get out of here. You can call me Nish, if you like.’ He held out his hand, forgetting the burn.

‘I’m Colm,’ said the boy, squeezing hard. A blister popped and Nish winced. ‘My home was in Bannador, but I have no home any more.’

‘Where’s Bannador?’ Nish asked.

‘Across the sea; in the mountains.’

‘What sea?’ Nish had no idea where he was.

‘The Sea of Thurkad, of course,’ the boy said scornfully. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘I come from a long way away.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Einunar.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s on the other side of the world. So this camp is near the sea?’

Colm pointed. ‘It’s only half a league, that way.’

‘Are we near a city?’ The Sea of Thurkad was long and Nish was desperately trying to find some geographical point to hang on to.

‘Nilkerrand is up the coast. Not far.’

‘I don’t know that place,’ he said. ‘Can you give me any other names?’

‘Nilkerrand is directly across the sea from Thurkad. Surely even you have heard of it?’

‘Of course I’ve heard of Thurkad,’ said Nish. For millennia it had been the most famous city in the world, the richest, and certainly, to the prudish minds of distant Einunar, the wickedest. ‘It fell to the enemy a while back, didn’t it?’

‘Last autumn. Why were you hanging onto that … bladder thing?’

‘I floated across the Great Mountains on it.’

‘Just like that?’ Colm asked, incredulously.

‘There used to be a basket but I was attacked by a savage beast called a nylatl, the most horrible creature you have ever seen. It’s got claws as long as my fingers, and teeth nearly as big. Its spines are poisoned and it squirts venom out through a blue tongue. I set fire to the basket and exploded the beast to bits. It was the only way to survive.’

‘Really?’ said the boy, in a tone that suggested he did not believe a word of it.

‘Yes, really !’ Nish pulled up his trouser leg, showing the savage lacerations to his calf and the teeth marks on either side, which were red, swollen and hot to the touch. ‘And see this,’ he probed his still-swollen lips with a fingertip, ‘that’s where it got me with its poison. It was aiming for my eyes.’

Colm was impressed. ‘I’ve never met a real hero. I bet you could fight a lyrinx and win.’

‘I bet I couldn’t,’ said Nish. ‘A real hero knows when to fight and when to run.’