'Even your people?' Tiaan whispered.
'Harjax's envoy bound us as well. Perhaps he felt it was a way of allying our sundered kind. Or perhaps he felt as aggrieved as Vithis. I didn't wait to find out.'
And yet you three helped me, at the cost of your own lives.'
'It wasn't just for you,' said Malien. 'There's a higher danger and we can't do without you.'
'The nodes?' said Tiaan.
'The nodes. Bilfis has made a model of the ones near Stassor — those you've mapped — and they're more unstable than he'd imagined.'
'To put it at its bluntest,' said Bilfis, who was a pallid grey, and sweating despite the cold, 'I'm so terrified that I was prepared to break the code of clan-vengeance and become an outlaw. There is a higher duty, when the very world may be at stake.' Nodding formally to Tiaan, he went below.
The remaining Aachim seemed to be assessing her worth. The lean man was Talis the Mapmaker, whom Tiaan had met several times. The stocky one was called Forgre but she knew nothing about him. Without acknowledging her, he followed Belfis and Talis below. A mutter of voices drifted up, in which she heard her own name several times, though she made out nothing more.
Tiaan looked up at Malien, who was staring at her. What was Malien thinking? Was she regretting giving up everything to save her, Tiaan? And poor, maimed Minis, condemned to a living death. Other tragedies, other disasters, though arising out of Tiaan's actions, had ultimately been caused by others. She had done this terrible wrong by herself, out of terror for her life. No, call it by its true name: cowardice. She had maimed the man who, for all his failings, had loved her. He'd been going to help her, she felt sure of that now, and in return she'd hurt him grievously and run away.
'Clan Elienor were blamed for allowing you to escape,' said Malien, 'and have suffered the greatest penalty Vithis could impose. They've been cast out, exiled and their constructs forfeited.'
Guilt overwhelmed Tiaan. The control yoke slipped in her hand and the construct dipped sharply.
'I think you'd better let me take over. Go below and lie down.' Within seconds Malien had ejected the amplimet and taken the yoke. Grim-faced, she flew between the unclimbable peaks.
The day faded. Tiaan lay dozing on her bunk. Malien flew on, torn half a dozen ways. Exile could not hurt her as it did her companions, for among her own people she'd been an outsider since the Forbidding was broken. Even so, to actively defy the entirety of her kind was no small thing. And now Tiaan's life had been laid in her hands — a precious, vital life if the nodes were fading, as Bilfis suspected. What was she to do about that?
Not to mention Clan Elienor. Though the clans had disappeared on Santhenar thousands of years ago, every Aachim knew their heritage. Malien's was the House of Elienor and she was a descendant of the great heroine. Now Clan Elienor were lost somewhere in Taltid. Their homes and means of travel had been confiscated and they had been abandoned to starve in a land stripped bare and plundered by lyrinx as well as human scavengers. Her duty was clear. She must do what she could for her people.
Malien knew roughly where Clan Elienor had to be. They had been left on the coast north-west of Snizort, where they could survive for a time by fishing and collecting seaweed, though when the fish migrated south to the Karama Malama in the winter their position would be dire. There was only one thing to be done. Around midnight, Malien turned south.
Tiaan woke wrapped in blankets but still cold. The thapter was whining furiously, and someone was coughing, over and over. She touched a globe to brightness. It was Bilfis, dabbing at his lips with a cloth that was stained red.
Seeing her staring, he said hoarsely, 'It's nothing. I suffer from mountain sickness. We're much higher than Stassor, here.'
She went up the ladder. It was mid-morning and Malien stood at the yoke, as she had all night.
'We're going back to Tirthrax,' said Malien.
'But you said we wouldn't be safe there.'
'Not for long, anyway,' Malien said tersely. 'We'll fill the thapter with provisions and other essential items, then head west.'
Tiaan, full of guilt and feeling that she was only here under sufferance, asked no questions.
'I plan to share my exile with Clan Elienor,' Malien went on. 'And ask them about the node problem, though they may not be able to help. The nodes of Santhenar must be very different from those of Aachan. It's lucky I have Bilfis. He's the most brilliant of all our field mancers and if anyone can solve this problem, he can.'
Tiaan took turns with her, winding through the passes night and day, and they reached Tirthrax on the third evening after fleeing Stassor. Malien flew inside and the Aachim got out. Bilfis, still coughing blood despite the lower altitude, came last.
'Stay here,' said Malien to Tiaan. 'Keep watch and make sure it's ready to go at a moment's notice. Forgre, would you set a sentinel at the entrance? I doubt if Harjax's thapters could reach here before this time tomorrow, since he has no relief pilots and they must stop to sleep, but we'd better be sure.'
They were gone many hours, during which Tiaan had ample time to reflect on her own problems, though not to find any resolution. The Aachim reappeared after midnight, wheeling trolleys filled with food and wine, bags and boxes of tools and equipment, a number of volumes of the Histories, plus atlases and charts of the western lands. It took until dawn to pack it all inside.
The sky was clear when they departed, and there was no sign of pursuit. Malien ordered Tiaan to set a course southwest, in the general direction of Snizort, and went below.
After an hour in which she got no sleep at all, Malien came back up. They were now flying over the north-western corner of Mirrilladell, a land of a million lakes and bogs. It looked pretty from the air but was scarcely inhabited, being bitterly cold in the long winter, and a mosquito-ridden hell in the short summer. Folktales told that the insects could bite through metal.
'Would you set down, Tiaan?' she said politely. 'Bilfis is no better. Even this height is troubling him.'
Tiaan settled the craft on a bare island in a braided stream milky with glacier-ground rock. They helped Bilfis out. He could not stop coughing.
'I begin to wonder if it can be mountain sickness,' said Malien. She unfastened his coat. 'Hold! What's that?'
There was a fresh stain on the back of his shirt. Bilfis raised a limp hand. 'It's nothing. A chip of stone hit me during the escape.'
'But that was days ago — let me see.' She tore off his shirt. Just below the shoulder blade a little green blister bulged out, leaking pale fluid.
'It's a flac!' said Malien in a rigidly controlled voice. 'Talis, my healer's bag, quickly!' 'What's a flac?' said Tiaan. Malien did not answer.
'A tiny, burrowing dart,' Bilfis said weakly. 'It releases a slow poison into the blood that affects the breathing. It has to be cut out at once.'
And never to be used against our own kind,' said Forgre grimly.
'It was intended for you, Tiaan,' said Bilfis, 'but you swerved unpredictably and I obviously took it instead. An irony, some might think.'
Talis raced up with the bag. Malien selected various bladed tools as well as a long thin pair of tweezers.
'It's too late,' Bilfis said. 'It'll be part-dissolved by now, Malien.'
I have to try. Hold still.'
She began to cut into him. 'There, I see it; she said after some time. 'Tweezers, Talis.'