Alchymist

'He's going to do it,' she said, awed at Yggur's power.

The remaining soldiers broke and ran, abandoning their weapons.

'To me,' Yggur roared. 'Rally behind me. Flydd, make a—'

An unnoticed soldier behind Yggur brought the flat of his sword down on the mancer's head. The sword broke, but Yggur was driven to his knees. The soldier, gasping for breath, slammed the hilt into the side of Yggur's skull. He slid to the floor, stunned. The soldier pinioned his hands. The ones who had fled ran back, swarming over Yggur and binding him like a moth in a spider's web.

'That's it,' said Irisis.

'There's still a chance,' said Flydd. 'Gilhaelith and Malien each have the power to take on a brace of scrutators.'

'But not all of them together.' Irisis ducked back inside Flydd's room. 'And their mancers at the same time. There's no way out, Xervish.' The room had no window.

Flydd was fumbling in his satchel and did not answer.

'Forget it, Xervish,' she said. 'There's far too many of them. There's nothing you can do.'

'Bar the door and shut up.'

She flung it shut, dropped the heavy bar and pushed the bed up against the door. 'What do you have in mind?' She didn't imagine he could do much, not being fully recovered yet. 'Close your eyes. Turn your back.'

'But-' she began, then obediently closed them and turned away. She'd been down that road before.

'One, two, three …' he said under his breath, then something cracked against the floor.

Sound enveloped the room, a roaring, crashing and crumbling. A piece of stone thumped her in the side so hard that it knocked the breath out of her.

He took her hand. 'You can look now.' The room was full of whirling dust and there was a hole in the floor between them, large enough to have slid the bed down on its end. She could not see what lay below.

Flydd was already knotting the sheet and the blankets together and tying one end to a leg of the bed. 'Go down!' he said.

Something struck the door so hard that it shivered. Irisis grasped the blanket and slid through the hole to the first knot, then past it to the second, and the third. As she was dangling there her feet scraped the floor, though she still could not see anything. The room was in darkness.

Abandoning the makeshift rope, she sprang to one side. Flydd came sliding and bumping after her. He hit the floor hard, clutched at his middle and she steadied him. 'Are you all right?' Just a twinge.' 'Where to now?' said Irisis. 'I'm not sure. Feel around the walls for a door.' He found it first, opening it into darkness. 'This way,' he whispered- "Follow me.'

They eased through the door, tiptoed down a corridor and out into a wider hall that was also dark, though Irisis could feel a cold wind blowing along it. It was not far to the outside. They had a chance, though at the expense of leaving all their friends behind..

'Come on,' said Flydd. 'I think we're going to make it after all.' Irisis clutched her sword and followed, but they had not gone more than a dozen steps before brilliant lights came on before them, and behind.

'Xervish Flydd,' said a voice that was unpleasantly familiar. 'Irisis Stirm. I'm so pleased to see you both again.'

It was Chief Scrutator Ghorr, and he had at least a dozen soldiers with him. She looked the other way and recognised the malicious face of Scrutator Fusshte, with as many more troops, all armoured and heavily armed.

'These are the last,' said Fusshte. 'Let's get the trials underway. The executioners are impatient.'

Their hands were bound behind them and they were marched out of the broken doors of Fiz Gorgo into the bleak yard. The thirty or so prisoners already there, each with their group of guards, were well separated. Yggur's servants and his few surviving guards were treated no differently. All were surrounded by four or five soldiers.

Irisis struggled all the way, suffering many a kick and a cuff across the face from the soldiers. It did not deter her. She fought them until the ropes had worn a collar of skin off each wrist and her raw flesh rasped against the wiry fibres.

'Cut it out,' said Flydd, who was still beside her. He looked up at the vast air-dreadnoughts, hanging in the sky around the walls in perfect formation. Already the attendants were tethering them in place with cables as thick as a man's arm. 'See what we're facing. They've spent half a year planning this. If I know Ghorr, he's left nothing to chance.'

'I'm not giving in,' she gritted. 'I'll never submit to them, Xervish.'

He shrugged. 'Do as you will. It won't make any difference, either way.'

'What do you mean?'

'They made up their minds about us a long time ago. We've got as much time left as the trial takes, and that's the limit.'

For all her premonitions of doom, Irisis wasn't prepared for that. 'But surely they'll take us back to Nennifer. Or Lybing, or other great city, to make a spectacle of our trial and punishment.'

¦Ghorr won't risk it, in case any of us has a trick up our sleeves. Their air-dreadnoughts must contain a thousand people, and that's plenty to witness the spectacle. Among them will be tale-tellers and chroniclers enough to spread the word throughout all the lands of Santhenar. There have been too many humiliations, Irisis. The people are already questioning the scrutators' authority, so this operation has to be quick, brutal and complete. We must all die in the most drawn-out and horrible of ways, as a lesson to everyone else. I wonder what Ghorr's got planned for us?'

'How can you be so calm?' she said.

'To be a scrutator is to be impassive to the worst the world, and your fellows, can throw at you.'

'Impassive!' she murmured cheekily. 'I've seen the proud, imperious Flydd, the irascible, the querulous, and occasionally the mean and spiteful side of you, but I'd never call you impassive.'

'I'm just a man, with as many faults as any other, and I never claimed differently. It seems the worst brings out the best in me. Let me assure you, Irisis,' Flydd gave her the best smile he could manage, 'on the inside I'm quaking. I know what it's going to be like. I've been in their hands before, remember?'

The smile did not help. She'd been expecting to die for a year now, and had long ago inured herself to it. But this was going to be torment, inflicted by people who had made a science of agony.

'I'm really scared, Xervish.'

He rubbed his shoulder against hers, since his hands were tied behind his back and he could not reach her. 'You shouldbe scared. Take comfort from one thing, though.'

'What's that?'

'We're all in it together, and we'll all be thinking of you, as you will be of us.'

'I don't see how that's going to make a difference,' she said bitterly. 'Oh, I suppose it does, in a way. I've suffered alone, and I've suffered with dear friends, and the latter is preferable.'

'Well, if that's little comfort,' said Flydd, 'here's something that should be: We'll all be dead by nightfall.'

'They'll draw our torment out for days. They like to make their prisoners suffer.'

'They won't dare, this deep in enemy territory. The air-dreadnoughts are a powerful force, none more so. And from what we heard earlier, they've got weapons no one has ever heard of before. But even so, air-dreadnoughts are as vulnerable as any other kind of air-floater. It only takes one lyrinx to tear the airbags, after all. In the daytime this fleet might fight off hundreds of flying lyrinx, but if they attacked in their thousands, enough would get through to bring down every machine and all the people in them. That would be the end of the Council, and Ghorr doesn't take chances like that. See how most of the guards up there have their weapons pointed out and up, rather than down at us.'