Irisis beat on the glass. He simply sneered and turned away. ‘Did you really think I’d be taken in that easily? I’ll crush him like the roach he is. I’m not going to give him any chances.’
‘What about my secrets?’ she said plaintively.
‘I’ll have all the time in the world to devote to you, Crafter Irisis, once I’m back in Nennifer at the head of the Council and you’re hanging upside down on my dungeon wall.’
SIXTEEN
Nish hung on desperately as the thapter rolled. The note of the mechanism rose a little, then fell again. The machine slipped through the nets before stopping with a jerk that threw him halfway out of the angled hatch.
‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled.
Malien took a while to answer. ‘Ghorr has a lock put on it that I’m having trouble breaking. I can get the thapter to lift, though not enough to make it fly.’
‘Better work fast. We’re slipping through the nets.’
‘I can feel it!’ she snapped over her shoulder. ‘I’m doing all I can, Nish. If that doesn’t work, then falling to our deaths is our fate.’
‘I don’t believe in fate,’ he muttered.
She gave him one of those looks that implied he was speaking above his station. Even Malien, the gentlest and most broadminded Aachim he’d ever met, was not entirely free of the legendary Aachim arrogance.
The thapter slipped further, the mechanism roared and the machine lifted against the meshes before falling back.
‘Still locked?’ said Nish.
Malien didn’t look up. ‘No, but I’m having trouble drawing power.’
‘Ghorr must be using it,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I see it now, and he’s using colossal amounts of power.’ She stood up straight and gently lifted the flight lever; the thapter rose and, with a delicate wriggle and a shake, slipped free of the meshes.
It immediately dropped sharply and she struggled to hold it as she clutched the flight controller with both hands. The mechanism roared and faded. She directed the thapter towards a mud island in the swamp, landing with a thump that splattered mud and reeds everywhere.
‘Are you all right?’ said Nish.
She leaned against the side for a moment, then slid down to the floor. ‘I’m weaker than I thought. Should be able to do this in my sleep.’
Nish stared up at the air-dreadnought. The mist had dissipated everywhere except among the tangled airbags, where it was thicker than ever. A flash made it glow milkily. Something was going on up there.
Malien sat with her head on her knees. Nish tried to curb his impatience as her breathing slowly returned to normal. Ghorr was close to victory, Nish knew it.
‘Malien, we’ve got to help Yggur.’
‘What can I do, Nish?’ she said softly. ‘I can’t force strength where there is none.’
‘Ghorr has Yggur trapped. And Irisis. He’s got them all.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I don’t know, but I am sure.’
‘Where are they? I can’t tell.’
‘Up!’ Nish said urgently. ‘They’re up among the airbags. You’ll have to –’ He broke off, expecting another flash of arrogance.
Malien got up, lifted the thapter and turned towards Fiz Gorgo, shaking her head. The mechanism faltered; the thapter dipped and her fingers worked furiously to bring it back up again. She put the nose down, travelling slowly between the trees. ‘I can’t take him on. I can barely keep this thing in the air.’
‘But …’
‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Nish, but I simply can’t do anything about it. We have to retreat while we can, and hope to take him on later. There’s a right time for every battle and this isn’t it.’ She turned the thapter away.
‘There won’t be a later,’ he said bitterly. ‘They’ll be dead!’
‘Just give me an hour … or two.’
‘We don’t have that long. Ghorr won’t dare linger once it starts to get dark. He’ll kill them straight away, or take them with him to torture them to death at his leisure.’
The thapter dipped again. Malien swerved in through the branches of a swamp forest giant. Nish ducked instinctively.
‘I must rest, Nish. Just give me an hour.’
‘What if you were to let me try?’
‘Try what?’ she said forbiddingly.
‘Just take me up there. I’ve got to do something, Malien.’
‘He’ll crucify you, Nish, then flay you alive. If you could have heard the things Ghorr said about you earlier, you wouldn’t go within a thousand leagues of him. He blames you for everything that has gone wrong today, and rightly so.’
‘I know, and I’m terrified of him, but I still have to go. He hates Irisis even more than he loathes me, Malien, and if he keeps her alive it would only be to wring such torments out of her that the very ethyr will echo with her agony. I have to go to her aid, no matter what the cost. I can do nothing else.’
She took one hand off the controller to grip his shoulder. ‘You’re a true stalwart Nish. I was quite wrong about you when we first met, back in Tirthrax.’
‘I was such a callow, selfish fool then that I can’t bear to remember it.’
‘I’ll drop you up top but after that it’s up to you. I won’t risk the thapter.’
‘If he wins, he’ll be back for it in the night.’
‘And we’ve precious little strength to resist him. But we all must do what we can.’
By the time the thapter hovered just above the white deck, Malien was close to collapse. Nish stepped out onto the surface, whose foundations seemed tenuous in the extreme. Should it fail, or the Art that supported it be withdrawn, none of them would have to worry about the future.
The surviving air-dreadnoughts now began to draw in around Ghorr’s, cutting off any escape, though they made no effort to intervene. They would see the conflict through to the end, and only then would they strike. Or bow to the victor.
Klarm duck-walked Nish’s way, Flangers limping beside him, carrying Irisis’s sword but so worn out that he could barely hold the tip up. Ullii came two steps behind, peering around at Nish as if expecting him to be angry with her. He didn’t have the energy.
‘Where’s Irisis?’ said Nish.
‘Ghorr has her.’ Klarm indicated the closer sphere, presently rolling towards another whose seething inner globes were mostly shattered-glass grey, though a few were transparent. ‘Yggur is in that one, but he’s failing rapidly and I’m powerless to help him.’
Behind them the thapter lifted, almost soundlessly, sideslipped into the mist lower down, and was gone. Ghorr’s great globe rolled around them, rotating slowly, though the inner globe remained in the same orientation no matter what the motion of the outer. Irisis was trapped between the two. The globe stopped, leaving her spread-eagled upside down, staring despairingly at Nish. She waved her hands as if to push him away.
The globe stopped while Ghorr inspected the new arrival, then whirled away to orbit Yggur’s limping, failing sphere. White light forked out, once, twice, and two more inner globes exploded. Ghorr raised his good arm and a treacly brown fan of light touched Yggur’s outer sphere, which dissolved from the base like sugar in the rain. The last surviving globe, with Yggur still inside, fell to the milky floor where it stuck fast in the gooey remnants of the sphere.
Nish ran towards it, pulling out his sword as if he could break the sphere and free Yggur from his magical confinement. As he came close Yggur sagged against the wall, then stood up straight and forced out his arm, sending a final blast at his nemesis.
Had it been a ruse to lure the chief scrutator close? Nish allowed himself to hope so. Surely Yggur had been playing with Ghorr, just waiting for this moment, and was now going to destroy him.
Red lightning forked out from Yggur’s fingers but a counter-blast turned the surface of his globe into a mirror, outside and in, that reflected the blast back on him. Nish didn’t see what happened inside, though he could imagine the effect on human flesh of so much power expending itself in such a tiny space. The mirrored sphere turned black, then white and silver again, only to burst around its equator, emitting a circumferential blast of steam.