‘Why didn’t you say so?’ snapped Yggur.
‘I’m constrained by my oath not to speak about our secrets,’ said Malien. ‘Already I’m treading a finer path than I care to.’
‘Considering that your people exiled you and sentenced you to clan-vengeance, you seem overly fastidious. How do you know the amplimet will do what we require?’
Again Malien hesitated before answering. ‘I don’t know what it will do if it’s unleashed. Amplimets are capricious.’
‘What if we were to threaten it?’ said Nish.
Irisis was amazed at Nish’s audacity. How could he, with neither talent for the Art nor any sensitive abilities, presume to tell the mighty their business?
‘That’s a good idea, Nish,’ Flydd said thoughtfully. ‘A very good idea. Provoke it and make it lash out. It’ll either go for the node, or attack what it perceives as the threat. The scrutators won’t know what hit them, and in the chaos we go in.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Yggur. ‘We’ve no idea what we’re doing.’
‘It could do anything,’ said Malien. ‘And what if we can’t get to the amplimet, to put it in the platinum box?’
‘Our troubles will soon be over,’ said Flydd. ‘Unfortunately, it’s our only option so let’s vote on it right now. Do we provoke the amplimet and risk the consequences, or run home and let the Council drag the world to ruin?’
He went around the table one by one and wrung reluctant agreement out of them. ‘We’re all in save one. What say you, Malien?’
‘We do it,’ she said after a long hesitation, ‘and if it goes terribly wrong, I pray none of us live long enough to realise the enormity of our folly.’
TWENTY-TWO
As soon as the platinum box was finished they gathered their gear, shrugged on their heavy packs and climbed down the ice-crusted ladder into the darkness. They dared not take the thapter closer; the Nennifer field was under such strain that any drain of power from outside the fortress must arouse suspicion. It would take most of the night to get close enough to wake the amplimet. And even if they succeeded, they had to attack on foot, and in the blackest of nights, when not even the sentries on the watch-towers could see beyond their noses. That meant before midnight tomorrow night, when the moon rose.
Nish heard a series of clicks: Malien locking the thapter. They couldn’t spare any guards for it, not that a couple of guards could defend it anyway if a patrol came upon them. Nish shivered. Leaving the thapter so far away seemed like burning their boats behind them. He took a couple of noisy, crunching steps. It was impossible to move quietly on the loose gravel.
‘Hold on,’ said Irisis, taking him by the arm. ‘Flydd wants to say something.’
‘Why didn’t he say it inside?’ Nish grumbled, for his breath was already freezing on his moustache.
The dullest of glows appeared, lighting up the faces of the group. She pulled him into the circle, facing the wind. Nish’s eyes began to water and the tears to freeze.
‘Fusshte knows we have the thapter,’ Flydd reminded them. ‘He probably isn’t expecting an airborne attack but he’ll certainly be prepared for one. The only thing he can’t be expecting is an attack on foot.’
‘Because only the biggest fools on Santhenar would think of it,’ said Yggur sourly. ‘If we are to go for this folly, let’s get moving.’
‘Once we approach, we must be exquisitely careful,’ said Flydd. ‘The guards are always watching. Always waiting.’
Nish gathered his cloak around him, feeling out of his depth. There had been a long debate as to the safest method of waking the amplimet, or threatening it, most of which had been so arcane as to be incomprehensible. He wished he’d slept instead. His head throbbed from the stale air in the thapter and he had a leaden feeling behind his temples.
‘Flydd must be out of his mind,’ he muttered to Irisis. ‘Lust for revenge has blinded him to reality.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Malien is afraid,’ he went on. ‘Even Yggur is against it. I –’
‘We voted,’ she said in a dead voice. ‘We’re going in.’
‘But I –’
‘Shut up, Nish!’ Irisis hissed in his ear. ‘We’ve got a long march ahead and you’re not helping.’
‘And a horrible end when we get there.’
She must have picked up his despair, for Irisis turned and put her hands on his cheeks, looking into his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Nish,’ she said more kindly. ‘You’ve been working towards this day since you escaped from Snizort.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m not terrified,’ he muttered.
‘We all are. Anyway, I’m supposed to be the doom merchant. Don’t push me into the caring role – you know I’m not comfortable with it.’ Giving the lie to her words, she linked her arm through his and they set off.
It was a long and miserable trudge across the slopes of the mountain, as cold as anything he’d experienced, though nothing happened to distinguish one gritty, sliding step from another. Because of the altitude, walking was hard work and he was soon so short of breath that talking at the same time wasn’t worth the effort.
Near the tail end of that exhausting night they ran into a steep ridge of quartz that puckered the mountainside vertically like a badly healed sword slash. Klarm had noted it from afar, from the thapter. They felt their way up it in the dark, eventually finding a fissure large enough for the fifteen of them to hide in. Nennifer lay below and to the east, little more than a league away. They could go no further until Malien had done her work on the amplimet.
They put up a pair of tents, set out the guards and crawled in for whatever rest they could steal before the attack.
Malien cleared her end of the tent by the simple expedient of creating a golden bubble from her fingertips and allowing it to expand until it enveloped her completely. Whatever else it touched was pushed out of the way.
‘What’s she doing?’ whispered an awed Inouye.
Malien was dimly visible inside, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed and her long fingers extended along her thighs. The shimmering luminescence of the globe cast moving lights and shadows across her face and body. She looked ageless, cunning, fey.
‘She has her own unique form of the Art,’ Yggur said quietly. ‘As do I. Hers doesn’t rely on the field, so she can scry without the scrutators detecting her.’
‘At least, we hope so,’ said Irisis.
Yggur glared at her, then went on. ‘We can, of course, draw on the field at need.’
‘How long is it going to take?’ said Nish.
‘However long it takes,’ snapped Flydd from his sleeping pouch. ‘Now keep your trap shut. I need my sleep.’
Flydd must be in constant pain, Nish thought charitably. He’d always been irascible, but now he was angry all the time. Nish wriggled around against the side of the tent, trying to find a comfortable position. Irisis elbowed him in the ribs. He sighed.
The golden bubble popped. ‘I’ve located the amplimet,’ said Malien.
‘What, already?’ The words burst out of Nish.
Everyone turned to stare at him. He flushed. ‘I thought it would take hours,’ he mumbled. ‘Thought there’d be time for sleep.’
No one said anything, which was worse than if they had.
‘It’s not sealed away,’ Malien said. ‘And, judging by the peculiar orientation of the field, the scrutators are working on it now. They must have barriers up to prevent the amplimet taking more than a trickle of power.’
‘Then they know the danger it represents?’ asked Yggur.
‘We have to assume that they’ve discovered everything Tiaan knows about it,’ said Flydd.
‘Tiaan has a way of revealing only what she wants to,’ said Malien. ‘But I agree – it’s safer to assume that.’