'What's that?' said Nish.
The attenuated rumble made by its weight rasping against the bottom and sides of the valley had altered to a sharper, higher note. A mound of ice had been forced up and was tearing at the fresh rock of the mountainside above them. It sounded as if boulders were being crushed to pieces. Rock began to fall. Nish watched it coming and didn't know which way to run.
Ullii screamed, caught his hand and jerked him to the right. She bolted up along the ledge that led away from the glacier. Nish fled after her. Rock roared and cracked above their heads.
This was no landslide but a chaotic fall of ice and rock plucked directly from the side of Tirthrax. A lump of mountain the size of his parents' mansion started to roll. It went straight for a few tumbles, split, and the larger half careered in their direction. Nish could see it out of the corner of his eye.
He ran so hard that blood began to drip from his nose. He was still running after the boulder passed by and thumped down the mountain towards the distant trees. The noise was cataclysmic.
Ullii was already out of sight, amazing for someone who never took any exercise. Nish gained a ridge that formed a natural divide and hurled himself over. He had to roll in the air to avoid landing on the seeker, who lay curled up on the ground with her hands over the earmuffs, desperately trying to block out the sound. Her mouth was open and she was screaming, though he could not hear a thing.
He found the earplugs in her pack, pushed them in and put the earmuffs back. Ullii sat up and said something. He had no idea what. The noise died away. They looked over the ridge. The fall of rock had stopped though the ice was pressing against the mountain right where Ullii had been leading them. The ground shook, several times.
With a roar that dwarfed the previous fall, a larger section of the mountain cracked off. There was another monumental fall of rock and ice. They watched it thunder down. A quarter of an hour later, when the glacier had resumed its normal note, Nish said, 'I wonder if it's safe now?'
Ullii must have thought so, for she began to head up the slope towards the fall. They came over the cusp of the ridge and stopped. Nish could see right inside the mountain. It was like a gash in the side of a termite mound, revealing the living cells within.
'A city inside the mountain!' He saw several levels and grand, highly decorated columns. 'So that's where she went! But why? Is it a lyrinx city?'
'I don't think so!' She shivered.
Dare he risk the rest of the mountain coming down? What of Ullii's other seeings: the flying lyrinx, and that unnamed horror?
'I can see her,' hissed Ullii.
He took no notice; she'd said that many times.
She shook him. 'I can see her, Nish. Up there!'
Following her arm he saw two figures at the entrance. They were too far away for his eyes, though he did not doubt Ullii. For all the difficulty of working with her, he had never known her to be wrong.
'Come on! We can take her!'
Whatever impulse had driven her this far now evaporated. Ullii curled up between two rocks. 'Too late. Too, too late!'
'Well, stay here!' he snapped. The opportunity, that he had never dared hope for, had come. Tiaan was alone but for the child. All he had to do was grab Tiaan, carry her to the balloon, fire it up with tar spirits and get away. It would make up for everything. He would be a hero. Nish ran.
As he approached the ragged tear in the mountain, which exposed three levels of the city inside, Nish began to see bright flashes of light. The figures disappeared.
Ullii screamed and came pelting up to him. 'Don't leave me!' she cried, flinging herself into his arms. 'It's coming!'
Nish did not ask her what. Such pronouncements seldom resulted in anything he could get a grip on. He kept on and she followed, treading on his heels.
They went in through the lower tear, found a spiral stair in reasonably good condition and crept up it. Up two flights, they came out on the level where Tiaan and the child had been. The floor, broken near the entrance, was strewn with mounds of rubble and ice, enough to fill a quarry.
The sight that met his eyes would live in Nish's mind until the day he died.
S IXTY – O NE
Haani was tugging at her arm. 'Tiaan, quickly!' Tiaan got up, feeling frozen solid. A vast, crackling roar surrounded her. Blue icicles hung from the port-all. She smelt dust and vaguely recalled the sound of falling rubble.
Haani tugged her around. 'Look what's happened.'
The amplimet had gone dull but the twisticon was ablaze, colours chasing themselves around its surface, inside, then out, then inside again without any break. The vertical doughnut looked as if it was on fire. The annulus of light from it focussed to a point above Tiaan's head, then spread out again. It had torn a hole through the wall, and in the middle of the vast hall beyond, some hundreds of paces away, made another ring that stretched from floor to ceiling. Air shrieked through it. It must be the gate, but nothing had come out.
Something flashed into her mind, a fragment from the time she had been unconscious: screams, explosions of light and fire, and cries of utmost agony, as if people were being turned inside out. It vanished just as swiftly, but what had followed did not. A background wailing; thousands of souls in grief. Tiaan felt a chill of horror. What had happened to the Aachim in the gate? Where had they ended up?
Up the far end she saw light where there had been no light before. A tongue of blue-white ice had punched through the side of the mountain. Had she made a dreadful mistake? 'The little fool has made the zyxibule the wrong way round!' Vithis had said. What had he meant?
'Do you think we should run away?' Haani clutched Tiaan's hand as the ice scraped and squealed towards them.
'I don't know.' The ice stopped moving. The floor shook twice, and with a rumble more of the mountain wall caved in. Rubble exploded everywhere. Part of the floor collapsed. Most of the ice and rubble slid back out.
They ran towards the opening. It was bitterly cold, for the great glacier that curved around the side of the mountain immediately below them had risen, pushed up against the wall, cracked it open and subsided again. The rock beneath had been ground off like the surface of a road.
Outside they could hear the crack of ice falling, the thunder of its landing far below. Tiaan shivered. Her blouse, pantaloons and sandals were quite inadequate here.
'Something's happening back there,' said Haani.
The great annulus had gone dark. Shadows danced on the wall opposite.
'He's coming!' cried Tiaan, embracing the child. 'Oh, he's coming, Haani!'
She ran forward. A hollow boom shook the floor. A dark shape appeared in the base of the doughnut-shaped gate. The shape pushed, concentric rainbows rippling around it as if it was held back by a transparent barrier.
'It can't get through,' said Haani.
There came a brilliant white flash, followed by thunder. Quakes shook the floor and a flat disc of mist condensed in the plane of the gate. The dark shape pushed through it and, as suddenly, the mist was sucked back the other way.
'What is it?' whispered Haani.
'I… don't know. Perhaps it's some kind of clanker.'
'What is a clanker?'
Of course the child would not know. There were no clankers in this land. The war had not come this far, yet. 'It is a cart that moves by itself, without horse or ox or deer to pull it.'
'Oh!'
It began to emerge, a long, tapering snout of shining blue-black metal, rising to a cockpit ringed about with circular rails, covered by a metal dome like a lid. Wisps of yellow smoke clung to it; fumes dragged out by its passage. The body was long and broad, with bulbous flares and inexplicable indentations and protrusions. The back was cut straight down. It looked like something made by a sculptor, but if so, the greatest genius in the world. It looked deadly, but it was a work of art too.