A day later a glob of matter began to grow at the bottom of the jar. On the third day buds formed into two limbs, then four, then many, then back to four again. Its shape seemed not fixed; or was Liett’s flesh-forming constantly changing it? Tiaan suspected that Liett had added other tissue to the jar when no one else was there. Once she noticed a fresh circular scab up in the lyrinx’s armpit. Had she used her own tissue? If so, she had taken pains to conceal it. Perhaps that was forbidden.
After a week the creature began to grow rapidly, the limbs branching over and over again until it resembled a four-armed starfish, each arm terminating in a dozen smaller ones, like fingered, coiling tentacles.
In a fortnight, when the creature’s body was the size of an egg and the limbs spread to six times that size, it began to show signs of coordination, if not intelligence. All the lyrinx in the spire came to see it, crowding into the room in small groups. There were hundreds of them. Gloom settled over her. She would never escape.
Tiaan rubbed her arm. The injury had been slow to heal and the neat circular scar still ached. Repelled, horrified and fascinated in turn, she could not keep away from the jar. The creature was unique, bizarre. Each of its extremities was different: some like fingers, others resembling claws or probes, bundles of feathers or threads as fine as silk. Some she could imagine a purpose for, others she could not. What did Liett have in mind for it?
The creature began to grow scaly plates all over its body. The plates thickened until the arms could no longer move. It lay on the floor of its jar for a day, whereupon Liett took it out and killed it with a single thrust from a carefully cleaned knife. As she did, pain sheared through Tiaan’s head. It passed without after-effects, apart from uncomfortable feelings of empathy for the dead animal.
Liett dissected the corpse, made notes and reduced it to pulp for her next experiment. However, the next three attempts were failures; the creatures terminated within a few days.
Ryll was as busy with his own flesh-forming. His creations were all of a type – an elongated body, heavily armoured and spiked on the underside, long, armoured legs, a spiked club for a tail and a spiked, fanged, plate-armoured head. His experiments likewise were not going well. Tiaan often saw what she now recognised as stress-patterns on his skin: chevron shapes in blacks and reds.
Tiaan could not fathom why that particular form was so important to him, and Ryll would not say. He made his creatures over and again, using tissue samples of unknown source. Each time, when they reached the size of a fat mouse, Ryll collapsed from the strain. His creatures would keep growing for a day or two before falling down in a twitching, uncoordinated mass. Ryll would groan and bang his sensitive crest on the wall. There would be yet another conference with Coeland and other senior lyrinx, much shouting, yelling and violent skin-talk, then they would all go away and Ryll, as soon as he was able, returned to his work.
‘I wonder …’ Ryll said late one night, about a month after Liett had taken the sample from Tiaan’s arm.
Tiaan looked up from the crystal. The work made her nauseous and all she wanted was to go to bed and shut out the world. It was hotter than ever down here; she could not adjust. For most of her life she had been cold. Now she yearned for it. She slept with her window open, whatever the weather. When not sleeping she stood at the window, staring across the lake to the smudges of snow-blanketed forest in the distance, and wondering if she would ever reach it. In the two and a half months she had been held here, there had been no chance to escape. She was not permitted to go anywhere unescorted and was always locked in at night.
‘What?’ Tiaan said, indifferent.
Ryll was staring at the many-armed creature growing in Liett’s jar. It was still tiny – no bigger than a thumbnail.
He looked over his shoulder. The gesture seemed furtive. His colour changed to iron-greys and browns, a camouflage so brilliant that Tiaan could only see him when he moved. She did not think Ryll had any idea he’d done it. What was he up to?
Liett had gone to her chamber some time ago and would not be back until the morning. She began early; Ryll worked late, perhaps so that they needed to spend the least time in each other’s presence.
Striding to the door, Ryll thrust a finger in the lock. It gave a gentle snick. Furtively he picked up Liett’s jar and carried it to his bench. He fed his own creature, the size of Tiaan’s thumb, a knockout pellet. It went still. In seconds Ryll had it out of the cage, made a careful incision from neck to tail, clamped the major blood vessels, scooped Liett’s tiny creature from the jar, blew it dry then put it into the incision, with the body at the base of the skull and the tentacles trailing down the back.
With deft stitches he fixed the creature inside, rejoined the blood vessels, sutured the wound and spread a clear jelly over it. Tossing the needle on the bench, Ryll held his armoured creature in one hand and began flesh-forming. Tiaan’s brain fizzed.
After an hour or so, the creature gave a single, feeble kick. A thread of purple ebbed out under the jelly, which had formed a clear skin. The creature kicked again and lay still.
Tiaan crept across to stand beside Ryll, who looked saggy today. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘The heat down here does not suit us. We are beings of the cold void.’
She had noticed how sluggishly he moved in the lower levels. ‘It does not seem to bother Liett.’
‘Liett doesn’t have skin armour.’ He turned back to the cage.
‘Is the creature dead?’ she whispered.
‘Not yet!’ A muscle twitched in his neck. ‘But it’s in shock. I should not have tried. It’s too small.’
‘Could you not start at an earlier stage, as with your own children in the void?’
‘We don’t know enough about other animals.’
They watched the creature for hours. It did not move, or even look to be breathing, though Ryll said it was still alive. Finally, when it was nearly dawn and the creature lay as limp as ever, Ryll rose.
‘I must sleep, at least for an hour.’
‘And I. Liett will be coming to drag me out in two.’
She dozed with her mind full of flesh-formed images and woke feeling hot, claustrophobic and not a little horrified that a part of her had gone into the creature. She was at the window, gulping down lungs of frigid air, when the bolt clicked.
Liett flung the door open. ‘Come. I have had an idea. We must work swiftly. You will channel power for me and there can be no mistakes.’
Tiaan dragged herself down the ladders, wondering what would happen when Liett discovered what Ryll had done.
‘What is the matter with you today?’ Liett snapped. Tiaan had stalled halfway down, hanging from the ladder like a dead spider.
‘I worked most of the night with Ryll.’
‘Waste of time!’ Liett gave her a playful buffet that crashed Tiaan into the wall.
Liett squeezed through the entrance, scowled at Ryll, who was frowning down at his creature, and headed for her bench. Tiaan’s brain began to fizz. There was barely any colour in Ryll’s skin, and no pattern, just a uniform dull grey. It must be taking all his Art to keep the creature alive.
‘Where’s my snizlet?’ Liett held her jar up to the light. Ryll was too preoccupied to answer. ‘What have you done with it?’ she screamed.
He did not look up. She bounded across the room, lifted Tiaan by the shoulders and shook her. ‘What has he done with my snizlet?’
Tiaan’s head was nodding so hard she could not speak. She simply pointed to Ryll’s armoured creature.
Liett dropped Tiaan and flung herself at Ryll. Her claws scored down his side, carving a gash between his skin plates. Setting down the cage, he whirled and lashed out.