‘Shall I carry you to your room?’ Ryll said, bending down.
Pillowing her head on her arms, she snuggled down and closed her eyes. ‘Perfectly comf …’ Tiaan fell into sleep.
Moonrise over a boggy plain. The luminous light reflected brassily off a hundred thousand little ponds, some no bigger than a tablecloth. Rushes threaded their way between them.
Tiaan was sitting on a reedy mound, the sole vantage point in that dismal scape. It moved as she did, like a sodden, floating haystack. There was no track through the mire; no escape!
A movement caught her eye, some way off. The reflection of the moon on one pond had been eclipsed momentarily, as if something had disturbed the smooth plane of water. She stared at the spot for ages. The blink did not recur, but as Tiaan resumed her watch there came another flash to the left of the first, and a third to her right. She looked behind her but saw nothing. All was dark there.
Turning back, Tiaan saw that the ponds were winking everywhere, the flashes of light and darkness getting closer. Whatever caused them was headed directly towards her.
The moon rose higher. A cool breeze made her shiver. Tiaan stood up, staring at the approaching streamlines. She caught the distant chuckling of agitated water, growing ever louder until it became a thrashing roar like the wind-driven paddle-wheels in the coastal fish ponds below Tiksi.
Then she saw it – an elongated shape diving into a pond not fifty paces from her mound. It thrashed across, thick legs moving like paddles and sending gouts of water high. The moonlight illuminated the translucent tips of spines. It resembled Ryll’s creature, only grown monstrously large. An elongated head, an enormous mouth full of teeth, spiky sides and underneath, a spiked club for a tail. Worst of all was the glittering intelligence in its eyes .
Another creature left a trail across a nearby pond. They were everywhere, pounding toward the mound as if racing to get to her first.
She stood up on tiptoe. Now the dark behind her was cut by hundreds of phosphorescent trails. The moon reflected off bleached eyes and grey teeth. Tiaan whirled around and around. They were everywhere; thousands of them. She felt at her waist. No knife; no weapon at all.
The creature she had first seen was ahead of the others. It hurled itself into the pond next to her mound, sending up twin deluges. Mud and reeds were flung in the air. It was three times her size .
It reached the near side of the pond. The flat feet slipped on the wet stems of her mound. Claws snapped out, took hold, and it came out of the water in a rush. Its spiked snout gaped. It lunged .
Tiaan screamed and woke up. It was just a crystal-induced nightmare, to be expected after such overuse of the amplimet.
As Tiaan stood, she saw something fingered in a beam of moonlight from the window. It was Ryll’s creature in its cage.
Come closer.
She spun around, thinking that someone had whispered behind her, though the sound had been unlike any lyrinx voice. The room was empty. Tiaan approached the cage. The creature pressed its snout through the bars. Its eyes were fixed on her.
Closer, closer!
Tiaan stared at the little beast, which was like the one in her dreams, only small. It looked … She did not know what, but deadly.
Hungry.
Recalling the fate of the rats it fed on, she reached for a strip of dried flesh in a basket and held it out, carefully. The creature watched her, unmoving. It was not looking at the meat. Its eyes were fixed on her fingers.
Hungry!
Tiaan moved closer, reaching out until the strip touched its snout. She felt mesmerised by the eyes; the call.
It sprang, hitting the bars so hard that the cage jerked forward. The jaws snapped just a breath away from her fingers. She leapt backwards with a squawk and the forgotten helm fell off. Instantly the whispering in her head stopped, the mesmerising power of its eyes faded. The creature, vicious though it was, was just a wild animal.
It had bent the bars. Tiaan put a heavier cage over the first, weighed it down with a block of metal and went out. A guard escorted her to her room, where she locked the door behind her. Three times that night she woke in a lather and ran to the door, to check that it was still locked.
Tiaan told Ryll about the incident, though not about the impulses it had put into her head via the helm. She did not want him to know that – he might be even more pleased with his creation.
The following morning she woke with a streaming nose and a throat so sore that she was unable to eat. She was confined to bed; there was no possibility of working.
Three days later, when she returned to work, Ryll’s creature had grown to twice its previous length. It had a body the size of a small house cat, longer and thinner legs, and segmented armour plating through which the spikes grew. A reinforced cage was required to contain it.
‘It’s going wonderfully well,’ Ryll exulted as she took her place on the stool. ‘Come see.’
She did not move.
‘Come on, Tiaan.’ He took her hand and pulled. Her reluctant feet dragged across the floor.
The creature fell into a crouch, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on her. It began to hiss. The flattened spines erected and the neck skin inflated into spiked rings.
She stopped dead. It was trying to get at her mind and it felt stronger now. Had she been wearing the helm, Tiaan was not sure she could have resisted it. Hungry! was a whisper inside her head.
Ryll urged her forward by the elbow. She allowed herself to be drawn closer. No harm could be done to her while he was here. As Tiaan took the last step the creature launched itself at the bars. The cage, which had no bottom, rocked and might have toppled had not Ryll slammed a fist on it. The creature twisted and flashed for the opening but the side came down, pinning it to the bench by the tip of one spine.
Pulling away, it flung itself from one side of the cage to the other, letting out ear-piercing squeals of rage and frustration. It attacked the bars with its teeth, breaking several, then just as suddenly sat on what passed for haunches, staring at Tiaan. The look in its eyes made her catch her breath.
‘It’s a wild thing!’ Ryll scratched his cheek cheerfully.
She was backing away when the animal protruded a rolled blue tongue through warty lips and squirted something at her. The fluid struck her brow, eyebrow and left eyelid, and immediately began to sting and blister.
She cried out, vainly trying to wipe the clinging, noisome stuff away. Ryll bounded across the room and heaved half a bucket of water at her face. The next second she was hanging upside down, her ankle clutched in his hand, while he scooped water and washed the poison off.
In a few minutes it was gone, though where the venom had landed was covered in fluid-filled blisters and the hairs of her eyebrow were falling out. Ryll sent a guard to her room for Tiaan’s pack. She changed her clothes, washed the contaminated ones and spread them on the warm floor to dry. They continued their work.
‘I’m afraid of this creature,’ she said to Ryll that evening. ‘It hates living things.’
‘The rrhyzzik and snizlet aren’t completely integrated. They’re fighting each other; that’s why its behaviour is so odd.’
It’s more than odd, she thought. It’s an obscenity, and I helped to make it. ‘What if … you can’t fix it? What if it turns on you?’
‘Me?’ He laughed. ‘That little thing! I’d kill it and start again. It will be easier next time.’
She said nothing. If only she had pretended to be stupid from the beginning, this could never have happened.