The sight that met his eyes would live in Nish’s mind until the day he died.
SIXTY-ONE
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.
‘It is like a clanker,’ Tiaan said to herself, ‘only larger. A dozen people could fit inside, and all their gear. How can they work metal so beautifully?’ Beside it, the manufactory clankers would look like the work of a village blacksmith. She longed to see inside it and know how it was made.
‘But it hasn’t got any wheels,’ said Haani.
There was nothing under it but a dusty, yellow-glowing blur, and it floated well above the floor. Moreover, it did not make the groaning rattle that alerted the whole world to the coming of a clanker. All she could hear was a low whine and an occasional hiss.
‘It … It’s a construct!’ said Tiaan. ‘It must be.’
The construct emerged from the gate, turned the other way, back towards them, and stopped. Another appeared behind it, followed by a third. Tiaan felt an indefinable foreboding. These vehicles seemed ominous rather than welcoming.
‘Haani,’ she hissed. ‘Go behind me. Scuttle around into the ice and hide. Don’t come out until I call you.’
‘But Tiaan, what’s the matter?’
‘Do as you’re told! At once!’
Haani sucked in her breath, gave a muffled sob and crept away. Out of the corner of her eye Tiaan saw her scuttle across the rubble-strewn floor to her left. Tiaan crouched down behind a fallen column.
She felt like weeping too. What must the child be thinking? That disaster was about to strike again? Not if she could stop it! Tiaan climbed onto the column.
The three constructs floated up the hall. More appeared from the gate, one after another. They were practically touching as they came out. Within minutes there were hundreds of them. All had the same overall shape but there were many variations in detail, and in size, from constructs that might hold fifty people to others that could scarcely have contained a family. Some had people running beside them, or clinging onto the outside.
The machines crept towards her, spreading out behind the first three until they formed a rank twenty wide in the vast hall, and a hundred deep. And still they came pouring from the gate. Two thousand already. If each held only a dozen, that was twenty-four thousand people. Minis had said a few thousand. Still, they were just a drop in the lake compared to the millions of humans. These Aachim with their amazing constructs would be a great help in the war.
Tiaan stood in the middle of the hall, completely alone. They came to within fifty paces, then stopped, every one, in the same instant. It was incredible. Eerie!
The central construct cracked open at the top, the dome tilting back to reveal a platform on which seven people stood. Most were dark-faced and near a head taller than their human equivalents. Not all, though. One, a woman with pale skin and red hair, was no taller than Tiaan. All were armed with bows, swords or other recognisable weapons. At the rear a man sat in a turret, behind a spring-fired weapon resembling the javelard of a clanker.
The construct to the left of the first came open, followed by the one on the right. Six Aachim stood on each platform. Tiaan scanned the faces for Minis but did not see him. They looked exhausted – bruised, battered and soot-stained – yet they had about them a lofty dignity. Despite their travails they were dressed richly. Tiaan glanced at her own finery and quailed. She was covered in dust, the hole in her knee gaped and she knew her hair was a mess.
A tall man pushed to the front of the platform of the central clanker. She recognised Vithis, though he looked haggard. His eyes were staring and he seemed to be having trouble mastering himself.
‘Who are you,’ he boomed in the common speech, ‘who stand before the might of the Aachim?’ His voice was richly resonant; a voice used to command. The accent was strange, the language stilted, and like Minis he pronounced every letter separately, giving his speech a sense of deliberation.