No one came to collect the eggs. Kalissin Spire had been known as a place of evil spirits long before the lyrinx secretly entered it. No humans crossed the uncannily warm waters of the lake. Just to look up told them what a forbidden place it was. The skies of Tarralladell were overcast for half the year but over Kalissin a circle of clear air was often ringed by great storms, and the iron fangs of the spire were struck by lightning more frequently than any other place in that land. The evil ones were recharging their death spears, folktales told, preparing to wreak havoc on the world in their night ridings. And just occasionally, a fisher on the furthest shore of the lake would look up to see winged creatures wheeling and soaring high above, and know it was all true.
Being a creature of the void from which the lyrinx had come, the remains of the comet drew the invaders to it. The crater, and particularly the honeycombed iron peak, were things they knew and understood – part of their own environment, in a way. But it was more than that. Comets are bodies of unimaginably vast energy, and this one had not expended all its potential in its fiery plunge into the ground. The fall, the impact, the melting and the rising of that iron froth had created an instability. The metal shaft which ran deep into the earth was out of equilibrium with its surroundings. That instability, that node, represented a mighty pool of energy waiting to be tapped.
Comets are strange things. Wandering the heavens for billions of years as they do, their matter attains inexplicable properties of great value to practitioners of the Secret Art. Lyrinx who had this ability coveted cometary iron above all things, and Kalissin Spire represented the very acme of their desires. They brought their best and most creative intelligences here, to envelop themselves in the energy fields; to eat, breathe and sleep surrounded by this, to them, most magical of all substances.
Kalissin was their greatest workshop and laboratory. Here the lyrinx in their individual cells went about their urgent project. Clankers had inflicted enormous casualties on them and they were not numerous enough to support such losses. They had to find a defence.
Unfortunately they had not discovered how to tap the power of Kalissin. Just being within the fields helped, but it was not enough. It was frustrating to be surrounded by more power than they could ever use, and not be able to draw on it. They wanted the amplimet; more importantly, to find out how Tiaan used it to take power from the field. All this Tiaan learned, directly or indirectly, in her first days in Kalissin.
A week went by. Tiaan was fully recovered, apart from a tenderness in her shoulder. The lyrinx had not treated her unkindly, and fed her better than she had ever eaten at the manufactory. At first she insisted on being shown the source of her meals, but soon realised that they respected her beliefs and taboos. The lyrinx would no sooner have fed her human flesh than they would have eaten their own dead. Besides, they mostly ate fish from the lake. Tiaan was soon sick of their diet: grilled fish, a kind of soupy algae, and a root vegetable like a pungent turnip. She had the same every day.
She was housed in a cluster of rooms near the top of the pinnacle. Their shape, like iron bubbles, was hard to get used to. The walls were curved, dark metal with streaks of rust. Her bedroom had a circular hole cut through to the exterior for fresh air, and a cap of green volcanic glass to close it when it was frigid outside. She seldom did. The iron conducted heat up from the depths, keeping the whole of Kalissin warm. The hole was too small to squeeze through.
The droning music was less audible here, and higher-pitched, more like a raspy oboe. The lyrinx had bored holes through the outer bubbles to make wind horns. The wind blew constantly around the heights and the horns never stilled their mournful voices.
None of these things gave Tiaan any comfort. Desire for the amplimet was a constant ache and the pangs grew worse every day, though she was helpless to do anything about her craving. She had learned to undo her door lock the first night but was caught within minutes. They did not harm her, but simply returned her to her room and fixed a bolt on the outside.
Every day they questioned her about the amplimet and the nature of her art and craft. She refused to answer, though with each day’s separation from the crystal that grew harder. Soon, Tiaan knew, she would tell them everything, just to have it in her hands for an instant. And she had to have it. It was her only hope of getting free. Most important of all, it was the key to Minis’s survival. In all her troubles she never lost sight of that ultimate goal – to get the amplimet to Tirthrax in time.
How she regretted telling Ryll about withdrawal, but it was too late for that.
‘What are your people doing here?’ she asked Ryll on the eighth day. ‘Are you trying to make your own clankers? Is that why you’re so interested in my craft?’
‘We would hardly duplicate the weapons of our enemies,’ he said coolly. Relations had been strained since she’d defended him.
‘Why not?’
‘That way lies degeneration. It would be going against our own nature. Any device we use must come from the wellspring of our lives and traditions.’
‘But surely it would be easier …’
‘What do we care about easier?’ he said savagely. ‘We are not human! We do not exist to make things easier for ourselves! Better, yes! It is the struggle that matters, else we will soon be as depraved as …’
He had been going to say ‘as you’. She forbore to state that it would be worth it to win the war. It was already clear that, to them, the end did not justify the means. Only means that were part of their culture would ever be employed. ‘What are you trying to do?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Another difference between lyrinx and humans. They did not lie, as a rule. They just refused to answer.
‘Then what do you want me for? Since I’ve been here I’ve done nothing but eat and sleep. I begin to worry that I am being fattened for your dinner table.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but was not convincing.
Undoing the cap on her window, he thrust his muzzle into the opening. When he finally pulled away there was a ring of ice around each eye. ‘We’re watching you and learning about your kind. We think you will be able to help us.’
Tiaan shivered. An icy wind was blowing straight in today. ‘Your own efforts with my amplimet have not been successful?’
‘What makes you think that?’ he said, interested.
‘Your manner with each other, and the tones of your voices. I am learning about lyrinx, too.’
‘What else have you learned?’
‘You never talk about your Histories, Ryll.’
He closed off at once. ‘We are the lost people. We have no Histories.’
‘What do you mean?’
She did not expect an answer, but after striding about the room in some agitation, and closing the door, Ryll came back to her.
‘We patterned our unborn children in the void, that our kind might survive. And we did. We thrived. Thereafter we did it again and again, patterning our babies in the womb to meet each new threat. We survived; we increased; but we do not fit. We no longer know who we are.’
There were hundreds of lyrinx in Kalissin and a good proportion had one deformity or another – lack of wings or claws, inadequate armour or pigmentation, inability to change the colour of their skin. Tiaan wondered about that. Were they reverting to what they’d been before they re-formed their bodies in the void? None of them, even the normal ones, quite seemed to belong. The following day she was taken down a series of iron ladders, some straight, others corkscrewed, to a series of rooms halfway down the spire. The temperature increased with every step and in these middle chambers it was unpleasantly warm.