‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan was afraid she’d broken his leg.
He sat up and rolled the walker off. ‘Just bruised.’ He rubbed his thigh and winced.
Merryl was lifting Tiaan up when a storm of wind roared down the tunnel outside, banging the door of the storeroom. Dust whirled in the air. ‘I don’t like that, Tiaan. You’d better go.’
‘What about you?’ She wanted to run, to skip. After weeks when she could do nothing at all, she wanted to race down the tunnels like a child.
‘I’ve one more person to find.’
‘Can I help?’
‘You probably couldn’t get through, in the walker. If you go that way,’ he pointed right, ‘then left, left, right and left, you’ll be on the long passage to the exit into the main pit. I’m afraid for you, Tiaan. I’d go with you but I must look for another friend, and swiftly. Are you sure you can find the way?’
‘I’ve a perfect memory for directions.’
Merryl smiled. His eyes seemed to be summing her up. He gave her his hand. ‘After all I’ve heard about you, I expect you will. Good luck!’
‘And you. I hope you find what your heart desires.’
He closed those dark eyes. ‘An illusion, I expect, after so long as a slave. But freedom beckons.’ He turned away.
Tiaan kept on, following his directions with an increasing sense of foreboding. The air was thicker and hotter here. She wondered how Gilhaelith was faring. He had always looked after himself, and no doubt the lyrinx would take good care of him. But at least he hadn’t got the amplimet. Flawed and dangerous though it was, she had it still, and it was going to get her out of here.
She stopped the walker, suddenly uncertain if she was going in the right direction. The strangeness that had pervaded everything for days was stronger than ever here. The air was full of floating bubbles of tar, which was impossible, and the whole world seemed to be shaking.
Quite suddenly the strangeness vanished and she stood in a black tunnel where the tar was soft under the feet of the walker. Tiaan flexed her toes, just for the pleasure of feeling them. The tension grew – she could feel it in her knotted stomach muscles; the prickling in the backs of her hands; the dryness in her mouth.
Boom! The walker was hurled against the wall. Had it not been so soft she would have cracked her skull. A gale of sand blasted down the corridor. The rock, solid with tar, emitted tortured groans and with a booming crackle a slab slid across the corridor, partly blocking it.
An even mightier explosion occurred inside her head, so bright that she almost passed out. Coils of the field wrapped themselves around her skull, dancing in her eyes.
She groaned and shook her head, which was full of cobwebby mirages. Tearing the walker out of the wall, Tiaan continued but before long the air on her face grew warm, the stink of hot tar unbearable. She forced herself around the next corner. Ahead, a red glow danced on the walls. Black, deadly fumes crept along the floor. The tar was on fire.
She fled, retracing the walker’s steps as fast as it would go. That was not very fast – it was increasingly difficult to draw from the field. As she reached the place where the wall had fractured, red fire flickered in the fissures. Molten tar dripped in her path. Flame roared forth like the exhalations of a dragon. Forward or back, there was nowhere to go. Then she lost the field, and the walker died.
SIXTY-ONE
Several nights after the scrutator’s visit, Nish was lying in his tent, listening to a gentle rain pattering on the canvas, when a signal whistle piped. He did not move. The Aachim were constantly signalling to each other. It did not concern him. The brief hope he’d felt when the scrutator appeared was gone. He was still a prisoner, a pawn in a global struggle. His great plans had failed through no fault of his own.
There seemed to be a lot of activity outside, including the whine of hundreds of constructs. Something was going on. He was just slipping back to sleep when Minis crashed through the opening of the tent. ‘Nish! Get up!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘We march to war against the lyrinx.’
Nish sat up. At last! ‘How did this come about?’
‘Last night your scrutator agreed to all our demands.’
Nish was shocked. For Flydd to capitulate, after that bitter scene with Vithis, humanity’s position must have been hopeless. How Vithis must be crowing.
‘Including giving up Tiaan?’
‘Yes. Apparently your seeker has located her underground, within the eastern quarter of Snizort.’ Minis began to unfasten the manacles.
‘And Vithis has agreed to free me?’
‘A long hesitation. ‘Not exactly, though I’m sure if he thought about it …’
‘What is he going to do in return?’ Nish was wondering what he could make out of the situation.
‘Attack Snizort.’
‘If the lyrinx learn he is after Tiaan,’ Nish said carefully, ‘and surely they must, it will not go well for her.’
Minis faded to white. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They will kill her, rather than allow anyone to gain the secret of flight.’
Minis pressed his head into his hands and shook it violently. In times of stress he was given to exaggerated gestures. ‘We must save her, Nish.’
‘I’m sure Vithis will be careful. Tiaan is no good to him dead.’
Minis’s face cracked. Hurling himself across the tent, he wrung Nish’s hands. ‘Please, Nish. I’m desperate.’
Nish reached for his boots. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Help me get her out of Snizort.’
The man was such a fool. ‘Minis, Snizort is the most carefully guarded fortress in this land. There are twenty-five thousand lyrinx there. It can’t be done.’
‘I love Tiaan,’ Minis said simply. ‘I know that now. Foster-father has brought me dozens of partners, all of noble Aachim blood, but none mean anything to me. I look at them and I see Tiaan, only Tiaan. I must find a way, Nish.’
‘Vithis has ordered you to take no risks. Would you defy his direct order?’
‘To save her life I would do anything.’ Savage eyes glared out of that young, blanched face. ‘I’ll hide her away; bargain with foster-father for her.’ Minis tried to look implacable but did not succeed.
Nish sighed. Even if they could rescue her, Minis had not considered the most important part of the equation – how Tiaan would react. Whether Minis found her, or Vithis did, he did not want to be there.
By dawn, half of the constructs were gone, and more moved out that morning. The battle was set to begin as soon as they were in position.
The camp was now just a skeleton of its former self. More than four thousand of Vithis’s six thousand constructs had gone to Snizort, plus two thousand more from the other fleets. Vithis had accompanied them after many exhortations to his foster-son to take care of himself. The remaining five thousand constructs protected women, children and those too old to go to war. If necessary they would be evacuated to safety in the east.
The Aachim camp was a model of military organisation and no one could move without being checked off a dozen lists. Minis, the only other survivor of Clan Inthis, was not permitted to go near the battlefield. He had promised faithfully that he would not, but planned to break that promise as soon as he was able. The opportunity did not come for days.
On the third night of the siege, Minis and Nish slipped away under cover of a wild thunderstorm, heading for the human headquarters east of Snizort. Nish stood beside the tall Aachim as they floated across the undulating land the following morning. It was summer now and a dry one. The grass was bent and brown; most of the creeks carried no more than a trickle, even after last night’s storm. The land was empty. The people who once dwelt here had fled long ago and their mud and thatch huts were crumbling.