Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (91 page)

He smirked, the effect rather spoiled by the blood at the corner of his mouth. ‘Can we get on? I feel I’m being filleted like a fish.’

Ullii put her hands over her eyes. Her arms shook. Her jaw clenched. Irisis felt as if she was picking at a ball made of black string, but it was wound so tightly she could not unravel it. She plucked and plucked, at one place and another, fruitlessly. Then a pair of hands began to work next to hers. Small and slender they were, and they seemed to know what they were doing. In her mind’s eye, Irisis followed the movements in and out, back and forth. They eased one thread out of the tangle, leaving it sticking up in the air.

The fingers withdrew. Irisis took hold of the thread and tugged. It unwound, the ball spinning off the other way, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared, leaving just a pile of shining silver thread. She began to gather it up, for at the end of it must be the key. Or maybe
it
was the key. She began to weave the silver into a bracelet, an exquisite piece of jewellery.

‘Clawers, clawers.’ The seeker folded up on the floor.

As Irisis slid the bracelet on her wrist she saw the way so clearly that it was like a lifeline stretching out in front of her. She drew power and, to her surprise, her joy, it cascaded into the crystals. They exploded with light and something inside the cap gave forth a low, vibrating hum.

‘I’ve done it! Xervish, I’ve done it!’

There was no time to enjoy her triumph. Flydd snatched the cap. ‘Prepare to defend me!’ He ran to the node-drainer.

Irisis whipped out her sword and stood at the entrance, looking up and down and back over her shoulder. There were no lyrinx in sight. She was strangely weak and nauseous. Mancers suffered from aftersickness but this was the first time she had experienced it.

Flydd seemed to be having trouble fitting the cap. Strange energies kept bursting out in all directions. It was like trying to seal a flowing hose. He cursed, forced the cap over the top of the mushroom, and cursed again as it was tossed out of his hands to land on the tarry floor.

Irisis peered out the entrance but could not see any enemy. She crept down the passage to the point where a broad thoroughfare became visible. The disruption was much less here. Some distance away, a lyrinx shadow fleeted across an opening, carrying something that looked like a human body. She edged back. Her sword would not stop a lyrinx, even for a minute.

The lyrinx hurried past, looking neither right nor left. She heard shouting. More enemy shadows ran by, all carrying loads. What was going on? Were they losing the war, or had they already won it? She scuttled back to the cavern. In her absence Flydd must have worked some great scrutator magic, for he cried out, ‘It’s on! Time to go.’

The energy fountain had disappeared but the room felt stranger than ever. The once solid tar was flowing like water,
up
the walls. The walls expanded and contracted like the chambers of a beating heart.

Irisis fought back the panic, fought the nightmare of being entombed alive, the urge to flee. All this effort must not be wasted for want of courage at the last instant. ‘Better be sure it’s going to work first.’

‘The power’s not coming out, so it must go back. They’re the only two choices.’

‘Then they’ll notice the power isn’t flowing and come to investigate,’ said Irisis. ‘They’ll take the cap off.’

‘There’s no way to remove it without breaking it, and if they tamper with anything, it triggers the power stored in the blue hedrons. That would destroy the node-drainer and everything around it.’

‘What if they cut off the top of the node-drainer?’

‘That will destroy it too. Once the flow is interrupted, anything will.’

‘Won’t the node-drainer be rather dangerous, then?’

‘It shouldn’t be if the cap was built right.’

‘What if it’s not? What if Ghorr deliberately made it wrong?’

‘I don’t dare think what might happen.’

‘In that case, why are we standing here?’

The blue hedrons lit up. The room shook. ‘It’s working,’ said Flydd.

Ullii shrieked, clutched at her temples and fell down.

‘What’s the matter?’ Irisis bent over the seeker. She did not answer. She was unconscious.

‘Should have anticipated this,’ said Flydd. ‘When it turned on, it must have been like an explosion in her lattice. Is she alive?’

‘Yes, but she won’t be showing us the way out.’ Irisis put Ullii over her shoulders. ‘Do you remember it, surr?’

She expected him to say no. From the beginning he’d said that it was a suicide mission.

‘I know the first part.’

‘That’s not a lot of help, surr. With all due respect.’

‘While we live …’

He spoke his words of power, strained, and Ullii became just a shimmer at the edges. The cloaking spell was back. ‘Let’s see how long I can hold it,’ he said ominously.

They struggled along dimly-lit side passages, for the main one was full of lyrinx. For every step of that journey Irisis expected to be torn apart, or burned or buried alive, in some unimaginable disaster connected with the node-drainer.

Flydd’s cloaking served them well until they were near the exit, when he let out a groan, fell to one knee and their concealment was gone.

He crouched against the black wall, gasping. His red eyes met hers. ‘I feel as if my belly is full of blood.’ His mouth and teeth were red.

She felt little better. Her muscles felt like glue. ‘There’s not far to go, Xervish. Keep on.’

He gave another groan, spat blood on the floor and drew his sword. Irisis could not do the same, for Ullii was a dead weight in her arms. Flydd edged around the door, ducked back, and a minute later looked again.

‘It’s clear now.’

Before they reached the exit two lyrinx ran in, covered in tar and blood. They stopped, then the first hurled itself at Flydd. The second put hands around its mouth and let out a booming bellow that could have been heard half a league away. Ullii squirmed in Irisis’s arms, her eyes flicked open, fixed on the enemy and closed again.

The lyrinx reached Flydd in a couple of bounds. The great arms swung – blows that could kill a man. Somehow Flydd avoided the first and the second, moved in from the side and his sword caught the creature between the plates of the throat.

The second lyrinx proved a harder opponent. A backhanded blow sent Flydd tumbling one way, his sword another. He made no attempt to go for it, but thrust both hands at the creature’s feet and screamed a word of power that sprayed blood from his nostrils. The black floor glowed pink for a second, then collapsed. The lyrinx went into it to the hips and, try as it might, could not drag itself out. The tar was already setting.

Flydd wiped blood across his face, staggered to his sword and they lurched towards the exit. ‘That was the end of me. I can do no more magic, even to save our lives.’

They emerged at the base of the pit. It was not as black as before, for the rim was lit up by fire and blast. Blazing flares soared across the sky.

‘The fools! If one of those falls down here,’ gasped Flydd, ‘we will die the most horrible death it is possible to imagine.’

‘Maybe they’ve given us up for dead.’

‘Maybe we are and just don’t know it.’

They staggered up the sticky steps, their feet so clotted with tar that they could barely lift them. Halfway up, a lyrinx came running towards them; Irisis could see the light reflecting off staring eyes and bared teeth. Flydd flattened himself against the pit wall and, as the creature passed, swept his sword at it. It threw up its arms, tried to slash back and went over the edge.

‘Easiest victory I’ve ever had,’ he muttered.

‘It didn’t seem to know we were here.’

‘The stink of tar must have kept it from smelling us. You right with her?’

Irisis eased Ullii on her shoulder. ‘I’ll manage.’

They made the top without further incident and saw fighting everywhere. A force of clankers had broken through the eastern wall of Snizort, near the gate, though they had not gone far. A bitter battle raged there. Other walls had smaller breaches, each with its struggling figures, human, Aachim and lyrinx. The perimeter walls swarmed with enemy, although none looked in their direction. The battle was too desperate.

They headed for a mound, hardly a hill, between the pit and the Great Seep. It was one of several that offered a better view. There was no sign of the air-floater in the cloudy sky and their signals were not answered.

‘I didn’t expect it would still be around,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s too easy a target.’

‘Let’s try for the clankers.’

‘There’s a wall of lyrinx between us and them.’

‘We need some kind of diversion,’ said Irisis.

‘I can’t –’ Flydd began. ‘Well, it looks like you’ve got one!’

Behind them, above the location of the node-drainer, the ground surface slowly rose until it formed a dome twenty spans across and five high. It changed from tar-black to a dull white, to orange, to red. A single spark burst through in the centre, soaring high, only to wink out. Others followed it, whereupon the ground erupted in a veritable fountain of sparks and colours. It was beautiful; beautiful and deadly.

‘This is just the beginning,’ said a deathlike Flydd. ‘The cap isn’t going to burn out the node-drainer at all. It’s going to blow it apart and take half of Snizort with it.’

‘Shouldn’t we run?’ Ullii was like lead in her arms.

‘There’s nowhere to run to. This is it, Irisis. All along I’d hoped we would get away, but that’s not going to happen’

‘Oh well.’ She embraced him as best she could, still holding the seeker. ‘We did our duty. Besides, we’ve had some good times.’

‘Indeed we have. Give her to me.’ He took Ullii, who opened her eyes, flipped herself out of his arms and scuttled into the shadows.

‘Let her go,’ said Irisis. ‘We might as well watch the show.’

They stood together, seeing the fountain grow and grow. ‘The battle’s over. The clankers are pulling back through the wall. They’ve realised what’s going to happen.’

The lyrinx had too, for they were streaming away from the boiling fountain in all directions, passing by as if Irisis and Flydd were not there.

‘It won’t do them any good,’ said Flydd. ‘Not even a league will be far enough.’

‘Xervish,’ Irisis said. ‘There’s something I don’t understand.’

‘What’s that?’

‘About you finding Myllii. You said he was many days away and Muss would bring him. But Muss was at the camp yesterday morning. How did he know?’

Flydd glanced at Ullii, who was pacing around a tar mire some distance away. He lowered his voice. ‘I lied.’

‘What?’

‘I had to lie, otherwise she wouldn’t have cooperated. I have no idea where Myllii is.’

On the other side of the Mire, Ullii went as still as a shadow. She turned her head to them and fountains of sparks reflected in her colourless eyes. It looked as if she were shooting fire at them. Ullii was not wearing her earplugs and had heard every word.

‘Lucky we’re all going to die then,’ said Irisis.

‘Lucky!’ Flydd grunted.

The minutes ticked by. Irisis said, ‘It doesn’t seem to be quite as high as it was.’

The fountain was dying down and now, with an explosion of bubble-clear fire, it burst. The dome began to collapse in on itself like a miniature volcano.

‘What’s going on?’ she cried. ‘Is it the end?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t expect it to go this way.’

‘It’s our chance.’ Opening the shutter of the lantern, she pointed it upwards and began to blink it rapidly.

‘They won’t come,’ he said. ‘The lyrinx will have got them.’

‘It’s worth a try.’

Shortly Irisis heard the faint whirr of the rotor and, in the greatest miracle of all time, the air-floater appeared above them. Ullii sprang up. Irisis threw herself over the side, jerked Flydd in and they were away.

‘Drop
all
the ballast,’ Flydd shouted to Pilot Hila. ‘Up fast and high, away from here. Go! Quick as you can.’

The sandbags went over and the air-floater shot up like a balloon released under water. ‘Away!’ roared Flydd, pointing south.

Irisis looked down into the collapsed dome chamber, which glowed white, red, and slowly faded. ‘It’s going out,’ she said. ‘It must have destroyed itself and plugged up the drainer.’

‘It hasn’t,’ Flydd growled. ‘
Faster, pilot
!’

‘Oh, look!’ Irisis was staring beyond the wall, where a glowing speck had appeared a few leagues north. ‘Isn’t that where the node is –’

‘Cover your eyes, everyone,’ Flydd roared, casting Ullii onto the floor of the cabin and tossing his coat over her. ‘Don’t look toward the node.’

‘Why not?’ Irisis said. ‘I –’

His rough hand went over her eyes. ‘Do what you’re damn well told.
Turn away!
’

Too late. The node erupted in a brilliant purply-white flare that went straight up for a thousand spans. Irisis could see it through her closed eyes; even through the scrutator’s fingers. More fire followed it, and more, until it was like a giant needle spanning ground and sky. The needle began to rotate faster and faster, white, blue-white, violet, white again; then it exploded, spinning threads of fire in all directions.

As Flydd threw her through the cabin door, the shockwave hit them with a roar that almost burst her eardrums. The rotor tore away from the air-floater and went spinning into the night. The air-floater turned upside down, dropping them onto the cabin ceiling, then to the floor as the weight righted it. Out of the corner of her eye Irisis saw someone go over the side – one of the soldiers, she thought. Ullii screamed once but the trauma was too much. She collapsed into her silence.

‘Are we all right?’ Flydd called. He shouted names. All but two answered, the soldier and Navigator Nivulee, who had been at the back when the shockwave hit. She must have been thrown straight out.

‘Pull the emergency release, Hila,’ said Flydd. ‘We’ve got to go down.’

They drifted away from Snizort toward the rows of clankers on the plain, slowly descending.

‘We’re going to make it,’ said Irisis, reaching out to Flydd. ‘Oh, Xervish, we’ve survived despite everything.’