Forty-six

Ghorr's air-floater carried Ullii back to the main camp. She did not say a word the whole way — she was overcome by a crawling horror of him and the scrutators, and her own folly. They'd trapped her with the bracelet and now controlled her utterly.

Ullii tried to retreat to her inner refuge by cutting off all her senses, as she'd often done in the past, but Ghorr just dragged her out again. She could find no comfort in her lattice, either, for it seemed to be fading. What had once been brilliantly clear was hardly there, and when she tried to make the lattice anew, her mind's eye was empty. It was one blow too many. She collapsed and lay on her sickbed for a week, raving with a brain fever.

As soon as she began to recover, Ghorr dragged her out of bed. Flydd and Nish had disappeared and she had to find them. Ullii looked for her lattice and it was back, though not as strong or clear as before. For days she sought in vain; Flydd was beyond its reach.

The search went on and, many troubled days later, high in the air-floater, she detected a faint trace of him at the battlefield of Gumby Marth. By the time Ghorr had assembled a force strong enough to brave that lyrinx-infested place, Flydd was gone again. Subsequently the news came that his ship had been lost and Flydd drowned. Ghorr refused to believe it and ordered a search of the entire Karama Malama, by ship and air-floater.

Three air-floaters, and a fleet of commandeered ships, criss-crossed the Sea of Mists for days until she found him again, but before Flydd could be taken he was rescued by a stolen air-floater in which Ullii recognised the knots of FynMah and Irisis. They flew out of range and, though Ullii lost the individuals, she was able to track the air-floater's crystals into Meldorin before they vanished yet again.

Ghorr held a furious conference with his fellow scrutators before heading to Lybing, the capital of wealthy Borgistry, in his remaining air-floater. There a number of the scrutators disembarked to continue prosecuting the western war. Ghorr's air-floater took to the air again, heading north across the Great Chain of Lakes, then east past the Ramparts of Tacnah, forbidding gateway to the Great Mountains. The country began to make distinctive patterns in Ullii's lattice, for they were reversing the route by which she'd come west with Flydd and Irisis last spring. Dread grew in her as she recognised their destination. They were heading for the scrutators' hidden bastion of Nennifer, between the Great Mountains and the arid depressions that lay to the north.

Nennifer, the most frightening place in all Lauralin, appeared before them. It lay on a narrow rim of plateau with the mountains rearing up, thousands of spans high, to the east, west and south. The northern side of Nennifer was truncated by a monumental cliff, a thousand spans high, at the base of which lay an oval of sunken land, the Desolation Sink, as desiccated and lifeless as the Dry Sea itself.

'Why are we going to Nennifer?' she whispered. The very stones it was built from were imbued with the odour of the scrutators, and it was full of wicked, cruel people.

Ghorr gave his vulpine, snaggle-toothed smile. 'I have plans.'

'Nish and Flydd are gone,' said Ullii. She no longer knew what to do about them.

"They killed your brother and must be punished. You'll find them, Ullii, and we'll do the rest. Nennifer is where we design the weapons of tomorrow. Two hundred and twenty-three mancers work night and day, utterly devoted to inventing new devices of terror. Four hundred and seventy artisans make controllers for these weapons, and find ways to draw on the fields ever more efficiently. A thousand artificers, and three thousand smiths and other workers, build and test these devices. Five hundred and thirty-five draughters create the plans and patterns that will be used by our manufactories, across the breadth of Santhenar, to make innumerable copies. We have made many breakthroughs since you left us so .., precipitously.' Ghorr chuckled at his meagre wit. Ullii and Irisis had escaped through a tunnel that discharged over the precipice into the Desolation Sink.

'Our workers are already designing the mighty craft that will take us back to Meldorin,' he went on, 'in a force so powerful that the lyrinx will flee in terror. Then you will find our enemies again, Ullii, wherever they've hidden. We'll take them with overwhelming force and destroy this burr in my side for good.

'In the meantime,' he continued, 'there's another way for you to help me.'

They were alone in his room. Ullii felt trapped in every possible way. Why had she listened to the voices? Why had she imagined she could use this monster to gain her revenge? She was not strong or clever, but weak and insignificant. All she'd done was put herself back in prison, and this time she had no friends to take care of her.

'Yes?' she whispered, for even had she the strongest will in the world, the bracelet on her wrist would not allow her to say no.

'Tell me how you magicked Irisis out of her cell last spring, without opening the lock or setting off my alarm. And how you translated Flydd's air-floater, in an instant, from a thousand spans above Nennifer to the end of the tunnel where you and Irisis were hiding.'

That had been her own precious little secret that not even Flydd had understood. Her lattice was her own creation, the world she retreated to when the physical world failed her. It was the one place no one else could go. Was even that to be taken from her?

Don't know!' she said mulishly, keeping her eyes firmly on the floor.

His hand went under her chin, jerking her upright. He looked like a mature, handsome man but up close his skin was shiny and pinkly smooth, like baby skin on top of scar tissue. The feel of it, the softness clinging to those underlying ropy ridges of flesh, made her shudder with disgust. He tried to appear in his prime but Ullii's lattice told her what lay beneath the surface. He was old and rotten inside.

'Don't play games, Ullii. Do you want me as a friend, or as an enemy? It would not be wise to incur my enmity.'

She had often had this nightmare, after the first visit to Nennifer, and still she'd given herself up to Ghorr. Why, why had she put on the bracelet? Why hadn't she tested it first? Because it had been so cunningly designed to trap her that it did not even show in her lattice. The scrutators were too clever for her, as they had been too clever for Mylii.

'I have cunning mancers here, Seeker,' he resumed when she did not reply. 'Men and women who know how the mind works, even a mind as special as yours. And they know how to break it! They can go deep into your mind, Ullii. They can learn everything about you. They can make lattices of their own — or take yours from you.'

'Make another one' she muttered, trying to look away. Though she tried to deny it, her greatest fear was losing her precious lattice and being unable to make another.

'They won't let you. So, Ullii, are you going to tell me how you managed it? How did you free Irisis?'

If she told him, surely he would leave her alone. 'I held the magicked lock in place and turned the lattice around it,' she said simply.

He stared at her. 'That's nonsense.' But, after chewing over it for a minute, he reconsidered. 'You turned the lattice? Did you translate the air-floater the same way?'

'No. I just moved its knot, and Xervish's, in my lattice.'

'Astounding! If I hadn't seen it happen I would not have believed it. You can't tell me any more, can you? You simply don't know what you did. But I'll have the secret out of you, and then there won't be anything I can't do.'

His eyes dissected her, then he swept out. And Ullii knew he would get the secret out of her, if he had to take her apart to do so. He was the most evil man in the world. Worse than Flydd, worse than Nish. And she was going to find them for him, so he could destroy them. She could not do otherwise -there was no way she could fight Ghorr.

And once she did find them, it would be her turn to suffer.