TWENTY-TWO

As soon as the platinum box was finished they gathered their gear, shrugged on their heavy packs and climbed down the ice-crusted ladder into the darkness. They dared not take the thapter closer; the Nennifer field was under such strain that any drain of power from outside the fortress must arouse suspicion. It would take most of the night to get close enough to wake the amplimet. And even if they succeeded, they had to attack on foot, and in the blackest of nights, when not even the sentries on the watch-towers could see beyond their noses. That meant before midnight tomorrow night, when the moon rose.

Nish heard a series of clicks: Malien locking the thapter. They couldn’t spare any guards for it, not that a couple of guards could defend it anyway if a patrol came upon them. Nish shivered. Leaving the thapter so far away seemed like burning their boats behind them. He took a couple of noisy, crunching steps. It was impossible to move quietly on the loose gravel.

‘Hold on,’ said Irisis, taking him by the arm. ‘Flydd wants to say something.’

‘Why didn’t he say it inside?’ Nish grumbled, for his breath was already freezing on his moustache.

The dullest of glows appeared, lighting up the faces of the group. She pulled him into the circle, facing the wind. Nish’s eyes began to water and the tears to freeze.

‘Fusshte knows we have the thapter,’ Flydd reminded them. ‘He probably isn’t expecting an airborne attack but he’ll certainly be prepared for one. The only thing he can’t be expecting is an attack on foot.’

‘Because only the biggest fools on Santhenar would think of it,’ said Yggur sourly. ‘If we are to go for this folly, let’s get moving.’

‘Once we approach, we must be exquisitely careful,’ said Flydd. ‘The guards are always watching. Always waiting.’

Nish gathered his cloak around him, feeling out of his depth. There had been a long debate as to the safest method of waking the amplimet, or threatening it, most of which had been so arcane as to be incomprehensible. He wished he’d slept instead. His head throbbed from the stale air in the thapter and he had a leaden feeling behind his temples.

‘Flydd must be out of his mind,’ he muttered to Irisis. ‘Lust for revenge has blinded him to reality.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Malien is afraid,’ he went on. ‘Even Yggur is against it. I –’

‘We voted,’ she said in a dead voice. ‘We’re going in.’

‘But I –’

‘Shut up, Nish!’ Irisis hissed in his ear. ‘We’ve got a long march ahead and you’re not helping.’

‘And a horrible end when we get there.’

She must have picked up his despair, for Irisis turned and put her hands on his cheeks, looking into his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Nish,’ she said more kindly. ‘You’ve been working towards this day since you escaped from Snizort.’

‘Doesn’t mean I’m not terrified,’ he muttered.

‘We all are. Anyway, I’m supposed to be the doom merchant. Don’t push me into the caring role – you know I’m not comfortable with it.’ Giving the lie to her words, she linked her arm through his and they set off.

It was a long and miserable trudge across the slopes of the mountain, as cold as anything he’d experienced, though nothing happened to distinguish one gritty, sliding step from another. Because of the altitude, walking was hard work and he was soon so short of breath that talking at the same time wasn’t worth the effort.

Near the tail end of that exhausting night they ran into a steep ridge of quartz that puckered the mountainside vertically like a badly healed sword slash. Klarm had noted it from afar, from the thapter. They felt their way up it in the dark, eventually finding a fissure large enough for the fifteen of them to hide in. Nennifer lay below and to the east, little more than a league away. They could go no further until Malien had done her work on the amplimet.

They put up a pair of tents, set out the guards and crawled in for whatever rest they could steal before the attack.

Malien cleared her end of the tent by the simple expedient of creating a golden bubble from her fingertips and allowing it to expand until it enveloped her completely. Whatever else it touched was pushed out of the way.

‘What’s she doing?’ whispered an awed Inouye.

Malien was dimly visible inside, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed and her long fingers extended along her thighs. The shimmering luminescence of the globe cast moving lights and shadows across her face and body. She looked ageless, cunning, fey.

‘She has her own unique form of the Art,’ Yggur said quietly. ‘As do I. Hers doesn’t rely on the field, so she can scry without the scrutators detecting her.’

‘At least, we hope so,’ said Irisis.

Yggur glared at her, then went on. ‘We can, of course, draw on the field at need.’

‘How long is it going to take?’ said Nish.

‘However long it takes,’ snapped Flydd from his sleeping pouch. ‘Now keep your trap shut. I need my sleep.’

Flydd must be in constant pain, Nish thought charitably. He’d always been irascible, but now he was angry all the time. Nish wriggled around against the side of the tent, trying to find a comfortable position. Irisis elbowed him in the ribs. He sighed.

The golden bubble popped. ‘I’ve located the amplimet,’ said Malien.

‘What, already?’ The words burst out of Nish.

Everyone turned to stare at him. He flushed. ‘I thought it would take hours,’ he mumbled. ‘Thought there’d be time for sleep.’

No one said anything, which was worse than if they had.

‘It’s not sealed away,’ Malien said. ‘And, judging by the peculiar orientation of the field, the scrutators are working on it now. They must have barriers up to prevent the amplimet taking more than a trickle of power.’

‘Then they know the danger it represents?’ asked Yggur.

‘We have to assume that they’ve discovered everything Tiaan knows about it,’ said Flydd.

‘Tiaan has a way of revealing only what she wants to,’ said Malien. ‘But I agree – it’s safer to assume that.’

‘Then you’d better get to work,’ said Flydd.

Malien took several deep breaths, knitting and unknitting her fingers, but didn’t move.

‘You can wake it?’ said Flydd roughly.

She nodded stiffly. ‘I just don’t think I should.’

‘We’ve been through all that. Just get on with it!’

Nish had never heard anyone speak to Malien that way before. Her lip curled as she looked at the meagre old man. ‘In the circumstances, I will forgive that. Ah, but you know so little of what you’re asking.’

She regenerated her bubble, though this time it took on an opalescent translucency that reduced her to a hunched shape inside.

‘You can have your precious sleep now, Artificer,’ said Flydd.

Nish lay down and dozed off at once, only to be woken by a mutter from the other side of the tent. As he began to sit up, Irisis gripped his arm, warningly.

‘It worries me that the field is so strained,’ said Yggur. ‘One misjudgment –’

‘Let’s not speculate about that,’ Flydd said. ‘Get some sleep. You too, Klarm. You’ll need it before this is over.’

‘As will you,’ said Klarm. ‘We’re relying on you, Flydd.’

‘I don’t need much sleep these days. Master Flenser pruned me of all that was superfluous. Perhaps he did me a favour.’ He laughed harshly.

Yggur made no reply.

Nish closed his eyes and tried to get back to sleep, though now an image kept recurring – the red ruin which Flydd’s healer had revealed so fleetingly, and with such rage at man’s inhumanity to his own.

A long time later Yggur put his head out of the tent, looking up at the dark sky. A high overcast blotted out the stars and moon. ‘It’s coming dawn.’ He rubbed his stubbled cheeks. ‘Aah, it’s cold out.’

Flydd was sitting with his hands on his knees, exactly as he had been hours earlier, watching Malien.

‘Doesn’t look as though she’s having any success,’ said Yggur.

‘It’s taking too long,’ said Flydd, ‘and there’s nothing we can do to help her. This is Malien’s great task and if she can’t do it, no one can.’

Before dawn the sentries were drawn back inside the ends of the fissure. Everyone else spent the day cooped in the tents. This close to Nennifer they dared not go outside, for the risk of being seen was too great.

In mid-morning, Malien dissolved the bubble and crawled across to the food bag, where she made a scant meal of mouldy bread and hard cheese, and another of the knobbly fruits. She had trouble eating it; her hands and arms shook unceasingly. Washing the morsel down with gulps of water that spilled down her front and froze instantly, she flopped onto her sleeping pouch and fell into sleep.

Yggur and Flydd exchanged glances. Yggur jerked his head at the tent flap and went out. Flydd followed. They could be heard conversing in the fissure, though Nish didn’t catch a word.

‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ he said quietly to Irisis.

She rolled over, irritably pulling the sleeping pouch up around her ears. Nish turned onto his back, staring at the roof of the tent. Ice crystals were growing down from the ridgepole. He shivered and drew his fingers down the canvas wall. They left trails in the growing frost.

‘This is too big for any of us.’

Klarm’s voice, though soft, came from just behind Nish’s ear. He jumped. ‘What do you mean … er, Scrutator?’ Nish still wasn’t sure how to address the dwarf. In truth, despite Klarm having saved his life, Nish still felt uncomfortable with him. He rotated so he could see Klarm’s face.

‘Malien has just realised that what she’s trying to do isn’t possible. It’s too much for any mancer, or all of us together. Go to sleep,’ Klarm said abruptly. ‘It’s what you wanted.’ He got up and went out. The tent flap, stiff with ice, crackled as it fell back into place.

Nish, feeling vaguely uneasy, said softly, ‘Irisis?’

She didn’t reply. Irisis was asleep; Malien too, judging by the gentle snores issuing from the other end of the tent. There was no one to share his fears with. Inouye and Evee had been sent to the other, larger tent, occupied by Flangers and the soldiers.

He went across the litter of gear and sleeping pouches on knees and elbows. A buzz of conversation came from outside. Nish eased his head through the flap. Klarm sat hunched in his cloak just before the bend in the fissure, head tilted to one side as if listening.

Flydd and Yggur must be just around the corner – Nish could see the edge of Yggur’s long cloak draped over the rock. Unfortunately Nish still couldn’t hear. And what was Klarm up to? Had everything just been a plot to lure them here? Did he plan to betray them as the price of admission to the Council?

Long fingers wrapped around Nish’s ankle. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Malien said, soft and low.

He whirled, cracking his ear on the tent pole. A stalactite of ice fell on his head and shattered. Nish sat down, picking ice out of his hair. ‘Klarm’s up to something.’

She let go. ‘Do you think of Yggur and Flydd as fools?’

There was ice in his ear as well. He tried to get the fragment out but it melted, sending an icy trickle down to sear his eardrum. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then leave the worrying to them.’

‘What if the Council’s quest succeeds, and they learn to control the amplimet?’

‘They’ll have enough power to annihilate us.’

‘And if they fail and the amplimet gets … whatever it’s looking for?’

She looked him in the eye and for an instant Nish saw beyond the stern, almost ageless face. What was she thinking? Did she pity him?

‘Worse,’ she said almost inaudibly, and turned away.