TWENTY-SEVEN

Something skittered along the curved far wall. Irisis couldn’t see what it was. She moved further out into the room, though shadows lay all around and she still felt exposed. The scrutators could be anywhere.

‘A warning to the Council, too,’ said Flydd. ‘Fusshte must be paralysed with terror.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ Klarm said dryly. ‘He’s the ultimate opportunist. Well, do we go for the crystal or the Council?’

Irisis looked the other way, only then seeing, in the semidarkness around the circumference of the room, another ring of mancers, each standing with left arm outstretched and hand up, as if holding the whole world at bay. There were fifteen of them, and the right hand of each clutched a device that vaguely resembled her pliance, though presumably much more powerful. The mancers stood as still as the carbonised statues, apart from the faint tremble of an outstretched arm here, a pulse throbbing in a throat there; and apart from the wide, staring eyes, which revealed such terror in their hard and rigid souls as Irisis had never before witnessed. The mancers knew what their fate would be once the concentration of any one of them faltered, as sooner or later it must.

‘If we go for the amplimet we may be caught in the cone of control these ward-mancers have over it,’ said Flydd. ‘Yet, if we attack the Council, their hold could fail and the amplimet break free.’ He considered for a moment, gazing at one of the ward-mancers though not seeing her. ‘The Council would be less risky, I think.’

‘How so?’ said Klarm.

‘Given the fate of the inner ring, would you put your shoulder to the same wheel? Or would you stand back and let your mancers take the strain?’

‘I’d stand with my people,’ said Klarm. ‘How could any man do otherwise? Better it cost me life than honour.’

‘Quite,’ said Flydd, ‘though Fusshte would see it differently. Better the limb be amputated than the whole body die. Nothing is more important than the Council, so the Council must survive even at the cost of everything and everyone surrounding it. Can we attack Fusshte without risking their hold on the crystal?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Klarm.

They moved through the ring of ward-mancers, Irisis passing by a dumpy, white-haired woman whose eyes did not even register her. The ward-mancers’ vision was turned elsewhere.

‘How can we find Fusshte in all this chaos?’ said Flydd. ‘Curse you, Eiryn Muss.’

‘I’m sensing something above us,’ said Irisis, crushing her pliance in her fist, the better to see.

‘Are they drawing on the field?’ said Flydd.

‘The reverse …’ Irisis tried to make sense of what she was seeing, which wasn’t easy. The patterns were weirdly truncated, as if the dimensional dislocation that had sliced up Nennifer had done the same to the fields. ‘There must be hundreds of little devices still working here – globes and so forth. I can see where they’re drawing on the field all over the place.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’ said Klarm roughly.

She screwed her eyes closed, furrowing her brow. ‘That’s just it. It all looks normal except, directly above this room –’ she nodded upwards, ‘– it’s completely blank. It’s as if the field doesn’t extend through that space. And that’s impossible.’

‘The Council has shielded its bolthole,’ rapped Klarm. ‘They’re afraid to come out. Come on.’

Flydd didn’t move. ‘If they’re afraid to use power, so should we be.’

‘So we rush them and overwhelm them with physical force,’ said Klarm. ‘It’s the one thing they won’t be expecting.’

‘Let’s hope Muss was right about the guards,’ said Flydd, eyeing their little group.

He went back through the four metal doors and looked around. ‘Straight up, Muss said. Ah!’

He headed for a set of coiling metal stairs that looked as though they’d been jammed diagonally down through the roof. As he stepped onto the first tread the stairs shook as if the only thing holding them was the shattered hole through the ceiling. A span below that, the outside curve and rail had been shorn away leaving the treads dangling precariously.

Klarm followed, then the four surviving soldiers and Flangers, Nish and Inouye, who carried a short sword as though it were a walking stick. She’d be no use in a battle. At the first coil of the stairs Nish looked down at Irisis, who had stopped on the bottom step. ‘Is something the matter?’

She shook her head but couldn’t clear away the after-images of the field. ‘I … think so. Everything’s so strange here; I can’t get my bearings. And …’

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t help feeling that we’ve missed something.’

‘I feel the same,’ said Nish. He looked up. The others had passed the damaged part of the stair and were disappearing through the ceiling.

Above the ceiling the stair continued, more wobbly than before, eventually terminating just below a broken hole in the slate-clad roof. They scrambled up and through onto the roof. Not far away, the remains of an open-sided, glass-roofed passage led into a broad dome that stood some twenty spans above the roof on pillars of basalt. The dome, although tilted at a slight angle, was intact, but the roof surrounding it had been sliced and reassembled in many places.

‘Careful now,’ said Flydd as they headed for the passage and the entrance to the dome. ‘There could be guards inside.’

The wind howled around the dome, though not loudly enough to block out the cries of the injured in the rear yard. A bonfire blazed in the far corner and throngs of bewildered, bedraggled people stood around it, staring at the flames.

With a crash and a shudder, a section of Nennifer to their west collapsed. The mass of people surged away towards the far wall of the yard.

‘Poor devils,’ said Flydd. ‘Without food or water they can’t last long, and they know it.’

‘They’re brutes, all of them,’ said Irisis, recalling her previous treatment here.

‘Aye,’ said Klarm. ‘Corrupted by cruel masters, but human beings nonetheless.’

Seeing no guards, they pressed on, acutely aware that the amplimet could overcome the ward-mancers at any moment. At the entrance to the dome, Flydd and Klarm laid their bare hands on the door, sensing the magic that closed it. Flydd asked Klarm a question which Irisis didn’t catch. Klarm shook his head. Irisis crept closer. Flydd moved his hands across the door, taking one position after another. He looked down at Klarm, who gave another shake of the head.

Flydd swore, stepped back and bumped into Irisis. ‘Would you get out of the way?’ he snapped.

She gave him room. ‘Will it warn them if we break the magic?’ he said to the dwarf.

‘Very probably,’ said Klarm.

They put their heads together, low down, and Irisis couldn’t see what they were doing, but shortly the door came open. No klaxon went off, though that didn’t mean there was no alarm. Flydd beckoned and they went through. ‘I’ll seal it to any but us,’ he said. ‘It won’t keep scrutators or mancers out but the guards won’t be able to get through.’

He did so, looking haggard as he turned from the door. Aftersickness was wearing him down and there was so far to go, the worst yet to be faced.

The space inside the dome consisted of a single open chamber, some fifty spans across, dimly lit by globes suspended from the ceiling on long chains. The central area was divided up by a maze of long tables, workbenches and cabinets, while the outer ring of the chamber was completely empty. Irisis wondered why. The walls contained tapestries and paintings glorifying the Council, and there were statues and busts of scrutators everywhere. Irisis saw many busts of Ghorr, carved in marble, obsidian and even granite. She wanted to knock them off their pedestals.

From the look of the devices laid out on the benches, the chamber was the Council’s private workroom. In the centre a spherical turret was mounted on a metal stalk five or six spans high. Clusters of conduited bell-pulls ran out from one side of the turret, as well as flared pipes that Irisis assumed to be speaking tubes. Through the wide windows, standing at sloping tables, she saw five scrutators.

Fusshte, identifiable at a distance by his meagre, misshapen frame, had his back to them and stood by himself. The other four scrutators made a tight group on the other side of the turret. Irisis recognised Scrutator Halie, a small dark woman who’d once been a kind of ally of Flydd’s, and Scrutators Barbish, Ying and Eober.

‘The four surviving scrutators have been forced to side with him,’ said Flydd, ‘and they don’t like it. Now, if we can just –’

Too late. They’d been seen. The group of scrutators leapt for their consoles. Fusshte stood frozen for a moment, staring in disbelief as Flydd waved jauntily at him, then disappeared from view.

They dived behind the benches. ‘Did you see the swine?’ crowed Flydd. ‘He had no idea we were within a hundred leagues of Nennifer.’

‘He’ll soon realise that we were behind the amplimet’s liberation,’ said Klarm. ‘That’ll terrify him.’

‘Until he works out that we don’t know what we’re doing,’ retorted Flydd. ‘Come on – we’ve got to attack while he’s still off-balance. Soldiers – split into two pairs. Narm and Byrn, go around to the right; Yuddl and Qertois, take the left flank. Weave through the benches to attack the turret from the sides with crossbow fire. I’ll hit it from our left front. Flangers, come with me. Klarm, take the right front approach. Inouye, go with him as a messenger.’

‘What about us?’ said Nish and Irisis at the same time.

‘Stay here. Irisis, keep an eye on the field and watch for the unexpected. Nish, guard her back.’

They scattered.

‘I’ve just had a horrible thought,’ said Nish after a minute’s inactivity.

‘So have I.’

‘What is it?’

‘You go first. We’re probably thinking the same thing anyway.’

‘Fusshte has another option Flydd didn’t think of: to divert the amplimet’s attention to us. While it’s attacking us, Fusshte’s ward-mancers might be able to permanently contain it. And then he can use all the power he wants.’

A long interval of silence was punctuated by the creaking of the foundations, a distant collapse, and then the thunder of thousands of terrorised people in the yard stampeding again.

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t think of that,’ said Irisis, holding her pliance against her temple. ‘Though of course he will.’

Nish waited, but when she didn’t go on he said, ‘Was that what you were thinking?’

‘Unfortunately not. The scrutators won’t dare direct power from the field against us. If they did, the amplimet could ride it back and overwhelm them. But they can still use devices that store power, and there are plenty here. Nennifer reeks of the Art.’

‘So Flydd and Klarm could be walking into a trap.’

‘They’re bound to be.’

Something whirred across the room, high up, and a chilly eddy touched the back of Nish’s neck. ‘What was that?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t know.’ She moved closer to him. ‘Can you see what’s going on?’

Nish eased his head above the bench and caught a fleeting scuttle from the left of the turret, though he couldn’t identify it. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’

The whirr sounded again, and closer. A serrated flash of light was followed by a mechanical shrilling that set his teeth on edge. Someone far off cried out.

‘That sounded like Klarm!’ Irisis’s eyes were closed and her pliance was enclosed in her hands, which were extended in front of her as if in prayer. He’d never seen her look so uncertain.

Another flash, a thud, a scream, and then a grinding sound like metal teeth cutting through bone.

‘Get back!’ Flydd roared. ‘Baaack!’

‘No!’ one of the soldiers roared. ‘Behind you –’

Swords clashed on metal, then something shot straight up from beside the turret. The light caught it as it revolved in the air – a small object, toothed like a cogwheel. A glassy sphere with a brown circle on one side, resembling a mechanical eyeball, arced after it. It seemed to look down on them, a yellow light blinked back the other way, and the sphere disappeared behind the cabinets.

The speaking tubes gave forth a deep, throbbing blast that shook dust down on Irisis’s hair. It went on and on, and only at the end did Nish realise that there were words in it.

‘Guards! Guards! To the scrutators’ dome at all speed.’

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ said Nish, risking another glance over the bench.

Pfft! A crossbow bolt scored a groove across the timber, embedding dozens of splinters into his right cheek. He ducked down and began to pick them out.

‘I don’t know. The scrutators have outwitted us.’

‘Should we go to Flydd’s aid?’

‘Better to die in battle than fall into Fusshte’s hands. Let’s do it. A last stand together, Nish.’

She was about to stand up when Nish heard a low clattering sound in the alley of benches and cabinets to their left. He jerked her down. Three bolts screamed through the space where she’d been about to lift her head.

Clatter, rasp-clatter came from around the corner.

‘What’s that?’ He cocked his head.

It came darting this way and that, a device like a metal ball with rubber tyres running around it in three directions, and a pair of whirling scythes the length of knife blades sprouting from either side. It bumped against a cabinet and the blades chopped straight through the wood. It then spun around twice, thumped against the outside wall, turned and headed straight for Nish.

‘How the hell are we supposed to fight that?’ said Irisis.

‘I don’t know, but I sure hope there aren’t more of them.’