FIFTY-SIX

Tiaan threw the thapter at the ground, which sloped steeply here. The base of the machine hit wet, clayey soil and kept sliding, and she had to spin it around to avoid trees and rocks. She slowed, stopping against the base of a giant tree whose trunk was wider than the thapter was long.

She couldn’t see Irisis anywhere. A fall from that height onto solid ground could well have killed her, but the slope was so steep here, and the ground so slippery, that it would have helped to break her fall.

The sky had clouded right over now and grown ominously black. Lightning flashed, thunder roared and it began to rain. A spatter of hail struck the thapter.

‘Irisis?’ she yelled.

No reply. Tiaan could hear the lyrinx crashing down the slope above her. They’d be here within minutes. The fliers would be even quicker.

Her orders had been made more explicit after she’d nearly lost the thapter in the burning silk warehouse. Tiaan was not to risk the thapter, or herself, more than was necessary to complete the job. And once the mission had succeeded, or failed in this case, she must not risk the thapter to save any life but her own.

Her duty was absolutely clear. If she couldn’t find Irisis in the next minute she had to abandon her to whatever fate the lyrinx had in store for such a continued thorn in their side. And there still hadn’t been time to check on Nish. Tears pricked at her eyes and she dashed them away furiously. There wasn’t time for that either.

‘Irisis?’ she shouted.

Tiaan calculated where Irisis should have fallen and circled up and across the slope, looking for a body. She didn’t find one though she did discover a long yellow streak where Irisis had hit the slope, tearing though the thin grass and exposing the clay underneath.

Tiaan followed it down. Irisis must have slid a long way, and fast enough to smash bones or skull if she hit an obstacle. The minute was up. She hesitated, then decided to give Irisis another thirty seconds. The enemy couldn’t be that close yet, surely?

She headed directly down and saw a pair of clay-covered feet sticking up in the air some twenty spans below. Irisis had skidded all that way, then fallen over a couple of embankments before embedding herself in a wiry bush.

‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan called, settling the thapter against a tree trunk to prevent it from sliding. She was afraid to get out in case it slipped.

The feet moved. Irisis began to pull herself out of the bush. ‘Just wonderful,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Apart from ten thousand bruises, a badly wrenched ankle and a hole in my wrist I could thread a needle through.’

‘Can you hop?’ said Tiaan. ‘They’re after us.’

‘I heard them.’ Irisis stood up, holding her left foot up. ‘What’s that?’

It was a crashing and a rumbling that was growing ever louder. Tiaan spun around, staring up the hill. ‘It sounds like a landslide.’

‘It’s not,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re rolling boulders –’

The ground shook and a rock half the size of the thapter came thundering though the trees, bouncing ten spans high. Passing to Tiaan’s right, it struck the trunk of a big tree, smashing it into jagged splinters as long as Tiaan was tall. Leaves and wood rained down, fortunately below them, then the upper part of the tree toppled and fell down the slope. The boulder, hardly slowed by the impact, kept going and they heard more ground-shaking crashes before it disappeared beyond their ken.

‘Go!’ cried Irisis. ‘You know your orders. Don’t risk the thapter. You can’t get me in by yourself.’

Tiaan hesitated. She was obedient by nature. But then again … She leapt over the side, slid down the greasy slope and gave Irisis her shoulder. The rain grew heavier, running into her eyes until she could barely see. It had been warm at first but the drops now felt like melted ice.

‘Hop as if the fate of the world depended on it,’ she said, terrified that the thapter would slide away and be lost.

Irisis did so, ignoring the pain, and they slipped and staggered up towards the thapter. Another boulder came crashing down, smaller than the first and not bouncing as high, but all the more dangerous because of that. It followed the path of the other and disappeared.

They reached the side just as there came a rumble of thunder, though there was no lightning. The ground shook. Another crash and it shook again; the thapter moved.

‘That’s one hell of a boulder this time,’ said Irisis, putting her good foot onto the ladder. ‘Sounds like half a pinnacle.’

Tiaan felt a spasm of fear. Thump. She boosted Irisis up and pulled herself up the ladder after her. Thankfully Irisis had the presence of mind not to hesitate at the top. She simply went through the hatch head-first, heedless of her injuries.

Thump-thump. The ground shook so hard that the thapter began to slide.

Tiaan fell in on top of Irisis, who let out a groan as Tiaan landed on her wrenched ankle. Tiaan pulled herself up using the controller.

Thump thump, thump thump. Thump-thump.

She jerked up on the flight knob and the thapter lifted, with agonising slowness. One span, two, three. And then she saw it coming and could not contain herself.

The lyrinx had toppled half of one of the pinnacles, which had broken into two gigantic boulders, bigger than houses, plus a host of smaller, thapter-sized ones. They were thundering down the mountainside, spreading into a fan of devastation hundreds of spans across, smashing trees and rocks to fragments as they came. The thapter was right in their path and from a standing start she couldn’t see how she could get high enough to escape.

Thump. Thump-thump.

Tiaan wiped her eyes with her free hand and tried to see where she could go. The two huge boulders were bouncing twenty or thirty spans high, the smaller ones five or ten. She couldn’t rise above them in time.

The only chance was to fly up the slope, between the biggest boulders, until she gained enough speed to sweep upwards. Tiaan turned that way, knowing that neither the height nor direction of the bounces was predictable. Just as dangerously, the air between the fan of boulders was full of fragments of rock and pieces of shattered wood, a hailstorm of it.

She had to fly on instinct, as she had before. Tiaan went left so as to put herself between the two big boulders, which were roaring towards her. She rose to avoid a pair of trees and corrected again as the right-hand boulder bounced in towards its twin. The next bounce took it out again and for an instant her hand froze on the controller, seeing that it was heading directly for her.

An instinctive wiggle took the thapter sideways; the boulder whistled past, its windstorm buffeting the machine wildly, and smashed off the top half of the tree just below her. She took the machine up and curved away as the smaller boulders, carrying a landslide of rocks, clay and wood with them, rumbled underneath.

The flying lyrinx, who had been hanging back to see the result of their handiwork, now turned towards her in an angry swarm, but it was too late. Tiaan peeled away and fled into the now freezing rain as fast as the battered machine could go.

Ten or fifteen leagues away, out of sight of pursuit, Tiaan set down on the first hill that had a clear view in all directions. She was still shaking.

‘What about Nish?’ she said softly. ‘How did he look?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Irisis, who had overcome her injuries enough to pull herself up onto the side. ‘But he hasn’t moved.’ There was such a stricken look in her eyes that Tiaan had to turn away. She didn’t feel very good either.

‘I’ll go and see. Keep watch.’

‘I’m coming too,’ said Irisis. ‘I’m so afraid. I – I love him, Tiaan. I swore I’d never submit to such a folly. Not me; I was too strong for it. But I do love the little squirt, with every cell of my body, and now I’m terrified that I’ve lost him.’

‘Did … does he know?’

‘Of course not,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s the thickest man on Santhenar. He understands nothing.’

Tiaan smiled at that. Nish understood a great deal. ‘Then perhaps you should spell it out for him.’

‘And perhaps you should mind your own business,’ said Irisis. ‘If you could give me a hand.’

Tiaan wasn’t offended, though once she would have been. She was beginning to understand people too.

She helped Irisis up onto the back platform. The hood was flattened around Nish’s body and head, squashing him face down against the deck, leaving only the top of his head exposed. The hood was deeply dented in four places from crossbow bolts. Moreover, two javelard spears had pinned it in place, one angling in towards his left side, the other between his knees. If either had gone through him he could have bled to death.

Irisis slid a hand under the hood onto Nish’s cheek. ‘He’s icy cold. He’s dead!’

Tiaan eased her out of the way. ‘Of course he’s cold. He’s soaking wet and we’ve been flying fast. It’s lucky he hasn’t got frostbite. Nish?’

He didn’t answer, so she felt his cheek. He was so cold that it was hard to believe that he could be alive. She forced her hand through the narrow space and down to his neck, which proved just as chilly. Tiaan wriggled her fingers underneath his shirt, where his skin was protected from the wind. She found a trace of warmth there. Was that a pulse? She couldn’t be sure.

‘I think he’s alive, Irisis. Talk to him; hold him. I’ll get something to prise the hood off.’

When she returned with a bar, Irisis was crouched down, her hand on Nish’s cheek, her forehead touching the top of his head. Her eyes were screwed shut.

Tiaan began to lever from the side. It was hard work. The black Aachan metal, although thin, was intensely strong and inflexible. It proved impossible to bend out of the way. In the end Tiaan had to whack the spears one way and then the other with the bar until they came free, knowing that if either had gone into Nish she would be greatly aggravating the wound.

The second spear came out. Tiaan tossed it over the side and lifted the sheet of metal, which sprang back to its original shape. Nish gave a groan and turned his head. His nose was running with a mixture of blood and mucus and his lower face was wet with half-frozen saliva.

‘You took your bloody time,’ he said through bruised and swollen lips.

‘Are you all right?’ Irisis said, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You look disgusting.’

‘Thanks.’

‘If you were all right, why the hell didn’t you say so! I thought you were dead.’

‘I couldn’t move a fingertip. Couldn’t open my mouth, or close it. Do you think you could wipe my nose?’

‘The things I do for your dignity.’ Irisis took off her shirt and began to clean him up with it.

Tiaan walked away across the wet tussock grass and left them to their cheerful bickering.

Once Irisis’s twisted ankle had been immobilised by strapping it to shaped pieces of wood, her wrist bandaged and Nish’s bodylength bruises marvelled over, Tiaan said, ‘What now?’

‘Flydd wants us to check on the cities again, to see what’s happened,’ Nish reminded her. ‘If we go back to Alcifer in three or four days, we should be able to see if the spores have had any effect. In the meantime, let’s find somewhere to hide. With no lyrinx.’

‘Somewhere tranquil,’ said Irisis. ‘With decent food.’

‘And wine,’ said Nish.

‘Neither will be easy to come by,’ said Tiaan, ‘in a land that’s been empty of humans for years. I’ll see what I can find.’

They flew south-west, skirting along the foothills of the mountains. Below, they saw many manors and fastnesses, once sited to protect the fertile valleys from mountain marauders, but now abandoned and some already falling into ruin.

‘What about that one?’ said Irisis.

It was a small manor set on the edge of a grassy upland plateau. A stream meandered across the sward, passed by the rear of the manor then curled around like a sickle before tinkling over a waterfall, five or six spans high, in a crystalline shower. The grass was green, fragrant herbs grew on the edge of the plateau and in the distance a forest barred the way to the higher mountains. Stock grazed on the grass: cattle with long, twisting horns and sheep whose fine crinkly wool was a purple black. Goats stood sentinel on rock stacks here and there. The Sea of Thurkad was just visible in the east. They hid the thapter in a stone barn, pushed the doors closed and hobbled off to look for something better than the hard tack they had in the thapter.

‘I wonder who lived here, and what happened to them?’ said Tiaan. The place had a melancholy air. ‘Whoever they were, they lost everything, and probably their lives as well.’

‘A story that’s been repeated a hundred thousand times across Santhenar since the lyrinx came,’ said Nish, supporting Irisis with his shoulder.

The front door was closed but not locked. They went inside. The owners had either been killed or had fled carrying only what would fit on their backs, for the manor was full of precious things. Silverware, cloisonné lamps of the most exquisite workmanship, silken tapestries and other fineries remained in place as though the house was still occupied, though there was a film of dust over everything.

‘How long ago would this place have been abandoned?’ Tiaan wondered.

‘It must have been one of the last, since it’s not been looted,’ said Irisis, hopping across to a leather chair and sitting down. ‘No more than three years, I’d say. I’m going to stay right here. You can wait on me for a change, Nish.’

‘There could still be food in the pantries, and drink in the cellars,’ said Nish. ‘Beer wouldn’t be much good after three years, but wine should have lasted, and cheese.’

‘You keep talking about food,’ smiled Irisis.

‘I haven’t had anything decent to eat since you went east at the end of the winter. Cooking is a lost art at Fiz Gorgo.’

‘Yggur’s food is a little stodgy, I’ll agree, but it’s a damn sight better than I’ve been eating in the eastern manufactories.’

Nish and Tiaan found a larder with a vermin-proof door, and there was food in it: hanging hams, cheeses, pickled onions and other preserved vegetables and fruits. He found wine in a cellar too: an immensely strong red wine, as well as small barrels of fruit liqueurs. Nish lugged one of each up and outside, while Tiaan carried out the most comfortable chairs. Irisis was carving herself a crutch from a forked stick.

They had a picnic on the terrace, overlooking the lands of Iagador, while the sun went down behind them. It hadn’t stormed here and they lingered outside in the balmy evening.

Tiaan toyed with a mug of wine, then put it aside. It was too strong, and wine did uncomfortable things to her head. She lay back and studied the stars.

Nish and Irisis had gone inside, Irisis hopping on her crutch. Tiaan knew what they were up to. Good luck to them; they might as well enjoy what little time they had left.

She was thirsty but felt too lethargic to go all the way to the well for water. Irisis had decanted part of the liqueur barrel into a jug so Tiaan took a sip. It was thick and sweet, more to her taste. She had another, then lay back in her armchair again, pulled her coat about her and watched the stars wheel across the sky.

She woke as a crescent moon rose over the distant sea. All was quiet inside the manor and her bare hands were cold. Somewhere behind her, an owl hooted. Moonbeams lit up the mist above the falls like a fairy veil drifting in the wind. Dew glittered on the grass. It was so peaceful; so beautiful. It must often have been like this, before the war began.

She felt a tear in the corner of her eye. This place would always be as lovely, but there would be no one to appreciate it. These attacks were a folly, and suddenly she felt sure that they were going to lose the war.

Tiaan had an urge to call Flydd and tell him so. She considered it, but the drink had left her lethargic. It was easier to snuggle up in the chair and close her eyes again.

Despite having unlocked Golias’s globe all those months ago, she still didn’t understand how a message could travel from one field to another. Even less, how it could loop and whorl its way across lands a dozen nodes apart one day, yet on the next, not even reach someone in a nearby town.

Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Tiaan wondered if the erratic performance of farspeakers could have anything to do with the interlinking, or failing, of the nodes. Could she put farspeaker globes at each end to study how the signals changed as power was drawn from the nodes?

What if? There were too many questions and never enough answers, while each answer raised new questions. In a lifetime she wouldn’t be able to answer a fraction of them.

The moon travelled higher; the illuminated veils of mist danced over the waterfall like the restless spirits of those who once lived here. She wished she knew who they’d been, and what had happened to them. Did they still pine for this place and long to come home once the war was over? Or were they dead and eaten by the enemy long ago?

The morbid thoughts disturbed her. As a distraction, Tiaan went over the events of the past few days, still marvelling how they’d survived the attack at Alcifer. Had it not been for the lyrinx suddenly checking as they raced for Irisis and Nish at the bellows … Now, why had they done that?

For a few seconds, they’d all acted as though they’d been in pain. Could it have something to do with the way she’d been operating the thapter? She’d often flown it near lyrinx and never seen such a reaction before.

Tiaan replayed the scene, back and forth. It had happened just as she had screamed into the farspeaker at Flydd. Could that have hurt them? She’d not encountered anything like it. Or had she?

Nearly two years ago, when Besant had carried her off to Kalissin, Tiaan had felt a strange sensation whenever Besant drew powerfully on the Secret Art. It had been like sherbet dissolving and fizzing behind her temples, and Tiaan had experienced it a number of times.

Poor Ullii had felt it much more strongly: Tiaan could still recall her anguished screams as Besant took off. It was equally possible that lyrinx could be affected when humans used the Art in certain ways.

Had anyone else noticed? She went inside, intending to ask Irisis and Nish. The lamp had burned low in the front room but its dying flickers showed them lying together on a rug on the floor, fast asleep. Tiaan looked down at Nish’s scarred back, which he had been so anxious to conceal. It was worse than Irisis’s. How it must have hurt. Pulling a fold of the rug over them, she blew out the lamp.

She went into the barn and sat in the thapter, in the dark. It was the closest thing she had to home and a place of her own, though it still stank of lyrinx blood. Tiaan wanted to talk to Flydd or Yggur about her observations, but her slave farspeaker could only call when Flydd’s master globe had been set to speak to her.

Setting up the farspeaker, she leaned back in her seat. What would Flydd and Yggur do if the lyrinx did come out of their underground cities? It now struck Tiaan as an absurd plan – surely the enemy would fight twice as hard if they had no home to return to. Using the spores now seemed reckless and she wished she hadn’t been talked into it, though, if she hadn’t, one of the other pilots would have done it.

She felt so isolated and alone that it was easy to imagine the world had already ended, for humanity. What if the only humans left alive were herself and the snoring pair inside?

In need of comfort, Tiaan took the amplimet out of its socket under the smashed binnacle. Flydd had given it back to her for the duration of this mission, after which it was to return to the platinum box. Tiaan didn’t mind – since Nennifer she’d been purged of that tormenting withdrawal. Nonetheless, the amplimet was a comfort and reminded her of her first real friend, old Joeyn.

A tiny spark drifted slowly down the centre of the crystal. It was dull, which meant that there wasn’t a strong node nearby. Tiaan knew that already – the fields were always in her inner eye now. She cupped the amplimet in her cold hands and warmth spread through her, out of all proportion to its size.

She focussed on her slave farspeaker, wondering yet again about the force that made such things work. Bringing up her mental image of Golias’s globe, Tiaan revolved its inner spheres as if tuning it to speak with her farspeaker. The spheres turned as if coated in oil. Golias’s globe had been so well made that the best artisans had not been able to equal it, and it still worked better than any of the copies. Messages went further and were just that little bit clearer.

The farspeaker burped, startling her. An uncanny coincidence, that the scrutator should call her just as she was thinking about him. She imagined him sitting at the long table, papers and maps all around. She waited for him to speak but he did not.

‘Hello?’ she said after a decent interval. ‘This is Tiaan.’

‘Tiaan?’ Flydd cried in astonishment. ‘What …?’

‘What do you want, Scrutator?’

‘I didn’t call you. My globe was set to speak to someone else.’

‘But, that’s impossible.’

‘It’s supposed to be. What have you done, Tiaan?’

She didn’t know. ‘I was just sitting in the thapter with the amplimet in my hands, wondering what was happening back east. Thinking about your globe, and the settings needed for you to contact me, I just moved the spheres in my mind.’

‘You did more than that. You actually changed the settings of my globe.’

‘But …’ said Tiaan.

‘I saw them move.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Why did she always feel the need to apologise? ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said delightedly. ‘It’s an important discovery. Where are you?’

‘Somewhere in the hills of Bannador. We’re resting on the way south to Alcifer.’

‘Good for you. I presume you got the job done at Thurkad?’

‘Not entirely.’ She explained what had happened. ‘Some of the spores could have been sucked inside but the barrel fell out. There was nothing we could do about it.’

‘You did better than I dared hope, and survived. And who knows, fear of the fungus may do our work for us.’

‘Why didn’t you call before?’

‘I tried,’ said Flydd. ‘But two more nodes have gone down and we’re having a lot of trouble with our farspeakers.’

She was about to say, ‘I have a theory about that,’ but decided not to. It was probably nothing. She still hadn’t thought it through properly. ‘Scrutator?’

‘What is it, Tiaan?’

‘Something unusual happened during the attack on Alcifer. If you recall, I shouted at you on the farspeaker.’

Flydd chuckled. ‘It’s not often I’m shouted at. Most people are too afraid.’

‘The lyrinx attacked Nish and Irisis as they tried to throw the spores in, and I couldn’t get to them in time. But as I screamed at you, the enemy reacted as if in pain, and one lyrinx put its hands over its ears. Have you ever seen that kind of thing before?’

‘Can’t say that I have, though I’ve never been close to the enemy when using it. You’ve given me an idea. I’ll order some trials with lyrinx prisoners.’

After he had gone she lay back in the seat, utterly exhausted, and slept. Two days later they were high over Alcifer, above the height that any lyrinx could reach, watching and waiting. There was a little more activity on the ground and in the air than usual, but no sign of an army in readiness for battle. The scrutator called twice a day but there was nothing to report, apart from the odd flaring and fading of the exotic node-within-a-node at Alcifer, and a corresponding fading and flaring in the node associated with the nearby volcano. They had to be linked in some way. Tiaan made a note to mention it the next time he called. She hadn’t attempted to contact him again, so she did not know if she could reproduce what she had done before.

Time went by. It was now a week since they’d dropped the fungus spores, without any discernible effect, and it was the same at the other cities. Every time Tiaan spoke to Flydd he sounded more depressed.

‘What a waste of time this has been!’ Irisis said irritably.

Nish was peering over the side with a spyglass. ‘Hello, I think they’re coming out. Yes they are. I can see hundreds of lyrinx, assembling in the great square not far from the white building with the glass dome.’

‘Hundreds won’t bother us,’ said Irisis, reaching out for the spyglass.

‘Wait a second,’ said Nish, leaning away. ‘Go a bit lower, Tiaan.’

‘What is it?’

‘I’m not sure, yet.’

Tiaan began to spiral down. Normally the wheeling fliers would have turned towards her but they continued their patterns as if they were flying along wires.

‘They’re carrying something out,’ said Nish.

Irisis took the spyglass from him and peered over the other side. ‘Looks like dead lyrinx, to me. A bit closer, please, Tiaan.’

Tiaan went down another turn, anxiously watching the fliers, who were not far away. ‘They’re carrying bodies down to that embankment,’ cried Irisis, ‘and throwing them over.’

Tiaan felt cold inside. They’d brought plague upon the lyrinx and they were dying in agony. It wasn’t right.

Irisis counted some sixty bodies being dumped. Not long after that, more lyrinx appeared, carrying barrels which they also emptied over the embankment.

‘Can you see what that is?’ said Nish.

Irisis adjusted the spyglass. ‘The bodies of small creatures. About cat-sized. Hundreds of them.’

‘Could they be uggnatl?’ said Tiaan.

‘I think they are,’ said Irisis. ‘Yes, definitely.’

Many more barrels were brought out, then the pile began to smoke, the fliers turned towards them and Tiaan headed away. They had just flown across the glass dome when the sound of the mechanism vanished. She took power from another node and climbed a little higher.

‘What was that?’ said Nish.

‘I don’t know, but it was a lot stronger than when they tried to take my power a year ago.’

It happened again, though this time Tiaan was waiting for it and switched nodes instantly. ‘I don’t think they like us here,’ she said, turning away.

A few seconds later, power was snatched from her again. Then again, and each time it was quicker than before.

‘Fly!’ yelled Irisis.

Tiaan tried to, but all at once time seemed to freeze. Nish, his mouth open, went as still as a statue. Tiaan’s hand appeared to solidify in mid-air and the thapter itself to stop, though it did not fall. She tried to reach for the flight knob but her hand would not move. What’s … happening? Her thoughts were so sluggish that she had to force herself to create each word.

After an agonised aeon, time reverted to its normal beat and she streaked away to safety, without having the faintest idea what had been done to them.

Flydd was revoltingly pleased to hear about the dead, and the uggnatl, and told them that similar plagues had been reported from two of the lyrinx’s eastern cities, though the number of lyrinx dead was relatively small so far. He was not so pleased to hear about the strange attack on the thapter, though he couldn’t make anything of it either.

The next day Tiaan kept at a safe distance, observing with the spyglass. The thapter was not attacked again, but a thousand dead were carried out of the city. The day after that Oellyll erupted, lyrinx boiling from it like ants from a broken anthill. They disappeared into the forest too quickly to count, though Nish did his best to estimate the numbers.

‘Around twenty thousand,’ he said when dusk cut off the scene.

Irisis laid down her tally sheet. ‘I make it more like twenty-five.’

‘Then we’ll take the difference. Twenty-two and a half.’

They were back on station at dawn, and found the enemy fleeing Oellyll as fast as ever. By the end of the day Nish and Irisis had estimated another twenty-two thousand. That night was clear with a good moon and they saw that the evacuation continued all night, though it wasn’t bright enough to count them. Finally, around lunchtime of the following day, it slowed to a trickle and the circling lyrinx, without so much as a glance at the thapter, flew east across the sea.

‘Fifty-five thousand,’ Tiaan said when Flydd called not long after. ‘And that’s just the ones we saw in the daytime. There would have been roughly as many again at night.’

‘So a hundred thousand; maybe a hundred and ten,’ said Tiaan. ‘That’s far more than Flydd expected.’

The scrutator could hardly speak when she told him the number. ‘And how many dead?’ he said after a long, long pause.

‘A couple of thousand, in total,’ she said soberly.

‘Is that all?’ he whispered. ‘It’s not near enough. If that’s repeated at the other cities, we’re staring at a catastrophe.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ said Tiaan through her farspeaker.

‘When you’re sure it’s safe, take a look at the bodies, if they’re not all burnt. Then you’d better go north and see if the same is happening there.’

That afternoon she landed by one of the main entrances to Oellyll. The bodies lay in great piles, adults as well as infants whose armour had barely formed. The outer skin was red and blistered, the fingers and toes hooked as though the creatures had died in agony. The threat of the uggnatl had meant there was no choice, but Tiaan felt sick. We did this, she thought. I did it, and for what? There’s got to be a better way – a way we can all live together, without slaughtering each other and resorting to ever-increasing barbarities like this.

By the time they reached the lyrinx city west of Thurkad the following day, the smoking bodies were piled as high as houses between the cliff and the pinnacles. They saw no lyrinx about, which surely meant that this city had also been abandoned.

Tiaan landed the thapter so that Irisis and Nish could inspect the bodies, then took them up to one of the entrances, as they wanted to check inside. She did not. She sat at the very brink, looking down at the fuming corpses. Many of them were children and infants. Very many. How could peace ever be made between humans and lyrinx, after this?

But there had to be a way. Tiaan could not bear to think of the war going on in ever-increasing violence and depravity until the world had been utterly laid waste. One side would be annihilated and the other ruined by the legacy of its own viciousness and moral corruption, as it tried to justify more and worse depravities in the cause of victory. How could humanity – should it prove the victor – ever recover from such bloody Histories? It would taint every child born in this world, for as long as the Histories endured.

I can’t be a party to it any longer, she thought. I must find a solution, whatever it costs me.

Nish and Irisis came out, pale and silent. They did not speak about what they’d found inside, though Tiaan could only assume it had been more dead, twisted in their last agonies. Neither did she mention to them her resolve – let Flydd get word of it and she’d be deprived of thapter and amplimet, and probably locked up for the duration. Her quest would have to be silent and secret. She could not afford to trust even her new-found friends.

‘We’d better report to Flydd,’ said Irisis.

‘You do it,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

Irisis nodded. ‘I think I know how you feel.’

I doubt that you do, thought Tiaan, handing her the slave farspeaker. ‘Let’s go; I can’t bear the smell any longer.’

‘We can’t tell how many there were,’ Irisis said over the farspeaker once they were almost to Thurkad. It had taken ages to contact Flydd. ‘Though …’ She squinted into the distance.

‘What is it?’ said Flydd, his voice echoing.

‘I can see clouds of lyrinx in the distance, flying over the sea towards Meldorin. There must be ten thousand fliers; or more.’

‘And I dare say there’s more that you can’t see,’ he said heavily.

‘I dare say. And the harbour of Thurkad is full of boats, thousands of them. The enemy must have had them stored under cover. Some are already moving out. They’ll all be across the sea in a few days.’

‘I suppose we could pray for a storm.’

‘I’ve never seen the sea calmer,’ said Irisis. ‘What’s happening on the east coast?’

‘The same,’ said Flydd. ‘Our estimates were low at each city. Their numbers are at least a third higher than we’d thought.’

‘A third!’ cried Nish, staring into the farspeaker. ‘But that means …’

‘I’d hoped we’d infect most of them, and wipe them out as a threat, but a few thousand dead is nothing.’

Tiaan was even more shocked than when she’d looked at the twisted corpses. ‘It seemed a lot to me,’ she said quietly.

‘Tiaan, each of our armies is outnumbered by an enemy that doesn’t need to outnumber us, and they’ve nowhere to go. They’ll all go to war against us. We gambled and we’ve lost.’

‘Can’t you use the spores again?’ said Nish.

‘They’re all gone.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ said Irisis.

‘Do whatever you want,’ Flydd said despairingly. ‘You have my permission to save yourselves any way you can.’

‘What would be the point?’ said Nish. He looked questioningly as Tiaan, who was staring straight ahead, her jaw clenched, and gave no response. Irisis nodded. ‘We’re coming home to fight,’ Nish added.