FIFTY-SEVEN

Gilhaelith had been working with Ryll for months before, in late summer, they made the breakthrough. The lyrinx watched him so carefully, and constrained his every movement so tightly, that he could not have lifted a finger without being noticed. On the first few occasions he was watched over by Great Anabyng himself, whom Gilhaelith knew to be a mancer of surpassing power. Gilhaelith was meekness personified, doing nothing without asking permission first. He would be patient. The lyrinx couldn’t afford to waste Anabyng’s talents on guard duties for long.

Sure enough, after several sessions Anabyng came no more, being replaced by a pair of lesser but still powerful mancers who never took their eyes off him. Gilhaelith kept up the pretence of total acquiescence. In fact they constrained him so tightly, out of fear, that he was almost useless to Ryll. Gilhaelith was happy to go along with that. Sooner or later they would have to give him more freedom, and he would use it to get what he wanted. In the meantime he kept his head down and let his resentment burn. He, a master geomancer, had been reduced to begging for the right to use his geomantic globe, just to save his life. Gyrull had not deigned to reply to his pleas, which made him bitter indeed. Once he got hold of the globe, she would pay. He’d rehearsed his plan so many times that even his reluctant, damaged brain had it down perfectly.

Eventually they had given him a little freedom – enough for Ryll to discover what he needed to complete the flisnadr, yet not enough for Gilhaelith to take control of his globe. And the instant Ryll had it, the guards had taken Gilhaelith straight back to his watermelon-shaped stone cell and locked him in.

This time Gilhaelith knew he was doomed. The damage caused by the phantom crystals was close to irreparable now, and in a month or two it would be. A few months after that, if he was still alive, he would be little better than a vegetable. And he probably would live that long. They would keep him alive until the flisnadr had been tested and was ready for use, just in case. But as soon as it was ready, he would go to the slaughtering pens. Apart from any other considerations, he knew too much about the power patterner to be allowed to live.

Liett hurtled into the patterning chamber, skidding halfway across the stone floor before she could stop herself. Her claws screeched on the shale, gouging pale marks across it. ‘Ryll!’ she screamed.

He set down the bucket of gruel with which he was feeding the human females sealed in the linked patterners, but didn’t turn to her at once. Ryll was used to Liett’s histrionics, and he was deep in thought. The flisnadr was the size of a beer barrel now, almost fully grown, and he’d already carried out most of the tests. The results were encouraging, though he wanted to keep testing for a month or two, just to be sure that he had mastery of it well before it was needed. ‘What is it?’ he said absently, watching the flickering chameleon colours on its skin.

‘We’ve been attacked,’ she cried.

‘Attacked?’ Ryll spun around. ‘How?’

‘One of the enemy thapters flew right to the main air shaft, the one with the bellows, and hurled in a barrel of the skin-rotting spores.’

Ryll’s skin turned a dull, creeping yellow, fading to grey, and he felt an involuntary urge to scratch himself. He resisted. ‘When?’

‘Just ten minutes ago. Mother ordered the bellows shut down and the shaft sealed but … it may be too late. The spores could have blown anywhere by now. What are we going to do?’

‘We don’t panic,’ said Ryll, heading for the door at a run. ‘First, we burn brimstone in the sealed shaft.’

‘Will that work with spores?’ Liett was trotting beside him.

‘I don’t know. It saved a few of our uggnatl, but that was a different kind of infection. We seal all the floors the shaft blows air to, wash everything down into the gutters, and burn the washings outside. Did we get the thapter?’

‘Almost, but the black-haired pilot got away in the end.’

His heart sank even further. ‘Tiaan was the pilot?’

‘Yes.’

For once Liett refrained from making the obvious accusation. Tiaan had thwarted them a number of times now, and all because he, Ryll, had allowed her to escape from Kalissin a year and a half ago. Shame made his stomach throb, for all that he’d followed his honourable instincts, and few could fault that. His mind was already projecting the worst possibilities from this attack, and they were very bad.

On the upper level they ran into a group of desperate lyrinx, milling back and forth, barely able to contain their terror. Recalling the fate of those infected by the spores in Borgistry, he could hardly blame them.

‘Where’s Matriarch Gyrull?’ said Ryll.

A squat female, whose dark-green crest looked as though it had been chewed by a dog, pointed down the corridor. ‘She’s receiving. She can’t be disturbed.’

‘What about Great Anabyng?’

‘Outside, strengthening the defences.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ said Ryll. ‘They won’t come back.’

‘If they’re trying to frighten us,’ Liett said savagely, ‘they –’

‘They’re not trying to frighten us, Liett. They’re trying to wipe us out.’ Ryll headed up the corridor searching for Gyrull, and found her in a small room, crouched in the corner with her hands over her ears, her brow ridges knitted in concentration. She would be mindspeaking to the other matriarchs.

He waited silently, and after several minutes she dropped her hands and looked up.

‘What did they say when you told them, Wise Mother?’ said Ryll.

‘All our cities have been attacked in the same way, at the same time. All the attacks succeeded save the one at Thurkad, where the pilot of the thapter was shot and those inside it were killed.’

The ice in his stomach developed needles that pricked right through him. ‘Is this the time, Wise Mother?’

‘For victory or annihilation? I don’t know, Ryll. The spores may do nothing. We won’t know for some days, but we’d better be ready.’

‘Are you going to release the uggnatl?’

‘Maybe in the east, where we have enough to make a difference. Not here. How is your work going?’

‘The flisnadr has passed all but the final tests. I could use it now if I had to. Within weeks I’ll have mastered it.’

Matriarch Gyrull smiled. ‘Well done, Ryll. It’s been a mighty labour, and few among us thought it could ever succeed. Even I had my doubts, but you’ve done everything I asked of you, and more. We may save something out of our ruin after all. It – it’ll be the last thing I do for my people.’

‘But, Matriarch!’ he cried, aghast. ‘No – we need you.’

‘Don’t be troubled,’ she said. ‘I’m not dead yet. But my time as matriarch has been a long one, and I’ll be glad enough to hand on the flask and the cup to a younger leader. One who’s fit to lead us into our new future – if there is one for us.’

‘Have you chosen the new matriarch?’

‘Not yet, though I’m close to it.’

‘May I ask if … Liett?’ Ryll didn’t know whether to hope she was chosen or rejected. Either way Liett would be insufferable. And yet, Ryll felt she would make a good leader in time. Unfortunately, time was no longer on their side.

‘You may not.’ She smiled. ‘It may be Liett, or another. I’ll be watching to see how the favoured ones acquit themselves over our coming trials.’

Some days after the attack, six lyrinx guards came for Gilhaelith. This is it, he thought, they’re taking me to the slaughtering pens. He tried to summon up some vestige of his earlier rage but, after the months of solitary confinement, he felt too apathetic. Could that be due to the brain damage? His every sense, his every emotion, felt damped down these days, and perhaps it was for the best. At least it would put an end to his troubles.

The guards said nothing, just stolidly led him up the ramps towards Alcifer. Other lyrinx ran past all the time, close to panic. Gilhaelith smiled grimly. It was clear that the city had been attacked and the lyrinx did not know what to do. It no longer concerned him. At least he was going to die out in the fresh air, not in a claustrophobic, reeking chamber down in the pit.

But they did not take him to the slaughtering pens. The guards kept going up the road towards the central point of Alcifer, the five-armed white palace with the glistening shell roofs, at the intersection of the seven boulevards. Just there, beneath the glass-domed roof, he had completed the geomantic globe last autumn. So they weren’t going to kill him after all – at least, not just yet. They still wanted something from him.

Gilhaelith was led inside and, to his unparalleled joy, the globe stood on the stone bench where he’d last used it, under its dust cloth. Ryll was waiting beside it, along with one of the lyrinx mancers who’d kept watch over Gilhaelith previously. He felt another tickle of hope. Perhaps in the present crisis they couldn’t spare the second mancer. The fellow’s skin was flashing and flickering in all the colours of the spectrum, such was his agitation. Ryll maintained a studied calm, though he kept scratching his claws across the bench.

‘I’ve brought you here for the final tests on the flisnadr,’ Ryll said, indicating a barrel-shaped object covered with a canvas. ‘Let’s begin.’

‘I need answers before I’ll agree to help you,’ said Gilhaelith, who was beginning to see the faintest possibility of escape.

Ryll extended his claws towards Gilhaelith’s face. Gilhaelith didn’t flinch. ‘If you could do without me you would have killed me long ago. What’s going on?’

Ryll didn’t even think before answering, which meant that things were desperate and the need for the flisnadr urgent. ‘The humans have attacked Oellyll with the spores of a fungus that causes us to shed our outer skin and tear ourselves to shreds in agony.’ He explained the circumstances of the attack.

Gilhaelith recalled the infected lyrinx that had been put out of its misery as they’d fled from Snizort last summer, and saw the implications at once. Had humanity got the idea from him? He vaguely remembered talking to someone about the incident, at Fiz Gorgo, he thought. ‘Are you abandoning Oellyll?’

‘No decision has been taken,’ said Ryll. ‘Shall we begin?’

He had told Gilhaelith all he needed to know. Oellyll surely would be abandoned, either because lyrinx were being infected with the fungus, or for fear that they would be. This was the crisis – the moment upon which the fate of both lyrinx and humanity hinged. He had to take advantage of the first chance he got, for the instant he gave Ryll what he wanted, Ryll would put him to death.

That knowledge quite concentrated the mind, and Gilhaelith rehearsed once again the attack he’d been planning for months now. He was ready; all he needed was the opportunity.

Ryll went to the flisnadr, though he left the canvas over it so Gilhaelith couldn’t see how it was used. They worked for a night and a day, then slept for a few hours. Gilhaelith was bound hand and foot and watched over by four lyrinx guards, then untied and they worked on. Ryll was methodical and took no chances. Neither did he allow Gilhaelith any.

On the afternoon of the following day, Gilhaelith heard the whine of a thapter not far above. ‘What’s that?’ he said, hoping to distract Ryll.

Ryll cocked his head. ‘Thapter. Go and see,’ he said to one of the guards, and the lyrinx ran off.

‘Perhaps they’re going to attack with more spores,’ Gilhaelith said.

‘They’ll get a surprise if they try,’ said Ryll, pretending indifference, though his skin colours told otherwise.

They continued, Gilhaelith sliding the brass pointers on their circumferential rings as he tuned the geomantic globe to the field, while Ryll worked under the canvas. Gilhaelith couldn’t see what he was doing, though he could feel the effects on the field, which kept drawing down then flaring up. So the flisnadr is working, Gilhaelith thought. And if Ryll can control this dark and dangerous field, formed around the perilous Alcifer node-within-a-node, he can control just about any field in the world. He can take all the power from it, to deprive the enemy, or give it all to his own kind. He can do anything he wants with it. How can humanity counter that?

Surprisingly, Gilhaelith cared. The knowledge that he truly was doomed had come like a blinding revelation. His own selfish interests, which had sustained him all his life, would never be satisfied, but somehow that did not matter any more. What did matter was the fate of humanity, and he might hold the key to saving them. It seemed it was time to throw in his lot with his own kind after all.

The lyrinx came running back. ‘It’s the same thapter that attacked the air shaft last week,’ he said. ‘It’s not attacking, though; just circling.’

Tiaan’s thapter, Gilhaelith thought. This is my chance. If I can just get free and signal her, she can take me away from here. He suppressed the thought that, after his previous behaviour, she might refuse.

He glanced up at Ryll, gauging whether it was the right moment, only to realise that Ryll had seen an entirely different possibility. With the flisnadr he could withdraw all the power from the thapter, no matter what node Tiaan tried to use. He could cause it to crash or bring it to ground just where he wanted it.

Ryll hurled the canvas out of the way and his big hands danced over the recesses and protrusions of the warty, chameleon-skinned flisnadr. He thrust his arms into two of the slits, up to the elbows, and the note of the thapter dropped sharply. Gilhaelith knew his opportunity had come.

He wasn’t going to be rash about it, though. One word from Ryll, even a gesture, and the mancer or the guards would slay him out of hand. Gilhaelith continued moving the pointers exactly as before, and kept the geomantic globe turning gently underneath them on its cushion of freezing mist.

The pattern of the fields – for the node-within-a-node produced two fields here – came into view, slightly blurred in his enfeebled mind. He had to focus the fields, and then, right here in this most perfectly designed place in all the world, wake the sleeping construct that was Alcifer itself. If he could correctly align the geomantic globe to do that, he would have power to blast his enemies into oblivion, drag the thapter to himself and make good his escape in it.

The thapter’s mechanism screamed, died away and screamed again as Tiaan tried desperately to escape. She was jumping from one field to another, trying to preserve her power, as Ryll took command of the fields. Her strategy had worked when she’d escaped from Alcifer the first time, almost a year ago, but it could not work now. Tiaan could not hope to defeat the power patterner in the hands of the lyrinx who had designed it.

Hurry! Gilhaelith told himself. If Ryll takes the thapter, or crashes it, all is lost. Gilhaelith ignored his own imperative. He must stay calm and, above all, be controlled. His mind was far less than it had been but his unquenchable will was as strong as ever. He could still do it. Focus. Focus the field!

Its grainy strands sharpened but then dissolved into a blur again. He could feel control slipping. With a supreme effort of will, Gilhaelith wrenched it back in place. The field came perfectly into focus and, the instant it did, he reached down to Alcifer’s core that had lain sleeping for over a thousand years, waiting for a master who would never return.

Gilhaelith reached out and down, deeper and deeper, and suddenly there it was. It faded; then, without any warning, the faint nodes beneath the glass surface of the geomantic globe lit up.

Gilhaelith drew a deep breath and willed himself to calm as Ryll spun around, staring at the globe.

‘What have you done?’ Gilhaelith cried, to forestall Ryll and make him wonder if he had done it himself, with the power patterner.

Ryll gave him a suspicious glance, withdrew one arm from the flisnadr and beckoned the watching lyrinx mancer over. The male came at a run, close enough to see into the bowl, then froze. The nodes were glowing more brightly than before, each according to its true nature. Now a slender thread of orange light began to extend from Alcifer’s node-within-a-node to another node, a quarter of the way across the globe.

‘Ah,’ breathed Gilhaelith. Tiaan had previously told him that nodes could be linked. He’d thought a lot about that but had never been able to work out how. At last he began to understand. The thread had now touched the second node, and other threads began to extend out from it towards yet more distant nodes. If he could duplicate in the world what he’d done on the globe, could the power of all the nodes become available to him? His mind reeled with the possibilities – survival, even reversal of the brain damage after all? He didn’t know – it was too much for anyone to take in.

‘Step away from the globe,’ snapped Ryll. ‘Then don’t move.’

Gilhaelith wasn’t quite ready, but it had to be now. He could feel power flowing into the globe and he drew on it to strike his enemies down.

Something low down in the bowels of Alcifer throbbed; he heard a low grinding note. To his geomantic ear it sounded like basalt grating across obsidian. The nodes grew brighter, the threads of light raced between them and suddenly Gilhaelith woke to something that had happened to him a long time ago.

He began to feel the tiny, invisible thread that the amplimet had drawn to the back of his skull when he’d been working for the lyrinx in the tar tunnel in Snizort. He’d forgotten it during the escape, but now he could feel it tugging at him. Abruptly it also seemed to light up, a fiery pulse ran up it into the ethyr and then he felt – oh, horrible, horrible! He actually felt it – the sleeping amplimet in Tiaan’s thapter was driven over the threshold to the second stage of awakening.

‘No!’ he cried aloud. ‘Not that!’ and hurled every iota of power he could at the thread to sever it. He succeeded, but then the strangest thing happened.

All the lights went out, though it was daylight. The world and even the lyrinx faded to frozen translucency, and Gilhaelith shifted. Everything went dull and dim except the geomantic globe; the roused core of Alcifer, which now glowed a baleful red; and somewhere above, frozen in flight, a tiny winking gleam that was the woken amplimet.

He moved a hand. It appeared real, solid, though when he dropped it on the stone table it sank partway into it before enough resistance built up to stop it. Gilhaelith had been shifted outside the dimensions of the world. Or almost out.

Free, he exulted. I’m free.

First of all, he would make his escape from this accursed place. No, before anything, he must exact retribution on Gyrull, for holding him against his will and for refusing him what was rightfully his. Gilhaelith looked around and then down, tracing through the layers of Oellyll as if it were a translucent cake. The matriarch wouldn’t be hard to find, even among so many lyrinx, for few held such power as she did. She would stand out among the lesser lyrinx like a ruby in a tray of grey glass.

Ah, there she was, deep down, in a secluded little chamber, frozen in the act of bending over what appeared to be a coffin. Gilhaelith looked more closely. It was one of the relics she’d retrieved from Snizort, and they were more valuable than the whole city of Snizort had been. Behind her, two other lyrinx, no more than grey shadows, had coffins on their shoulders. They were moving the relics. They must be evacuating Snizort.

Time to be going. Gilhaelith reached out and exerted his new-found power. It was easy here, outside the real world. With no more effort than the wiggling of a fingertip, he pulled down the roof of the tunnel in front of Gyrull, then collapsed it for a few hundred spans, to make sure she would never get out. You did everything for those relics, he thought, including kidnapping and enslaving me. Now you’ll have what remains of your life to regret it.

The floor shook beneath him, reminding Gilhaelith that he knew little about the power he was using, or what the consequences would be. A sharp pang struck him in the heart, and by the time he’d recovered from it, he was back in his body in the glass-domed chamber. All remained as it had been, except that Ryll was now moving in extreme slow-motion. Whatever power had shifted Gilhaelith outside of normal space and time was lapsing. Time and reality would soon resume.

Gilhaelith raised his hand and drew power to blast Ryll and the flisnadr to pulp, but that pain stabbed him in the chest again. He must have taken too much already. Revenge would have to wait. He picked up the globe and staggered with it out to the main door of the palace, then outside. By the time he reached the intersection of the boulevards, the world was almost as solid as it had ever been.

He looked up, thinking that he could at least use power to pull the thapter down to him, but whatever he’d woken in Alcifer’s core slipped beyond his reach. One minute the thapter was frozen in the air above him, the next it had streaked away and vanished. Perhaps he’d taken the globe too far from the centre, but there was no time to think it through. He couldn’t go back; the lyrinx would kill him on sight. Hefting the globe in his arms, Gilhaelith ran for the port, praying that there would be some kind of boat available when he got there. If he made it across the sea, Flydd would be most interested to hear about the power patterner. It gave him something to bargain with.

Ryll.

Ryll was frantically searching for Gilhaelith, who had inexplicably vanished from the glass-domed chamber. Now he stopped abruptly, for it had sounded like the matriarch speaking inside his head. Ryll had little talent for mindspeech – few but the strongest lyrinx did – but he had occasionally picked up fragments of the mindspeech of others, and knew what it was like. This was far stronger, for it came from the greatest mindspeaker of all.

Ryll, I know you can’t answer me. Don’t worry – I can tell you’re hearing what I have to say. Alas, Gilhaelith is free and is now on his way across the sea to rejoin humankind. His knowledge of our flisnadr will strengthen them immeasurably, if we allow them time to understand it. The moment has come that we have long been dreading, but at least we’re prepared for it, and we have the flisnadr at last. Humanity is strong; maybe stronger than we are. Only time and courage will tell.

Our cities are lost and, with winter coming, we’ve nowhere to go. We can’t allow humanity to defeat us. No lyrinx could submit to the enslavement and degradation it visits on its unhuman enemies. We will die before we become caged beasts for their amusement. Liett was right. Now is the time for every one of us – woman, man and child – to go to war. We will have victory or annihilation! And you must lead us, Ryll.

‘Matriarch,’ he cried. ‘What’s going on? Where are you?’

Gilhaelith pulled the roof in on me. I’m trapped with two companions, and the relics. We’re unharmed, and we have food and water, but it will take weeks to dig ourselves out, and nearly as long for anyone to tunnel in to us. The war cannot wait else the advantage of the flisnadr will be lost. You must take charge of it and go over the sea at once. Safeguard it at all costs, for it’s the key to victory. Take it to our secret lair in the caves of Llurr, do the final tests and master it. Liett and the advance guard will carry you, and when the tests are done, get ready for the final battle.

‘Matriarch, why me?’

It was as if she’d heard him. I’ve prepared you well, Ryll. This is the first battle of the new lyrinx, and we need new leadership. If anyone can do it, you can. You will be well supported by Liett, and Great Anabyng, when he has time from his special duties, and all the others.

Leave a detachment of volunteers here, to dig us out. When we get out – if we get out – and have taken the relics to safety, we will join you for the final battle. But if the disease claims us, someone else must retrieve and guard the relics. Should that happen, Anabyng has my orders for the succession.

Go at once, Ryll. There is much to be done. Farewell. I’ve already spoken to the other matriarchs and they’re agreed that this is our only course.

‘What about the children?’ said Ryll. ‘Surely you cannot think to take them to war?’

We have no home now, nowhere to shelter our young ones, and I will not leave them behind to the cruellest of all fates – enslavement and degradation by the old humans. Far kinder that they live or die with us. We’ll shelter them to the end, but if the end comes, we will die together.

‘Yes,’ said Ryll. ‘Better that we all die than exist only as their beasts or slaves.’

And so the entirety of our kind will go to war. That is the Matriarchal Edict and everyone will follow it – to victory or annihilation.

‘Victory or annihilation,’ he said with furious resolve, and turned to get ready for war.