SIXTY-THREE

Nish told Liett as little as he could without seeming uncooperative. Fortunately he had no idea what Flydd’s plans were.

After the interrogation was over, the lyrinx separated. Liett picked Nish up in her claws and carried him, dangling like a rabbit in an eagle’s talons, on a long flight north-west. She flew for the remainder of the day, stopping at dark in a nondescript range of hills where she tied him to a tree while she went hunting. He hung there miserably, the claw punctures in his back and sides throbbing. She soon returned with a small, black-haired goat which she skinned and ate, bones, entrails and all.

Once she’d licked the blood off her chin and hands, Liett freed Nish’s hands and tossed a freshly skinned rabbit at him. It hit him wetly in the chest and fell to the dirt.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ he said.

‘It’s all the dinner you’re getting.’

‘But it’s raw!’

She took it back and ate it with a few appreciative gulps, head and all. She retied his hands, lay down and went to sleep. Nish didn’t sleep a wink. Before dawn they were off again, and eventually he recognised the long expanse of Warde Yallock, the largest lake in Lauralin.

Near the northern end of the lake she wheeled over the water several times before flying into a cave among hundreds that honeycombed vertical cliffs a hundred spans high. At the entrance she set Nish down while she folded her wings. He looked over the drop and his stomach churned. It was possible to climb up or down, if you were a lyrinx with clawed feet and hands, or fly in and out. Since he couldn’t do either, the place was as secure as any prison.

Liett spoke to the guard by the entrance, who pointed around the corner to the next cave. Taking Nish under one gamy arm she climbed across the sheer rock face and inside. Not far from the entrance, working in the light, was a wingless male who was also vaguely familiar.

On seeing Liett the male’s maw split into a smile of delighted surprise. He came striding out, arms spread, but Liett, scowling, thrust him away. After a heated exchange in the lyrinx tongue she threw Nish at the male, ran back to the entrance and hurled herself out. Her wings cracked and she raced away.

The wingless male stared after her, his skin colours flickering as if bemused, then turned to Nish. ‘My name is Ryll,’ he said, in an accent not dissimilar to Nish’s own. ‘And you, I’m told, are Cryl-Nish Hlar, son of the Scrutator Jal-Nish Hlar.’

‘He was my father,’ Nish said coldly, ‘until you ate him.’

‘I ate your father?’ said Ryll. ‘I don’t think so, human. I would have recognised him.’

‘Not you personally. Your people ate him at the battle of Gumby Marth.’

‘Did they? I was not there. I’m sorry for the loss of your father, Cryl-Nish. I lost my own when I was young.’

‘It was a mercy,’ Nish muttered. ‘After what you did to him two years ago, before you carried Tiaan away on that flying wing, he was never free of pain.’

Ryll inspected Nish. ‘I recognise you now – small but valiant. You’ve grown face hair since our last encounter. As for your father, we fought each other and I did no more than he would have done to me.’ Ryll spoke mildly, almost kindly, with none of the passion that characterised Liett. ‘I hate this war as much as you do, human.’

‘You started it!’

‘Our records tell otherwise,’ Ryll said. ‘Still, we’re not here to debate history, but for you to tell me everything you know about the plans of your leaders. Why did Gilhaelith the tetrarch steal our relics?’

‘I haven’t got the faintest idea.’

‘Come, Cryl-Nish, you were with him at the time. You laid down your life so that he could escape.’

‘We are at war,’ said Nish. ‘But I know no more than his parting message to Gyrull –’

‘Matriarch Gyrull! Show respect, human.’

‘Matriarch Gyrull. I’m sorry. Not everyone trusts Gilhaelith. Some people think he’s on your side.’

Ryll let out what could only be interpreted as a honk of derision.

‘He traded with lyrinx for many years,’ said Nish. ‘He helped you in Snizort and worked with you in Alcifer.’

‘We did not find him entirely trustworthy at Snizort. Thereafter he attempted to make deals with us, and sold us one or other worthless secrets in exchange for his living, but he never worked for us. Indeed, I planned to send him to the slaughtering pens once he was no further use, though only a very hungry lyrinx would have gnawed on his rank bones.’

‘I thought you lyrinx would eat anything,’ said Nish thoughtlessly.

‘And I thought you humans were treacherous, murdering scum,’ said Ryll in his unemotional way, ‘until I met Tiaan and discovered that humans could also be decent and honourable. There’s a lesson for both our peoples. Anyway, we no longer eat humans. Enough of philosophy – how did you know our Wise Mother had the relics?’

Nish didn’t answer at once, for he didn’t want to aid the enemy. But then, Gilhaelith could also be an enemy. ‘Gilhaelith found a way to eavesdrop on your mindspeech, with farspeakers.’

‘Ahhh,’ sighed Ryll. ‘How did he know our tongue?’

‘One of your former slaves, called Merryl …’

Ryll grimaced. ‘We should have secured Merryl before we left Snizort. Alas, in the chaos, many vital things remained undone. What did Gilhaelith do then?’

‘He learned that your matriarch had the relics, but was dying. He kept it from everyone else, stole a thapter and fled.’

‘Stole a thapter? So he is an outcast among you. How did he find our sacred relics?’

Nish hesitated.

‘You can either tell me now or, with the greatest regret, I will torture you until you beg for death, and then you will tell me.’

The latter course seemed more virtuous, more noble, though Nish could not see a lot of point to it. ‘He scried it out with his geomantic globe.’

‘The same one he perfected in Alcifer using our maps – or thinks he did.’

Nish was not treated badly, though that did not surprise him. The lyrinx used torture where necessary to extract information, but did not torment for the sake of it, as humans did.

Ryll returned to his work, whatever it was, with a barrel-shaped device in a recess further down the cave. Nish didn’t learn anything about it, for he was carried back to the adjoining cave. There he was given a wooden bucket and a fly-covered chunk of raw meat, so torn and filthy that he couldn’t tell what animal it had come from. He felt sick just looking at it, but in the end he ate it, knowing that he’d get nothing else. He wasn’t questioned further, and discovered only that he was a hostage.

After about a fortnight in the caves, the lyrinx abruptly departed late one afternoon. Nish was carried up to the top of the cliffs, where Ryll and a large band of lyrinx had gathered. Ryll carried the barrel-shaped object on his back, securely covered. Liett was there too. He gave it to her and she flew north-east with a large escort.

‘We’re marching to meet our fellows at the edge of the Dry Sea,’ said Ryll. ‘I trust you’re well shod, Nish? You humans have such useless soft feet.’

‘What are you going to do with me?’ said Nish.

‘We may exchange you, and other prisoners held elsewhere, if we get our relics back.’

‘What if you don’t?’

Ryll made neck-wringing motions with his huge hands.

Nish’s boots were in good condition, though he wasn’t much used to walking. His recent travels had been in thapters, air-floaters, constructs or clankers. The group set off at a pace he could barely maintain and, after an hour, when his legs had turned to rubber, he was taken on the shoulders of one or other of the lyrinx. It was not a position he found comfortable or dignified. They walked all night and until mid-morning the following day, and did the same every day.

The only rest they took was for the six hours in the middle of the day and, while he was carried for all but a few hours of the march, Nish was never anything but exhausted. However, the trip proved uneventful, and although he remained alert for opportunities to escape, they gave him none.

One day they were moving across a broad valley where the river was just a series of long pools up to a league in length, separated by gravel banks covered in tall reeds. Ryll and most of the lyrinx had crossed the gravel and Nish was stumbling along at the rear, with only a single lyrinx to guard him.

Without warning, a battered construct shot out of the reeds in front of them. Another construct pushed out behind and Nish heard a third moving in their direction, though he couldn’t tell where it was. The guard, taken by surprise, darted into the reeds to his right. Nish went left and hid.

He heard the sound of a construct as it pursued the rest of the lyrinx across the river. Nish crouched down and did not move, hoping that the Aachim had not noticed him dart into the reeds, but unfortunately the other two constructs remained where they were. He could hear the gentle whine of their mechanisms now, and Aachim calling to one another in their own tongue. They began to tramp through the reeds and he debated whether it was better to remain where he was or to run. He stayed.

It wouldn’t have made any difference, for they converged on him from two sides – a thickset man with flashes of white at the temples, a dark-skinned woman with a badly scarred right arm. He recognised the woman’s face, though not her name. He had seen her at some stage in his captivity a year and a half ago.

She recognised him too. ‘Cryl-Nish Hlar!’ she exclaimed. ‘What were you doing with those lyrinx?’

‘I was a hostage.’

‘Lucky we were patrolling well outside our borders. Come, you look as though you could do with a ride. And Vithis will be pleased to see you, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Nish echoed. He could well imagine it.

The three constructs headed directly to the Hornrace, hardly stopping night and day, though it seemed to take a couple of days to get there. Nish could not be sure because he slept most of the time. In his waking moments, he wondered what the Aachim wanted of him. Information, no doubt. Nish was not sure that Vithis was much of an improvement on Ryll.

He woke before dawn of the second night of travel, sated with sleep, and went up the ladder. The woman with the scarred arm was at the controls but seemed disinclined to talk. Nish pulled himself up onto the top and sat with his legs dangling down the hatch, enjoying the cool breeze on his face and the sweetish, musky perfume of the little trumpet-shaped desert flowers that only opened at night.

The construct climbed up from a small depression and, straight ahead, he saw three lights in a line, one above the other. The highest was a good hand-span above the starry horizon. After an hour they did not seem appreciably closer.

‘What are the lights?’ he said.

‘Vithis’s watch-tower.’ She absently stroked the writhen scars on her forearm.

‘It must be a tall one.’

She didn’t bother to answer. Shortly dawn broke and the shimmering heat haze obscured the land ahead. Nish couldn’t see any sign of a tower.

In the mid-morning it suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and the tower was so high that it could be seen across the arid plain an hour before they reached it. It was a needle of stone floating on a mirage which only dissolved when they were a couple of leagues away. Now the true enormity of the structure Vithis had built there was revealed, a vast rectangle of stone, hundreds of spans high, with stepped cubes forming a pyramid above that. The spire-topped needle tower rose from its top, suspended on five slender, arching wings.

Nish first heard the whisper of the Hornrace, an ocean flowing into an empty sea, shortly after that, and it grew ever louder. By the time the construct drew up at the foot of the building the music of the water had become a monumental roaring and crashing, so loud that it was difficult to talk over it. The building arched right across the Hornrace and was called simply the Span.

Ahead lay a door wide enough to admit the three constructs side by side. They whined into the bowels of the structure down a spiral path cut into stone, then stopped. Nish was led up a series of stairs whose sweeping shape was vaguely reminiscent of those in Tirthrax.

They emerged on an open floor paved with pale sandstone. The space was filled with the rush of flowing water. Nish was escorted across to the middle, where a slot in the floor wide enough to have engulfed a construct, though ten times as long, emitted wisps of vapour. He looked down and his head exploded with vertigo. He was directly above the Hornrace.

Nish felt himself leaning forward, almost as if he wanted to fall. The escort’s fingers clamped onto his left biceps.

‘The lure of the depths is powerful, but Vithis would be vexed if I allowed you to escape him that way.’

Nish took another glance at the torrent and shuddered. The roar was muted here, compared to outside. They went left, up a whirling stair into a perfectly circular room with glass walls that looked out on the Dry Sea, as well as down to the race and up to the stars. Vithis stood at the side, looking away. He did not turn as Nish entered, though Nish knew the Aachim was aware of him.

‘You’ve come to gloat!’ Time had only honed the bitter edge to his voice.

‘It was not my wish to come at all,’ Nish said.

Vithis turned. It was more than a year since Nish had last seen him, but he looked decades older. His hair was white, his face etched with such grief that Nish could hardly bear to look at him. Though Vithis had not treated him kindly and was a cold, unlikable man, Nish was moved by his suffering.

‘Clan Inthis is lost. After all this time, I’ve heard no more than whispers on the ethyr.’ Vithis spoke slowly, each word measured out as before, but he seemed a lesser figure than the man Nish had known.

‘Do you mean,’ said Nish, bemused, ‘that you built all this just to search for your lost clan?’

‘Why else would I have built it?’ said Vithis.

‘We thought … at least …’

‘Go on. What did your friends Flydd and Yggur and treacherous Malien think?’

‘After you went north so suddenly, after the battle of Snizort,’ Nish said haltingly, ‘it was thought that you’d made a pact with our enemy.’

‘I don’t ally with savages.’

Hadn’t Vithis threatened to do just that in the early days? Nish could no longer remember all the twists and turns of the war.

‘I left because Tiaan had destroyed Minis, my last hope,’ Vithis went on, speaking so slowly that each word was like the grinding of an enormous mill.

‘Is Minis dead?’

‘What do you care for Minis?’

‘I liked him,’ said Nish softly. ‘We were … friends.’ Insofar as such a weak, flawed man as Minis could make friends.

‘Minis is dead to me,’ Vithis said dismissively. ‘He’s not a whole man any more.’

‘So that’s why you abandoned all plans for conquest and retreated here,’ said Nish. ‘With Minis disabled, the only way to restore your clan was to find the ones lost in the gate.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that needed to be stated.’

‘It does to us, surr. Humanity reads everything through the lens of our unending war. When you began to build this great tower, at such a powerful node … everyone … that is, Scrutator Flydd, believed that you were making a great weapon of war to strike down our army at a single blow.’

‘What small minds you old humans have – I care nothing for your petty wars. This tower has one purpose and only one. It is a beacon, beaming through the limitless void, to tell my lost people that I’m searching for them. Its signal is so powerful that, if they can impress their cry for help upon it and bounce it back, I’ll be able to find them. And once I do, I’ll come for them if I have to tear the very void asunder.’

‘You say “I”,’ said Nish. ‘Is this the will of all your people?’

‘Of course,’ Vithis said. ‘They voted me leader. Don’t think to come between us, Cryl-Nish Hlar.’

‘I wasn’t. How do you know First Clan is out there?’

‘Tiaan,’ the name dripped like venom from his tongue, ‘heard their cries and their lost wailing after the gate was opened. Later still, I too heard cries for help. Just twice, a long time ago, but I knew they were out there.’

‘How will you get them back?’

‘Another tower in another place will create the greatest gate that has ever been built.’

‘But if you make a gate into the void,’ said Nish carefully, knowing Vithis’s rages of old, ‘don’t you risk more void creatures coming through? That’s how the lyrinx got here in the first place.’

‘There’s nothing I won’t do to get Inthis First Clan back.’