Chimaera (23 page)

She turned the flails to drooping, overripe bananas, the black sphere into a rotting pumpkin covered in blowflies, with fat white grubs crawling out of oozing holes in the skin. It was all she could think of to do. Not enough, surely, though Ullii’s sense of humour was rustic in the extreme.

The belt snapped tighter and she felt the bones of her neck shift. She wondered if she’d die of a broken neck before she suffocated. Time slowed right down and the last thing Irisis saw, before all went opaque, was Ullii suddenly convulse with laughter.

For an unknown time, seconds or hours, the field swirled in stately patterns more beautiful than any she’d ever seen. Dying wasn’t so bad after all.

The patterns vanished, the pressure eased and cold air rushed down her throat, and then the world went insane. Her eyes flicked open, though what she saw could not be happening. The ticking rotors of the surrounding air-dreadnoughts emitted tortured groans as they spun up beyond their maxima. There were cries as the great craft lurched in all directions, colliding and tangling with each other. Two exploded in a colossal fireball that seared her exposed cheek.

The phantom labyrinth sagged underfoot before going hard as crystal, flinging Nish and Klarm in the air. The deformed sphere on Irisis’s back crumbled like week-old bread. Pieces of the floor broke away and once again black snowflakes drifted down, while red wisps of acrid vapour, like the fumings from an alchymist’s cauldron, condensed in mid-air.

Ullii’s lattice fan was stretched like a rubber sheet, as if she’d taken it in her hands and pulled it. The knots on it were drawn out to black streaks, all but one. Ullii let go of the lattice and Ghorr’s rotting sphere went flubbing up above the fan as if she’d fired it from a catapult. It came down again and splatted against the lattice, which snapped back and wrapped itself tightly around Ghorr’s knot, squeezing it into a tighter and tighter ball until, finally, with a burst of light, both knot and lattice vanished.

Ghorr shrieked as he fell halfway through the floor. His clothes exploded into rags, revealing a wattled, sack-like belly bulging between a pair of tightly laced corsets, fat-marbled upper arms, the left one stained with old blood, and wobbling fish-belly thighs. The illusions he’d maintained for decades evaporated. His lips shrank, displaying yellow, corroded teeth and retreating gums, and jowls saggy enough to contain a handful of marbles each. The mane of hair vanished apart from a few dingy straps dangling over his ears.

The tightness around her throat was gone. Irisis sucked in a breath, rubbing her bruised throat as she tried to work out what Ullii had done. She’d destroyed Ghorr’s knot, an analogue of his mancer’s self, and her lattice in the process. She’d damaged Ghorr, stripped him of much of his mancer’s power, but had she destroyed it utterly? Surely not, or this phantom world would have vanished and they would all have fallen into the forest. So something still remained. What would he do with it?

She got up and limped across to join her friends.

‘Y
ou haven’t finished me yet,’ said Ghorr. ‘But I can finish you.’

‘Your power is broken, Ghorr,’ said Klarm, making no secret of his derision. ‘You’ll never get it back.’

‘There’s more than one kind of power,’ Ghorr choked, trying to pull the rags over his sagging, repulsive frame.

‘You needn’t bother,’ said Irisis. ‘It’d take a sail to cover that up.’

Ghorr shot her a venomous glance, took three steps to the collapsed remains of his sphere and from inside lifted an unusual multiple crossbow. Irisis hadn’t seen one like it for ages. A massive device that only a strong man could use, it fired five bolts at once. Jal-Nish had designed the bow as a lyrinx killer long ago, though it had proved too unwieldy in the battlefield. Before anyone could move, he had its five bolts trained on them.

‘Come out, Yggur,’ he said.

Nails scratched on glass, then a blackened hand flopped over the nearer side of the hemisphere. A frizzy head and ebony face rose up above the side, frost-grey eyes brilliant against the soot.

‘Out!’ Ghorr jerked the crossbow at him.

Yggur climbed out and staggered across to the others, charred pieces of clothing flaking off him like the black snow of a few minutes ago. He could barely stand, but at least he was alive.

‘Five with one blow,’ Ghorr said. ‘It’ll have to do. Any last words, my friends? A simple acknowledgment of my mastery will do.’

Klarm began to speak but Ullii, who was standing beside Nish and Irisis, said quietly, ‘Do you love me, Nish?’

After a long pause he replied, ‘Ah, Ullii, I’m sorry. I thought I did, once and … I’ll always care for you. But no, I don’t love you. I can’t.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. Turning to Nish, she took his hand in her little hands.

‘What for?’ he said numbly.

‘You’ve set me free. My lattice is truly gone this time and it will never come back. There’s nothing to keep me now.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She let go of his hand. Klarm was still speaking.

‘Enough!’ snapped Ghorr. ‘You never did know when to stop, Klarm. That’s why you were never admitted to the Council.’

‘For which I’m mightily glad, as it’s turned out,’ said Klarm.

Ullii took a small step forward. She looked little and frail, her skin was practically transparent, but her back was straight and her head held high.

‘What pathetic last words,’ said Ghorr to Klarm. ‘Anyone else have anything to say?’ He took no notice of Ullii. Ghorr had always held her in contempt.
Run away, little mouse
, he’d sneered in Nennifer. ‘Cryl-Nish?’

Ullii kept moving, and all at once Irisis did understand. ‘No!’ She reached out for the seeker.

Ghorr swung the crossbow at Irisis, struggling to keep it steady, and Ullii sprang.

He fired just as she reached him, knocking the crossbow to one side. Four of its bolts tore through the snowy floor but the fifth struck Ullii in the chest, felling her instantly.

Ghorr let the useless bow fall. As Flangers and Irisis threw themselves at him, he tore one of the crystals from his belt, formed a circular section of the floor into a slide, leapt into it and disappeared.

Nish fell to his knees and lifted Ullii’s head into his lap. There was a neat hole in the centre of her chest, hardly bleeding at all. ‘Why did you do that?’ he wept. He kissed her on the forehead and then on the mouth. ‘Dear Ullii, you didn’t –’

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Yggur stood there, looking down sombrely.

‘I didn’t want to be here any longer. I’m going to Myllii and Yllii,’ she said with a joyous smile. Ullii squeezed Nish’s hand, closed her eyes and died.

‘Come on,’ said Klarm. ‘As soon as Ghorr gets to the bottom he’ll dissolve this place, and then we’re done. I’ve got a little power back but not enough to maintain all this.’

Nish picked up Ullii’s body, cradling it in his arms. There was no point to it, for she was gone, but Irisis would have done the same. Ullii had, despite all her frailties, been one of them for a long time now. The spirit might be gone but the mortal flesh demanded a dignified completion.

‘We’ll never get down in time,’ said Flangers. ‘He must be nearly there now.’

‘Look!’ cried Irisis, pointing to a rope ladder that ran up to the high central balloon. ‘That’s real.’

They ran, and Irisis could feel the floor becoming more insubstantial with every step. Pieces fell out, leaving ragged holes that she had to dart around, or try to leap, and hope that what lay beyond was solid. She reached the ladder just ahead of Klarm, whose dwarfish scuttle could be surprisingly fast, considering the caliper.

‘Up!’ he snapped. ‘Give them room.’

Irisis went up a span. Klarm remained where he was. Flangers laboured across, his feet sinking into the floor and clouds of its failing material pulling up every time he lifted his feet. Yggur lurched a few steps behind. Patches of red skin were exposed where his charred clothing had flaked away.

The phantom world shook; chunks of floor fell away on all sides. Flangers came up the ladder. Klarm helped Yggur to the rope. ‘Go down!’

Yggur began to do so, mechanically and painfully.

Nish was still several spans away, making slow progress, but would not lay Ullii’s body down. In the circumstances, Irisis began to think he was being excessively noble. ‘Come on!’ she snapped.

Klarm stepped onto the floor, thrust out an arm and jerked him to the rope ladder. Nish clung to it with one hand.

‘She’s gone, Nish,’ Irisis said. ‘She doesn’t care.’

‘But I do,’ said Nish. ‘She loved me and I couldn’t repay her by loving her in return.’

‘Love doesn’t work that way,’ she said waspishly. ‘I should know.’

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘And, despite everything I did to her, she gave her life for me.’

‘Ullii was glad to go,’ said Klarm. ‘There was no longer anything to keep her here. We need not weep for her, Nish – only for ourselves.’

‘I intend to bury her with my own hands, and then to honour her,’ said Nish. ‘I let her down – that’s why she’s gone.’

Irisis gritted her teeth but said nothing.

The ladder shook and slowly began to move through the mist.

‘Well spoken, lad,’ said Klarm, ‘but first we must get out of here. We’re still on Ghorr’s air-dreadnought, do you realise, and judging by its motion the pilot has come to.’

‘Ghorr will start shooting at us soon,’ Irisis muttered.

‘He won’t want to, for fear of hitting the airbags,’ said Klarm.

‘What’s left of his crew will come out of hiding, and he can recruit others from the survivors of the other craft,’ said Irisis. ‘If he hasn’t already cut it free.’

‘Is there any way we can signal Malien?’

‘She’s probably too
weak
to come for us,’ said Nish, unable to conceal his resentment at her earlier abandonment, as he persisted in seeing it. ‘She couldn’t help before. She could barely fly the thapter when she left me here.’

‘She may have recovered by now. I’ll do what I can.’ Klarm scuttled up the rope ladder as far as he could climb, and a green light flashed and flickered there. As he was making his way down again, a crossbow bolt whistled through the rigging, not far away.

‘Already they attack,’ said Flangers. ‘And we’re weaponless. We must go higher.’

‘What’s the point?’ said Nish, hefting Ullii’s body on his arm. ‘We can’t defend ourselves.’

Irisis moved up. Flangers climbed around Nish and followed. Even Yggur, beaten though he seemed, ascended half a dozen rungs. ‘Are you coming, Nish?’

Nish clung to the rope with one hand. His shirt was smeared with Ullii’s blood. ‘I can’t climb and carry her too.’

‘Pass her to me,’ said Flangers.

‘She’s my burden,’ Nish replied, looking down at her face. Ullii was at peace. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

Another bolt whipped through the rigging, clipping a rope in half and sending the severed ends dancing. The air-dreadnought lurched suddenly and jerked upwards. Irisis looked down. Someone had cut free the broken bow section of the other air-dreadnought, though its airbags were still tangled in the rigging of Ghorr’s machine, giving it extra lift at the expense of control. Two men were now sawing at the ropes from which the stern section was suspended.

‘No!’ she yelled, remembering the woman in the cabin with the two broken legs.
You’ll be safe here
, Irisis had told her.

The last ropes were severed and the stern section, still hanging vertically, fell towards the swamp. Irisis tried to console herself. Perhaps Ghorr had taken the injured off first, unlikely as that seemed. The stern section struck a tree, tearing off branches and smashing to pieces. Objects that looked like people fell out. Ghorr’s craft gave another lurch and lifted out of the mist into the light of the setting sun.

‘The bastard has managed it,’ said Nish. ‘After all he’s done, Ghorr is going to get away.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Klarm. ‘Here come the jackals.’

Irisis looked the way he was pointing. The surviving air-dreadnoughts, led by Fusshte’s brown-nosed craft, were heading in an arrowhead formation directly for them.

‘Faster, pilot!’ Ghorr cried in a cracked voice.

The sound of the rotors became more shrill, though the air-dreadnought went no faster. The drag from the tangled airbags meant that he could never outrun his pursuers.

‘Cut those airbags free,’ he shouted at his crew. ‘Then bring down the prisoners.’

Three men began to run up the rigging. The first airbag was released, then two more. The air-dreadnought leapt forward. One man headed for the fourth airbag, while the second and third angled across to where Nish and the others clung to the rope ladder.

Irisis was preparing to fight them bare-handed when, with a swoop and a whoosh, the thapter rose out of the swamp forest, wove expertly through the rigging and hovered next to the ladder. Two strong-armed guards lifted Nish, Ullii’s body and all, in through the hatch. They took Yggur next, the others followed and the thapter darted away. Nish went below. Yggur did too, aided by the guards.

Irisis stayed up top with Klarm and Flangers. ‘Perfect timing, Malien.’