Chimaera (77 page)

‘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.

T
hey returned to Fiz Gorgo only to discover that Yggur, Flydd and the others had just gone to Lybing. Tiaan didn’t follow immediately, for Irisis’s leg was infected and needed a healer’s attention. By the time they reached Lybing a week later, the news from the east coast was immeasurably worse. Attacking the underground cities had proven the most disastrous blunder of the war. The dispossessed lyrinx had gone to war and fought with unparalleled ferocity, annihilating the human army at Gosport. Less than fifteen thousand of its fifty thousand had survived, and none of them uninjured. The armies at Guffeons and Maksmord had capitulated after similarly bitter fighting that had reduced them to half their number in little more than a day.

Smaller armies, protecting human settlements all the way up and down the east coast, had suffered similar fates. Many towns had been overwhelmed, their people killed or forced to flee into the countryside where they would be easy targets. The walls of the principal cities, greatly reinforced over the past six months, now sheltered huge numbers of refugees but would soon be besieged. Of all the nations of the east only populous Crandor had managed to stay the lyrinx tide. Its armies had fought the attacking hordes to a standstill but Governor Zaeff held little hope. Roros and the other cities of Crandor would soon be islands in a sea of the enemy. With no possibility of outside aid, in the end even proud Roros, the greatest city in the world since Thurkad had been overrun, must fall.

The west had seen little action thus far, but regular flights over Almadin showed that the lyrinx hordes had crossed the Sea of Thurkad and were advancing ever closer. Battle was only days away, but this battle could not be won. The enemy were simply too many.

Tiaan’s thapter landed on the lawn of the White Palace after dark and they went straight to conclave. It was an open meeting and the extravagantly over-decorated audience chamber was packed with people, standing in little groups waiting for the proceedings to begin. Few were talking. Everyone seemed too stunned.

Irisis had never seen such luxury as was displayed in the hall, though she paid little attention to it. It seemed like a sad folly that would soon be gone. She threaded her way through the groups, looking for Flydd. He was not up on the dais with Governor Nisbeth and the other dignitaries.

Painfully standing on tiptoe, she saw Yggur over in the far corner and headed for him. Flydd was standing beside him, talking to Klarm. They made the oddest of trios: tall, broad-shouldered Yggur, his ageless features as though frozen in ice; withered, scrawny little Flydd who barely came up to his chin; and handsome, unflappable Klarm, not even chest-high to the scrutator.

Flydd didn’t look as though he’d eaten since they’d left Fiz Gorgo weeks ago. Bone and gristle were all there was left of him. He nodded as Irisis approached, with Nish and Tiaan close behind, but kept speaking.

‘I promised our people in the east that if we all worked together we had a chance,’ Flydd said bitterly. ‘Then I took this ruinous gamble, and lost.’

‘Not you alone,’ said Klarm, twisting strands of his beard together. ‘Our Council voted on the attack, as did the eastern governors, and to take the blame on yourself devalues everyone else.’

‘I did my best to talk you into it,’ said Flydd.

‘You’re an overly proud man, Flydd, for such a meagre one,’ Yggur said waspishly. ‘You know we didn’t have a choice. We had to destroy the threat of the uggnatl and I believe we’ve done that.’

‘We can’t resist this tide,’ said Flydd in anguish. ‘All my life I’ve fought to save humanity. Now I’ve brought about its destruction.’

Irisis stopped a few steps away. She’d rarely seen Flydd in such a state. Nish and Tiaan pulled up behind her.

‘Better we left the east to their own devices,’ said Flydd, ‘than raise hopes so savagely dashed. Not only is the east defeated, it feels betrayed.’