Chimaera (83 page)

They began to pass over forest, though even in this light Nish could see how different it was from the forests he was used to. This was a woodland of scrubby trees, twisted by the unceasing plains wind. They were flying low now and once, as Nish looked down, he saw the moon-reflected gleam of a pair of eyes looking up. He shivered.

‘How far to go?’ he asked.

‘Another twenty leagues,’ said Kimli. She yawned. ‘We should be there just after dawn.’

‘Have you heard anything else, Gilhaelith?’ said Nish.

‘Not a whisper.’

‘Maybe the matriarch is dead.’

‘Or maybe they’re waiting for us.
For every action, a reaction
. Everything we do with the Art leaves a trace, Nish, and a great adept may be able to find it.’

‘First time I’ve heard of it,’ said Nish.

‘What you know about the Art would fit into a thimble,’ Gilhaelith said crushingly. ‘And you don’t know any great adepts either.’

What about Yggur and Flydd, Nish was going to say. Not to mention Malien. He kept his mouth shut; Gilhaelith was baiting him.

‘If a great lyrinx adept was watching when I scried with the brimstone crystals,’ Gilhaelith went on, ‘he’s had plenty of time to close the trap.’

The moon dropped toward the western horizon, and as it sank the sun rose in the other direction, over the Marches of Tacnah. It was a featureless plain without rivers, lakes, or even a creek. Not a single tree could be seen; not a rock or a bush. The sparse tussock grass was grey, the soil red.

‘What a bleak place,’ said Nish.

Gilhaelith came up the ladder to see for himself. ‘The lyrinx won’t find it easy to ambush us here.’

But they can camouflage themselves to look like
anything
, Nish thought.

‘Not long now,’ said Gilhaelith. He went down to his globe, then called, ‘A little more to the east, Kimli.’

‘It should be just around here,’ he said a few minutes later. ‘Can you see anything?’

Nish was scanning the horizon with a spyglass. ‘Only red dirt and grey grass.’

‘Go higher, Kimli, and circle around.’

Kimli took the thapter up to a height of a few hundred spans. She could barely keep her hand on the controller now.

‘Are you all right?’ said Nish.

‘So tired …’

‘Anything?’ called Gilhaelith.

‘No,’ Kimli whispered.

‘What did you say?’ said Gilhaelith.

‘Lyrinx!’ yelled Nish. ‘In the west. Flying fast towards us.’

Gilhaelith shot up the ladder and took the spyglass. ‘And more coming from the south.’ He barked a bitter laugh. ‘At least we know we’re in the right place.’

‘Can’t you scry again?’

‘To locate the matriarch precisely, I’d need a globe a thousand spans in diameter.’

They went around and around as the flights of lyrinx drew ever closer. With the spyglass, Nish estimated twenty in the western group, a few more in the more distant southern flight. ‘They’re coming straight for us,’ he said, seized by a sudden thought.

Kimli, who had been sagging at the controller, let out a little squeak and stood up straighter.

‘Of course they are,’ said Gilhaelith.

‘No, both flights are heading for
us
,’ said Nish. ‘You’d think one would be going to the matriarch, unless she’s directly below and we can’t see her.’

‘She’s had plenty of time to skin-change.’

Nish swept the spyglass around the horizon. While the lyrinx stayed still, skin-changing could conceal them, but once they moved they would be visible. He went all the way around, once and again, then a flying lyrinx flashed across his view, camouflaged to disappear against the sky.

He went around again and saw another lyrinx, or was it the same one? It wasn’t flying towards him. It was streaking low across the grass to a point a little north of them.

‘We’re in the wrong place,’ yelled Nish. ‘
There
, Kimli.’

Kimli, bright-eyed now, whirled the thapter around so fast that Nish was thrown against the side. She calculated the place the lyrinx was heading for, maybe half a league away, and accelerated towards it.

‘Can we get there before it does?’ snapped Gilhaelith.

‘Yes,’ said the pilot, ‘but …’

‘The others will get here before we can snatch the relics. Hoy, Flangers! Pass the farspeaker up here, would you. I may need it.’

It came up the hatch. Gilhaelith spun the globes, froze them and waited.

‘There they are,’ cried Kimli, changing course so abruptly that the farspeaker almost went over the side. The mechanism of the thapter screamed, she seemed to bounce it off solid air, put it sideways and stopped in a cloud of torn-up tussocks and a whirlwind of red dirt.

Nish was impressed. He’d had reservations about her skills in the early days, but Kimli was proving nearly as good a pilot as Chissmoul.

Five lyrinx lay on the ground. Three were dead and their skin had faded to an oily grey that stood out against the red soil. No, it was their inner skin, gone dry and wrinkly. They must have shed the armoured layer in their agony and then, exposed to the sun and wind, they had died. The fourth was still twitching, its fanged mouth opening and closing. It had torn its chest armour to shreds and crumpled pieces of bloody armour still clung to its claws.

The fifth, a huge green-crested female, was practically invisible, her skin matching the texture of the pebbly soil. Her wings, camouflaged the same colour, were spread out over several long crates.

‘It’s Matriarch Gyrull,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘Get the relics!’

Nish went over the side and ran toward the relics but one wing stirred and a fist of air thumped him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. It was more than just air, though. It had the Art behind it and Nish found it hard to get up again. All his nerve fibres were singing.

The matriarch lifted her head and tried to speak. Her armoured skin was blistered and had peeled away at throat and groin to reveal the sensitive inner skin, which looked as though it had been dipped in acid.

‘Matriarch Gyrull,’ said Nish, rising painfully. He bowed. She was a noble figure, after all, and he’d been taught respect at an early age.

He saw the dismay in her eyes. Mottled patterns chased each other across her chest and shoulders. The wing stirred and he felt another blow from her Art. This one was like a punch in the chest but not enough to hurt him. She was fading rapidly.

‘I should have allowed Ryll to send you to the slaughtering pens,’ she croaked. Her eyes were on Gilhaelith, who was on top of the thapter.

‘You should have,’ said Gilhaelith.

The soldiers leapt over the side and were racing for the crates when the first of the fliers shot across the bare ground towards them. Gilhaelith held the farspeaker close to his mouth and roared.

The lyrinx’s wings locked; it let out a paralysed squawk and ploughed into the ground, skidding on its chest and belly armour. Another close behind it did the same, the pair coming to rest in a tangle of limbs and wings. They swung around, and in their eyes was the same distress Gyrull had shown – that the precious relics might be lost. Their clawed feet tossed red dust into the air as they tried to rise, but their legs wouldn’t support them.

Two soldiers hefted the first crate, staggered to the thapter and slid it up onto the carrying racks. Flangers was limping for the second. Gyrull let out a despairing cry, her skin colours exploded into brilliant reds, yellows and blacks and she forced herself to her feet. Blood ebbed from the shredded skin. Her armour burst apart along the plates of her chest, revealing raw, bleeding flesh beneath. Red tears ran from her eyes but she took one excruciating step towards them. She would protect the relics whatever the cost to herself.

She took another step. Blood was running down her belly and thighs; her great maw was twisted in agony, but she reached out a hand and power fizzed from it. Nish froze in place, right foot upraised, the opposite hand outstretched. He couldn’t move, and the soldiers were similarly afflicted.

Gyrull took another step. ‘Come on!’ shouted Gilhaelith, but none of the soldiers could move. He clambered onto the rear platform of the thapter, his right hand in a filigree basket, working some Art of his own.

Gyrull strained so hard that her chest plates burst away, but she took another step, and another. She was almost to the racks now.

Gilhaelith attempted a different working. Gyrull dismissed it with a flash of skin colours on what outer skin she had left. Forcing herself against the torture, she threw herself at the racks and caught the end of the crate.

Nish was still paralysed as Gyrull took the crate in both hands and tried to lift it off. Nish was struck with admiration, that she could overcome such agony to regain, against such odds, the most precious things in the world to her people. He felt sure she would, for the other lyrinx were only minutes away.

Gyrull hefted the crate onto her bloody shoulder and staggered back with it. Gilhaelith abandoned his Arts, which were clearly inferior to hers, leapt down through the hatch and reappeared with a crossbow. He slid in a bolt, clumsily wound the cranks and pointed it at Gyrull’s back. The bow wobbled in his hands, but not even a novice could miss her from here.

He fired. She jerked, turned halfway around and the crate slid from her hands, raising clouds of dust when it hit the ground. Gyrull’s claws scraped at the wound, fell to her sides and she thudded to the ground beside the crate. Though she struggled until the soil around her was purple with blood, she could not force herself to her feet again.

The paralysis vanished. Nish ran to help recover the first crate and tie it down, while the paired soldiers went for the second and third. The downed lyrinx were on their feet, wobbly but recovering rapidly. He felt for his sword.

Once more Gilhaelith roared into the farspeaker. The lyrinx collapsed again, though this time they were up rather more quickly. Each time the device was used, it seemed to affect them less.

He roared again. They checked, their mouths open in pain but they remained on their feet. Gyrull was still struggling, though weakly. She urged the lyrinx on in her own tongue, reinforcing her exhortations with fiery skin-speech on her rags of outer skin.

The second pair of soldiers were struggling to lift the last crate. They carried it a few steps, let it down hard then hefted it again. Flangers hobbled across to help them while his mate stood by with the rack ropes.

The two lyrinx struggled towards them as if walking through thigh-deep honey, but suddenly broke free and went for the last crate. The other fliers were closing rapidly and once they arrived all would be lost. Nish threw himself between the lyrinx and the crate, swinging his sword around his head, hoping to make enough of a diversion for Flangers to heave the crate onto the racks.

The two lyrinx stopped, cast a couple of blows in his direction, which he ducked, then went around him on either side. Nish whirled, attacking the one on his right from behind, though his blow did not penetrate its armour.

‘Get aboard!’ shouted Gilhaelith. ‘We’ve got what we came for.’

The lyrinx were now between the thapter and Nish, running for the racks. Two soldiers took on the creature to Nish’s left. One soldier went down from a backhanded blow to the side of the head but the second fought on.

Flangers and the fourth soldier were already climbing the ladder; the thapter began to move, stirring up clouds of red dust. The lyrinx on Nish’s right sprang and landed on the racks, frantically slashing at the ropes with its claws and teeth, and tearing one of the metal covers of the thapter half off. Flangers armed a crossbow and jumped awkwardly onto the rear platform, landing just a span from the creature. His weak leg shook and he nearly went over the side, but the lyrinx didn’t look around. It kept clawing at the ropes. Flangers shot it and it fell off just as the first flight of lyrinx came hurtling through the drifting dust. The second flight was close behind.

Kimli spun the thapter to approach Nish from the other side. Gilhaelith was shouting at her. The second soldier had fallen.

‘Get aboard!’ she screeched.

Lyrinx flew at the thapter from all directions, teeth bared and eyes wild.

‘Go!’ Gilhaelith roared. ‘Leave him.’

Kimli nudged the machine across towards Nish, who took a running leap and managed to catch hold of the racks with one hand. The thapter jerked into the air, he lost his grip and fell hard.

‘Get going!’ Gilhaelith must have grabbed the pilot’s hand and pulled up on the controller, for the thapter took off vertically through the lyrinx. It stopped in mid-air about twenty spans up and hovered while they desperately beat their way to it.

Gilhaelith climbed onto the rear platform and shouted down to Gyrull. ‘Mindspeak this message to your people, Matriarch! Withdraw your armies from east and west or I’ll burn your relics to ash and scatter them from one side of the Dry Sea to the other.’

‘What would you have us do?’ she croaked, barely able to raise her head.

The thapter lifted another ten spans to remain out of reach of the despairing lyrinx.

Gilhaelith raised his voice. ‘Assemble your armies on the cliffs near Ashmode, at the edge of the Dry Sea north-west of here, and bring the power patterner with you. In exchange, I will return your precious relics.’

‘We will not give up the flisnadr,’ said the matriarch.

‘I know your deepest secrets,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘You’ll abandon everything else to recover the relics.’

‘You know nothing about us, Tetrarch.’

Nish couldn’t see how she found the strength to speak. And then a dozen lyrinx, diving out of the dazzle of the sun, plunged head-down straight for the thapter.

‘On the contrary,’ began Gilhaelith. ‘No!
Kimli
–’

She’d already acted. The thapter shot sideways, flinging Gilhaelith to his knees. ‘Bring the power patterner or lose everything,’ he shouted. The thapter shot away, soon to disappear into the northern sky.

The lyrinx in the air formed a circle and let out a series of shrill, wailing cries, echoed by the creatures on the ground. What would they do now? They’d been driven from their homes and lost the relics that mattered most to them, so what did they have to lose? Had he helped to precipitate Armageddon?