Chimaera (86 page)

‘She’s a wonderful woman,’ Minis sighed. ‘Tell me, does she have many lovers? I suppose she must.’

Nish resented the question and felt disloyal for answering it, though he did, curtly. ‘As Tiaan is my friend, I wish you hadn’t asked. But since you were … are also my friend, I’ll do you the courtesy of an answer. As far as I know, she has no lovers at all.’

‘Ah.’ Minis looked away. ‘Do you think there’s any chance for a maimed man like me?’

Another question Nish didn’t want to answer. ‘Minis, how can I tell what is in Tiaan’s mind? She keeps her feelings to herself.’

‘Please, Nish. In your heart, do you feel she might ever consider me?’ Minis’s shiny eyes were on him, hope warring with dread.

Nish delayed his response for as long as he could. ‘In all honesty, Minis …’ He searched his former friend’s face. What would be worse: to lie or to tell the truth? It had to be the truth, and in terms Minis couldn’t possibly misunderstand. ‘If she loved you, it wouldn’t matter that you are maimed. But you betrayed her and that must have killed her feelings for you. I’m sorry. I wish you hadn’t asked.’

Minis turned away, trying to compose his ravaged features. ‘I – I suspected as much. Thank you for telling me. In some respects it makes my choice easier.’

Nish didn’t ask what choice. He didn’t want to know. He just wanted to get away and never see Minis again. They talked about other matters until the conversation petered out. Minis was returning to his work when the floor shook and there came a rumbling from below.

‘What was that?’ said Nish.

‘The earth trembles here from time to time. We often felt it, when we were putting down the foundations.’

Two Aachim, deep in conversation on a bench across the room, also came to their feet but soon sat down again. Minis stood at the misty slot in the floor, looking down at the Hornrace for a drawn-out moment, before nodding curtly and stumping away on his crutches.

The afternoon dragged, as did the night. Nish was used to being busy all his waking hours but there was nothing to do here. He cadged some paper and spent the following day writing down his experiences with the lyrinx, and all the questions Ryll had asked him. Later he recorded Vithis’s interrogation, just in case he escaped.

To ease the boredom, Nish began to do a sketch of the building, or at least the floors he’d been on, but soon put it away. His rudimentary drawing skills could not do the tower’s wonders justice. He returned to the slot over the Hornrace again and again, staring down at the racing water and marvelling at the power of nature, which could reduce such a staggering work as the Span to insignificance.

Again there came that little shudder, but this time the water, hundreds of spans below, cusped up for an instant before the torrent flattened it out again. Three Aachim walking by stopped to remark upon the tremor, which struck Nish as odd if they occurred all the time.

Someone took him by the arm from behind and a deep male voice said, ‘Come this way, please.’

‘Where are we going?’ said Nish.

‘Vithis would like to see you again.’

‘What about?’

The Aachim didn’t answer. In Vithis’s room, the same spherical one as before, the Aachim left him and closed the door.

‘What’s going on, Cryl-Nish?’ Vithis was deadly cold now.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I take you for. Those two tremblers weren’t like the normal ones we have here.’

‘What do you mean?’ Nish’s voice had gone squeaky.

‘Someone is sending me a warning. Who among your kind hates me the most, Cryl-Nish?’

‘I don’t know that anyone hates you,’ said Nish desperately. Had Vithis finally cracked?

‘One of your great powers is trying to bring me down. Who is it – Flydd? Yggur? Gilhaelith?’

‘Maybe it’s one of your own,’ Nish snapped. He was taking a risk, but knew Vithis couldn’t respect anyone who didn’t stand up to him. He also knew of the longstanding bitterness between Vithis and Tirior of Clan Nataz.

‘I have the full support of my people,’ snarled Vithis, and Nish wondered if his guess had struck the mark. ‘Come on; which one is it?’

‘We’re fighting for our lives, surr. No one has time to think about you.’

‘What about Gilhaelith?’ Vithis said menacingly.

‘I hardly know the man.’

‘He’s a geomancer, is he not?’

‘As I understand it,’ said Nish, ‘he wishes to comprehend the roots of the world and all the secrets that go with it.’ He didn’t see any point in mentioning the theft of the relics.

‘Does he now?’ There was a glint in Vithis’s eye. ‘And should he succeed in that impossible aim, what then?’

‘Gilhaelith seeks knowledge and understanding for its own sake.’ That may have been true once. Nish didn’t have a clue what Gilhaelith wanted now.

‘So pure a motive does not exist,’ said Vithis. ‘In my long life, there’s one thing I can be sure of – once people have tasted real power, there are few who can give it up.’

Nish shrugged. ‘Gilhaelith is an enigma.’

‘Even more dangerous,’ said Vithis. ‘Leave now.’

Nish went.

That night he was lying in bed when the stones of the tower let out a groan like a ghost in torment and the room gave a long, sideways shudder. Nish’s wiry hair stood up. He got out of bed, staring at the roof. The room shook the other way but this time it kept shaking. It felt as if the tower had been set vibrating and each oscillation plucked at the foundations of the Span.

Slowly the vibrations died away and did not resume, but sleep had fled. Nish went barefoot down the stairs, drawn to the slot above the Hornrace. The floor was dark but lights from the lower floors illuminated mist rising up through the slot.

He edged to the brink, fascinated by the torrent yet terrified of it. He went down on his belly and crept forward over the last distance.

‘It compels, doesn’t it?’ said a low voice from the darkness. ‘I come here every night, to think and to dream. To wonder if this will be the night when I take that way out.’

Vithis was sitting up the other end of the slot, his long legs dangling over the edge. The tone of his voice frightened Nish, who came to his feet and began to back away.

‘Stay, Cryl-Nish. I mean no harm to you. Come and sit down.’

Nish did so, as far away as he reasonably could. His heart was thudding.

‘They’re trying to destroy me, you know.’

Mad and paranoid. Nish attempted to speak but nothing came out. He swallowed and tried again. ‘Who?’

‘Everyone. Yggur, Flydd, Gilhaelith –’

Nish wondered how the other clans allowed Vithis to remain leader. But then, from what he knew of Aachim Histories, insane obsessiveness was an all too common trait.

‘You think I’m mad,’ Vithis went on, softly. ‘You think the loss of my clan has broken me. It hasn’t, Cryl-Nish. I’m going to bring them back.’

‘What if you can’t find them, surr?’

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Vithis’s eyes caught the light and again Nish felt an urge to run away. ‘I
still
have Minis,’ he grated, ‘despite what that little bitch did to him. He’s pure First Clan. He’ll build us up again.’

‘Does Minis want to?’ said Nish.

‘Minis wants what I want.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He always has. He’s never once tried to make his own life.’

‘He’s tried, but you would never allow it.’

‘That proves that he never really wanted it.’

‘You’ve broken his spirit,’ said Nish.

‘He didn’t have any to begin with.’

‘Then why did you adopt him?’

Vithis jumped up, swaying at the other side of the slot, his big hands held up as if he planned to leap it and throttle Nish. ‘His parents were dead and I … could not have children of my own. Why was
I
so robbed?’ he cried. ‘My children would have been as strong as the founders of First Clan. Why am I cursed with this weakling who can never do anything right? Minis could have had his choice of a dozen women – all noble, all beautiful, all clever – but he wouldn’t have them. He still pines after that sad little creature who brought him to ruin. Who would mate with him now?’

‘Tiaan is a brilliant artisan and geomancer,’ said Nish. ‘She’s brave and kind, loyal and generous.’

‘She’s an ugly, wretched little sow and no noble Aachim could see anything in her.’

‘Among our own kind, Tiaan is considered a beauty. I think her –’

‘An insipid kind of beauty, at best, and she has no family. Her mother is a breeding-factory slut; she has no father at all.’

‘I’ve always thought the qualities of the person to be more important than the lineage of the family.’ That was a lie. Until recently Nish had been as proud of his family’s wealth and status as he’d been ashamed of his father’s lowly ancestors.

‘Considering your own lineage, I’m not surprised.’

‘My mother and father –’ Nish protested.

‘Now you change your song. And who, I ask, were your father’s parents, or your mother’s? Nobodies! Minis can trace his lineage back ten thousand years. No old human on Santhenar can claim a quarter of that. Not one single person.’

‘I dare say you’re right,’ said Nish, annoyed because he was sure it was true.

‘Of course I am. I took the trouble to find out –’

The earth gave another wrenching groan, the building a grinding shudder. Vithis broke off and came around the slot. Taking Nish by the arm, he hauled him all the way up to the spherical room. By that time, Aachim were running everywhere in silent efficiency. Divided they might be over the construction of the Span and the great search, but a crisis instantly united them.

Tirior and Luxor appeared at the door. ‘I see the Art in this,’ Tirior said. She was in a blue nightgown which swept the floor, and her black hair formed a cloud of ringlets. Luxor was dressed but barefooted. He had extremely long and hairy toes, like brown caterpillars.

‘Indeed,’ Vithis said grimly. ‘Do you know who it is?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Bring up the miasmin at once.’

Directly, an underling carried in an object roughly the size of a port barrel, shrouded in a green cloth. Tirior removed the cloth, revealing a glass bell jar mounted on an ebony base. There was something inside, obscured by fog. Tirior and Luxor worked their hands, eyes closed, with evident strain. The fog cleared and the object, the size of a large round melon, began to glow. The miasmin became brighter and brighter until it resembled the sun as Nish had once seen it through a smoked-glass spyglass. Its surface roiled and dark spots broke through, emitting flares and prominences that looped partway around it before plunging back into the surface.

Luxor whipped the bell jar off its base and the miasmin drifted up towards the ceiling, swelling to many times its size and boiling like a thunderhead. Red and black streamers were plucked out of it in one direction, then another, only to be resorbed. Tirior moved back, holding her arms spread above her head and making little movements with one hand or another. Luxor stood at right-angles to her and did the same, their hand movements seeming to keep the sphere away from the walls.

Vithis touched the lights on the wall to darkness. The surface of the miasmin smoothed, though it still roiled inside. A glowing filament arced from the top, twisted like a thread in the air and plunged back in halfway down the right side. Other filaments arose, whirled about and sank back into the mass. Dark, fringed spots appeared on the surface, slowly rotating.

‘There are too many powers,’ said Tirior with a shake of her black curls.

‘I think not. That would be the scrutator, Flydd,’ said Vithis, indicating a large spot from which the glowing filaments arose like sparks from a firework. ‘And this, his chief lyrinx opponent. They seem too preoccupied with each other to be attacking us, though … the scrutator is cunning.’

‘But not
that
powerful,’ said Tirior. ‘It’s someone else, Vithis.’

‘What’s that one?’ said Nish, pointing to another fringed spot that pulsed and spat black filaments, arcing out only to be sucked straight back in.

He shouldn’t have interrupted. Vithis looked at Nish as if he’d just discovered a servant’s nose hair in his wine.

‘It’s a node that’s been sucked dry,’ said Luxor. ‘Not what we want to see, so close to our principal node.’

‘It’s being attacked, so as to drain our node,’ said Tirior.

‘Who by?’ asked Nish.

Luxor consulted the miasmin, which was smaller than it had been. ‘I can’t tell.’

‘Vithis,’ said Tirior urgently, ‘the field is falling faster than I’ve ever seen it. It’s as if our node is being drained.’

‘This reeks of the way Nennifer was destroyed.’ Vithis’s eyes were unfocussed.

‘The field is collapsing around us,’ Tirior said. ‘We’re being attacked from the Foshorn.’

‘It’s the Council, but I have their measure.’ Whipping an emerald rod from his belt, Vithis pointed it at the black fringed spot they’d just been discussing.

‘No, Vithis,’ cried Tirior. ‘Not
that
one.’

Vithis spun the rod in the air, caught it, pointed it again. Momentarily a tight green beam burst from one end and illuminated the fringed spot, which sent out filaments in all directions before collapsing in on itself and disappearing. ‘That’s the end of them.’

While Nish stared, his mouth agape, Vithis slipped the rod back in his pocket. With the air of a man who had just succeeded at an impossible task, he walked out and closed the door behind him.

‘But …’ cried Nish, horrified.

‘It wasn’t them,’ said Luxor. The fringed spot reappeared. Prominences arced from it and it grew until it covered the visible hemisphere of the miasmin. ‘Whoever it was, he was just testing our defences. But now he’s threatened and may hit back.’

The sphere shrank further, but the fringed spot stayed the same size until it covered the entire surface.

‘Vithis has finally broken,’ said Tirior. ‘Let him go. Run for our strongest adepts, Luxor. I’ll hold the miasmin until you get back, but …’

‘What is it?’

‘Whoever is attacking us, they’ve drawn the field so low that I don’t think we can defend ourselves.’