Chimaera (97 page)

How could she look into those eyes and release him to oblivion? ‘I won’t let you go, Nish.’ She forced her knees to straighten through sheer will, but the force was pulling her fingers open.

‘Save yourself. It’s not worth it.’

‘You
are
worth it, Nish.’ She hung on.

Nish struck at her hand. ‘Let me go.’

Her knees collapsed, she was dragged to the edge and they went over.

T
ime stood still. A million yellows whirled around them and Tiaan saw echoes of the past and the present: sights and sounds, scents and tastes all mixed together. The yellows exploded, the whole world became one brilliant colour, and the next she knew, she was lying on the rocks beside the Well.

Nish had been thrown out on the other side. Vithis was wheeling around and around on one foot, the other up in the air as if trying to step over a stile. He didn’t seem to know what had happened.

Malien stood across from him. Her hair was wild; she had bitten through her bottom lip and her clenched fists were jammed against her sides. She was breathing hard.

‘Before the Well I must speak the unadorned truth. You were right, Vithis. Clan Elienor
has
always worked to bring Inthis down. Not to destroy you, but to humble you and strip you of your unshakeable hubris. That has been our goal since the day, all those thousands of years ago, when Elienor stood in the great hall and saw Inthis render Aachan up to Rulke without a fight.’

Vithis rotated to face her and his upraised foot slapped to the ground. Malien was doomed, and she knew it. But she kept on.

‘Elienor swore an oath that day, that she would make up for the betrayal. We have renewed the oath, and followed her goal, unflinchingly since. Each time we faltered, another member of First Clan reminded us of that fatal flaw in the character, nay, the very germ-plasm, of Inthis. There was Pitlis, who betrayed Tar Gaarn, the most beautiful of all our works, to the enemy. There was Tensor, whose folly after folly saw us lose beloved Shazmak and the Mirror of Aachan, and caused countless other tragedies. And this paltry act against Nish, who could never do you harm, shows that you, Vithis, are of the same base stock.’

Vithis took a step towards her. He flung up one hand behind him and the Well surged and flared to an incandescent brilliance, as if preparing for an entirely different class of victim.

Malien went on, unmoving, her eyes on Vithis as he came towards her. ‘We set out to reduce Inthis from First Clan to last, not for ourselves but for the good of all Aachim. We continue to do so for the good of humanity. It has been a long struggle, as it must always be when the least opposes the greatest, and because we would not act contrary to our nature.
We
would not be corrupted by our quest.’

The instant Malien had begun to speak, Tiaan knew that there was something wrong. Oh, Elienor may well have sworn such an oath long ago, and the elders of the clan renewed it ever since. Malien may well have tried to bring Vithis down in whatever small ways she could, but the conspiracy that had destroyed First Clan was far deeper, and it hadn’t come from Clan Elienor. She knew Malien well, after all the time they’d lived and worked together, and Tiaan would have sworn that there wasn’t a duplicitous bone in her body.

And Yrael, the present leader of Clan Elienor, was a decent, honest man. He would have faced Vithis straight out, even if it caused him his doom, but Yrael would never have done anything underhand. And if it wasn’t Elienor’s leaders, it certainly wasn’t the ordinary people – Aachim society simply did not work that way. So who could it be? A memory tugged at her but she could not pull it out into the light.

It had been just after the death of poor Ghaenis, Tirior’s noble and handsome son, at the hands of the amplimet. He’d died the most horrible of all deaths, by anthracism, his body burning from the inside and blowing apart. After that, there had been the bitterest of fights between Tirior and Vithis, until Urien had interceded.

What had Tirior said?
You always return to the same tune, Vithis
.

And you to the same obsession that brought us ruin in the past
, he had replied. Tiaan now knew that Tirior’s clan, Nataz, had been obsessed with an amplimet in the distant past, and it had wrought ruin on the Aachim from which they had taken a thousand years to recover. The precise details had been lost in the deceits of time and the Histories. The deed had been covered up too well.

But that was not the memory Tiaan was searching for. It had been days later, and she had been listening to a group of Aachim argue bitterly. They were carrying her somewhere and had thought she was still unconscious. When was that? Ah! It had been after she’d collapsed from hauling constructs from Snizort to the node, using the amplimet. She struggled to recover the memories, but they were deeply submerged.

‘So it was
you
made the gate go wrong!’ Vithis was saying to Malien. ‘
You
tampered with it in Tirthrax.
You
hurled Inthis into the void to die.’

‘I did not,’ she said, so softly that Tiaan could barely hear her. ‘I was not aware of the gate until Tiaan came to me, days later.’

Tiaan’s memories were unfolding now. Tirior had taught Ghaenis how to use the amplimet. Tirior had been conspiring to get the crystal, so fatally attractive to her clan. Yes, when Tiaan ran through her earliest memories of the Aachim, long before the gate had been made, Tirior had always been there, her voice positively dripping with desire for it. And Tirior had taken Minis into Snizort, hoping he would be killed there, the last hope of Clan Inthis gone.

Vithis caught Malien, lifted her over his head and was about to hurl her bodily into the Well when Tiaan cried out, ‘Clan Nataz is behind your ruin, Vithis. Tirior has been conspiring to get the amplimet for her clan since the very moment I revealed that I had it.’

‘Clan Nataz?’ he said, lowering Malien but not letting her go.

‘Tirior taught Ghaenis how to use the amplimet,’ Tiaan went on desperately. ’She took Minis into Snizort, risking the life of the last survivor of your clan, in direct defiance of your orders. Think, Vithis.
Think!

‘Which clan has been obsessed with amplimets since ancient times? Which clan covered up the disaster of the last one found on Aachan, a disaster that led inexorably to the ruin of your world?’ And now Tiaan was guessing, but the train of logic was running away with her and she was sure it was right. ‘And which clan leader stood beside you when the gate was opened, and was the only one who could possibly have tampered with it? It
was
tampered with, wasn’t it, Malien? You told me so a long time ago, for you checked the port-all after I first left Tirthrax in the thapter, and what you found disturbed you very much.’

Vithis set Malien on her feet. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘It was,’ she said, almost inaudibly. ‘Very cleverly – at the moment First Clan raced up into the gate. And then undone so that the other clans could pass through safely. It took me all night to discover what had been done.’

‘And was it Nataz? Was it Tirior?’

‘I couldn’t tell,’ said Malien.

‘Where is Tirior?’ said Nish.

She was nowhere to be seen. ‘She’s gone for the thapter,’ Tiaan yelled. ‘And the amplimet is inside. She’s got what she wanted.’

Vithis leapt right across the Well, which flared bright as if vexed it couldn’t consume him.

Before he had gone ten bounds, the thapter whined to life. ‘Not just the amplimet. She’s going to abandon us to the same fate as Inthis.’

Irisis bored easily and, despite the gravity with which Vithis sent his people to the Well, after interminable hours of it she’d had enough. She didn’t know them, nor him, nor even Malien all that well. Nish was preoccupied with the ceremony so Irisis seized a suitable moment to slip quietly away.

She walked on the jagged basalt for a while, and climbed a rocky spine to see how far she could see, but a dancing heat haze obscured everything in the distance. She perched behind the spine, in the shade, but the rock was too hot to sit on for long. Irisis headed back to the thapter for a drink from the water bag and discovered that, with the vents open, it was actually cooler than outside.

Not much, but at least she could sit down without roasting her backside. She found the coolest corner, settled back and, in the oppressive heat, drifted off to sleep.

The whine of the mechanism startled her awake. It was screaming, shaking the whole machine, and that wasn’t right. Malien had a delicate hand on the controller and never asked more of the mechanisms than was necessary.

Tiaan used it aggressively when she had to, though that was not often, for she flew thapters with an intuitive grace. Neither would she have abused it the way it was being treated at the moment. Someone else was at the controller, someone who had no right to it.

Irisis eased her head around the corner to peer up the ladder, but couldn’t see who was at the controller. But whoever was prepared to steal the thapter, out here, would hardly stop at doing her a mischief.

The mechanism roared and the thapter lifted off only to thump down again. A woman swore under her breath, and it evened the odds a fraction in Irisis’s mind. She looked for a weapon but everyone had taken theirs with them and Irisis had left the camp without so much as a knife. She couldn’t even see anything to throw.

She took off her boots and socks, sniffed disgustedly and laid them aside. She rose to her feet, then went back for a boot. It was better than nothing.

The thapter lifted off, screaming like a ghost in torment and shuddering so violently that Irisis had to hold on. The pilot was standing with her back to her, jerking back and forth on the controller, not understanding what she was doing. If she got the thapter up to ten spans or so, and lost control, it would be destroyed in the impact and everyone would die here.

Irisis crept up the ladder, the boot swinging in her right hand, though it was little use as a club; it didn’t weigh enough. She slid her arm in, up to the elbow, settled the hard heel over her fist and kept it behind her back as she climbed one-handed.

The thapter sideslipped, steadied and began to rise, wobbling from side to side. Irisis was far enough up the ladder now to recognise the pilot, Tirior. She was a mighty mancer, second only to Vithis in power.

Irisis hesitated for a second and Tirior must have sensed that she was there, for she turned her head. Irisis went up the rest of the way in a rush as Tirior twisted her body and raised her free hand to deliver a blast that would tear Irisis apart.

She acted without thinking. There wasn’t time, and physical force versus the Art normally only ended one way. Irisis swung her fist in a vicious blow to the bridge of Tirior’s nose. The heel struck it full on, her nose broke and Tirior went down. Her hand slipped off the controller, the mechanism died and the thapter fell.

Irisis caught Tirior’s hand, slammed it onto the flight knob of the controller and eased it up, gently. The thapter arrested, hovered, and Irisis let it down with just a minor crunching of metal, then stopped the Aachim’s mouth with her knee and held her fingers until, with a bound, Vithis was perched on the hatch.

The trial took little time, since the evidence was beyond dispute. The clan leaders were unanimous in their verdict, though given that Tirior was a clan leader herself, the sentence had to be confirmed by Urien. This she did with dispatch and Tirior was sentenced to be delivered upside down to the Well by all the clan leaders, an ignominious end that would result in the demotion of Clan Nataz to Last Clan. Tirior made no defence, no statement, no plea. She simply went to the Well as if it was beneath her dignity to remark upon it.

The revelation of her betrayal had washed Vithis’s despair away. First Clan hadn’t fallen, it had been brought down by treachery. He stood up straight, brushed the salt dust off his garments and there was a glint in his eye that Tiaan did not like at all. It was as if he’d found new hope.

‘Minis! Attend me!’ he said peremptorily, after the Well had taken Tirior with a brilliant yellow flare that lit up the salt-crusted basalt for hundreds of paces around, and a positive volley of echoes.

Minis, reluctantly, levered himself to his foster-father’s side and stood leaning on his crutches.

‘Foster-son,’ said Vithis, laying a hand on his shoulder, ‘I judged you ill and I’m deeply sorry. I blamed you for failings that were due to our clan enemy. You did not let me down then and I know you won’t do so now.’

‘Foster-father?’ said Minis.

‘I despaired when I should have put my faith in you. I will do so now. Minis, Clan Inthis must be created anew and only you can do it, for as you know I am sterile. You must put aside all other objectives until you’ve bred me sons and daughters – especially daughters. I will chose your partners from women of other clans, who have strong Inthis blood –’

‘I cannot, Foster-father,’ cried Minis.

‘If you lack desire,’ said Vithis carefully, ‘I have the remedy here.’ He withdrew a capped phial from his pocket.