Chimaera (98 page)

Minis looked as if he was going to vomit with humiliation. ‘I am not …
incapable
, Foster-father.’

‘If you were a man, you would have mated already and produced the children that Inthis needs. You would have taken joy in it.’

‘I –’

‘No more talk, Foster-son. Take one of these today,
now
, and another every half-year. It will give you potency beyond any man alive. Women will flock to you, despite your disabilities.’

‘I am not a rutting machine, Foster-father.’

‘You have a duty to me and your clan. Do it, for once in your life.’

‘No, Father. I will not.’ Minis looked pale and terrified of the older man. Tiaan’s heart went out to him.

Vithis sprang, caught Minis around the chest and thrust a tablet into his mouth. Minis tried to spit it out. The older man held his nose until Minis had to open his mouth, then thrust it down his throat.

The crutches fell away and Minis collapsed on the ground, weeping with mortification.

‘Do your duty like a man,’ Vithis raged. ‘If you
are
a man. I have often wondered.’

Minis found his crutches and climbed onto them as tears of helpless rage flowed down his cheeks. ‘I
am
a man, Foster-father, and I will do what a real man must do.’ He clacked away behind the thapter.

‘You have always been a dutiful son, Minis,’ said Vithis, the rage gone as quickly as it had come. ‘I have every confidence in you.’

Tiaan suppressed an urge to run after the younger man, for it could do no good. In spite of her feelings about Minis, she could not bear to see him so humiliated.

‘And now you, Malien,’ said Vithis. ‘For your clan’s part –’

He broke off as Minis reappeared, carrying something in his cupped hands. Blood dripped from his knuckles. He walked up, held out his hands and pressed the red contents into Vithis’s hands.

‘Here, Foster-father, this is what you have always lacked. Now you may do my duty for me.’

Vithis looked into his hands and recoiled in horror. Dropping the mess onto the rock, he whispered, ‘You have …
cut
yourself?’

‘You castrated me long ago, Foster-father.’

Raising his gory hands to the sky, Vithis let out a scream of anguish that made the Well flutter. He looked into the Well, which was shivering like blades of grass in a breeze, and the Well seemed to respond. Its whirling slowed and the colours brightened.

Vithis bared his teeth in the grimmest of smiles. ‘All things must pass – I can accept it now. This is the end of Inthis, first and greatest of all the clans. We came from the Well, so it is fitting that we take our departure through it.’

‘And I will follow you,’ said Minis. ‘Life has nothing left for me.’

‘Begone!’ snarled Vithis. ‘You cut your life free from First Clan; now go and live it. You are no longer Clan Inthis. You are not my foster-son and I forbid the Well to you.’

Minis gave him a blank-faced look then turned away, stumbling blindly out into the waste. He fell over repeatedly, but always pulled himself up onto his crutches, as if, after a failed life, this was the one thing he could achieve.

Vithis stepped into the Well, though it did not take him. He hung at the top of the shaft to nothingness, watching the silent watchers, and a mad, eerie smile passed across his face. ‘My time is over, and I go to a better fate than anyone on Santhenar can hope for. But you – you will rue this day, Malien. All Santhenar will rue it.’

He made circular motions with his hands and snapped them down. The Well flared as bright as the sun and began to spin, pulling in loose gravel and salt dust. Vithis hung atop it a moment longer, then fell, disappearing with a purple flash and a crack that echoed up and down for minutes after.

Tiaan expected the Well to disappear, since Vithis had called it here, but it expanded right to the toes of her boots. She sprang backwards and everyone scrambled out of the way. The dark, which had come down when Vithis called the Well, suddenly lifted.

The Well began to drift away, pulling in bits of shattered rock, pieces of construct metal, shreds of cloth and every other loose object in its path. They watched it wander in the direction of the mid-sea rift.

Malien shuddered. ‘No, no, no!’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Nish, who had been holding Irisis’s hand ever since she’d climbed out of the thapter. ‘He’s gone. It’s over.’

‘The Well should have collapsed as soon as it took Vithis, but … it seems to be growing. He has set it to some dreadful purpose.’

‘Can’t you stop it, the way you bound the Well in Tirthrax?’

‘Not this one,’ said Malien. ‘This is the Master Well and not I, nor all my people together, can lay a finger on it.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’

‘Get into the thapter! We must go, and swiftly. There are still the lyrinx to deal with, remember? The world hasn’t stood still while we’ve been out here.’

The remaining people climbed in and Tiaan lifted off, keeping low.

‘What about Minis?’ said Nish. His thin figure was struggling over the rocks, away towards the distant salt.

‘It would be kindest to let him go,’ said Malien.

‘To die?’ whispered Tiaan.

‘No Aachim would want to live with his burden, Tiaan. Trust me. I do know my people.’

‘But to leave him out here, all alone? I just can’t, Malien.’

‘He won’t last long, poor fellow.’

There was a long silence, interrupted only by the faint whine of the thapter.

‘But you aren’t going to leave him, are you?’ said Tiaan.

‘How can I?’ said Malien. ‘Go down.’

Tiaan landed the thapter beside Minis. He gave it a fleeting glance and kept walking. She scrambled down the side. ‘Minis, wait.’

‘Go away,’ he said. ‘You only remind me that I have nothing to live for.’

She ran after him and took his stained hand. ‘Come back with us, Minis.’

‘Do you say that because you love me, Tiaan? Or because you pity me?’

How could she answer? She had loved him once, and for that reason she still cared. But the death of little Haani had undermined her love, and his vacillation at Snizort had killed it. She could not lie to him, not even to save his life.

‘Well, Tiaan?’ There was a nobility in his eyes that she had never seen before.

‘No, Minis. I don’t love you. But I do care for you.’ She was still holding his hand. The blood, already dried in the fierce heat, flaked off.

‘It’s not enough. If you truly care for me, let me go.’

As she released his hand, a single red flake fluttered on the breeze. ‘Please come, Minis. Life –’

‘I’ve seen enough of life,’ he said over her head to Malien. ‘Will you let me go, or would you take me against my will, to draw out my agony?’

‘I shall not take you against your will,’ Malien said softly.

He bowed to her, and then to Tiaan. ‘I have to atone. My life in return for the life of little Haani.’

‘It was an accident,’ said Tiaan. ‘And you weren’t responsible.’ For the first time since it had happened, nearly two years ago, she understood that. It had just been a tragic accident. No one was to blame, and her anger and bitterness afterwards had been due as much to hurt pride. Having been rejected, she’d wanted to hurt as much as she had been hurt. She too had much to atone for.

‘I know that,’ said Minis, ‘but atoning for her death is the only worthwhile thing I can do with my life.’

‘Then I won’t stand in your way. Thank you, Minis. Haani would have liked you.’

‘I’m sorry. So very, very sorry. I know how much you loved her.’ His big eyes searched her face, perhaps, even now, hoping against hope.

She could not say it. ‘I … I loved you too, Minis. Back then.’

‘Goodbye, Tiaan.’

He turned away, moving off the black rock into a gully filled with windblown salt, and away towards the centre of the Dry Sea.

Tiaan watched him till he was just a shadow and her cheeks were crusted with salt from evaporated tears. She wiped her face. When she looked again, she could no longer see Minis through the shimmering heat haze.

‘I can’t help but make the comparison,’ Malien said softly. ‘Flydd and Minis were both unmanned, the one by the torturer’s knife, the other by the impossible demands of his foster-father. Yet Flydd has risen above his maiming, while in the end, for Minis, the knife was the only way to escape.’

‘No trauma can bring down the truly great in spirit,’ said Tiaan.

‘Nor any privilege raise up the incurably weak.’

Behind them the Well boomed. ‘Come,’ Malien went on.

From above they saw it intersect the mid-sea ridge, where molten rock was squeezed out along a rift ten leagues long. Great booms and crackles reached them and the Well swelled again, now resembling a tornado whirling above and through the ground. It began to track south along the ridge.

Malien set off for the Foshorn with all the speed she could manage, to take the clan leaders home and then go on to Ashmode. Tiaan said not a word during that long journey. She was thinking about wrongs that must be put right; it seemed the one worthwhile thing she could do with
her
life, for Minis, and for all that might have been. But how?

Tiaan could no longer take pleasure in wielding her Art, as once she’d done for the sheer bliss of using her abilities to the limit. Employing her Art had destroyed too much, and too many people, and the little good that had come from it seemed outweighed by the evil. She felt that she’d been used, even controlled, for most of her life.

And she began to feel increasingly alone and estranged, even from Malien, Irisis and Nish. Tiaan began to think that there was only one way out – to use her geomancy one last time to do something that no one else ever would. One question remained. Did she have the courage?

T
hey returned, having been away almost four days, to discover air-floaters in all shapes, sizes and colours moored by the camp, and a myriad of brightly coloured tents surrounded by courtiers and attendants. The dignitaries included Governor Zaeff of Roros, who had already been on her way when the battle was won. Her thapter had carried the ten most important leaders from the east. Orgestre had summoned her more than a week ago, and at the moment of victory he had called in as many of the western governors and provincial leaders as could get here.

‘Orgestre has outflanked Flydd and the other moderates,’ panted Fyn-Mah, who had run to meet them at the thapter. ‘Come quickly, Malien. They’re taking the vote now.’

‘What about us?’ said Tiaan.

‘You won’t have a vote,’ Fyn-Mah said, ‘but you might as well be there.’

They hurried to the meeting tent but it was too late – a white-faced Flydd was just stumbling out. ‘We’ve lost,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Orgestre put his hard line to the vote and it won by thirty-two votes to three. I spoke against it for a day and a half, until I had no voice left, but it made no difference. The only votes against were mine, Yggur’s and Troist’s. The conclave has voted to eliminate the lyrinx.’

‘Three?’ said Irisis. ‘Did Klarm –?’

‘He wasn’t well enough to get to the conclave. And that’s not the worst of it. They took another vote, one I didn’t even see coming. They’ve agreed that the Council will be disbanded immediately. The power of the scrutators, such as we were, has been smashed.’

‘I suppose it had to happen,’ said Malien, ‘though it’s a tragedy it happened now.’

‘I now see that the Council was doomed, once Nennifer fell and I failed to maintain its networks of control. Klarm warned me, back then, but I couldn’t do that and fight the war as well. I didn’t think it would fall this quickly.’

‘That victory sowed the seeds of this defeat,’ said Irisis. ‘You showed that the old Council was hollow, so the instant it was no longer necessary …’

‘If only it had lasted a few days longer, I could have prevented this disastrous decision. The world will come to rue it. And I made a pledge that I can’t fulfil. Yggur hasn’t reproached me though I’d feel better if he had.’

‘You couldn’t have anticipated this,’ said Irisis.

‘Ghorr or Fusshte would have,’ said Flydd. ‘They’d have arrested Orgestre on a trumped-up charge, or had him quietly slain, to make sure he couldn’t have interfered. If I’d just put him out of the way for a week.’

‘So you’ve thought of a way to save the lyrinx?’ said Malien.

After a long pause he said, ‘Unfortunately, I haven’t.’ Flydd glanced at Tiaan. ‘And what the devil did you do with your map? I really can’t countenance this kind of insubordination, Tiaan. Orgestre was apoplectic. I thought his head was going to explode. And he accused me of taking the wretched thing.
Me!
’

What did it matter, Tiaan thought. The lack of the map hadn’t made one bit of difference.

‘The enemy’s defences are failing,’ crowed General Orgestre at a victory dinner hosted by Governor Zaeff that night, in a vast tent flown in from Lybing. ‘Their food and water are dwindling daily. All we have to do is hold them, and in a week they’ll be dead, without the loss of a single man. It will be my crowning achievement.’

‘If you order any more medals you’ll have to pin them to your backside,’ said Flydd.