Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (12 page)

Nish felt quite calm about dying. He had done his best; however, as with so many other people in this war, circumstances had been against him. His only regret was that his family would never know what had happened. Their Histories would just say ‘disappeared in Mirrilladell.’

The balloon was falling directly towards one of the larger trees of the forest. They were going to hit the top, full on. ‘Hang on!’ he said uselessly to Ullii.

She clung to him. Nish gripped the sides of the basket. The base struck the top of the tree, snapping it off, and the broken trunk thrust up through the bottom of the basket like a magic beanstalk. Blue needles and pieces of shredded bark and cane whirled like snowflakes. The basket kept going down, stripping off the small upper limbs until it slammed into a pair of solid branches. The tree swayed across the sky, went
creak-crack
and Nish thought it was going to snap again. It moved back and forth a few times then stopped. They had, somehow, survived.

The stripped trunk had thrust up beside the brazier and gone some distance into the open neck of the balloon. The tree now appeared to have a black mushroom sprouting from its top. The last of the air rushed out and the balloon went flaccid, bent in the middle where its supporting wires had warped out of shape.

Nish looked at Ullii. ‘Well, at least we’re alive.’

‘I knew we’d be all right,’ she said.

The climb down was unpleasant. Though Nish was not afraid of heights, the knife wound troubled him and Ullii did not seem to understand how high they were, or how to get down. The branches were spaced uncomfortably far apart and she had no idea which ones would support her weight and which would not. He had to check her every step, as if she were a two-year-old.

Eventually they did reach the ground, where he was at a loss what to do. The black balloon could be seen for leagues and he was tempted to burn it to make it harder for the enemy to find them. Of course, he could only do that from underneath the tar-soaked fabric. Besides, a fire in the treetops would be even more visible.

Nish did not think there was any possibility of repairing the balloon, which was a pity. He could see no other way out of here. There had been no sign of habitation from above and they would soon starve to death in this wilderness.

His side began to ache. Taking off his jacket, jerkin and bloody shirt, he inspected the self-inflicted injury. A long shallow cut ran up his ribs almost to his armpit. The wound had closed over but was rather painful. It was getting late. Having no idea what to do, he put the decision off until the morning.

‘We’ll have to camp here.’ He unpacked the tent. ‘Could you find some firewood please, Ullii?’

She stared blankly at him.

Nish suppressed the urge to slap her. Ullii had never learned to do the least thing for herself and had no concept of cooperative labour. That was just the way she was. She was not going to change.

‘We must have a fire, Ullii,’ he said patiently, ‘and I’ve got to put the tent up. Could you collect some wood, please?’

He pointed to a branch on the ground. She tried to pick it up, found it was too heavy and just stood there looking at it. Sighing heavily, Nish showed her two others that she would be able to carry. By the time he had erected the tent, she had brought back the two pieces of wood and was squatting by them, shivering.

‘That’s not enough, Ullii. We’ll need ten times that much to get us through the night.’

He had to show her, piece by piece, and then help her to bring them back, so he might as well have done the work himself. Finally, when the fire was blazing, Nish looked around for the dinner bag. It was still in the basket at the top of the tree, with their packs.

It was getting dark but they had to have food. The climb, a good thirty spans up, then down again in the gloom, was not one he cared to think about afterwards. But he made it with no more damage than a lot of skin off his hands and the departure of what remained of his temper.

‘I’ll make the dinner, Ullii …’ He was speaking to empty air.

Nish swore. Where had the wretched woman gotten to? About to roar out her name, he heard a gentle snore coming from the tent. Ullii was inside, curled up in his sleeping pouch, fast asleep.

‘All the more dinner for me,’ he said selfishly, and set to with the frying-pan.

On the morning after the crash, Nish discovered that the minor injury, which he had been too weary to tend the previous night, had become infected. It was now an angry red from one end to the other.

‘This is all I need,’ he muttered, peeling off his shirt.

‘Don’t die, Nish,’ Ullii wailed, thrusting her head hard against the wound.

It was agony. Nish cried out and shoved her away, biting back tears. Ullii put her hands over her ears and ran into the forest.

‘Come back,’ he yelled once the shooting spasms had eased. She did not answer. Well, let her go; she would not run far.

He boiled water, cleaned the wound, then put on salve from the medicine kit and bound it up in the cleanest cloth he had. With the rest of the water, Nish made a brew of liquorice tea, sweetened with great quantities of honey from a comb. The tea was too hot to drink, so he leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes, the better to think.

The balloon carried a small repair kit: needles, thread, a length of silk cloth and a pot of tar to seal it with, though Nish doubted if there was enough fabric for this job. The tear was long, with subsidiary rips radiating out as far as the seams in the material. Without them the top of the balloon would have torn off.

Still, he had to try: the idea of walking out of here was laughable. He had already consulted the map which, even if it was accurate, showed no town within ten leagues. Ten leagues of frozen waste that was rapidly unfreezing, turning even small streams into impassable barriers.

He could, he supposed, attempt to build a raft of logs tied together with the ropes from the balloon. That would be easy enough for someone with his artificer’s skills, and he had an axe. As long as the green wood floated. But rafts were difficult to steer and at the first set of rapids it would be torn to pieces, dumping him, Ullii and everything they owned into the icy water where, if they survived the rocks, they would quickly drown or freeze to death on the shore.

Repairing the balloon was the better gamble, and he’d better get started. Leaving Ullii to return in her own time, Nish shinned up the tree next to the one they had landed in, so as to gauge the repair job. He was inured to the climb now, though his wound hurt more than before. At the top he took a firm grip on the trunk and leaned out. He was level with the top of the balloon, which was sheltered from the wind by the surrounding treetops. The damage was worse than he had expected, the main tear a good three spans long. How could he possibly repair that?

On the ground again, he found Ullii in the tent, curled up into a ball, but he was sure she was awake. He did not go in, just made sure she knew he was there, and in sound health.

He spent the rest of the day by the fire, considering possiilities for repairing the balloon, and rejecting them all. The infection grew more painful and, by the afternoon, climbing the tree was impossible. He went to his sleeping pouch as soon as the short day ended.

For the next three days, snow fell lightly all day and wind whistled through the branches. It was too cold to risk exposure up in the trees, for he could not work bundled up in his cold-weather gear. He spent the time carving and shaping pieces of wood with the blade of his axe and the tip of his sword. It was awkward work. The time dragged, the only comfort being that the lyrinx did not come back. Nish saw them wheeling in the air on occasion, in the direction of the mountains, and wondered what they were up to.

One day, trudging down to the river for water, he saw a white shadow thumping the water with a flat paddle, making a booming sound that could have been heard half a league away. Nish slipped behind a tree. It was a great Hürn bear, scarcely visible in its shaggy winter coat. It was in the water now, scooping stunned fish out onto the bank. A magnificent animal, this one was bigger than a lyrinx.

As he watched, its head turned in his direction. Nish went still. Hürn bears were not vicious but they were territorial, and even a backhanded blow from those paws would be the end of him. As soon as it went back to its fishing, he slipped away to the camp. He and Ullii spent a cold and uncomfortable night halfway up the tree. Nish did not sleep. A Hürn bear could climb better than he could.

On the following morning he woke to feel no pain in his side, just the tightness of healing flesh. The sun was out, already melting the snow on the branches. He went up at once. Though they had plenty of food, the supply was not inexhaustible and every day they stayed here increased the risk of lyrinx coming to investigate. Or Hürn bears.

He assembled the shaped pieces of wood into a small block and tackle. Passing the rope through it, he tied one end to the tree and tossed the other across to the neighbouring trunk. Climbing down, then up, he passed the rope around the trunk and threw it back to the first.

By the time Nish had gone down, then up the first tree again, he was practically treating it like a footpath. He used the block and tackle to pull the two trees closer, then lashed them together. He constructed a platform by cutting one of the sides out of the basket and tying it to the branches. Now the real job would begin.

It went painfully slowly, for the upper part of the tear curved away from the trunk and he had to lean out just to the point of toppling. At the end of the day he had done less than a third of the sewing.

The job took another two days, at which time the cloth ran out when he still had half a span to go. Nish sewed one of his shirts over the remaining slit. The cloth was heavier than silk, but the balloon had less to lift than before, so he hoped it would suffice.

When all was finished, and sealed with tar, he stood back. The repair did not look strong enough. What if they got up into the air and it tore out? Their escape had been miraculous. It would not happen a second time. Unravelling a length of rope, he reinforced the repair with a network of strands and tarred them down. It would have to do. He had no tar left.

It took another day to cut up enough dry fuel, and then he had to carry every stick up on his back. Nish tied the section back into the basket, roped everything down and wove green twigs together to repair the hole in the floor, should he ever succeed in raising the balloon.

‘Amplimet is gone,’ Ullii said suddenly.

‘What?’

She pointed to the west. ‘It went that way.’

‘Do the lyrinx have it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Tiaan?’

‘Tiaan too.’

He mulled over that while he worked, but there were too many possibilities and he had no way of distinguishing between them. Finally all was ready. Firing up the brazier, he cut away any branch stubs that would impede their upward progress and helped Ullii into her basket. He was stirring the fire with a stick when three things happened at once.

To the east, in the direction of the great mountain, a yellow cigar-shaped object passed across the sky. It looked like a gourd or squash, though tapered at either end. Underneath hung a smaller, elongated container. Nish squinted at the object, wishing for a spyglass. Was it a lyrinx machine of war, brought here to attack Tirthrax?

Ullii let out a screech that made his hair stand on end. Nish spun around, wondering what had so terrified her. She was not looking that way at all. The seeker was staring towards the base of the tree.

‘Hooks and claws,’ she moaned. ‘Hooks and claws.’ Ullii threw herself into her basket and wrenched the lid closed.

Nish caught an unpleasant reek, like hot rotting meat. What was it? Ullii had said something similar before they’d gone up in the balloon. Was it a predator nearby, or just something she had seen in her mental lattice? Better find out. The brazier would not fill the balloon for hours. Thrusting his battered sword through his belt, Nish began to climb down.

Near the bottom, the decaying reek became stronger, until he began to gag. It did not have the smell of a dead animal; more like a live one that had burrowed through decaying flesh.

Nish went still. The noise sounded like a low, purring growl. The purring bothered him more than the growl. Something began scratching at the bark at the back of the trunk.

Drawing his sword, Nish peered down. He could not see anything. Edging around the tree, he looked again. Still nothing. He lowered himself onto the next branch and ducked his head through the twigs. The beast slid around the tree and stood up on all fours, staring straight at him.

T
iaan lay on her bed, puzzling about the construct until she drifted to sleep. Perhaps that was why she dreamed of the forbidden book, Nunar’s
The Mancer’s Art
, which she had found hidden in the manufactory. At the very least, discovery would have meant the end of her career, if not her life, so why had she kept it? Partly for the thrill of the forbidden, though she had never been a rebel. But mostly because the night she had read the thoughts of the great Nunar on the nature of power Tiaan had been touched by something.