'Will you find him for me?'
'I will find him,' said Ullii. 'Wherever he goes. There is nowhere on Santhenar that he can hide.'
'And Crafter Irisis Stirm?' He bared his hyena teeth.
After a considerable pause, for Irisis had not betrayed her as badly as the others had, she whispered, 'Her too.'
Ghorr raised his hands to the sky and roared in exultation. She had to stop her ears until he was done.
'I'll put it about that you're dead,' Ghorr said after some reflection. 'That way Flydd won't try to hide from your talent. Is that acceptable?'
'No one cares whether I live or die,' she said softly, sadly.
Ullii stood watching him, hating him almost as much as the others, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered but that she find the three who had tormented her, and bring them to justice:
'Well done, Scrutator T'Lisp,' Ghorr purred to the old man.
'I never would have believed it possible, even with your talent, but you've excelled yourself.'
T'Lisp smiled and caressed a bracelet on her arm, identical to the one that now strangled Ullii's wrist. She said nothing at all.
'It was a stroke of genius, trapping her with Mylii's bracelet,'
Ghorr went on. 'She didn't realise for a second.'
Ullii looked from one to the other, her guts crawling with horror as she understood what they'd done. They'd set the snare and she'd put her head right in it. From the instant she'd slipped on the bracelet she'd been under their control, just as they must have controlled Mylii before. It hadn't been Flammas in her head at all, but wicked Scrutator T'Lisp. Ullii hadn't taken charge of her life; she'd simply done their bidding.
'Oh yes,' said Ghorr, sneering at her distress, her futile struggle to wrench the bracelet off. 'You're mine, Ullii, just as your brother was, and there's nothing you can do about it.'
Twenty-five
The race to Gumby Marth had been plagued by breakdowns and mechanical problems that could not be allowed to delay the army. Where these could not be fixed at once, the affected clankers and their cargo of soldiers were left behind with an artificer, to catch up when they could. Troist fought furiously with the scrutator about it, for the general did not care to leave the least of his soldiers behind, but if they were to save Jal-Nish's army it had to be done. He had abandoned the idea of travelling at night, instead rousing the army before dawn so they could begin at first light, but still they were behind schedule.
Flydd spent most of his waking hours closeted in another twelve-legged clanker with the army's chief mancer, who went by the absurd name of Nutrid. He was an elongated stick of a man, quite meagre apart from an improbably round, quivering belly, like a jelly moulded in a bowl. His head was the shape of a hatchet, his eyes huge and glassy, and his fluted, constantly pursed lips had the look of an insect's proboscis.
Nish never spoke to Nutrid, nor even went close to his clanker. Mancers were particularly irritable when at work and Flydd's natural irascibility was growing as he recovered. Nish did glean, however, that the two mancers were trying to modify a cloaking spell to conceal the entire clanker fleet from sight and hearing, for the last day of travel. Camp gossip told him that Nutrid was dubious. Such spells had had limited success previously, and had never been attempted for an army as big as this one. The strain on the mancers, not to mention the field, would be prodigious. Twice on the first day of travel, and three times on the second, the entire column had to be stopped so the two mancers could test their makeshift spell. During the first three stops, nothing happened, though Flydd was so exhausted afterwards he had to lie down.
On the fourth attempt, as Nish was climbing out of Troist's clanker, the air turned a shimmering green and every anthill within two hundred paces of the column exploded, deluging the army with red clay and little green ants. Nish was still picking them out of his hair an hour later – and so, unfortunately, was the cook from his cauldrons. Lunch reeked so pungently of crushed ants that not even the hardiest soldiers could force it down.
The mancers tried again at sunset, as camp was being set up for the evening. Nish was taking his turn on watch when a burst of purple flame set fire to a row of canvas privies, sending the occupants hopping, trousers about their ankles, in fear of their lives. Unfortunately the chief cook was one of them and took it personally. He locked himself in his supply clanker and not even Troist could coax him out in time to supervise the preparation of dinner. That task fell to the under-cook, a good assistant but a disorganised supervisor, and the food he served three hours late was worse than lunch had been. A grim Troist, whose belly was giving him more trouble than usual, ordered the chief cook to his post at once, and the troublesome mancers to get it right or desist forthwith, before the soldiers mutinied.
On the following morning, the fourth, a loud bang from Nutrid's clanker was followed by puffs of orange smoke and the two mancers hurling themselves out of the rear hatch.
'Another failure, surr?' called Nish, keeping a safe distance away. He couldn't resist getting a little of his own back. Whenever Nutrid and Flydd went to work, the wags among the soldiers had begun to snigger behind their hands.
'Nothing that compares to your gross and repeated incompetence' Flydd said coldly, beating out acrid yellow fumes issuing from the seat of his pants. 'Now clear out.'
The fleet stopped in the imddle of the fifth day, a good few leagues from their destination, to give Nutrid and Flydd one last chance to master their cloaking spell. The sky was clear and Troist was afraid of being spotted by flying spies.
Nish went for a walk across a plain covered in long grass, and studded with orange anthills twice the height of his head. He was thinking and fretting about Ullii when a hot breath of air stirred the hair on the back of his head. That was odd, for the cool breeze in his face was blowing from the sea.
He turned, frowning, to see an air lens form all around the fleet. The whole camp seemed to rise off the ground, and then the ground with it, as if the light had been bent upwards. A mirrored wall appeared, there came a shrill whistle, rising to a whip crack, Nish blinked and the fleet was gone. The plain seemed to be empty but for the anthills and the gently waving grass.
He paced back, a hollow core of fear in his belly. The army could not have vanished just like that, spell or no. But everyone had heard stories about squadrons of clankers overloading a node and disappearing into nothingness. Could Flydd and Nutrid – ridiculous name! – have taken too much from the node? From a hundred paces he could see nothing but grass and the depressions where the clankers had stood. They were simply gone. He raced back. Fifty paces away the air began to shimmer and he ran right over Flydd, who was lying flat on his back in the grass, observing the effectiveness of the cloaker. As Nish sprawled on the ground, looking up, the fleet appeared out of nowhere.
'I knew we could do it,' Flydd said cheerfully. 'Now we'll give the enemy something to put in their dispatches.'
It was mid-afternoon and they were going slowly over rough ground, in open forest that ran most of the way to their destination. After much tinkering the cloaker was working well, though Flydd was concerned about its massive drain on the field, not to mention Nutrid's ability to maintain the spell while Flydd was recuperating. The cloaker required constant attention and maintenance, and was a strain on everyone who lay within its umbrella, especially the clanker operators and Flydd himself. He was far from recovered and, after an hour supporting the cloaker spell, had to lie down for four hours.
The inside of the clanker was dark but for a conjured ghost light at Flydd's right shoulder. He was deep in a small, thick volume bound in maroon calf, its title inlaid in platinum leaf.
'What's that you're reading?' asked Nish. 'Yet another tome on the Secret Art?'
Over the past days, able to walk only with great discomfort, Flydd had gone through every volume in Nutrid's small library. He was in a fine humour, now that the spell was working.