Nish looked up from the thapter mechanism his artificers were repairing, said, ‘Keep at it, you’re doing well,’ and wiped his greasy hands.
Klarm was over the side before it stopped, taking the steps three at a time and crashing through the front door. Nish followed.
‘I’ve got it!’ Klarm shouted up the hall.
‘Got what?’ said Yggur, emerging from his office polishing Golias’s globe with a scrap of airbag silk.
‘I’ve discovered where the lyrinx from Snizort and Gumby Marth have been hiding all this time. The ones who didn’t fly back to Meldorin.’
‘Come in here and tell me about it.’ Yggur took the little man by the arm and began to steer him into his workroom. ‘And you can start by telling us where the blazes you’ve been. You should have been back weeks ago.’
‘Not in there. We’d all like to hear the news,’ said Flydd, hurrying up the hall with his hands still dripping from the washtub. ‘Nish, would you call everyone together?’
Nish collected Flangers, Fyn-Mah and Merryl. Tiaan and Malien were away, mapping, and Irisis was still in the east. They assembled in the dining hall, neutral territory as it were, and Klarm began.
‘We’ve always wondered where the bulk of the lyrinx army went after the battles of Snizort and Gumby Marth. Most of the fliers returned to Oellyll but the others disappeared, as did the armies that had been terrorising Taltid and Almadin since the spring. They simply vanished at the beginning of winter. It was thought that they’d taken ship back to Meldorin, though we could find little evidence for it. I now know that they did not.’
‘Where did they go?’ said Flydd.
‘Underground,’ said Klarm. ‘They made their winding way by night, in small groups so as not to attract attention, to the sea caves of Rencid. They went into the caves but they didn’t come out again.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,’ said Flydd. ‘They’d have to cross running water just to enter the sea caves, and a lot more inside.’
‘That’s why we didn’t look more closely,’ said Klarm. ‘We knew it was against their nature, but there’s no doubt about it. The leaders must have fed their people an elixir to overcome their terror of water.’
‘I’d be more convinced if you could tell me where they went,’ Yggur said dubiously.
‘I know exactly where they went. At some stage, perhaps decades ago, they found or made an underground connection between the sea caves and the deep caverns that honeycomb central Rencid, a good hundred leagues away.’
‘They couldn’t have made a connection all that way,’ said Flydd. ‘It would be the work of a thousand years.’
Klarm shrugged. ‘It’s mostly limestone country and no one knows how far the caverns run. They’ve never been explored. But that doesn’t matter – the lyrinx now lie hidden in their tens of thousands, deep underground, within a stone’s throw of Worm Wood.’
‘How can you know?’ said Yggur. ‘How do you know they went through the sea caves, for that matter?’
‘My spies have been scouring the area between Nilkerrand and Snizort ever since we came back from Nennifer,’ said Klarm. ‘Talking to the hunters and scavengers, and the nomads who used to wander those plains. It’s surprising how many people still live in those lands. Most useful were the scavengers who roam the west coast of Lauralin. A rat doesn’t scurry from one side of a ribcage to the other without them knowing about it.
‘My spies have talked to thousands of people over the past months, and very expensive it was. I felt positively profligate.’ Klarm’s eyes flashed at Yggur. ‘And when I wasn’t wenching and boozing like the dissipated sot you think me to be, I put together a picture from all those tiny fragments of information, and it told me where to search.
‘We identified the right sea cave a month and a half ago, and I checked out the signs for myself. There was nothing at the entrance; the enemy had wiped it clean of tracks, but there were plenty inside. They’d gone in and there were no tracks coming out again. Where had they gone and how would I find them? Even ten thousand lyrinx, hibernating deep underground, would produce no sign that could be detected from above.’
‘So how did you find them?’ said Flydd, signing to an orderly. The fellow went out silently.
‘The only way I could. I followed their tracks.’
‘What, underground?’ cried Flydd. ‘You bloody fool, what if you’d been caught?’
The little man bowed in his direction. ‘It had to be done, Xervish, and I couldn’t send anyone else to do such a dangerous job. Besides, no one was more suited to it than myself, my father being a caver. I was born underground.’
‘And had they caught you, you would have died underground,’ said Yggur, ‘though not before telling them every secret we have.’
‘I carried a poison pill set in wax inside a hollow tooth,’ said Klarm. ‘If taken, I would have bitten it in half.’
The orderly reappeared with a flagon of black beer and a large tankard, which he placed in front of Klarm before withdrawing. Klarm nodded his thanks and filled the tankard. ‘It’s surprisingly thirsty work, following a lyrinx army underground.’ He downed half the tankard in one swallow.
‘And frightening too, I dare say.’
‘Aye.’ Klarm took another pull at the tankard. ‘It was that. In truth, I had little expectation that I’d come out alive. There’s bad air in places, and fast streams, and it wasn’t unguarded either. That was the hardest part of all. I couldn’t kill the guards, nor harm them in any way, or they would have known someone was spying on them. All I could use was my natural cunning and the odd small illusion.
‘But illusions work better underground, and the enemy were more frightened than I was, despite their elixir. They had to cross many subterranean streams and their terror gave me heart. But, terrified or not, they’d gone on, and so must I. That’s why I was so late back. I followed them the whole winding way, at least a hundred and twenty leagues underground, through one system of caverns after another. Many a marvel I saw that no man has seen before, and in the end I found them, hibernating in groups of thousands, unguarded apart from sentries at entrance and exit.
‘There were more lyrinx than I could count – thirty thousand at the very least, and there could be other groups I didn’t find. They’re hiding three hundred spans underground not far from the abandoned town of Strebbit. They’ll be coming out of hibernation any time now. They’re less than a night’s march from Worm Wood, the perfect cloak for their movements, and they’ll be ready to attack within weeks. Once they reach the forest they can go anywhere, unseen.’
Flydd swore. ‘I’d assumed they would come from the coast, and that we’d hear of their march a good week in advance.’
‘What do we do now?’ said Yggur.
‘We must attack them the moment they come out,’ said Klarm.
‘How do we know where they’re going to come out?’ said Flydd. ‘If my memory serves me, those caves have dozens of outlets.’
‘But the cavern they’re hibernating in has only one dry exit,’ said Klarm. ‘All the connecting caverns are partly flooded. Their elixir allowed them to endure the terror of the water, but I’m betting they’ll avoid it on the way out. All elixirs take their toll and they won’t want to be suffering from it on their way to war.’
Klarm’s voice went hoarse. He drained his beer, licked the foam from the rim of the tankard, and filled it again.
‘The dry passage opens out into a natural bowl.’ He shaped it in the air with his hands. ‘If we can get our forces into position in time, we can ambush them as they come out, still sluggish from hibernation.’
‘And if they retreat?’ said Flydd, smiling as if he already knew the answer.
‘We drive them into the underground streams and cut them down in their panic.’