In need of comfort, Tiaan took the amplimet out of its socket under the smashed binnacle. Flydd had given it back to her for the duration of this mission, after which it was to return to the platinum box. Tiaan didn’t mind – since Nennifer she’d been purged of that tormenting withdrawal. Nonetheless, the amplimet was a comfort and reminded her of her first real friend, old Joeyn.
A tiny spark drifted slowly down the centre of the crystal. It was dull, which meant that there wasn’t a strong node nearby. Tiaan knew that already – the fields were always in her inner eye now. She cupped the amplimet in her cold hands and warmth spread through her, out of all proportion to its size.
She focussed on her slave farspeaker, wondering yet again about the force that made such things work. Bringing up her mental image of Golias’s globe, Tiaan revolved its inner spheres as if tuning it to speak with her farspeaker. The spheres turned as if coated in oil. Golias’s globe had been so well made that the best artisans had not been able to equal it, and it still worked better than any of the copies. Messages went further and were just that little bit clearer.
The farspeaker burped, startling her. An uncanny coincidence, that the scrutator should call her just as she was thinking about him. She imagined him sitting at the long table, papers and maps all around. She waited for him to speak but he did not.
‘Hello?’ she said after a decent interval. ‘This is Tiaan.’
‘Tiaan?’ Flydd cried in astonishment. ‘What …?’
‘What do you want, Scrutator?’
‘I didn’t call you. My globe was set to speak to someone else.’
‘But, that’s impossible.’
‘It’s supposed to be. What have you done, Tiaan?’
She didn’t know. ‘I was just sitting in the thapter with the amplimet in my hands, wondering what was happening back east. Thinking about your globe, and the settings needed for you to contact me, I just moved the spheres in my mind.’
‘You did more than that. You actually changed the settings of my globe.’
‘But …’ said Tiaan.
‘I saw them move.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Why did she always feel the need to apologise? ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said delightedly. ‘It’s an important discovery. Where are you?’
‘Somewhere in the hills of Bannador. We’re resting on the way south to Alcifer.’
‘Good for you. I presume you got the job done at Thurkad?’
‘Not entirely.’ She explained what had happened. ‘Some of the spores could have been sucked inside but the barrel fell out. There was nothing we could do about it.’
‘You did better than I dared hope, and survived. And who knows, fear of the fungus may do our work for us.’
‘Why didn’t you call before?’
‘I tried,’ said Flydd. ‘But two more nodes have gone down and we’re having a lot of trouble with our farspeakers.’
She was about to say, ‘I have a theory about that,’ but decided not to. It was probably nothing. She still hadn’t thought it through properly. ‘Scrutator?’
‘What is it, Tiaan?’
‘Something unusual happened during the attack on Alcifer. If you recall, I shouted at you on the farspeaker.’
Flydd chuckled. ‘It’s not often I’m shouted at. Most people are too afraid.’
‘The lyrinx attacked Nish and Irisis as they tried to throw the spores in, and I couldn’t get to them in time. But as I screamed at you, the enemy reacted as if in pain, and one lyrinx put its hands over its ears. Have you ever seen that kind of thing before?’
‘Can’t say that I have, though I’ve never been close to the enemy when using it. You’ve given me an idea. I’ll order some trials with lyrinx prisoners.’
After he had gone she lay back in the seat, utterly exhausted, and slept. Two days later they were high over Alcifer, above the height that any lyrinx could reach, watching and waiting. There was a little more activity on the ground and in the air than usual, but no sign of an army in readiness for battle. The scrutator called twice a day but there was nothing to report, apart from the odd flaring and fading of the exotic node-within-a-node at Alcifer, and a corresponding fading and flaring in the node associated with the nearby volcano. They had to be linked in some way. Tiaan made a note to mention it the next time he called. She hadn’t attempted to contact him again, so she did not know if she could reproduce what she had done before.
Time went by. It was now a week since they’d dropped the fungus spores, without any discernible effect, and it was the same at the other cities. Every time Tiaan spoke to Flydd he sounded more depressed.
‘What a waste of time this has been!’ Irisis said irritably.
Nish was peering over the side with a spyglass. ‘Hello, I think they’re coming out. Yes they are. I can see hundreds of lyrinx, assembling in the great square not far from the white building with the glass dome.’
‘Hundreds won’t bother us,’ said Irisis, reaching out for the spyglass.
‘Wait a second,’ said Nish, leaning away. ‘Go a bit lower, Tiaan.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure, yet.’
Tiaan began to spiral down. Normally the wheeling fliers would have turned towards her but they continued their patterns as if they were flying along wires.
‘They’re carrying something out,’ said Nish.
Irisis took the spyglass from him and peered over the other side. ‘Looks like dead lyrinx, to me. A bit closer, please, Tiaan.’
Tiaan went down another turn, anxiously watching the fliers, who were not far away. ‘They’re carrying bodies down to that embankment,’ cried Irisis, ‘and throwing them over.’
Tiaan felt cold inside. They’d brought plague upon the lyrinx and they were dying in agony. It wasn’t right.
Irisis counted some sixty bodies being dumped. Not long after that, more lyrinx appeared, carrying barrels which they also emptied over the embankment.
‘Can you see what that is?’ said Nish.
Irisis adjusted the spyglass. ‘The bodies of small creatures. About cat-sized. Hundreds of them.’
‘Could they be uggnatl?’ said Tiaan.
‘I think they are,’ said Irisis. ‘Yes, definitely.’
Many more barrels were brought out, then the pile began to smoke, the fliers turned towards them and Tiaan headed away. They had just flown across the glass dome when the sound of the mechanism vanished. She took power from another node and climbed a little higher.
‘What was that?’ said Nish.
‘I don’t know, but it was a lot stronger than when they tried to take my power a year ago.’
It happened again, though this time Tiaan was waiting for it and switched nodes instantly. ‘I don’t think they like us here,’ she said, turning away.
A few seconds later, power was snatched from her again. Then again, and each time it was quicker than before.
‘Fly!’ yelled Irisis.
Tiaan tried to, but all at once time seemed to freeze. Nish, his mouth open, went as still as a statue. Tiaan’s hand appeared to solidify in mid-air and the thapter itself to stop, though it did not fall. She tried to reach for the flight knob but her hand would not move. What’s … happening? Her thoughts were so sluggish that she had to force herself to create each word.
After an agonised aeon, time reverted to its normal beat and she streaked away to safety, without having the faintest idea what had been done to them.
Flydd was revoltingly pleased to hear about the dead, and the uggnatl, and told them that similar plagues had been reported from two of the lyrinx’s eastern cities, though the number of lyrinx dead was relatively small so far. He was not so pleased to hear about the strange attack on the thapter, though he couldn’t make anything of it either.
The next day Tiaan kept at a safe distance, observing with the spyglass. The thapter was not attacked again, but a thousand dead were carried out of the city. The day after that Oellyll erupted, lyrinx boiling from it like ants from a broken anthill. They disappeared into the forest too quickly to count, though Nish did his best to estimate the numbers.