Liett hurtled into the patterning chamber, skidding halfway across the stone floor before she could stop herself. Her claws screeched on the shale, gouging pale marks across it. ‘Ryll!’ she screamed.
He set down the bucket of gruel with which he was feeding the human females sealed in the linked patterners, but didn’t turn to her at once. Ryll was used to Liett’s histrionics, and he was deep in thought. The flisnadr was the size of a beer barrel now, almost fully grown, and he’d already carried out most of the tests. The results were encouraging, though he wanted to keep testing for a month or two, just to be sure that he had mastery of it well before it was needed. ‘What is it?’ he said absently, watching the flickering chameleon colours on its skin.
‘We’ve been attacked,’ she cried.
‘Attacked?’ Ryll spun around. ‘How?’
‘One of the enemy thapters flew right to the main air shaft, the one with the bellows, and hurled in a barrel of the skin-rotting spores.’
Ryll’s skin turned a dull, creeping yellow, fading to grey, and he felt an involuntary urge to scratch himself. He resisted. ‘When?’
‘Just ten minutes ago. Mother ordered the bellows shut down and the shaft sealed but … it may be too late. The spores could have blown anywhere by now. What are we going to do?’
‘We don’t panic,’ said Ryll, heading for the door at a run. ‘First, we burn brimstone in the sealed shaft.’
‘Will that work with spores?’ Liett was trotting beside him.
‘I don’t know. It saved a few of our uggnatl, but that was a different kind of infection. We seal all the floors the shaft blows air to, wash everything down into the gutters, and burn the washings outside. Did we get the thapter?’
‘Almost, but the black-haired pilot got away in the end.’
His heart sank even further. ‘Tiaan was the pilot?’
‘Yes.’
For once Liett refrained from making the obvious accusation. Tiaan had thwarted them a number of times now, and all because he, Ryll, had allowed her to escape from Kalissin a year and a half ago. Shame made his stomach throb, for all that he’d followed his honourable instincts, and few could fault that. His mind was already projecting the worst possibilities from this attack, and they were very bad.
On the upper level they ran into a group of desperate lyrinx, milling back and forth, barely able to contain their terror. Recalling the fate of those infected by the spores in Borgistry, he could hardly blame them.
‘Where’s Matriarch Gyrull?’ said Ryll.
A squat female, whose dark-green crest looked as though it had been chewed by a dog, pointed down the corridor. ‘She’s receiving. She can’t be disturbed.’
‘What about Great Anabyng?’
‘Outside, strengthening the defences.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ said Ryll. ‘They won’t come back.’
‘If they’re trying to frighten us,’ Liett said savagely, ‘they –’
‘They’re not trying to frighten us, Liett. They’re trying to wipe us out.’ Ryll headed up the corridor searching for Gyrull, and found her in a small room, crouched in the corner with her hands over her ears, her brow ridges knitted in concentration. She would be mindspeaking to the other matriarchs.
He waited silently, and after several minutes she dropped her hands and looked up.
‘What did they say when you told them, Wise Mother?’ said Ryll.
‘All our cities have been attacked in the same way, at the same time. All the attacks succeeded save the one at Thurkad, where the pilot of the thapter was shot and those inside it were killed.’
The ice in his stomach developed needles that pricked right through him. ‘Is this the time, Wise Mother?’
‘For victory or annihilation? I don’t know, Ryll. The spores may do nothing. We won’t know for some days, but we’d better be ready.’
‘Are you going to release the uggnatl?’
‘Maybe in the east, where we have enough to make a difference. Not here. How is your work going?’
‘The flisnadr has passed all but the final tests. I could use it now if I had to. Within weeks I’ll have mastered it.’
Matriarch Gyrull smiled. ‘Well done, Ryll. It’s been a mighty labour, and few among us thought it could ever succeed. Even I had my doubts, but you’ve done everything I asked of you, and more. We may save something out of our ruin after all. It – it’ll be the last thing I do for my people.’
‘But, Matriarch!’ he cried, aghast. ‘No – we need you.’
‘Don’t be troubled,’ she said. ‘I’m not dead yet. But my time as matriarch has been a long one, and I’ll be glad enough to hand on the flask and the cup to a younger leader. One who’s fit to lead us into our new future – if there is one for us.’
‘Have you chosen the new matriarch?’
‘Not yet, though I’m close to it.’
‘May I ask if … Liett?’ Ryll didn’t know whether to hope she was chosen or rejected. Either way Liett would be insufferable. And yet, Ryll felt she would make a good leader in time. Unfortunately, time was no longer on their side.
‘You may not.’ She smiled. ‘It may be Liett, or another. I’ll be watching to see how the favoured ones acquit themselves over our coming trials.’
Some days after the attack, six lyrinx guards came for Gilhaelith. This is it, he thought, they’re taking me to the slaughtering pens. He tried to summon up some vestige of his earlier rage but, after the months of solitary confinement, he felt too apathetic. Could that be due to the brain damage? His every sense, his every emotion, felt damped down these days, and perhaps it was for the best. At least it would put an end to his troubles.
The guards said nothing, just stolidly led him up the ramps towards Alcifer. Other lyrinx ran past all the time, close to panic. Gilhaelith smiled grimly. It was clear that the city had been attacked and the lyrinx did not know what to do. It no longer concerned him. At least he was going to die out in the fresh air, not in a claustrophobic, reeking chamber down in the pit.
But they did not take him to the slaughtering pens. The guards kept going up the road towards the central point of Alcifer, the five-armed white palace with the glistening shell roofs, at the intersection of the seven boulevards. Just there, beneath the glass-domed roof, he had completed the geomantic globe last autumn. So they weren’t going to kill him after all – at least, not just yet. They still wanted something from him.
Gilhaelith was led inside and, to his unparalleled joy, the globe stood on the stone bench where he’d last used it, under its dust cloth. Ryll was waiting beside it, along with one of the lyrinx mancers who’d kept watch over Gilhaelith previously. He felt another tickle of hope. Perhaps in the present crisis they couldn’t spare the second mancer. The fellow’s skin was flashing and flickering in all the colours of the spectrum, such was his agitation. Ryll maintained a studied calm, though he kept scratching his claws across the bench.
‘I’ve brought you here for the final tests on the flisnadr,’ Ryll said, indicating a barrel-shaped object covered with a canvas. ‘Let’s begin.’
‘I need answers before I’ll agree to help you,’ said Gilhaelith, who was beginning to see the faintest possibility of escape.
Ryll extended his claws towards Gilhaelith’s face. Gilhaelith didn’t flinch. ‘If you could do without me you would have killed me long ago. What’s going on?’
Ryll didn’t even think before answering, which meant that things were desperate and the need for the flisnadr urgent. ‘The humans have attacked Oellyll with the spores of a fungus that causes us to shed our outer skin and tear ourselves to shreds in agony.’ He explained the circumstances of the attack.