‘Strange kind of trick,’ said Irisis.
‘In the past weeks we’ve lost everything in the east but a few walled cities,’ said Troist, ‘and we’ve no hope of recovering it. The enemy can afford to forgo some of their gains if it means we capitulate sooner. Now the end is near they may want to limit their own casualties.’
‘Abandoning sieges which will soon have to be renewed seems a strange way of doing it,’ said Flydd.
‘Governor Zaeff has a thapter at Roros. Ask her to find out what the lyrinx are doing.’
‘She already has,’ said Flydd. ‘They waited out of range of the walls of Roros for the rest of the day and night, then headed south-west. The fliers were followed as far as the Wahn Barre, the Crow Mountains, which they were flying across when the thapter turned back. The lyrinx on the ground were marching in the same direction.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Troist. ‘The enemy must have found a way to seize control of our farspeakers. These messages are lies, to lure us out of our refuges – they’ve got to be. You know we’ve never been able to speak directly to Roros, Flydd.’
‘You could be right,’ said Flydd, frowning and pulling at his bristly chin. ‘But we’ve got to know, either way.’
During the day, similar messages were received from the other eastern cities. Troist plotted the directions the enemy were said to have taken. They intersected in a broad area on the southern extremity of the Dry Sea, to the east of the area occupied by Vithis.
‘What about the lyrinx who were besieging Borgistry?’ said Yggur.
‘They’ve gone into Worm Wood and we can’t find them,’ said Troist.
‘There’s only one way to uncover the truth,’ said Flydd. ‘I’ll have to send one of the thapters east and confirm the flight of the lyrinx, with eyes I can trust.’
‘That’s going to take a long time,’ said Yggur. ‘If your observers can’t report by farspeaker, they’ll have to fly all the way back.’
‘What’s our alternative?’ said Flydd. ‘If we can’t trust our farspeakers, we’ll have to go back to the old reliable ways.’
Kattiloe’s thapter was dispatched to the city it could reach quickest, Tiksi, with three pilots so it could fly non-stop. It would still take at least a week. More messages came in that day and the next. Hosts of fliers were reported to be streaming from the east, making no attempt at concealment. All were heading towards the same area, if the reports could be believed, though no one trusted anything heard through a farspeaker now, even when the voice was recognisable. Lyrinx were also reported flying north-east from Meldorin, and north from Borgistry.
Troist’s map now had enough lines to show the destination: the old town of Ashmode, a port established an aeon ago when the Dry Sea had still been the Sea of Perion.
‘Why Ashmode?’ said Flydd. ‘The lyrinx have never shown any interest in that part of the world.’
No one could answer the question. Initial tests of the trial field controller having shown promise, Malien and Tiaan were sent to the Dry Sea, to fill in the gaps in Tiaan’s map. Irisis was assigned a team of artisans and told to get a reliable device made with the utmost speed.
SIXTY-TWO
Leaving Booreah Ngurle, now blowing itself to pieces behind them, Gilhaelith set off for the Marches of Tacnah, a flight of more than a hundred leagues.
‘Get some sleep,’ he said to Nish and the soldiers. ‘I’m not planning to stop, and there’ll be precious little time after we arrive.’
Nish settled down in a corner but couldn’t sleep for worrying about the geomancer’s intentions. He’d considered trying to foment a rebellion, but surely stealing the relics from the enemy was a good outcome?
Gilhaelith and Merryl were down at the other end of the thapter. Gilhaelith had a farspeaker on his lap and was spinning the globes, listening, then spinning again. Merryl sat in the corner, steadying a writing tablet with his stump while he took notes. Daesmie was asleep in the corner.
Nish got up and sat beside Merryl, so as to see what he was writing, but the fragments of mindspeech didn’t mean anything to him.
‘I’m not as skilled as Daesmie,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘but we have to keep listening. Every lyrinx who heard that call for help will answer it, and some are bound to be closer than us.’
‘Why would they take the relics to Tacnah?’ said Nish.
‘They were taking them across Tacnah, to hide them. You don’t realise how insecure you’ve made the enemy feel. In a hundred and fifty years there wasn’t one successful attack on their underground cities. Then Snizort was destroyed in a way no one could ever have imagined, and now their six remaining cities have been rendered uninhabitable for years, in a single day. They’re homeless and winter is coming. They’ve lost everything except what they can carry on their backs.’
Gilhaelith kept working, but with little success – Merryl had only a few notes on his tablet by the time Nish began to doze off again. When he woke, Gilhaelith had his geomantic globe on the floor, its bowl resting on the crumpled indigo velvet from its box, and was scrying with the brimstone crystals again.
The light winked from the same place as before. ‘They’re not moving,’ said Merryl.
‘It might be a trap,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘Or a false trail.’
‘How could they know about us?’ said Nish.
‘Never underestimate the enemy.’
Including you?
They flew into the night. Nish went up to stand with Kimli, who had begun to sag at the controller. The moon rose, near its full and mostly the dark side, an ill omen, not that Nish believed in such superstitions. Its slanting rays shone reddish silver off the dry plains grass. This was country the like of which he’d never seen before, even during his travels across Almadin. It was completely flat, bone-dry and empty.
‘The City of the Bargemen,’ said Gilhaelith, who had come up to stand on the other side. He pointed to their left, towards a lake shaped like a twisted teardrop. A meandering river ran in one end of it and out the other, its further reaches lost in the night. ‘An odd name, since it’s nothing like a city and the barges are run by the women. It’s built out over the lake on poles of turpentine wood.’
‘Then it’s probably the only settlement in Lauralin safe from the lyrinx’s vengeance,’ Nish observed.
‘I dare say. There’s nowhere that the lyrinx will be safe from mine.’
‘What did they do to you?’ said Nish.
‘They stole me away from Nyriandiol, the only place I’ve ever felt comfortable. They ruined me – I’m going to die the worst death a mancer can suffer …’
‘You look healthy enough to me,’ said Nish, who’d come to realise that Gilhaelith didn’t always tell the truth.
‘That is the worst death, Artificer. To have the body remain as strong as ever while the mind slowly decays from within. I’ve lost a quarter of my faculties already, because of the lyrinx. I might have repaired the damage with my globe but Gyrull denied it to me until it was too late and ensured there were flaws in it. My mind will be gone within a year. But worst of all, I’ll never finish the great project I worked on all my life – to understand the world and the forces that move and shape it. My whole life has been rendered meaningless, and all because of the lyrinx.’
‘So this is all about revenge?’
Gilhaelith was calm, almost good-humoured. There wasn’t a trace of rage in him as he answered. ‘The lyrinx robbed me of all that mattered, so I plan to take the relics that mean everything to them. I find revenge peculiarly nourishing. It’s given me a new purpose.’
They began to pass over forest, though even in this light Nish could see how different it was from the forests he was used to. This was a woodland of scrubby trees, twisted by the unceasing plains wind. They were flying low now and once, as Nish looked down, he saw the moon-reflected gleam of a pair of eyes looking up. He shivered.