‘The town grew ever wealthier from its people’s restrained use of the Art, eventually attracting the attention of distant powers who saw that the Art might also be used to subdue unruly neighbours. Lyr Rinx’s philosophers, or mancers as we would now call them, refused to sell their secrets or go into employment. In consequence, an edict was passed, making it a capital crime to use their Art in any way.
’The philosophers had the support of the townspeople and continued to practise their Art in secret as they sought a way to escape to a better place. However, after decades of persecution, the wrath of the great powers came down on them. Many of the philosophers were put to the sword, Lyr Rinx was razed and the fields surrounding it sowed with salt.
‘But still the people would not give up their Art, for it was the keystone of their culture now, and they were close to completing the ark which would allow them to escape their persecutors. They built a floating village in the middle of the Great Seep and continued to practise their Arts for some weeks before they were discovered. Their enemies came, destroying everything, but the surviving philosophers had found the way. They used their power to tear open a hole into the void. It wasn’t such a feat back then, long before the Forbidding.
‘The philosophers and half the villagers fled to safety, as they thought, in the void, for its savage nature was not then known. The remainder were slain, and the living and the dead, and all their goods, were dumped into the Great Seep to disappear forever.’
Gilhaelith paused for a sip from a metal bowl. Irisis glanced at Flydd. His face was inscrutable, but she felt sure the tale was true. Yggur seemed to think so too, despite his antipathy to Gilhaelith.
‘But those who’d escaped into the void did not find the haven they’d expected. It was a savage place where the only rule was eat or be eaten. Their only hope was to transform themselves from weak humans into fierce, terrible creatures, totally dedicated to survival. And that is what those gentle philosophers did. They used the Art to flesh-form their unborn children. Such magic was possible in the void, where all things are mutable. They modelled themselves on fierce winged humanoids called thranx, but called themselves lyrinx so they would never forget where they had come from. And each succeeding generation changed themselves more, until they were more like thranx than the thranx themselves, and had lost all semblance of their former human selves.
‘With their big, tough bodies, their fierce dispositions and unconquerable will to survive, not to mention their Art, the lyrinx survived and even prospered in the void. But they weren’t content there, as they had been at home.
‘They were never completely comfortable in those huge bodies, which didn’t quite fit. And many were unhappy with what they had become: a savage warrior race lacking art, culture or philosophy. But they had to be warriors to survive, and in their eight thousand years in the void they eventually lost all trace of their human culture. They knew where they had come from: Lyr Rinx, on Santhenar, and that they had fled to escape persecution. They knew they had lost their souls, and longed to go home and discover who they truly were. But not even the matriarchs knew that they had once been human.
‘With time, their longing became unbearable and, when the Way between the Worlds was opened, they seized the opportunity to come home. They came in peace, offering friendship, but the people of Santhenar saw them as monsters just as brutal and vicious as the thranx. The lyrinx were attacked the instant they appeared and many were slain. They tried to explain, to negotiate, but their emissaries were slaughtered. They were persecuted, hated and reviled, just as they had been in the distant past.’
‘What a load of rubbish!’ said Orgestre. ‘You can’t believe a word he’s saying, Flydd.’
‘But the lyrinx were survivors now,’ Gilhaelith went on, unfazed. ‘They took refuge in the deepest forests and the wildest mountains of Meldorin, and bided their time until they could come to terms with their new world. It wasn’t easy, for their bodies were even more uncomfortable on this heavy world than they had been in the void. They stayed in hiding for more than fifty years, until they’d replaced those who’d been slain and their numbers began to increase, and then set out to take back a portion of their former world. It was only then, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the war began. It was a war for freedom, yet all the while they had one objective in mind, to go home to Lyr Rinx and discover their past.
‘When they eventually tracked down the lost town to Snizort, there was not a trace of Lyr Rinx, and the peasants who now dwelt in the area, still living off the tar deposits, knew nothing of the impossibly distant past. The lyrinx set out to uncover it themselves. It proved a far greater task than they’d expected, even after they’d established their underground city at Snizort. Finally, with my help, they froze the molten tar of the Great Seep, tunnelled in and recovered these bodies and these relics.
‘It turned them upside down to look upon their ancient selves, to see the relics of their proud culture – the music, the books, the art, the Histories – and compare it to what they had become. On the outside they were lyrinx; within, they longed to be human again. For a hundred and fifty years these once gentle, peace-loving philosophers had been waging war on their own kind.
‘Matriarch Gyrull was transformed by the discovery, and where she led, her people followed. Flesh-forming had allowed them to survive in the void, but back on Santhenar it caused physical discomfort and mental anguish. They had gained powerful bodies, but at the expense of their spirit, their soul, their culture and their Histories.’
‘Gyrull realised that they looked on themselves through the wrong side of the glass. They’d seen their winged, clawed and fanged selves as the peak of perfection, and in the void they had been. Now she realised that the imperfect ones – the wingless, those lacking skin armour or the ability to skin-speak – were closest to their true selves. Before they could regain what they had lost, they would have to return to the semblance of the Sacred Ones. Their ancestors!’ He indicated the people in the boxes.
‘And with this realisation, last winter, came another: that they were vile cannibals who had been living on their own kind. Most gave up eating human flesh. In the battle for Borgistry, if you recall, they no longer fed on our fallen. They could not stop the war, for humanity would not rest until the lyrinx had been wiped out, but they were losing heart.’
‘When did you realise all this?’ said Flydd.
‘I discovered part of the story before Tiaan shanghaied me to Fiz Gorgo,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘though it wasn’t until I stole the relics, and demanded that they abandon their sieges in return for them, that I began to put the final picture together. The lyrinx would only accede to my demands if the relics mattered more than the war, and so it proved. We thought they came for conquest, but that story never fitted what I knew of them.’
‘A pretty tale,’ said General Orgestre, ‘but even if it were true it doesn’t change our situation. Just thirty leagues away at Ashmode are hundreds of thousands of lyrinx, each the equal of two of our finest soldiers, and more are coming all the time. We only have eighty thousand men to put against them. If they could turn themselves into humans and abandon their warlike ways, I might be prepared to listen. In the meantime, humanity stands in peril of being wiped out. We have to proceed with the plan.’
‘What plan is that?’ said Gilhaelith.
‘Our troops are now moving, under cloaking shields, to the high ground. We will attack without warning, using Flydd’s mind-shockers mounted on our thapters and air-floaters, to drive the enemy over the cliffs.’