He stopped, afraid for her, but then went on. Irisis had made her decision and it wasn’t up to him to undermine it. Besides, there was no time. He could feel the tension building second by second.
Nish was just stepping off onto the roof when the back of his neck crawled, as if someone was watching him. He looked left, then right, but saw nothing. He headed for the walkway, cursing an over-active imagination.
The attack came without warning – a colossal thump in the back that drove him face-first into the roof. He tried to scramble away but was struck in the back of the neck and around the sides of the head by someone who was kneeling on his back, pinning him down.
The weight wasn’t inordinate – a woman or a compact man, and not one with much experience of fighting. The blows hurt but had done no great damage, apart from his nose which felt as if it was broken.
He took a deep breath, tensed and heaved with all his strength, rolling at the same time. His attacker went flying. Nish kept rolling, came to his feet and threw himself at the man. It was a man, a young fellow not much bigger than Nish. Nish didn’t waste time. He punched his assailant in the belly, kneed him in the jaw when he doubled over, lifting him to his toes, and followed that with a left hook that rattled the fellow’s teeth. His head hit the wall and he shifted right before Nish’s eyes, becoming a shaggy, dazed, but very small bear.
Nish hit him and he shifted again, into a small wingless lyrinx. ‘Muss, you bloody treacherous bastard!’ Nish roared, clamping his fingers around the leathery throat and banging the crested head against the wall.
Muss shifted to a much smaller person, a beautiful, buxom young woman, black of hair and eye. Nish lost his grip and hesitated for a moment. The code against harming women was so strong that it momentarily overrode his reason.
Muss brought his knee up into Nish’s groin, thrust him out of the way and bolted for the stairs. By the time Nish recovered, the spy was out of sight. Nish didn’t go after him. Trying to ignore the agony in his groin, he staggered across the roof towards the dome.
He eased through the door, keeping a sharp lookout. The chamber was as gloomy as before, though an occasional fitful burst of light came from the direction where Flydd and Klarm had been pinned down. At least one of them must be at large.
Nish didn’t try to get to them; he would certainly be captured. All he could do was shout, which would alert Fusshte as well. Nothing he could do about that. He raised his voice and roared, ‘Flydd!’
The flashes stopped. The room went dark, then he heard Fusshte’s voice. ‘That’s Cryl-Nish Hlar. Get him!’
‘About time!’ yelled Flydd. ‘Where’s Tiaan?’
‘She got away. She’s in the warding chamber.’
Flydd cursed. ‘You damn fool – I told you – never mind. Nish, we got two of the scrutators but the other three are blocking us. Run down and smash the warding barriers – the rose-crystal blades around the amplimet. Hurry.’ He paused, then said in a lower voice, as though to his comrades, ‘Now!’
A gigantic flash of purple light illuminated the chamber and the dome. Thunder reverberated back and forth. Nish was starting for the door when he felt the floor move underfoot. At first he thought that the whole chamber was collapsing, but the movement was constant and only in one direction. The floor was moving, drawing back underneath the walls. That was why the outer ring of the chamber had been empty.
It slid away from the centre in radial sections, revealing that the scrutators’ turret was founded on a column that ran down through the floor. It looked like the column that ran up from the warding chamber. Sections of false floor rotated out and up and snapped into place, creating circular ranks of seating as in a stadium, or a theatre with a central stage. That’s what it was – a theatre for displays of power and terror. The scrutators loved their public spectacles.
Ducking low, Nish made his way to the edge. The warding chamber, several floors below, now formed the stage of the theatre. He could see the dais with its rose-crystal barriers, and outside them the shadows of the nine anthracised mancers. Tiaan was standing between them, staring at the barriers.
She could get to the amplimet before anyone else could reach the warding chamber. What then? Disaster, he suspected. And doom for Irisis, wherever she was. His heart turned over at the thought.
Flydd had ordered him to smash the rose-crystal barriers. He couldn’t jump – the dais was a good twenty spans below. Nish turned and bolted for the door.
THIRTY
Once Nish had gone, Irisis began to creep around the circumference of the warding chamber behind the ring of fifteen mancers, who were standing as silent and motionless as before. Her stomach hurt. Fatalist that she was, she was still vain enough that she didn’t want to be slain in some grotesque or disfiguring way.
A swift sword thrust between the ribs, or in through the back, she found herself thinking. That won’t make too much of a mess. But no severed limbs or spilled guts, and definitely not anthracism. The sight of those oozing, foamed-up statues of char and bone, once men and women as proud as herself, filled her with unspeakable horror.
Irisis heard a footfall off to her left and shook herself free of morbid reflections. She’d spent far too much time wallowing in that sort of thing lately. How was she to capture Tiaan while preventing the amplimet from destroying them both? If she drew no power at all, not even the tiny amount required to check on the state of the field, she might be all right. But then again, the amplimet might be able to take control of her pliance and direct power straight at her. She didn’t know what it was capable of.
She passed in front of one of the living ward-mancers – the dumpy old woman she’d noted earlier. Her whole body was shuddering now, and her eye had a deranged, unblinking stare. Her mouth hung open on the left side but was twisted closed on the right, as if she’d had a stroke. Saliva ran down her chin, sliming the breast of her robe. Surely she couldn’t hold out much longer.
Irisis circled the room. The other fourteen mancers were in a similar condition. Though none had yet failed, they were close to cracking. When they did, they would die as gruesomely as the inner circle, and so would she.
She circled the room again but saw no sign of Tiaan. At all costs she must stop the amplimet breaking free until Flydd got here, though how was she to do that?
She couldn’t do anything to support the ward-mancers. Tiaan was the key, but would Tiaan try to contain the amplimet or help it get free? Another unknown. Irisis went down on hands and knees and began to crawl towards the dais. The stench was truly revolting, and as she eased between two of the carbonised mancers, her head brushed a hanging hand. A finger tangled in her hair and broke off. Irisis raked it out furiously. The crunchy, bubbly feel of the remnant made her gag.
She still hadn’t seen Tiaan, though surely she would be close to the rose-crystal barriers. Irisis didn’t think Tiaan would have gone inside yet – she’d sound out the amplimet first. She could be patient now; this close, her withdrawal would ease.
And then the unexpected happened. The ceiling shook and, with a whirring of oiled rods, separated into radial segments that moved fractionally apart and began to slide away from the centre, exposing a twelve-sided hole. It slowly enlarged to reveal, far above, the scrutators’ turret with its elongated speaking trumpets, surmounting its column like a flower at the end of a tall thick stalk.
As the ceiling opened, benches concealed within it rotated up and locked into place, creating a theatre whose central stage was the warding chamber with its two rings of mancers, the outer ring scarcely more alive than the black inner one. And central to it all, the oval ward-walls of rose quartz guarding the as yet unseen treasure, and the steel column ascending from inside.