Flashes lit up the distant curve of the dome, the bell-pulls and speaking trumpets disengaged from the scrutators’ turret and then, silently, the turret began to inch down the column. Did the scrutators now have what they’d wanted all along? It seemed so. They must have planned some great spectacle once they’d mastered the amplimet.
Shouts and battle cries echoed down from above, along with the sound of sword on sword and the clang of crossbow bolts on metal. Craning her neck, Irisis saw a small group of people running around the circumference of the upper chamber, darting between the seats as they tried to find a way down. She thought she recognised Flydd. And yes, that small, rolling shape was definitely Klarm.
But without a rope there was no way down. The walls of the warding chamber were intact, for it had been protected from the dislocation. Flydd and Klarm would have to take the precarious metal stair, but before they were halfway down, the turret would have reached the dais.
Turning back to the dais, Irisis caught a glimpse of a dark head moving along the base of one of the tall blades of rose crystal. It was Tiaan, down on hands and knees. A glimmer grew inside the wards at the opposite end to the column; a blue-green flicker made patterns on the walls. It seemed the amplimet was responding to her nearness. Calling her?
The flicker became a pulse, and each time it brightened the ring of mancers let out a collective groan. They wouldn’t be able to hold the amplimet back this time. Its light seemed to shine right through the small crawling figure. Once Tiaan found a way past the wards it would either be the end of her, or of everything.
Irisis hesitated only long enough to think of what was going to happen if she passed between the wards. Taking a deep breath, she followed.
As Nish came through the dome door onto the roof he was caught from behind and his arms pinned. He struggled to get free but was held too cunningly.
‘The game has been set up,’ Eiryn Muss’s voice was soft in Nish’s ear. ‘No one can stop it now. Let them work it through.’
Nish threw his head back, trying to ram it into the spy’s face. Muss held him and drove a knee into his kidneys. The pain was so excruciating that Nish fell to his knees. Muss tied his hands using a length cut from a coil of rope that hung from his hip.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Nish ground out.
‘I have my reasons and they go back a long way. And, no, I’m not a traitor. I no longer serve anyone but myself.’
‘Why, Muss?’
Muss hauled Nish up a narrow ladder that ran up the outside curve of the dome. Muss had learned from his earlier defeat. This time he wore the guise of a stocky, muscular man in a soldier’s uniform.
At the top, he levered open a small service hatch and pushed Nish through onto a balcony covered in icicles. He tied Nish’s hands to the semicircular cast-iron railing. Where Nish’s wrist momentarily touched the frigid iron, his skin stuck to it and tore as he jerked away.
‘Aah!’ he yelped.
Muss looked down and, to Nish’s surprise, lengthened the rope. Not from compassion, Nish felt sure. He’d not seen Muss evince any such emotion, but neither was he one to inflict needless suffering.
‘A fine spy nest,’ Muss observed, glancing into the warding chamber. ‘One can see everything from here. I’ve often used it when the scrutators were at their meetings.’
Nish looked down but couldn’t see Irisis or Tiaan. ‘Who are you?’ said Nish.
‘Eiryn Muss, the perfect spy.’ There was a hint of emotion in his voice. Bitterness?
‘The morphmancer,’ said Nish. ‘How did you come to be a mancer and no one knew about it, in this place dedicated to the perfection of the Secret Art?’
‘I never wanted the things they wanted,’ said Muss. ‘Not gold, nor power nor domination, nor the gratification of the senses. I had no need to show off my Art. I was content to bide my time.’
‘For what?’ Nish cried in frustration. Muss was a creature of shadows, an illusion. Whenever pushed, he retreated to places no one else could go.
‘Shh!’ said Muss. ‘The pieces are moving into place.’
The scrutators’ turret was halfway now, still inching down its column. On the far side of the upper chamber, among the seats, Nish made out a hobbling Flydd and several companions, trying to find a way down to the warding chamber. They looked in bad shape.
‘What’s Fusshte up to?’ Nish said aloud.
‘I suppose he wants Flydd to think that he’s going after the amplimet …’
Flydd and his companions had disappeared. Nish hoped they’d made a break for the stairs.
‘But Fusshte isn’t?’
‘He’s too scared,’ said Muss. ‘He now knows that he can never understand the amplimet. What man can? It’s inanimate, a crystal that has somehow, over the aeons, woken. Its needs, desires, urges are incomprehensible.’
‘And Fusshte’s purpose is?’ said Nish. Muss’s words were as confusing as everything about him.
‘He wants to force the amplimet to strike at Flydd. As soon as Flydd draws power to defend himself, the amplimet will turn that power against him. And while it’s diverted, Fusshte surely hopes to bind it to himself. If he succeeds, he’ll have all the power he could ever want. And all his opponents will be dead.’
‘How is Fusshte going to do that?’ said Nish, to keep Muss talking while he tried to think of a plan. Muss avoided fighting so he could hardly be good at it. Nish had to attack violently, without warning.
Muss, peering down at the dais through his eidoscope, permitted himself the faintest of smiles. ‘He’s got scores of mancers and artificers. He’ll have them attack the amplimet while making it appear that Flydd is doing so. There’s no risk to him that way.’
‘But plenty to the mancers and artificers, I’ll bet.’
‘What does any scrutator care if his servants live or die, as long as he gets what he wants?’ Again that hint of bitterness. ‘And now, they come.’
Flydd and another man close behind, possibly Flangers, eased in through the door of the warding chamber and seemed to be trying to sneak between the circle of juddering mancers. The darting figure of Klarm appeared, then a second soldier.
A hatch flipped open on the far side of the chamber and Flydd threw himself down, cursing as a purple ray lanced past his head. It illuminated the tip of one of the rose-crystal wards, the light slowly spreading down until the whole ward glowed pink.
Nish could feel tension building, charging up everything from the floor of the lower chamber to the tip of the dome. His hair and beard were drawn upwards and a shock leapt from the metal rail to his hand. Below, someone let out a moan of horror.
Behind the hatch from which the ray had come, a man screamed, his voice rising higher and higher until it became a cracked falsetto which was abruptly cut off. Something burst with a pulpy splat, like a melon dropped from a great height.
Red mush began to ooze from the partly open hatch, then brown fumes. Nish averted his eyes. The scrutators’ turret had stopped some five spans above the dais and he could see Fusshte inside, seeming to direct his forces like a concertmaster directing musicians.
The tension began to charge up again. Another ray zapped from an aperture beside the first hatch, followed by a third from the other side of the room. Each just missed Flydd’s hand before lighting up the rose-crystal wards. It was intended to look as if Flydd were attacking the wards, but the amplimet wasn’t deceived. The consequences in each case were just as quick, bloody and horrible.
The speaking horns boomed. ‘Guards, guards! To the warding chamber.’