Scrutator Flydd had many objections, which he put strenuously, but Nish would not back down.
‘You’re a curious chap, Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘I recall a time, not so long ago, when you pleaded with me to keep you away from the front-lines. Now you’re begging to go there.’ He surveyed Nish just as keenly as Troist had. ‘Are you sure you’re not running away from something?’
Nish tried to pass it off. ‘Well, I’m a different man now.’
‘You’re a man, not a boy pretending to be one. That’s the difference. Oh, go on then. I dare say Troist needs you more than I do.’
Troist and his retinue of officers were heading for Clew’s Top, east of The Elbow in southern Borgistry, where a small force of his army was stationed, to await the main army now racing back from Strebbit. Nish rode with them in a cramped, bone-jarring clanker. It seemed such an old-fashioned conveyance now, so noisy that he couldn’t think straight, and joltingly uncomfortable.
‘Did you happen to see Mira yesterday?’ Troist said that afternoon.
‘I didn’t get the chance,’ Nish lied.
‘She was looking for you. And so were Yara and my twins.’
‘I was working on the supply records until late.’ Hiding, as it happened.
‘I dare say she’ll find you when we get back.’
If we get back. The lyrinx generally attacked the command centre from the air at night, with massive force, at the beginning of a battle. Just so had Troist gained his command after all the more senior officers were slain.
FORTY-NINE
Tiaan had spent weeks in the thapter, alone but for Malien, who flew it while Tiaan monitored the fields and refined her maps. She had now surveyed the whole of western Lauralin save for the northern sector of the Great Chain of Lakes, which roughly marked the boundary between the lyrinx-occupied lands to the west, Borgistry in the centre and impoverished Tacnah to the north.
Tiaan was now completing her lakes survey, after which they were to go to Borgistry to help with the coming war. They’d heard from Yggur the previous day, though perturbations in the ethyr had prevented them from replying with their slave farspeaker.
The Great Chain of Lakes lay in rugged, rifted and sunken lands bounded by great fault escarpments on either side, dotted with fuming volcanoes and boggy geyser country. Complex lines of nodes ran along the rift valley and the area had proven troublesome to map, but now, almost a week later than Tiaan had expected, the first rough chart was finished.
Malien was flying across Warde Yallock, the longest and deepest of all the lakes, and the cradle of civilisation on Santhenar. ‘Let’s set down there, by the water. I’m so weary of flying.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Tiaan. ‘You’ve been doing it for months with hardly a break.’
Malien headed towards an open area on the western side of the lake, landing at the top of a long green slope that ran to the water’s edge. Patches of forest spread over the hills behind them like dark green eiderdowns. Beyond the lake, twinned volcanoes smoked. They strolled out to the edge and Tiaan bathed while Malien kept watch. The water was surprisingly warm for the season. Afterwards Tiaan dried her hair in the sun and Malien swam out until she was just a dot in the distance.
They had lunch in mid-afternoon, in the shade of the thapter. They could see all the way across the lake, where the setting sun illuminated tall cliffs of red stone.
‘It’s peaceful here,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’m so sick of the war.’
‘You’ve never known anything else.’
‘It must seem like the blink of an eye to you.’
Malien laughed aloud. ‘Not even in my advanced years could I consider one hundred and fifty years to be the blink of an eye. But it has been a bad time, the worst I can remember, though my people have scarcely been involved in the war. We leave the lyrinx alone and they don’t trouble us.’
‘What was it like, in olden times? Was it as good as the tales say?’
‘No, nor as bad, in my lifetime, anyway. There was peace, of a sort, before the Forbidding was broken and everything changed. Oh, there were always little wars going on somewhere, but few people were affected by them. Most lived their lives without ever seeing an army, save during a ceremonial march. But the big difference was the freedom.’
‘How do you mean?’ Tiaan had never known freedom before leaving the manufactory, and could not imagine it. The Council organised every aspect of people’s brief lives from the moment they were born until their untimely deaths.
‘Well, people were free to move to another place or another country, if they wished to. They might not have been welcomed, but there was no law to stop them. They could do whatever kind of work they could make a living at. There were no examinations and no Council of Scrutators telling everyone what to do.’
‘And no breeding factories,’ said Tiaan.
‘Certainly not! Women could choose to have children, or not. It wasn’t a crime to prevent conception then.’
That reminded Tiaan of a puzzle she’d often thought about. ‘When I was held in the breeding factory, I saw something that I’ve wondered about ever since.’
‘What was it?’ Malien lay on the grass and closed her eyes. ‘Can you keep an eye out, in case I doze off?’
Tiaan climbed onto the shooter’s platform and scanned the country. There was no living creature in sight. She sat beside Malien again.
‘I don’t know who my father is and Marnie wouldn’t tell me. But one time in the Matron’s office I happened to see a book – the bloodline register for the breeding factory at Tiksi.’
‘Bloodline register?’
‘Yes. It was like a human stud book.’
‘You old humans are obsessed about your family Histories. The breeding factory would have to have records of the parents.’
‘But it was what was in the records,’ said Tiaan. ‘The talents of the parents …’
Malien yawned. ‘You should ask Flydd about that. I’ve never understood why old humans do the things they do. I suppose we’d better find a place to hide for the night. I’m too tired to fly all the way to Borgistry.’
In the morning they flew due south over the unending expanse of northern Worm Wood, and in the early afternoon Tiaan saw a cluster of volcanoes in the distance.
‘There’s a place I’ve not properly surveyed,’ she said. ‘Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain.’ It stood at least a thousand spans higher than the other volcanoes in the cluster and was belching dark grey clouds of ash.
‘We might as well have a quick look at it on the way to Lybing.’
Before they reached the lowest of the peaks, as they were flying across dense forest, Tiaan looked up from her map. ‘That’s funny!’
‘What?’
‘There’s a strong node here but the field is really tenuous.’ She peered over the side but saw only the same untracked forest they had been crossing for hours. It was getting dark.
‘Fields fluctuate,’ said Malien.
‘Not as much as this.’
‘We can go back and forth if you want to take a closer look.’
‘No.’ Tiaan felt uneasy without knowing why. ‘We’re supposed to be heading for Borgistry.’
‘There’s time. Yggur said they wouldn’t be fighting for a few days yet.’
‘In that case, go on to Booreah Ngurle. It has a double node that I’m interested in.’
Malien flew around the peak, then back and forth across it, to either side of the ash clouds.
‘All finished, Tiaan?’
‘Um, can we go back to that weak field now? I want to take another look.’
They flew north on the same track as they had taken south. Two small chains of hills ran to their left. The area that interested Tiaan lay a little to the east of them. ‘Now turn around and go back.’
‘Again?’ said Malien when they had returned to their starting point.