‘Never think of defeat,’ cried Liett, flashing out her iridescent wings so they touched the ceiling. ‘We came to Santhenar for a great and noble purpose, remember?’
‘I have not lost sight of it, daughter,’ said the matriarch.
‘Everyone has lost sight of it,’ Liett said savagely. ‘Oellyll is rife with despair. But I say, never! We cannot go back to the void. We came here to grow and discover ourselves, and I cleave to that purpose. But if it should prove to be beyond us, if defeat should become inevitable, let us not go tamely to our deaths. Let us not suffer the ultimate indignity – to be caged and paraded like circus animals for the amusement of these human savages. We are warriors from a line of warriors, and in the ultimate extreme, let us die like warriors.’
‘It hasn’t come to that,’ said the matriarch uneasily. ‘I too cleave to our dream: a new future on this beautiful world. A future where we don’t have to fight to survive, where we can grow beyond our warrior past, as we’ve already begun to grow.’
‘As do I,’ said Liett, springing to her feet. ‘But should that prove impossible, should all hope fail, let’s make a last, desperate plan,’ she said in ringing tones. ‘Let the entire lyrinx nation, women, men and even children, come out of our cities and fight to the death, holding nothing back. Let there be nothing in between.’ She thrust her fist as high as it would reach. ‘Let us have victory, or annihilation!’
Ryll felt the blood rush to his face, and the matriarch and Anabyng were equally fired. He had never loved Liett more than at that moment, nor been more inspired.
‘Yes,’ said the matriarch, filling their bone cups. ‘That is the only way, should we be put to it.’ She stood up and they all raised their cups high.
‘Victory or annihilation.’
FIFTY-TWO
The bolder of the refugees began to reoccupy the borderlands of Almadin and Nihilnor, putting in what crops they could. They had no choice: Borgistry was rich but it could not feed them all.
Spring passed into summer, and summer into autumn. The crops planted in the borderlands began to ripen. It had been a good season, and the settlers hoped that they might, after all, harvest enough to get them through the winter.
There had been no more battles like the one for Borgistry. The lyrinx had gone back to the guerrilla tactics they’d perfected in ages past, melting away at the first signs of resistance. But they did considerable damage and everyone knew that the terror campaign had a darker purpose – to keep humanity from taking back more of the lands they’d lost during the war. To keep them afraid until the lyrinx trained a new generation to replace those that had been lost, and perfected whatever new weapons they were working on in Alcifer.
As soon as that was done, the savagery would be unleashed.
The company had returned to Fiz Gorgo in mid-spring, where Yggur and Flydd began working on a secret project, aided by Flydd and, at times, Malien and Tiaan. Nish didn’t know what it was – no one would say a word about it.
Irisis was still in the east, now overseer of her former manufactory in place of Tuniz, who had gone home at last. Nish missed Irisis terribly. He’d tried speaking to her over Golias’s globe once or twice, relayed via several farspeakers on the way. Each time he spoke it took minutes for Irisis to reply, and her voice was so distorted by crackling sounds, whistles and gurgles that it was unrecognisable. Finally he gave up and wrote to her instead, sending his letter with the next thapter to go east. He received a brief, scribbled and unsatisfying reply when it returned. Irisis was not one for writing letters.
Nish had spent the past months making more air-floaters, now that the new season’s silk was becoming available, and training more air-floater pilots and artificers.
Tiaan spent her time refining her maps of nodes and fields, sometimes with Malien, more often with one or other of the thapter pilots. Each time she returned, Tiaan went directly to Yggur’s workroom, briefing him and Flydd on her latest discoveries and how they fitted into her overall picture of the fields and the nodes. By the end of summer she had surveyed all the known world save the Dry Sea, the reefs and islands of the equatorial north, and the frigid lands south of the Kara Agel, or Frozen Sea.
Flydd had made good his promise to Governor Zaeff of Roros, in Crandor, sending her a thapter and two pilots, as well as an artisan in case anything went wrong with the controller, and three artificers to keep the machine in good order. Tuniz, who came from Crandor, had been made overseer of the most troubled manufactory there and was busy restoring it to order, aided by Mechanician M’lainte, the genius who had built the very first air-floater. Flydd had also provided the Stassor Aachim with farspeakers, though they’d not offered any support in return. His embassies to Vithis at the Hornrace had been turned back at the borders.
Then in early autumn, after six months of running and hiding, an overwhelming force of lyrinx ambushed a column patrolling the Westway near Gospett, destroying thirty clankers and two hundred soldiers in twenty minutes of bloodshed. It was on again. ‘We’ve lost another node,’ said Klarm, who’d just been flown back from inspecting the scene of the massacre.
He was having dinner in a secluded corner of the refectory with Yggur, Flydd, Malien, Nish and Irisis, who had finally been recalled from the east after more than half a year, to Nish’s joy.
‘Whereabouts?’ said Malien sharply.
‘South-west of Gospett, in Gnulp Forest. Tiaan took me by it on the way back, and the node had disappeared.’
‘Exploded, like the Snizort one?’ asked Flydd.
‘No. It had just faded away. That’s three in that area now.’
‘Do you think it’s got anything to do with the massacre?’
‘No,’ said Klarm.
‘Is it some new kind of node-drainer?’
‘We couldn’t find any sign of one.’
‘Then why is it happening?’ Yggur said in frustration.
‘Everything is connected to everything else,’ said Malien cryptically.
The table fell silent. Yggur took a small goblet of wine, as was his wont. Flydd half-filled a large goblet, as was his. Klarm filled his goblet to the brim but did not drink at once. Malien, unusually, had nothing at all.
‘That’s it!’ cried Yggur, springing to his imposing height and spilling wine across the table.
People on the far side of the room looked up. Flydd mopped the droplets with a grubby sleeve. ‘I presume it’s no secret, since you see fit to tell everyone in Fiz Gorgo about it.’
‘Everything is connected to everything else,’ said Yggur. ‘If you draw on a node too heavily, it affects its neighbours.’
‘It doesn’t explain how the node near Gospett failed. No one’s drawing power down there.’
‘Nodes need not be linked to their neighbours. Maybe they can be linked to distant ones.’
‘There are thousands of nodes, Yggur,’ said Flydd. ‘If they can be linked to any others, anywhere, we could never hope to work out the connections.’
‘But we can observe them. At least, Tiaan can.’
Tiaan spent a week going through her records before talking to Yggur and Flydd. ‘I’ve found something strange,’ she said. ‘When Vithis draws heavily on the massive node at the Hornrace, a field near Morgadis dies down, as does another on the southern end of Lake Parnggi, and a third at Hardlar, on the coast of the Karama Malama. They must be linked in some way. And these nodes between Gnulp Landing and Gospett have completely failed.’
‘Will they regenerate?’ asked Yggur.
‘I have no idea.’