‘There’s no other choice,’ said Flydd. ‘Believe me, we’ve tried to think of one.’
‘Let it be done,’ said Yggur, and one by one everyone agreed.
FIFTY-THREE
Rather to Tiaan’s surprise, Irisis and Nish had asked if they could accompany her to Alcifer, where she was to drop a barrel of spores into one of the air vents. Flydd had allowed it and, to her own surprise, Tiaan had agreed. Though they were friends now, she preferred her own company. But then, she had to take someone.
‘What do you think of the morality of this attack?’ she said once the three of them were settled on their course from Fiz Gorgo to Alcifer.
‘I can’t say it bothers me,’ said Irisis. ‘How can it be worse than what the enemy has done to us, and hope to do with these uggnatl?’
Not long after dawn, Tiaan settled on a misty mountaintop a few leagues away from Alcifer, where they could hide unseen. The thapter sank a little way into powdery autumn snow, whirling it up all around. The snow hissed as it turned to steam, which burst out on all sides before drifting away on the keen southerly.
‘How long do we have?’ said Irisis, yawning.
‘About five hours,’ said Tiaan. ‘I left early, just to be sure. All six cities have to be attacked at the same moment, otherwise the lyrinx would send out a mindspeech alert.’
Nish and Irisis dozed for most of that time. Tiaan was tired but too tense to sleep, and it was too cold at this altitude to make walking pleasant. She closed the upper hatch, sat on the warm floor above the mechanism and studied the plans of Alcifer, working out how she was going to carry out the attack. It was not going to be easy.
They could only attack in daylight, of course. Tiaan’s attack was timed for noon, as was the attack on the city west of Thurkad. There was a three- or four-hour time difference between here and the lyrinx cities on the east coast.
‘It won’t be long now,’ she said later, as they descended towards the sea, north of Alcifer. ‘Alcifer is down to our right.’
‘And well protected,’ said Irisis, shading her eyes. ‘I can see lyrinx in the air from here. Look.’ She counted them. ‘At least fifteen.’
The farspeaker belched. ‘Where are you, Tiaan?’ The voice was unidentifiable.
‘Who’s asking?’ she snapped, bending over the slave farspeaker attached to the binnacle.
‘Xervish Flydd!’
The way he said his name identified him, though passage through successive fields had dragged his tones out to something between a bark and a croak.
‘We’re approaching Alcifer now, surr. Just ten minutes away. There are a lot of lyrinx in the air.’
‘Also west of Thurkad. Perhaps they know we’re up to something.’
‘Or they are,’ said Irisis.
‘Call when you’ve done it.’ The farspeaker squelched and Flydd was gone.
The magnificent ruined city spread out before them, just like the map impressed in Tiaan’s mind. ‘I’ll circle a few times, as we do whenever we’re spying on them. We’ll locate the air shafts, then I’ll hurtle down and hope to dump the spores into one on the first attempt. We can’t afford to have them guess our intentions. If we have to make a second attempt there’ll be fliers everywhere and it’ll be ten times as difficult.’
‘And deadly,’ said Irisis.
‘Where are the air shafts?’ asked Nish as Tiaan began to circle. He was looking down as if he expected to see them boring through the hillside.
‘We know of three, though they’re not easy to see. Two are concealed within partly ruined buildings in the centre of Alcifer. The third is at the base of a cliff, under the trees over there somewhere.’ Tiaan pointed to her left, where a series of grey cliffs fell into the forest that had grown over the rim of the city. ‘There may be others.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘They’re shafts bored through rock, about a span across. One has a giant bellows outside, to pump in fresh air. It would be the best place to dump the spores but it’s the hardest to get to, so I won’t risk it.’
As they curved around the edge of the city, the wheeling lyrinx began to climb towards them. ‘Which shaft are you going for?’ asked Irisis.
‘The two within Alcifer will be easiest to find. I’m going for the one beneath the dome – see the sun shining on it? The dome is open underneath, so I’ll go down to the left, come in between the columns and see if I can get close enough.’
‘I thought we’d just fly over and drop it in,’ said Nish.
‘I may not be able to get that close. One of you will probably have to jump out and heave it in. Keep an eye on the fliers. And you might want to get your crossbows ready.’
The lyrinx closed the gap.
‘Ready?’ said Tiaan.
‘We’re ready,’ said Irisis.
‘Hang on!’ Tiaan turned sharply left and dived steeply.
Nish let out a muffled cry as the thapter hurtled towards the dome. The lyrinx folded their wings, diving after them.
Tiaan felt the Secret Art fizzing in her brain. ‘They know we’re up to something,’ she shouted over the shrieking of the mechanism and the roaring of the wind. ‘They’ll be everywhere in a minute.’
‘How are you going to get to it?’ said Irisis.
Tiaan pointed to the right as she curved around the dome and its many extravagantly carved columns. ‘In there.’
The dome was about two hundred spans across and supported on many slender columns. She couldn’t see far inside, though the tiled floor was scattered with rubble and rectangular piles of stone blocks.
Tiaan turned sharply, slowed and darted in between the columns. It was much darker inside and her eyes were slow to adjust. She clipped a cairn of blocks, sending loose stone tumbling across the floor, jolting the thapter sideways.
‘Can you see the shaft?’ she yelled. ‘Irisis?’
Irisis was standing up on the side. ‘No, I can’t. Are you sure this is the place?’
‘I’m sure it’s the one Klarm told me about.’ Tiaan turned in a figure-eight inside the dome. ‘But I’m beginning to think he got it wrong, or his spy did.’ She turned again, her stomach already knotted up. The lyrinx would be here in seconds. ‘He said the air shaft was in the middle but we’ve been across twice and there’s nothing here. We’ll have to go to the next.’
She shot out the other side, but as they passed between the columns Irisis cried, ‘It’s just there.’
Tiaan saw it out of the corner of her eye as well, though too late to stop. The vent was right on the edge, hidden between two walls of stone. The thapter shot into the sunlight and there were lyrinx everywhere. Several landed just outside; others flew in under the dome, and dozens more were approaching. What to do?
‘I don’t dare go back,’ she said. ‘They’d be onto us before we could get the barrel to the opening. We’ll have to try the one with the bellows.’
She shot across the abandoned city, carving a curved trail to the other side, hoping thereby to confuse the enemy about her destination. There were flying lyrinx everywhere now, hundreds of them, and more appearing all the time.
She turned down a broad boulevard where ruined, half-ruined and intact buildings towered on either side, screamed left into a smaller road and turned right into an alley. From there she flew up, soaring over the thoroughfare ahead, turned left again and headed towards a pentagonal pavilion with steepled roofs, set on a stone platform reached by broad steps on all five sides.
‘How do you do it?’ Irisis said.
‘What?’
‘Know exactly where you are, despite all the twists and turns. It’s as if you have the whole map in your head.’
‘I do,’ said Tiaan. ‘The second air shaft is in the building with the steeples. We’ve got to do it this time or they’ll close off all the shafts.’ The sky was dark with lyrinx now.