‘Guards!’ roared Troist.
‘Now!’ Gilhaelith screamed in her face.
Kimli’s arm jerked on the flight knob and the thapter leapt in the air. The guards came running, arming their crossbows, but by the time they took aim it was too late. The thapter was out of range.
‘Go north until we’re out of sight,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘then sweep around to the west.’
‘Where are we going?’ she quavered.
‘First to Nyriandiol, my former fortress atop Booreah Ngurle, if anything remains of it. And then, we shall see. Go swiftly.’
Four soldiers were sitting down below. Flangers was one of them. Nish sat beside him. ‘What’s going on?’
‘No idea,’ said Flangers. ‘I’m just doing what I’m told.’
He looked unhappy but did not seem inclined to talk so Nish sat in a corner, closed his tired eyes and tried to work out what the geomancer was up to, and what he, Nish, should do about it. Clearly, Gilhaelith was following his own private agenda. Equally clearly, he was on to something important and, even if Troist wasn’t aware of it, it might have been sanctioned by Flydd or Yggur. Well, probably not Yggur. Nish decided to keep his eyes and ears open and follow Gilhaelith’s orders, for the time being …
He woke as they set down on the mountaintop. Outside, he looked around curiously. Booreah Ngurle was often mentioned in the Histories. It had been an important site two thousand years ago, though Nish could not remember why.
It was mid-morning. The mountain’s crest was wreathed in steam and fumes which had a yellow cast and a sulphurous stench. Gilhaelith had made a fortune mining condensed sulphur from the floor of the crater.
Nish looked over the side. Not even the foolhardiest miner would have gone down there now. The crater lake was boiling, while up the other end red lava forced itself from a vent, surrounded by roiling black smoke and punctuated by small explosions that filled the air with wheeling, red-hot lumps of rock. The ground shook and grey ash filtered from the sky. His shoulders were already coated with it.
‘This is the end for the mountain,’ said Gilhaelith, leaning on a stone wall to look over the edge. ‘It won’t be long now.’
‘Then hadn’t we better do what you came for and get away?’ said Nish.
‘Humour me, Nish. I lived here a hundred and fifty years, all that time wondering when Booreah Ngurle would finally blow itself apart. The mountain is like an old friend to me, and I have to say goodbye.’
‘Why are we here?’
Gilhaelith roused. ‘Ah, yes. Because I left something here which will help us to find the matriarch, and more importantly, what she has with her. Kimli, Nish, come with me. The rest of you, stay with the thapter. We won’t be long. Keep a sharp lookout.’
He laid his hands on the broken front doors, which had been rudely but strongly reinforced with iron bands, and they unlocked. Gritty hinges squealed when he pulled the door open. Nish followed him and Kimli fell in beside Nish. No doubt Gilhaelith wanted her along so she couldn’t be forced to fly the thapter away.
They headed down a long hall thick with dust and ash which long ago had been scalloped into ripples by the wind. There were no tracks apart from one set of boot marks going in and another back out, and the occasional trail made by a lizard’s tail. The boot marks were Gilhaelith’s. So he’d been back here after escaping from Alcifer.
‘The earth has been my science and my Art, for all my adult life,’ said Gilhaelith, his long strides puffing up ash at toe and heel. ‘If I am to leave here forever, there’s one small thing I have to take with me.’
They went down several floors. Nish was amazed at the wealth of the place, and the austere beauty. Both his father and mother had been wealthy but they’d possessed nothing like Nyriandiol. Even more amazing, it had not been looted. Perhaps Gilhaelith’s reputation was too uncanny.
Gilhaelith opened a door into a dark room, touched a quartz sphere above the door and soft light spread out. The room was empty except for a sphere, about half a span across, turning slowly in a metal bowl on a round wooden base set with brass graduated rings and pointers that could be slid around them.
‘This,’ said the mancer.
‘Not so small,’ said Nish. It appeared to be a model of Santhenar. The side facing them showed Lauralin and the ocean to the east, and part of another land, beyond the equator to the north. He walked around it, studying the islands and continents. ‘I’ve often wondered what was beyond those seas.’
‘So did I, Nish,’ said the mancer. ‘All my life I’ve wondered, and now I know.’
‘It must have taken you a long time,’ said Nish.
‘Half a lifetime. I completed it only recently, in Alcifer, with the aid of the lyrinx. They’d flown the entire world in their early days here, mapping it on charts made from tanned human skin.’
‘How did you get away?’
‘The globe can be used for more than I told them. At an early stage I tapped into their sentinels and discovered what they had planned for me – among other things.
‘I’d given up hope of escape when fate took a hand. You, Tiaan and Irisis attacked Alcifer with the fungus spores. A clever idea – I never would have thought of it, but nothing could have been more cunningly designed to panic them. On the night of your attack, their watch relaxed, I used the globe to conceal myself from their sentinels and walked out of Alcifer to the port. I’d left a boat there when I came from Fiz Gorgo, and I sailed it across the sea. Once in Taltid I signalled a passing air-floater and convinced them to bring me and the globe here. I left it here for safekeeping and they flew me down to Lybing in time for the conclave.’
The holes in his story gaped as wide as the front door, but Nish didn’t question Gilhaelith further. He took a closer look at the globe.
It was exquisite. The surface appeared to be a kind of glass, and although the mountains were raised in relief, they were below the surface, which was smooth and so cold that when Nish touched it with a finger, his skin stuck to the glass and had to be eased off.
‘Don’t touch,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘There could be … unexpected consequences.’ He drew on a pair of silken gloves and traced a fingertip across the surface, which had hardly any dust on it. ‘It’s my life’s work.’
‘Surely not?’ said Nish. A skilled artisan, such as Irisis, could have made it in a few months.
‘It’s more than it seems,’ Gilhaelith said mildly. ‘This is not just a globe, Nish. It’s a geomancer’s model of the world, meaning that each part of the model corresponds to a part of the world. Had I power enough, I could change the world, within limits, by changing the model.’
‘Is that why you want it?’ asked the pilot in a meek little voice.
‘No, Kimli. I’ve never sought to change the world, merely to understand it. But I have a different purpose today. That call Daesmie picked up was from Matriarch Gyrull, one of the six matriarchs, and pre-eminent among them on the rare occasions when a supreme leader is required, as at the moment. She must have escaped from the collapsed tunnels in Oellyll, but the infection has taken hold. She’ll soon be incapacitated, if she’s not already.’
‘That must be the bitterest of blows to them,’ said Nish.
‘Not in the sense that we value a leader. The moment Gyrull became matriarch, she would have begun training successors. It’s what she’s bearing that’s important.’
‘What are the Sacred Ones?’ said Nish. ‘Her children?’
‘The cultural relics of the lyrinx.’
‘I didn’t know they had any culture.’
‘They gave up their ancient culture in their struggle to exist in the void. That’s why the relics found in the Great Seep are so important. They’ll do anything to protect them. The matriarch must have been ferrying the relics to a safe place, far away, but was struck down by the disease. Perhaps her escort is similarly afflicted; they’re calling for help and we have the chance I never imagined would come.’