The four remaining mindspeech listeners had recorded intense message activity the previous afternoon and all morning, but in the early afternoon it stopped abruptly. The two thapters continued with the army. It was not attacked again, not even the solitary night raids from flying lyrinx to which Troist had grown accustomed.
‘It’s so quiet,’ said Flydd the morning after that. ‘Too quiet.’
They were camped on a gentle rise, a patch of barren ground with good views over the grassland in every direction. A small fire smoked between the thapters and Irisis was grilling gangrene-coloured offal sausages over it. She wasn’t looking forward to dinner.
‘I can practically feel the enemy’s rage about their loss,’ said Tiaan, who’d spent two days in the bowels of the thapter working on the field controller with Irisis, or by herself after Irisis had gone to bed. It had come together at last and they were going to begin testing after breakfast, Tiaan working as the operator.
Golias’s globe sounded and a voice rumbled like a cow’s belly, the words low and drawn-out.
‘Who was that?’ said Troist.
‘It sounded like Governor Zaeff in Roros,’ said Flydd in amazement. ‘I’ve never spoken to her directly. The fields must be marvellously aligned today.’
‘What did she say?’
‘I couldn’t make it out.’ He turned to the farspeaker. ‘This is Scrutator Flydd, north of Borgistry. Please repeat your message, Governor Zaeff.’
It came again, after a wait of two or three minutes. ‘The enemy have abandoned the field of battle …’ The rest was lost in noises like water bubbling in blocked drains.
‘Please repeat that, Governor Zaeff. It sounded as if you said the enemy were retreating.’
‘… were preparing to … walls of Roros … within hours of overcoming us … are streaming west …’
‘Are you saying that the enemy have broken off the attack?’ Flydd said incredulously.
‘Yes,’ said Zaeff. ‘I don’t believe … miracles … else can I explain …?’
‘When did this happen?’
Another long wait. ‘Yesterday morning…. felt sure it … a decoy … kept our silence until … knew what was happening.’
Flydd tried to call the other cities in the east, but could not raise any of them. Their fields were not aligned, so he had to go through the laborious process of having his calls relayed. It took hours, but in the end proved worth it. From Taranta to Tiksi, all had the same news. The lyrinx had broken off all attacks in the east and, accounting for time differences, at the same time.
‘It’s got to be a trick,’ said Troist. ‘They’re trying to lure us out after them.’
‘Strange kind of trick,’ said Irisis.
‘In the past weeks we’ve lost everything in the east but a few walled cities,’ said Troist, ‘and we’ve no hope of recovering it. The enemy can afford to forgo some of their gains if it means we capitulate sooner. Now the end is near they may want to limit their own casualties.’
‘Abandoning sieges which will soon have to be renewed seems a strange way of doing it,’ said Flydd.
‘Governor Zaeff has a thapter at Roros. Ask her to find out what the lyrinx are doing.’
‘She already has,’ said Flydd. ‘They waited out of range of the walls of Roros for the rest of the day and night, then headed south-west. The fliers were followed as far as the Wahn Barre, the Crow Mountains, which they were flying across when the thapter turned back. The lyrinx on the ground were marching in the same direction.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Troist. ‘The enemy must have found a way to seize control of our farspeakers. These messages are lies, to lure us out of our refuges – they’ve got to be. You know we’ve never been able to speak directly to Roros, Flydd.’
‘You could be right,’ said Flydd, frowning and pulling at his bristly chin. ‘But we’ve got to know, either way.’
During the day, similar messages were received from the other eastern cities. Troist plotted the directions the enemy were said to have taken. They intersected in a broad area on the southern extremity of the Dry Sea, to the east of the area occupied by Vithis.
‘What about the lyrinx who were besieging Borgistry?’ said Yggur.
‘They’ve gone into Worm Wood and we can’t find them,’ said Troist.
‘There’s only one way to uncover the truth,’ said Flydd. ‘I’ll have to send one of the thapters east and confirm the flight of the lyrinx, with eyes I can trust.’
‘That’s going to take a long time,’ said Yggur. ‘If your observers can’t report by farspeaker, they’ll have to fly all the way back.’
‘What’s our alternative?’ said Flydd. ‘If we can’t trust our farspeakers, we’ll have to go back to the old reliable ways.’
Kattiloe’s thapter was dispatched to the city it could reach quickest, Tiksi, with three pilots so it could fly non-stop. It would still take at least a week. More messages came in that day and the next. Hosts of fliers were reported to be streaming from the east, making no attempt at concealment. All were heading towards the same area, if the reports could be believed, though no one trusted anything heard through a farspeaker now, even when the voice was recognisable. Lyrinx were also reported flying north-east from Meldorin, and north from Borgistry.
Troist’s map now had enough lines to show the destination: the old town of Ashmode, a port established an aeon ago when the Dry Sea had still been the Sea of Perion.
‘Why Ashmode?’ said Flydd. ‘The lyrinx have never shown any interest in that part of the world.’
No one could answer the question. Initial tests of the trial field controller having shown promise, Malien and Tiaan were sent to the Dry Sea, to fill in the gaps in Tiaan’s map. Irisis was assigned a team of artisans and told to get a reliable device made with the utmost speed.
SIXTY-TWO
Leaving Booreah Ngurle, now blowing itself to pieces behind them, Gilhaelith set off for the Marches of Tacnah, a flight of more than a hundred leagues.
‘Get some sleep,’ he said to Nish and the soldiers. ‘I’m not planning to stop, and there’ll be precious little time after we arrive.’
Nish settled down in a corner but couldn’t sleep for worrying about the geomancer’s intentions. He’d considered trying to foment a rebellion, but surely stealing the relics from the enemy was a good outcome?
Gilhaelith and Merryl were down at the other end of the thapter. Gilhaelith had a farspeaker on his lap and was spinning the globes, listening, then spinning again. Merryl sat in the corner, steadying a writing tablet with his stump while he took notes. Daesmie was asleep in the corner.
Nish got up and sat beside Merryl, so as to see what he was writing, but the fragments of mindspeech didn’t mean anything to him.
‘I’m not as skilled as Daesmie,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘but we have to keep listening. Every lyrinx who heard that call for help will answer it, and some are bound to be closer than us.’
‘Why would they take the relics to Tacnah?’ said Nish.
‘They were taking them across Tacnah, to hide them. You don’t realise how insecure you’ve made the enemy feel. In a hundred and fifty years there wasn’t one successful attack on their underground cities. Then Snizort was destroyed in a way no one could ever have imagined, and now their six remaining cities have been rendered uninhabitable for years, in a single day. They’re homeless and winter is coming. They’ve lost everything except what they can carry on their backs.’
Gilhaelith kept working, but with little success – Merryl had only a few notes on his tablet by the time Nish began to doze off again. When he woke, Gilhaelith had his geomantic globe on the floor, its bowl resting on the crumpled indigo velvet from its box, and was scrying with the brimstone crystals again.