They crowded around, Irisis looking over the top of Flydd’s head. The crate contained the perfectly preserved body of a man and a woman. Their skin was stained dark by tar but the flesh had shrunk only a little. Both wore necklaces of silver, gold and semi-precious stones. A bound book rested on its spine between them. The first few pages had been separated, revealing illuminations of great delicacy.
In the second crate were the bodies of three children, equally well preserved. At their feet were items of clothing, leather boots, three more books, and bowls, knives and other personal items.
The third crate held more books and manuscripts; a pair of unstained, woven tapestries; small carvings in wood and amber; a stringed instrument; a kind of wooden flute with nine finger-holes; scrolls covered in musical notations; painted timber panels, so tar-stained that the images were indecipherable; as well as a wooden case containing crystals of yellow brimstone, including a large, perfect one. Most items bore the marks of the tar, though the contents of the second crate were clean.
Flydd surveyed the crates again. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re so used to war you can’t see beyond it,’ said Gilhaelith.
Irisis studied the faces in the crates. There was something about the eyes. ‘Xervish –?’
Gilhaelith held up his hand and she did not go on. ‘Lyrinx, it has often been remarked, are similar to us in many ways. People have noted – Tiaan for one – that some of the enemy display more humanity than humanity itself. There’s good reason for it. They’re just as human as we are.’
Flydd laughed in his face. ‘You’ve been eating your poisonous caterpillars again.’
‘Take another look at them, surr,’ said Irisis. ‘Look at the eyes. They do resemble lyrinx eyes.’
Gilhaelith shot her a keen glance. ‘More than eight thousand years ago, a village was established near Snizort to harvest tar, naphtha and brimstone from the vast tar deposits there. In time the village became a town, and then a wealthy one, whose philosophers had the gold and the leisure to devote themselves to the study of arcane arts. They uncovered glimmerings of the Secret Art and were probably the first people on Santhenar to do so. In the records that have passed down through the Histories the town was named Ric Rints, but the kings’ chroniclers who made those records used a different alphabet to ours and the name was written down incorrectly. The people of that town called it Lyr Rinx.
‘The town grew ever wealthier from its people’s restrained use of the Art, eventually attracting the attention of distant powers who saw that the Art might also be used to subdue unruly neighbours. Lyr Rinx’s philosophers, or mancers as we would now call them, refused to sell their secrets or go into employment. In consequence, an edict was passed, making it a capital crime to use their Art in any way.
’The philosophers had the support of the townspeople and continued to practise their Art in secret as they sought a way to escape to a better place. However, after decades of persecution, the wrath of the great powers came down on them. Many of the philosophers were put to the sword, Lyr Rinx was razed and the fields surrounding it sowed with salt.
‘But still the people would not give up their Art, for it was the keystone of their culture now, and they were close to completing the ark which would allow them to escape their persecutors. They built a floating village in the middle of the Great Seep and continued to practise their Arts for some weeks before they were discovered. Their enemies came, destroying everything, but the surviving philosophers had found the way. They used their power to tear open a hole into the void. It wasn’t such a feat back then, long before the Forbidding.
‘The philosophers and half the villagers fled to safety, as they thought, in the void, for its savage nature was not then known. The remainder were slain, and the living and the dead, and all their goods, were dumped into the Great Seep to disappear forever.’
Gilhaelith paused for a sip from a metal bowl. Irisis glanced at Flydd. His face was inscrutable, but she felt sure the tale was true. Yggur seemed to think so too, despite his antipathy to Gilhaelith.
‘But those who’d escaped into the void did not find the haven they’d expected. It was a savage place where the only rule was eat or be eaten. Their only hope was to transform themselves from weak humans into fierce, terrible creatures, totally dedicated to survival. And that is what those gentle philosophers did. They used the Art to flesh-form their unborn children. Such magic was possible in the void, where all things are mutable. They modelled themselves on fierce winged humanoids called thranx, but called themselves lyrinx so they would never forget where they had come from. And each succeeding generation changed themselves more, until they were more like thranx than the thranx themselves, and had lost all semblance of their former human selves.
‘With their big, tough bodies, their fierce dispositions and unconquerable will to survive, not to mention their Art, the lyrinx survived and even prospered in the void. But they weren’t content there, as they had been at home.
‘They were never completely comfortable in those huge bodies, which didn’t quite fit. And many were unhappy with what they had become: a savage warrior race lacking art, culture or philosophy. But they had to be warriors to survive, and in their eight thousand years in the void they eventually lost all trace of their human culture. They knew where they had come from: Lyr Rinx, on Santhenar, and that they had fled to escape persecution. They knew they had lost their souls, and longed to go home and discover who they truly were. But not even the matriarchs knew that they had once been human.
‘With time, their longing became unbearable and, when the Way between the Worlds was opened, they seized the opportunity to come home. They came in peace, offering friendship, but the people of Santhenar saw them as monsters just as brutal and vicious as the thranx. The lyrinx were attacked the instant they appeared and many were slain. They tried to explain, to negotiate, but their emissaries were slaughtered. They were persecuted, hated and reviled, just as they had been in the distant past.’
‘What a load of rubbish!’ said Orgestre. ‘You can’t believe a word he’s saying, Flydd.’
‘But the lyrinx were survivors now,’ Gilhaelith went on, unfazed. ‘They took refuge in the deepest forests and the wildest mountains of Meldorin, and bided their time until they could come to terms with their new world. It wasn’t easy, for their bodies were even more uncomfortable on this heavy world than they had been in the void. They stayed in hiding for more than fifty years, until they’d replaced those who’d been slain and their numbers began to increase, and then set out to take back a portion of their former world. It was only then, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the war began. It was a war for freedom, yet all the while they had one objective in mind, to go home to Lyr Rinx and discover their past.
‘When they eventually tracked down the lost town to Snizort, there was not a trace of Lyr Rinx, and the peasants who now dwelt in the area, still living off the tar deposits, knew nothing of the impossibly distant past. The lyrinx set out to uncover it themselves. It proved a far greater task than they’d expected, even after they’d established their underground city at Snizort. Finally, with my help, they froze the molten tar of the Great Seep, tunnelled in and recovered these bodies and these relics.
‘It turned them upside down to look upon their ancient selves, to see the relics of their proud culture – the music, the books, the art, the Histories – and compare it to what they had become. On the outside they were lyrinx; within, they longed to be human again. For a hundred and fifty years these once gentle, peace-loving philosophers had been waging war on their own kind.
‘Matriarch Gyrull was transformed by the discovery, and where she led, her people followed. Flesh-forming had allowed them to survive in the void, but back on Santhenar it caused physical discomfort and mental anguish. They had gained powerful bodies, but at the expense of their spirit, their soul, their culture and their Histories.’