‘Gyrull realised that they looked on themselves through the wrong side of the glass. They’d seen their winged, clawed and fanged selves as the peak of perfection, and in the void they had been. Now she realised that the imperfect ones – the wingless, those lacking skin armour or the ability to skin-speak – were closest to their true selves. Before they could regain what they had lost, they would have to return to the semblance of the Sacred Ones. Their ancestors!’ He indicated the people in the boxes.
‘And with this realisation, last winter, came another: that they were vile cannibals who had been living on their own kind. Most gave up eating human flesh. In the battle for Borgistry, if you recall, they no longer fed on our fallen. They could not stop the war, for humanity would not rest until the lyrinx had been wiped out, but they were losing heart.’
‘When did you realise all this?’ said Flydd.
‘I discovered part of the story before Tiaan shanghaied me to Fiz Gorgo,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘though it wasn’t until I stole the relics, and demanded that they abandon their sieges in return for them, that I began to put the final picture together. The lyrinx would only accede to my demands if the relics mattered more than the war, and so it proved. We thought they came for conquest, but that story never fitted what I knew of them.’
‘A pretty tale,’ said General Orgestre, ‘but even if it were true it doesn’t change our situation. Just thirty leagues away at Ashmode are hundreds of thousands of lyrinx, each the equal of two of our finest soldiers, and more are coming all the time. We only have eighty thousand men to put against them. If they could turn themselves into humans and abandon their warlike ways, I might be prepared to listen. In the meantime, humanity stands in peril of being wiped out. We have to proceed with the plan.’
‘What plan is that?’ said Gilhaelith.
‘Our troops are now moving, under cloaking shields, to the high ground. We will attack without warning, using Flydd’s mind-shockers mounted on our thapters and air-floaters, to drive the enemy over the cliffs.’
‘They can climb cliffs as easily as we walk down the garden path,’ said Gilhaelith.
‘Then we drive them down,’ gritted Orgestre, ‘and out to the Dry Sea. Once we get them there, we force them into the salt lakes to drown, or onto the salt to die of thirst. Any that try to break free, we annihilate with our massed clankers.’
‘I won’t allow it,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘And while my Art holds, you shall not have the relics.’
Flydd, who had manoeuvred himself behind Gilhaelith, withdrew a sock full of wet chalk dust from his pocket and thumped Gilhaelith over the back of the head with it.
‘Your Art no longer holds. Bring the crates, troops, and let’s get on with it.’
‘At last he acts,’ said Orgestre. ‘Well done, Flydd. Now let’s deal with the enemy in the only way they can understand.’
Yggur said nothing, but his eyes showed such contempt that Irisis had to look away.
As they were leaving Flydd pointed to the geomantic globe. ‘Put that in its box and bring it as well. You never know when it might come in handy.’
SIXTY-EIGHT
The poorly trained guards quickly surrendered once they saw that their master had fallen. They were herded into Kimli’s thapter, which had been concealed in one of the caverns. A distraught Kimli was found, reunited with her machine and told to take the soldiers to the army camp, which had been set up some leagues south of Ashmode. Yggur went with them. Daesmie and Merryl were also discovered in makeshift cells and freed. Flydd’s troops loaded the crates into Kattiloe’s thapter and they shot up from the terrace in clouds of yellow chalk.
‘We didn’t ask him about Nish,’ she said miserably.
‘I had more urgent business to attend to than your bloody love life,’ said Flydd. ‘You can ask him yourself when he comes round.’
They flew high above the cliffs towards Ashmode, but long before they reached it she saw the lyrinx camps, extending like dark ink blotches for leagues along the brink of the uppermost cliffs.
‘Fly over them,’ said Flydd. ‘A trifle lower, Kattiloe. Let’s find out exactly what we’re up against.’
Kattiloe put the nose of the thapter down and headed towards the nearest of the camps, but shortly the noise of the mechanism cut out. She drew a sharp breath and her fingers danced over the controls.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Flydd.
The thapter was falling, gathering speed, the wind whistling around it. ‘I can’t draw any power. The field is gone.’
Gilhaelith, who was slumped against the side wall fingering the bump on his head, gave a thin smile. ‘What a pickle.’
‘What’s going on?’ cried Flydd. ‘Gilhaelith?’
‘The lyrinx have walled themselves off with a dead zone. You can’t approach them in any contrivance that needs power.’
‘How have they done that?’
The whistling was now so loud that Irisis could hardly hear. She went up on tiptoes, looked over the side and blanched. The ground was approaching at frightening speed and, in what was obviously a game of bluff, she hoped Flydd would show sense and give in quickly.
‘I should have thought that was obvious. With their power patterner, Flydd,’ Gilhaelith chuckled. ‘It’s like your field controller, only better.’
‘How did you know about it?’ Flydd said.
‘I tapped into Golias’s globe. You may control the fields, if Tiaan ever comes back with her map, but they can control the flow of power from nodes. And they know them all. They mapped Santhenar a hundred and fifty years ago, trying to find Lyr Rinx.’
‘Surr,’ said Kattiloe, pulling at her blonde plaits with her free hand, ‘what should I do?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ Flydd said savagely. He looked down at the rapidly approaching ground and cracked. ‘How do we get out of this, Gilhaelith? I know you’ve got a way.’
‘Makes no difference to me. I’m dying and you’ve taken away my last hope.’
‘What hope? Quickly, man.’
‘To exchange the relics for their power patterner, to see if I could repair the damage in my brain with it,’ Gilhaelith said with provocative deliberation.
‘You can use it when we get it,’ Flydd said at once. ‘Anything you want.’
‘And I want my freedom,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘On your honour. As a man, not a scrutator, of course.’
‘You have my word,’ snapped Flydd.
Gilhaelith stood up, wobbly on his long shanks. ‘Turn away, little Kattiloe. Make for that knobbed peak to the south, if you can.’
‘Not sure that I can make it, surr,’ said Kattiloe, turning the machine. ‘Thapters glide like bricks.’
‘Well, just do your best.’
‘What if we can’t reach the peak?’ said Irisis.
Gilhaelith gave her a lazy smile. ‘We make a hole in the ground you could fit a house in.’
Kattiloe’s fingers worked furiously and the machine turned, though it still seemed to be going down much faster than across. The ground wasn’t far away at all now.
The thapter hit a broad column of rising air, lurched sharply, and Kattiloe expertly used the lift to skip across to the other side. The thapter bounced as it came out again, heading directly for the knob and looking as though it was going to plunge straight into it at high speed.
The mechanism groaned, died away, grunted, then resumed its familiar whine. Kattiloe jerked the controller and the thapter shot by the side of the knob then curved away to the south.
No one spoke for a long time, although Gilhaelith was still smiling.