‘Is everything all right?’ he said hoarsely, looking up the ladder.
‘So far,’ replied Malien in a strained voice.
‘I just hope they know what they’re doing,’ said Nish to Irisis.
‘They’ve fought this kind of battle before,’ said Irisis, intent on a new brooch.
Several hours afterwards Malien called down. ‘One of the thapters has turned away towards the Foshorn. I think Flydd’s in it. I wonder what he’s up to?’
‘I’m sure we’ll find out before too long,’ said Irisis.
Tiaan went higher and shortly the other two craft turned back. By the time they reached Nithmak in mid-afternoon, the first of the fliers were already there. A narrow stair wound around the peak from top to bottom. Though the mighty winches were still in place, the five constructs Tiaan and Malien had seen previously were gone.
Most of the fliers were spread out around the base of the peak, or hanging from the sides, though several hundred had assembled on the flat top, Liett among them, when the thapter landed. They were assembling javelards and catapults for the inevitable attack. Tiaan remained where she was, slumped in her seat, eyes closed.
‘Are you all right?’ said Irisis.
‘Just clearing my mind before we begin on the gate.’
‘You’d better have a sleep first,’ said Malien.
‘There isn’t time.’
‘The runners won’t be here for a day and a half. Remember your first gate, Tiaan. You wouldn’t want anything to go wrong this time.’
When Nish rose late the following morning after the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks, Tiaan was walking around and around the tower, as if trying to find courage after the disaster of her previous gate. Everything rested on her. What if she couldn’t make it work, or it went wrong again?
He was eating breakfast when he felt a shudder that made the red-topped tower sway back and forth. Rock cracked off one edge of Nithmak, taking five lyrinx with it, though three managed to flap to safety. Hundreds more flew up in a flapping of leathery wings and circled the tower.
‘What was that?’ said Nish, uncomfortably recalling the fall of Vithis’s watch-tower.
‘If it was an earth trembler, it was a mighty one,’ said Malien. ‘But they do have big earth tremblers around here. We’d better find out. Just in case …’
In case of what? Nish thought, as they headed for the thapter. It curved around Nithmak tower, rising slowly, before heading south-west. After some time, Irisis, who was peering over the side with her spyglass, sang out.
‘There’s smoke rising above the Hornrace. No, it’s dust. It looks like a gigantic dust storm.’
‘The rest of Vithis’s arch must have collapsed,’ said Nish from below. ‘Can we take a look?’
Tiaan turned the thapter that way and climbed until it was high enough to get a good view. ‘The whole of the Hornrace, leagues long, is covered by a vast line of dust,’ she called down the hatch. ‘It must have been the arch. It’s not going to do us any harm –’
‘The Trihorn Falls are flowing again,’ cried Irisis. ‘Oh, just look at that! Have you ever seen anything like it?’
Irisis was not given to hyperbole. Nish came scrambling up the ladder and pulled himself up onto the side next to her. Gilhaelith followed, though he was tall enough to see over. Vast arching streams of water were pouring out from the thunderhead of dust enveloping the Trihorn Falls.
‘There’s more water coming over than there was when I first saw them,’ said Tiaan. ‘Much more.’
By the time they were above the falls, the dust had begun to settle. The deluge had doubled and tripled by then. A torrent was pouring through the Hornrace, unimaginably greater than before.
‘What’s happened?’ said Nish, whose heart was hammering. ‘That’s more than the blockage in the Hornrace breaking open.’
As the dust was blown away into the Sea of Thurkad, the scale of the cataclysm became evident. ‘A great slab has cracked off the end of the Foshorn,’ said Irisis.
‘There must be ten times the flow there was before,’ said Nish.
‘More like a hundred,’ said Tiaan. ‘Just look at it.’
The flood was massive, awesome, prodigious; there were not words to describe it. And then it exploded in size again. ‘The other side of the Hornrace is collapsing as well,’ said Irisis. ‘Nish, look!’ She was on her knees, shaking his arm. ‘Oh, this is unbelievable. Half of one of the Trihorns is falling down. Now the other one is going as well. They’re being washed away.’
Those mighty peaks, that had split the flow of the Hornrace for thousands of years, were undermined in less than an hour. Peaks almost a thousand spans high tilted, toppled, rolled over and over and broke into pieces the size of hills before thundering to the bed of the Dry Sea, or into the salt lakes which were already overflowing. They could hear the roaring from on high, and even see the ground shake. Fissures zigzagged out across the salt for leagues.
The flow doubled and redoubled, until even from their height the noise was deafening. No one said a word. Even Gilhaelith was awed by the power of nature, so much greater than his greatest geomancy.
‘It’s not going to stop, is it?’ shouted Nish.
‘Not until it fills the Dry Sea –’ Irisis stopped with her mouth open. ‘They must have used the field controller to explode the node under the Foshorn.’
‘Neither Flydd nor Yggur would have done this, even if Orgestre put a sword to their necks,’ said Irisis.
‘No geomancer has the power to do what’s been done here,’ said Gilhaelith.
‘Then who has?’
‘Earth tremblers happen for their own reasons.’
He didn’t sound convinced and neither was Nish, who wasn’t a believer in coincidences.
‘It’s the end of the Dry Sea. It’s going to be the Sea of Perion again,’ said Tiaan.
‘And that too was foretold,’ said Malien.
‘How long will it take to fill?’ said Irisis.
‘Weeks, I should think,’ said Tiaan in a wisp of a voice. ‘But as soon as the water is two spans deep in this corner of the sea, all the lyrinx will drown, and Ryll will think I planned it all along. He’ll think it’s humanity’s perfect revenge – to offer them hope, then snatch it away at the last minute. There’s no death the lyrinx fear more than drowning.’
‘Liett will certainly think that,’ said Irisis.
‘What are we going to do?’ cried Tiaan, looking around wildly.
‘Don’t panic. There’s time yet,’ said Malien.
‘How much?’ she wailed.
‘It will depend on which point of the sea is lowest, and whether they have to cross it to get to Nithmak.’
‘We’d better warn them,’ said Tiaan, turning out towards the lyrinx. ‘Perhaps they can run a bit faster.’
The thapter raced from one end of the running horde, now stretched out over fifteen leagues of salt, to the other, though it seemed clear from their pace that the lyrinx knew what had happened. By the time they’d done that, the water was threading the bed of the Dry Sea and Tiaan was in a panic. Tiaan hurtled back to Nithmak, setting down right at the base of the tower in the middle of the afternoon, and running to the doors. They were still locked.
‘I wish I’d gone in before,’ she said. Tiaan threw herself back in and drove the thapter straight at the doors.
‘Stop! You don’t know how strongly it’s built,’ yelled Malien.
It was too late. The front of the thapter struck the doors with a crash that threw them all forward. The front crumpled and Malien cried out in dismay. The metal doors had buckled but still held. Tiaan pushed again and the doors tore from their hinges.
Everyone scrambled out, and Malien inspected the damage, shaking her head. ‘We may come to regret that.’
Tiaan wasn’t listening. She ran past and up the winding stairs into darkness. Everything had been built of basalt as black as the void itself, and there were no windows here. Irisis and Gilhaelith followed at a less precipitous pace.