‘I think not,’ said Klarm after a brief glance at the forbidding mountainside passing by. ‘Set down wherever you can find a safe place.’
Malien curved around in a circle, signalling her intentions back to a fur-shrouded Inouye, before heading for a relatively bare, relatively flat patch on the rock-littered slope. The thapter settled, gravel grating underneath. Ten spans back the dirigible came to ground silently.
Irisis opened the upper hatch and gasped at the frigid blast that swept in. Nish pulled his fur-lined coat more tightly around him, the earmuffs down over his ears, and climbed out. As soon as his boot touched the ground he felt a pang of unease, but dismissed it. How could he feel otherwise, so close to Nennifer?
He had never been anywhere like this place. The surface was utterly barren, just shattered rock and grey gravel and grit as far as his eye could see. He saw no living thing: no birds in the sky, no animals on the horizon, no plants anywhere. There weren’t even lichens on the rocks.
‘What a wasteland!’ Nish said to Irisis, who had walked away a few steps and was nudging stones over with the toe of her boot. There was nothing underneath them either.
‘The perfect place for the arid souls of the scrutators,’ she said.
‘Shh!’ Nish gave her a meaningful glance.
Klarm stood behind her, his bowed legs braced against the wind. He’d had the calipers removed before they left Fiz Gorgo, though he still put his foot to the ground gingerly. ‘Take no mind of me,’ he said. ‘I always hated Nennifer and was never more glad than to see the back of it. And –’
‘What?’ said Nish.
‘To me, the choice of location was not suggestive of unparalleled strength and supreme majesty, as the Council would have it. It indicated a deep-seated insecurity and I always wondered …’
Again he trailed off, as if he scarcely dared to speak what he was thinking – a survival strategy, surely. Ghorr had not encouraged people to speak their minds, and that included the host of lesser scrutators who weren’t members of the Council.
‘What did you wonder?’ said Yggur, coming up beside the dwarf and turning his back to the wind.
‘What the Council is most afraid of,’ said Klarm. ‘It isn’t the lyrinx, for all that we’re losing the war. And certainly not their own people, thoroughly cowed after a century of the scrutators’ iron rule.’
Nish and Irisis exchanged glances but neither said anything. It wasn’t their place.
The wind gusted up, howling around the thapter and lifting the tethered dirigible a span into the air. They ran and held it down with their weight, and the effort of running those few steps left them breathless.
‘We can talk about that later,’ said Yggur. ‘Get the dirigible tied down before it blows away.’
‘There’s nothing to tie it to,’ said Nish. ‘You can’t drive a stake into this grit.’
‘Then it’ll have to be anchored to rock. Is something the matter, Malien?’
She had her hands over her eyes and was walking back and forth, taking tiny, sliding steps that rasped across the surface. Her head was bowed. She continued for another ten steps, rotated slowly on the ball of her right foot and came rasping back.
‘Malien?’ Yggur said sharply.
‘I’m not sure about this place.’
‘This campsite?’
‘No, Nennifer itself. I’m sensing a strain on the node.’
‘You’ll have to explain,’ said Yggur. ’Your Art and mine are totally different, remember?
‘I learned to be sensitive to such things,’ said Malien, speaking breathlessly, ‘while guarding the Well of Echoes in Tirthrax against the amplimet.’
‘Is the amplimet doing something to the node?’
‘No … At least I don’t think so. I feel that the amplimet has been contained, yet the node is under strain … like a ball of rubber squeezed between the heels of one’s hands.’
‘Irisis,’ said Yggur, ‘would you take your pliance and tell me what the field is like here?’
She withdrew it from between her breasts and squeezed it in her right hand. ‘It’s incredibly strong,’ said Irisis. ‘I can almost see it. With my eyes, I mean. I’ve never experienced such intensity.’
‘We’re close to one of the greatest nodes in the world,’ said Klarm. ‘Another reason why the Council chose to build Nennifer here.’
Nish was still feeling uneasy. He closed his eyes and a shimmering silver loop drifted across his inner vision. He tried to focus on it but it eluded him and disappeared.
‘The fields have been drawn right down,’ said Irisis. ‘They weren’t like this when I was here before. It’s as if the node is being sucked dry …’ She gave a spasmodic jerk. ‘Aah!’
Nish saw, or felt, a bright flash of blue; his eyes sprang open.
‘What is it?’ said Yggur.
‘It flared up,’ said Irisis shakily. ‘So strongly that I couldn’t keep it out. But now it’s died again.’
‘Can it be the node?’ said Yggur. ‘Is it bound to explode?’
‘No – it doesn’t feel like the time we went into Snizort.’
‘It’s not the node,’ said Flydd, lurching up behind them. He was staring over the edge of the mountain. ‘It’s nothing like that time …’
Everyone stared at him. ‘You spoke!’ said Irisis, her eyes lighting up. ‘Xervish … surr, you’re better!’
‘Am I, Crafter?’ He turned his eyes to her and they were as bleak as chips of stone. ‘I’m glad you think so.’
She quailed, and that did not happen often. ‘I – I –’
He turned away as if she wasn’t there and Nish saw the hurt, quickly veiled, in her eyes.
‘Then what’s going on?’ said Nish, memories of that dark time in Snizort rising up to choke him. ‘Why would the scrutators be using so much power?’
‘I think …’ Flydd seemed to be straining hard to see the unseeable. He bared his teeth. ‘They’re probing the amplimet, I’d say, hoping to master it and gain undreamed-of power. And there may also be a power struggle between the scrutators. Not a battle, but certainly intrigues and undermining of each other.’
‘But the chief scrutator –’
‘Ghorr was a thug and a bully –’ said Flydd. He broke off, rigid with rage, and had to force himself to calm down. ‘But he was also a natural leader, and he knew how to use the authority of the chief scrutator. So, despite his failures, he was unchallenged until the end. Fusshte has neither charisma nor natural authority. He repulses people and can only maintain power through terror.’
‘He’s capable of it,’ said Klarm, with an involuntary and uncharacteristic shudder.
‘The Council won’t vote Fusshte as their chief, for he doesn’t have the strength to dominate them. He may have seized the position after Ghorr’s death but, safely back in Nennifer, every scrutator will question his legitimacy. And after the fiasco at Fiz Gorgo, every ruler on Santhenar must be querying the fitness of the scrutators to rule the world.’
‘Will they rise up to overthrow the Council?’
‘Not yet,’ said Flydd. His eyes met Nish’s for a moment, though without any sign of warmth or fellow-feeling. ‘For a hundred years the scrutators have cut down every mancer, army officer, governor and provincial leader who showed signs of personal ambition. Subservience to their rule has been a prerequisite for survival and no one in Nennifer would have the initiative to mount a coup. But if the struggle isn’t resolved quickly, rebellion becomes a certainty, and that would be worse than having Fusshte as chief scrutator. Once authority is lost at the centre, the outskirts will swiftly fall.’
After the dirigible had been fastened to steel pegs driven into rock, Yggur sent two soldiers to look over the other sides of the ridge and report back. They soon returned, reporting that nothing could be seen but the same dismal vista in all directions. He set out sentries, relatively close to the thapter for their safety in case a blizzard swept in, and everyone else went below for dinner, after which they sat down to plan the attack.