‘Well, I’m sorry if I’m acting out of character!’ Irisis turned her back, pointedly taking up her braid again.
‘Sorry,’ Nish said automatically. ‘I – I’m out of my depth. This idea about waking the amplimet … it’s bound to go wrong.’
‘It’s the only plan we have, Nish.’
The flap was thrust open, scattering ice across the floor. Yggur came in, bent low, followed by Flydd and Klarm.
‘Time to go,’ said Yggur, going to his knees to shake Malien’s shoulder.
She sat up, bleary-eyed. ‘Already?’
‘I’m afraid so. We’ve got about half a league to go. We go over the ridge and down into the little valley where they grow their crops. We’ll get a bit of cover there. When we’re in place, we’ll work together. It’ll be easier down there, closer to the amplimet. If you seek it as before, I’ll lend you my shoulder when you need it.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s the idea, anyhow.’
‘Great,’ Nish muttered when they had gone out. ‘Now when it goes wrong we’ll lose them all.’
‘It’s no use,’ said Yggur a couple of hours after midnight, wiping hard granules of blown snow off his brow. He’d been working with Malien for ages, without success. ‘It’s hopeless.’
‘Let’s give it one last try,’ said Flydd.
‘The moon’s up. We’ll have to leave it until tonight.’
‘We must go on,’ said Flydd.
‘We’ve got to have darkness.’
‘Another day and neither you nor Malien will have the strength. And I’m not turning my back on the Council again.’
This time they were just above the valley floor, which was networked in dark and light greys by its dry irrigation ditches and the tufted remnants of the harvested autumn crop. They huddled in the long moon-shadow behind a cluster of hip-high boulders, while the wind shrieked all around them. To their left, a frozen stream in the bottom of the valley disappeared over the precipice into the abyss of the Desolation Sink.
‘Aftersickness is killing me,’ croaked Malien.
‘One more time,’ Flydd said grimly.
Malien grew the golden bubble around her and became a blurred outline. Yggur stood facing her, his hands at his sides. He whistled under his breath and a series of golden threads extended from the sphere towards his face.
Malien shifted her weight, Yggur threw up his arms as if off-balance, and for a moment the rock Nish crouched behind faded to translucency. His vision blurred then returned to normal, but his anxiety only intensified. He let out his breath in a loud hiss.
Flydd jabbed him in the ribs. ‘What’s the matter with you tonight?’
‘The amplimet is waiting for us,’ Nish burst out, ‘and it’s angry.’
Malien stood up on tiptoe, shuddering with the strain. Yggur turned his head as far as the filaments would allow. He seemed to be holding his breath.
‘It’s just a mineral,’ said Flydd. ‘It can’t feel anything. You’re projecting your own fears onto it.’
Malien seemed to be beckoning to Nish, as if saying, ‘Go on.’
‘It’s real,’ said Nish.
Everyone stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ Flydd rasped.
Nish had no idea how he knew it, until the words formed and he spoke them aloud. ‘I can sense something … just as I did that night above Gumby Marth, after Father cast his alchymical spell on me and I saw the lyrinx stone-formed into the pinnacles. It’s a … a brittle rage, a crackling fury like a box of crystals being ground underfoot. The amplimet is tormented, and it hates the scrutators for shackling and probing it, and for blocking it from the field it so desperately needs. They’ve fenced it in with ice and now they’re forcing it …’
‘To what end?’ said Flydd.
‘I can’t tell.’ Nish slumped to the ground and it was all gone. He was just his normal prosaic self, with not a trace of the Art in him.
‘Ice,’ Yggur muttered, the golden threads twanging as his jaw moved. He swayed on his feet and nearly fell.
‘Heat quickly destroys any kind of hedron,’ said Irisis. ‘Cold never can, but it can slow it to a murmur. Why didn’t I think of that? That’s how they’ve made it safe to use.’
Flydd gave a mirthless snort. ‘And to think we’ve spent days trying to wake it without killing ourselves. To unshackle it, all we have to do is warm it up. It’ll lash out at the scrutators and then we go in.’
‘It may lash out at us,’ said Malien, slumping to the ground. ‘You can never tell what an amplimet will do.’
‘We don’t have any other option,’ said Flydd. ‘We must go on, no matter what the risk.’
‘You’re insane,’ she said in a wisp of a voice.
‘We – go – on!’ he ground out.
Another still silence.
‘If Malien can find it again I might be able to warm it up,’ said Yggur finally. ‘Though I’d have to be closer. I’ve not got much strength left.’
‘How close?’ said Malien, lying on her back on the frozen ground with her arms flopped by her sides.
Yggur joined her, breathing heavily. ‘Ideally, against the outside wall of Nennifer.’
‘The sentinels would pick you up before you got within a hundred spans,’ said Klarm.
‘How close can we get?’ said Flydd.
‘Five hundred spans is the closest I’d dare,’ replied Klarm, ‘and even that’s …’
‘Not good enough,’ said Yggur. ‘I can’t do it from so far away.’
‘Then we risk everything and go on,’ said Flydd in tones that would not be denied.
‘No closer,’ Malien begged as they crawled up the edge of the shallow valley towards the flat-topped promontory, out of which the foundations of Nennifer had been carved. Here there had been enough moisture to freeze the gravelly soil into an iron-hard aggregate, brutal on their hands and knees. ‘Please.’
‘I can’t do it from here,’ said Yggur as he’d said half a dozen times already. He could barely hold himself on all fours now. Aftersickness was crushing him and Malien was little better.
‘Hold him up, Nish,’ said Flydd, working some kind of illusion with the fingers of one hand. It made no difference as far as Nish could see but, after a whispered consultation, Malien and Yggur agreed to keep going.
They continued crawling up the side of the valley, thence onto a fluted ridge of sharp rock. The sky had clouded over but now the moon came out momentarily and Irisis, beside Nish, caught her breath. The sudden brightness lit up the paved parade ground and mooring field which extended from the vertical slash of the thousand-span-high precipice that fell into the sunken lands of the Desolation Sink, all the way, as flat as a table, to the front wall of Nennifer. Two air-dreadnoughts were moored in the central part of the parade ground, one not far from this end, the other midway.
Nennifer’s monumental bulk reared up before them, the biggest building in the world and one of the most brutal in its sheer functional ugliness. It made no concession to beauty, harmony, proportion or setting: in a world devoted to war, nothing mattered but the power of those who told the world how to fight and die. Behind Nennifer, mountains black and bare rose up to pierce the glowing sky.
They were no more than five hundred spans from the front of the building. From here they would be exposed every step of the way, and within range of the great javelards and catapults mounted on the walls. If the sentries saw them, they would be shot without warning.
‘Where’s the amplimet, Malien?’ said Flydd.
‘Somewhere in the middle of the building,’ she replied. ‘I can’t tell more from here. The third floor, or perhaps the fourth. No closer, please.’ She choked.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Nish.
‘Something is very wrong. We must turn back.’
‘We have to go on,’ grated Flydd.
‘No further. I’m begging you.’ Malien’s face was stark in the moonlight. ‘Take another step and the mission will fail.’