Muss led them across the tilted, shattered stones of the parade ground, keeping to the low side of an upthrust bank of rubbly rock that curved towards the former entrance of the fortress. In the drifting dust and smoke it was hard to follow him. Though Muss was undisguised, he tended to blend into his surroundings.
‘He’s almost as weird as the rest of the place,’ Irisis said quietly to Nish. ‘I don’t trust him, despite his fine words.’
Nish didn’t have the energy to worry about anything else. ‘He knew we were here. He could have betrayed us any time in the past few days, had he wanted to.’
‘He’s up to something,’ she muttered.
Muss, ten or fifteen paces ahead, stopped and looked directly at her, before heading off again.
Irisis shivered. ‘And he’s fey.’
Nish put an arm around her but the sudden movement made his head spin again. He gagged and pulled away.
‘Are you all right?’ Irisis said sharply.
‘This place makes me dizzy.’
‘I feel it too.’ She touched her pliance with a fingertip. ‘Whatever the amplimet did to the dimensions, they haven’t quite gone back to normal.’
Where the rubble bank branched into two, Muss stopped for everyone to catch up. ‘Best if we go in here.’
The curving slice of building in front of them was shaped like a fingernail paring cut in half. The short straight end still had its outer wall, but the exposed side, which protruded several spans further than the neighbouring slice, revealed a section through all the above-ground floors of Nennifer. The lower floors were intact and contained their original contents, but the upper two levels were in disarray, their floors and ceilings partly crumbled.
Muss sprang lightly up onto the lowest floor, which stood two-thirds of a span above the ground, and disappeared.
‘What –?’ said Klarm.
The spy reappeared, his image wavering as if seen through the surface of a rippled pond. Nish felt an almost overwhelming urge to throw up.
Irisis steadied him until the nausea faded. ‘Perhaps if you close your eyes?’
‘Fat lot of use I’ll be then, when we’re attacked.’
‘You won’t be any use if you’re hurling your breakfast up all over yourself.’
‘We didn’t have any breakfast!’ he said miserably.
‘You’ll be fine then. Hold my hand while we go through.’
Klarm looked back, frowned, then flipped himself up onto the floor. This time Nish couldn’t control his stomach. Once he’d finished, Irisis took his hand and led him to the edge. ‘Close your eyes,’ she hissed as Flangers swung himself up.
Nish did so. ‘Ready?’ Without waiting for him to answer, Irisis took him under the arms and heaved him up, grunting with the effort.
His stomach tied itself in knots as he passed through a chilly, wetly-clinging barrier, but the nausea faded as he landed on the floor inside. He stood up, steadfastly looking the other way as Irisis came through.
The room appeared to have been the sleeping chamber of a senior mancer, or possibly a scrutator, for it was lavishly appointed with rugs, tapestries and furniture made of inlaid ebony and other rare timbers. An ivory wand lay in the middle of the rug, broken in half.
‘Which way?’ said Flydd, moving in behind Muss and taking him by the upper arm.
Muss went still. ‘I don’t like to be touched, surr,’ he said stiffly.
Flydd didn’t let go, and the pair stood frozen for a full minute before Muss gave a slight dip of the head and Flydd stepped back.
‘I still have to find the way,’ said Muss, looking around. He glanced down at the eidoscope in the folds of his cloak, then opened a door and slid through it. They waited. His head appeared around the door. ‘This way.’
Irisis muttered something rude. Flydd directed a fierce scowl at her. ‘If you are to lead, you must also learn when to trust.’
‘I’d trust Muss more if he had a personality,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve known him for years, yet I have no idea what he thinks or feels, about anything. He’s a machine.’
‘One who’s served me faithfully and well, and never let me down, which is all that matters. Now be quiet. This place could still be full of enemies.’
‘They’ve all run away save the scrutators and their pet mancers.’
‘Really?’ said Flydd, thrusting at her his seamed and puckered face, all bone and gristle. ‘A good seven thousand people dwelt in Nennifer and there could be many still inside.’
She pulled away, scarcely abashed, but drew her sword. Oddly, Flydd had lost the bitter fury of the past days. The duress seemed to have driven him back to his normal irascible self, which she was used to dealing with. Nish moved closer to her. The dust made everyone else look grubby but it only heightened her beauty.
He’d expected to be fighting his way in, but the monumental corridor proved empty apart from blocks of stone, scatterings of plaster and overturned pieces of furniture. One or two wall globes still glowed further on, and moonlight streaming in through fissures provided irregular slashes of illumination. The walls and ceiling were webbed with cracks, while pieces of plaster were falling all the time.
‘One more shock and the rest of this will come down,’ Flydd said with unsettling good humour.
It was the first time Nish had seen a smile on the scrutator’s face since the rescue at Fiz Gorgo. ‘You look awfully cheerful about it.’ It was incomprehensible in such a situation.
‘I’ve been looking forward to this day since Snizort. I feel almost restored.’ A momentary spasm distorted his features, but he overcame it.
‘Do you think there are going to be aftershocks?’
‘Bound to be,’ said Flydd. ‘Muss?’
Muss had stopped in a corner of the wall, again scrying under his cloak. ‘That way.’ He pointed to the right, across a mess of rubble and timber that marked the junction with the next building slice.
The rubble contained three partly crushed bodies; none had died pleasantly. ‘It doesn’t look too safe to me,’ said Nish, averting his eyes. ‘There could be a crevasse below that, or anything.’
‘Or nothing,’ Muss said cryptically.
‘What if we crossed up there,’ said Irisis, pointing to the next floor. ‘See the beam that’s fallen across?’
They went out and along to a stair that led to the next floor, then walked the beam in single file, a miniature nightmare to add to the rest of Nish’s horrors. It was precariously balanced on shifting chunks of stone and every movement made it wobble.
They passed diagonally across part of a prentice artisan’s training room, or so Irisis judged from the boxes and displays of crystals and other artefacts, each with its crudely lettered instruction cards. The front right and rear left corners of the room had been shorn off, replaced by a masonry wall on the one hand and a triangular section of room containing only a pair of butcher’s blocks on the other. The second block, illuminated by a puddle of moonlight, held a partly carved ham and a neatly severed hand and arm, still holding the carving knife. The arm had hardly bled at all, though the fingertips were as white as the ivory wand Nish had seen earlier.
At the door, Muss checked his instrument. This time Irisis, who had been watching for it, caught a quick glimpse of brass rods and mottled lenses. Muss pointed to the right, down a narrow hall.
They were just gathering behind him when Klarm said, ‘We’re being watched.’
‘What do you mean?’ Flydd asked in a low voice.
‘I don’t know, precisely, but I can feel it.’
‘It?’ whispered Flydd.
‘I believe so.’ Klarm cast a quick glance across the displays of crystals on the far side of the room.
Irisis followed his gaze. The reflection off one particular crystal, a deep green tourmaline, gave it a predatory look. ‘I think we should get out of here right away.’
No one argued. On the other side of the door, Flydd said, ‘I can feel the amplimet now. It may be contained but it’s not controlled. It’s extending a web of filaments throughout Nennifer. And it’ll use any crystal or device capable of drawing power. We’d better hurry.’