‘Just as Eiryn Muss said.’ Flydd gave Klarm a significant glance.
They had been turned to charcoal where they had stood, anthracised in place as they strove to work some mighty magic on the amplimet. No, not charcoal. It looked like black, honeycombed flesh, as if the living bodies had turned to char where they stood and escaping gases had foamed it up before it solidified. The statues were perfect replicas of the humans they had once been, save for the empty eye-sockets and various glistenings and dribbles, like wax that had run down the sides of a candle. Imagining the horrors they’d been through before they died, Nish’s skin crawled.
‘They must have been probing the amplimet,’ said Klarm. ‘And it didn’t like it. It’s a warning to us all.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
Something skittered along the curved far wall. Irisis couldn’t see what it was. She moved further out into the room, though shadows lay all around and she still felt exposed. The scrutators could be anywhere.
‘A warning to the Council, too,’ said Flydd. ‘Fusshte must be paralysed with terror.’
‘He’ll get over it,’ Klarm said dryly. ‘He’s the ultimate opportunist. Well, do we go for the crystal or the Council?’
Irisis looked the other way, only then seeing, in the semidarkness around the circumference of the room, another ring of mancers, each standing with left arm outstretched and hand up, as if holding the whole world at bay. There were fifteen of them, and the right hand of each clutched a device that vaguely resembled her pliance, though presumably much more powerful. The mancers stood as still as the carbonised statues, apart from the faint tremble of an outstretched arm here, a pulse throbbing in a throat there; and apart from the wide, staring eyes, which revealed such terror in their hard and rigid souls as Irisis had never before witnessed. The mancers knew what their fate would be once the concentration of any one of them faltered, as sooner or later it must.
‘If we go for the amplimet we may be caught in the cone of control these ward-mancers have over it,’ said Flydd. ‘Yet, if we attack the Council, their hold could fail and the amplimet break free.’ He considered for a moment, gazing at one of the ward-mancers though not seeing her. ‘The Council would be less risky, I think.’
‘How so?’ said Klarm.
‘Given the fate of the inner ring, would you put your shoulder to the same wheel? Or would you stand back and let your mancers take the strain?’
‘I’d stand with my people,’ said Klarm. ‘How could any man do otherwise? Better it cost me life than honour.’
‘Quite,’ said Flydd, ‘though Fusshte would see it differently. Better the limb be amputated than the whole body die. Nothing is more important than the Council, so the Council must survive even at the cost of everything and everyone surrounding it. Can we attack Fusshte without risking their hold on the crystal?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Klarm.
They moved through the ring of ward-mancers, Irisis passing by a dumpy, white-haired woman whose eyes did not even register her. The ward-mancers’ vision was turned elsewhere.
‘How can we find Fusshte in all this chaos?’ said Flydd. ‘Curse you, Eiryn Muss.’
‘I’m sensing something above us,’ said Irisis, crushing her pliance in her fist, the better to see.
‘Are they drawing on the field?’ said Flydd.
‘The reverse …’ Irisis tried to make sense of what she was seeing, which wasn’t easy. The patterns were weirdly truncated, as if the dimensional dislocation that had sliced up Nennifer had done the same to the fields. ‘There must be hundreds of little devices still working here – globes and so forth. I can see where they’re drawing on the field all over the place.’
‘Then what’s the problem?’ said Klarm roughly.
She screwed her eyes closed, furrowing her brow. ‘That’s just it. It all looks normal except, directly above this room –’ she nodded upwards, ‘– it’s completely blank. It’s as if the field doesn’t extend through that space. And that’s impossible.’
‘The Council has shielded its bolthole,’ rapped Klarm. ‘They’re afraid to come out. Come on.’
Flydd didn’t move. ‘If they’re afraid to use power, so should we be.’
‘So we rush them and overwhelm them with physical force,’ said Klarm. ‘It’s the one thing they won’t be expecting.’
‘Let’s hope Muss was right about the guards,’ said Flydd, eyeing their little group.
He went back through the four metal doors and looked around. ‘Straight up, Muss said. Ah!’
He headed for a set of coiling metal stairs that looked as though they’d been jammed diagonally down through the roof. As he stepped onto the first tread the stairs shook as if the only thing holding them was the shattered hole through the ceiling. A span below that, the outside curve and rail had been shorn away leaving the treads dangling precariously.
Klarm followed, then the four surviving soldiers and Flangers, Nish and Inouye, who carried a short sword as though it were a walking stick. She’d be no use in a battle. At the first coil of the stairs Nish looked down at Irisis, who had stopped on the bottom step. ‘Is something the matter?’
She shook her head but couldn’t clear away the after-images of the field. ‘I … think so. Everything’s so strange here; I can’t get my bearings. And …’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t help feeling that we’ve missed something.’
‘I feel the same,’ said Nish. He looked up. The others had passed the damaged part of the stair and were disappearing through the ceiling.
Above the ceiling the stair continued, more wobbly than before, eventually terminating just below a broken hole in the slate-clad roof. They scrambled up and through onto the roof. Not far away, the remains of an open-sided, glass-roofed passage led into a broad dome that stood some twenty spans above the roof on pillars of basalt. The dome, although tilted at a slight angle, was intact, but the roof surrounding it had been sliced and reassembled in many places.
‘Careful now,’ said Flydd as they headed for the passage and the entrance to the dome. ‘There could be guards inside.’
The wind howled around the dome, though not loudly enough to block out the cries of the injured in the rear yard. A bonfire blazed in the far corner and throngs of bewildered, bedraggled people stood around it, staring at the flames.
With a crash and a shudder, a section of Nennifer to their west collapsed. The mass of people surged away towards the far wall of the yard.
‘Poor devils,’ said Flydd. ‘Without food or water they can’t last long, and they know it.’
‘They’re brutes, all of them,’ said Irisis, recalling her previous treatment here.
‘Aye,’ said Klarm. ‘Corrupted by cruel masters, but human beings nonetheless.’
Seeing no guards, they pressed on, acutely aware that the amplimet could overcome the ward-mancers at any moment. At the entrance to the dome, Flydd and Klarm laid their bare hands on the door, sensing the magic that closed it. Flydd asked Klarm a question which Irisis didn’t catch. Klarm shook his head. Irisis crept closer. Flydd moved his hands across the door, taking one position after another. He looked down at Klarm, who gave another shake of the head.
Flydd swore, stepped back and bumped into Irisis. ‘Would you get out of the way?’ he snapped.
She gave him room. ‘Will it warn them if we break the magic?’ he said to the dwarf.
‘Very probably,’ said Klarm.
They put their heads together, low down, and Irisis couldn’t see what they were doing, but shortly the door came open. No klaxon went off, though that didn’t mean there was no alarm. Flydd beckoned and they went through. ‘I’ll seal it to any but us,’ he said. ‘It won’t keep scrutators or mancers out but the guards won’t be able to get through.’
He did so, looking haggard as he turned from the door. Aftersickness was wearing him down and there was so far to go, the worst yet to be faced.