‘Get out of here,’ roared Flydd. ‘The torrent is drawing a gale of air through the Hornrace and it’ll smash us on the Trihorn.’
Malien had gone pale. She tried to turn the thapter but it shook violently, swung towards the black cliffs, rotated one hundred and eighty degrees but kept going, hurtling backwards down the Hornrace. Below, Tiaan could hear compartments flying open and gear crashing everywhere.
‘The gale is too strong,’ said Malien, fighting the controls.
‘Give the thapter more power.’
‘I’m doing the best I can. It’s hard to take it from the node I’ve been using.’
‘What about the big node?’
‘I can’t sense it.’
‘Tiaan?’
Her skin crawled at the thought of trying to draw power from such a field. It would turn them all inside out.
‘I dare not,’ she whispered. ‘It’s beyond me.’
‘What do I do?’ cried Malien. ‘Flydd?’
‘Turn around,’ said Flydd through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t fight the wind. You’ll have to go with it.’
In turning, an eddy flipped the thapter over and a downdraught hurled them at the torrent of black water. Tiaan bit down hard on a scream. Malien pulled up on the flight knob, the thapter struck the water and skipped like a stone, the blast from its base sending steam corkscrewing up all around them like miniature tornadoes.
‘Go up! It’s deadly this low,’ he yelled.
‘I know it!’ she snapped. ‘It … doesn’t want to go up, Flydd. The downdraught is too strong.’
‘Try to get out into the middle.’
‘I’m doing all I can,’ Malien said, fighting the controller.
The thapter edged toward the middle of the Hornrace. The wild air eddies were fewer there but the gale was stronger, hurling them from side to side. They skated across to the southern side on a rising column of air. Tiaan closed her eyes, sure they were going to strike the basalt wall.
Malien took advantage of another eddy to carry them away, and managed to lift the machine a little. The dark cliffs of the Hornrace were rushing past. Tiaan had never gone so fast. How could Malien control the little craft?
Somehow she did. ‘We’re nearly halfway down the Hornrace,’ said Flydd. ‘Better try and get out.’
‘I know,’ Malien said crossly.
‘Sorry.’ Flydd explained to Tiaan. ‘At the other end, three pinnacles stand up in the middle of the stream, breaking it into four torrents. Beyond the pinnacles, the race plunges over the mightiest precipice in the world.’
‘The Trihorn Falls,’ said Malien. ‘Misnamed now, for the tip of the third peak collapsed when the earth moved and the Rainbow Bridge fell.’ She eased the thapter upwards. The buffeting grew less for a moment, until a gust plunged them down again. ‘Not as easy as it seems.’
The wild dance continued for another few minutes then, suddenly ceased as, in the distance, a pair of fanged peaks and a stump, almost as tall, rose out of the water. The craft hurtled towards them.
‘Now!’ cried Flydd.
Malien jerked the controller hard. The thapter shot up and with a momentary shudder broke free of the streaming gale above the water into slightly calmer air. She kept going up, though the pinnacles seemed to rise out of the water just as quickly. The thapter was going like a rocket and she couldn’t slow it.
Tiaan held her breath. One minute it looked as though they were going to make it, the next that they would smash straight into the left-hand peak.
‘Up!’ Flydd roared.
‘I’m doing my best,’ said Malien, tight-lipped.
She climbed, curving toward the gap where the third peak had been. An air whirlpool threw the thapter back toward the left peak. The controller was shuddering as if it lacked the power to lift the weight. It felt as though the whole machine was going to come apart. Malien tried again and again but the thapter wouldn’t turn. She just couldn’t reach the gap.
‘We’ll have to try and go over the top.’
Tiaan reached into the box, took out the amplimet and held it against her heart. They shot toward the tip of the peak; they were going to smash into the rock. At the last second Malien coaxed a little extra from the mechanism, the airflow over the pinnacle bumped them up and they soared over and out toward the Dry Sea. The buffeting ceased: they were sailing in clear air.
Malien slowed the machine, curving around so they could take in the majesty of the Trihorn Falls in their wild plunge, a whole sea full of water, down and down, fifteen hundred spans to the floor of the sea. It was magnificent, glorious, unsurpassed in the Three Worlds.
But Tiaan’s eyes were drawn beyond it, back along the top of the Hornrace, to where four black pillars stuck up, two on either side of the chasm. They were all that remained of the Rainbow Bridge.
Around each pillar were immense stacks of cut stone, the foundations for some monstrous structure that was even now being built. One of the piles on the Lauralin side of the Hornrace was already half as high as the bridge pillars, and five times as wide.
‘What on earth is that?’ Tiaan whispered.
‘So that’s what Vithis has been up to all this time,’ said the scrutator. ‘But what’s he building?’
‘And why?’ Malien said grimly.
FORTY
‘Whatever Vithis is building,’ said Malien, ‘he’s doing it with the utmost urgency. What he’s done in a few months is extraordinary.’
Flydd took the amplimet from Tiaan’s fingers and put it away. As they climbed, enormous camps became visible. Roads had been carved across the drylands, ravines dammed and aqueducts were being constructed.
‘He has the best part of ten thousand constructs, even after the losses he suffered at Snizort,’ said Flydd. ‘He could do a mighty lot of carrying, hauling and lifting with all of them. And don’t forget he has well over a hundred thousand disciplined adults to do his bidding.’
‘As long as he can compel their loyalty,’ said Malien.
‘Would you go over the biggest structure, Malien? I’d like a closer look.’
‘Be careful,’ cried Tiaan. ‘I went over another camp once and Vithis did something to the field. I nearly crashed.’
‘I remember you telling me,’ said Malien. ‘They won’t find this craft so easy to deal with.’
Nonetheless, she kept well up, circling while Flydd peered over the side with a powerful spyglass. ‘I wonder what he’s doing?’ said Malien. ‘Can Vithis be trying to span the Hornrace itself? That would eclipse the Rainbow Bridge and every other structure in the Three Worlds, but I don’t see the point of it. It would be a monument to hubris, nothing more.’
‘Or a way of staking claim to their portion of Santhenar,’ said Flydd. ‘In a manner that no one could dispute.’
‘And perhaps,’ Malien pursed her lips, ‘they plan to tap the great node here for some purpose we know nothing about.’
‘Or one we’d rather not know about,’ said Tiaan.
The headache and the visions returned at twice their former force and she doubled over, holding her hands over her eyes. Then, as they passed above the largest structure, for a fraction of a second it was as if they’d flown through a vertical beam of light. Tiaan saw right through Malien, her bones just shadows, even through the wall of the thapter to the world outside. She blinked and the spectral image was gone. The whine of the thapter stopped, and just as suddenly rose to a scream before settling back to its familiar whine. Tiaan closed her eyes but could still see the images.
‘What was that?’ came Flydd’s voice from beside her. He did not seem to be overly concerned.
‘Something to do with the node, I suppose,’ Malien replied, no less casually.
‘Did you see the light?’ said Tiaan.
‘What light?’
‘A boiling column of it. I saw something similar the first time I flew over an Aachim camp, before I crashed on Booreah Ngurle. It wasn’t as big as this one though.’