“What is it?” said Tali.
He tried to speak but no words came out. Though he was much bigger than her, Tali thrust him aside and looked up.
Gauntlings! Dozens of them, circling around the tip of the spike that topped Tirnan Twil. Her heart stopped for a moment, then restarted with a lurch. But what could gauntlings do, up there?
“They can’t get in, can they?”
His mouth worked; a globule of red saliva oozed onto his lower lip. He’d bitten his tongue in terror. Useless man! She ran past him to the ladder hole and yelled down.
“Holm! Gauntlings, dozens of them, high above!” She shouted the same message up to Rezire.
Holm came clattering up, the curator silently down. He thrust past her into the service level and across to the window. When he turned to them, his face was the colour of white marble. “It’s an attack!”
“Surely gauntlings can’t hurt this place?” said Tali.
“There is a way,” said Rezire. “A flaw in the design. Though it was not a flaw when Tirnan Twil was built — ”
“What flaw?” snapped Holm.
“The early curators discussed the issue for many decades.”
Tali wanted to shake him. “What issue?”
“Whether an intelligent flying creature could ever be created. The best advice in Hightspall said no.”
“So you did nothing.”
“Are you without personal failings,” said Rezire coldly, “that you judge others so readily, on so little evidence?”
“The question, however badly put,” said Holm, “is an urgent one, Rezire.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tali. “But if the gauntlings have ill intentions — ”
“This is a place of guardianship and contemplation,” said Rezire. “We’re used to thinking before we speak. Not a virtue held in high esteem in the outside world, I fear.” His cold stare included Tali in that category.
“What was done?” she said.
“At crippling expense, Guardians were stationed at the ends of the arches, and up top, but no threat ever eventuated. The Two Hundred and Fifty Years War ended in our victory, and the danger passed. The Herovians who were our chief supporters fell on mean times. Support for Tirnan Twil dwindled, and we could no longer afford the Guardians. We kept watch ourselves, though Tirnan Twil has never been threatened…”
“And now it is,” said Tali. “What’s the flaw in the defences?”
“Water.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We need water to drink, and cook with, and bathe in,” said Rezire, “but we can’t carry it up a thousand feet from the river.”
“How do you get it?
“Fans inside the top of the tower draw the misty gorge air in through slits in the stone. An array of condensers extract water from the air, and it’s piped down to tanks on each level of the spike.”
“Why is that a flaw?”
“An attack on the slits at the top of the tower could make its way all the way down the tower.”
“What kind of an attack?” said Tali.
“Remember how the gauntling attacked my boat after Lizue was killed?” said Holm.
Tali stared at him. “Fire?”
“Fire.”
CHAPTER 46
“Can’t you block the slits?” said Tali.
“We could, if we had people stationed up there,” said Rezire. “But it takes an hour to do so…”
“And the gauntlings can attack in minutes,” said Holm, “if that’s their intention.”
“If you turn off the taps,” said Tali, “it’ll stop fire coming down the pipes.”
“However if the top level of Tirnan Twil should be set alight,” said Rezire, “burning books and embers will cascade down through the ladder holes. There’s no way to seal them.”
“Then you’ve got to stop the gauntlings.”
“I don’t know how.”
Tali tore at her hair. Could Rezire be that obtuse? But then, he was a man of learning. Battle and bloodshed wasn’t real life to him, as they had become to her. War was something he read about in dusty old books. She looked to Holm to take the lead but he waved a hand as if to say, continue.
“You have defensive magery, don’t you?” said Tali.
“We used to, devices of great power brought from ancestral Thanneron, but they failed long ago.”
“They failed?”
“The land fights back. Most of the old magery has failed. Everything fails in the end, even steel and stone…”
Rezire sounded resigned, accepting, and she could not comprehend it.
“Not Tirnan Twil!” said Tali. “Send men up to the tower top, armed with bows and spears.”
“What would they do?”
“Attack the gauntlings. Drive them away from the air slits. Hurry!”
Rezire went to the ladder hole and shouted orders. Tali looked out the window at the circling gauntlings.
“Are they carrying riders?” said Holm.
“No.”
“So what are they doing here?”
“They could be just spying for Lyf.”
“Then why so many of them? One would be enough to shadow us here.”
“I’ve ordered my most reliable people up to the defences,” Rezire said dolefully, “but I fear it will do little good. Those attributes that make a good fighter are of little value in our work.”
“Then you’d better tell your people that they don’t have much time to escape — just in case it is an attack.”
“Tirnan Twil is our home, our hope, our life, our future.”
“If the gauntlings attack the air slits, some of your people may die.”
“Everyone dies, Lady Tali.”
“Not before their time.”
“If Tirnan Twil’s time has come, so has ours.”
He trudged off, bent-shouldered and flat-footed.
“You’ve been very quiet,” she said to Holm, who was looking up through the window.
“I’m wondering why the gauntlings are circling the tower. If they knew you were coming here — and presumably they’ve been spying on us from on high — why didn’t they try to capture you on the way?”
“And carry me to Lyf?” said Tali. “I don’t know.”
“Wait a minute,” said Holm, staring at her. “I don’t think they’re under Lyf’s command at all.”
“Why not?”
“He wouldn’t order them to attack this place with you inside. That would risk losing the master pearl.”
“Then who is commanding them?”
“No one,” he said grimly.
“I don’t understand.”
“We talked about gauntlings after Lizue was killed, if you recall. They’re troublesome, rebellious creatures, and Lyf would never send them out on attack without a rider to command them.”
“Well, what do you think is going on?”
Holm took another look. “I think they’ve turned renegade. I think they’re out for revenge because you killed Lizue and gravely injured her gauntling. They’re not attacking Tirnan Twil for itself — they’re trying to kill you.”
“Sounds a bit far fetched.”
“Gauntlings are vengeful, malicious and not entirely sane — madness is the bane of many kinds of shifters.”
Tali checked on the gauntlings. “They’re circling in towards the top of the spike. If they are planning to attack, it won’t be long. Should we go up and help?”
“By the time we haul ourselves up another eight hundred and fifty feet of ladders, any attack will be long over.”
“Then I’ve got to choose, right now — healing or destruction.”
Holm said nothing.
“If I use it for destruction, what will happen if I need to heal someone to save their life?”
“I suspect you won’t be able to heal anyone with magery, ever again.”
“I don’t know how to decide.”
“If you freeze because you’re afraid of the future, you’ll never make any choice. You’ve got to choose now.”
Tali had been through this before, before healing Holm’s skull. Her frantic gaze fell on the scars on his brow and nose. “If I do choose destructive magery, could it undo the healing magery I did on you?”
“Possibly.”
The gauntlings were using their little arms to heave barrels out of their panniers.
“They’re going to attack,” she said without turning around.