Tetrarch

'We have to. The war depends on it.'

'Would you like to know something?'

'What?'

'I don't give a slussk about the war. I've had enough. If we are all to be eaten by the lyrinx, so be it. I don't see that they're any worse than you scrutators and the world you've created, with its breeding factories and Examinations, and its rules for every damned thing. This isn't life, it's misery and I just want it to end. I don't care any more, scrutator!'

He went away and she did not see him for another hour. 'We're not going to the manufactory,' he said. 'At least, not straight away.'

'You've seen some sense, then.'

'No, you've convinced me that I can't rely on you any more and I've got to find another way.'

He went out again. Irisis could not speak, for his words had carved right through her fit of self-pity. She'd let him down. It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her.

She felt her way through the cabin and out to the open deck, along the rope rails. The rotor was whirring gently. She went up to the stern and his hand – she recognised it by feel – caught her arm.

'If you keep going you'll be over the side,' he said gruffly, 'and what use will that be to me, eh?'

'I'm sorry.' She felt her way to his chest and pressed herself against him. His arms went around her. 'I'm just not as strong as you, Xervish.'

'I'm not as strong as you think.'

'How are we going to do this?'

'Well, I wasn't planning to land at the front gate and ask Jal-Nish to let me in. What ideas do you have?'

She pondered for a while. 'What about the old entrance, through the other mine?'

'I believe that's been blocked up.'

She turned her face into the breeze from the rotor. Yellow hair streamed out behind her. 'There are higher entrances, but all would be guarded, and we would still have to go down by the lifts.'

'The guards probably aren't as vigilant as the ones on the main adit.'

'And it would be easier to use some form of deception underground,' she supposed.

'I'll give the order.' He went up toward the pilot.

She did not feel any better. Maybe that was all the planning the scrutator required but Irisis liked everything organised to the tiniest detail, with a variety of contingency plans for when things went wrong. That was how she had survived so long.

The air-floater dropped the two of them on the top of the range, over the hill out of sight of the manufactory and the main adit, just before dawn. It was just the two of them, Irisis and Flydd. They dared take no others into the cramped tunnels.

They hid in an abandoned tunnel all day, and as darkness fell made their way down the hill toward the higher entrance, which was blocked off by a barred gate. The clankers had gone through the mountain that way, in their pursuit of Tiaan last autumn. They eluded the solitary guard and got inside without difficulty, through some magic of Flydd's that he did not explain. These tunnels had been worked out more than a century ago but a decline still led down to the lower mine. They reached the first level without incident. Now their troubles would start; the only way to the lower levels was via the rope lift, which would be guarded.

'You'd think they'd clean up this mess,' Flydd said, after Irisis had stumbled over a tattered length of lift rope, followed by a wooden barrow with a broken wheel. Inside it lay several ragged, greasy miner's aprons.

'Miners don't care about mess.'

'Stop!' he hissed. 'The lift is just around the corner.' He crept forward, then returned to her side. 'The guards are on alert.'

'Well, you're a mancer aren't you?'

'I can't knock them out, else Jal-Nish will soon know we're down there. Our work is going to take hours.'

'Can't you do illusions?'

'It's not a branch of the Art I've ever been much good at.'

'Great!' she said. 'Well, what about a diversion?'

'What did you have in mind?'

'The soldiers would be afraid of fire, down here.'

'So am I.'

'A small fire. Lots of smoke.'

'The miners will come rushing up. We won't be able to get down in the lift.'

'I don't think the mine's working at the moment,' she said. 'I can't hear anything.'

'All right. I know just the thing. Come this way.' He set fire to the greasy aprons with his lantern, then piled the rope into the barrow, holding up the strands until they caught.

'I'm worried this will seem suspicious,' said Irisis.

'Oily cloth can catch fire by itself.'

They approached the lift from another direction and waited. Oily smoke began to drift down the tunnel. The leading guard caught a whiff, screamed 'Fire!' and ran for the entrance. Two others followed.

'I think that's all of them,' said Flydd after an interval.

'Seems a bit too easy to me.'

'It probably is. Let's be as quick as we can.'

He wound them down to the ninth level. The crank sounded unusually noisy.

'Do you know the way to the crystal field?'

'I've never been there,' said Flydd. 'I was relying on you.'

'You blinded me, remember?'

'It's your eyes that have gone, not your brain. Just tell me the sequence of turns.'

That was harder than it sounded. Irisis was not used to working that way and when she tried to recall the path it vanished from her mind. She panicked and he had to calm her before they could continue. Precious minutes were lost.

She did not like it down here. Being blind in the tunnels was somehow worse than being lost in the dark. But they eventually found the shaft that the miners had sunk down to the massive crystal. The pumps were working sluggishly, powered by the diminished field. Thud-thud-THUD; THUD-thud-THUD.

'Look at that!' The scrutator whistled.

'Don't!' she said irritably. 'You've got to tell me things.'

'The crystal is gigantic – a perfect prism of quartz as tall as you are.'

'Doesn't necessarily mean it's any good,' she said peevishly. 'Most crystals are useless.'

'This one's different. Even I can tell that. Let's get to work. Find the field, quickly.'

With her pliance, Irisis saw it at once. 'It's weak.' It was fluttery and hard to monitor. She was trying to get a good image of it, which proved unexpectedly difficult, when she had the strange sense of being watched from afar. How could that be, through solid rock? She rested her head on the stone, struggling to work out what was going on.

'What's that?' she hissed, facing the other way.

'What?'

'I thought I heard something.'

'I didn't hear anything.'

She paced, trying to extract sense from what her ears were telling her. No, it hadn't been a sound, rather the absence of one. 'The pumps have stopped working.'

'Water's flooding into the bottom of the pit,' said Flydd. 'Check the field.'

She tried. 'There is no field now, Xervish.'

'There's got to be something, this close to the crystal, if it is actually the node.'

'There's not a trace.'

'It was there a minute ago.'

'Well, it's not there now -' Thud-thud-THUD. The pumps were working again. 'I don't understand. How can it be there one minute and gone the next? And… it felt as if someone was watching, but from a long way away.'

'Maybe the enemy is watching. Maybe they sensed you and turned up their node-drainer.'

'Is there any way to find it?'

'They'd hide it somewhere inconspicuous. It doesn't have to be close to the node, of course, though the closer the better.'

The pumps stopped and a whistling sound arose from low in the pit – threads of water forced through the joins of the metal sleeve. The sound became shrill, then ping, ping, ping.

'What's that?' she whispered.

'The bolts shearing,' said Flydd. 'The whole thing is failing.'

They tried to induce an aura with the reader but the node was now so dead that they could not draw the required power.

'Now what?' said Irisis.

'We can't do it when there's no field at all. We'll have to wait. If it comes back, even for a minute, we'll try again. Let's scout around and see what we can find in the meantime.'