A shadow passed by the end window – Gilhaelith again. She hoped he would not come in. He knocked at the door. She did not answer but after an interval he entered. He was now dressed in long yellow robes which concealed his ungainly figure. She imagined he had come to interrogate her.
'You are better, I hope?' he said in her tongue, which he spoke with a rather flat accent, as if he had learned the language from a book.
'Yes, thank you. Apart from my broken back!'
'I'm sorry,' he said formally. He looked down the line of her body under the covers.
'It's done.' She wished he would go away. The conversation was pointless.
'Is there anything you would like?'
'I'd like to go out in the sun.' It came out without her thinking about it.
'I will arrange it at once.'
He went to the door. Shortly two servants wheeled in a small bed and slid her onto it. Gilhaelith pushed her out of the door, around the corner and along a suspended, undulating stone walkway.
Tiaan caught her breath at the view, not to mention the drop into the lake. 'How can you live at the top of a volcano?'
'Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain,' said Gilhaelith, misinterpreting the question. 'Welcome to Nyriandiol. My house.'
She counted the windows as they went by. Eighty-one. And there were another seven levels below this one. 'House' was not the word for it. It was almost the size of the manufactory.
Gilhaelith parked the bed on a small paved area at the rear of the building. Some distance away was a stone skeet house. She could hear their harsh cries. To her right the arid inner slope of the crater swept down, not quite barren of life, but nearly. Steam wisped up from vents, discoloured yellow or brown. Workers, the size of ants, could be seen toiling at them. Below, occupying perhaps a third of the floor of the larger crater, the lake was as brilliantly blue as lapis lazuli. Nearby a large fat-tailed lizard scratched among the rubble. The crater aroused a deep-seated fascination; she had never seen anything like it.
'What's that lizard doing?' she wondered.
'Looking for a suitable place to lay its eggs.'
'Isn't this a dangerous location to do that?'
'Indeed, and for us too, though I have dwelt here more than a century.'
She opened her mouth and closed it again. In her part of the world the normal lifespan (for those not sent to the war) was less than sixty years, though a few people lived longer. Gilhaelith clearly was not a normal old human like her. And yet he did not appear to be Aachim, as Malien was.
The sun slanted in on her face. It felt wonderful to be warm. 'Could I look over the other side?'
He wheeled her across so she could see down the outer slope to the forest. It was luxuriantly different from the impoverished forests around her manufactory.
'That's where I… crashed?' she asked.
'Back the other way.' He pointed. 'The construct is damaged, but I think it can be repaired.'
She did not have the strength for question and answer, nor for thinking about what had caused the crash. For some reason she couldn't explain, she did not want him to know about the capricious amplimet. 'It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now…'
The sun was beating down on her head. She felt ill and Gilhaelith's looming presence discomforted her.
'I'd like to go back to my room, please.'
The servants wheeled her away, but an hour later she was still sweating. Gilhaelith had not questioned her. He must want something from her, otherwise he would not have treated her so well. What was it? Her helplessness was terrifying. Tiaan's second day began the same way as the first, with embarrassing toilet operations by Alie, a pale fleshy woman with a figure like a bale of wool and a square face utterly devoid of expression. Breakfast was spooned into her as if she was a baby. Alie talked the entire time she was in the room, but her words were empty. It was so tiresome that Tiaan closed her eyes and turned away.
'Bitch thinks she's better than us,' Alie said to the healer on the way out.
'And she can't even wipe her arse,' Gurteys agreed. 'What is the master thinking?'
Tiaan bit her lip. Why did they resent her so? She hadn't said a thing to them.
Gurteys plied her healer's art with all the indifference of the true professional, and so roughly that it hurt. In the afternoon she reappeared with a contraption made of wood and leather. Rolling Tiaan onto her side, she propped her in place with cushions and pulled her gown down to the waist.
'What are you doing?' Tiaan asked.
Gurteys fitted the rows of straps around Tiaan's chest, belly and hips and pulled them tight until they pinched the skin. She adjusted the position of the wooden spars. 'The brace will ensure the bones set in place.'
The brace was uncomfortable lying down. Tiaan could not imagine what it would be like sitting up. 'How long will I have to wear it?'
'How would I know?'
'Well, you're supposed to be the healer.'
'A month. Two? Until your back is healed.' A bell rang and Gurteys hurried out, leaving Tiaan's garments around her waist.
Gilhaelith thrust the door open. He had been in several times today, but this time, realising that she was half-undressed, he spun on one foot and dashed from the room, shouting orders. Gurteys reappeared, roughly jerking Tiaan's gown over her shoulders. 'You're more trouble than you're worth!' she said between clenched teeth.
'I didn't say a thing,' cried Tiaan, but the healer had gone. Why had Gilhaelith reacted that way?
N INETEEN
The balloon, carrying no more weight than Nish and the brazier, drifted high and fast. The streaming winds carried it across the Filallor Range, which ran south from the western end of the Great Mountains, separating frigid Mirrilladell from the more equable western lands. The forests of central Lauralin passed beneath unseen. Still out of it, Nish drifted north of Booreah Ngurle in the dark, slowly descending. The brazier had gone out hours ago and the air in the balloon was cooling rapidly. The craft skimmed the top of a solitary tree, floating over scrub towards a broad, sluggish river.
As the sun rose, the balloon just cleared a palisade around a vast encampment crowded with the meanest of dwellings, a refugee camp for some of the millions who had fled the fall of the great and wealthy island of Meldorin. From the top of the hill the Sea of Thurkad could barely be seen. It had rained in the night and the bare earth was an ocean of mud. Nish drifted between two decrepit dwellings before his dangling boots struck the earth and the balloon lay on its side, the last air sighing out of it. Its long voyage had ended.
Nish, roused by his impact with the mud, groaned. Though he was half-frozen, his injuries throbbed. Within a minute he was surrounded by people, all dirty, hungry and staring. Paying him no heed, they took the balloon and brazier apart with ruthless efficiency. In ten minutes every scrap had disappeared, even the scorched rope ladder he had tied himself to. They went through his pockets, removing everything but the lint. The coat vanished from his back but they left him the rest of his clothes. Then the crowd evaporated.
He sat up, still dazed. He had no idea where he was, though it was not cold enough to be Mirrilladell. The place stank of sour water and human waste.
Someone shouted. Drums rattled. He was about to call for help when a small figure came flying out from behind the nearest hut.
'Quick!' hissed a young voice. It was a boy of eleven or twelve, a skinny lad. He used the common tongue of the west, in which Nish had become fluent during his days as a merchant's scribe. 'Guards coming.'
'That's just as well,' said Nish. 'I've been robbed and I -'
'Come on!' The boy hauled him by the hand. 'If they find you, they'll beat you senseless.'
'But I don't come from here,' Nish began. Prudence overcame outrage. He staggered after the boy, around the corner, down between the rows and into a sodden space underneath one of the huts. It was barely high enough to crawl through. When he was well inside, the boy shoved a rotting piece of timber against the entry.