Tetrarch

'We're running on the Gornies field and it's a long way away.'

'Of course,' said Flydd. 'The Minnien field has failed. That's why we're here.'

The air-floater set down as lightly as thistledown. The passengers descended the rope ladder. The scrutator gave instructions to the pilot, who nodded and raised her hand in salute. The air-floater lifted off and soon was just a shadow whirring into the night sky.

'This way,' said the scrutator. 'Let's get under cover before it's light. Then we'll go over the plan again.' Irisis had slept the whole trip and woke to find herself in darkness. Then she remembered. She was blind.

Someone, not Flydd, helped her down the ladder. Her feet landed on uneven ground that slipped underfoot. It felt and sounded like shale. The air smelt different: a faint salty tang mixed with the sharp odour of a crushed herb whose name she did not know. It was considerably warmer than the manufactory.

So, she was on the coast somewhere, or near it. Minnien was just a name to her and she could not have traced it on a map. There was not even a village here, only a place name so old that people had forgotten where it came from.

But there was a node at Minnien, and it had failed, causing the loss of fifty clankers and hundreds of lives. She closed her eyes and saw the bloody plain, the wrecked machines that had taken years to build, the broken bodies and the red-mouthed, feeding lyrinx. If the enemy had made this node fail, they could do it anywhere. Everywhere – in which case clankers would become useless and the war must be lost. It was up to her to find out why. The job had been daunting when she'd been sighted. Now it felt impossible.

They walked around the side of a steep slope, one foot higher than the other, for a long time. Irisis plodded along, putting her feet where she was told, holding onto someone's hand. No one spoke. She heard nothing but slate sliding underfoot, smelt only crushed herbs and the sea breeze.

Eventually they stopped and her guide sat her down on a sloping slab of rock. Her fingers traced its smooth surface and sharp edges. Food and drink was handed around. Irisis took what she was given, listening to the talk but alienated from the faces behind it.

'Hush!' said the scrutator. 'Irisis?'

'Yes?'

'What have you got to say?'

'Come here.'

He moved to her side, the slab settling under his weight. 'What's the matter?'

She clutched his arm, felt for his ear and whispered, 'I can't do it. I don't know where the node is. I don't even know what it is. What are we supposed to do first?'

'You could start by trying to visualise the field.'

'There is no field.'

He sighed. 'The node may not be completely dead. Take hold of your pliance and do what you would do if you were trying to see the field.'

She did so.

'Tell me what you see,' said the scrutator.

'I don't see anything at all.'

'Are you sure? Other artisans have been brought here since the field failed.'

'Then why don't you ask them?' she said.

'I have. That's part of the reason I brought you here.'

'Oh?'

'You are better at visualising the field than most artisans.'

'Except Tiaan!' she snapped.

'Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,' he snapped back. 'Yes, except Tiaan, if you must. Tiaan is quite exceptional. But then, her heritage…'

She wondered about that as she tried again. There had always been something strange about Tiaan. Putting the distraction out of mind, she focussed on where the field should be. This time she did pick something up, the very faintest wisp rising from not far away.

Emptying her mind, Irisis allowed the wisp to flow by. Another followed it, as tenuous as mist, though with the slightest blue tinge. She traced it down. It seemed to be coming from somewhere deep underground, though it was impossible to determine where – fields were difficult to associate precisely with the structures that generated them, and anyway, she could not see the peaks.

Giving up on that path, Irisis withdrew, visualising the wisps from further away. That was better; they now made a drifting, smeared-out trail and as she shifted viewpoint again she saw another trail of wisps a long way to the left, and a third to the right.

Pulling back as far as she could go, Irisis realised that they were rising in a kind of squashed figure-eight formation, apparently offset from the twin-peaked hill they were sitting on, as if mimicking not the hill itself but some subterranean structure.

'I think the node is regenerating the field!' she exclaimed.

'What?' said Flydd.

She explained exactly what she had seen.

'An interesting idea. Nunar herself speculated about such a possibility. Maybe that's why you can see it now, when previously a hundred mancers and artisans could not. It may have started to regenerate recently.'

'Or maybe I'm cleverer than they are,' she said, nettled.

He snorted.

'So what do we do now?'

'Investigate the bigger problem. Find out why it failed in the first place.'

'How do we do that?'

'Well, you're the artisan.'

'And you're the mancer!' she said irritably 'Nodes are the home of forces, and forces are mancers' work, aren't they? Artisans aren't clever enough to work with forces. Only the weak field for us.'

'There's no need to be sarcastic. We've all got to work together. You're pulling in the other direction, Irisis.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, and was. 'I'm a moody sod. I've had rather a difficult few days.'

'This is mancers' work for the most part, but I still value your thoughts. How would you approach the problem?'

'I've no idea… Tiaan once made an aura reader, to find out what had happened to failed hedrons. I might be able to make something to do that, though…'

'A node is a far more difficult proposition than a hedron.'

'And more dangerous. Oon-Mie, Zoyl, listen carefully.' Collecting her thoughts, Irisis began to describe what they had to make. 'Hist!' said the man on watch. 'Something's coming!'

'What is it?' Flydd said in a low voice.

'I think… I think it's a lyrinx.'

'What's it doing?'

'It's well down and across, walking along a ledge.'

'What would a lyrinx be doing here?' Irisis asked.

'Who knows what they do?' said the scrutator. 'Maybe it's a lookout.'

'It's not a good place for a lookout. Over on the next hill would be better.'

'Maybe it has a nest here?' came Oon-Mie's voice. 'Or it sneaks across to mate…'

'The lyrinx are not animals,' Flydd said coldly. 'They're as intelligent as we are. Now be quiet. Keep your weapons ready.'

'It's disappeared,' said the sentry.

'Keep still,' Flydd advised. 'We'll wait and see.'

No one said anything for a long while; then Irisis heard whispering. 'Will someone tell me what's going on?' she said waspishly.

'Nothing's happened,' said Flydd. 'Be patient.'

Finally the lookout spoke. 'I can see it again. It's heading back the way it came.'

They watched it move down the long slope, to Irisis's frustration, before the scrutator took her hand, saying, 'I think we can take a look now.'

A difficult climb for a blind woman, on a steep path littered with slipping plates of slate. 'It was just around here,' said the lookout.

They cast about for ages. 'Tracks!' said one of the soldiers.

'The footmarks seem to have been made by someone stepping in the same places all the time,' said Flydd. 'Someone with a lyrinx stride. It's not the first time it's been here.'

After hours of searching they located a ledge under which the lyrinx had crouched when it had disappeared from their sight; but apart from a few curled-up scraps that looked like leathery mushroom, they found nothing.

'Maybe it just wanted a place in the shade to eat its lunch,' said the sentry.

'I thought they et people,' the soldier muttered.

'They eat anything they can find, just like us,' said the scrutator. 'I don't believe in coincidences. It was here for a reason, and it's connected with the node failing.'