Chimaera (42 page)

Fusshte dropped the useless crossbow as if it had grown too hot to hold. His black-rimmed mouth gaped open and a mewling cry of terror issued forth. He threw himself backwards into the turret, which shook free and began to slide down the column until it crashed into the dais.

Flydd slipped the dull crystal back into its box and softly closed the lid. He headed for the turret, staggering in his weariness. Nish and Irisis followed warily, but when they peered in Fusshte and Halie were gone.

Flydd closed his eyes and pounded the sides of the turret in his anguish.

‘I expected more of Fusshte,’ said Nish, ‘after the way he faced down Ghorr at Fiz Gorgo.’

‘The chief scrutatorship was within his sights, back then,’ said Irisis. ‘But Flydd’s towering attack on the amplimet has crushed Fusshte’s hopes forever. He can’t hope to match the strength Flydd has just displayed, and the ward-mancers have repudiated him. If Fusshte can’t command their loyalty, all he can do is run.’

Shortly, Nish picked out his spidery shadow, high on a rope ladder that ran up the other side of the column. Fusshte was too high to attack and soon disappeared into the darkness. Halie, the other surviving scrutator, was close behind him.

‘They can’t get far,’ said Nish, leaning back against Irisis. ‘It’s over.’

‘That was the bravest, most reckless deed I ever saw,’ Irisis said to Flydd. ‘You could have –’

‘And I so very nearly did,’ said Flydd. ‘I was sure it would be the end of me.’

‘And yet you did not falter.’

‘I told myself I had to keep going, that there was no other option. And to my shame, there was a touch of pride in it as well. I had to prove that I was still a man.’

‘A
touch
of pride isn’t such a bad thing,’ said Irisis.

‘It was so near. And yet, it’s still not over.’ He looked up but Fusshte and Halie had disappeared.

Flydd climbed onto the top of the turret, turned to survey the ward-mancers and extended his hands towards them, then to the others in the chamber.

‘The two surviving scrutators have fled,’ he said so softly that Nish had to strain to hear, ‘abandoning Nennifer to the fate they brought upon it. Their Council is disbanded. Scrutator Klarm and I will take their place until a new regime can be installed. Does anyone challenge our edict?’

None of the ward-mancers spoke, though they bowed their collective heads. ‘Then it is done,’ said Flydd. ‘Go, inform the guards that a new council is in charge, and that Scrutators Fusshte and Halie must be held for trial and execution. Tell everyone to assemble in the air-dreadnought yard, well away from the walls, for the remains of Nennifer will soon collapse. Everyone must collect what food and clothing they can gather on the way.’ He turned to Nish, Irisis, Flangers and Klarm.

‘It’s not over yet. We must make sure that the amplimet has been driven back to the lowest stage of wakening, where it was when Tiaan found it. I’ve done the first part of the job, but it’s mancer’s work and none of you need be bothered about it.’

‘Let’s go home,’ said Irisis.

One of the seats rattled up above, and Nish looked up to see Muss’s slender figure disappear from the rail of the dome chamber.

‘First we have a mite of unfinished business to attend to,’ said Flydd. ‘After him, and be quick about it.’

‘What’s going on?’ said Klarm.

‘That’s what I’d like to know. All I know is that Eiryn Muss has been waiting for this moment for a very long time.’

‘And probably engineered it,’ said Nish.

Flydd gave him a keen glance. ‘He probably did.’

‘He’s a chimaera,’ said Irisis.

Flydd started. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Unwittingly, you’ve put your finger on the very key to his nature, though you don’t realise it. He is a chimaera and I don’t know how to deal with him.’

T
iaan was secured and one of the soldiers carried her out to where Yggur, Malien and Evee had been left. Everyone else went after Eiryn Muss at the best pace they could muster. It wasn’t impressive – they were all beyond exhaustion – but the cold spurred them on. In exposed areas it was crippling, for the Art sustaining Nennifer had completely failed now. All the globes had gone out and what remained of the structure was crumbling visibly in the moonlight. Not a minute went by but that another segment fell into ruin.

‘Where would Muss go?’ said Flydd, the only one of them who wasn’t staggering. His hair was white with dust, his lips like bloodless worms, his scarred and puckered skin glassy tight. He had bloodstains small and large all over him and his clothes were in shreds, but his eyes were gleaming beacons. The impossible victory had been achieved and he’d exacted a partial revenge for his torments. The amplimet’s box hung from his hip in a net made from a section of platinum mesh, just to be sure, and both were secured to his waist with a fine steel chain.

Klarm shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

Something occurred to Nish. ‘Xervish, at Gumby Marth you said –’

‘When I want you to blab about my affairs I’ll let you know,’ Flydd said coldly.

‘Aren’t you being a bit hard on the lad, Xervish, after all he’s done?’ said Klarm, lurching on the leg that had previously been in calipers.

‘Humph!’ Flydd snorted, casting Nish a piercing glance from beneath his single brown and hairy eyebrow. The mad grin of triumph came back. ‘If our subordinates are to earn our trust, they must learn when to keep their mouths shut. Which way here?’

Klarm held up an oil-fed lantern he’d found in the upper chamber and passed it back and forth over the dusty rubble. Nish couldn’t make out anything from its flickering yellow glow.

‘This way,’ said the dwarf, gesturing with the lantern towards a crumbling opening on their left.

They followed him in silence, too worn and weary to speak. Nish’s broken arm hadn’t been set yet, and indeed, he wasn’t sure anyone but Irisis realised that it was broken. Irisis was stumbling along with her eyes almost closed. There had been no time to eat, drink or rest before the pursuit had begun. Nish was in such pain that he couldn’t think, and every step up onto the rubble, or down off it, sent another spasm up his arm. The pain ran all the way to the base of his skull, where it lodged as a brilliant, white-hot glow.

‘I’ve got a feeling he’s heading for the chief scrutator’s strongroom,’ Klarm went on after they’d scrambled through another three half-collapsed building segments, following Muss’s trail through the dust. ‘Which is off his private mancing chambers – at least, it used to be.’

‘How can you tell
where
he’s going?’ Flydd said wearily. The grin was fading.

‘Just a hunch.’

‘I’ve never been to the strongroom. Have you?’

‘Once,’ said Klarm. ‘Though only to the outer door, and the inner was sealed with potent scrutator magic all the time I was there.
Chief
scrutator magic, at that – I could sense it from the other side of the room. It pleased Ghorr for me to know about it, I think. He liked to emphasise his superiority in little ways as well as big.’

‘It’s surprising that you got on at all,’ said Flydd, ‘considering …’

‘Considering that he despised anyone with physical imperfections,’ chuckled Klarm. ‘Ghorr sneered at everyone less imposing than himself, and loathed those who had a greater physical presence.’

‘An insecure man, despite all his natural gifts. Unlike yourself.’

‘I came to terms with what I am long ago. It’s the inner man that counts, not the fragile shell that carries it around.’

Flydd paused a moment, as if pondering that. ‘You say the strongroom was locked with chief scrutator magic,’ Flydd ruminated, ‘the secret of which is passed on to the new chief scrutator only when the old one is on his deathbed, or in some equally dire extreme. Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Klarm?’

‘I’m not sure I am,’ said Klarm.

‘I am,’ interjected Irisis, suddenly perking up. Her wits were many steps ahead of Nish’s. ‘None of the scrutators were with Ghorr when he died, so the secret can’t have been passed on. Fusshte wouldn’t have been able to discover what lay inside the chief scrutator’s strongroom.’

‘That would have driven him into a fury,’ Flydd chuckled. ‘Being chief but not having the keys to the treasure chest. But now the Art sustaining Nennifer has failed, perhaps the scrutator magic has failed as well. Yes – that’s why Muss is heading for the strongroom. He’s after something inside. Is this what he was trying to engineer all along?’

‘I presume so,’ said Klarm.

‘Does that mean we can expect a visit from Fusshte as well?’ said Nish, plodding dully along. He couldn’t contemplate yet another struggle. He was utterly, utterly burned out. How was it that Flydd could drive himself on?

‘After Flydd’s awesome display to overpower the amplimet,’ said Klarm, ‘Fusshte will be running as fast as he can.’

‘That will be the strongroom ahead,’ Klarm said a while later, heaving himself up a pile of stone blocks towards an imposing steel door, once concealed by maroon velvet drapes which now hung from the left side, all tattered and covered in dust. The door was ajar. ‘Quiet now. It looks like he’s already within.’

They eased up behind him: Flydd followed by Flangers, Irisis and Nish, nursing his arm. Flydd put his head around the door, then beckoned.

Nish slipped through the gap in his turn. He was standing in a gloomy hall made of some dark stone that soaked up the glimmers of moonlight coming through the cracked roof. After much eye-straining he discerned a square door at the far end. It seemed to be moving – no, it was the hall that appeared to stretch and contract before his eyes. He couldn’t look at it.

It’s an illusion, Nish told himself, a deception meant to keep out those who don’t belong here. So the scrutator magic hasn’t completely faded. He moved forwards a step and ran into Irisis’s back. He hadn’t even seen her.

‘What’s going on?’ he whispered.

She put a hand on his arm – the good one, fortunately – and the illusion faded somewhat. ‘Eiryn Muss is up at the far door,’ she whispered right into his ear. ‘He’s trying to get in.’

As Nish’s eyes adjusted he made out the faintest shadow there, though it didn’t have Muss’s outline. It was taller and broader, and with a hint of wings, like a very small lyrinx. Why that shape?

‘Ah!’ said Flydd as gently as a sigh. ‘He’s done it. He’s through.’

The shadow disappeared, though Nish did not see it move. Flydd held up his hand. ‘Give him a moment. We don’t want to scare him off.’

There came a distant rumble – another collapse – and the floor heaved subtly beneath them. Flydd waited until it had stopped, then moved on. A yellow glow appeared in the strongroom and brightened sufficiently to light up the hall and dispel the illusion.

They reached the inner door, which was made of black steel a hand-span thick, bonded to the solid stone wall on steel hinges thicker than Nish’s upper arm. Both walls and door were scorched as if great heat had been applied in an attempt to force the lock.

‘Looks like Fusshte’s work,’ said Flydd. ‘How it must have vexed him not to gain access to Ghorr’s treasures.’

Approaching the door, Nish was assailed by a powerful feeling of wrongness, then every muscle in his body went rigid. He couldn’t even move his tongue; he was like a living statue. Flydd turned, wove his hand in a circle above him, and then above Irisis and Flangers, and they could move again. Klarm had not been immobilised, though he walked as if his joints had rusted up. Flydd did the same for him.

‘This is a forbidden place,’ said Klarm in a croaky whisper. ‘No man or woman, bar the chief scrutator, has passed this door in the hundred years since it was built. And though the old Council has fallen, its edict freezes my very marrow now that I pass it.’

‘Ah, but the Council
has
fallen,’ said Flydd, equally quietly. ‘No edict of theirs has power any more. We may do whatever we have the strength to bear.’ He eased through the door, though not without a wrenching shudder that gave the lie to his words.

Nish passed through without further effect. The strongroom proved larger than he had expected, and was still intact. It was illuminated by the soft yellow glow of an oil lantern. Nish could smell the sulphurous tang of the quick-match Muss had struck to light it. There was enough light to reveal gorgeously patterned marble- and travertine-clad walls that could have graced an emperor’s palace.

The strongroom formed a perfect cube some seven or eight spans on a side, though it proved empty apart from a small square table carved from green serpentine, polished to bring out the oily sheen of the rock, a throne-like chair cut from a single emerald, and a large glass sphere, mirrored on the outside, suspended from a frame like a globe of the world.

Eiryn Muss stood with his back to them in the middle of the room, the eidoscope up to his right eye, scanning back and forth across the far side of the room. He flipped one lens out, another in, rotated the ones on either end and scanned that part of the room again.

‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Nish.

Flydd reached back and crushed his good wrist. Nish fell silent, though Muss gave no sign of having heard. He made a minor adjustment to one lens and scanned a third time.