Chimaera (68 page)

G
ilhaelith paced his cell, a watermelon-shaped chamber excavated out of the shale underneath Alcifer. He’d been back for months, he’d finally been able to test the geomantic globe, had made the last changes and thought it perfect. He’d begun the dangerous experiment of scrying out and dissociating the fragments of phantom crystal from his brain, but to his dismay it hadn’t worked. He soon discovered why. Gyrull had deceived him last autumn, fed him some false details about nodes. The globe was wrong in several small but important aspects that made it useless to his purpose, while not affecting hers. He was trying to uncover the errors when Gyrull and Anabyng seized him and cast him into this cell deep within Oellyll. The only way out was through a long, narrow and winding crawl passage, like the stalk of a watermelon, but the entrance was closed off with crisscrossing bars socketed deep into the rock.

And here he had remained, cut off from his Art and feeling his intellect fading every day. He’d pleaded with Gyrull to be allowed to fix the globe and repair himself but, afraid of what he might do with the globe, she would not even allow him to see it. Gilhaelith was in despair.

Occasionally one or other of the phantom fragments would grow hot, or sing a fractured note that seemed to echo back and forth inside his skull. It was a resonance induced by the globe, which meant that the lyrinx were using it to try and solve the problem of their flisnadr, or power patterner. Gilhaelith knew about that. He knew what the power patterner was intended to do, the problems they’d had making it and, he believed, the reason why they’d failed.

The knowledge did him no good, for Gyrull did not trust him. She made no response to his frequent pleas to the guards and eventually replaced them with two ever-watchful zygnadr sentinels: strange, twisted objects like a ball wrenched into a spiral. Their surfaces bore traces of a crab-like shell and segmented legs, reminiscent of the fossils found everywhere in Oellyll, including the walls of his prison.

The weeks went by but no one came near Gilhaelith except a human slave, the lowest of the low, who once a day slid food and water beneath the bottom bar, and took away the wooden pan containing his waste. The man did not speak Gilhaelith’s language, or indeed any of the many languages Gilhaelith knew.

Helpless, Gilhaelith paced his reeking, claustrophobic cell and brooded, and his resentment festered.

A half-grown female lyrinx came running into the main chamber of the eleventh level, where Ryll was working with the patterners. These were large pumpkin-shaped devices, chin-high to a lyrinx, whose gelatinous outsides also bore fossil-like traces, though in this case they were plant fossils: leaves, cones and bark. There were twelve patterners, and inside each was a human female with only her head exposed. Writhing vines or tubes, not unlike the fissured stems of pumpkins, ran from each of the patterners to a barrel-shaped object made of yellow glass, within which a tapered object roughly the size and shape of a bucket was suspended in aqua jelly. The object’s exterior was leathery and covered in nodules the size of peas. Waves of colour passed constantly across it, like a lyrinx’s skin-speech, though the colours never settled. The sides bore a number of irregularly spaced slits that a small human child might have inserted a hand into. It was the growing flisnadr. At least it had been growing – it had stopped a long time ago, well before maturity, and no one could work out why.

‘Master Ryll, Master Ryll?’ said the girl.

‘Yes?’ Ryll said sharply, for he’d made no progress in months and was keenly aware of his failure. Had the flisnadr been ready at the end of winter they would never have been forced into the recent battle in Borgistry. And when they
had
done battle, with the flisnadr they would have had a glorious and overwhelming victory, not this humiliating defeat that had sapped the morale of everyone in the great underground city.

‘Matriarch bids you come to the nylatl breeding chambers.’

‘I’ll be there directly,’ he said, rubbing his aching back. He’d been on his feet for two days, without sleep or any kind of progress to give him the least encouragement that he was on the right track.

The girl wrung her hands. Soft hands, he noticed, and she’d applied some kind of pearly lacquer to her nails, which had been trimmed down to uselessness. Her armour had hardly grown at all, though her chest had.

‘Er, Master Ryll,’ she said diffidently, ‘Matriarch said to bring you without delay.’

He sighed, exposing hundreds of teeth. ‘Very well, Oonyl. Take me there.’

She turned away, walking several steps ahead, and he followed. Ryll extended his finger claws, which he kept sharp enough to tear through leather. They were yellowed, not very clean, and there was old blood under one of them. He studied the girl from behind. She was smaller than most, and slighter, and her wings were just nubs that would never develop. But then, once the war was over, what need would there be for fearsome clawed and armoured creatures like him? Perhaps
she
was the future and his time was passing as well. Assuming there was a future. Suddenly, after years of successes, he had begun to doubt.

Up on the seventh level, he followed Oonyl into the breeding chamber and was immediately struck by a strong, festering odour. Ryll sniffed the air and detected the tang of blood and rotting flesh. The nylatl always smelled that way, but this time it was worse. Diseased. He spied the matriarch over next to the cages on the far side of the chamber, talking to Anabyng, Liett and several other important lyrinx.

‘Ryll!’ said Gyrull peremptorily. She beckoned.

Ryll hurried over and eased between the matriarch and Liett to see what the matter was. ‘Not another failure?’ he said. ‘The nylatl went so well in the battle.’

‘They’re dying!’ Liett said accusingly, as if it were his fault, though Ryll had nothing to do with nylatl these days.

Though Ryll loved Liett dearly, sometimes he wanted to throttle her. She could be brilliant, even inspiring at times, but so often spoiled it by saying the first thing that came into her head.

‘It’s a flesh-eating infection,’ said Gyrull, moving aside. ‘The keepers have tried all the potions they know but none have made any difference.’

Ryll studied the savage, spiny creature, which lay on its side, whining and licking at itself. The muscles of its back legs were a putrid eruption of rotting flesh. ‘Put it to death, then carry it outside and burn it,’ he said. ‘Are there any others?’

‘Hundreds,’ said Anabyng. ‘Near a third of the breeding stock, and more are looking sickly.’

‘They’ll all have to be put down,’ said Ryll. ‘It’s impossible to control an infection in such a confined space. Take the healthy ones up into Alcifer and keep them out in the open air, in their cages. They may live. Incinerate all the dead and infected ones, then seal this floor and burn brimstone inside until the whole chamber is filled with its fumes. Wash the ceiling, walls and floor afterwards. That may be enough to kill the infection.’

‘If we put down the sickly ones,’ said Gyrull, ‘we won’t have enough breeding stock for the next battle.’

‘If you don’t put them down,’ said Ryll, ‘we may lose the lot. The nylatl all spring from one ancestor, so an illness that kills one will probably kill all of them.’

Gyrull and Anabyng conferred for a moment, then the matriarch said, ‘Let it be done. Come, Ryll, Liett; we must talk.’

They left the others and went up to the matriarch’s chamber, a large round room, sparsely furnished with a broad low bed, a shelf containing a number of books, a table and stool, and several charts on the wall made from human leather. Gyrull closed the door. They sat on the mats and she took a leather flask from a peg on the wall, pouring a milky liquor into small bone cups.

They raised the cups as high as their extended arms could reach, then lowered them and downed the liquor in a single swallow. It carved an acrid track down Ryll’s throat and the rising fumes burned the passages of his nose like hot mustard.

‘What are we to do?’ said Gyrull. ‘This reversal in Borgistry – no, this
defeat
– has shaken me.’

‘The old humans are deadly cunning,’ said Anabyng. ‘I don’t like to say it, but they’re cleverer than we are.’

‘Never say cleverer,’ said the matriarch. ‘Yet they adapt their plans more quickly than we do. In battle we’re stuck in our old, tested ways, while they change their tactics constantly. For the first time since becoming matriarch, I don’t know what to do.’

‘Attack them with everything we have,’ growled Liett. ‘They’re weaker than they seem.’

‘And so are we, daughter. I dare not risk it. What if that’s been their plan all spring, to entice us into all-out war on their terms?’

‘They don’t have the numbers. We’ll overpower them through sheer force of arms.’

‘They don’t need the numbers when they can track us from above with their flying machines. And when they can talk to each other and coordinate their forces with these devilish farspeakers, far better than we can with our halting mindspeech. Two brilliant discoveries in less than a year, Anabyng. What will they come up with next?’

No one spoke.

‘And then there’s Vithis’s army down at the Hornrace,’ said Anabyng. ‘His massive beam spears across the heavens every night. I don’t know what kind of a weapon they’re developing there, but I know one thing. If they can perfect it, and mount it on their constructs, they could wipe out our entire army before we get within catapult distance. I was with foolhardy Tyss when he flew into the beam, to see what it was made of. It crisped him like a moth in a candle flame.’

‘And there’s no doubt they’d side with the old humans, if pressed,’ said Ryll.

‘None whatsoever. Have you mastered the principle of their farspeakers yet, Anabyng?’ the matriarch said.

‘I’ve cut apart the globe we captured, though I still don’t understand how it works, or how to reproduce it.’

‘And we’ve no further progress on the flisnadr,’ said Gyrull.

‘None worth talking about.’ Ryll lowered his head, ashamed of his failure, so costly to the hopes of his people. ‘Though I wonder …’

‘Yes?’ said Gyrull.

‘Gilhaelith understands the geomantic globe far better than we do. Can we use him to help ourselves?’

‘Gilhaelith is a lying, treacherous villain and I fear the consequences if he puts his hands to his device. To say nothing of what he may learn about the flisnadr itself.’

‘I know,’ said Ryll. ‘But on my own I can do no more. I think it’s worth the risk. If we guard him suitably. Say …’ He lowered his head at his temerity, but pressed on. ‘Say if he were guarded by Great Anabyng, surely he could do no harm.’

The matriarch and Anabyng exchanged glances.

‘It would be worth the risk, since we’ve come this far,’ said Anabyng. ‘Though …’

‘And as soon as the flisnadr is complete, grown to maturity and tested,’ Ryll said hastily, ‘we put Gilhaelith to death.’

‘Very well,’ said Gyrull. ‘Let it be done.’ She bowed her head, deep in thought. ‘How could it have come to this?’ she mused. ‘At the end of autumn we were close to victory. Four months and one battle later, and I’m thinking of defeat.’

‘Never think of defeat,’ cried Liett, flashing out her iridescent wings so they touched the ceiling. ‘We came to Santhenar for a great and noble purpose, remember?’

‘I have not lost sight of it, daughter,’ said the matriarch.

‘Everyone has lost sight of it,’ Liett said savagely. ‘Oellyll is rife with despair. But I say,
never
! We cannot go back to the void. We came here to grow and discover ourselves, and I cleave to that purpose. But if it should prove to be beyond us, if defeat should become inevitable, let us not go tamely to our deaths. Let us not suffer the ultimate indignity – to be caged and paraded like circus animals for the amusement of these human savages. We are warriors from a line of warriors, and in the ultimate extreme,
let us die like warriors
.’

‘It hasn’t come to that,’ said the matriarch uneasily. ‘I too cleave to our dream: a new future on this beautiful world. A future where we don’t have to fight to survive, where we can grow beyond our warrior past, as we’ve already begun to grow.’

‘As do I,’ said Liett, springing to her feet. ‘But should that prove impossible, should all hope fail, let’s make a last, desperate plan,’ she said in ringing tones. ‘Let the entire lyrinx nation, women, men and even children, come out of our cities and fight to the death, holding nothing back. Let there be nothing in between.’ She thrust her fist as high as it would reach. ‘Let us have victory,
or annihilation
!’

Ryll felt the blood rush to his face, and the matriarch and Anabyng were equally fired. He had never loved Liett more than at that moment, nor been more inspired.

‘Yes,’ said the matriarch, filling their bone cups. ‘That is the only way, should we be put to it.’ She stood up and they all raised their cups high.

‘Victory or annihilation.’

T
he bolder of the refugees began to reoccupy the borderlands of Almadin and Nihilnor, putting in what crops they could. They had no choice: Borgistry was rich but it could not feed them all.