Chimaera (95 page)

She glanced at Tiaan, despite herself half hoping to see it reflected there. It wasn’t. Whatever Tiaan was feeling at that moment – horror at the extent of his injuries, compassion, guilt perhaps – it wasn’t the naked adoration shining from Minis. She may have loved him once but it was gone forever.

Minis strained forward on his crutches as if he could compel her to love him in return, but as it became clear that she did not, would not,
could not
, the seams of his face deepened, his shoulders dropped and he sagged onto his crutches with a groan of despair.

Vithis had also turned. He looked from one to the other and his face hardened. ‘What did you expect?’ he said harshly. ‘Come, Foster-son. I’m all you have left.’

Irisis couldn’t watch any more. ‘Let’s go,’ she whispered to Nish. ‘This is none of our business.’

She led him around the other side of the thapter and they climbed in and settled companionably on the lower floor, in a shaded corner. Irisis linked her arm through his again. ‘Now tell me everything. Don’t leave out the tiniest detail.’

‘T
ake the controller,’ Malien said, ushering Tiaan toward the thapter.

‘I’m not sure I can.’ Tiaan’s knees were shaking.

‘I think it’s best. It’ll give you something to do.’

‘I thought you wanted me to talk to Minis?’

‘You can’t do that in a crowded thapter. Time enough after the dead have been dealt with.’

Vithis climbed in, followed by ten Aachim – the other clan leaders and Matah Urien – there to set down the fate of First Clan and see the dead laid to rest. Minis came last, and when no one moved to help him up the ladder, Tiaan went to do so.

‘Don’t take away the little self-respect he has left!’ said Vithis.

She returned to the controller and fastened her straps. Minis struggled in and she could feel his feverish eyes on her. It was a relief when he went below with the others. Malien had gone down too.

‘Lift off!’ rasped Vithis.

She did so, as jerkily as a novice. He stood beside her, shuddering with such suppressed emotions that Tiaan began to think he would strike her down and seize the controller for himself.

They travelled in silence, for Tiaan could think of nothing to say to him, and he, it appeared, did not trust himself to speak.

An hour into the flight, Nish came up the ladder and Tiaan had never been more glad to see him. The uncomfortable silence stretched out. Shortly they saw ahead the solitary tower, like red balls on a skewer, which the Aachim had constructed on the pinnacle in the Dry Sea.

‘Nithmak Tower,’ said Vithis. ‘Another monument to my folly. I built it to bring First Clan home from the void. If only I had looked closer to home. All that time I wasted here, striving to beam my beacon out across the limitless void, and my people were crying out for aid just days away. Why was I so fixed on the void? Why did I not think of the Dry Sea? How could I have been so blind?’

‘Is Nithmak a portal?’ asked Nish.

‘Not of itself, but one can readily be made there at need,’ said Vithis.

‘I wish I’d never made the gate at Tirthrax,’ said Tiaan. ‘I wish I’d never seen the amplimet, nor heard Minis’s call. Nor listened to him.’

‘So do I wish it,’ said Vithis. ‘I would shed every drop of my heart’s blood to make it so. If First Clan had to disappear, why could we not have died together on our own world, with
dignity
?’

‘I thought I was doing the right thing,’ said Tiaan. ‘Why didn’t I refuse to put the port-all together?’

‘Nithmak is a master zyxibule,’ said Vithis. ‘Nothing was done in haste this time. It was designed so carefully that a child could use it, built by masters, and checked by my own hands. It’s perfect.’

She studied the structure as they went by. ‘And you designed it to reach
anywhere
in the void?’ she said thoughtfully.

‘I wouldn’t say anywhere, for the void is limitless. But anywhere my people could have ended up.’

‘Could you go back to Aachan?’

‘We
have
gone back,’ he said grimly. ‘We clan leaders have been there a dozen times, visiting all the havens and searching for survivors of any clan. We found none. Our beloved Aachan is a volcanic hell.’

Tiaan dwelt on that as they left the tower behind. And all because of choices made thousands of years ago, by Aachim desperate to have the power that mastery of an amplimet could bring.

‘Whenever the way into the void has been opened, trouble has come out of it,’ said Malien from the top of the ladder. ‘I dread what will come through this gate if it’s left for the future’s fools to play with.’

‘Do what you wish with it,’ said Vithis. ‘Destroy it! I care not. Here is the key.’ From a chain around his neck he took a hexagonal rod carved from a single sapphire, whose corners were rounded from aeons of handling. He gave it to Malien.

Malien studied it for a moment, nodded and put it in her scrip. ‘I will see to it.’

No one spoke for hours afterwards. Tiaan held on to her controller like a lifeline, longing for the journey to be over, though not for what lay at the end of it. In the immensity of the Dry Sea the thapter did not seem to be moving.

She flew through the night and soon after dawn began to descend. ‘We saw the first construct not far ahead,’ Tiaan said.

Vithis was the first to spot the wreckage. He showed no expression, apart from a hardening of the corners of his mouth.

‘There’s one. Go lower. I would count their number first, and make sure none have been overlooked.’

Tiaan went back and forth as he directed. As many of the Aachim as could fit came up, until the compartment was so crammed that she was hard pressed to work the levers.

Vithis’s lips moved. ‘Some constructs hit so hard that they were smashed to pieces, yet others are hardly damaged. Why didn’t they repair one and send for help?’

‘This country is so rugged that not even a construct could hover across it,’ said Malien. ‘You’ll see what I mean when we set down.’

His mouth shut like a trap. ‘I’ve seen enough. Go down now.’

The heat radiating from the black rocks hit them like a furnace. They visited the isolated machines, and their dead, before turning to the stone tombs. For Minis, having to pick his way on crutches across the jagged rocks must have been another kind of torture, but he neither complained nor faltered.

Vithis examined the bodies in the mausoleums, exclaiming as he recognised one, and another. ‘My clan, oh my clan.’

It took all day and night, for there were many, many bodies. He checked each one, named it without hesitation; mourned over each, too. Each name seemed to take a little more from him. The lines of his face lengthened and deepened, his eyes became more sunken, his back more bent as the terrible night wore on. Tiaan had to sleep at last, but he was still going when she got up.

‘Ah, Sulien,’ he said, bent over the desiccated rags of a small, black-haired woman. ‘You were the greatest beauty of our times. I once thought to match you with my foster-son. Would that I had.’ Vithis stood up, wiped dust from his eye and shuffled to the next. ‘And you, Orthis – sage, philosopher, dear friend and counsellor, how I need your wise guidance now.’

So it went on – poet, architect, Mother of the Clan, beloved niece – he mourned over every one, as the sun rose higher and sucked up the last drops of perspiration.

‘You survived all this time,’ he said at the last stone mausoleum. ‘If only I had known to look here. Why did you not call? Did you not see my beacon?’

Vithis shuffled out like an old man. His skin had taken on a grey tinge and Minis, beside him, looked even worse. The dried paths of tears streaked his salt-crusted face.

‘Is that all?’ Vithis said hoarsely. ‘There are many missing. Very many that I would have expected to find accompanying these.’

‘There’s still the building constructed from the skins of the wrecked constructs,’ said Malien. ‘Perhaps some you’re looking for lie within.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could I have forgotten it? Or is it that I dread what I will see inside?’

They went up the path to the metal building and began to go through each of the rooms, Vithis leading, Minis struggling along behind. Tiaan noticed that Irisis and Nish were not following and was glad. It didn’t concern them.

Vithis turned into a compartment that Tiaan and Malien had missed previously. On pallets on the floor lay an old man and an old woman, their dark robes covered in a dusting of windblown salt. They were thin to the point of emaciation and the woman’s arms were folded across her breast; the man’s lay by his sides. They too looked as if they were sleeping.

Vithis looked down, saying nothing. A single tear welled in his left eye. He ignored it. ‘Uncle Mumis, Aunt Zefren. Why didn’t I hear your cries?’

Luxor tapped Tiaan on the shoulder and jerked his head at the entrance. She went out, followed by Malien and all but Vithis and Minis.

‘Clan mourning,’ said Malien to the clan leader beside her. ‘What comes after, Tayel?’

‘I can scarcely bear to think.’

A good while later Vithis emerged, more stooped than before, and more haggard. His eyes sought Tiaan out among the gathering.

‘There are more.’ It was a statement.

‘Upstairs.’ She hesitated, unsure what he wanted, then pointed.

‘You will take me there.’

Tiaan led the way. This time only Minis followed, leaving his crutches at the bottom and hauling himself up the steps. At the top, by the children’s room, she stood aside to let Vithis past. The doorway was no higher than her head but he was so bowed that he passed through freely.

He walked to the centre of the room, looked at the beds, and gave forth a cry of anguish such as Tiaan had never heard from a human throat. She turned to leave him but his arm shot out and caught her hand.

‘Stay! See what you’ve wrought by debauching my foster-son with your alien allure.’ Tears coursed down his cratered cheeks. ‘You seduced him with your charms and your deadly stone, and for that First Clan is no more. Ah, the children, the children!’

‘Foster-father,’ cried Minis. ‘Have you lost your wits? We called out for help, remember, and when she answered we used her innocent infatuation –’

‘Be silent!’

‘You approved every action we took, Foster-father, and if the gate went wrong that was due to what you did with it after it opened.’

‘It had already gone wrong. I was trying to put it right.’

‘If it did go wrong,’ said Malien, who had come up quietly, ‘and I know it did, then you must look to your own enemies, Lord Vithis. Ask yourself who wanted to see the end of First Clan. And who seized that opportunity, when Inthis were first into the gate, to be rid of them?’

‘No!’ cried Vithis, putting his hands over his ears. ‘I will not hear this. It is Aachim first and clan second, as it has always been. No one would attack another clan at such a desperate time. No one!’

He turned to Minis, who was leaning against the wall, panting. ‘And you are just as culpable. Why could you not cleave to your own? What was so wrong with the women of First Clan that you had to call out across the void for an
old human mate
?’ The very words were a curse.

‘You know it wasn’t like that,’ began Minis. ‘I was asked to join the call.’

‘For help.
Not for a mate
. You could have had anyone, even beautiful Sulien who now lies out there, shrivelled like a piece of dried meat. Our clan, the greatest and oldest of all, is dying, yet you have not produced so much as a half-Inthis child. What have I done to make you hate me so?’

‘I don’t hate you, Foster-father. I …’

‘Aaargh! Begone. And take
her
with you.’

Tiaan scrambled down the stairs and outside. Minis clacked after her, avoiding her eyes. A great cry of anguish came from the attic window, after which there was silence. Finally Vithis emerged. His back was no longer bent but his face was more crevassed than ever.

‘All things must pass and First Clan is no more. I will send them on their longest journey, in the way that has always been foretold. Not foretold by a mooncalf with a head full of fantasies,’ he spat, with a glance in Minis’s direction. ‘Forecast by our ancient seers. Inthis came first and we found the Well. Some say it came first and First Clan was born of it. As we came, so shall we depart. No more fitting farewell can I make my people.’

He threw his arms up, clawing for the sky, and opened his mouth to speak the Great Spell.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Malien.

‘I am summoning the Well, Matah Malien.’

Malien looked afraid. Tiaan shuddered and moved closer to her.

‘The Well cannot be summoned,’ said Malien. ‘It just
is
, and presently it lies chained within Tirthrax. Even to go near it is perilous.’

‘Not to me, for I am the direct heir of Inthis, founder of First Clan ten thousand years ago. I have the power and the right, for the chained Well at Tirthrax is just a shadow of what it should be.’ He raised his arms again.

‘Why are you doing this?’ said Malien.

‘The least honour I can do my people is to send them to the Well, but it is the only honour in my power.’