Empire in Black and Gold (66 page)

‘You must hold on tight,’ he said, and she put her arms about his waist and did her best to grip with her knees.

He made some signal with the reins and, in a single lurching movement, the moth flung itself airborne.

In that moment Che was sure she was going to slide off, bound back from the powering wing and then tumble to the ground however far below. She clutched at Achaeos so desperately that she could feel the hard line ridging his side where her stitches still held.

Then she began to anticipate the rhythm of the insect’s flying, and it was not as she had expected. Instead of the manic fluttering, the almost random blundering of its little brothers, the giant’s wings had a slow and sombre beat, each downturn propelling the moth forwards and upwards into the air, It was a patient and tireless rhythm that reminded her of being out in a rowing boat with Stenwold once, when she was very young, with her uncle pulling on the oars with his unfailing strength. She slowly loosened her hold on Achaeos so that he could breathe again, and looked about her.

She was too far from the ground to see more than the red lights of Helleron’s distant forges, too far out from the mountain to detect its slopes. Above there were only stars. Achaeos and the moth and herself were the only other bright things in the world, coursing through the cool, still air, higher and ever higher. She leant her head on Achaeos’s shoulder. It was so silent up here. The insect’s wings made no sound, and the flight was gentle enough for there to be no rushing of air in her ears. It was so different from the fixed-wing she had piloted, or the ponderous bulk of the
Sky Without
or the Wasps’ clattering heliopter.

How wonderful it would be to fly like this
, she thought. Ever since childhood she had coveted this moment, that was being given to her now so casually. She could not say why she craved it, for Stenwold could not fly, nor could Tynisa. Che had often looked out of her bedroom window at the clouds or the stars, and at Fly-kinden messengers on their frantic errands or slow-droning fliers coming in towards the airfield, and she had known that here was something she would always want, and never have.

And then the slopes of the mountain came into sight, and she realized that she was now seeing Tharn.

She had pictured, perhaps, houses built slantwise on the slopes, or even caves carved into them. She had known the Moth-kinden were an ancient people, and that these places that were their last homes had also been their first. That fact had never meant much to her until now.

The lowest slopes that she could see were cut into steps that were tens of yards wide, deep with waving crops, where water trickled from one artificial plateau to the next in delicate, dividing streams. Here and there were shacks and huts for the fieldhands, but this was not Tharn. Instead Che could see Tharn on the upper slopes. For a sheer height of over one hundred yards the side of the mountain had been worked into a city.

They met in a darkened room again, the back room of some dingy Beetle hostelry where the guests were obliged to bring their own lamps. Thalric was glad of that, anyway. He had no wish to see his own face leering at him out of the gloom.

The figure that was Scylis found a chair by barely more than starlight, but then Spider-kinden always had good eyes, Thalric knew. He heard more than saw the other man pour a bowl of wine and sip a little.

‘Progress?’ he said impatiently.

Scylis swallowed and made a disappointed noise. ‘Abysmal vintage, this. Given my current short commons I’d ask you to find something better, but I’m afraid your people’s taste in wine is even worse.’

Thalric hissed through his teeth. ‘Time is short, Scylis.’

‘I know it is, Major, but never fear, all is in hand. I’m well in with Stenwold’s divided little band. With this face I’m closer to Stenwold than his shadow.’

‘I thought you were intending to go all the way with them disguised as Khenice.’

‘I didn’t think that would convince, and in my position the least suspicion can be fatal. So I found a better opportunity – a perfect opportunity that fell right in my lap. They had so much on their minds that they never wondered why poor Khenice left them without saying goodbye.’

‘Who?’ A cold feeling came over Thalric, though he was hard put to place it. ‘Whose . . . face are you now wearing?’

‘My secrecy is my life, Major. Do you think I would trust you with my life? Would you trust me with yours?’

‘Then what have you got for me?’

‘You’ve been admirably patient this last year, Major, in putting your plans into operation. Now you’re like a child who has been promised a toy. Very well. I will show you where Stenwold’s man has his den. He has mustered quite a force of malcontents there. You should, I think, move on them. Use local muscle if you’re worried about the look of it. Thirty decent fighters should do it.’

‘Hiring thirty men without word spreading will be difficult.’

‘I leave that in your capable hands,’ Scylis said. ‘You won’t catch all of them, because about half are out on errands at any given time. I will leave you details of where and to whom, for those I know about. A few will slip past, but you’ll at least cut off the head. The top man is a spiky little grotesque called Scuto. Kill him, if you can. Kill all of them, if you can.’

‘And what about you? If you won’t tell me who you’re dressed up as, you could get caught in the middle.’

‘If that happens then I deserve to be,’ Scylis said dismissively. ‘Let me look after that. I’m very good at it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘They’re hoping the Moth-kinden hermits will help them out. I can sour that, I think.’

Thalric nodded. ‘We’ve already sent men to them. They’re now in hand.’

‘I wonder.’

‘You doubt me?’ Thalric asked.

‘I doubt your understanding,’ said Scylis. ‘They’re not just mountain savages, you know. They’re a clever pack of quacksalvers, the Moths, and nobody ever quite knows what they’re after. I would make them a priority, if I were you, since they are adept at breaking up just the sort of plans you are relying on.’

‘Then do it,’ he said. ‘Prevent any alliance with the Moths, by whatever means.’

‘And Stenwold Maker?’

‘Can you take him alive?’

‘Probably not, as things stand.’

Thalric considered. ‘I have my men looking out for him. If only I can get
him
to the interrogation table . . .’ He made up his mind. ‘We’ll kill his people, and we’ll break any of their links with the Moths, but if there’s the slightest chance of a live Stenwold Maker in my hands at the end of it, that’s what I really want.’

Tharn was a city placed on its side. There were windows above windows, doorways above doorways, and it was not mere blank stone that separated them. It had been carved, every inch of surface. At first the detail was so much as to defeat the eye, but as the moth swooped closer it proliferated and proliferated further. There were twisting pillars and fretwork, friezes and statues, a whole history of pictures and close-chiselled commentary. Lines of robed figures performed obscure devotions. Battles were caught in mid-blow, the stylized figures of Mantis, Moth and Spider, and other races she could not name, locked in conflict. There were figures of beasts and abstract arabesques and things she knew were simply beyond her knowledge to identify. The Moths had made the face of the mountain their book and their history, and it was grand and vast, stern and awful, and it was so sad that she felt tears catch at her throat. A thousand years of carving were on this lonely mountainside: the work of a people who had once stretched out their hand to control half the known world, and were now dismissed as mere mountain mystics by those who had usurped their place.

‘How you must hate us,’ she whispered timidly in Achaeos’s ear. He looked round at her, surprised.

‘I did not think . . . you see this now as we see it. Lost glories and better days.’

The moth had picked out a mottled wall as its destination and was flying in narrowing, slowing circles as it readied itself to alight. She saw that the mottling was, in fact, the flat-folded wings of other moths and that the creature was intending to roost vertically. There was a ledge at the foot of the wall, and the insect found purchase close enough that Che was able to half-clamber, half-fall onto the solid stone. Achaeos helped her up as the insect clambered towards a higher resting place above them.

‘Will I even be able to get myself from room to room in your city?’ she asked him.

‘You are not the only earthbound guest who has come here. For visitors, there are places set aside close to the edge,’ he explained.

‘Close to the edge?’

‘Why of course,’ he told her, smiling. ‘Tharn is a city, not just this fac¸ade. In building it we have delved all the way into the mountain.’

‘But . . . the sun . . . ? How do you . . . ?’

‘The dark is no barrier for us. Nor is it for you,’ he reminded her.

Beneath the mountain, in that darkness that was not darkness, the mind played tricks. Although this circular room’s walls were picked out in subtle shades of grey, so that the inscriptions and carvings that twined across them were clear to her sight, her mind still knew that they were black as night, and never intended for her eyes. Her ears strained, and by straining, heard.

‘Achaeos,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I can hear music.’

‘It’s just the sixth hour.’ He had been pacing, seeming more nervous now within the halls of his people than he had been in the city of his enemies.

‘The sixth . . . hour? I don’t understand.’ She heard it more clearly now, and it seemed as though, deep within the mountain, a chorus of high, sweet voices was singing words she could not quite disentangle.

He halted, turning towards her, a smile starting that had been lacking since they left sight of the open air. ‘But of course you cannot know. This is my home, so I think of its habits as my habits. Forgive me. Children of my people are given to choirs whose voices announce the changing of the hours. This is the hymn to the sixth hour of night. I remember singing it myself, when I was only seven or eight years. I still recall the words.’

‘It’s . . . beautiful.’ And it was: beautiful and solemn, like all this place, and racked with sorrow. ‘But don’t you have clocks?’ She suspected even as she said it that they did not. No mechanisms, no devices, no artifice here. They were an alien people to her.

But Achaeos replied, ‘Of course we have clocks. Water clocks fed from the mountain rains which keep the best time we need, but we record the hours for many reasons, ritual and practical, and by these voices everyone may know how the night passes.’

‘I would assume most people would be asleep,’ said Che, and corrected herself even before he opened his mouth. ‘But of course not. Night is when your people are most busy.’ And he nodded.

‘That is why the Skryres will shortly hear us,’ he agreed. ‘I’d hoped to have more time to prepare our case, but they have already known that I was coming, and why, and with whom, so we must brave it out.’

‘These . . . Skryres.’ She stumbled over the unfamiliar word. ‘They lead you? They are your statesmen?’

‘More than that. I am a seer, and thus I have started on the road of knowledge. They are not near its end, for no one is, but they are so far along it that I cannot even imagine what they know: of men’s minds, of the universal truths, of the Art and the forces of the world. We are not ruled by the strongest or the richest, or those who can talk most smoothly. We are ruled instead by the wisest and the most terrible. Che, you must be careful not to offend them.’

But it is you who are afraid
, she realized. She wanted to ask him what these Skryres might do if he failed to move them but, even as she stood up to go to him, a door opened seamlessly in one wall, carvings sliding into carvings, an age of history being devoured. A robed Moth-kinden stood there, older than Achaeos, though she could not judge by how much. His pale eyes narrowed when they saw her.

‘It is true then,’ the newcomer said in a hard, quiet voice. ‘You have been corrupted.’

‘That is not for you to judge,’ Achaeos told him sharply. ‘I will put my case before the Skryres.’

‘How fortunate,’ said the stranger, ‘since that is what they wish also. You are to come with me.’ His nose wrinkled at the thought. ‘Both of you.’

The capacity of Che’s vision could just encompass the room they were taken to, and then led to the centre of. In the heart of the mountain was an amphitheatre, stepping up and up in tiers, the steps themselves worn smooth and rounded by the councils of antiquity until at the very last it rose to terminate in high walls, disappearing out of sight into the lurking darkness. There were lamps up there, which surprised her at first: dim, pale lamps burning coldly blue and shedding only the faintest of pale radiance.

The seats were burdened with the Moth-kinden, for in the room sat several hundred of them at least, a crowd in Beetle terms but a multitude amongst this more reclusive people. They could not, she decided, all be the Skryres, yet they all looked alike to her, grey-skinned and white-eyed, all robed as Achaeos was, their heads close together as they whispered. She did not need to speculate on what had caught their imagination. Slim-fingered hands picked her out as she entered, pointing as they followed her progress across the floor. She saw blank eyes flash angrily, and sudden fierce gestures. The assembly of Moths stared down on her with loathing as cold as the lamps above them.