Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (63 page)

I
t was nearly dark now. The lyrinx must charge soon. The soldiers were still shooting but did not seem to be doing any damage. The enemy’s claws rasped on the stone, just a few spans below. Oon-Mie was dropping rocks on them. ‘Take that, and that!’ They weren’t big enough to do a lot of damage but Irisis caught one or two cries of pain.

‘Can’t you do anything, Flydd?’ she said. ‘What’s happened to your famous scrutator magic?’

‘I spent it earlier.’ He sounded worn out.

‘For nothing.’

‘Nothing comes for nothing and scrutator magic has painful after-effects, though we don’t talk about such things.’

‘Why not? To maintain the myth of invulnerability for us peasants?’

‘If you like. What’s that?’

Irisis could hear it too; the whirr of a rotor. She felt a rush of wind as the air-floater appeared above them.

‘Get moving,’ yelled Flydd. ‘They’re charging.’

They scrambled up the ladder, Irisis with a rope around her chest. The machine ticked away rather more quickly than when it had brought them here, such was the strength of the field now.

‘That taught us something,’ said Flydd, sitting with Irisis down the far end of the cabin in the dark.

‘That we should never have been born!’ It was just one of her remarks. There was no bitterness behind it. Irisis felt better than she had in ages, though she could not have said why. ‘What do you make of what Zoyl saw?’

‘I reckon the lyrinx have found a way of draining the node.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. We know so little about how they think and work. Some of them are mancers as powerful as any of us scrutators, though they use power differently.’

‘They use the field though?’

‘Indeed, but not through crystals, controllers or any of the devices we employ.’

‘What about those mushroom-shaped spying devices I heard of?’

‘Ah, those. We’ve captured several in the past few years, but we haven’t learned how they work.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’re grown, or flesh-formed, for a particular purpose, such as keeping watch. But once we take them they die – if they’re actually alive – like a flower plucked from the garden.’

‘And you think they’ve tailored such a device to drain the field out of a node?’

‘It’s beginning to look that way. It may be that our clankers overloaded this node and drained it, then the lyrinx flesh-formed a device to do the same. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they can do it.’

‘It can’t be that easy or they’d be doing it everywhere. How many nodes have gone dead? Four in a year?’

‘Five if you count the one at the manufactory, though it hasn’t completely failed yet.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Irisis, ‘is how the air-floater carried us to the node when it was practically dead.’

‘Air-floaters are built as light as possible, so it takes little power to turn the rotor. A clanker needs a thousand times as much. And as I said before, we were using a different field.’

‘Where are we going now?’

‘Further up the coast, to look at another failed node.’

‘How far is it?’

‘We’ll be there before dawn.’

‘Good!’ She snuggled down against the seat, then sat up again. ‘Scrutator?’

‘I told you before, I don’t like you calling me that in private.’

‘I like calling you that in private,’ she said, grinning wickedly. ‘It makes me feel, well, you know …’ she leered at him.

‘I don’t want to know, since there’s nothing I can do about it. What did you want, anyway?’

‘How come you’ve still got this air-floater, if you’re an outlaw?’

He did not answer.

‘Xervish?’

‘I still have a few friends where it counts. They do what they can for me.’

‘Who?’

‘It would not be healthy for you to know.’

Irisis woke in the night, realising that the air-floater was not moving. She was alone, though two people were talking quietly outside the cabin. She began to repair the broken dragonfly reader. Before long, the machine began to move. Irisis finished the job and went back to sleep, to be woken by someone shaking her arm.

‘We’re here, crafter.’ It was Oon-Mie’s voice.

‘Where’s here?’

‘I don’t think it has a name. The failed node lies inland from a town called Fadd.’

The artisan led her over the side onto rock. It was raining. The air-floater pulled away, its rotor spattering cool drops at them.

‘This node is associated with an escarpment that runs inland from the coast,’ came Flydd’s voice. ‘It’s quite high here; on a clear day you can see the ocean. At least, you could if you could see.’

Irisis, used to his provocations by now, did not react.

This node proved to be completely dead. There was not a wisp of the field associated with it, nor could they induce any aura, even by a more refined version of the process they had used previously. There was no power to draw upon.

‘The node-drainer must still be in place,’ said Flydd.

‘Are we going to look for it?’ asked Oon-Mie.

‘It could be anywhere along this escarpment, which runs for a good thirty leagues. We might search for years and not find it.’

‘So we haven’t learned anything here?’ said Irisis.

‘Unfortunately not.’

‘What were you doing in the night, Xervish? When the air-floater stopped.’

‘I had to send a skeet to one of my associates, telling them what we’d discovered. The price of continued support.’

‘I hope you didn’t tell them where we were, or where we were going.’

‘I have to trust someone.’

‘Let’s hope they’re worthy of it.’

The party searched along the nearby part of the escarpment, to fill in the time until dark, when they could signal the air-floater. Irisis was waiting, perched on a rock with her hood over her head to keep off the drifting rain, when something occurred to her.

‘Scrutator?’ she yelled. ‘Anyone know where the scrutator is?’

‘He went for a walk in the forest,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Probably crapping behind a tree.’

‘I was trying to work out the lie of the node, as it happens,’ Flydd said with lofty dignity. He had come up on them from behind. ‘What is it, Irisis?’

‘If there is a node-drainer,’ she said, ‘where is it draining all that power to? And what happens where it comes out – so much power in a small place must have some effect.’

Dead silence. Flydd took her by the arm, shaking her in his excitement. ‘That’s brilliant!’ he cried. ‘It has to be going somewhere, and that must leave a trace. More than a trace – strange things would happen where all that power was dumped. Such a place can’t be hard to find.’

‘How would you go about finding it?’

‘I’d ask people who live in the area. The local querist or perquisitor, first; it’s their job to hear about strange and inexplicable things. If we fly along the edge of the escarpment, we might see something, though I wouldn’t want to spend too long doing it. As soon as it’s dark I’ll signal the air-floater. We’ll have a look on the way back, since we’re going that direction.’

His words made her uneasy. ‘The way back? Where are we going now?’

‘Back to the manufactory. To look at its node.’

‘The
manufactory
? Are you out of your mind?’

‘Shh! Don’t alarm the others. There’s no choice, Irisis. Only concrete evidence can save me. I have to see a failing node to really understand what’s going on. Dead ones are no good at all.’

‘After Jal-Nish catches us,
we’ll
be the dead ones.’

The problem with the scrutator, as Irisis well knew, was that once he had made his mind up, nothing could shake him. She did not try. Irisis was too afraid. A senile old fool and a blind woman – what a formidable team! Jal-Nish must be quaking in his bed.

They saw no sign of a power seep on the way back, though as the scrutator had said, such a thing need not occur above the ground. It could lie anywhere in the three dimensions.

He roused her in the night. Irisis was lying awake, biting the ends of her fingers. ‘We’d better talk about how we’re going to do this,’ he said.

‘You talk! I don’t have any ideas and I’m so scared I can’t think of anything but which horrible way I’m going to die.’

‘There is a way.’

‘Good. You can do it. I’m taking my toys and going home.’

He laughed.

‘I mean it, scrutator. Everyone has their breaking point and I’ve reached mine. I can’t do this. I’m
blind
, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘We have to. The war depends on it.’

‘Would you like to know something?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t give a
slussk
about the war. I’ve had enough. If we are all to be eaten by the lyrinx, so be it. I don’t see that they’re any worse than you scrutators and the world you’ve created, with its breeding factories and Examinations, and its rules for every damned thing. This isn’t life, it’s misery and I just want it to end. I don’t care any more, scrutator!’

He went away and she did not see him for another hour. ‘We’re not going to the manufactory,’ he said. ‘At least, not straight away.’

‘You’ve seen some sense, then.’

‘No, you’ve convinced me that I can’t rely on you any more and I’ve got to find another way.’

He went out again. Irisis could not speak, for his words had carved right through her fit of self-pity. She’d let him down. It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her.

She felt her way through the cabin and out to the open deck, along the rope rails. The rotor was whirring gently. She went up to the stern and his hand – she recognised it by feel – caught her arm.

‘If you keep going you’ll be over the side,’ he said gruffly, ‘and what use will that be to me, eh?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She felt her way to his chest and pressed herself against him. His arms went around her. ‘I’m just not as strong as you, Xervish.’

‘I’m not as strong as you think.’

‘How are we going to do this?’

‘Well, I wasn’t planning to land at the front gate and ask Jal-Nish to let me in. What ideas do
you
have?’

She pondered for a while. ‘What about the old entrance, through the other mine?’

‘I believe that’s been blocked up.’

She turned her face into the breeze from the rotor. Yellow hair streamed out behind her. ‘There are higher entrances, but all would be guarded, and we would still have to go down by the lifts.’

‘The guards probably aren’t as vigilant as the ones on the main adit.’

‘And it would be easier to use some form of deception underground,’ she supposed.

‘I’ll give the order.’ He went up toward the pilot.

She did not feel any better. Maybe that was all the planning the scrutator required but Irisis liked everything organised to the tiniest detail, with a variety of contingency plans for when things went wrong. That was how she had survived so long.

The air-floater dropped the two of them on the top of the range, over the hill out of sight of the manufactory and the main adit, just before dawn. It was just the two of them, Irisis and Flydd. They dared take no others into the cramped tunnels.

They hid in an abandoned tunnel all day, and as darkness fell made their way down the hill toward the higher entrance, which was blocked off by a barred gate. The clankers had gone through the mountain that way, in their pursuit of Tiaan last autumn. They eluded the solitary guard and got inside without difficulty, through some magic of Flydd’s that he did not explain. These tunnels had been worked out more than a century ago but a decline still led down to the lower mine. They reached the first level without incident. Now their troubles would start; the only way to the lower levels was via the rope lift, which would be guarded.

‘You’d think they’d clean up this mess,’ Flydd said, after Irisis had stumbled over a tattered length of lift rope, followed by a wooden barrow with a broken wheel. Inside it lay several ragged, greasy miner’s aprons.

‘Miners don’t care about mess.’

‘Stop!’ he hissed. ‘The lift is just around the corner.’ He crept forward, then returned to her side. ‘The guards are on alert.’

‘Well, you’re a mancer aren’t you?’

‘I can’t knock them out, else Jal-Nish will soon know we’re down there. Our work is going to take hours.’

‘Can’t you do illusions?’

‘It’s not a branch of the Art I’ve ever been much good at.’

‘Great!’ she said. ‘Well, what about a diversion?’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘The soldiers would be afraid of fire, down here.’

‘So am I.’

‘A
small
fire. Lots of smoke.’

‘The miners will come rushing up. We won’t be able to get down in the lift.’

‘I don’t think the mine’s working at the moment,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘All right. I know just the thing. Come this way.’ He set fire to the greasy aprons with his lantern, then piled the rope into the barrow, holding up the strands until they caught.

‘I’m worried this will seem suspicious,’ said Irisis.

‘Oily cloth can catch fire by itself.’

They approached the lift from another direction and waited. Oily smoke began to drift down the tunnel. The leading guard caught a whiff, screamed ‘Fire!’ and ran for the entrance. Two others followed.

‘I think that’s all of them,’ said Flydd after an interval.

‘Seems a bit too easy to me.’

‘It probably is. Let’s be as quick as we can.’

He wound them down to the ninth level. The crank sounded unusually noisy.

‘Do you know the way to the crystal field?’

‘I’ve never been there,’ said Flydd. ‘I was relying on you.’

‘You blinded me, remember?’

‘It’s your eyes that have gone, not your brain. Just tell me the sequence of turns.’

That was harder than it sounded. Irisis was not used to working that way and when she tried to recall the path it vanished from her mind. She panicked and he had to calm her before they could continue. Precious minutes were lost.

She did not like it down here. Being blind in the tunnels was somehow worse than being lost in the dark. But they eventually found the shaft that the miners had sunk down to the massive crystal. The pumps were working sluggishly, powered by the diminished field.
Thud-thud-THUD; THUD-thud-THUD
.