Part 51 (1/2)

'Oh, over on Meldorin Island.' He waved a hand towards the west.

'The name makes it seem like a little place,' she said, trying to envision a map of that part of the world. For once, it would not come. 'It's not though, is it?'

'Meldorin is enormous. A good three hundred leagues from south to north, and a hundred west to east.'

'Whereabouts did you live?'

'Oh, you know!' He waved his long hand again, then fell silent.

A third of the way around the circuit of the crater, Tiaan stopped the walker.

'Something the matter?' Gilhaelith enquired.

'The crutch strap is chafing. I'm not used to such rough ground.'

'Do you want to go back?'

'No. It's lovely out here.'

They picked their way across the stony rim. Billows of mist drifted around them. Tiaan could feel droplets condensing on her eyelashes. The scarf over her face was dripping.

'Gilhaelith?' she said.

'Yes?'

'What did you want to talk to me about?'

He leaned on an elbow-high boulder, staring into the invisible crater. He seemed reluctant to speak.

'Gilhaelith?'

'This is a great gamble, Tiaan. A prodigious gamble, so don't get your hopes up.' Another extended pause. 'I've come across something about broken backs. There is ' His head whipped around. 'What was that? Did you hear it?'

'It sounded like a sheet flapping in the wind.'

'But there's just the gentlest of breezes.'

The mist broke and re-formed. He ran to the outside edge, peering down toward the forest.

'Can you see anything?' she called.

'No. Sometimes you hear funny noises up here,' he said doubtfully. 'I think we should head home, Tiaan.'

She adjusted the chafing strap, rotated the walker and they set off. 'What about my back?'

He was slow to reply. Before they had gone twenty steps she heard that crack again. Gilhaelith went still, his head c.o.c.ked to one side.

'I think I know what it is.' One hand slid inside his coat.

'What, Gilhaelith?' She turned the walker one way and then the other, but could not see anything.

Before he could answer, a winged shape appeared in the fog right behind him. Another thumped into the ground between him and her, and then two more, one on either side.

Gilhaelith whipped out a stubby rod but the rear lyrinx dropped a rope over his head and jerked it tight around Gilhaelith's chest. The one to the left struck the rod from his hand.

'What are you doing?' she cried.

They did not answer. Other ropes bound his arms to his chest. He tried to say something, perhaps a geomantic word of power, for a rock exploded into fragments, gas.h.i.+ng one of the lyrinx's calves. It ignored the minor wound.

Tiaan hurled the walker forward, recklessly attacking the nearest lyrinx with her fist. It pulled back its arm to deliver a blow that would have torn her head from her shoulders. She skittered sideways, careering towards the second lyrinx.

Gilhaelith shouted something she did not catch. Before he could utter another word, the first lyrinx pulled a hood tight over Gilhaelith's face. She caught a whiff of tar.

Tiaan threw herself at the nearest enemy, who simply put his great clawed hand across her face and pushed. The walker went backwards and toppled. As she crashed down the slope, the last thing Tiaan saw was the four lyrinx lifting off, in perfect formation, carrying Gilhaelith between them.

'Tia ' he yelled.

All further sounds were drowned out by the rush of shattered rock down the slope.

FORTY-FOUR.

The scrutator had set up camp in a cave below the steep top of the twin pinnacles at Minnien. Irisis and her team had been working for days, mapping the wisps of field as it strengthened and trying to work out what had happened to it. At the same time, they built a device to read the aura of the node, and hopefully its history. It was a contraption of gold and silver leaf, platinum wire and crystals of various kinds. Jewel-like in its delicacy, it vaguely resembled a dragonfly. It could have had a variety of forms but Irisis had taken her frustrations out by making it as extravagant, and as beautiful, as she could with the materials she had. The work was painstaking, and blindness made it more so, but she would make no concessions to her disability.

They had not seen the lyrinx again, though Irisis felt sure that its visit had something to do with the reappearance of the field, which was clearer and stronger each day.

'It's nearly strong enough to drive a clanker,' she said to Flydd on the fourth morning.

He sat up nakedly in his sleeping pouch. 'Our first piece of luck.' He scratched his scarred, hairless chest. 'How is your aura reader going?'

'Almost finished. The thing that puzzles me, Xervish, is why the Council did not do this a long time ago.'

'Too blinkered,' he said. 'We scrutators think of mancing as the very pinnacle of the Secret Art, and no doubt it is, in terms of sheer power. But it is not a subtle Art, the way we use it, and we do not have the artisan's ability to see the field. We draw on it intuitively; almost blindly. So, when our Art failed to penetrate the node, we did not consider that lesser abilities might succeed.'

'It remains to be seen whether our minor minor talents can.' talents can.'

'Your humility is admirable,' he said with a twitch of the lips.

'I was taught by a master.'

She began to work another crystal into the dragonfly. Irisis did not need to see for this. As a prentice she had often made jewellery in the dormitory after the lamps had been snuffed out. That craft was her greatest pleasure, though she had little enough time to practise it.

'What are we looking for, precisely?' she asked. 'Or is that another of your scrutator's secrets that can be revealed to none?'

'Several things.' He laid a twisted finger on her bare upper arm. 'Firstly, using my raw power and your subtle device, we will attempt to induce an aura from the node itself. That could reveal its recent history, though auras can be hard to read and even harder to interpret. Tiaan did this with a failed controller crystal, once. But of course, Tiaan ...' He sighed heavily.

Irisis was heartily sick of Tiaan's marvels. 'Might that not be dangerous?' she said irritably.