'My lattice isn't gone.' She smiled a secret smile. 'I just can't see it. I'll have to make a new lattice.'

Nish cursed, but under his breath. What a time to lose the only talent that could help them. He looked up. The balloon was taut. The danger would come when it lifted, for the stripped trunk went up through the neck. If anything caught, it would tear the flimsy fabric apart.

The air-floater was getting closer every minute. Nish leapt out and gave the basket a heave. It lifted but stuck. He climbed in and rocked the basket from side to side. It freed itself from a snag and shot up; he had to brake it with S'lound's sword against the trunk.

The balloon rose steadily, the trunk slid from the neck and they were free, rising above the treetops. Nish could have wept. Their survival was truly a miracle; a series of miracles. He held his breath, staring at the patch. Let the wind not be too strong. Let the patch hold.

The patch held and there was no wind at this level. They simply drifted above the forest, slowly rising. The air-floater altered course, heading directly for them. How could it do that?

The minutes went by with agonising slowness. The balloon caught the gentlest of breezes and sailed beyond the forest. The air-floater approached. Nish could make out people standing in the smaller compartment underneath. Human, or Aachim? If human, were they friend or foe?

Nish picked up S'lound's sword, not that it would be any good against archers. He rubbed his chin, which hurt. It was blistered from the nylatl venom. The air-floater closed the gap, swung side-on, and at least a dozen soldiers, armed with spears and crossbows, stood along the side. Nish swallowed.

'What the blazes are you doing?' bellowed a familiar voice across the gap.

Nish searched the faces. A lean, gaunt-looking man forced his way between the ranks. 'Don't hang there like a b.l.o.o.d.y fool. Go down.' It was Xervish Flydd, the scrutator.

Nish yanked the release rope and the balloon drifted down. What was the scrutator doing here? Nish had no idea what he was going to say to him.

He rehea.r.s.ed his lines all the way to the ground. The scrutator was the most powerful man in the land, and the most feared. A combination of secret policeman, spy and inquisitor, he could do just about anything he wanted. He had sent Nish out on this suicide mission, to bring back Tiaan, and the crystal. Nish had recovered neither.

The balloon slowly reached to the ground. Nish jumped out, closed the valve and tied the tethers to a log. He stood waiting as the air-floater slid to earth not a hundred paces away. Soldiers sprang over the rails, hammered stakes into the ground and roped the vessel down fore and aft.

The craft held sixteen soldiers. He counted them off, as well as the scrutator and Mechanician M'lainte, who looked like a squat scrubwoman and did not appear to have changed her clothes since he'd last seen her. The mechanician was a genius and it did not matter how she looked, but Nish was conscious of his own shabbiness. Appearances had always been important to him, as if to make up for his short stature and indifferent looks.

The whirring, that had been in the background ever since the craft approached, slowed to a gentle tick. Some kind of mechanical contraption at the rear was attached to a twelve-bladed rotor similar to those he had seen on windmills, though this one was driven by the field. It enabled the air-floater to go where it pleased, even against the wind as long as it was not too strong. The cabin of the craft was built of canvas reinforced with light timbers, to weigh as little as possible. Sandbags hung on the sides, for ballast.

'Well, artificer?' The scrutator, a small man who looked as though every sc.r.a.p of flesh had been pared from his bones, clambered over the side. He walked awkwardly, as if those bones had been broken in a torture chamber and put back together wrongly, and they had. Taking Nish's arm, Flydd led him back toward the balloon. 'What have you got for me?'

'Er ...' said Nish.

'Did you recover the precious crystal?'

'No I mean, I did recover it, surr, back there at Tirthrax, but a witch-woman took it from me and gave it back to Tiaan.'

'A witch-woman? What b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense is this? Explain yourself, artificer.'

Nish felt his life hanging by a thread. 'A n.o.ble Aachim, surr. A woman of advanced years. She called herself Matah of Tirthrax.'

'Matah? What did she look like, boy?'

'She was this tall,' Nish held his hand a little above his head, 'with grey hair that once must have been as red as the setting sun. A very handsome woman, for all that she was old ...' He selected his words more carefully, not wanting to insult the scrutator. 'She looked the age of a human of sixty, but she talked about the time of the Forbidding as though she had been there. I '

'Malien!' said Flydd between his yellow teeth. He turned away in some agitation, muttering to himself, as he often did. 'Well, well. The Council of Scrutators will want to hear of this.'

'You mean the the Malien, from the Malien, from the Tale of the Mirror Tale of the Mirror?' Nish said, awed. 'How can she still be alive?'

Flydd did not bother to answer. 'She is no witch-woman, artificer, but a mancer of considerable subtlety. I will not hold it against you that she took the crystal away. You are not made for that kind of foe. You did not manage to take Tiaan either?' he barked.

'I had her, twice, and twice she got away from me.'

'Twice?' The scrutator wrinkled the single brow that ran across both eyes. 'Twice, boy? To lose her once is bad enough. Twice looks distinctly like '

'She was ... clever,' Nish said lamely. 'I caught her a third time, tied her up, and was determined that nothing could free her.'

'Where is she? I don't see her?' The scrutator pretended to look around.

Nish went along with the game, knowing how deadly it could become. 'The witch Malien, surr. She freed Tiaan and befriended her. I tried,' he pleaded, 'but Malien used her magic against me.'

'Enough!' snapped the scrutator. 'I have no doubt that you tried, but you failed.'

'And Tiaan is gone, with her crystal.'

'What?'

'This morning, surr. Ullii said that they had gone west.'

'The lyrinx, or the Aachim, must have taken her.' Flydd growled. 'She's out of the game! You've let me down.'

Unable to think of any defence, Nish stood, head hung, awaiting his fate.

'So!' Flydd measured him up and down. 'You seem to have grown up since I saw you last.'

'There have been a number of trials, surr,' Nish said softly.

'I'm sure there have. You shall tell me the entire story, later, and my chronicler will write it down. At least you have not lost the seeker, eh?'

'No,' said Nish inaudibly.

Flydd ratcheted his way across to the basket, spoke to Ullii and gave her his hand. For some reason Nish would never comprehend, she got on well with him. She stood up on the side, wearing mask and earm.u.f.fs now, protection as much against people as against the elements. Ullii stepped lightly down. Flydd threw her pack over his shoulder.

They ate lunch inside the lower section of the air-floater, since the ground was a snowy slush. Nish was seated next to M'lainte, and Ullii beside the scrutator. Nish told his tale, which earned the undivided attention of the group, and even several grunts from Flydd that might have const.i.tuted approval. At the end, when he described the repair of the balloon in the treetops and the subsequent beating off of the nylatl, both he and Ullii were given a cheer by the soldiers.

Even Flydd, a man who rarely praised anybody, reached across to grip him by the shoulder. 'You might be a second-rate artificer, lad, but I can't fault your initiative.'

'Thank you, surr,' Nish said without a trace of irony.

Flydd showed no such restraint with Ullii. 'If courage is measured not by the deed but by the terror overcome, surely you are the bravest of us all.' Shaking her little hand, he said, 'You are one of my finest, seeker.'

Ullii pulled off her mask. Her eyes were huge, luminous and moist. She kissed his withered hand and swiftly pulled the mask up again, though she could not conceal the colour that crept up her cheeks.

'Is something the matter?' said Flydd.

'Ullii has lost her lattice,' Nish interjected.

'I was not speaking to you! Ullii, what happened?'

Ullii blushed, her colourless skin going the colour of blood.

'Is there something the matter? Something I should know about?' Flydd continued.

'No, Xervish,' she said faintly. 'I will make a new lattice.'

'My skeet arrived safely?' Nish asked, for that had not been mentioned. 'That is what brought you here so swiftly?'

'It arrived only two days after you sent it. That was a good bit of work, lad. Fortunately I had other skeets at the manufactory and could send out the warnings right away. Within three days every city in Lauralin had been alerted to the invasion, though I don't know what good it may have done us.'

'How did you build this air-floater so quickly?' It was much bigger than the balloon, which had exhausted all the silk cloth in the city of Tiksi and taken more than a month to construct.

'We didn't,' said M'lainte. 'I had the idea not long after our first balloon flight, but we were not sure that it would work, so it was built in secret at another manufactory. It was already being tested when you left.'

Nish looked up at the great airbag and for the first time noticed something missing. 'Where is the furnace, and the fuel?'

'Not needed, said M'lainte complacently. 'A mine in the mountains produces floater-gas. We simply filled the air-floater with it.'

Nish had heard something about floater-gas. 'Isn't it ... explosive?'

'Horribly. And it leaks through the tarred seams, so we must return soon or there will not be enough to lift us. Going back will be slower than coming.'

'Why did you come?' Nish asked.

'To see what we could see,' said the scrutator. 'To test this new air-floater. And to bring back whatever you had found. The wind seldom blows east at this time of year so, even if you had recovered Tiaan or her crystal, you would have had to walk home. That would have been too late.'

'And to bring back Ullii, of course,' Nish said quietly.

'You are expendable, alas, but we can't do without her.'

'How is my friend Irisis?'

Ullii jumped, then clenched her little fists.

The scrutator gave Nish a hard stare. 'I'm pleased to say, since you've been gone, she has settled down to her work. There'll be no more of that nonsense.'

'No, surr,' Nish said faintly.

The mechanician was concerned about the leaking floater-gas, so as soon as lunch was finished they prepared to leave. Nish was heading to the balloon for his gear when one of the guards shouted, 'Lyrinx, surr, in the north-west!'

'Are they heading this way?'

The guard put a spygla.s.s to his eye. 'Not at the moment, surr. They're watching the hole in the great mountain.'

Flydd paced back and forth. 'Is it better to be in the air or on the ground? In the air, I think. At least we can move, and defend ourselves. But on the ground, should they drop something on the envelope, we're done.'

'And we can soar up high,' said the mechanician, 'where the air is too thin for their wings.'

'We won't be able to breathe,' said Flydd.

'There'll be enough. We're We're not doing the hard work of flying.' not doing the hard work of flying.'

'True. Gather your gear, everyone. We're going now.'

Nish ran. 'Make it snappy, artificer,' roared Flydd. 'I won't wait on anyone.'

Nish was climbing the rope when Ullii cried out, something that in all the shouting he did not catch. Then she screamed.

'Get moving!' yelled Flydd.

Nish went over the side into the basket, and froze. On the other side, just across the hole in the floor, crouched the nylatl. And he was defenceless. S'lound's sword was over by the air-floater.

He tried to throw himself out but the nylatl sprang and caught him by the calf muscle. Nish kicked, the teeth tore through his flesh and the nylatl fell through the hole in the floor. He hobbled to the side but, before he could leap over, the horned snout came at him again.

There was a knife in S'lound's pack. Nish wrenched out the long blade, then hurled the pack at the creature, hoping to create enough of a diversion to get over the side. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Ullii, screaming and struggling in the arms of one of the guards. The scrutator was shouting. 'We can't wait, even for you, Nish. Come now or stay behind stay behind!'

Nish heaved himself onto the rim. The nylatl's teeth went through his boot, just missing his toes. It tossed its head and the force went close to breaking his ankle. Nish was dragged into the basket, slashing wildly at the beast. One blow carved the top off the main spine on its snout. The nylatl squealed, drew back and sprang again. This time the vicious teeth closed around his leg.

Nish hardly felt it, the way the adrenalin was surging through his veins, the blood l.u.s.t singing in his ears. He stabbed down with the knife, whose blade was long enough to pa.s.s between the poisoned spines. It skated off an armoured plate, found the crack between it and the next, and went in deep.

The nylatl reared up, its eyes wide, and let go. Nish knocked it down with one boot and kicked it in the head with the other. It fled through the hole.

He clambered over the side but was too late: the air-floater was taking off without him. Nish slashed the tethers and the balloon shot up. His leg began to throb. Sagging against the basketwork, he took toll of his injuries. The muscle of his calf was torn in three places and there were tooth punctures on both sides of his leg, almost to the bone. It could have been worse. Much worse.

The balloon had gone up faster but the air-floater was swiftly overtaking him. There was still a chance. He waved and someone waved back. The air-floater altered course, though Nish could not see how they could take him off in mid-air.

He was wondering how to manage it when the nylatl, which must have been clinging to the underside of the basket, came over the side right behind him. Its smell alerted him as it was about to sink its teeth into his neck. He dived across the basket. This had to end, now now.

The nylatl limped around the rim, its back legs dragging. He must have done it some damage. How to kill it? The flask of tar spirits, carried all the way from the manufactory, gave him an idea.

Hefting the flask, he backed away from the creeping beast and jerked out the bung. The creature eyed him. He feinted with the knife, and as the nylatl went the other way, heaved a great spurt at its face. It squealed as the stinging liquid went into eyes, nostrils and gaping mouth. Nish gave it another whoosh, then dropped the flask and attempted to attack while the nylatl was blinded.

It did not work; the creature seemed to sense his position and slashed with its right paw. The sole remaining claw raked down Nish's wrist, sending the knife flying across the floor and out through the hole. He was defenceless.

From the corner of his eye he saw an archer standing at the rail of the air-floater, but the man could not get a clear shot. The nylatl sprang down. Nish threw himself onto the rim, crawled around and his head b.u.mped the hanging rope ladder up to the brazier.

Without thinking he went up hand over hand, all the way to the top. The nylatl came to its hind legs to follow. The air-floater, which had been standing by, suddenly veered away as fast as its rotor could go.

Must have read my mind, Nish thought. Nothing mattered but to rid himself of this ravener. Flipping open the lid of the stove, he reached in with his bare hand, pulled out a handful of red-hot coals and hurled them into the basket. Then he pushed head and shoulders through the rope ladder and hung on for dear life.

The coals scattered. One landed on the creature's snout. Flame burst out in all directions. The nylatl let out the most hideous scream and raced around the basket, flame following it to every drop of spilled spirit. Nish's hand began to burn and there was worse to come. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and waited.

The blazing nylatl ran full tilt into the half-empty flask of tar spirit. Flame licked it, then bottle, basket and nylatl were blown apart in an explosion that sent flames bursting out in all directions The ladder burned away from below Nish's feet. His trousers caught fire. He beat them out. Nish opened his eyes to see the remains of his nemesis falling in a sheet of flame. It surely had to be the end of it.

The balloon, freed of most of its load, shot upwards, higher than it had been before. There it caught a gale blowing west.

Nish climbed up next to the warmth of the brazier. Tying himself to the ladder, he thrust his hands into his sleeves. The air was numbingly cold, but it eased the pain. It was thin, too. So thin that he could hardly breathe. He closed his eyes.