Gilhaelith thrust the door open. He had been in several times today, but this time, realising that she was half-undressed, he spun on one foot and dashed from the room, shouting orders. Gurteys reappeared, roughly jerking Tiaan's gown over her shoulders. 'You're more trouble than you're worth!' she said between clenched teeth.

'I didn't say a thing,' cried Tiaan, but the healer had gone. Why had Gilhaelith reacted that way?

NINETEEN.

The balloon, carrying no more weight than Nish and the brazier, drifted high and fast. The streaming winds carried it across the Filallor Range, which ran south from the western end of the Great Mountains, separating frigid Mirrilladell from the more equable western lands. The forests of central Lauralin pa.s.sed beneath unseen. Still out of it, Nish drifted north of Booreah Ngurle in the dark, slowly descending. The brazier had gone out hours ago and the air in the balloon was cooling rapidly. The craft skimmed the top of a solitary tree, floating over scrub towards a broad, sluggish river.

As the sun rose, the balloon just cleared a palisade around a vast encampment crowded with the meanest of dwellings, a refugee camp for some of the millions who had fled the fall of the great and wealthy island of Meldorin. From the top of the hill the Sea of Thurkad could barely be seen. It had rained in the night and the bare earth was an ocean of mud. Nish drifted between two decrepit dwellings before his dangling boots struck the earth and the balloon lay on its side, the last air sighing out of it. Its long voyage had ended.

Nish, roused by his impact with the mud, groaned. Though he was half-frozen, his injuries throbbed. Within a minute he was surrounded by people, all dirty, hungry and staring. Paying him no heed, they took the balloon and brazier apart with ruthless efficiency. In ten minutes every sc.r.a.p had disappeared, even the scorched rope ladder he had tied himself to. They went through his pockets, removing everything but the lint. The coat vanished from his back but they left him the rest of his clothes. Then the crowd evaporated.

He sat up, still dazed. He had no idea where he was, though it was not cold enough to be Mirrilladell. The place stank of sour water and human waste.

Someone shouted. Drums rattled. He was about to call for help when a small figure came flying out from behind the nearest hut.

'Quick!' hissed a young voice. It was a boy of eleven or twelve, a skinny lad. He used the common tongue of the west, in which Nish had become fluent during his days as a merchant's scribe. 'Guards coming.'

'That's just as well,' said Nish. 'I've been robbed and I '

'Come on!' The boy hauled him by the hand. 'If they find you, they'll beat you senseless.'

'But I don't come from here,' Nish began. Prudence overcame outrage. He staggered after the boy, around the corner, down between the rows and into a sodden s.p.a.ce underneath one of the huts. It was barely high enough to crawl through. When he was well inside, the boy shoved a rotting piece of timber against the entry.

'Shh!' he said.

'But ' Nish began.

'Wait!'

Nish peered through the crack. The rattle of drums came closer and shortly a squad of guards pa.s.sed by. Two of them kicked open the door of a hut and stormed inside. Dragging an elderly man from the hovel, they began beating him about the back and body with their sticks. 'Get to work, you lazy swine! No work, no eat!'

The other soldier made a mark on his slate. They proceeded to the next hut, and the one after, all the way down the line. The old man reeled off in the other direction.

'What is this place?' Nish asked. It was all too much to take in.

'It's supposed to be a refugee camp,' said the boy. 'It's really a slave city. We work fourteen hours a day, every day of the week, and all we get for it is pig swill.' The boy seemed older than his years. No doubt kids grew up quickly here, those that survived.

A hundred questions swirled in his head but Nish was too dazed to ask them. 'My name is Cryl-Nish Hlar, son of Jal-Nish Hlar. He is the perquisitor for Einunar.' It could not hurt to establish that at the beginning.

'A perquisitor!' whispered the boy.

'I'm just an artificer. I fix weapons, and clankers.'

The boy seemed, if anything, even more impressed. 'Back home, I used to watch the clankers go by. I always wanted to ride up on top with the shooter. Can you get me a ride?'

'I will, when I get out of here. You can call me Nish, if you like.' He held out his hand, forgetting the burn.

'I'm Colm,' said the boy, squeezing hard. A blister popped and Nish winced. 'My home was in Bannador, but I have no home any more.'

'Where's Bannador?' Nish asked.

'Across the sea; in the mountains.'

'What sea?' Nish had no idea where he was.

'The Sea of Thurkad, of course,' the boy said scornfully. 'Don't you know anything?'

'I come from a long way away.'

'Where are you from?'

'Einunar.'

'Never heard of it.'

'It's on the other side of the world. So this camp is near the sea?'

Colm pointed. 'It's only half a league, that way.'

'Are we near a city?' The Sea of Thurkad was long and Nish was desperately trying to find some geographical point to hang on to.

'Nilkerrand is up the coast. Not far.'

'I don't know that place,' he said. 'Can you give me any other names?'

'Nilkerrand is directly across the sea from Thurkad. Surely even you you have heard of it?' have heard of it?'

'Of course I've heard of Thurkad,' said Nish. For millennia it had been the most famous city in the world, the richest, and certainly, to the prudish minds of distant Einunar, the wickedest. 'It fell to the enemy a while back, didn't it?'

'Last autumn. Why were you hanging onto that ... bladder thing?'

'I floated across the Great Mountains on it.'

'Just like that?' Colm asked, incredulously.

'There used to be a basket but I was attacked by a savage beast called a nylatl, the most horrible creature you have ever seen. It's got claws as long as my fingers, and teeth nearly as big. Its spines are poisoned and it squirts venom out through a blue tongue. I set fire to the basket and exploded the beast to bits. It was the only way to survive.'

'Really?' said the boy, in a tone that suggested he did not believe a word of it.

'Yes, really really!' Nish pulled up his trouser leg, showing the savage lacerations to his calf and the teeth marks on either side, which were red, swollen and hot to the touch. 'And see this,' he probed his still-swollen lips with a fingertip, 'that's where it got me with its poison. It was aiming for my eyes.'

Colm was impressed. 'I've never met a real hero. I bet you could fight a lyrinx and win.'

'I bet I couldn't,' said Nish. 'A real hero knows when to fight and when to run.'

'Like everyone here,' sneered Colm. 'The camp is full of cowards. Even my father ran when the lyrinx came.'

'My father didn't,' said Nish, 'but I wish he had. A lyrinx ripped his face open and tore his arm so badly that we had to cut it off.' He clenched his fist, grimaced and examined it in the dim light. There was a blister the width of his palm, and smaller ones along his fingers.

Now Colm was positively awe-stricken. 'Was that where you wiped the venom off?'

'No, that's where I pulled red-hot coals out of the brazier to set fire to the beast.'

Colm went quiet. Nish looked out through the crack but the yard was empty. All he saw was beaten earth and mud. There was not even a weed to be seen. Everything burnable had been burnt, and everything edible, eaten.

'I've been praying for a real hero,' the boy said softly. 'We really need help, Nish. Our home is gone, where we lived for more than a thousand years. We've even lost our Histories, all but what mother and father remember, and they won't talk about it any more. They've given up! I hate them sometimes. Why won't they fight? Will you help us, Nish?'

'I'm on a secret mission,' Nish replied, thinking fast. He needed aid and only this lad, and his parents, could give it. However, the island of Meldorin was swarming with lyrinx, and anyone who went there would be eaten. 'For the scrutator! I'm sorry, Colm. It's the war.'

'Of course,' Colm said dully. 'I understand. Where were you going?'

'I can't tell you that. But there is something you can do for me.'

The boy's eyes were shining. 'But you're a hero.'

'I've lost my balloon, and those thieves stole everything I own. I've got to get out of here and ... do my job.'

'Of course I'll help you. I'll do anything. And in return ...' He caught Nish's eye, a desperately young lad. 'In return, when all this is over, will you help me get back my heritage?'

What could Nish say? 'I give you my word, Colm. When the war is over, I will help you.' He held out his hand. The lad took it and there were tears of grat.i.tude in his eyes. 'But first, I have to get out of this place.'

'The guards won't let anyone go.'

'I'll tell them who I am. That will make them sit up.'

'Do you have papers or a special pa.s.s?'

Nish had nothing. Most of his gear had been lost when the basket burned; the rest stolen the instant he arrived. 'No, but I represent the scrutator.'

'Not ours! They don't like foreigners in this country and the guards have heard every story in the world. They won't listen. They'll just beat you senseless and throw you in the mud. They say we should have been left to the lyrinx.'

'People must come in and out, in a camp this big.'

'Only soldiers. Sometimes they take the young women out, but they don't bring them back. My big sister is hiding.'

Nish could imagine why, all too well. The war was tearing society apart and in places like this the only thing that mattered was power. Getting it and keeping it.

'Perhaps I could dress up as a woman,' Nish said, half-joking.

Colm inspected Nish's swollen face and st.u.r.dy body. 'They wouldn't take you you, Nish.'

I deserved that, Nish thought. 'Could I dig my way out?'

'The soil is only this deep.' Colm spread his fingers. 'And under it, there's rock.'

'What about over the fence?'

'The guards hang the bodies on the spikes. After they've finished with them.'

Nish shivered. His options were rapidly running out. 'Do your mother and father know anyone important?'

'I don't think so,' said the boy. 'I'll take you to meet them when it's dark. It's not safe in daytime. You haven't got a sign.'

'A sign?'

Colm held out his hand. On the back was a red, raised scar of jagged lines, like a jumble of triangles.

'Did the guards do that to you?'

Colm nodded. 'They did it to everyone, even the babies. With quicklime!'

'It must have hurt.'

'It still does, sometimes, and that was six months ago.'

'You've been here six months? six months?'

'Yes, but we lost our home a long time before that. On my ninth birthday.'

'How old are you now, Colm?'

'Twelve and a half. I can join the army when I'm fourteen, if I'm big enough.'

'Don't be in too much of a hurry,' said Nish.

'I'll be signing up on my birthday,' said the boy proudly. 'We have to fight for what is ours, else we may as well lie down and die.'

Nish felt a thousand years old, though he was only twenty. Colm would be sent to the front with minimal training and would probably be dead in a month. The tragedy had been played out a million times and was not going to end until humanity was no more. Well, perhaps what he, Nish, knew might make the difference, if only he could get out of here and find someone in authority.

From not far away came the barking of hounds. Someone screamed. 'Come on!' said Colm. 'They've brought the dogs in. If they catch us, they'll beat us half to death.'

Nish wormed his way out, the boy beside him. 'Where are we going?'

Colm had his head around the corner. 'It's clear. Follow me.'

They ran a zigzag path between the hovels, Nish doing exactly as the boy told him to. Everything stank here. They dropped into a gully running with human waste, leapt the brown stream and continued along the other side. The ground was bare apart from bright-green, slimy strands of algae growing in the flow. Further down, Colm ducked into an embayment where a flood had undercut the bank, leaving a hollow the size of a small barrel.

'This isn't much of a hiding place,' Nish said doubtfully.

Colm dug a chip of stone out of the wall with one finger, tossed it aside and excavated another. 'We'll only be here a minute. Give me your hand.'

Nish held it out. Colm turned the chip of stone around until he had a sharp edge and scored it across the back of Nish's hand.