'Not on my foot, you b.l.o.o.d.y fool!'

'I was just trying to help, surr.'

'Leave it to those who know how.'

Irisis could feel feel the edge of the drop. Her teeth began to chatter. the edge of the drop. Her teeth began to chatter.

One of the soldiers lit a signal lantern. The scrutator held it high, facing across the valley towards the range. He gave a series of flashes, shuttered it completely, then opened it and gave the same sequence again. Irisis could hear the click of the shutter.

'No reply,' he said after a long wait. 'What are the enemy doing?'

'Coming after us,' said Oon-Mie. 'They're nearly within crossbow range.'

'Get your weapons out.'

Swords sc.r.a.ped on scabbards. Someone wound the crank of a crossbow. She felt useless, especially when the enemy were so close that she could hear their claws sc.r.a.ping on the rock. If only she could see. With a crossbow in her hands she'd make them jump.

A crossbow tw.a.n.ged. 'Missed!' the soldier cursed.

'How near do you need to be?' the scrutator said derisively. 'Any closer and you could have picked his nose with it.'

'The light's deceptive, surr.'

'Then hold off until you can see up their nostrils.'

'I don't ever ever want to see up a lyrinx's nostrils,' said Irisis. 'Are any of them fliers, Xervish?' want to see up a lyrinx's nostrils,' said Irisis. 'Are any of them fliers, Xervish?'

'Doesn't look like it, but once it's fully dark they'll come up the sides without us ever seeing them. And then, my friends, it's dinnertime.' He chuckled grimly.

No one else joined in.

'Look out!' Oon-Mie cried. 'They're throwing rocks!'

Someone pulled Irisis down. There was another thud, a man's cry of pain, then someone went off the side. Irisis heard every pulpy impact until he finally came to rest a long way below.

'Who ...?' she said fearfully.

'Jarle,' said Flydd. 'A good man. Don't look, Zoyl.'

The sound of rending and feeding began. Bones crunched; gobbets of flesh were swallowed noisily. 'Poor devil,' said Oon-Mie.

'At least he was dead first,' said Flydd heavily. 'Stay down. They'll try again.'

FORTY-FIVE.

It 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociates, 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 c.r.a.pping 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 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 we'll be the dead ones.' 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.