Flydd waited for him to go on.

'The node at Snizort appears to be weakening,' said Ghorr.

'Snizort has one of the greatest of all nodes. That doesn't make any sense.'

'Unless they are drawing more from the field than the node can replenish. If so, what are they doing there? Nothing to our advantage, you can be sure.'

'Or they may have a node-drainer in place,' said Flydd.

'Why would they drain their own node?'

'To siphon power directly, for other purposes. Snizort is known to be a centre for flesh-forming. Perhaps they're flesh-forming an army there.'

'We may suppose any outlandish idea at all, but it won't help us to win the war. We've been planning this a.s.sault for months. It was to be the greatest battle of the war, but without a secure field to drive our clankers we dare not move. We've discussed this and ...'

'You want me to go there?' said Flydd. He did not look surprised.

'As soon as the buoyant air in your floater can be replenished. You will take charge and find out what is happening at the node. Base yourself at Gospett. We have people there. Halie will give you the details. Your main task, which is more vital than all others, will be to make contact with Vithis and bring the Aachim into the war on our side.'

Flydd nodded. 'At any cost?'

After a long silence, with Ghorr consulting his colleagues, he said, 'Yes, at any cost, if there is no other option. You must use your discretion. Don't give up our '

'I will give away nothing but what it takes to secure the alliance,' said Flydd. 'What else do you require of me?'

'One more task,' said Ghorr. 'If the enemy have have put a node-drainer in place ...' put a node-drainer in place ...'

'Yes?'

'Find it, and destroy it.'

Five simple words, so easy to say, but they were his death sentence. No human could get into such a heavily guarded place Ghorr knew that as well as he did. It was Ghorr's revenge, and it was perfect. Destroying the node-drainer was vital to the war and the chief scrutator had given a direct order. Flydd could not refuse.

He looked into Ghorr's eyes. The man hoped he would would refuse, so he could dismiss him as a scrutator. A death sentence either way. Flydd was not going to give him the satisfaction. refuse, so he could dismiss him as a scrutator. A death sentence either way. Flydd was not going to give him the satisfaction.

'If I destroy the node-drainer, if if there is one, they will simply replace it.' there is one, they will simply replace it.'

'If they were easy to make, the lyrinx would have dealt with every node on the planet by now. Since they've only attacked five or six, we must a.s.sume that's all the devices they have.'

'a.s.sumptions are perilous things,' said Flydd.

'Destroy it!' said Ghorr.

'That may be ... difficult difficult.'

'I'm sure it will be, but we all have our duty to do and it is frequently difficult. If you are having second thoughts; if you don't have the courage '

Flydd's eyes met those of Irisis. She read nothing there.

'No,' he said. 'I will take it on, surr surr.'

Ghorr smiled for the first time. Prominent teeth gave him the look of a hyena. 'Good. We'll have dinner inside, brief you fully and then it will be time for you to go. But not you, Irisis. You and Ullii will stay behind.' His smile broadened. 'There is much you two can teach us.'

Ullii gave a terrified squawk and scuttled under Irisis's arm.

FIFTY-ONE.

The seeker had been escorted to her own room, away down the other end of Nennifer from Irisis's. It was a cold, shabby little place, suited only for the lowest of servants. That did not bother Ullii, for she took no account of her surroundings. It had a door that kept the sound out, and that was all she cared about. It allowed her to take off the earm.u.f.fs she wore everywhere. They were as comfortable as human ingenuity could make them, but still irritated her.

Ullii undressed and washed in a bucket of cold water. She rinsed her spider-silk undergarments, carefully spread a clean set on the bed and lay down on them. She could not bear anything else against her skin. Closing her eyes, she retreated to the security of her mental lattice, a matrix in which she tried to fit all the world within range of her strange talent.

Security would not come. Nennifer was not a pleasant place. It had whole floors of mancers, artisans, artificers and other craft workers, all labouring on devices for spying, control, domination or war. They created such aggressive knots in her lattice that Ullii had to build walls around them, for her own sanity.

And now the scrutator was being sent away. Despite the grudge she held against Flydd for forcing her to search for crystal, months ago, Ullii relied on him. He had been a friend, before he was mean to her. He was still her protector and treated her more kindly than anyone ever had, except her beloved Nish. But Nish was lost and now the scrutator was going away. She relied on Irisis too, but Irisis was being held by wicked Scrutator Ghorr, who was surely going to do something dreadful to her. Who would look after Ullii then?

Who had ever looked after her? In all her previous life, only old Mancer Flammas, who had put her in his dungeon and forgotten all about her. She still thought kindly of him for that. In the cool dark she had found peace from the noise, the sight and smell of humanity, not to mention the world that had so tormented her. In his dungeon no one had troubled her. They gave her food and drink, hosed out her cell at intervals, and left her be.

But that had changed one day when she was sixteen. She had disturbed something unpleasant in her lattice, began to scream and Flammas remembered her. Jal-Nish Hlar took her away and the nightmare of the world resumed. He had treated her kindly at first, though only because he wanted to use her talent. She knew what he was really like. She could read read the knot he made in her lattice all too clearly. the knot he made in her lattice all too clearly.

Ullii's thoughts went back to the years before Flammas's dungeon: that terrible time, beginning just before she was four, when something had woken her hypersensitivity. Life had become such a nightmare that her family, unable to understand what the matter was, or beat it out of her, had cast Ullii out.

She had always avoided thinking about that time. Ullii had blanked it out. Her family had rejected her. And even before that that she had been abandoned ... she had been abandoned ...

Ullii drifted into sleep, still thinking about her childhood. She had been happy once, when she was young, but a family crisis had swept it away. She did not know what the crisis had been about, only the consequences. It had been just before her fourth birthday. One day her beloved twin brother, Myllii, had been there. The next day he, and her father, had gone. She never saw either of them again. She missed her father, but words could not describe the loss of Myllii. It was like having a limb torn off.

A week later, an irritating inflammation of the skin had covered her whole body. She screamed with the torment, fell ill, sank into a coma and lay near death for a fortnight. Ullii came out of it unable to talk or walk. Everything had to be learned again. Before she recovered, the sensitivity began to appear. She remembered that with jewel-like clarity. It had begun with loud voices. Everyone seemed to be shouting all the time, and the shouting grew louder and louder until it hurt her. Every time someone spoke, she screamed. Her mother beat her, her brothers and sisters and aunts shouted at her, but she only screamed louder.

Then her sense of touch grew monstrously. Her clothes rasped against her sensitised skin and she took to tearing them off. Her mother and aunts beat her for that too, for they could not understand. The beatings made no difference. They were preferable to the coa.r.s.e fabric against her skin.

Taste was the next sense to swell out of proportion. The pickled fish and smoked meats the family lived on became unbearable to Ullii. She could eat nothing but fruit and raw vegetables, gruel and an occasional piece of raw fish or flavourless baby lamb.

Her sense of smell attacked her. The odour of people, even those who bathed frequently, became revolting. Her family were not frequent bathers; it was not the custom in the cold land they came from. Though she craved to be held, Ullii could not bear to sit on her mother's lap.

Last and worst was sight. First she could not stand to go outside. The bright sun burned her eyes, the light hurt her sensitive skin. Then she could not be in a lighted room. She began to spend the days in the dark under her bed. Her mother and aunts beat her. Ullii screamed and screamed, and would not stop. The whole world was a torment.

She had wept for Myllii and begged her mother to bring him back, but Myllii had been taken far away and no one knew where he was. Ullii went mad with screaming and her mother and aunts, unable to bear it any longer, eventually put her out the door.

Now she dreamed about her brother, not as a child of four but as the young man Myllii must be, nearly eighteen. She saw him in her dreams and he looked just like her, though his colourless hair was shorter, cut straight across just above his ears. He was a hand's breadth taller than she, with broader shoulders and narrower hips, but his beardless face was like her reflection in the mirror.

Myllii, she sighed, knowing it was just a dream. She could never find him, no matter how she had tried. When first she began to develop her lattice, in Flammas's dungeon, it had been in order to search for Myllii. She would have recognised his knot instantly, but had never seen it. Many times since then she had looked for him, but he was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps he had no talent, though she could not believe that. Her brother and herself had been like two sides of a coin, equal but opposite. Neither had been complete without the other.

She would would not believe he was dead, for if he was, she must die as well. She could not live knowing that he was gone forever. Most likely he was just too far away, beyond reach of her lattice. She could still hope. She could still search. not believe he was dead, for if he was, she must die as well. She could not live knowing that he was gone forever. Most likely he was just too far away, beyond reach of her lattice. She could still hope. She could still search.

The lattice had been her comfort for so long that sometimes she forgot it was there. She had not looked deeply into it for days, not since leaving the manufactory in the air-floater. Now, in her dreams, Ullii did.

The lattice here was profoundly different from the one she was used to. It was almost unfamiliar, being dominated by the geomantic forces that had created the enormous mountains all around, and the sunken land to the north. So much in it was strange that it would take days, even weeks, for her to make sense of it all.

And then there was the might and magic of Nennifer itself, a place dedicated to scrutator magic. Everywhere she looked, Ullii saw the dark knots that signified magical artefacts, devices and implements of war, spying and torment, and the differently shaped knots that represented mancers and other pract.i.tioners of the Art. They frightened her. Ullii had suffered at the hands of such people before.

In the maze of knots, lines and other markings, Ullii knew it could take days to find Myllii. She began at once. All through that night she sought him in her dreams, and every minute of the following day. That evening she went to bed early. It was easier to look for him asleep than waking.

Myllii?

Ullii, where have you been? I've been looking for you.

I'm lost without you, Myllii. Ah, Myllii, I nearly died when you were taken away from me.

And so did I. I wept for years.

She did not allow herself to speak, just drew comfort from his existence. Time floated. She felt deliriously happy.

Are you like me, Myllii? Can you go out in the sun, unprotected?

Of course. Can't you?

She felt strangely let down. She wanted them to be alike in everything, even suffering. Especially suffering. She told him how much she had suffered.

Ullii, he said. If only I had been there. If If only I had been there. If...

She lost him. Ullii spent the rest of the night searching the lattice but found no trace of Myllii. Perhaps it had just been a dream.

Flydd was delayed and delayed again, though he would not say what the problem was. All Irisis learned was that something was being hastily prepared for him to take to Gospett and it was taking longer than expected to complete.

She was questioned repeatedly about the way she had killed the unnamed mancer on the aqueduct. She had always known that she had done something unusual that day, but not how unusual. With all her other nightmares, she had not spent much time thinking about that one.

'I've gone over it twenty times already,' she said tiredly on the second night. She was walking out the front of Nennifer, along the edge of the pavement with Flydd. 'There's nothing more I can tell them. Why do they keep on about it?'

'Because you did something that has not been done before,' said Flydd, 'and it tips the balance against all mancers. They, we we, have always seen ourselves as being at the top of the pile. Not invulnerable, certainly, but well protected. If we can be bested at our Art by a mere artisan, a wretched craft worker, it turns our lives upside down. What if the enemy learned to do what you have done? No querist, perquisitor or even scrutator would be safe.'

'Unlikely, since the lyrinx cannot use our Arts.'

'Should they have learned to, they would certainly want us to think they were still incapable. Besides, the lyrinx are adept at finding new ways of doing things.'

'I still don't see why it's such a problem.'

'The Council must also look to a future when they have won the war and their power may be under challenge. They must protect themselves. That means discovering exactly what you did, then making sure that you can't teach anyone else.'

She spun around to face him. 'What?'

'They're not planning to let you leave here alive, Irisis, though they'll wait till I've gone to do the deed. They can't afford to let you live. Keep walking. They may be watching us.'

'What are you going to do about it?'

'I don't know that I can do anything. As soon as everything is ready, I've got to go. I have no choice in the matter.'

After their escape, and getting her sight back, she had allowed herself to enjoy life from day to day, without thinking about the future. She had thought she was safe, under Flydd's protection. Poor fool.

'They're going to kill kill me?' me?'

'They may not,' he said conversationally. 'You can't get away. There's only one path out of here and it's heavily guarded. They have a need for artisans and you're one of the best. And they may want to explore your unexpected talent.'

How could he be so casual? 'They must know that a question mark lies over my abilities. As soon as they discover how I overcame the mancer, they'll have no further use for me.'

'Then you must maintain the secret as long as possible.'

'I've already told them everything.'

'But they haven't been able to reproduce it, so they're sure you're keeping something back. Use it.'

'Look what they did to you, when you did that.'

He rubbed a scarred arm. 'Keeping secrets wasn't my failing. It was probing into their their secrets.' secrets.'

She couldn't take any more. 'I don't feel that you're being very helpful, Xervish! I feel that you've abandoned me already.'

'I'm under orders. I have to go to Gospett without delay.'

'You've disobeyed Council orders before.'

'If we lose this battle, we lose the west. You mean a lot to me, Irisis, but as I've told you many times, if it ever came to a choice between you and the greater good, I would make that choice. Now I've been put to it. How can I place you above the fate of the world?'

'You don't have to look so pleased about it,' she said.

'Don't be ridiculous. They're watching me every minute of the day, just waiting for me to make one wrong move. Look, Irisis, I'm '

'Oh, go away!' she snapped. 'Do your precious duty. I always knew you were a true scrutator scrutator.'

Flydd's normally expressionless face changed. His eyes narrowed to dark crescents beneath that overhanging brow. 'And so I am.' With a mocking bow, he turned swiftly away to the bastion of Nennifer.

Irisis continued along the rim. This was the most extraordinary country she had ever been in. Behind Nennifer the mountains marched in ranks as far as she could see, and they were mighty peaks, far greater than the mountains near the manufactory. There was little snow on their steep flanks, though, and the lower slopes of the mountains were brown, arid smears.

Before her, below the escarpment, lay the vast sunken land of Kalithras the Desolation Sink. It was bounded all around by escarpments like this one, and many rivers ran into it. None ran out, for the land lay below the level of the distant sea. It was as dry a h.e.l.l-hole as she had seen.

She sat down near the edge, looking over. Her life had to end sometime. And perhaps Flydd was right: there was always the possibility that they would keep her alive. Nennifer must have thousands of workers. After all, she did have other talents.

Flydd met Irisis at dinner that night. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'They're spying on me. I can't do anything for you.'

'Thanks.' She took up her bowl and moved to a table on the far side of the room. She thought she saw hurt in his eyes. Too bad. He'd get over it. And her. He was a scrutator after all, a lying, scheming, cheating manipulator who would do anything, and use anyone, to get what he wanted.

Irisis could normally enjoy eating no matter what her mood, and the food at Nennifer was very good, but she soon pushed the bowl away. She could not taste a thing.