Yggur put his head in his hands when his messengers came back with the news. ‘I can only assume that he is heading back to Alcifer.’

‘To do what?’ said Nish.

‘Betray us to the lyrinx?’

‘Well, it’s out of our hands. What happens now? There was a plan …’

‘To attack Nennifer and overthrow the scrutators?’ said Yggur.

‘Yes,’ said Nish. ‘Has Gilhaelith betrayed that as well?’

‘Ghorr gave no sign that he knew, and it would have been included in the charges against us had Ghorr known of it. But …’

‘The longer we delay, the more likely it is that the Council will learn of it,’ said Irisis.

‘Flydd was the key to the attack,’ said Yggur. ‘It’s going to take time for him to recover … if, indeed, he does.’

‘Do you mean …’ Irisis began.

‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll live, but the damage goes deeper than that. I hardly dare mount the attack without him, though I’m equally reluctant to wait until he recovers.’

‘Either way it’s going to be a bigger gamble than the one we’ve just been through, and less likely to succeed,’ said Irisis. ‘But let’s worry about that tomorrow. I’m going to cook a victory dinner.’

‘Better to call it a survival dinner,’ said Yggur. ‘I’m not yet sure that we’ve had a victory.’

‘Coming, Nish?’ said Irisis, taking him by the arm.

‘I’m not really in the mood just now,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly she understood and gave him a quick hug. ‘All right then. I’ll see you later.’

Nish watched her go, not sure whether to pray for Flydd’s quick recovery or to hope that his convalescence would be a lengthy one. Then he went outside to walk along the track that ran around the edge of the swamp forest. He had to think through the loss of Ullii, not to mention the son he’d never known, and never would. And then, find a suitable place to lay Ullii to rest. A quiet, pretty spot, as far from grim Fiz Gorgo as he could carry her.

EIGHTEEN

Gilhaelith shaded his eyes from the setting sun as he tried to make out the port, which had served Alcifer long ago, among the dense forest covering the shore. Could that blocky shape down to the left be it? He adjusted the sail of the dinghy, and then the tiller a fraction. Surely it had to be.

His escape from Fiz Gorgo had been uneventful, as had his trip up the west coast of Meldorin, east through the passage between Meldorin and Qwale and south again halfway down the Sea of Thurkad. It had taken longer than it would have done to walk from Fiz Gorgo across the width of Meldorin, but at least it had been safe. The lyrinx rarely attacked ships on the open sea, while anyone foolish enough to pass through the swamps of Orist into enemy lands would have been killed and eaten on sight. Gilhaelith had taken to the dinghy just that morning, for the ship’s captain had refused to go within a league of the fabled, haunted city, much less the lyrinx’s underground labyrinth of Oellyll, delved into the living rock beneath Alcifer and home to at least seventy thousand of the enemy.

Besides, Gilhaelith could not have walked across Meldorin to save his life. He hadn’t regained the strength he’d taken for granted in the hundred years and more he’d dwelt at beautiful Nyriandiol, and perhaps never would. Every stone of that great edifice had been chosen for its geomantic properties. Each had been shaped and placed so as to enhance the natural magic of the mountaintop, and to support him in his life’s endeavour – to understand the nature of the world and the forces that made it so. Without Nyriandiol, Gilhaelith was not a shadow of the master geomancer he’d been while he dwelt there.

He still yearned to complete his life’s endeavour, though Gilhaelith now doubted that he ever would. While trapped in sticky tar deep in the black pit of Snizort last summer, as the node had been about to explode, he’d done the only thing he could to save himself. He’d created a phantom, mathemantical crystal in his mind and used it to draw the power he’d needed to escape. He’d managed to drag himself to safety but in doing so the crystal had burst asunder, spearing its fragments through his brain and damaging part of it. The injury had further reduced his capacity for geomancy. What once had been effortless he now did only with the most prodigious labour, while some things he could not do at all.

But that had not been the worst of the damage. The phantom crystal fragments remained and whenever he drew power, even for the most trivial purpose, they burned more of his brain. Gilhaelith was faced with the worst of all choices. He could hope to prolong his life by never drawing power again, though without practising his Art, his life would be meaningless. Or he could attempt, by geomantic means, to locate and unmake every fragment of the phantom crystal. There lay his only hope of restoring himself to the greatness he’d once had, or at least to what shadow of it he could regain.

In that endeavour he’d spent his previous months at Alcifer refashioning his geomantic globe. He’d made it into the most perfect representation of Santhenar he could create, its lands, seas, mountains, rivers and icecaps, even down to the nodes themselves. It would give him the focus he needed to repair himself, though the work had done him more damage, of course. He’d completed it little more than a month ago, an unparalleled, agonising labour and, in the circumstances, a phenomenal work of genius. But then Matriarch Gyrull had sent him outside to take measurements of the field for her.

In reality she’d used him as an unwitting decoy to try to capture Tiaan and the thapter, and had almost succeeded. Instead, Tiaan had captured Gilhaelith and taken him to Fiz Gorgo. Without the geomantic globe, his agony had been complete and his death, or descent into irreparable brain damage, certain.

Unable to face that prospect, Gilhaelith had single-mindedly set out to get back to Alcifer, unwittingly betraying Fiz Gorgo to Ghorr in the process. He didn’t want to think about that.

He adjusted the sail again, taking advantage of an easterly wind-shift to speed towards the scrub-covered oblong that was undoubtedly the end of one of the breakwaters of the port. What would happen now? Even if he recovered his geomantic globe, using it to find and unmake those crystal fragments risked destroying his mind completely. He could scarcely bear the thought of his greatness reduced to a mindless, drooling vegetable – lyrinx fodder. Assuming that the lyrinx would allow him access to the globe at all. Matriarch Gyrull had been spying on him all the time he’d worked on the globe and had probably seized it in his absence. If she didn’t need him any more, he’d be sent to the slaughtering pens.

The thought checked him for a moment, for Gilhaelith had a horror of being eaten. It wasn’t right that a man so great as he could come to such an undignified end. Dare he go on, confronting such a fate? He took the numbers, to see what kind of omens there were for this choice. The once effortless calculations were now a great strain but the omens proved to be neither good nor bad. It was up to him to tilt fate one way or the other. He would go on. He would risk all to get back what he had lost, no matter what the consequences.

Gilhaelith brought the dinghy in to the eroded stone jetty and tied the painter to a gnarled root that had forced the stones apart. After heaving his canvas holdall up onto the barnacle-covered stone, he pulled himself after it, and froze.

Four lyrinx stood there, back against the shrubbery so that they had been out of sight from below. He recognised three of them: a young wingless male called Ryll; Liett, a young female with outer skin that was quite unarmoured and colourless, so that he could see the purple blood flowing beneath it; and Matriarch Gyrull, big and old with pouched eyes, battle-scarred armour and segments missing from her crest. And, further back, almost concealed by the shadows, the biggest lyrinx Gilhaelith had ever seen – a vast coal-black male with a golden crest. He was one and a half times Gilhaelith’s own majestic height, and probably five or six times his bulk. His folded wings drooped as though he was tired, though the lyrinx held himself erect and his golden eyes seemed to miss nothing.