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 bloody 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 rehearsed 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 scrap 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 bloody nonsense is this? Explain yourself, artificer.’

Nish felt his life hanging by a thread. ‘A noble 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 Malien, from the 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 earmuffs 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 constituted 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.