‘I will defend Ryll!’

Her words exploded into the silence. Every head jerked up, except one. Ryll’s sank to his ankles. ‘No!’ he groaned.

Had she shamed him? It seemed so, from the malicious stares of the other lyrinx. One even laughed, or so she interpreted the braying sound. But to be neutered – how could he suffer that? It did not occur to Tiaan that it might be a blessed relief, an honourable way out.

‘Very well,’ said Coeland, ‘defend your hero, human.’

Tiaan took a deep breath. Ryll let out another groan but it was too late. The order had been given.

‘Had Ryll stayed behind I would have died and my crystal would have been lost, for I could not have caught Besant’s flier.’ She explained the details of the escape. ‘Had Ryll not jumped, carrying me, I would have been captured.’

‘He should have harnessed you in and cut himself free!’ thundered the Wise Mother. ‘Besant, the greatest of our clan, lies dying, sacrificed for a wingless travesty.’

‘I could not have flown the wing,’ said Tiaan. ‘My shoulder is dislocated.’ She had to explain the term.

The young female with the transparent skin took off Tiaan’s upper garments and worked the arm. Tiaan gritted her teeth. The lyrinx, with a quick movement that made Tiaan shriek, popped the shoulder back in place. She then put the arm in a leather sling and pulled Tiaan’s shirt over it.

‘Ryll might have done the same,’ Coeland observed.

‘I still would not have been able to use my arm,’ said Tiaan.

‘Pfft!’ Coeland made a dismissive gesture. ‘Such weak creatures.’

‘I could not have flown the wing!’ Tiaan said furiously. ‘And without Ryll giving me the warmth of his body I would have frozen to death. Anyway, had it not been for his foresight and courage you would never have had the amplimet at all.’

Coeland sat up at that and Tiaan was made to tell her whole tale. When it was finished the Wise Mother said, ‘Ryll is cleared of the charge of cowardice, though you should be aware, human, that he would have preferred life as a neuter than to be defended by you! Take him away and attend his injuries.’

FORTY-ONE

Kalissin was a most special node, a place where the latent energies of the earth might conceivably be tapped – if someone was strong enough, and foolhardy enough, to try. Fifty thousand years ago a rock and iron comet from the depths of the void had plunged to ground here, making the planet ring like a gong and blasting up such a cloud of shattered rock that the entire globe had been plunged into darkness. An age of ice followed that had lasted for thirty thousand years.

The remains of the comet had buried itself deep in the crust of Tarralladell. The rocky parts were fused to glass but the iron core formed a deep molten pool that stayed liquid for twenty thousand years until, buoyed by up-seeping gases, it began to rise again. Expanding gas blew the iron into foamy cells that swelled until the mass forced its way to the surface, melted up though the receding ice sheet and set into a solid spire.

Now it made a pinnacle two hundred and sixty spans high, rising out of the island in the centre of the lake that filled the comet’s impact crater. Inside, the pinnacle was like a honeycomb built for giants, a frozen froth of iron. Outside, its upper parts, pointed like a collection of witches’ hats, were streaked red and rusty-brown. Clots of greasy green shattered rock and glass were welded to it here and there. The lower part was enveloped in country rock dragged up with the pinnacle and layers of windblown dust accumulated after the ice disappeared.

The skirts of the pinnacle were clothed in tall trees, quite unlike the spindly pines elsewhere in Tarralladell. Here and there lay steamy pools, ponds of bubbling mud and cracks from which warm water ebbed, coating the rocks in multi-coloured salts. The upper parts of the pinnacle were bare of all but lichen, though being warm in that frigid land they were a favoured nesting site of eagles and many other kinds of bird.

No one came to collect the eggs. Kalissin Spire had been known as a place of evil spirits long before the lyrinx secretly entered it. No humans crossed the uncannily warm waters of the lake. Just to look up told them what a forbidden place it was. The skies of Tarralladell were overcast for half the year but over Kalissin a circle of clear air was often ringed by great storms, and the iron fangs of the spire were struck by lightning more frequently than any other place in that land. The evil ones were recharging their death spears, folktales told, preparing to wreak havoc on the world in their night ridings. And just occasionally, a fisher on the furthest shore of the lake would look up to see winged creatures wheeling and soaring high above, and know it was all true.

Being a creature of the void from which the lyrinx had come, the remains of the comet drew the invaders to it. The crater, and particularly the honeycombed iron peak, were things they knew and understood – part of their own environment, in a way. But it was more than that. Comets are bodies of unimaginably vast energy, and this one had not expended all its potential in its fiery plunge into the ground. The fall, the impact, the melting and the rising of that iron froth had created an instability. The metal shaft which ran deep into the earth was out of equilibrium with its surroundings. That instability, that node, represented a mighty pool of energy waiting to be tapped.

Comets are strange things. Wandering the heavens for billions of years as they do, their matter attains inexplicable properties of great value to practitioners of the Secret Art. Lyrinx who had this ability coveted cometary iron above all things, and Kalissin Spire represented the very acme of their desires. They brought their best and most creative intelligences here, to envelop themselves in the energy fields; to eat, breathe and sleep surrounded by this, to them, most magical of all substances.

Kalissin was their greatest workshop and laboratory. Here the lyrinx in their individual cells went about their urgent project. Clankers had inflicted enormous casualties on them and they were not numerous enough to support such losses. They had to find a defence.

Unfortunately they had not discovered how to tap the power of Kalissin. Just being within the fields helped, but it was not enough. It was frustrating to be surrounded by more power than they could ever use, and not be able to draw on it. They wanted the amplimet; more importantly, to find out how Tiaan used it to take power from the field. All this Tiaan learned, directly or indirectly, in her first days in Kalissin.

A week went by. Tiaan was fully recovered, apart from a tenderness in her shoulder. The lyrinx had not treated her unkindly, and fed her better than she had ever eaten at the manufactory. At first she insisted on being shown the source of her meals, but soon realised that they respected her beliefs and taboos. The lyrinx would no sooner have fed her human flesh than they would have eaten their own dead. Besides, they mostly ate fish from the lake. Tiaan was soon sick of their diet: grilled fish, a kind of soupy algae, and a root vegetable like a pungent turnip. She had the same every day.

She was housed in a cluster of rooms near the top of the pinnacle. Their shape, like iron bubbles, was hard to get used to. The walls were curved, dark metal with streaks of rust. Her bedroom had a circular hole cut through to the exterior for fresh air, and a cap of green volcanic glass to close it when it was frigid outside. She seldom did. The iron conducted heat up from the depths, keeping the whole of Kalissin warm. The hole was too small to squeeze through.

The droning music was less audible here, and higher-pitched, more like a raspy oboe. The lyrinx had bored holes through the outer bubbles to make wind horns. The wind blew constantly around the heights and the horns never stilled their mournful voices.