the fire before sitting down again. ‘The plan is coming together. First we must train artificers to fix those constructs that aren’t too badly damaged, and pilots to fly them. That’s going to take a long time. Meanwhile, we’ll need enough air-floaters to carry everyone to Snizort. Cryl-Nish, you will command this operation.’
‘I don’t see how it can be done in time,’ said Nish.
‘You’ll have to find a way – we’ve got to have the thapters before spring.’
‘It takes time to train people.’
‘It has to be done, Nish, and you’ve got to do it.’
Nish gritted his teeth. ‘If I had a year and a hundred people I couldn’t do it all,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t just wave a magic wand like some people. I have to do real work.’ Irisis squeezed his arm, warningly. Yggur was glaring down his long nose at him. Nish buried his face in his goblet.
‘That’s only the first stage,’ Yggur said coldly, ‘but everything else relies on it. Coming back to my first point, of finding a way to talk to our distant allies and our scattered forces, there’s this.’
Yggur withdrew a glass globe, the size of a grapefruit, from a leather case at his side. He held it up. ‘Some of you may have seen it before. Fusshte stole it from Fiz Gorgo and it was the first treasure I went looking for in Nennifer. It’s one of the few surviving farspeaker globes of Golias the Mad.’ Flydd cleared his throat. Yggur continued. ‘Or if not, it’s closely based on his original. It doesn’t work, unfortunately. The secret was lost with Golias’s death.’
He glanced briefly at Nish. ‘I plan to rediscover Golias’s secret and, once I have, our skilled artisans will craft as many globes as we need. You may give one to each of our allies, Flydd. Such a gift, and the hope of greater ones, will do more to unite us than all the former Council’s threats and punishments.’
‘Many have sought Golias’s secret,’ said Flydd, ‘but none have succeeded.’
‘But they worked as individuals for their own greed or glory, sharing neither their discoveries nor their failures. For us, it’s our very survival. And around this campfire, Flydd, are people whose grasp of the Art is as great as any who have ever lived.’
‘I thought you said you were going to do it,’ Flydd said.
‘It’s my task,’ said Yggur, ‘but I plan to call upon everyone here. Everyone with a talent for the Art, I mean. We now have the greatest secrets and Arts of the Council, and they’d made many breakthroughs the world was never told about. If we can work as a team, and we must, together we will be greater than the greatest individual. We must crack Golias’s globe. We cannot win the war without it; not even with a hundred thapters.’
‘The Council didn’t believe the war could be won at all,’ said Klarm.
‘I do,’ said Flydd. ‘Is that your entire plan, Yggur? You haven’t given me much to do. Or Malien. Or Klarm, for that matter.’
‘Klarm will be poring over the Council’s Arts and devices. Malien … can speak for herself.’
‘I expect I’ll be at the controls of the thapter most of the time,’ said Malien.
‘You’re the head of the new council, Flydd. You must lead our embassy-at-large,’ Yggur went on, ‘since you know everyone in the east. While the air-floaters and thapter controllers are being built, and their pilots and artificers trained, you’ll need to fly east and north to rally our allies.’ Yggur looked around the fire. ‘That’s my plan.’
‘It’s a good start,’ said Flydd, ‘but we must also plan the second stage. The lyrinx have had it far too easy in the past. They’ve attacked and we’ve defended; and lost. The Council’s response has always been predictable, so we’ve got to be unpredictable. I want to mount a surprise attack on the enemy in early spring, before they’re ready to fight. I want to shock them; to make them worry about what we’ll do next and how strong we really are.’
‘Good idea. Incidentally,’ Yggur said casually, ‘Tiaan, I believe you attempted to map fields from the air, in the east.’
Tiaan, who was staring blankly at the fire, came out of her introspection with a start. ‘I – I spent a long time at it, surr. I’ve mapped the fields north and south from Stassor for a hundred and forty leagues, east to the sea and west for another eighty leagues – perhaps a tenth of Lauralin.