fault escarpments on either side, dotted with fuming volcanoes and boggy geyser country. Complex lines of nodes ran along the rift valley and the area had proven troublesome to map, but now, almost a week later than Tiaan had expected, the first rough chart was finished.
Malien was flying across Warde Yallock, the longest and deepest of all the lakes, and the cradle of civilisation on Santhenar. ‘Let’s set down there, by the water. I’m so weary of flying.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Tiaan. ‘You’ve been doing it for months with hardly a break.’
Malien headed towards an open area on the western side of the lake, landing at the top of a long green slope that ran to the water’s edge. Patches of forest spread over the hills behind them like dark green eiderdowns. Beyond the lake, twinned volcanoes smoked. They strolled out to the edge and Tiaan bathed while Malien kept watch. The water was surprisingly warm for the season. Afterwards Tiaan dried her hair in the sun and Malien swam out until she was just a dot in the distance.
They had lunch in mid-afternoon, in the shade of the thapter. They could see all the way across the lake, where the setting sun illuminated tall cliffs of red stone.
‘It’s peaceful here,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’m so sick of the war.’
‘You’ve never known anything else.’
‘It must seem like the blink of an eye to you.’
Malien laughed aloud. ‘Not even in my advanced years could I consider one hundred and fifty years to be the blink of an eye. But it has been a bad time, the worst I can remember, though my people have scarcely been involved in the war. We leave the lyrinx alone and they don’t trouble us.’
‘What was it like, in olden times? Was it as good as the tales say?’
‘No, nor as bad, in my lifetime, anyway. There was peace, of a sort, before the Forbidding was broken and everything changed. Oh, there were always little wars going on somewhere, but few people were affected by them. Most lived their lives without ever seeing an army, save during a ceremonial march. But the big difference was the freedom.’
‘How do you mean?’ Tiaan had never known freedom before leaving the manufactory, and could not imagine it. The Council organised every aspect of people’s brief lives from the moment they were born until their untimely deaths.
‘Well, people were free to move to another place or another country, if they wished to. They might not have been welcomed, but there was no law to stop them. They could do whatever kind of work they could make a living at. There were no examinations and no Council of Scrutators telling everyone what to do.’
‘And no breeding factories,’ said Tiaan.
‘Certainly not! Women could choose to have children, or not. It wasn’t a crime to prevent conception then.’
That reminded Tiaan of a puzzle she’d often thought about. ‘When I was held in the breeding factory, I saw something that I’ve wondered about ever since.’
‘What was it?’ Malien lay on the grass and closed her eyes. ‘Can you keep an eye out, in case I doze off?’
Tiaan climbed onto the shooter’s platform and scanned the country. There was no living creature in sight. She sat beside Malien again.
‘I don’t know who my father is and Marnie wouldn’t tell me. But one time in the Matron’s office I happened to see a book – the bloodline register for the breeding factory at Tiksi.’
‘Bloodline register?’
‘Yes. It was like a human stud book.’
‘You old humans are obsessed about your family Histories. The breeding factory would have to have records of the parents.’
‘But it was what was in the records,’ said Tiaan. ‘The talents of the parents …’
Malien yawned. ‘You should ask Flydd about that. I’ve never understood why old humans do the things they do. I suppose we’d better find a place to hide for the night. I’m too tired to fly all the way to Borgistry.’
In the morning they flew due south over the unending expanse of northern Worm Wood, and in the early afternoon Tiaan saw a cluster of volcanoes in the distance.
‘There’s a place I’ve not properly surveyed,’ she said. ‘Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain.’ It stood at least a thousand spans higher than the other volcanoes in the cluster and was belching dark grey clouds of ash.
‘We might as well have a quick look at it on the way to Lybing.’
Before they reached the lowest of the peaks, as they were flying across dense