forest, Tiaan looked up from her map. ‘That’s funny!’
‘What?’
‘There’s a strong node here but the field is really tenuous.’ She peered over the side but saw only the same untracked forest they had been crossing for hours. It was getting dark.
‘Fields fluctuate,’ said Malien.
‘Not as much as this.’
‘We can go back and forth if you want to take a closer look.’
‘No.’ Tiaan felt uneasy without knowing why. ‘We’re supposed to be heading for Borgistry.’
‘There’s time. Yggur said they wouldn’t be fighting for a few days yet.’
‘In that case, go on to Booreah Ngurle. It has a double node that I’m interested in.’
Malien flew around the peak, then back and forth across it, to either side of the ash clouds.
‘All finished, Tiaan?’
‘Um, can we go back to that weak field now? I want to take another look.’
They flew north on the same track as they had taken south. Two small chains of hills ran to their left. The area that interested Tiaan lay a little to the east of them. ‘Now turn around and go back.’
‘Again?’ said Malien when they had returned to their starting point.
‘No! Just keep going. I’ve got to think.’
‘Perhaps if you were to think aloud …’
‘Sorry, Malien. The fields down there are all wrong. The nodes are strong ones but their fields are just points.’
‘Meaning that something has almost drained them dry?’
‘Exactly,’ said Tiaan. ‘But why would the enemy put node-drainers in the middle of trackless forest. We’d never fight in such a place. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘How many fields have shrunk?’
‘All of them, over an area of forest ten leagues square.’
‘All of them?’ Malien stared at her. ‘It would take an army of lyrinx flying over the forest to drain that much from the field.’
‘And there aren’t any fliers in sight.’
‘An army moving through the forest then?’
‘They don’t use the field when they’re marching. Unless …’
‘Unless they’re travelling under a vast concealment,’ said Malien, ‘even greater than the one that stone-formed thirty thousand of them into the pinnacles above Gumby Marth. And it would have to be much greater to conceal an army on the march. We’d better get back. Whatever Flydd’s expecting, I’m sure it’s not an attack from the north, between Booreah Ngurle and the Peaks of Borg.’
‘They must have done a forced march all the way from Strebbit, to have got here so quickly.’ Tiaan measured distances on the map. ‘They’re only twenty-five leagues from Borgistry and lyrinx march faster than soldiers. They could do it in a couple of days, even through the forest.’
‘Try the farspeaker again.’
Tiaan did so, but heard nothing except a shrill whistling. ‘What are we going to do?’
Malien jerked the thapter around in mid-air. ‘We’re going to Lybing.’
They arrived over the city at the darkest hour of the night. ‘Do you know where to go?’ said Tiaan as they approached.
‘I haven’t been to Lybing in a couple of hundred years.’
‘I’ve never been here.’
‘There’s the Great North Road,’ said Malien. ‘I’ll set down at the northern gate.’
The terrified guards did not know whether to fire their crossbows or run screaming as the thapter whined into the pool of light outside the gates.
‘Hoy!’ roared Malien. ‘The enemy is nigh. Where can we find the governor?’
The guards each pointed in a different direction.
‘General Troist?’ said Malien. ‘Scrutator Xervish Flydd? Lord Yggur?’
‘The White Palace,’ gasped the guard. ‘Where the three waters join. If you run that way –’
‘Run,’ said Malien. ‘At my age?’
The thapter screamed and shot off, directly over the gates. They landed hard on the manicured lawn outside the front door of the White Palace, skidding on the dewy surface and carving out a streak of crumpled turf three or four spans long. Tiaan gathered her maps and threw herself over the side, Malien following just a little less hastily.
Tiaan pounded on the bronze-studded doors with her free hand. A sleepy guard opened the left-hand one.
‘Where is Scrutator Flydd? Or Lord Yggur?’ Malien rapped out.
‘Inside,’ said the guard, ‘but they’ll be sleeping now.’
‘I am Malien!’ she said briskly. ‘Matah of the Aachim. My name is written in the Great Tales.’
He took a step backwards, calling out to his fellows.
‘The enemy is almost upon us,’ said Malien. ‘Let us in at once.’
No one else could have done it, but such was her authority that the guard did allow them through. ‘Take the stairs straight ahead. Turn left down the corridor. The scrutator’s door is at the end.’
‘Thank you,’ said Malien.
Tiaan ran. Her back was troubling her and her legs felt weak,