‘Of course I am. I took the trouble to find out –’
The earth gave another wrenching groan, the building a grinding shudder. Vithis broke off and came around the slot. Taking Nish by the arm, he hauled him all the way up to the spherical room. By that time, Aachim were running everywhere in silent efficiency. Divided they might be over the construction of the Span and the great search, but a crisis instantly united them.
Tirior and Luxor appeared at the door. ‘I see the Art in this,’ Tirior said. She was in a blue nightgown which swept the floor, and her black hair formed a cloud of ringlets. Luxor was dressed but barefooted. He had extremely long and hairy toes, like brown caterpillars.
‘Indeed,’ Vithis said grimly. ‘Do you know who it is?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Bring up the miasmin at once.’
Directly, an underling carried in an object roughly the size of a port barrel, shrouded in a green cloth. Tirior removed the cloth, revealing a glass bell jar mounted on an ebony base. There was something inside, obscured by fog. Tirior and Luxor worked their hands, eyes closed, with evident strain. The fog cleared and the object, the size of a large round melon, began to glow. The miasmin became brighter and brighter until it resembled the sun as Nish had once seen it through a smoked-glass spyglass. Its surface roiled and dark spots broke through, emitting flares and prominences that looped partway around it before plunging back into the surface.
Luxor whipped the bell jar off its base and the miasmin drifted up towards the ceiling, swelling to many times its size and boiling like a thunderhead. Red and black streamers were plucked out of it in one direction, then another, only to be resorbed. Tirior moved back, holding her arms spread above her head and making little movements with one hand or another. Luxor stood at right-angles to her and did the same, their hand movements seeming to keep the sphere away from the walls.
Vithis touched the lights on the wall to darkness. The surface of the miasmin smoothed, though it still roiled inside. A glowing filament arced from the top, twisted like a thread in the air and plunged back in halfway down the right side. Other filaments arose, whirled about and sank back into the mass. Dark, fringed spots appeared on the surface, slowly rotating.
‘There are too many powers,’ said Tirior with a shake of her black curls.
‘I think not. That would be the scrutator, Flydd,’ said Vithis, indicating a large spot from which the glowing filaments arose like sparks from a firework. ‘And this, his chief lyrinx opponent. They seem too preoccupied with each other to be attacking us, though … the scrutator is cunning.’
‘But not that powerful,’ said Tirior. ‘It’s someone else, Vithis.’
‘What’s that one?’ said Nish, pointing to another fringed spot that pulsed and spat black filaments, arcing out only to be sucked straight back in.
He shouldn’t have interrupted. Vithis looked at Nish as if he’d just discovered a servant’s nose hair in his wine.
‘It’s a node that’s been sucked dry,’ said Luxor. ‘Not what we want to see, so close to our principal node.’
‘It’s being attacked, so as to drain our node,’ said Tirior.
‘Who by?’ asked Nish.
Luxor consulted the miasmin, which was smaller than it had been. ‘I can’t tell.’
‘Vithis,’ said Tirior urgently, ‘the field is falling faster than I’ve ever seen it. It’s as if our node is being drained.’
‘This reeks of the way Nennifer was destroyed.’ Vithis’s eyes were unfocussed.
‘The field is collapsing around us,’ Tirior said. ‘We’re being attacked from the Foshorn.’
‘It’s the Council, but I have their measure.’ Whipping an emerald rod from his belt, Vithis pointed it at the black fringed spot they’d just been discussing.
‘No, Vithis,’ cried Tirior. ‘Not that one.’
Vithis spun the rod in the air, caught it, pointed it again. Momentarily a tight green beam burst from one end and illuminated the fringed spot, which sent out filaments in all directions before collapsing in on itself and disappearing. ‘That’s the end of them.’
While Nish stared, his mouth agape, Vithis slipped the rod back in his pocket. With the air of a man who had just succeeded at an impossible task, he walked out and closed the door behind him.
‘But …’ cried Nish, horrified.
‘It wasn’t them,’ said Luxor. The fringed spot reappeared. Prominences arced from it and it grew until it covered the visible hemisphere of the miasmin. ‘Whoever it