them into a circle on the salt and slaughter them. We’ve got to kill every male, every female and every child. Exterminate the lot!’
There was a long, shocked silence. ‘I’d prefer to reach some accommodation –’ said Flydd.
‘You’ve failed to come up with a plan, so listen to mine,’ Orgestre ground out. ‘We end the war my way now, or sooner or later they’ll end us.’
‘Nisbeth?’ said Flydd. ‘Does Grand Commander Orgestre have your support?’
‘I don’t see any other choice,’ the governor said. ‘If he succeeds, we’ve saved Borgistry. If he doesn’t, how are we worse off?’
‘Whatever the cost, we pay it and get on with our lives,’ said Orgestre. ‘It’s the only way, believe me. Your votes, if you please. Right hand for their annihilation, left for our capitulation, since we don’t have anything in between.’
Orgestre and Nisbeth raised their right hands at once, and Klarm shortly after. Troist put up his left hand, as did Yggur. Flydd didn’t raise either.
‘Well, Flydd?’ said Orgestre. ‘It comes down to you, as usual. What’s your vote?’
‘I’ve already come to regret using the fungus against them,’ said Flydd. ‘To annihilate an entire species is a terrible crime against nature, and in the future I know we’ll rue it. But if we don’t, the war will go on and in the end we must lose it.’
‘I won’t be a party to it,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve lived long enough to know that this is the worst solution you could come up with. It’ll lead to more war, and more killing, not less.’ His frosty eyes met Flydd’s across the table. ‘And I won’t work with you again if you support it, Flydd.’
Flydd bowed his head. ‘I hear your wisdom, Yggur, and you may be right, in the long run.’ He looked around the group, breathing heavily. ‘But truly, for our present survival, I can see no other way.’ He raised his right hand.
Yggur thrust back his seat and walked out without a word.
‘Then let it be done,’ said Orgestre with savage glee.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Yggur did not leave them, though he travelled with Troist’s army after that as they marched for Ashmode, and refused to have anything to do with Flydd. Klarm and Flydd tried to persuade him otherwise but he wouldn’t relent.
‘I can see the disaster coming and I’m not going to add to it,’ he said when Flydd called on him one final time. ‘I can’t imagine how I thought the fungus would be the answer.’
‘Then what would you do differently?’ Flydd said furiously.
‘I don’t know, but genocide is not the solution.’
‘If you can’t suggest an alternative, better to keep your thoughts to yourself.’
‘Don’t use scrutator logic on me, Flydd. The only reason the war ever came to this stage is that the Council slew all those who spoke against it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Flydd, deadly cold now.
‘You’re not the only one to have dug through the rubble of Nennifer, Scrutator. I went looking for the origins of this most pointless of all wars. Back in the early days, the forerunners of the Council executed all those who warned about going to war against the lyrinx. Their warnings of unending war have come true to the letter. The Council wanted war before ever the enemy did, and silenced everyone who spoke against it.’
Flydd considered that, then said, ‘If you’re so opposed to Orgestre’s solution, what are you doing here?’
‘There may yet be a chance to save you from your folly.’
Kattiloe’s thapter returned from Tiksi ten days after it had left, confirming that the lyrinx had indeed abandoned the fields of war and were streaming west. Everyone knew it by then, however, for the bulk of the fliers had already reached Ashmode and were searching everywhere for Gilhaelith, as was everyone else.
An increasingly stressed and irritable Flydd had spent two and a half weeks looking for the geomancer, who hadn’t gone to Ashmode at all. Gilhaelith wasn’t that much of a fool. He’d headed that way after seizing the relics, but once out of sight he’d set down by the City of the Bargemen and ordered Flangers and the other soldiers out. He’d recruited new guards and servants and flown away, in darkness, to an inconspicuous ravine forty leagues away along the southern rim of the Dry Sea from Ashmode.
There he’d hidden in the Golden Terraces, an ancient village honeycombed into a layer of yellow chalk between two sets of the Grey Cliffs above the empty sea. The Golden Terraces had been abandoned when