Alchymist twoe-3

by Ian Irvine

  Liett lowered her wings, though not in submission. 'I'm sorry, Inyll. I put it badly. Let me explain. I once thought as you do, but Matriarch has opened my eyes. We've become creatures designed for just one thing — perpetual war! We're prisoners in our own armour.'

  Inyll tore the soft shale underfoot with her toe claws. 'War is our existence.'

  'But don't you yearn for peace, and the chance to live our lives without fear?'

  'What do I want with-peace? I am a warrior from a line of warriors. The line of battle is my life.' 'But surely for your children -?'

  'My children yearn to do their duty, not change their nature to suit some selfish whim.' Inyll used the word as if it was obscene, which it was. To the lyrinx, placing oneself ahead of the group was the greatest evil of all.

  'Ah,' said Liett, 'but we must change for the best of all reasons — to ensure our survival.'

  'We're winning the war as we are. There's no need to change.'

  'In so winning, we could be sowing the seeds of our ruin. I've been among humans, Inyll,' said Liett softly, carefully, and I used to hate and despise them too. I wanted to kill them all. But now I envy them, for the meanest of humans has something that we lost so long ago we cannot even remember it. Where is our culture? Where are our arts and sciences? We have none. In the void we rid ourselves of everything not essential to survival. In doing so, we cast away all that made us unique. We became machines.'

  Liett raised her voice, threw out her arms and addressed the group. 'Listen to me, my people. Unless you want to go back to the void, our future lies on this world. We must transform ourselves so that we can embrace it. Creatures like me, which you see as deformed, half-born, are the future of the lyrinx. Yet even we must renew —’

  'I'll hear no more of this . . , this sedition'.' Inyll cracked her wings and threw herself at Liett who, lacking armour, was at a severe disadvantage. She was brave, though. She bared her claws and stood up to her opponent, ducking one blow that could have taken her head off and just managing to sidestep another.

  'Enough!' roared Gyrull, who had been standing behind a pillar out of sight of Gilhaelith. 'Inyll?'

  The larger female drew back, bowing with ill grace. Liett, my daughter' said Gyrull sternly, Liett bowed to her mother, and to Inyll, flashing dark looks from beneath her heavy brows. Possessed of an aggressive nature and a powerful sense of her own rightness, she found difficult to defer to anyone.

  'I have fostered this debate,' said Gyrull to the group, 'for it is clear to me, as matriarch, that we must change. In the void we gave up our culture, our humanity and, yea, our very identity, in our desperation to survive. It was necessary, but we have come to lament it. Think about what has been said here today. We'll meet again tomorrow.'

  'To change now would be to warp our very souls,' said Inyll. I can't do it and I won't.' She stalked out, head held high, crying over her shoulder, 'Don't try to convince me, for I will never relent.'

  The remainder of the lyrinx followed, arguing among themselves, leaving just Liett and her mother in the cloverleaf chamber.

  Liett started after them but the matriarch laid a hand on her shoulder. 'Leave it for a while, my child.'

  'But I'm right!' said Liett in a passion. 'Why won't they listen?'

  'Their attitudes have been frozen by thousands of years of adversity, and all that time your kind has never been good enough. Until now, reverts, half-borns such as you and Ryll, have been a blight on our line.'

  'But they're just designed for battle,' said Liett. 'It leaves nothing for any other kind of life. We're handicapped, Mother. We may win the war — it looks as though we will — only to find that humanity has transformed its whole society again, and come up with a weapon we can find no defence against. Humans are infinitely flexible, so we must be the same.'

  'Or else,' the matriarch said provocatively, 'we must wipe every living human from the face of the world.'

  'I used to think that way,' said Liett, 'but after working with their females in the patterners in Snizort, I came to see them as people, not just food animals. We must embrace the future before the war is over, Mother, and we reverts are the best equipped to do it.'

  'You may be right, though it will take much to convince Inyll and her many followers.'

  'Why don't you talk to them? They would follow you anywhere.'

  'My time is coming to an end and I can't lead them where I cannot go myself. A new young leader is required for a bold new direction.'

  'You could order them to obey.'

  'Liett, Liett,' said Gyrull. 'You have much to learn, and many to sway, if you're to be chosen matriarch after me.'

  'But I've worked so hard, at every task you've given me. I've done well —’

  'At most. I recall a number of reprimands.'

  Liett bit her lip.

  Cyrull continued. 'You are intelligent, my daughter, a brilliant flesh-former and patterner, and your mancing talent is of the highest order. You have many of the qualities necessary to lead our people into the future, different qualities from those that I required. But Liett, you're too impetuous. You can't direct people to obey as though you know better than everyone else — even if you do. You must learn to persuade, to cajole, to lead! She turned and saw Gilhaelith in the shadows of the tunnel.

  'Begone, Tetrarch! You have no place here. Liett, would you escort Gilhaelith back to his quarters? We'll talk more about this tonight.'

  Gilhaelith returned to his room, thoughtfully. By the sound of it, the lyrinx were on the verge of a momentous transformation. If they did find the courage to make the leap, how would that change the balance? And could it have anything to do with what they'd found in the Great Seep?

  He wondered if mathemancy might give him a clue. He began to calculate a series of fourth powers, a preparatory exercise before beginning the divination, but as soon as he finished the first calculation, the number resonated wrongly. This horror was far greater than his previous failure, for Gilhaelith prided himself on his utter mastery of numbers. He never made a mistake. Never! He did the calculation again.

  Worst yet — he got a different answer and it was also wrong. Gilhaelith sank to his knees and pounded the floor in anguish, though cold resolve overpowered the impulse. This could not be happening; not to him. It was just another problem and he'd solve it as he'd solved every other difficulty in his adult life, with sheer, unconquerable will. Standing up to his full height, he took a series of deep breaths, ignoring the persistent gripe in his belly. I can do it. I must! Selecting a different number, 127, he raised it through its powers — 16,129; 2,048,383; 260,144,614. No, that couldn't be right. The last digit had to be odd, not even. About to try again, he discovered that the calculation had faded from his mind. Worse, though it was a simple operation, he'd forgotten how to repeat it. He was lost!

  What if his other abilities were failing as well? If he could not complete his great work soon, he never would, and would die having achieved nothing. Achievement was all he'd ever had. Without it his existence had been meaningless.

  Gilhaelith spent the next three days on his stretcher, refusing all food, just lying there with his eyes closed, raging against his fate and searching feverishly for a way out of it. He could not be beaten this easily. He had to know what was wrong with him.

  After much labour he devised a series of tests to probe the workings of his mind. The results were conclusive. In escaping from the tar, the phantom crystal he'd created had drawn too much power and literally cooked one tiny segment of his brain. Small parts of his intellect had been lost forever, though other aspects might, with diligent mental exercise, be recovered. But that was not the real problem.

  The explosion of the node had burst the phantom crystal into fragments that remained within his subconscious, doing more damage. Each time he used power, part of it leaked from the fragments and made the damage worse. Eventually it would progress beyond the point of recovery.

  There was only one solution. As soon as his hea
lth recovered sufficiently, he'd have to use his Arts to locate and unmake every fragment. Not the tiniest shard could be missed. If he could do that, he would at least have the chance to retain most of his remaining intellect.

  There was one more problem. Using his Arts in that way would require drawing a lot of power, and that risked destroying the faculties he was trying to save.

  The following morning, when Gilhaelith went for his walk he discovered a sentinel, or zygnadr, sitting in the corridor outside his room. It was a weird, twisted object that looked grown though not alive, and was nothing like the mushroomshaped sentinels he'd seen in Snizort. This one, knee-high, was shaped like a ball wrenched into a spiral. Its surface looked vaguely organic, like the patterners in Snizort, and bore traces of a crablike shell and segmented legs. As he passed what appeared to be compound eyes rotated on nubby stalks to follow his movement. It did not hinder him to be kept going. He turned randomly right and left until he reached an area he was not familiar with. Oellyll comprised a maze of shafts containing lifts operated by ropes, declines that spiralled down in loops and whorls of varying diameters, and tunnels that ran in seemingly random directions. Often they followed particular layers in the rock. Some were broad thoroughfares, others barely shoulder width, or so low that they could only be navigated on hands and knees.

  After half an hour of trudging, punctuated by several rest stops, he entered a decline that sloped gently down, lit at intervals by lanterns. Seeing no one to forbid him he headed along it. Partway down, he encountered a great shear zone where the upper rocks had ground over the lower. Below it the strata were crammed with fossils of every kind: the remains of little, creeping creatures; bones large and small; shells; rat-like skulls as well as feathery leaves like the fronds of ferns. Few of the fossils resembled animals that Gilhaelith had seen before, and some were oddities indeed. He crouched next to the lantern, studying the remains. Until now, he'd paid little attention to such relics of the past, and perhaps, for a geomancer, that had been a mistake. Gilhaelith stood up, rubbing an ache in the middle of his back, then trudged down to the next lantern. The fossils here were similar, though each kind bore subtle and curious differences to the ones above. At the lantern after that, which illuminated a lower layer of rock, they were subtly different again, and so it went, all the way down.

  One particular fossil, a creature like a crab curled into a twisted ball, was especially common. It had big compound eyes on short stalks, and it was his fancy that they followed him as he moved.

  Gilhaelith turned away then spun back. It had just been his imagination, though the creature was shaped rather like the sentinel outside his room. The zygnadr must have been modelled on this ancient fossil. According to the Principle of Similarity, one of the primary laws of the Art, every specimen of this fossil could be linked to the zygnadr, in which case the whole of Oellyll might be spying on him. Was there nowhere he could go, in light or in darkness, where they could not monitor what he was doing? But then, did it matter any more?

  Gilhaelith's stomach spasmed. His life had been out of his control for so long that it was killing him.

  Gilhaelith was sitting in a large dining hall, picking at the unpalatable green sludge in his bowl and brooding about his decline into helplessness. Gyrull had promised to loan him a dozen human prisoners, some of them skilled crafters of metal, wood and stone, as soon as he was well enough to go to Alcifer. The others would cook, clean and assist him with the rehabilitation of a suitable workplace. The matriarch had returned his geomantic globe and other devices, though it would be weeks before he had the strength to use them. His physical recovery had proved painful, slow and incomplete.

  The matriarch had allowed him to go wherever in Oellyll he wished, which suggested that she did not plan to release him. He'd set out to learn all he could about the city and was pleased to discover that the lyrinx did no flesh-forming here. Gilhaelith had few fears, but those creeping monstrosities inspired a particular horror.

  There was a commotion outside and a band of travel-stained lyrinx burst in, led by a small, wingless male. Gyrull, who was studying a parchment, set it down with a glad cry. Liett, eating gruel from a wooden bowl the size of a bucket, dropped it on the floor. Her iridescent wings snapped out, two spans on either side, then she bounded across the room and threw herself at the wingless male. The impact knocked him to the floor, whereupon she sat on his chest and began pumelling him with her fists. He tried to catch hold of her wrists but she was too quick for him.

  The other lyrinx were laughing, an extraordinary sight.

  What was going on? Even Gyrull was beaming. 'Thlapp!' she said at last.

  Liett got up, helping the young male to his feet and linking her arm sinuously along his. He was smiling too. 'Welcome, Ryll!' said Gyrull. 'We were afraid you'd been killed in the siege.'

  'There were times,' Ryll said, 'when we were struggling to cross the sea in a boat no bigger than a human outhouse, that I wished I had been. But we survived even the dreadful waters.

  He came to her with lowered head, a sign of deference, but she lifted his chin, speaking warmly to him in a dialect Gilhaelith did not recognise. Ryll's skin showed a cheerful, flickering pattern of yellows and blues. Finally he bowed and went out, Liett still attached to his arm.

  Later that day Gyrull came to Gilhaelith's room with the young male close behind her.

  'This is Ryll; she said, 'one of my most skilled young patterners.'

  'I know you,' said Gilhaelith, trying to recall where he'd seen Ryll's face before.

  'I fetched you to Tiaan, in the patterning room in Snizort,' Ryll answered coldly. 'She thought you cared for her, but all you wanted was her crystal.'

  Gilhaelith shrugged. He wasn't going to explain himself to an alien. 'You speak as though she's your friend! The emphasis made that into an absurdity.

  'Tiaan acted more than honourably to me,' said Ryll, 'and I deeply regretted having to use her to aid the war. In other circumstances we would have been friends.' 'What happened to her?' said Gilhaelith. In Nyriandiol, he'd begun to care about her in a way that had disturbed him, for it had meant losing control of a part of his life. To care at all was truly unusual — normally his feelings for other people were no more than efficiency required. People got in the way, made unreasonable demands, and therefore had to be controlled at all times. Abandoning Tiaan had been the easiest solution to his uncomfortable loss of control, but now he regretted it. He'd lost the chance to have an apprentice who would have complemented him perfectly. He'd also lost — what? The possibility of a friend? The chance of intimacy, both intellectual and — though he shied violently away from the recurring thought — physical.

  'I don't know,' Ryll replied. 'I was sent to the battle —’ 'A shameful mix-up,' said Gyrull with set face. 'Fortunately Tiaan escaped in a construct, though she is now held prisoner by the Aachim. But enough of her. From now on, Tetrarch, Ryll will take care of your needs, when he has time free from his other duties. No one else will attend you, so make no claims on them. And once you go up to Alcifer, take this warning to heart. Savage creatures from the void dwell in the forests of Meldorin — the vicious lorrsk, among others. They keep clear of our boundaries, but put one foot over them and you're game for their table.'

  Outside, Gyrull said quietly to Ryll, 'Keep a close eye on the tetrarch and don't trust him the length of a claw. He's a dishonourable man who would betray his birth-mother if it served his purpose. Question everything he says and does. On second thoughts, you've enough to do. I'll tune the zygnadrs to him, night and day.'

  'I don't like Gilhaelith,' said Ryll. 'He'll cause us all grief one day. Were it up to me, I would bite his head off.'

  'He served us tolerably well in Snizort and may do so again. I've an idea I'd like you to think about, and Gilhaelith's own studies may assist it.'

  Ryll grimaced. 'I will do my duty, of course. What is it?'

  'It arose from the work you were doing with the torgnadr, and Tiaan, in Snizor
t. This will be a new kind of device — I call it a disnadr, that is, a power patterner — and we'll need it to put an end to the war. The enemy are creating a myriad of new devices to take the place of the people they no longer have, and each must draw power from the field. If we could find a way to control that power, rather than just draining it away with torgnadrs, their devices could be made to act against them. Should we succeed they'll have to surrender, or die.

  'I've had the eleventh level cleared for this work and you will be in charge. No one will be allowed in save those working with you, and especially not the tetrarch.'

  'May I have Liett to assist me?' Ryll asked, a trifle over-eagerly.

  The matriarch sighed, then considered, her skin colours flickering a silvery mauve. 'I'm minded to say no, because of the trouble there's been between you in the past.' Ryll opened his mouth but closed it again without speaking.

  'But then,' she went on, 'together you seem to be worth more than separately. Yes, take my daughter. And whatever you require, you have only to ask. Come, this is what I want you to do …'

  Forty

  Gilhaelith trudged up a steep ramp towards the lower levels of Alcifer. He was alone, for Gyrull had simply indicated the way and left him, and he'd lost hope of being given the servants he'd asked for.

  His helplessness was corrosive. He had not fully recovered and no longer expected to. His stomach throbbed constantly, and walking for as little as half an hour exhausted him. By himself he'd be hard pressed to carry up his geomantic instruments. Even if he managed that, how could he live without servants? It would take all the hours of the day just to find food and prepare it, if there was any to be gathered so close to Oellyll. But he had to go on. Giving in had never been an option for Gilhaelith.

  Heart palpitating from the effort, he turned off the ramp at a great black door that marked the gate between Oellyll and Alcifer. Another of those crab-like sentinels stood beside it. He pushed past without incident and approached the door, which was made of a black metal that shone in the lantern light as though it had a hundred coats of lacquer. As he reached out, the door swung open silently. He froze, then peered through, carefully. The floor was thick with untracked dust, so the lyrinx had never been this way.