Alchymist twoe-3

by Ian Irvine

  'We'd hear them move. Scavengers must be used to waiting.'

  It was mid-afternoon now and Nish was parched. Unable to stand the suspense, he crept to the front end of the construct, peering warily around. A spear slammed into the dirt a finger's length from his nose. Shortly, the other two clankers thumped up.

  'How long does it take to die of thirst?' Irisis asked casually. A few days, I'd imagine.'

  'I don't-'

  'What's that?' hissed Nish.

  'It must be Yggur coming back in the air-floater.'

  A shadow passed across the sun and soon the machine was hovering above the barrier, just out of javelard range.

  'Now what?' said Nish. 'It can't come any lower, and we can't move without being shot.'

  'We wait for dark.'

  They did, interminably, but dark brought no relief. The scavengers raised a ramshackle tower from the top of the first clanker, from which, by some uncanny means, a beam of blinding light lit up the area around their refuge. The other two clankers did the same from the sides, leaving only a tiny pool of darkness behind the construct for Nish and Irisis to hide in. Camp fires were built, and shortly the smell of roasting meat drifted across.

  'I could use a haunch of that, whatever it is,' Nish said in a cracked voice.

  Irisis took his hand, giving it a hard squeeze. 'We've got to do something, Nish.'

  Once Nish would have thought the same, but he was wiser now. 'There's nothing we can do. Leave it to Yggur. He'll have a plan and we might spoil it.'

  'What if he doesn't? What if he's past it?'

  He didn't reply.

  'Can you hear something?' Irisis was on her feet. There was shouting off to the right, and one of the beams had gone out.

  'Something's burning,' said Nish.

  Another of the beams swung away. Nish peered from the dark side. 'One of their wagons is on fire.'

  'Yggur's made a diversion,' said Irisis. 'Does he mean us to run for safety?'

  'He hasn't come all this way to leave without the driver mechanism,' said Nish. 'Let's see if we can get it out.'

  After further shouting, the third beam went out. They scampered round the exposed side and underneath, heaving and tugging, but hadn't moved the mechanism far before the beam swung back in their faces. They froze under the construct, trying to look like red dirt and black metal.

  'If he realises we're here,' Irisis said out of the corner of her mouth, 'he can hardly miss.'

  'Whoever he shoots won't know anything about it.' Nish shielded his eyes, but the beam was so dazzling he couldn't tell what was happening at the clankers.

  As he was squinting off to his right, Nish saw a tiny spark drift down, as if attached to a piece of thistledown. It floated towards where the second of the clankers had been.

  The explosion painted his retina red. The black cut-out of the clanker was lifted into the air and turned onto its side. His eardrums throbbed from the colossal boom and crash. There were cries of pain and terror, and the last beam swung away, crisscrossing the sky for the air-floater.

  Feet pounded towards them. They shrank down into the dirt, then someone skidded under the construct. Flangers!

  'Is this it?' he panted, indicating the mechanism.

  'Yes, but we'll never lift it.'

  'We don't have to.' They lugged it out from underneath. 'Round the back!' said Flangers, 'where they can't get such an easy shot at us.'

  'What was that bang?' said Irisis.

  'A big balloon full of floater gas, pulled down by sandbags. Went off nicely, didn't it?'

  'We're not complaining,' Irisis said dryly.

  'And before that, I dropped a burning jug of oil onto one of the wagons.'

  'You're a dangerous man in an emergency,' said Nish. 'What's the plan?'

  'Yggur's getting another balloon ready. As soon as it goes off, he'll lower a rope onto us and winch the mechanism up through a hole he's made in the barrier.'

  'I'm not sure I want to be hanging in the air when the beams find us again.'

  'We run,' said Flangers, 'and try to get out the way I came in.'

  'Oh well,' said Irisis casually, it we don't get there, at least Yggur will have what he came for.'

  'That's the way it is,' said Flangers, in a tone that suggested he'd be happy to make the sacrifice. He might have given his life into her keeping, but the soldier still wanted to do the only thing left to him.

  Another explosion rocked the night, though this one did not do much damage. 'Get ready,' said Flangers.

  The rope came hissing down, its last coils smacking into the ground just a few spans away. Flangers retrieved it, knotted it expertly around the mechanism, gave three sharp tugs and stepped back.

  The rope tightened and the mechanism came up off the ground, but it rose only half a span before stopping, swaying back and forth.

  'How's Yggur going to lift that by himself?' said Nish.

  'A collection of pulleys,' said Flangers.

  Someone shouted from the remaining clanker and the beam returned, picking up the rope, which shone like a vertical rod of light. The javelard fired.

  'It's a difficult shot but if he hits the rope we're sunk,' said Flangers. 'We've got to make a diversion. Run, that way! Go separately. I'll come last.' The most dangerous position.

  Irisis ran diagonally away from the clankers and the burning wagon. Nish went a few seconds later, followed by Flangers. The girl's voice called out a warning; the beam swung, fixed upon Irisis and tracked her.

  'Down!' Flangers roared.

  Running full tilt, she threw herself down, skidding on her front across the ground. Thunnggg! A spear went over her shoulders, ploughing the dirt beyond her, then she was up and haring off again.

  Another beam fixed on the mechanism, now ten spans in the air. As Nish fled, he heard a spear clank off the outside and prayed it had done no damage. Another spear flew past Irisis's ear — he saw it flash like a silver snake through the beam -and they were beyond range of night shooting.

  Flangers passed Nish, running easily. 'How far to go?'

  panted Nish, who had a stitch already.

  'A thousand paces, more or less.' 'Less, I hope.'

  The soldier drew level with Irisis, pointed a little to his left, then drew ahead. Irisis had begun to flag and Nish felt no better. After a day without food or water he had nothing left to give. He chanced a glance back and up. The clanker had one last shot at the rope, but missed. The mechanism was almost out of sight.

  The clanker turned in their direction, following the other, which was moving slowly along the perimeter of the barrier. Ahead, Flangers was trotting, barely visible in the dark. As they caught up to him he had one hand out, searching for the opening Yggur had made for him earlier.

  'Here!' he called in a low voice, pushing something invisible open and holding it for them.

  'Which way?' gasped Irisis.

  'Straight towards the north-western corner of the Snizort wall.' He indicated the direction with a finger.

  Irisis jogged that way. Nish staggered after her, his throat so dry he could hear each breath rushing in and out. Flangers picked up a crossbow he'd left at the entrance and came last.

  By the time they were halfway to the Snizort wall, the clankers, with at least thirty vengeful scavengers hanging off the top and sides, were thumping after them. The seeker girl must have been directing the pursuit for, no matter how they twisted and turned in the darkness, Irisis and Nish could not shake it off.

  They topped a rise. To Irisis's dismay, the wall was a good half a league ahead. Flangers dropped to one knee and fired. Nish heard the bolt clang off the iron plates.

  Just when he thought he could go no further, there was an explosion between the two clankers. They stopped in a scream of metal and the beams wavered across the sky, searching frantically, then went out.

  The air-floater dropped out of the dark beside Irisis. They flopped over the side and it shot up and away.

  Fifty-one


  Gilhaelith sent a messenger down to Oellyll, carrying another plea to the matriarch, for any world maps the lyrinx had made. Gyrull came up to see him that afternoon and again consented so readily to help that he wondered if she had an ulterior motive. But then, he knew she had an interest in his work.

  'In our early days on Santhenar,' Gyrull said, 'before the war began, our best fliers crisscrossed the globe, mapping it from the air. We wanted to see if there were other lands we could go to, instead of fighting for a piece of Lauralin.'

  'Did they find any?'

  'Several. A small continent a long way to the west closely resembles the one marked on the far southern side of your geomantic globe. There are also a series of lands, well above the equator, that are wrongly depicted on your globe.'

  No wonder it had let him down before. 'Do human peoples live there?'

  'I don't know, Tetrarch. Those lands were so far away that only our best fliers could reach them, and they did not stay long. Such lands were of little interest to us, for the non-fliers, most of our population, would have had to sail there.' Jags flashed across her breast plates at the thought. 'The risk of sailing all that way was too great.' Her wings stirred in agitation. 'Better to die fighting for Meldorin and Lauralin than drown like dogs in the endless ocean. Our fliers did, however, make careful charts of the lands. I'll have a set of copies sent up.'

  'What about nodes and fields?'

  We know where the most powerful ones lie, on land and undersea. We had to, to be able to fly to unknown lands. You may also see those charts. In return, you will permit me one use of your geomantic globe, should I request it.'

  that night, four lyrinx carried up a great many rolled maps. Each was as large as a good-sized carpet, and each was drawn in meticulous detail in coloured ink on the softest leather Gilhaelith had ever seen. He unrolled the first map and recoiled. On the right-hand side, quite distinctly, was a navel, and above it a pair of large, dark nipples. It was made from human skin, evidently from women and several dozen skins had gone into each chart.

  Once he got used to the idea, though, he discovered what a marvel the maps were. They showed the kind of detail that could only be observed from the air. Even with just a fraction of that information, the usefulness of his globe would be magnified a hundredfold.

  Changing his world model, under the glass, was the most exquisitely painstaking work Gilhaelith had ever done. The lands and seas of the geomantic globe were marked so precisely that he required three pairs of lenses, mounted in a sliding frame, to resolve their finest structure. Once he had focussed on a particular point, Gilhaelith used the Art to change it, in three dimensions, to what was on the charts. Sometimes it took an hour to make one tiny alteration, for he might have to raise mountains, reduce highlands, correct the course of rivers or alter the shape of the coast. Hundreds of such modifications had to be made, not to mention creating an entire new continent in the northern hemisphere, complete with peninsulas, gulfs and archipelagos, and many islands large and small.

  Immersed in this craftsmanship, it was almost possible to forget the slow decay of his mental faculties. Almost possible, save that each new task took longer and required more concentration. By evening he felt like a mat that had been hung over a rope and beaten. And the work took its toll. The slow leakage of power from those fragments of phantom crystal was steadily damaging him. The difference was not noticeable at the end of one day, or even a week, but after working on the globe for a month it was clear what he'd lost. His thoughts were sluggish and disconnected. His ability to concentrate, once effortless, now required the most anguished feats of willpower, while parts of the landscaping spell, which formerly he could have used without thinking, often faded from his mind midway and had to be done over and over again.

  He knew Gyrull had set up hidden zygnadrs to spy on him but Gilhaelith pretended they weren't there. He'd known he would be watched. Besides, the geomantic globe was just a tool — it was what he planned to do with it that was important, and she couldn't know that.

  It took two months of work, so all-consuming that Gilhaelith could do nothing else, before the globe was as true as he could make it. Finally, one rainy mid-autumn afternoon, he stood up, rubbing an aching neck, and allowed the globe to rotate on its cushion of freezing mist. It looked so real that he could have been seeing Santhenar from the void. Perhaps, in some strange duality, it was real — a perfect microcosm of the world, and a device he could use to probe its secrets, if he could probe and repair himself first.

  Unfortunately it no longer depicted all the nodes he knew of, to say nothing of their individual natures. Sighing, he bent his head to the new task. He could never put all the known nodes on his globe; it would be the work of lifetimes. However, Gilhaelith did not think that would be required. As long as the greatest nodes were there, the controlling ones (now where had that thought come from?), the completed globe should enable him to reach a new understanding of the world.

  Gilhaelith went back to the human-skin node charts. He had Tyal and another servant unroll them for him; he'd become squeamish about touching human leather lately. What if Gyrull killed him and made a map out of his skin? Disgusting!

  He began to remove the existing nodes from the world surface and place them in a new layer, underneath the glass, that would allow him to include the nature of each node. For this task, he suspended the globe on its air cushion in a greentinged nickel bowl on a platform of turned rosewood. Near the outer edge of the platform a series of concentric, graduated brass rings was inlaid into the timber. Slender pointers could be slid around inner rings to make the detailed measurements he required. Weeks went by, but finally the task was done. Gilhaelith stood back, allowed the globe to rotate and brought a crystal close to the glass surface. A series of nodes lit up. The geo-mantic globe was as perfect a model of Santhenar as any man could make. It was the culmination of his life's work. Gilhaelith felt sure that, with it, he could finally understand how the world worked, and that would give him the key to the power of the nodes, if he wanted it. It should not take long now, if his strength held out and the accumulating mental damage did not prevent him.

  'Masterly work, Tetrarch,' said Gyrull, behind him.

  Gilhaelith spun around, seized by a sudden, blind panic. 'You've come for my globe,' he cried, trying to think of a way out and knowing there was none.

  'If we wanted such a device we would make it ourselves,' she said with a curl of her leathery lip. 'But you can help me another way, Tetrarch. Indeed, you must, for you owe me.'

  'The debt was discharged!' He put on an arrogant air to conceal his nervousness.

  'On the contrary, it continues to accumulate. For your servants, the food and drink we provide you and them, and for your every other request that I have accommodated unquestioningly.'

  'What do you want?'

  'It's no great favour,' she said blandly. 'Just a series of measurements of the field, from a number of points overlooking the city.'

  'You want me to go outside Alcifer? Didn't you say there are void beasts in the forests?' That sounded cowardly, but it wasn't. Having come so far, he grudged every moment spent away from his work. And having little time left, he couldn't afford to waste a minute.

  Gyrull passed up the opportunity to mock him for cowardice. She was nobler than he'd thought. 'You're quite safe. Our boundaries extend some distance from Alcifer, and you'll have my guards with you.'

  Can't you take the measurements yourself?' 'We can, but I'm asking you to do it, as part-payment of your debt. We have much to do, presently. The measurements won't take much time at all. A few days, at most.'

  Shortly after sunrise, Gilhaelith was taking sightings through a calibrated spyglass from a ridge high above the city, and noting field strengths on a map Gyrull had given him. The readings were to be done every half-hour all day, from this ridge, and from six other locations on succeeding days. Therefore the work would take a week, not the few days Gyrull had mentioned. There was no time
for wondering why. No sooner was the first set of readings complete than it was time to start the second, and so it went all day, and the next. All twelve of his servants had been sent with him — keeping an eye on him for Gyrull, he assumed — and two guards were watching them.

  On the third afternoon he was working on a higher ridge on the slope of the dormant volcano. He'd just moved the glass to a new position when a powerful distortion in the field led him to glance up the slope. The distortion seemed to be moving, but its source was masked or cloaked and it took quite an effort to see through it. To his astonishment, it was a thapter. The metal skin was undamaged, so it wasn't Tiaan's. Someone else had uncovered the secret. Soon, he supposed, the skies would be full of them.

  The thapter drifted in his direction. Gilhaelith squinted at it, trying to identify the operator, but the machine was too far off. Whoever was inside it, human or Aachim, was a threat to him. He ducked under the trees, praying that it would turn aside.

  Not so his servants, who began screaming and jumping up and down.

  Careful,' he called. 'Most likely it's Aachim in that flier.'

  'Do they eat folk?' said the always irascible Tyal.

  'Of course not.'

  'Then they're a damn sight better than the enemy.'

  If the Aachim found Gilhaelith he would certainly be imprisoned for keeping the thapter from them; he might even forfeit his life. Should the thapter be possessed by the scrutators, however, he would be swiftly tried for keeping it and the amplimet from Klarm, and as swiftly executed. That fate might await him from Gyrull, too, but surely not until he'd tested the globe. The decision took little time. Of his three possible fates, only remaining at Alcifer offered the chance to complete his life's work.

  'Not for me,' muttered Gilhaelith, moving further into the shadows.

  'So that's how it is,' roared lyal. 'Look at him, hiding like the craven cur he is! His promises were lies. He's a traitor, as I've always said, and the scrutators will pay handsomely for him. Take Gilhaelith!'

  Two of the male servants threw themselves on him, while the others took up cudgels and attacked the pair of lyrinx guards standing in the shade. The women began capering madly in the clearing, waving items of clothing at the thapter, but as Gilhaelith fell a cloaking spell renewed itself and the machine vanished.