Alchymist

by Ian Irvine

  'Don't get up,' said Chief Scrutator Ghorr, pressing him down with a shiny boot. 'Lie in the dirt while we judge you, worm. Who are you, who has so betrayed humanity?'

  Beside Ghorr stood Jal-Nish. Though he was greatly changed, and Nish had not seen him with the mask, he knew it was his father. What could be seen of Jal-Nish's face was white, but his one eye was blood red.

  'The worm, surr/ ground out Jal-Nish, 'is my own son, Cryl-Nish Hlar. I have long thought that he was dead. Now I wish he had never been born.'

  'So do I, Acting Scrutator Hlar. But since he is your son, and you crave elevation to the Council of Scrutators, I require you to prove that you are worthy. Devise a fitting punishment for the creature.' Ghorr's eyes showed his doubt.

  Jal-Nish cast a wild glance at his son. Nish could not meet his eye; he was too ashamed. What would happen to him now? A fitting punishment. That could mean anything from the front ranks of the army to a death sentence. But blood was blood, after all. Surely his father would not 'Cryl-Nish Hlar,' Jal-Nish said. 'You have failed as an artificer as you failed as a prober, a diplomat, and at every other task you've ever been set. You are a liar, a cheat and, as has now been proven before my very eyes, a vicious traitor. The tragedy we face today stems from your initial betrayal, with Crafter Irisis, of Artisan Tiaan at your manufactory. Had you not conspired against Tiaan she would not have fled, nor fallen into the hands of the lyrinx, nor been ensnared by the Aachim. She would not have opened the gate that brought them here, with their invincible fleet of constructs. Had we still the use of her talent, and the precious amplimet, we might have gained the upper hand over the lvrinx. Alas, we've lost both, and the secret of flight, and now our alliance with the Aachim is sundered. And it's all down to you, boy'.'

  I don't ask why you ensured that Artisan Tiaan, and this most precious of all secrets, should fall into Aachim hands. No doubt you've had vour bloodstained pay already.' No, Father!' cried Nish. 'I never —’

  'Be silent!' Jal-Nish thundered. 'The entire Council of Scrutators saw you betray us. Your guilt has been proven beyond doubt. Cryl-Nish Hlar, you are no longer my son. You will be erased, expunged, obliterated from the Histories of the Hlar family.'

  'Father,' Nish whispered. 'You can't take my Histories from me.'

  'I can and I will, before this day is over.' 'But — what am I to do?'

  'You should suffer the ultimate penalty, as all traitors must. But,' Jal-Nish said inexorably, 'we are in sore need of labour to haul our clankers to the nearest node. Therefore, Slave Nish, you will be harnessed into a team of criminals and slaves. You will be teamed with the treacherous Slave Flydd, and every time he incurs a whipping, so will you. You will haul clankers without respite until your heart bursts, and then you will be buried in the road, face upwards, that the meanest citizens in the world will tread you down. They will walk over you, Slave Nish, until there's not a fragment of flesh or bone or sinew left. And ever after, an obelisk at that point shall name your crimes and their punishment. Such is the penalty for high treason.'

  Even the chief scrutator looked shocked, though not, Nish thought, displeased.

  Jal-Nish turned away, struggling to contain himself, but after a few steps he doubled over and vomited into the grass. Shortly he returned, pulling the mask back into place. A single tear glistened in the corner of his eye, then the iron control was back.

  'It is done,' Jal-Nish said to the Council. Take Slave Nish to his doom!'

  'You have proven your worth over the past year Scrutator Jal-Nish,' Ghorr said softly. 'Should you save our clankers, and defeat the lyrinx in battle, a place on the Council will be yours. We have need of men such as you.' Taking Jal-Nish's arm, Ghorr led him up the hill.

  A pair of white-faced soldiers stepped in beside Nish. 'I won't resist,' he said numbly, but they seized him anyway. One went through his pockets and removed everything of value. The other patted him down for weapons. Finding none, they lifted him between them and carried him away.

  As Nish looked back, the crowd dispersed, except for two people. Tirior, who had been watching the proceedings from behind, walked slowly back to the Aachim lines. The other person was the one-handed man, Merryl, who had helped Tiaan. He stared after Nish, then began to trudge around the curve of the hill, away from the command post.

  After a sleepless night in a solitary slave pen, Nish was hurled into the bloody slush of the battlefield. A clanker stood just a few steps away, its thick metal legs half-buried in mud. Wooden skids had been fitted underneath. To his left a group of people, slaves like him, were being harnessed together. They looked as despairing as he felt. Behind them were other slave teams, as well as teams of horses, oxen, donkeys and buffalo, soldiers and camp followers, women and even children. Every kind of beast had been harnessed to the impossible, heart-bursting task.

  Nish was numb with horror. His own father had cursed him, had sentenced him to a bestial death. Even in this war, which had produced mountains of corpses, in which the whole fabric of human society had been torn apart, that was impossible to comprehend.

  Crack' Pain flowered in Nish's ear. He put a filthy hand up and brought it back covered in blood. It felt as if something had bitten a piece out of his earlobe.

  Crack! The other ear exploded with agony. Scrambling to his feet, Nish saw a grinning overseer coiling his whip, a good ten paces away.

  'What the hell do you -?' Nish roared, driven careless by despair.

  The whip lashed out again, catching him on the chest through the gape of his shirt. Muffling a cry, Nish looked around frantically. What was the brute trying to tell him?

  He scrambled towards the head of the team, slipping and sliding in the muck, and every time he went to his knees the lash fell on his back or buttocks, or coiled around his waist to nip at his belly. The overseer was a monster, a sadist, and he, Slave Nish, the lowest worm in all of Santhenar, could do nothing about it.

  Fumbling with the straps of the harness, Nish took several more lashes before he was fixed in place like a beast of burden. Go away! he prayed. Go and flog someone else.

  Eventually the overseer did, the cries and wails of the whipped echoing down the line. Nish could feel no pity for them, though some of their groans were soul-wrenching. All that mattered was that the lash fall on another.

  The man beside him at the head of the team, on his knees in the muck, was a scrawny old fellow whose back and meagre legs were crisscrossed with scars. He must have been a slave for a long time. It did not look as though he had much life in him.

  'Just what I need,' Nish said to himself. 'Useless old coot will never pull his weight. He'll die in the muck and I'll be whipped for that too.'

  The slave turned his emaciated, mud-coated head. Nish did not recognise him, nor even recall Jal-Nish's words, until the man spoke.

  'How quickly they forget,' said Xervish Flydd, looking him in the eye.

  'Scrutator! Surr!' Nish gasped. 'I'm sorry. I did not recognise —’

  'You're just doing what you must, to survive,' said Flydd. 'Don't call me scrutator. Nish. That honour has been taken from me and, gossip tells me, given to your lather I'm Slave Flydd now. What brings you here?'

  Nish told Flydd of his latest failing, in the smallest number of words he could. It hurt nearly as much as the lash. All his dreams were dead. He must face up to what he was, a worthless human being.

  'We all make mistakes,' Flydd said out of the corner of his mouth. 'Get ready to pull.'

  Nish looked around to see the overseer advancing, whip at the ready. The fellow caught Nish's eye, grinned and flicked the lash at him. It caught him on the nipple so painfully that Nish screamed. It felt as if his breast had been torn open.

  'No talking!' rapped the overseer, lashing him again. 'Pull! Pull until your hearts shudder and your bowels groan or, by the powers, I'll make you suffer'.'

  Nish threw his weight against the harness. Flydd did the same. The leather creaked; the rows of slaves behind them groaned. The whip cracked
again and again, but the clanker did not budge.

  'Pull!' roared the overseer.

  Nish strained until his boots skidded in the mud, to no more effect than before. The overseer stormed back and forth, lashing and cursing them. Nish strained again until his heart felt about to explode in his chest. It made no difference. The clanker was irretrievably bogged.

  If Nish had hoped for a respite, he was disappointed. While a bullock team was being brought up, they had to pull as hard as ever, and once it was harnessed in place the slave team was put beside the beasts. For every lash that fell on the haunches of the animals, the slaves felt three or four. All across the battlefield the scene was repeated: with soldiers, with other teams of slaves, with all the peasants and camp followers Jal-Nish had been able to round up, and with beasts of every description.

  After hours of the most brutal labour Nish had ever experienced, the clanker began to creak and groan out of the mud wallow, though before it had gone a hundred paces it ended up in another, and many more lay ahead before it could be dragged to solid ground.

  By that time it was well after dark. Each of the slaves was given a gourd full of sour water, a slab of black bread as hard as a brick and a mug of something which, with the most charitable will in the world, could only be described as slops. It had a sweet, off taste, as if it had begun to rot in the summer heat.

  Nish took one sip and spat it into the grass. It was far worse than the food he had eaten in the refugee camp in Almadin in the spring. He was about to heave the mug of slops after it when Flydd said quietly, 'I'd advise you to eat every mouthful, and lick out the mug afterwards.' 'It's disgusting!'

  'Aye, but you can't work without food. If you can't pull, the overseer will whip you into jelly and drag the clanker over you.'

  'If this is my life, then the sooner it's over the better,' Nish muttered.

  Flydd shrugged and sat down, jerking at the harness in a futile attempt to find a comfortable position. He ignored Nish, eating his slops slowly, as if savouring every morsel, and carefully wiping the mug out with lumps of bread. 'If you're not going to eat that, pass it over here.' Wordlessly Nish handed him the mug. Had it been the finest food in the land, he could not have eaten a mouthful. His stomach was throbbing with despair.

  'Better get some rest,' said Flydd. 'They'll be calling us out again in a few hours.' 'But it's dark.' 'It'll be light enough when they start to burn the bodies.'

  A few hours later it started again, but this time it was worse. The battlefield was dotted with pyres, blazing piles of human and lyrinx dead. They provided enough light for the overseer to pick his targets, though not enough for him to be accurate. A blow aimed tor Xervish Flydd's back came coiling around Nish's bent head, the hard tip of the lash catching him on the eyebrow with such force that he screamed.

  'You stinking mongrel —’ he raged, once the pain became bearable.

  A dirty hand smacked him in the mouth, cutting off the abuse.

  'Don't!' grated Flydd in his ear. 'Whatever thev do, don't react in any way. Just pull, as hard as you can.'

  Nish strained against the harness. 'The swine nearly took my eye out.'

  'If you attack him, he'll take pleasure in removing the other eye, in a way you will never forget.'

  'I want to die!'

  'You won't be so lucky. We're put here to suffer, and while we can stagger, that's what we're going to do.'

  'It doesn't seem to bother you.'

  Flydd forced himself against the straps, grunting with the effort. 'I feel pain the same as any man, Nish. I've just learned not to show it.'

  Nish supposed that must be true. The former scrutator was brutally scarred and he moved as though every bone in his body had been broken. There were rumours of his torment at the hands of the Council when he was a young man, for some unspecified crime.

  'I can't take much more of this,' Nish groaned. 'It feels as if my leg bones are splintering with each step.'

  'You'd be surprised how much the human body can endure,' said Flydd. 'You've got months of slavery ahead of you yet.'

  'Then I'll kill myself.'

  Flydd's fist came out of the dark, crashing into Nish's chin and knocking him backwards into the slush. The next pair of slaves went over him, tripped and fell down, pulling down the pair after that. The team ground to a halt.

  The overseer came up the line, flogging indiscriminately. The slaves fell over themselves to get away. It took a good ten minutes before the tangle was sorted out and they were pulling in unison again. Nish took more lashes, though no more than his share.

  'What did you do that for?' he muttered, feeling a split lip. Two teeth felt loose and one had a chip out of it.

  'Do your duty like a man and don't whine about it!' snapped Flydd. '1 expected more of you, Nish.'

  'But we're slaves,' cried Nish.

  'Aye. Even so, we're doing vital work. The fate of humanity may rest on us getting these clankers to the field, and never forget it.'

  Nish fell silent. Trust the scrutator (he could not stop thinking of Flydd that way) to keep his eye on the greater goal. Nish could not, and he felt bad about it. The survival of humanity hung by a thread and any little thing could make the difference, but it meant nothing to him. His own troubles were too overwhelming.

  He tried to talk himself into it, telling himself what a selfish, contemptible worm he was. Make something of your life, Nish! Do your very best, even if only as a slave.

  It was impossible. He had fallen too far. Once he'd been part of a wealthy, powerful family. Now he'd lost everything, even his part in their Histories. Once he'd had an honourable trade; now he was beneath contempt. Once he'd had a father; now he had nothing. He was nothing.

  They stopped just before dawn. Nish was so exhausted that he fell onto the mud and slept where he lay — blessed oblivion, though it did not last long.

  He dreamed that he was sitting at a banquet table, dressed in robes woven with golden thread. A lovely young woman was at his left elbow, an even lovelier one at his right. He was speaking and the whole table hung on his words. Nish finished his speech to a roar of acclamation. As he bowed, he smelt the most delicious aromas as waiters hurried in, bearing huge platters of roast meats.

  Nish woke salivating and the glorious smell was still there. He opened his eyes, realised where he was, and wept. He was covered in stinking, rotting mud. There was no dinner table; no audience. Worst of all, so horrible that he could not bear to think about it, the mouth-watering aroma came from the piles of burning dead. He was salivating over his own kind. He was a monster of depravity, no better than a cannibal.

  'Ah, no,' he wailed, and flopped down in the mud again.

  Flydd hauled him out, wiping his face with a callused hand. Nish, expecting to be smacked in the mouth again, pulled away.

  'What is it?' said Flydd, watching the overseer over Nish's shoulder.

  'I once had everything, and now I've lost it all. No, that's not true. I didn't lose it, I threw it away. I'm useless. And then, just then . . , my mouth was watering from the smell of cooked meat, and it was human meat.'

  Flydd stared at him for a long time. 'Mine too. It's entirely natural. It doesn't make you any worse in my eyes.'

  'You're a slave, surr. What you think doesn't matter.’

  Flydd clenched his fist, but unclenched it. He sighed and, though plagued by his own self-doubt, put it aside. 'You've done plenty that's right, Nish. You got the best out of the seeker, little Ullii, where no one else could. You thought of the idea of air-floaters, without which the war might already be lost. You sailed a balloon all the way to Tirthrax, and found Tiaan there. You might have brought her and the crystal back, had you not faced people with far greater power than yourself. You killed the nylatl single-handed, and that was a feat worthy of half a page in the Histories. You saved the lives of thousands in the refugee camp. Had you not given warning in time, every person there might have fed the enemy.'

  'How did you know about that?' sai
d Nish.

  'If a leaf falls in the forest when it should not, the scrutators hear about it.'

  Nish must assume that the scrutator also knew about his disastrous attempt at diplomacy, and the unfortunate liaison, if it could be called that, with Yara's sister Mira.

  'I have other failings,' Nish said, determined to scathe himself to the bone.

  'Who does not? I have so many weaknesses that it makes me shudder to think about them. It doesn't stop me from trying, though. Don't take on the slave's mentality, Nish. Once you do, you might as well be dead.'

  Nish glanced over his shoulder The overseer was not in sight, but a slave was squelching down the line with pannikins of water. Behind him, another bore a platter on which chunks of black bread looked as though they had been hacked up with an axe, and a filthy axe at that. 'There's one thing you haven't heard,' he said quietly.

  'Oh?1 said Flydd.

  'After my latest failing, which put Tiaan into the hands of Vithis, I came before the Council of Scrutators. The head of the Council . . .'

  'Chief Scrutator Ghorr,' Flydd prompted. He stared into space, lost in his own world, and Nish had to nudge him when the trusties held out the bread and water.

  'Yes, Ghorr,' Nish said after they had gone. 'He demanded that my father prove his suitability to be a scrutator, by sentencing me. And Jal-Nish did.' Nish repeated the sentence, word by awful word. It was engraved in his mind, and would be until the day he died. 'My own father/ he said brokenly. 'He — he condemned me without a second's hesitation.' Nish related the whole terrible episode. 'I just can't comprehend it, surr.’

  Flydd was staring at him, not breathing. 'And how did Ghorr react?'

  'He seemed delighted.'

  Flydd went so still that Nish wondered if he was alive. The lump of coarse bread was held out in one hand, the gourd of water in the other. His scarred and knotted jaw looked as if it had been cast from bronze. Finally he gave a great shudder, turned to Nish and handed him the bread.

  'Take this. I cannot eat.'