by Ian Irvine
“Let’s go home,” said Ifoli, and rubbed her arms as if spiders were crawling on her.
Llian wanted to, more than anything. “It’s no accident that the gate brought us here at the same time as the storm struck. And I’ll bet the unreality zone wasn’t created long ago either. I’ve got to know what’s up there.”
21
COME CLOSER
“Not long now,” said Regg an hour later. “Just another hundred yards.”
The moment they reached the western side of the island he had reverted to his normal, cheerful self. Llian wished he shared the lad’s uncomplicated view of the world, for his unease had grown with every upwards step. Ifoli was trailing behind again, holding her back and staring at the ground beneath her feet as if afraid to look up.
They were climbing the steep western face of the peak via a series of zigzagging ledges. The yellow rock formed a ragged wall to their right and fell away for hundreds of feet to their left.
It was darker here, since they were directly under the black thunderhead, a slowly whirling cylinder towering miles above the peak. It was spitting rain and wisps of mist trailed up here and there.
“Can’t come too soon,” muttered Llian.
The ledge was narrow here and the drop to his left was hundreds of feet. This was far from the biggest cliff climb he had done, or the most dangerous, but the sooner it was over the happier he would be. There was no sign of the unreality zone here but something was definitely wrong. The prickles down his arms grew stronger with every step.
Lightning sizzled down to the far side of the mountain top, the ground quivered underfoot and there came a shattering clap of thunder. Small rocks and loose earth tumbled down at him in a miniature landslide. Llian let out an involuntary yelp, skidded on loose gravel, his arms flailing, then caught a knob of rock protruding from the cliff and clung on desperately as the slide rumbled past and over the edge.
“It’s all right,” said Ifoli, who had merely stepped to her right to allow it to pass.
“Must be nice to have no fear,” he said sourly.
“I have many fears,” she said quietly, “and the time I spent serving Snoat reinforced all of them.”
There were three more lightning strikes before they made it to the top, each louder and brighter than the one before, and Llian’s nerves were shredded by the time they got there. What would they find? Did he really want to know?
He rounded a head-high wall of ochre rock covered in clusters of little ferns sprouting from every crevice, and the path petered out on bare yellow rock. Ahead, their view to the east was blocked by a large rock outcrop with a cleft running through it.
“Stay low,” said Ifoli, eyeing the great thunderhead.
Llian crept through the cleft for fifteen feet, and peered out. There were no trees here, though wiry bushes, bent inwards by prevailing updraughts, encircled the rim of the peak like thick hair around the edges of a bald head, and its uneven centre was covered in ferns and grey lichen. A patch of fog obscured the eastern end of the peak, apart from a small scarp of orange rock on the far right, with a ribbon of silver cutting through it from top to bottom.
Regg, who was standing behind Llian, let out his breath in a whistle. “Wow!”
“Stay back,” said Ifoli sharply.
Lightning struck the silver ribbon, sending smoking chunks of rock arcing through the air. The thunder blast knocked Llian off his feet. He came to his knees, rubbing his aching ears. The blast had dispersed the fog and there it was—the thing he had been dreading since the morning he had woken to see the storm still hanging above Demondifang.
The summon stone.
Though not as Shand and Ussarine had described it when he’d met them outside Alcifer. They had seen a trilithon of dark red rock as smooth as polished marble. The two upright stones had been seven feet high and the third had been laid across their tops.
This summon stone was a good twelve feet tall, though the uprights leaned dangerously to the right. It had gone the muddy brown of bad meat, with veins of sickly yellow and bile green, and parts of each stone were eaten away like rotten teeth. Yet it seemed stronger than ever; it squatted on the peak like a malicious demon, warping everything it touched.
The air had a pungent tang due to lightning striking close by, though it was underlain by the offensive stench of rotting flesh and blood, as if a corpse was slowly decaying inside the summon stone. Festering brown sludge oozed from its twin bases, pooling around them then trickling down channels in the rock and over the eastern edge of the peak—the source of the unreality zone now spreading through the forest below.
Another lightning bolt struck the silver ribbon cutting through the scarp and Llian saw what he had missed the first time: a surge of liquid silver flowing across the yellow rock to congeal between the uprights as, clearly, it had done many times before. The brown sludge sizzled and surged over the edge, and the summon stone grew a little taller, a little wider.
“Is the lightning empowering it?” said Llian. “Is that why it moved here?
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Ifoli.
Nothing grew within thirty feet of it—every fern and patch of moss or lichen had been charred down to bare rock in an oval around the stone. No, on the edges of the brown deluge the ferns were distorted and perverted like the plants in the unreality zone.
A whisper in his head. Come closer.
“Let’s go,” said Ifoli, pulling him away. She had gone pale and was clutching her back again with her other hand. “I’ve got to get a message to Nadiril and I daren’t do it here.”
“We’ll never have a better chance to find out about it,” said Llian.
“It’s too dangerous. We’ve got to go down.”
Come closer.
The urge was almost irresistible. He took a half step towards it.
Lightning struck again, sending another pulse of liquid silver down to congeal between the uprights. Somewhere to his left a rock struck another—click.
Ifoli thumped him across the side of the head. “It’s trying to get at us! Remember how madly you acted when you held the Command device?”
Llian stopped, rubbing his eyes as if roused from a dream. Each time he’d held Unick’s Command device he had felt delusions that he could use it, and before that its drumming had got to him. On several occasions when he’d heard it in Pem-Y-Rum he’d been tempted to sneak off to Thandiwe’s willing arms. Heat flooded his face at the memories. Was he really that easily corrupted?
He turned his back to the stone and helped her along the cleft, but before they reached the western end she doubled over and threw up.
“Don’t feel well,” she mumbled, wiping her mouth.
He turned. “Where’s Regg?”
Ifoli stumbled back to the eastern end of the cleft and her beautiful face twisted in horror. “Regg, no, stop!”
Regg was only twenty yards from the summon stone, his arms reaching out to it. If he touched it, it would annihilate him in an instant, and feed and grow.
Ifoli let out a little moan and started towards him. Llian caught her by the arm. “It’ll get you too.”
She struck at him in desperation. “He’s my cousin, Llian! He’s just a kid, and I brought him up here. I’ve got to get him down.” She gasped, doubled over and fell to her knees. “What’s … happening … to me?”
“Stay here!” he said, pushing her back into the shelter of the cleft. “Keep low.”
What he was about to do was utterly reckless but Llian could not afford to think about that. He slipped across into the wind-twisted shrubbery. He had no idea what he was going to do when he reached Regg but he had to keep out of sight of the stone.
Lightning flashed and thunder crashed as he scrambled through the scrub, only feet from the precipice. Now Regg was only five yards ahead, at the outer edge of the charred oval around the summon stone, and Llian’s entrails throbbed at the thought of exposing himself to it. He did not think he could resist it.
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Come closer, closer, closer.
“What are you?” said Regg in a high, breathless voice. His whole body was quivering.
Everything you’ve ever wanted.
Regg gave a little trembling shudder, took a step towards the stone but stopped.
“Regg!” Llian hissed. “The enemy sent it here to open the way for them. It’s corrupt!”
Regg looked over his shoulder. “Why are you lying to me? It can give me everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”
“Nothing can give you anything. Only you can make your life, Regg.”
Regg made a dismissive gesture with his right hand and took another step towards it.
“It wants to kill you, Regg. To feed on you.”
Regg took another step.
From the cleft, Ifoli let out a despairing cry, “Regg, come back!” then staggered across the open ground towards him. Llian groaned; they were all going to die here. He burst out of the shrubbery and hurled himself at Regg, bringing him down.
Good. Come closer.
Lightning struck the silver vein with shattering force. Llian, blinded and deafened, clung on as Regg struck at him wildly. Regg was desperate to get to the stone now; he was in a kind of mad ecstasy.
Closer, closer.
Llian’s sight came back and he knew he had only one chance. He freed his arms and swung at Regg, an uppercut that caught him under the chin, snapping his head back and knocking him senseless. Llian caught him as he fell and dragged him away.
Come back!
“Damn you!” Llian ground out. “I won’t.”
He had fought this battle many times before, and won it most of the time, but the power of the stone this close was overwhelming. He felt himself slowing, turning, a vacuous smile stretching his mouth.
But he could not let it beat him. Sulien was in the hands of the pitiless Whelm far away and he had to save her.
It took every ounce of willpower Llian had to deny the voice in his head and the compulsion that was trying to take control of his limbs, but he did it. He turned his back to the stone and was heaving Regg along when the boy stumbled on a loose rock and Llian lost his grip.
Regg moaned and clutched at his right ankle. His eyes were still closed, as if he were not fully conscious, then he shouldered Llian aside and scrabbled blindly across the yellow rock, heading straight back towards the stone.
22
YOU WILL LEARN RESPECT
“You stupid little girl!” roared Torsion Tule, thrusting his blotchy red face against Aviel’s. His breath was so foul that she could see it; the oozing exhalations from his crusted mouth were an oily green. “Don’t you know anything? Do it all again, twist-foot.”
She gagged and backed away. He glared at her, his sludgy brown eyes glittering, then headed for the door.
Aviel had only been his apprentice for a day but she knew it was not going to work. He had refused to discuss the making of nivol or indeed even the most basic techniques of practical alchemy.
“You won’t be ready for the first lesson for at least a month, twist-foot,” he had snarled first thing this morning. “Until you learn cleanliness. Wash everything!”
Aviel had looked at the array of equipment in dismay. There were hundreds of flasks, beakers, stills, retorts, crucibles, mortars and pestles, bowls, scrapers and other pieces of equipment she did not know the names of. Washing everything had taken her all morning and her back was aching by the time the job was done to her own high standards.
Tule had returned at midday, taken a perfunctory look, cuffed her over the head and said, “Do it all again, properly.”
She had scrubbed, rinsed and dried everything again; it had taken most of the afternoon. Every piece of glassware or metal shone, and even the stone mortars and pestles gleamed; there was nothing he could find fault with.
But he had. Without inspecting a single item of equipment he had ordered her to clean everything again, but by now her ankle was so excruciatingly painful that she lost control.
“All right!” she snapped as he reached the door. “But this is the last time.”
Tule rotated, slowly and awkwardly, and lurched back to her. His right side was shaking more than before. “What … did … you … say, twist-foot?”
“I said I’ll do it again,” she said, more politely though still with an edge of sarcasm.
He struck her across the left cheek with his swollen knuckles, knocking her head sideways. “You will call me Grand Master Tule. You … will … learn … respect.”
He went out.
Aviel slumped onto a stool, rubbing her stinging cheek and thinking impotent thoughts of revenge. Why did he hate her so? And what was she to do? Making nivol grew more important every hour. The future of Santhenar might depend on her succeeding, but with Tule for a master she never would. He was determined to crush her spirit, then force her to re-learn the basics the way the dullest of apprentices might, working on each elementary task for a month before being allowed to begin the next.
It did not matter that she had mastered many basic techniques, and some advanced ones, in the three years she had spent making perfumes and scent potions. She had to begin at the beginning, his way.
The latch clicked. Aviel hastily slid off her stool, expecting another blow, but there was no one there. She plodded to the nearest bench and gathered up the flasks.
“How are you doing?” said Shand, materialising in front of her.
She started. “On the um … project?” She had almost mentioned nivol. If she’d told such a vital secret to a traitor she would be hanged as one.
“Making nivol,” he said with a grim smile, as if to emphasise that he knew everything. “Any progress?”
“I can’t talk about my work.”
“What’s so secret about washing-up?” He let out a sour chuckle. “Tule doesn’t want you to succeed, Aviel. He’ll do everything in his power to block you.”
She propped herself up on the bench, uncomprehending. “But it’s his job to teach me.”
“He doesn’t believe nivol can ever be made, and he’s probably right. In times long past some great alchemists attempted it. None got close.”
“How do you know?”
“I dabbled in the art myself, in my youth.”
“You seem to have dabbled in a lot of arts,” she said sarcastically. “Did you actually master any?”
She leaned away from him, knowing she’d gone too far, but he favoured her with another grim smile. “About time you showed some spirit, girl.”
“But … why is Tule blocking me?” She had to understand.
Shand locked the door and perched on the stool opposite hers. “As a young alchemist he was a great genius, but he burnt out early. By the time Tule was thirty people were calling him a has-been and he knew it to be true, and it embittered him.
“From that day onward he was a plodder; he knew alchemy backwards but was utterly incapable of doing anything new with it. And the more embittered he became, the more he held back his knowledge from his apprentices; he could not bear for them to surpass him. The clever ones, knowing they were wasting their time, left without completing their apprenticeships. Only the dullest remained.”
“Why haven’t you told Tallia?”
Shand smiled thinly.
“Then what am I to do?” said Aviel. “The … project is urgent.”
He took the sheaf of papers and parchments from her pack and scanned them.
“Hey!” cried Aviel, limping at him. “They’re secret.”
“Are you going to stop me?” he said coolly.
She stopped, all the weight on her left foot, feeling powerless. Where should her greatest loyalty lie—with the man who had changed her life, or the allies who were struggling to deal with an overwhelming enemy? Tallia, Malien and Janck would expect her to inform on Shand but if she did they would set a trap for him, and hang him. Aviel could not do it.
He was sorting the nivol papers into a small pile on the left and a l
arger one on the right. “Shand?” she said timidly. “How am I going to get the job done?”
“You’ve got to find a way to deal with Tule.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a resourceful girl,” Shand said blandly. “I’ll leave that up to you.”
He finished sorting the papers. “The big pile on the right is worthless. The papers on the left can help you, especially the one on the bottom; it’s a tricky method, but by far the quickest.”
She nodded, still anxious about trusting him. “You said you wanted my help. What for?”
“Nothing yet. For the time being I’ll work here after you’ve gone to bed.” He climbed off the stool, rubbed his back and vanished.
Deal with Tule? What did he mean by that? Aviel began to carry the glassware to the big sink, then stopped. Damn Tule! Since he hadn’t bothered to look at her work before, he wouldn’t know if she’d cleaned the equipment again or not.
Mindful of Tallia’s injunction to keep the papers secret, she hid the thicker bundle and started on the small pile of methods Shand had said would be some use. And immediately encountered a major problem. Radizer’s grimoire was written in relatively clear language, with a minimum of abbreviations, arcane words and symbols; it had not been hard for her to follow. But the first method for making nivol seemed deliberately obscure. The first paragraph contained ten words she had never heard before, plus many abbreviations and references to unexplained techniques.
She checked the papyrus below it. It began with a list of formulae made up almost entirely of symbols, none of which were familiar to her. The rest of the papers, papyri, scrolls, parchments and tablets were much the same.
After hours of reading that left her with aching eyes, Aviel gleaned that nivol required either thirty-seven basic ingredients, forty-six, fifty-one or, from the faded purple writing on a sheet made from beaten silver, eighty-nine.
Some ingredients were animal, some vegetable, some mineral, and some were impossible to classify; however it wasn’t simply a case of obtaining them, extracting their vital essences and blending them, as she had when making the Eureka Graveolence. To create nivol she first had to transform many of the ingredients using alchemical techniques she had never used before—ones that Tule wasn’t planning to teach her in the next year, if ever.