Alchymist (18 page)

But
the crystal was done. Gilhaelith looked for power but found none — the field,
which had been waxing and waning for days, was dying. The tunnel had failed
because the phy-nadrs had not been able to maintain sufficient power to keep it
frozen.

Yet
for what he planned, only a little power was required. Gilhaelith sought in
another direction and discovered a drifting loop of field, cut off from the
rest. He drew power into the phantom crystal but there was not enough to
energise it.

He
had barely enough breath to try again. He found another loop, this one strong
as the field waxed dangerously. The node was desperately overloaded and
something had to give. But if it just lasted another minute . ..

His
lungs were shuddering for air; fire burned behind his temple as the crystal
powered up at last. Gilhaelith used a geo-mantic spell to drive heat from the
tar surrounding him, into the seep itself.

He
kept at it until the heat licked from his skull to his stomach, the first sign
of anthracism. He had to let go. Would it be enough? As the spell faded, a most
bitter cold enveloped him, as though he'd been frozen into a block of ice.
Then, as the heat of the seep attacked that rigid, frigid shell of tar, it
shattered into a thousand pieces.

The
shards broke away from his body, leaving him in a cavity lined with fractured
tar. The suction was gone; it was solid underfoot. The mosaic fell from his
eyes and he could see. Gilhaelith took hold of the still-hard shell of the
tunnel and, with a wriggle and a shake, pulled himself onto the floor.

He
hurt all over and, behind his eyes, needles pushed relentlessly into the bone.
He'd tried too hard and damaged something. He began to crawl blindly down the
tunnel. That was where Matriarch Gyrull, who had come pounding back for him,
found Gilhaelith. Tossing him over her shoulder, she clawed the last chilly
remnants of tar from his nostrils and raced off.

The
next few hours were a blur of belching fumes, pounding feet and panicky lyrinx.
Gilhaelith saw nothing, for the pain was so all-enveloping he could not open
his eyelids. And he was so cold — he could feel the shape of his stomach in
ice.

He
was carried through a myriad of tunnels, with Gyrull cursing and turning this
way and that, and her growing escort hard put to restrain their terror. There
was fire underground and they couldn't find a way out, though that wasn't their
greatest fear. Gilhaelith had learned enough of their language to deduce that
many of the escapeways had been cut off and they expected the unstable node to
explode at any time.

They
reached the base of a pit with steep sides. The lyrinx made a living tower
which Gyrull climbed to get out, a box of relics strapped to her chest, and
Gilhaelith, folded over in an elongated travesty of the foetal position, tucked
under one arm. The gamy odour of her sweat was intense.

Before
she reached the top, the phantom crystal picked up wild fluctuations from the
field that seared his forebrain. Gyrull muttered something.

'What?'
he croaked, but she did not answer. He could just see out of the crack of one
eye. It was dark and he felt so very cold. Beyond the walls, the battle still
raged — the groans of the maimed, the clash of weapons against armour, the
thudding of catapult balls into walls, ground and tar seeps. Fire flickered in
half a hundred places.

She
climbed over the rim of the pit and set off without looking back to see if her
fellows were following. Gilhaelith supposed they had sacrificed themselves to
give their matriarch a chance, or to get the treasure away.

"The
torgnadr is going to destroy itself,' she said, finally answering his question.
'How did the humans get in to attack it? They're more cunning than I imagined.'

In
the distance, the ground surface domed and a fountain of fire tore through. He
was in no state to see the danger. To Gilhaelith it just seemed extraordinarily
beautiful.

The
matriarch was running full pelt, considerably faster than a human could move.
Several times she flexed her wings and leapt in the air, but each time landed
hard and kept running. There was not enough in the field for her to fly with
such a burden, for Gilhaelith was a big man.

He
felt worse every minute. Either he'd burst something inside or the tar was
poisoning him. He felt sure he was going to die. He would never solve the great
puzzle and achieve a true understanding of the earth. His life had been wasted.
And, to his surprise, Gilhaelith felt a creeping remorse for all he'd done, and
all he'd neglected, in blind pursuit of that aim — most especially, Tiaan.

His
stomach boiled and he threw up all over Gyrull's side and thigh. She wiped it
off without breaking stride. Shortly, as she was climbing the southern wall,
the sky erupted into a spindle of fire that he could see with his eyes closed.
Pain crept, singing, along every nerve fibre. The fire died down, taking with
it the last vestiges of the field, and Gilhaelith felt the snapping of that
ethereal thread Tiaan's amplimet had drawn to him. His phantom crystal exploded
into fragments with a hundred sparkle-like throbs. Now he truly was helpless.
It did not matter. Nothing mattered — it was all over.

The
new day dawned, as hot as the previous one, but the cold, which had bitten into
him ever since he'd cast his freezing spell, grew steadily worse. He lost
everything but the rocking motion. Like a pendulum running down, even that
sense failed, until finally nothing was perceptible.

Gilhaelith
roused twice, once to realise that Gyrull was still running, another time to
discover that she had stopped and was speaking in low tones with several other
lyrinx, though he still lacked strength to open his eyes. They seemed to be talking
about the destruction of the node. What would such a thing look like? How could
a node explode, all its contained energies vanishing into nothingness? Surely
there had to be some residue?

He
felt that there was something he should follow up, but was too lethargic to
think.

Days
and nights went by, full of running; hasty meetings in shadowed caves or gloomy
woods; exhortations to hurry; and other urgent matters that were conducted out
of earshot. Gilhaelith was dosed with potions and fed at intervals by a lyrinx
who squeezed greasy pulp through its hands into his mouth. His senses were so
numb that he could taste nothing, though he felt better afterwards.

On
what he thought to be the fifth day after the escape, or possibly the sixth,
Gilhaelith felt well enough to sit up. It was not long after dawn and the
lyrinx had camped in a wooded valley by a meandering river. There were hundreds
of them, with more appearing all the time. They must have felt in no danger
now, for they were lying about in full view, chatting with voice and
skin-speech, their bags and boxes of relics piled in the centre. It surprised
him that they should be so casual, after the loss of Snizort.

The
underground galleries had been on fire and the tar might burn for a hundred
years, so whatever the result of the battle, they could not go back. That must
have been a blow to the lyrinx, for Snizort had made a formidable beachhead on
Lauralin from which to launch further attacks. On the other hand, the
destruction of the node would have immobilised both constructs and clankers, so
the lyrinx were in no danger once they escaped the immediate area. They could
attack at night and do great damage, though it did not appear they were going
to. He got the impression that the fliers planned to return to Meldorin.

In
that case, why did Gyrull still want him? He could see her across the clearing,
squatting under a tree, talking in a low voice to two other aged lyrinx. Their
skin-speech lit up the shadows in lurid reds and yellows, which meant an
important conversation.

He
dozed during the morning, waking to see Gyrull giving orders to another small
group, and later to a third. He learned nothing about what those orders were.
His brain hurt whenever he tried to think. There was a strong field here, but
he could not have blown a fly off the end of his nose with it.

A cry
disturbed his chaotic thoughts. A lyrinx, one of the recent arrivals, was
running around the clearing in circles, crashing into trees and other lyrinx,
and making a shrill keening, as if in pain.

The
matriarch sprang up. Several lyrinx tried to catch the distressed creature but
its flailing arms knocked them out of the way. It began to claw at itself,
tripped and fell just a few paces from Gilhaelith. He recognised it: one of the
diggers who had excavated the lost village in the Great Seep.

The
lyrinx was covered in red, swollen pustules and it began to claw furiously at
itself, tearing its chest armour off in bloody chunks. The sensitive inner skin
was exposed, not the usual pink, but red, pustular and oozing.

Within
minutes the lyrinx had ripped most of its armour away, though that did not seem
to improve matters. It began to scrape and scour at the living flesh, screaming
in agony, until Gyrull motioned, Enough!

Another
lyrinx came up behind it and slashed across the back of its unprotected neck,
severing the spine. The suffering creature fell dead. They dug a deep hole,
buried the lyrinx and left at once. The clearing was now a place of ill omen.

'What
are you going to do with me?' Gilhaelith said to Gyrull a couple of days later.
She was still carrying him, climbing a steep hill near the coast. He could
smell the sea.

She
worked her massive shoulders as if she were uncomfortable. The lyrinx often
seemed to be, inside their armoured outer skin. 'You were not truthful with me,
Tetrarch.'

'What
do you mean?'

'When
we were looking for the relics in the Great Seep, you spent longer studying the
node with your geomantic devices than you did searching for the lost village.
You should have found it a week earlier, and we would have got everything away
in safety. You're to blame for this situation.'

Gilhaelith
was not going to deny it. 'What did you expect? You abducted me.'

'On
the contrary, I saved your life. Vithis arrived at Nyriandiol just days later,
with a great host of constructs. On learning of your perfidy, he would have
slain you out of hand. Besides, you agreed to assist me —’

'Ah!'
said Gilhaelith, 'but in the excitement at Booreah Ngurle the price was never
fixed, therefore the contract is void.'

'Not
so, Tetrarch, for I could see what was in your mind. You had nowhere to go, and
both Aachim and scrutators were after you. It suited you well to be taken to
Snizort under our protection, to spy on our work and further your own studies.
Though never stated, you were happy with that price. The contract stands, and
by your procrastination and deceptions, you've dishonoured it. I've not had my
price from you, Tetrarch, but I will.’

Gilhaelith
bowed his head. 'I can do nothing to stop you. What do you require of me?'

'I
shall take you across the sea to Meldorin, and hold you until I find a need
that you can satisfy. Once you've done that, I may release you.'

That
also suited him. He couldn't save himself, so let the lyrinx do it for him.
Once they'd taken him out of his enemies' reach, he'd find a way to get free.
He had to, for his own sanity. Since Gyrull had first abducted him, he'd had no
control over his life. To Gilhaelith that was like a never-healing sore.

As
Gyrull lifted into the air from the top of the hill, with a host of lyrinx
rising around her like moths from a meadow, Gilhaelith was trying to think of a
way to win his freedom. Once on Meldorin, which was occupied by the lyrinx, he
would be trapped. Even if he could get away from them, he did not have the
skill in boat craft to make a seaworthy vessel. He would effectively be Gyrull's
slave.

They
were crossing the sea from a peninsula of Taltid where the gap was only three
or four leagues. It would be about an hour's flight, since they were flying
into a stiff westerly. Gyrull was at the head of a great wedge of lyrinx, the
arms of the flight trailing back for the best part of a league. She was flying
easily, despite Gilhaelith's weight, though from time to time her wings creaked
as they were buffeted by a particularly strong gust. Ahead, Meldorin was
already visible, a forested land clothing mountains that ran down to the coast.
He saw little sign that humans had ever inhabited it, just the scar of an
overgrown mountain road and what might have been the ruins of a port.

Gilhaelith's
thoughts returned to the problem he had wrestled with earlier: what had
happened at the node. As far as he knew, no node had ever exploded before, so
all he had to go on was his experience as a master geomancer, and his
intuition. Both told him that something could not be reduced to nothing — here
had to be some consequence, other than the raw power of the explosion itself.
But what could it be?

The
traumatic escape had left his thoughts sluggish, memory fractured and logic in
tatters. By the time they'd passed the midpoint of the journey, Gilhaelith had
made no progress on the puzzle.

Then,
as they were being battered by updraughts in the base of a cloud, it came to
him — the answer that could set him free.