Alchymist (61 page)

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 health 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 Snizort.
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 ...'

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.