Alchymist (76 page)

'I
don't follow you.'

'Come
outside, where we can talk.' She led him into a chilly corner of the yard. 'Do
you get the impression that Yggur knows more than he's letting on?'

'It's
just rivalry. No mancer can bear to be told what to do. And they've always got
to go one better.'

'That's
not what I meant. I think Yggur, despite his gruff manner, does feel some
sympathy for our cause. But he's been burned in the past and that's why he's
withdrawn.'

'Doesn't
help us much,' said Nish glumly.

'He
was one of the greatest mancers of all time.'

'A
thousand years ago.'

'He
played a great part in the Tale of the Mirror, too. We've got to convince him
to help us.' 'Good luck!' said Nish. 'I've an idea. I'm going to see him.'
'What are you going to say?' 'I won't know until I say it.'

Nish
followed her inside and down the corridor. She rapped on Yggur's door, which
was firmly closed. There was no answer. She rapped louder. Go away!' he roared.
Irisis took hold of the handle. 'Coming?' Nish, who was hanging back, shook his
head. 'I've felt enough of the wrath of mancers for one lifetime. I'll see you
later.'

You
coward,' she said amiably. She opened the door and slipped inside.

Yggur
was down the far end, working at a bench littered with objects familiar and
unfamiliar. 'Go away, I said.'

Irisis
kept coming. 'I know you want to help us. You're a hard man, Yggur, but not a
mean one. You'll happily turn the screws on Flydd, out of mancer's rivalry—'

'It's
not rivalry, Irisis. I'm not that petty.' He smiled ruefully. 'Well, hardly
ever. It's not the man, but his office. The Council is notoriously corrupt. I'm
sorry, but I just can't bring myself to trust a scrutator' 'He's not like
them.' 'How do you know?' 'I'm a good judge of character—' Clouded by feelings
for your lover.'

'He
hasn't been my lover for months, but I admire him as a man and a friend. Trust
me.' 'Hmn.'

'You're
an honourable man, Yggur, and I don't believe you'd refuse us if you could
help.'

'Don't
you?' he said, trying to stare her down. She held his gaze, defiant as always.
'Remarkable. Very well — I'll share what I have with you.'

May I
call Xervish Flydd?'

With
you alone,' he growled. 'Come here. You understand devices. Tell me what you
think of this.'

It
looked like a glass onion the size of a grapefruit. She could see layer upon
layer inside, each different, each made of glass etched or painted in colours
and patterns, or bonded with geometric shapes in gold, silver and copper foil.
A faint luminescence at the core was irregularly eclipsed as the layers
revolved and rotated independently of one another.

'It's
beautifully made,' said Irisis. 'I've never seen such craftsmanship. Where did
you get it?'

'I've
had it for hundreds of years, and before that it must have been through many
hands. The man who . . , sold it to me claimed it was made by Golias the Mad,
though I can't verify that.'

'Didn't
Golias invent the farspeaker?' she asked.

Yggur
gave her a keen glance. 'Indeed, though its secret died with him.'

She
touched a finger to the glass. 'What does it do?'

'I
haven't learned that, despite diligent study. I was hoping you might be able to
help me.'

'Me?
But I know little of the Art.' As Irisis picked up the sphere, the internal
layers spun.

'I
believe it requires a different kind of understanding — a capacity for thinking
across the Arts, if you will.'

'I've
heard Flydd talk about Golias's farspeaker,' said Irisis. 'Could it not speak
from one side of the world to the other?'

'So
the ancients have it, though all his devices failed on his death and no one has
been able to reproduce them.'

Yggur
took the globe from her hand, replacing it on the bench. 'Now this is entirely
my own work.' Reaching up to a high shelf, he brought down an object even more
incomprehensible than the first.

Made
of metal, and rather heavy, it was shaped like a legless beetle the length of a
man's finger. Its iridescent top was convex. Though flat underneath, it was so
well made that the joins in the metal could scarcely be seen.

'What
is it?' she said.

Yggur
touched it at what, if it had been a beetle, would have been the rear. It
emitted a high-pitched whistle and slowly rose off the table, to hover a
hand-span above it.

'Just
a toy.' They watched it rocking in the air for a moment, whereupon Yggur
touched it in the same place and it sank down, rather more quickly, to thump
into the surface. He was panting from the strain.

'You're
trying to make a flying machine,' exclaimed Irisis.

He
took a while to get his breath back. 'Not as a weapon of war, merely for the
intellectual challenge. I saw Rulke's original construct. I studied it as
closely as I could, from a distance, and I destroyed it. For two hundred and
seven years I've been trying to recover his secret, and this is all I've
achieved.'

'No
one else did better, until the Aachim came.'

'And
they made the real thing — eleven thousand constructs.'

'But
they had the original to model it on,' said Irisis. At least, what was left of
it. And they haven't made them fly, only hover. No one but Tiaan has done
more.'

'Even
so, I call this little thing a failure . . .'

'But?'
said Irisis. 'That's not the end of it, is it?'

He
gnawed at his lower lip; then, as if reversing a long-held policy in a moment of
weakness he was bound to regret, said: 'I've a mind to take a trip in your
air-floater, to the battlefield at Snizort. Hundreds of wrecked constructs lie
there, I'm told. No doubt they've been disabled, but I may learn a thing or
two. Of course, I'll need a skilled artificer to go with me . . .'

He
looked uncertain, as if not used to asking favours. The great mancer was
vulnerable too. 'Will Nish come, do you think?'

'I'll
make sure he does.'

'Tell
him to bring his artificer's tools.'

'He
has none. He escaped Snizort with just the rags on his back.'

Yggur
frowned. 'Instruct him to go to my lower tool room and select what he needs. We
may have to take a construct apart. What about you, Irisis?'

I'll be
there, if the scrutator will release me.' 'You said you had no master,' Yggur
reminded her. She turned away. 'I meant it in a different way.' 'Ah, how you
use words.'

Flangers
went with them too, and Inouye to pilot the air-floater. She was as meek and
quiet as ever, though once or twice, when she moved the controller arm and the
machine responded more precisely than before, Nish thought he detected the
faintest of smiles. Yggur had worked his magic there as well, to Flydd's
irritation. Flydd did not come. He had planned to refuse but Yggur hadn't
invited him. The other passenger was Eiryn Muss, whom Flydd was sending back to
Lauralin, where he could be useful.

'How
long to Snizort, Inouye?' Yggur said as they floated up from the yard and
turned south-east.

'Depends
on the wind, surr. If it's strong behind us, we might be there in fifteen
hours. If against us, it could take two days.'

He
studied the sky. 'Hard to tell what it's like up there. There's not a cloud to
be seen.'

The
trip was uneventful, the winds light and variable but generally assisting them
They flew all afternoon and most of the night, arriving over the battlefield
Sround five in the morning. Dawn was still some way off and there was no moon;
the stars barely illuminated the hummocky ground.

'The
smell . . .' said Inouye faintly.

Eleven
weeks had gone by, and the maggots and scavengers had reduced the unburnt
bodies to bone, sinew and hide, yet still the battlefield stank of its dead.
The Aachim had buried their dead deep, but the other remains lay where they'd
fallen. The stench brought it all back to Nish: the knee-deep, bloody mud, the
futility of war. He put his hands over his nose and breathed shallowly. It
helped, if only a little.

Yggur
laid one big hand on his shoulder. 'The sooner we begin, the sooner we can
leave this place.' He checked something concealed in his fingers. 'Settle down
over there, Inouye, by those pointed rocks. Stay at your post while we're gone;
you never know what we may encounter here. Flangers, keep the watch. Cryl-Nish
and Irisis, bring your tools.' He shrugged pack onto his back.

The
air-floater set down, the crusted ground crunching under the keel. Eiryn Muss
slipped between the ropes and was gone without a goodbye. They followed Yggur
over the side. An early autumn frost crackled underfoot. He moved purposefully
towards a hump about fifty paces distant, which turned out to be a wrecked
clanker. The oily smell reminded Nish of his time as an artificer.

The
mancer muttered to himself and a light glowed in his hand. He strode off to
another hump. This one was a construct, tilted on its side with solidified mud
holding it in place.

'Keep
watch,' said Yggur curtly.

For
what? Nish thought. A thousand lyrinx could be out there and we wouldn't see
them.

Yggur
made ghost fire in his palm and held it up to the base of the construct while
he walked around the machine. 'It's so like the original. Why, I wonder?'

'Perhaps
they felt it was perfect as it was,' said Irisis.

'The
Aachim's work is their art and they seldom make two objects exactly the same
way. Rulke was their most bitter enemy, so to copy his creation must have been
bile to them. Why did they not remake it in their own image?'

'Perhaps
they were afraid to,' said Nish. 'If they did not understand . . .'

'Yes,'
said Yggur. 'They've not been able to solve the secret of flight, which can
only mean one thing — they didn't understand what they were doing. They copied
his work blindly, afraid to make changes in case they modified something vital.
We've found their weakness.'

He
went round it several times, studying everything, then prised open the hatch
and climbed inside. A few seconds later he was out again, gagging.

'There's
a rotting corpse in there. We'll have to find another.'

And
burned underneath,' added Nish, 'doubtless destroying what we came for.'

Yggur
leapt down and set off across the rutted field, breathing heavily. They
followed him in silence. Dawn was dabbing patches of colour on the eastern sky
by the time they found another construct. This one was a wreck, the metal skin
torn open and curled back on itself, the hatch completely gone and even the
underside smashed in.

'I
doubt I'll find what I'm looking for here,' said Yggur, but he inspected it as
carefully as the first. He did not spend much time in this one either.

'There
was a fire.' He wiped sooty hands on his cloak. 'It looks like the drive
mechanism burst open. What's not burned has melted. Even the bones inside are
charcoal.' Standing up on the shooter's platform, he scanned the surroundings.
'There's another. We'll have to be careful. The lyrinx may still keep an eye on
this place.'

That
clanker was also ruined, and the one after. 'This could take days,' Nish said
gloomily.

'Why
don't we go up in the air-floater?' said Irisis. 'I've seen this place enough
times from the air to be able to find you a construct.'

'It'll
tell everyone within five leagues that we're here,' said Yggur, 'but I suppose
we've got no choice.'

They
floated over the walls of Snizort. 'The Aachim constructs were concentrated to
the west and north-west,' said Irisis. 'Over there.' She pointed west. 'I can
see hundreds of them, close together.'

The
humps were clearly visible, and in the middle they saw a magnificent pavilion
of golden sandstone, its carven dome standing on seven columns. In the distance
a creek, dry save for a few small pools, meandered between the hills.

'That
structure wasn't there before,' said Irisis.

'It'll
be a memorial to the Aachim dead,' said Yggur. 'So much death! On a dark night
the ghosts will be thick as mist.'

Nish
snorted. 'I don't believe in ghosts.'

Nor
did I, until I took pilgrimage to places where I'd sent armies to their deaths.
My Second Army in Bannador; the thousand of my finest who fell in Elludore
Forest. I wept for their lost souls, Nish. As will you, should you ever revisit
Gumby Marth, or any other place where men's lives were in your keeping.' He
went down the back to speak to Inouye.

'Cheerful
company, isn't he,' said Irisis, though she couldn't help thinking of the
mancer she'd obliterated on the aqueduct at the manufactory. What hopes had she
had? What dreams? What fears all too brutally realised? 'Bloody mancers!' They
strolled after him. 'Down there, I think, Inouye' said Yggur. The pilot moved
the steering arm and released a little floater gas. The machine had just begun
to sink when she turned around. 'Something's there, Lord Yggur.'