Alchymist

'He's a proud fool,' said Irisis. 'Yggur is stronger than he'll ever be. He'll kill himself. I'm going to stop it.'

Nish caught her wrist as she passed. 'Never interfere in the affairs of mancers. Surely you know that?'

She swung her other hand at him, but he caught it as well. Irisis looked furious but it passed in a moment and she sat down, watching the scrutator. Flydd's other leg collapsed. He wobbled on his knees, his teeth bared, but his fingers still moved. While there was breath in his belly he was not going to give in to Yggur.

Another cry ripped through the door. Yggur let out a bellow and the flier dipped in the air.

'Ugh!' Flydd grunted, but regained control and flew another perfect figure-eight.

'Be damned!' roared Yggur, sounding as if he was thumping from one wall to another.

The air rushed out of the scrutator's lungs and he subsided gently to the floor, still smiling. His fingers stopped moving.

The flier turned sharply, bounced off the wall, jagged across the room, struck the door and disappeared through it.

'Ha!' cried Yggur. 'I knew I could do it.' Then silence.

Irisis lifted Flydd to his feet. 'I'm all right,' he said in a faint voice. 'I showed him a thing, didn't I?'

'Bloody idiot!' Letting him fall, Irisis hurried into the other room.

Yggur lay on the floor with the flier clutched in his hand, and he was actually smiling. 'We can do it. I never believed it would be possible.'

That evening, Irisis had just carried a tray into Yggur's room when a servant came running in, carrying a message pouch. 'It's from Uritz, surr, by skeet, and it's marked of the utmost urgency.'

Yggur dismissed the servant, pulled himself up in bed and broke the seal of the pouch. He still looked wan.

'Do you want me to leave?' said Irisis.

He did not answer. Yggur was staring at the paper as if he could not believe what was written there. Irisis felt her skin crawl. Another defeat? Was ruin imminent?

He threw the paper aside, slid the tray to the other side of the bed and levered himself out. Standing on shaky legs, he began to dress.

'What is it? You must rest, Yggur.'

'There's no time. It's come from a spy I have near Alcifer, sent this morning. The skeet must have burst its heart getting here so quickly. A flying construct came across the sea from the east yesterday, went well north of Alcifer, crossed the range and circled back after dark. It's now believed to be hidden in the forest somewhere near the abandoned city. This is our chance!'

'But you're not ready,' said Irisis. 'You could barely control that little flier, and it put you into your sickbed. How are you going to seize a construct?'

'I'll have to. I thought we'd have to go all the way to Stassor and try to find it, with all the risks that entails. Now it's right in my own territory. There'll never be another chance like this. But if we know about it, chances are the enemy do too. Call everyone together. We're going in the air-floater – tonight.'

In the end they did not get away until dawn, and with a headwind made agonisingly slow progress, so that it was long after dark before they reached the vicinity of Alcifer. They turned north, sitting the night out on a frigid mountain peak, and took off before sunrise the next morning.

'Stay higher than they can fly,' said Yggur to Pilot Inouye. 'Should a lyrinx come on us unexpectedly, the war could end right here.'

'They'll surely see us,' said Fyn-Mah. 'Their eyesight's not that bad.'

'I don't mind them knowing we're here. Ghorr often sends air-floaters over the lyrinx cities, spying. But keep to the clouds as much as possible. If the flying construct is still here, and pray that it is, we don't want to alert it.'

They circled high over Alcifer all day, examining the city and its surroundings with Yggur's spyglass, which was the best to be had. When the mist and rainclouds parted, they could see slaves working in the gardens, and their lyrinx guards, but there was no sign of a flying construct.

'Your spy must have been mistaken,' Flydd said at the end of a long, tedious day. He had spent most of it lying on the floor of the cabin holding his stomach.

They were flying within the base of the clouds, which made it difficult to see. 'Not Uritz-' Yggur broke off to train his spyglass on a lyrinx that was labouring up towards them, its wings straining in the thin air. It was not the first: half a dozen had already inspected them that day. 'That's an unusual beast. It's built more like a human than a lyrinx, and its skin's got no pigment at all.'

The lyrinx almost met their height. It circled just out of javelard range, watching them with its large eyes, before wheeling around and diving back towards Alcifer.

'If the flying construct was here,' said Flydd when the sun was about to disappear below the horizon, 'it isn't any longer. Let's go home.'

He broke into another fit of coughing, ending with a groan. The struggle with Yggur had hurt him more than he dared show.

'We're going nowhere,' said Yggur. 'They could be hiding, waiting for us to go away. After all, they'd assume that this air-floater belongs to the Council.'

They returned to their rocky peak for the night, and went back on station the following morning, though this time they floated so far from Alcifer that they would have been no more than a speck against the overcast. Again they saw nothing.

They were taking an early lunch on the third day of their watch when Flydd, who had been looking green all morning, stood up, groaned and collapsed against the rope mesh outside the cabin. He slid along the rope and had started to slip through, when Nish caught him by the arm and hauled him back. Irisis helped to carry him inside, where they laid him on the canvas bench at the front of the cabin.

Nish checked Flydd's pulse, which was fast and erratic. His skin was clammy. 'It's not good, Irisis.'

She stood up as Yggur came through the door. 'He's ill, Yggur.'

'We can't leave now. It's there somewhere.' Yggur paced to the fabric door and back. 'He'll be all right.'

'He looks bad.'

'He did this damage to himself, trying to prove he was as good as me. He's not, and I'm not turning back. If we can take this construct-'

'The damn thing's not here. And if it were, do you value the life of a scrutator less than some damned machine?'

'I wouldn't swap the flying construct for a hundred scrutators,' said Yggur.

'If I were a mancer, I'd blast you clear across the Sea of Thurkad,' she said furiously.

'Your loyalty outweighs your common sense, Artisan. A flying construct means the difference between certain defeat and possible victory. We're going nowhere until I'm satisfied that it's here, or gone.'

It was an unpleasant lunch. As they were finishing, the scrutator's groans gave way to a laboured panting.

'He's really ill,' Irisis wept as they circled towards the mud terraces again. 'Can't you do anything, Yggur?'

'I'm not a healer,' he replied.

'There's a good one in Old Hripton.'

'How did you know that?'

'I've been down there several times. Women's troubles.' 'Oh!' He wasn't going to ask about that. 'If we get back in time you may take him there.'

'Unless we go right away we won't be in time.'

He folded his arms across his chest. 'No man is worth more than humanity, as I'm sure Flydd would agree.'

Irisis had heard the scrutator say such things more than once. It made no difference – her friend and one-time lover was really ill. If she could have wrested control from Yggur, she would have. But that, of course, was impossible. She vented her fury at him as only she could. He ignored her.

They slid into a veil of high cloud that covered most of the sky. Nish took up a spyglass, though his mind was no longer on the search. Looking through the cloud was like peering through a silk scarf. Far below, mist clung to the ridges, and only the tips of the spires and domes of Alcifer rose above it.

'There's a lot of activity this afternoon,' he said after a while. There were at least a dozen lyrinx in the air.