Alchymist

He swallowed and turned to Tiaan. 'I have much to get done,' Vithis said softly, 'so let us get this over with as quickly as possible. How did you make the construct fly?'

Vithis, an exceptionally tall man, was standing so close that she had to tilt her head right back to look at him. A fly buzzed around the tent. The sun was going down but the heat and stillness remained oppressive.

'I don't know,' she lied. 'I've never understood how I used the amplimet, even after all the instruction the Aachim gave me. My talent just seemed to grow. Sometimes it was as if the crystal was instructing me.'

His face was as expressionless as metal; she could not judge his thoughts.

'You're lying,' he said without emphasis. 'You blindfolded everyone in the construct and did something to it to make it fly. What did you do?'

'Nothing,' Tiaan said as steadily as she could. She could not match his strength so she must give before him, then spring back. 'You can check Tirior's construct.'

'We will, once it's cool enough to get inside. If you didn't change it, how did you make it fly?'

Any construct can be made to fly if you have an amplimet,' she lied.

'How?' he roared in her face. And why did you blindfold everyone?'

'I didn't want anyone to see the amplimet. Look what it's done to Ghaenis, after you gave it to him. It causes trouble everywhere I go, and everyone who sees it wants to take it from me. It's mine!. Joeyn gave it to me with his dying breath. It's all I have left, since you forced Minis to break his promise to me. Since you killed little Haani.'

'I did not kill her!' he snapped, but it put him off balance. 'It was an accident and reparation has been paid. Neither could Minis break his promise, since he did not have the right to make such a commitment to you.'

Tiaan had to reinforce his false impression of her character. She tried to make her emotions as flighty as a hutterfly. 'I did everything for the love of Minis,' she said with a sweet, dreamy smile, like a smitten adolescent. Then she screeched, 'He promised me! He lied, and you forced him to it. I hate you'.'

Vithis took a step backwards. 'Minis does not lie.' He grimaced as if he'd just swallowed something nasty.

'He lied to me!' she shrieked. 'Liar, liar, liar!' You're overdoing it, she thought. Vithis is a clever, subtle man. Don't be too emotional.

'You show your true nature at last. The amplimet can never be yours, sad little creature that you are. You're unworthy of it.'

'No!' she shouted. 'It's mine.'

He shook her until she felt like vomiting fragments of red sausage all over him. 'You're no geomancer, Tiaan. You have a brilliant native talent, but not the intellect to control the amplimet.'

'I flew my thapter all the way from Tirthrax,' she muttered.

'The crystal would end up controlling you. For the last time, how did you make the construct fly?'

'I had to work the balance between the two crystals,' she said, making up a meaningless term. 'For flight, the balance between the amplimet and the smaller crystal, my hedron, must be just right. I set up a kind of.., oscillation in the field, but it grew stronger and stronger, as if it was feeding on itself. It hurt so much! I thought it was going to anthracise me. Like you did to poor Ghaenis.'

He ignored the barb. 'But it didn't; said Vithis. 'How did you overcome that?'

'The oscillation vanished and the field seemed to be pushing the other way, lifting the construct off the floor. Then… I can't explain it. I visualised the construct flying.., something grew hot beneath the floor and up it went…'

"That's gibberish,' he said doubtfully. 'You're making it up.'

A drop of ice slid down her gullet. She was making it up, and if he was sure of it he would crucify her. Careful, she thought. Be more convincing in your stupidity. 'That's what happened, I swear it!' she rushed out. 'I didn't understand. The feeling of the crystal was soul-deep.' She said it with wide-eyed, gullible since:

'Soul-deep? What mumbo-jumbo is that?'

Someone was at the flap, beckoning. Vithis spoke briefly to the man, then returned. 'I have urgent business elsewhere. Before I go, answer me this. What did you mean, it was as if the crystal was instructing you?'

She seized on that. Back in the manufactory, one of the workers, a girl called Sannet, had heard voices all the time. It had been tiresome to work with her, for Sannet needed to consult her voices before undertaking the simplest task.

'I heard voices. In my head,' lied Tiaan, looking up at the Aachim stupidly.

He was disgusted. 'Have you always heard them?'

Could she reinforce his feeling that she was not completely sane? No, better to pretend that the amplimet had damaged her. 'Never!' Tiaan cried theatrically, 'Until I was given the amplimet by old Joeyn. He was my only friend.'

'I'm not surprised,' said Vithis.

'That very night I dreamed about Minis,' Tiaan went on. 'And afterwards. But.., it wasn't until I used the amplimet in the ice cave that the voices began.'

'Is that so?' he said softly. And did you hear them all the time after that?'

'Only after I used the crystal, and then only for a day or two. In the months it took to travel from Kalissin to Tirthrax, I didn't hear voices at all. There were no nodes by the great inland sea; the crystal could draw no power there.'

And after Tirthrax?'

'I've often heard the voices these last few months.'

'What do they tell you?' He sounded as if he believed her.

Tiaan did not relax. He was weighing everything she said, and if she made one inconsistent remark, one false step, he would have her.

Fifteen

Tiaan recalled something Vithis had said just after coming through the gate to Santhenar. Tirior had wanted the amplimet but he'd been afraid of it, saying that it was corrupt and dangerous. Could she play on that fear?

'I can't bear to be without the amplimet; she said softly. 'I haven't suffered withdrawal since the gate was opened, but whenever someone else has my crystal, I feel the most indescribable longing for it.' She looked Vithis in the eye. 'Yet it frightens me. After Tirthrax, it was as if the amplimet wanted something. As if it were using me.'

The man who had come to the door was back, gesturing furiously. Vithis waved him away.

'Using you? How do you mean?'

'I felt that it was a million years old,' she said breathlessly. And all that time it had lain underground, drawing power from the node. Waiting, and planning what it would do when it got free.'

'What does it want to do?' Vithis spoke as if humouring her, but he was plucking uneasily at his chin.

Perhaps he was superstitious about such things. 'It's following a mineral.., instinct, from times so long ago that the shape of the land was different. I dreamed that it was controlling me, though it didn't want me. It's looking for someone stronger, a great mancer like you! She reached out to him.

He sprang backwards. 'Don't touch me! It's telling you to work on me now, isn't it?' His breath whistled in and out through his teeth.

How could it be telling me anything?' she said with childlike innocence, 'I don't have it.'

Wait here, if you please.'

How could she do otherwise? Again Tiaan reached towards him but he stepped back smartly and slipped out through the flap.

He returned some time later with a woman Tiaan had not met before. She was old, her dark skin weathered to the texture of bark, her hair as grey as aged thatch and her back bent.

"This little thing?' the old woman said, fixing Tiaan with cloudy eyes. She came up close but avoided touching her. Her voice was croaky, crackly. 'It hardly seems possible.'

'We've all seen her fly the construct, Urien, and we know she made the gate.'

Urien stared right into Tiaan's eyes. 'The crystal talks to you, child?'

Tiaan shivered and the old woman smiled to see it. Her gums had withered, exposing snaggly yellow teeth which looked as though they'd been stuck in clay by an inexpert hand.