'They go to establish the truth of what you've told us,' she said. 'We'll rest for an hour, then take you to Oellyll.'
'What's Oellyll?' said Gilhaelith.
'A city of ours, the best part of a day's flight from here.'
He felt the familiar panicky tightness in his chest, the difficulty of getting enough air. Once she had him there, it was unlikely she would ever let him go. And, held like a pet in a cage, subject to Gyrull's whims, he must eventually go mad.
After flying through dense cloud that night and all the next day, they arrived at Oellyll on a dark and rainy evening. Gilhaelith had no idea where in Meldorin they were. He was carried blind-folded through caverns lined with cut slabs of carven stone, into a deeper underground that the lyrinx had excavated out of rock. It was warm here, which was pleasant, for he was still saturated with an inner chill.
He learned nothing about Oellyll that night, save that it was ventilated by great bellows up on the surface. Several times he passed through their blasts of air, so strong that they almost tore him from the lyrinx's grasp. He was left in a warm room on a low platform which passed for a bed. It had an open doorway. They had no fear of him escaping for he could not stand up.
He lay on the platform, closed his eyes and did not wake for twenty-four hours, not even while their healers attended his injuries.
Two more days Gilhaelith spent in his room, lying on the platform without strength to raise his head. He had been badly hurt by immersion in the tat His liver troubled him, his head still throbbed, his heart would race for no particular reason and he felt incredibly weak. Walking the few hundred steps to the privy was beyond him. And the movement of those gallstone fragments along his internal ducts proved more excruciating than his most dismal imaginings.
Making matters worse, the food they gave him was a murky sludge the colour of rotting leaves. Reaching over the side of the platform, Gilhaelith dipped a finger in the bowl. The stuff turned out to be vegetable in origin, but quite bland. He pushed it away. The only vegetables he cared for were strongly flavoured ones, such as onions, turnips and radishes. He'd lived on a diet of slugs, pickled organs and other delicacies most of his adult life, and his palate craved exotic and the intense tastes. But if this pulverised goop was all he was going to get, he'd better eat it. He extended bony fingers, scooped up a gob of the green-brown muck, and swallowed. The repulsive blandness reminded him of his miserable childhood and the repressed memories exploded.
An orphan who had been dragged screaming out of his mother's lifeless body, he'd been carried to a far-off land by his loyal nurse, travelling by night and hiding by day. Gilhaelith had never learned why, or who he was, and had long since decided that he did not want to know. It could only cause him more trouble.
He'd never fitted in. Gilhaelith shivered as the distant memories ebbed and flowed. He'd been plagued by illness and stomach upsets as an infant. As a child, learning had been difficult, and if not for the patience of his nurse he'd still be illiterate. Once he'd mastered reading, though, and especially numbers, the whole world had opened up to him.
Then came the greatest tragedy of his life. His nurse fell ill and died, and Gilhaelith ended up in an orphans' home, fed on tasteless gruel and little enough of it. He thrust the bowl away so roughly that mush slopped all over the floor. In the home his stomach had begun to trouble him again and it wasn't until he began to feed on slugs, grubs, fish organs and other exotica that it had settled down.
Gilhaelith had been out of harmony with the world and had to fight it every step of the way, though the world showed him only brutality or indifference. Always an outsider, his feeding habits made him an object of derision and disgust. He was ostracised and bullied, and the only way he could cope was with absolute self-control. Forced to master his feelings and emotions, he had gradually extended that control to everyone around him, and then to everything.
Once grown to manhood, that iron control had helped him to accumulate great wealth, which allowed him to retreat to a place he could control completely. He'd built Nyriandiol so as to be master of his own environment, though he'd discovered that, without perfect understanding of the world, he could never have complete control. Gilhaelith, a man determined to overcome all obstacles, had set out to do just that. And first he had to discover why the world was the way it was. His life's work was born.
He'd become a geomancer and, after a century and more of study, the greatest geomancer of all, but his goal seemed as far off as ever. He still felt threatened – some unpredictable event might still overturn his carefully constructed existence. Then it had: Tiaan had appeared, and her amplimet had opened up all sorts of previously inconceivable possibilities.
But Tiaan had upset his control mechanisms. At first, because of his attraction to her, he'd found that exhilarating. Soon, however, his carefully structured life had fallen into chaos, which he'd found increasingly difficult to handle. Vithis had come, and Klarm. His servants had begun to plot behind his back. Then Gyrull had abducted him and Gilhaelith's hard-won control began to falter. He'd felt like an orphan again. In Snizort he'd allowed his relationship with Tiaan to founder. Gilhaelith regretted it, both for the loss of her friendship, and the loss of an apprentice worthy of him, but at the time there'd been little choice.
Since being trapped in the tar his life had careered out of control. His health grew worse each day, he felt ever more stressed and panicky and there were signs of breakdown that he could not admit to himself. He'd never thought he could be so vulnerable. The panic exploded, choking him.
In an effort to calm himself, he began to recite a list of minerals and their properties. He'd previously found rote exercise to be soothing in times of stress. He'd listed all the properties of quartz and fluorspar and was about to begin on calcite when his mind went completely and unaccountably blank.
Calcite, he thought. Rhombohedral crystals, sometimes prismatic or.., or… Nothing! He could not recall any of the dozens of properties on the list, not even the variety of its colours, only that calcite was mostly white.
He picked another mineral at random, barite. Nothing. Dolomite. Nothing. Sulphur. Nothing. Then, with a horror that could not be described, the entire catalogue of minerals faded from his mind. He'd known the list by heart for a hundred and thirty years, and in that time had never forgotten the smallest detail.
It's just exhaustion, he told himself. You're pushing too hard. Give yourself a chance to recover. He put the failure out of mind, or at least tried to, but the appalling thought kept returning. He hadn't been pushing at all – the recitation had been meant to be a comfort. And from there, only one conclusion was possible. During the escape from Snizort he must have damaged a part of his brain.
Gilhaelith did not try again; he was too afraid. In his long, long life there had been few problems he'd not been able to solve by intellect, geomancy or sheer will. He'd even found a solution to the vexation of human relations – he controlled everyone who came into his life. Those who could not be controlled he simply pushed away. Until Tiaan appeared, emotion had played no part in his existence, or so he liked to think. He was a man governed by pure reason, and if his intellect deserted him, what would he have left?
After a few more days' rest he was mobile again. Gilhaelith was tracing out the familiar journey to the privy for the third time in a few hours, hobbling like an old man, when a lyrinx fell in beside him.
'Would you come this way, please?' she said politely. 'The matriarch wishes to speak with you.'