Alchymist

'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.'