Alchymist

Gyrull passed up the opportunity to mock him for cowardice. She was nobler than he'd thought. 'You're quite safe. Our boundaries extend some distance from Alcifer, and you'll have my guards with you.'

Can't you take the measurements yourself?' 'We can, but I'm asking you to do it, as part-payment of your debt. We have much to do, presently. The measurements won't take much time at all. A few days, at most.'

Shortly after sunrise, Gilhaelith was taking sightings through a calibrated spyglass from a ridge high above the city, and noting field strengths on a map Gyrull had given him. The readings were to be done every half-hour all day, from this ridge, and from six other locations on succeeding days. Therefore the work would take a week, not the few days Gyrull had mentioned. There was no time for wondering why. No sooner was the first set of readings complete than it was time to start the second, and so it went all day, and the next. All twelve of his servants had been sent with him — keeping an eye on him for Gyrull, he assumed — and two guards were watching them.

On the third afternoon he was working on a higher ridge on the slope of the dormant volcano. He'd just moved the glass to a new position when a powerful distortion in the field led him to glance up the slope. The distortion seemed to be moving, but its source was masked or cloaked and it took quite an effort to see through it. To his astonishment, it was a thapter. The metal skin was undamaged, so it wasn't Tiaan's. Someone else had uncovered the secret. Soon, he supposed, the skies would be full of them.

The thapter drifted in his direction. Gilhaelith squinted at it, trying to identify the operator, but the machine was too far off. Whoever was inside it, human or Aachim, was a threat to him. He ducked under the trees, praying that it would turn aside.

Not so his servants, who began screaming and jumping up and down.

Careful,' he called. 'Most likely it's Aachim in that flier.'

'Do they eat folk?' said the always irascible Tyal.

'Of course not.'

'Then they're a damn sight better than the enemy.'

If the Aachim found Gilhaelith he would certainly be imprisoned for keeping the thapter from them; he might even forfeit his life. Should the thapter be possessed by the scrutators, however, he would be swiftly tried for keeping it and the amplimet from Klarm, and as swiftly executed. That fate might await him from Gyrull, too, but surely not until he'd tested the globe. The decision took little time. Of his three possible fates, only remaining at Alcifer offered the chance to complete his life's work.

'Not for me,' muttered Gilhaelith, moving further into the shadows.

'So that's how it is,' roared lyal. 'Look at him, hiding like the craven cur he is! His promises were lies. He's a traitor, as I've always said, and the scrutators will pay handsomely for him. Take Gilhaelith!'

Two of the male servants threw themselves on him, while the others took up cudgels and attacked the pair of lyrinx guards standing in the shade. The women began capering madly in the clearing, waving items of clothing at the thapter, but as Gilhaelith fell a cloaking spell renewed itself and the machine vanished.

Three of the male servants lay bleeding on the ground before the lyrinx were defeated. One was felled by an expertly thrown rock, the other went down under the weight of four humans. A cudgel blow knocked it unconscious.

Gilhaelith was dragged, struggling furiously, out into the open. Someone bound his wrists behind his back with a length of cord. Gilhaelith prayed that there were more lyrinx nearby, or he was finished.

Fifty-two

Malien came to Tiaan's room that night, very late, looking rather drawn.

'I'm sorry,' she said on entering. 'I should have anticipated their reaction and kept our business till later.'

'Of course your people wouldn't want an outsider at their council,' said Tiaan, who had been watching the patterns ebb and flow in the translucent walls. 'I should have known better than to interrupt.'

'It's just that it showed up their fatal weakness — an inability to agree on anything.' Malien sat on the bed, a rhomboid frame of metal with a mattress as hard as a plank. The other furnishings were equally minimal and unornamented. In Tirthrax, every surface of every object had been decorated. 'It's worse than it was before the council began.'

'Are they like this in everything they do?'

Malien sighed. 'Unfortunately, when they deal with the outside world, yes. In the past we've allowed ourselves to be led to disaster because we lacked the courage to challenge a powerful, charismatic leader, or because we believed the unbelievable of him. The march of folly, I call it, and Tensor's folly became so seared into our consciousness that no one wishes to be leader any more. Every proposition is torn apart in the meeting room. We're so afraid of hubris that we won't act at all; not even when the outside world burns.'

'And Vithis is like Tensor, you said. Has Vithis been here?'

'His envoys have, though not recently. The country is too steep and rugged for constructs and, even from the lowlands of Kalar, west of these mountains, it takes weeks to walk into Stasor. For the coming winter, which is six months long here, it can't be done at all.'

'Except by thapter. Do you know where Vithis is?' A long way away, Tiaan fervently hoped.

'He's gone north to the Foshorn, seized land there and closed the borders. No one knows what he's up to.'

'I was sure he would come after me,' Tiaan said softly.

'Another of our failings, in times of duress, is to retreat into our fastness and shut the world out.'

Tiaan sagged with relief. 'What are you going to do, Malien?'

'I don't know. I may return to Tirthrax, if Harjax will let me.'

'Why wouldn't he?'

'My people want the thapter. To gain such a prize, they may find the courage to act.'

Are you in danger?'

'I hardly think so, though …'

Three nights later, Tiaan was lying awake in the dark when the room was shaken gently by an earth trembler. It wasn't the first she'd felt here, but the amplimet, which had hardly changed since she'd escaped from the Aachim's nets, began to blink rapidly. She sat up. The room shook again, violently enough to slide a metal goblet off the table. It rang on the stone floor like a distant alarm and the patterns in the walls went wild for a few seconds before returning to their previous progression. Tiaan thought about investigating the source of the trembler with geomancy, but that would require her to use the amplimet. She'd not touched it since Tirthrax and was reluctant to now. The feeling that it was waiting for something was stronger than ever.

She got out of bed to pick up the goblet, then reached for her hedron. As she touched it the field flashed into her mind, but it was all eaten away on one side as if something was taking massive amounts of power from it. Was this what the amplimet had been waiting for?

Without dressing, she fleeted down the hall to Malien's room. The stone was frigid underfoot, for the Aachim main-tained their city at a temperature considerably lower than Tiaan found comfortable.

She rapped on the door. 'Enter!' said Malien.

Tiaan went in. Malien was sitting at the table with Bilfis, who had a glassy cube in his hands, like a model of Stassor. Coloured patterns moved within it, and on the outside. He was frowning.

Malien was making marks, in the Aachim script, on a complicated diagram. Bilfis rotated the edge of the cube, twisting it so that smaller cubes were revealed, twenty-five to each side. He moved the smaller cubes into a new pattern.

Malien made another series of marks. 'Worse!'

Bilfis set the divination cube down on the table and ran his hands through his hair.