Alchymist

'Explain!'

'When you first showed us Golias's sphere, your eyes were positively glowing with yearning. I've not seen you that inspired about anything else, not even your little flier. You want Golias's secret more than anything.'

'I've wanted it from the moment I saw the device.' He took the glass sphere in his big hands, turning it this way and that, staring through its outer layer at her.

Irisis had a momentary loss of confidence. Yggur had lived more than a thousand years, had seen everything this world had to offer, yet he looked no older than a hale and powerful fifty. All her life and experience were no more than the blink of an eye to him. But she must go on. 'And then, when you told us about Tiaan surveying the nodes the other day, I saw that look again.'

'Continue,' he said softly.

'The clincher is the way you've rebuilt this construct controller. Controllers are my life, Yggur. My mother had me pulling them to pieces and putting them back together before I could walk. See here and here and here,' she touched in turn the flat coils of metal that whorled out from the cup holding the powering crystal, and the reciprocating rods that extended in six directions, 'these are surely to channel power from the crystal to the controlling levers, and these to convey it to various parts of the construct—'

'You can tell all that so quickly? I've spent weeks puzzling it out.'

'I've been working with fields since I was an infant.' Even so …'

'A construct controller is nothing like the controllers I'm used to, but it does the same thing — it draws on the field and uses that force to power and control the machine.' She indicated other parts, where the reciprocating rods were surrounded by red concretions and a network of glass filaments. 'These modifications of yours have no place in a normal construct. They can only be for one purpose — to seize control of a flying construct from its operator.'

He nodded. 'That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Do you think it will work?'

She thought for a minute or two. 'No, because this array of crystals will cancel out the effect of this one, here. But if you were to network these crystals in this kind of arrangement, tightly coil these filaments around them thus …'

Irisis began to sketch swiftly on a large piece of paper with a stick of charcoal, covering it with lines, shapes and symbols. Yggur leaned forward, watching the design grow. She smeared out a number of lines with a fingertip, cocking her head as she redrew them. Finally satisfied, without a by-your-leave she took tools from his bench and began to pull his controller apart.

Yggur said nothing during the next hour, just watched the deft movement of her fingers as she completely rebuilt it, adding in new sections from the boxes of crystals and silver wires on his table. Finally she laid the controller down, brushed her yellow hair out of her eyes and looked up. He studied the new arrangement for a good while, then suddenly smiled; it lit up his stern and craggy face. 'You're right, of course. Why couldn't I see that? You were going to say?'

'It'll work, assuming you've solved the other problem. How to communicate at a distance.' She rolled Golias's onion globe into her hand. It was as unfathomable as ever.

'I'm no further advanced than I was two hundred years ago. Do you have any ideas?'

She closed her hands over the globe. 'No. I can only think of one person who might, but—'

'Would that Tiaan were here,' he said shrewdly, 'rather than on the other side of the continent.'

Irisis pursed her lips, still feeling the rivalry after all this time. An idea occurred to her. 'Fyn-Mah scried out the scrutator in the middle of the Karama Malama, using only a crystal and a bowl of quicksilver—'

"To be correct, she scried out a special kind of lodestone he was carrying.'

'We might attune this controller to a flying construct's hedron in the same way.'

'I doubt it.'

'Let's ask Flydd.'

'What does Flydd know, pray?' Yggur said coolly.

'He knows more about the field, and devices to shape and use it, than anyone. For seven years he was in charge of the scrutators' secret project to develop new devices powered by the field.'

Yggur sat back with his eyes closed and fingers pressed to his temples. 'I can't bring myself to trust any scrutator, but in this emergency I suppose I must.' He put the globe away. 'Very well. On your say-so I'll ask to him. Anyone else?'

'Only me.'

Irisis was lying awake that night when she had another idea. She brought it up the following morning, as the group sat staring glumly at the controller.

'There are crystals,' she said thoughtfully, 'that can induce an aura around a hedron from some distance.'

And some are natural,' Flydd added. 'Certain ore deposits caused problems with clanker controllers, back when they were first invented, until we discovered a way to shield them.'

'We're not getting anywhere with Golias's globe,' said Irisis. 'We might be better off trying to discover how such auras are generated, and how they can affect hedrons, and at what distance.'

'Let me see if I'm following your train of thought,' said Yggur. 'You're thinking that we should try to deliberately create such auras, even magnify them.'

'Yes. If we can find ones that work at a distance, perhaps we can imprint your controller aura onto them. I may be able to change your controller to do that.'

'Hmn,' Yggur said doubtfully. 'If by some chance we did manage to send such a signal, how would we take command of the controller of the flying construct? How would we control it? And how stop its operator from taking it back? The most likely result would be no effect at all. If it did work, the construct would doubtless fall out of the air, and all in it be destroyed.'

'We'll never know unless we try.'

The next couple of weeks were spent in the most tedious of labour, investigating hedrons of various types, and other kinds of crystals, to determine the nature of auras that could be induced from them. Irisis did most of this work, assisted somewhat uncomfortably by Fyn-Mah. And every time Flydd entered the room, she turned her dark eyes on him, gazing at him with that deferential longing that Irisis found so irritating. If you want him, she thought, go after him!

None of the rock crystals proved good enough, but one day Irisis discovered, in forgotten vats of brine in Yggur's cellars, crystals of various coloured salts that had grown slowly over a hundred years. One particular crystal had the most powerful aura of all. Using similar crystals grown painstakingly from special salt solutions, with layers of a second and third crystal grown over the top, she built a controller which, through a kind of ethyric transfer no one understood, would cause an ordinary controller in the next room to mimic it. Even Xervish Flydd was impressed.

But will it work in the real world?' asked Yggur. 'That's the question.'

'We won't know until we try,' said Flydd. 'I'll have the air-floater loaded with supplies. We'll fly direct to Stassor, find Tiaan or the other flying construct, and test it.'

'What if the transfer controller fails?' said Yggur. 'The construct will fall out of the sky, destroying itself and everyone in it. We must test it here first, and know it will work perfectly every time.'

Fifty-seven

Several days later, Yggur came striding down the hall, his stern face alive. 'Come into my workroom,' he said to Flydd, Nish and Irisis, who were warming their hands on mugs of tea beside an inadequate fire. 'I've something to show you.'

'What's the matter?' snapped the scrutator, whose own work was going badly. 'Surely you're not asking us for help?'