Alchymist (17 page)

The
rope jerked and she was hauled up, still upside down. Her head cracked on the
sheer fracture surface as she was dragged over the edge, then Irisis was
dropped onto the pitchy floor.

'Myrum
. . .' she gasped.

It
was not Myrum, but Flangers, on his knees in a small pool of blood. He looked
ghastly. A mutilated corpse lay not far away, strangely shortened, though she
could barely see it through the tears of relief. Or perhaps it was the fumes.
Fyn-Mah was sprawled on the path at the beginning of the broken bridge,
unmoving.

'What
happened, Flangers?'

"Nother
lyrinx.' He sucked in a breath as though it was his last, glancing towards a
hollow where the dead creature lay. 'Myrum thought he'd killed it.' Flangers
hunched over, supporting himself with both arms, gasping. 'He hadn't. Tore his
head off.'

'That
was Myrum's head you threw at the lyrinx?'

'First
thing I could reach. Poor fellow. A good soldier and a decent man.' Flangers
lay on the floor without the strength to lift his head.

'Is
Fyn-Mah dead too?'

'Don't
know.'

Irisis
crawled to the small woman and felt her throat. 'She's alive.' She peered over
the edge. 'We'd better move. I wouldn't bet that lyrinx is dead.'

'Leave
me,' said Flangers. 'Can't walk.'

'Then
crawl — I'm not leaving you behind. That was a mighty heave, Flangers. Any idea
how we get out of here?'

One
finger pointed to the right.

She
discerned a series of ledges between the pitch spears, which might have been
close enough together to form a track, though it would be a dangerous one.

'I'll
carry Fyn-Mah. Bring the bag and the rope.' Unknotting the phynadr bag, she
handed it to him.

'Don't
think I can.'

'Just
try,' she said. 'I can't get it back without you.'

Once
more the appeal to duty lifted Flangers beyond what any normal man could have
achieved. What a hero he was. And what a waste that such courage should be
directed to so bloody an end.

It
buoyed her up as well, and Irisis found the strength to lift Fyn-Mah onto her
shoulders. She set off, trying not to think about the path ahead. It was
killing work. Several times she had to hoist the perquisitor onto a higher
ledge, hoping she would not fall off while Irisis clambered up herself. After a
desperate twenty minutes they reached the other side. The black mouth of the
tunnel was just above them. She pulled herself up into it and smelled fresh
air.

'It's
not far now, Flangers.'

They
lurched along like two bloody wrecks, turned a corner and emerged halfway up a
deep but narrow mine pit. The sky was just growing light, though not enough to
illuminate the pit. 'At last,' said Irisis, limping on bloody, pitch-stained
feet. She turned the other way. 'Where's the air-floater?'

"This
isn't the pit we came down,' said Flangers, who, astonishingly, appeared to
have rallied a little. 'We're in the wrong place.'

Irisis
put Fyn-Mah down on the ledge. 'Then we'll have to climb.'

Flangers
was staring at the rim. 'I can see something moving up there.'

They
stepped back into the tunnel entrance. Fyn-Mah said, more clearly than before,
'Go round base of pit .., through tunnel . . , other side.'

'You're
conscious!' Irisis wished she did not have to pick her up again.

The
perquisitor did not answer. Hefting her, Irisis followed the path to the bottom
of the pit, around the base and in through a tunnel that had not been visible
in the black wall. They were underground for only a few minutes before emerging
in a larger pit. The air-floater was waiting across the far side, right where
they had left it, its four guards with their crossbows ready. Irisis pushed
Fyn-Mah through the ropes, fell through herself and lay on the deck without the
strength to rise. Two of the guards carried Flangers aboard.

Muss
was already there, gazing up at the rim. He had assumed his old persona — the
slim, middle-aged man she'd first met in Gosport — though he still looked
frustrated and unhappy. So he didn't get what he went in for, Irisis thought. I
wonder what it could be?

'Where
were you when we needed you?' she snapped. 'On other duties,' he said,
impassive again.

'Where
are our mates?' cried a young soldier.

'Dead!'
Fyn-Mah tried to sit up but sagged back against the wall of the cabin. 'Go up,'
she whispered to Pilot Inouye. 'Out of crossbow range.'

The
grapnels were pulled aboard. Inouye twisted a knob on the floater-gas generator
and gas whistled up the pipe. The air-floater shot up out of the pit, rising
above the hummocks and tar bogs of Snizort, and just in time. A detachment of
some hundred soldiers had come through the broken eastern wall and were
advancing towards the pit. They stopped and someone waved. Pilot Inouye turned
to Fyn Mah. 'They're signalling. I think they want us to land.'

'Keep
going!' said Fyn-Mah, forcing herself to her feet. She hung onto the rope mesh,
swaying dangerously. 'I have other orders. Guards,' she said to the four men,
'ready your weapons. We cannot be taken.'

The
soldiers looked uneasy, but complied. Irisis felt the hairs rise on the back of
her neck. She took a crossbow for herself. The loyalty of these men had already
been tested. Surely it would take little for them to mutiny — if Fyn-Mah was
taken, they would be condemned with her.

On
the ground, there was a flurry or activity at the front of the detachment. A
black-robed figure waved its arms, a perquisitor Irisis did not recognise. A
soldier put a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

'Land
at once, whoever you are,' he boomed.

'Go
higher!' hissed Fyn-Mah. Clinging death-like to the ropes, she shouted down. 'I
may not. I'm on a special mission for Scrutator Xervish Flydd.'

The
robed figure snatched the speaking trumpet. 'There is no Scrutator Flydd, only
the condemned criminal, Slave Flydd.'

Fyn-Mah
let out a muffled cry. She turned to Irisis and Flangers. 'What do I do now?'

'Follow
your orders,' said Flangers unhelpfully.

'Muss?'
she called.

Eiryn
Muss was squatting on the deck, deeply immersed in his own thoughts, and did
not answer. Whatever was bothering him, it was more important than their
imminent demise.

'Land
immediately, in the name of Acting Scrutator Jal-Nish Hlar!' shouted the figure
on the ground.

'Perquisitor
Fyn-Mah,' said Inouye, 'I must go down. I have a direct order from your
superior.'

Fyn-Mah
covered her face with her hands.

If
the scrutator had fallen, what hope was there for any of them? 'You're risking
everything on Flydd,' Irisis said. 'Do you think he can possibly rise again?'

Fyn-Mah
groaned, then mastered herself. 'Scrutator Flydd ordered me to go on, no matter
what happened to him, and so, I must. No matter what the consequences.'

Irisis
felt Death look up from his work on the battlefield, rub a testing thumb down
the blade of his scythe, and smile grimly.

The
scrutators will torment us all,' cried Inouye, desperately defiant.

'I'm
taking the air-floater,' Fyn-Mah gritted. 'If you won't cooperate, we'll throw
you down to join your friends and Crafter Irisis will take over your
controller.'

Irisis
doubted that she could operate it, or that Fyn-Mah would be so ruthless, but
the pilot did not know that.

Inouye
licked her wind-chapped lips. The bond with the machine was intense, and
pilots, like clanker operators, had been known to go insane after their craft
was destroyed.

'They'll
slay my man and my little children,' she said in a barely audible voice.

'Not
if you're forced to it.' said Fyn-Mah in more gentle tones. 'Flangers, make a
show.'

Flangers
liked it no more than the pilot did, but he took Irisis's crossbow and pointed
it at Inouye, in full view of those on the ground.

'This
will ruin us all,' wept little Inouye. She obeyed and the air-floater lifted.

'Go
north, with all speed,' said Fyn-Mah.

The
soldiers on the ground fired their crossbows but the air-floater was out of
range and the bolts fell harmlessly back. Someone ran to the broken wall,
climbed it and began to signal frantically towards the command area.

'I
feared this was going to happen,' said Fyn-Mah. 'With the scrutator lost,
there's only one option left.' She groaned and slumped to the canvas deck.

Behind
them, three black air-floaters rose from the mound next to the army command
area, and followed.

'Or
maybe none,' said Irisis, picking the perquisitor up and carrying her inside.

Gilhaelith
was slipping ever deeper into the bottomless pit of tar and there was nothing
he could do about it. He'd tried everything, but his geomancy was useless
without some kind of a crystal to serve as a focus, and he had none. He'd even
attempted to use one of his ever-troubling gallstones, but under the strain it
had burst into jagged fragments that were causing him agony. Before they
passed, should he live that long, he'd be wishing he were dead.

His
only other resort had been mathemancy, that strange branch of the Secret Art
Gilhaelith had developed long ago. It proved singularly useless. Mathemancy was
a philosopher's Art, ill-suited to any kind of direct action, much less such
immediate peril.

Gyrull,
Matriarch of Snizort, had abducted him to scry out the remnants of a village
lost in the Great Seep seven thousand years ago. Afterwards, she'd kept
Gilhaelith beside her, refusing him the use of his globe and the other
geomantic instruments he'd brought with him as his means of escape. But the
tunnel into the Great Seep had failed, its shell of frozen tar had cracked and
hot tar had been forced in. The lyrinx had fled with their relics, just in
time. Gilhaelith had tried to follow but he'd not been quick enough.

He
took the numbers again, raising a series of random integers to their fourth
powers to see what pattern they offered. It was awesomely bad. He tried again,
with an even worse result.

The
tar now reached to his hips, its suction far too great for him to pull himself
out. Ribbons of liquid tar, from a breach in the roof, began to fold onto his
head and shoulders, its bituminous reek burning his nose, throat and lungs.

And
it was hot. Not burning hot, not enough to blister, but uncomfortable and
getting worse. Eventually, if he survived long enough, he would simmer like a
crab in a pot. Fortunately, he wouldn't survive. In a few minutes, when that
great oozing clot came down on his head, he would suffocate.

A
possibility slid into Gilhaelith's mind as if it had been whispered in his ear
— to couple his two very different Arts. Geomancy was hopeless because he
lacked a crystal to draw power and focus it. Mathemancy was not a tool for
directing power at all. But what if. . . ?

If he
could create a phantom mathemantical crystal, and use it to draw power and
focus it, might that be the solution? It was a last resort — such a crystal
must pull power directly into his head. A little too much would cook him from
the inside, a gruesome, slow death. A lot too much and he would suffer the
agonising fate of anthracism, human internal combustion, though that would not
take long to kill him.

The
very idea of such a crystal felt alien, and it reminded him of those links the
amplimet had drawn throughout Snizort, including one to him. Could it be
directing him for some purpose of its own? Too bad — without a crystal he was
going to die.

He
slipped further into the tar, which was now creeping up his groin. It felt
hotter than before. Fortunately he'd worked out the mathemancy of crystals long
ago, though to create one with numbers, purely in his mind, was another thing
entirely. Still, he had always relished challenges.

Gilhaelith
began to construct a crystal in layers, beginning at its base and building
towards the apex. It was painfully slow — literally painful, he thought wryly. By
the time tar had risen to his waist, the phantom crystal was only half done.
His shoulders were covered with ribbony black epaulettes; it was dripping down
his forehead, clotting over his eyes, and rubbing just smeared it everywhere.

As
Gilhaelith built another layer, the tar seemed to dissolve beneath his feet and
he slid down to his chest. A bucket-sized clot landed on his head, pushing him
face-first into liquid tar, which was forced up his nostrils. Though he clawed
it away, he could not clear his nose enough to breathe.

Turning
his head sideways, he managed to get a breath through his mouth. Hum'! The
layers went more quickly as he approached the tapering apex of the crystal.
Only one layer to go. As he sucked another breath, the rest of the clot fell,
burying him completely. And it was so hot. His feet were cooking.