Alchymist (72 page)

Flydd
stood staring at her, gnarled hands by his sides. Just give the word, she
thought, and I'll resist him with all the strength in my body. But Flydd said
nothing. Perhaps he wanted her to reveal what he could not.

'The
only thing I know,' said Irisis, 'and that was mentioned several times in .., extremis
. . '.

'An
excess of wine!' said Yggur. 'What price your oath now, Scrutator? Two cups?
Three?'

'. . ,
it was a reference to the Numinator,' Irisis finished.

'The
Numinator?' Yggur said, puzzled.

'The
person who gives the scrutators their orders, surr. The one for whom they have
shaped our world.'

'Ahh!'
He let his breath out. 'I've often wondered how such a collection of fools and
incompetents came to gain such power; and how they maintained it for so long.
Who is this Numinator?'

'That's
all I know, surr,' said Irisis.

'It's
enough. You've bought your master a refuge.'

'No
man is my master,' said Irisis.

'Whatever
you say. Well, Flydd, you may stay for a few days. We'll speak more about these
matters tonight. Are you happy, now that you've gained what you wanted?'

'Time
will tell if it was worth the price,' said Flydd.

Ghorr's
air-floater carried Ullii back to the main camp. She did not say a word the
whole way — she was overcome by a crawling horror of him and the scrutators,
and her own folly. They'd trapped her with the bracelet and now controlled her
utterly.

Ullii
tried to retreat to her inner refuge by cutting off all her senses, as she'd
often done in the past, but Ghorr just dragged her out again. She could find no
comfort in her lattice, either, for it seemed to be fading. What had once been
brilliantly clear was hardly there, and when she tried to make the lattice
anew, her mind's eye was empty. It was one blow too many. She collapsed and lay
on her sickbed for a week, raving with a brain fever.

As
soon as she began to recover, Ghorr dragged her out of bed. Flydd and Nish had
disappeared and she had to find them. Ullii looked for her lattice and it was
back, though not as strong or clear as before. For days she sought in vain;
Flydd was beyond its reach.

The
search went on and, many troubled days later, high in the air-floater, she
detected a faint trace of him at the battlefield of Gumby Marth. By the time
Ghorr had assembled a force strong enough to brave that lyrinx-infested place,
Flydd was gone again. Subsequently the news came that his ship had been lost
and Flydd drowned. Ghorr refused to believe it and ordered a search of the
entire Karama Malama, by ship and air-floater.

Three
air-floaters, and a fleet of commandeered ships, criss-crossed the Sea of Mists
for days until she found him again, but before Flydd could be taken he was rescued
by a stolen air-floater in which Ullii recognised the knots of FynMah and
Irisis. They flew out of range and, though Ullii lost the individuals, she was
able to track the air-floater's crystals into Meldorin before they vanished yet
again.

Ghorr
held a furious conference with his fellow scrutators before heading to Lybing,
the capital of wealthy Borgistry, in his remaining air-floater. There a number
of the scrutators disembarked to continue prosecuting the western war. Ghorr's
air-floater took to the air again, heading north across the Great Chain of
Lakes, then east past the Ramparts of Tacnah, forbidding gateway to the Great
Mountains. The country began to make distinctive patterns in Ullii's lattice,
for they were reversing the route by which she'd come west with Flydd and
Irisis last spring. Dread grew in her as she recognised their destination. They
were heading for the scrutators' hidden bastion of Nennifer, between the Great
Mountains and the arid depressions that lay to the north.

Nennifer,
the most frightening place in all Lauralin, appeared before them. It lay on a
narrow rim of plateau with the mountains rearing up, thousands of spans high,
to the east, west and south. The northern side of Nennifer was truncated by a
monumental cliff, a thousand spans high, at the base of which lay an oval of
sunken land, the Desolation Sink, as desiccated and lifeless as the Dry Sea
itself.

'Why
are we going to Nennifer?' she whispered. The very stones it was built from
were imbued with the odour of the scrutators, and it was full of wicked, cruel
people.

Ghorr
gave his vulpine, snaggle-toothed smile. 'I have plans.'

'Nish
and Flydd are gone,' said Ullii. She no longer knew what to do about them.

"They
killed your brother and must be punished. You'll find them, Ullii, and we'll do
the rest. Nennifer is where we design the weapons of tomorrow. Two hundred and
twenty-three mancers work night and day, utterly devoted to inventing new
devices of terror. Four hundred and seventy artisans make controllers for these
weapons, and find ways to draw on the fields ever more efficiently. A thousand
artificers, and three thousand smiths and other workers, build and test these
devices. Five hundred and thirty-five draughters create the plans and patterns
that will be used by our manufactories, across the breadth of Santhenar, to
make innumerable copies. We have made many breakthroughs since you left us so
.., precipitously.' Ghorr chuckled at his meagre wit. Ullii and Irisis had
escaped through a tunnel that discharged over the precipice into the Desolation
Sink.

'Our
workers are already designing the mighty craft that will take us back to
Meldorin,' he went on, 'in a force so powerful that the lyrinx will flee in
terror. Then you will find our enemies again, Ullii, wherever they've hidden.
We'll take them with overwhelming force and destroy this burr in my side for
good.

'In
the meantime,' he continued, 'there's another way for you to help me.'

They
were alone in his room. Ullii felt trapped in every possible way. Why had she
listened to the voices? Why had she imagined she could use this monster to gain
her revenge? She was not strong or clever, but weak and insignificant. All
she'd done was put herself back in prison, and this time she had no friends to
take care of her.

'Yes?'
she whispered, for even had she the strongest will in the world, the bracelet
on her wrist would not allow her to say no.

'Tell
me how you magicked Irisis out of her cell last spring, without opening the
lock or setting off my alarm. And how you translated Flydd's air-floater, in an
instant, from a thousand spans above Nennifer to the end of the tunnel where
you and Irisis were hiding.'

That
had been her own precious little secret that not even Flydd had understood. Her
lattice was her own creation, the world she retreated to when the physical
world failed her. It was the one place no one else could go. Was even that to
be taken from her?

Don't
know!' she said mulishly, keeping her eyes firmly on the floor.

His
hand went under her chin, jerking her upright. He looked like a mature,
handsome man but up close his skin was shiny and pinkly smooth, like baby skin
on top of scar tissue. The feel of it, the softness clinging to those
underlying ropy ridges of flesh, made her shudder with disgust. He tried to
appear in his prime but Ullii's lattice told her what lay beneath the surface.
He was old and rotten inside.

'Don't
play games, Ullii. Do you want me as a friend, or as an enemy? It would not be
wise to incur my enmity.'

She
had often had this nightmare, after the first visit to Nennifer, and still
she'd given herself up to Ghorr. Why, why had she put on the bracelet? Why
hadn't she tested it first? Because it had been so cunningly designed to trap
her that it did not even show in her lattice. The scrutators were too clever
for her, as they had been too clever for Mylii.

'I
have cunning mancers here, Seeker,' he resumed when she did not reply. 'Men and
women who know how the mind works, even a mind as special as yours. And they
know how to break it! They can go deep into your mind, Ullii. They can learn
everything about you. They can make lattices of their own — or take yours from
you.'

'Make
another one' she muttered, trying to look away. Though she tried to deny it,
her greatest fear was losing her precious lattice and being unable to make
another.

'They
won't let you. So, Ullii, are you going to tell me how you managed it? How did
you free Irisis?'

If
she told him, surely he would leave her alone. 'I held the magicked lock in
place and turned the lattice around it,' she said simply.

He
stared at her. 'That's nonsense.' But, after chewing over it for a minute, he
reconsidered. 'You turned the lattice? Did you translate the air-floater the
same way?'

'No.
I just moved its knot, and Xervish's, in my lattice.'

'Astounding!
If I hadn't seen it happen I would not have believed it. You can't tell me any
more, can you? You simply don't know what you did. But I'll have the secret out
of you, and then there won't be anything I can't do.'

His
eyes dissected her, then he swept out. And Ullii knew he would get the secret
out of her, if he had to take her apart to do so. He was the most evil man in
the world. Worse than Flydd, worse than Nish. And she was going to find them
for him, so he could destroy them. She could not do otherwise -there was no way
she could fight Ghorr.

And
once she did find them, it would be her turn to suffer.

Dirty,
ragged and weary to the point of exhaustion, Tiaan approached the hidden city
of Tirthrax. Three weeks had passed since her escape from the Aachim nets on
the shore of the Sea of Thurkad. She had no idea why she'd come back, only that
there had been nowhere else to go. But surely, after the crimes she'd
committed, Malien would turn her over to the Aachim. Vithis could be here already.

She
was so overcome by guilt that Tiaan gave only passing thought to her reason for
fleeing Tirthrax previously — the amplimet's communication with the great node
here, and the thawing of the perilous Well of Echoes, which had been frozen in
place long ago. Despite her fears, the amplimet had given her no trouble on her
long journey. It was hardly glowing now, and did not change as she neared
Tirthrax. She wondered if it wanted to come back. Or if she'd exhausted it.

It
was a hard climb up the slopes of the mountain, and many times Tiaan thought
she would have to complete it on foot, for the construct was now a battered,
limping thing. Each morning, when she unlocked the hatch and set off again, it
was slower and more erratic. There was any amount of power this close to
Tirthrax, far more than the amplimet could draw, but the construct could no
longer use it.

Yet,
despite everything, she'd made it. She crept up the ragged track, carved out by
the great glacier, to the lip of the broken hole in the side of the mountain.
It looked the same as when she'd left here at the beginning of spring. Tiaan
stopped outside. Tirthrax was a place of bitter memories. Here, little Haani
had died and her body had been sent to the Well. Here, Tiaan had made the
fateful gate. Here. Minis had rejected her.

That's
all in the past, she told herself. Go on. She inched the construct up and over
the top. The vast cavern, just part of one level of the grand city, yawned
before her. Tiaan stopped abruptly.

Malien
stood in the middle of that open space, arms folded across her chest, watching
her with those cool green eyes. Though an old woman, Malien was as strong as
anyone Tiaan had ever met. She was kindly by nature, yet could be hard as Stone
when she had to be. How would Malien treat her now?

'I've
been expecting you,' Malien said evenly. 'Take the construct down to the very
end of this level and leave it there.'

Tiaan
did so. Whatever Malien ordered, she would do. Whatever punishment Malien
imposed, she would suffer it without complaint, though it could not make up for
the harm she'd done Minis, or Malien's own Clan Elienor.

She
stopped near a spiralling staircase, withdrew the amplimet and climbed down.
Her breath steamed in the frigid air and she felt a trifle light-headed. The
city was high up and the air thin.

Malien
indicated a small table to one side, set with a cloth, two plates, knives and
forks. A round loaf, freshly baked, sat on a wooden carving board. A variety of
meats, cheeses and preserved vegetables had been arranged on a platter. 'Sit
down.'

Tiaan
sat. Malien carved slices of bread, sprinkled them with golden oil from a glass
jug, and handed the platter to Tiaan. She took two slices, Malien one. Tiaan
selected a fragrant cheese. Malien poured wine into silver goblets, handing one
to her. They ate.

'Why
have you come back?' said Malien when Tiaan's plate was empty. Her voice was
without expression. Tiaan could not tell if she was pleased, indifferent or
enraged.

'I
had nowhere else to go. And you said — you once said to call on you, if I
needed help.' Tiaan's palms were sweaty.

Malien
inclined her head in acknowledgment. She regarded Tiaan steadily. 'Your back is
better, I see.'