Alchymist (8 page)

'He's
an important man,' said Merryl. 'Surely the lyrinx will have taken him with
them.'

'I
was important to them, yet they panicked and left me behind. They may have
abandoned him as well. Do you know where Gilhaelith was working?'

'In a
tunnel excavated into the Great Seep.'

A
tunnel in liquid tar? How can that be?'

'They
froze it first.'

'How?'
said Tiaan curiously.

'One
of their Arts.'

'If
he was left behind, can he possibly still be alive?' she said to herself.

'Not
if he's still in the seep.' He looked through the front. 'But, perhaps, in the
tunnels near it ... We can go that way. It's not much further.’

Merryl
was a man of the same heart as Tiaan. She thanked him, silently. 'He treated me
kindly. I have to know.'

'Then
go straight on.'

They
came to a high point in the tunnel where the heavy black mist had not reached.
Merryl cracked the hatch open to let in fresh air, but it stank so badly that
he quickly closed it again. The construct went down sharply, plunging into
fumes which the globes could not penetrate. Tiaan had to creep along, and even
then was continually bumping into the sticky, gritty walls.

They
turned a sharp bend, then another that formed the other half of an 'S', and the
black fog thinned. Ahead, two tunnels diverged at a shallow angle.

'Which
way?' said Tiaan.

Merryl
was staring blankly through the screen. 'I'm . . , not sure. The fog has
confused me. Have we missed an intersection?'

'We
could have missed fifty for all I could see.'

'Take
the left. I think:

After
a few minutes, Tiaan felt the right-hand side scrape on the sandy wall. Shortly
afterwards the other side did the same and the construct shuddered to a stop.

'It's
the wrong way, said Merryl. 'Better go back.'

'I
hope we can,' Tiaan muttered.

After
much jerking and heaving the construct began to move backwards. They had been
heading down the other tunnel for some minutes when Tiaan saw a red glow in a
cross-tunnel to their left.

'We're
running out of options,' said Merryl. 'Can you go faster?'

She
increased speed as much as she dared, following a zigzag path away from the
burning area until they hit a broad tunnel that ran straight. There were no
fumes in it and they made good time. The walls and roof here were yellow
sandstone, hardly tar stained at all. After ten minutes they came abruptly into
blackened rock and then, where the tunnel opened out, into solid tar. The
tunnel kept on.

'Is
this where Gilhaelith was?' Tiaan did not like the feel of the place.

'He
would have been some way ahead. We're close to the outer edge of the Great Seep
— the solid edge. In a few spans it becomes soft and beyond that it's liquid
tar for a league.’

'How
did they tunnel it? And why?'

Merryl
spoke to the huddled slaves in a language Tiaan did not know. A woman answered
in the same tongue.

'They
used devices powered by phynadrs,' said Merryl, 'to draw the heat out and
freeze the tar hard. Why, I cannot say, only that it was mighty important to
them. Matriarch Gyrull worked there every day, and a matriarch does not risk
her life needlessly.'

They
crept on. Objects were strewn here and there as if discarded in flight — rotting,
tar-stained remnants of clothing, a small wooden chest. Further on was a
distinctly human-looking body.

Tiaan
caught her breath. Not Gilhaelith, surely? She drew the construct alongside,
opened the hatch and looked down.

The
body was small, female, and tar-impregnated. 'It has a .., withered look; Tiaan
said. 'As if long dead.'

'Many
people, and many animals, must have become stuck in the tar over the aeons, and
been carried down into the depths. I saw a number of them over my time here,
all perfectly preserved. You need shed no tear for her, Tiaan. She's been dead
hundreds of years, at the very least.'

'I'll
go on, just in case . . .' She edged the construct down the tunnel. I thought
you said they tunnelled in a long way.'

About
a hundred spans, I heard.'

'We're
only in twenty and I can see the end,' said Tiaan.

She
lifted herself up on the side, the better to see. The end of the tunnel was but
spans away, a smooth, shining black bulge dotted with fragments of wood and
cloth. 'It's moving!' Warm tar was creeping towards them like molasses squeezed
through a hole. The tunnel had collapsed, 'If Gilhaelith was in there, he's
dead.'

Merryl
gripped her shoulder. 'Was he special to you, Tiaan?' 'I wouldn't say that we
were friends, for he had none. Gilhaelith was quite the strangest man I've ever
met, and totally absorbed in himself. Yet he was good to me and I can't forget
it. We'd better go, if we're to get out.'

Reversing
the little construct, Tiaan turned it about and went back the way they had
come. At the first intersection, Merryl said, 'Go left.'

She
headed that way but was soon confronted by a baleful glow and another creeping
fume.

'There's
fire ahead, Tiaan. Try the other way.'

To
the right they encountered a cave-in that completely blocked the tunnel. There
was no hope of clearing it, for the fumes were knee high and rising. They
turned back to the junction and took the middle path, their last hope.

'Fire,'
Merryl said dully, after they had moved less than a hundred spans.

Tiaan
kept going until it was certain there was no way past. 'What now?'

'Resign
ourselves to death.'

It
was hot here. Tiaan went back to the entrance to the tar tunnel. She could not
resign herself to dying. Turning the construct again, she stared at the oozing
face of the tar.

'Tell
me about the Great Seep, Merryl.'

'It's
a good league across, and hundreds of spans deep. Some say it's bottomless.
Things, and creatures trapped in it, sink down and sometimes appear again,
countless years later, with the wheeling of the slow currents in its depths.'

'If
we remain here,' she said absently. 'We'll be dead within the hour.'

'I'd-say
so.'

'How
long would the air in the construct last with the hatch down, and all of us
inside?'

'I
don't know. Two hours? Three? Four, possibly.'

'Then
let's live those extra hours. Let's risk it.' Tiaan slammed the hatch, took a
deep breath and moved the construct gently forwards until it met the convex
face of the tar.

Merryl's
eyes met hers. Tiaan's eyes were alive for the first time since he'd met her.
'What have we got to lose?'

The
construct met resistance and stalled. Tiaan moved the controls, just a tickle.
The skinned tar broke and the machine surged into treacly material that smeared
across the screen. Everything went black.

'Are
we even moving?' whispered Tiaan. 'I can't tell.'

Merryl
looked through the rear screen. 'We're going about two spans a minute. The
tar's coming over the top. I can't see anything now.'

She
nudged the trumpet-shaped lever. There was no sense of motion. 'It's not fast
enough. It'll take an hour to get to the end and we've still got to go up to
the top of the seep. How far below ground are we?'

He
shrugged. 'More than a hundred spans, but less than two hundred.'

'That's
another hour, probably two. Can we make it before we breathe all our air?'

'I
don't know.'

'I'll
have to go faster.'

'Go
too fast and it may tear the construct apart.'

'Too
slowly and it won't matter' she retorted.

The
minutes ticked by. Occasionally they came up against an object that scraped
along the skin of the construct. It was hot inside now.

'How
hot is the tar in the Great Seep, Merryl?'

'I
wouldn't know. It's warm on top, so it must be warmer inside.'

'Hot
enough to cook us?'

'I
couldn't say.'

'Do
you think we're at the end of the tar tunnel yet?' Tiaan asked.

'Once
the node failed, the walk of the tunnel would soon have gone liquid. We'd be in
the swirl of the Great Seep right now.'

'We're
too slow,' she fretted. And we're not going up. I've got to do something.'

She
knew what to do but was reluctant to do it, since that would give away the
secret of making thapters-constructs that could fly. But if they were going to
die anyway . ..

'Could
you have the prisoners blindfolded, please, Merry!7 And ask the slaves to turn
their backs. I've got to do something to the construct and I don't want anyone
to see.'

He
went down. Tiaan unpacked the set of pink diamonds -powerful hedrons — and the
strands of black whiskers, fifty-four of each, weighing them in her hands. So
much from so little.

'It's
done,' called Merryl.

She
lowered herself down the ladder by her hands and Merryl caught her at the
bottom. Tiaan exercised her legs at every opportunity but it was going to take
weeks before she could walk properly.

Opening
a hatch in the floor at the front, she identified a black box among the tangle
of parts inside, and prised the lid off. Inserting the diamond hedrons into
their sockets, she fed the black threads up to the back of the amplimet cavity,
checking everything carefully as she worked. There would be no time to do it
again.

As
soon as it was done, Merryl lifted her up the ladder. How quickly she had come
to rely on him. Tiaan took hold of the controls. The amplimet meshed with her
snugly now, not opposing her at all. It wanted to escape as much as she did.
The whine rose in pitch as she pulled up on the flight knob but nothing seemed
to happen. She could not tell if they were moving upwards.

'Is
it working, Merryl?'

He
thought for a moment. 'You know how, when you carry a bowl of water, it moves
with your motion?'

'Yes!
What a clever idea.'

He
found a broad metal dish among the bits and pieces in one ot the storage
compartments, half filled it with water and sat it on the top of the binnacle.
With a pointed instrument he scored marks around the dish, at the water level.

'That
will show movement from side to side, or back and forth.'

'But
not up, which is what I most need to know.' She wiped her brow. Sweat was
running down her neck and her shirt was saturated. The air was getting stuffy,
too.

'But
if we had something springy . . .'

He
was away half an hour of their precious time, before returning with thin strips
of green material. 'I found a diaphragm in one of the drawers. It's a kind of
rubber.'

Tying
one strip from the ceiling, above the binnacle, Merryl knotted a small coin
into the other end, one-handed. 'I've carried this copper nyd for twenty
years,' he said with a hint of a smile, 'for luck — not that it's brought me
any.' Merryl scored a line across the screen at the lowest edge of the coin and
stood back. 'Try again.'

She
moved the controller lever slightly. The water in the dish moved back a
fraction. 'It works!' She gave him a triumphant grin, then a tentative hug.
'Let's try the other' Taking hold of the flying knob, she pulled it up. The
rubbery strip lengthened perceptibly before oscillating around its original
position.

'How
fast do you think we're rising?' she said.

'Haven't
a clue.'

She
pulled the knob up further until the machine began to shudder, then backed it
off a little. 'If we're only rising at a few spans an hour ... I suppose it'll
be an easy death, if we run out of air.'

He
did not answer.

Tiaan
settled back in her seat. 'How did the enemy come to capture you, Merryl?'

'We
lost an unimportant little battle near Gosport, way over on the east coast; he
said. 'We were fighting for a village you'd never have heard of. I don't
remember its name. On the march we went through so many places that after a
while no one could tell the difference.'

She
wiped her dripping brow. Were you in the army a long time?'

'Only
a few months. There was an emergency, and after a week of training we went to
the front. I say 'the front", though there wasn't one. The lyrinx prefer
to fight in small bands, or even alone. Most of my friends died in ambushes and
isolated skirmishes. Afterwards, no one knew where; no one survived to write
their Histories. The cursed war!'

There
was a bang on the roof of the construct, followed by a scraping down the back.

'What
was that?' said Tiaan.

'Something
in the seep. Perhaps a piece of wood, or a large bone.' Merryl was staring
straight ahead, as if to pierce the black tar.