Alchymist (81 page)

He
rubbed it, examining his fingertip. 'Just a flying shard.'

'Where
to?' asked Tiaan.

'We
can't go to Tirthrax' said Malien. 'Not for long, anyway.'

'Or
to any of our other known refuges.' said Bilfis, 'since they'll look there in
their thaptersMalien considered. 'We've got little food or drink, and only the
clothes we're wearing. Head south and west, Tiaan, for the moment.'

'What
happened back there?'

'Harjax
was uncomfortable with the story of your escape,' said Malien. 'As soon as
their first thapter was free, he sent it to the Foshorn, to Vithis. We had a
feeling the news would be bad, so we were ready to flee. The urgency of the
envoy's return was alarm enough.'

And
when he ordered the guards to fire on us,' added Bilfis, 'it confirmed the
worst.'

Tiaan
looked from one to the other. 'What news did he bear?'

'In
your escape, you did more damage than you'd thought. Vithis suffered a broken
arm and jaw, and three noble Aachim were killed in the construct that exploded
underwater. But there was worse . . .'

'Minis!'
Tiaan said, white-faced. 'I killed Minis.'

'You
did worse than that, as far as Vithis is concerned.'

'How
can anything be worse than death?'

'Oh,
for some Aachim, there can be far worse,' Malien said grimly.

'Death
in life,' Malien explained sombrely. 'You maimed him, Tiaan. He lost a leg,
three fingers, and his pelvis was crushed. He may never walk again; he'll never
be without pain. But worse still, he's no longer whole, and every Aachim knows
it. To their eyes Minis is a ruined man. If Vithis lives another thousand years
he'll neither forgive nor forget. He's declared clan-vengeance against you and
all who aid you in any way. Any Aachim who does so faces exile or death.'

'Even
your people?' Tiaan whispered.

'Harjax's
envoy bound us as well. Perhaps he felt it was a way of allying our sundered
kind. Or perhaps he felt as aggrieved as Vithis. I didn't wait to find out.'

And
yet you three helped me, at the cost of your own lives.'

'It
wasn't just for you,' said Malien. 'There's a higher danger and we can't do
without you.'

'The
nodes?' said Tiaan.

'The
nodes. Bilfis has made a model of the ones near Stassor — those you've mapped —
and they're more unstable than he'd imagined.'

'To
put it at its bluntest,' said Bilfis, who was a pallid grey, and sweating
despite the cold, 'I'm so terrified that I was prepared to break the code of
clan-vengeance and become an outlaw. There is a higher duty, when the very
world may be at stake.' Nodding formally to Tiaan, he went below.

The
remaining Aachim seemed to be assessing her worth. The lean man was Talis the
Mapmaker, whom Tiaan had met several times. The stocky one was called Forgre
but she knew nothing about him. Without acknowledging her, he followed Belfis
and Talis below. A mutter of voices drifted up, in which she heard her own name
several times, though she made out nothing more.

Tiaan
looked up at Malien, who was staring at her. What was Malien thinking? Was she
regretting giving up everything to save her, Tiaan? And poor, maimed Minis,
condemned to a living death. Other tragedies, other disasters, though arising
out of Tiaan's actions, had ultimately been caused by others. She had done this
terrible wrong by herself, out of terror for her life. No, call it by its true
name: cowardice. She had maimed the man who, for all his failings, had loved
her. He'd been going to help her, she felt sure of that now, and in return
she'd hurt him grievously and run away.

'Clan
Elienor were blamed for allowing you to escape,' said Malien, 'and have
suffered the greatest penalty Vithis could impose. They've been cast out,
exiled and their constructs forfeited.'

Guilt
overwhelmed Tiaan. The control yoke slipped in her hand and the construct
dipped sharply.

'I
think you'd better let me take over. Go below and lie down.' Within seconds
Malien had ejected the amplimet and taken the yoke. Grim-faced, she flew
between the unclimbable peaks.

The
day faded. Tiaan lay dozing on her bunk. Malien flew on, torn half a dozen
ways. Exile could not hurt her as it did her companions, for among her own
people she'd been an outsider since the Forbidding was broken. Even so, to
actively defy the entirety of her kind was no small thing. And now Tiaan's life
had been laid in her hands — a precious, vital life if the nodes were fading,
as Bilfis suspected. What was she to do about that?

Not
to mention Clan Elienor. Though the clans had disappeared on Santhenar
thousands of years ago, every Aachim knew their heritage. Malien's was the
House of Elienor and she was a descendant of the great heroine. Now Clan Elienor
were lost somewhere in Taltid. Their homes and means of travel had been
confiscated and they had been abandoned to starve in a land stripped bare and
plundered by lyrinx as well as human scavengers. Her duty was clear. She must
do what she could for her people.

Malien
knew roughly where Clan Elienor had to be. They had been left on the coast
north-west of Snizort, where they could survive for a time by fishing and
collecting seaweed, though when the fish migrated south to the Karama Malama in
the winter their position would be dire. There was only one thing to be done.
Around midnight, Malien turned south.

Tiaan
woke wrapped in blankets but still cold. The thapter was whining furiously, and
someone was coughing, over and over. She touched a globe to brightness. It was
Bilfis, dabbing at his lips with a cloth that was stained red.

Seeing
her staring, he said hoarsely, 'It's nothing. I suffer from mountain sickness.
We're much higher than Stassor, here.'

She
went up the ladder. It was mid-morning and Malien stood at the yoke, as she had
all night.

'We're
going back to Tirthrax,' said Malien.

'But
you said we wouldn't be safe there.'

'Not
for long, anyway,' Malien said tersely. 'We'll fill the thapter with provisions
and other essential items, then head west.'

Tiaan,
full of guilt and feeling that she was only here under sufferance, asked no questions.

'I
plan to share my exile with Clan Elienor,' Malien went on. 'And ask them about
the node problem, though they may not be able to help. The nodes of Santhenar
must be very different from those of Aachan. It's lucky I have Bilfis. He's the
most brilliant of all our field mancers and if anyone can solve this problem,
he can.'

Tiaan
took turns with her, winding through the passes night and day, and they reached
Tirthrax on the third evening after fleeing Stassor. Malien flew inside and the
Aachim got out. Bilfis, still coughing blood despite the lower altitude, came
last.

'Stay
here,' said Malien to Tiaan. 'Keep watch and make sure it's ready to go at a
moment's notice. Forgre, would you set a sentinel at the entrance? I doubt if
Harjax's thapters could reach here before this time tomorrow, since he has no
relief pilots and they must stop to sleep, but we'd better be sure.'

They
were gone many hours, during which Tiaan had ample time to reflect on her own
problems, though not to find any resolution. The Aachim reappeared after
midnight, wheeling trolleys filled with food and wine, bags and boxes of tools
and equipment, a number of volumes of the Histories, plus atlases and charts of
the western lands. It took until dawn to pack it all inside.

The
sky was clear when they departed, and there was no sign of pursuit. Malien
ordered Tiaan to set a course southwest, in the general direction of Snizort,
and went below.

After
an hour in which she got no sleep at all, Malien came back up. They were now
flying over the north-western corner of Mirrilladell, a land of a million lakes
and bogs. It looked pretty from the air but was scarcely inhabited, being
bitterly cold in the long winter, and a mosquito-ridden hell in the short
summer. Folktales told that the insects could bite through metal.

'Would
you set down, Tiaan?' she said politely. 'Bilfis is no better. Even this height
is troubling him.'

Tiaan
settled the craft on a bare island in a braided stream milky with
glacier-ground rock. They helped Bilfis out. He could not stop coughing.

'I
begin to wonder if it can be mountain sickness,' said Malien. She unfastened
his coat. 'Hold! What's that?'

There
was a fresh stain on the back of his shirt. Bilfis raised a limp hand. 'It's
nothing. A chip of stone hit me during the escape.'

'But
that was days ago — let me see.' She tore off his shirt. Just below the
shoulder blade a little green blister bulged out, leaking pale fluid.

'It's
a flac!' said Malien in a rigidly controlled voice. 'Talis, my healer's bag,
quickly!' 'What's a flac?' said Tiaan. Malien did not answer.

'A
tiny, burrowing dart,' Bilfis said weakly. 'It releases a slow poison into the
blood that affects the breathing. It has to be cut out at once.'

And
never to be used against our own kind,' said Forgre grimly.

'It
was intended for you, Tiaan,' said Bilfis, 'but you swerved unpredictably and I
obviously took it instead. An irony, some might think.'

Talis
raced up with the bag. Malien selected various bladed tools as well as a long
thin pair of tweezers.

'It's
too late,' Bilfis said. 'It'll be part-dissolved by now, Malien.'

I
have to try. Hold still.'

She
began to cut into him. 'There, I see it; she said after some time. 'Tweezers,
Talis.'

He
passed them across. 'This is a big risk, Bilfis,' said Malien. 'It's very
fragile. I don't think I can get it out whole.' 'If it stays in, I die. If you
break it, I die more quickly. It's designed so. I'm ready, either way.'

'It
never occurred to me that they would use a flac against us,' said Malien,
shaking her head.

'It's
a forbidden weapon, even in clan-vengeance,' Forgre explained.

'But
not against me,' said Tiaan.

'Not
against the lesser species.' Malien wiped sweaty hands. Her lips moved in an
exhortation, or a prayer. Slipping the tweezers into the slit, she took gentle
hold of the end of the flac and tried to ease it out.

They
all heard the sound, like rotten metal crunching. Bilfis jerked and his eyes
went wide, then Malien was desperately, furiously raking the fragments from the
wound and reaming out the residue, heedless of his pain.

Forgre
held a white dish to Bilfis's back, probing the bloody residue with a
forefinger. 'I think you may have got it,' he said.

Bilfis
looked down at the dish and gave a rueful smile. 'I never thought—' He
stiffened, gave the faintest of sighs and, with no other sign, he died.

'I
wasn't quick enough.' Malien covered her face with her long fingers.

'No
one ever is,' said Talis, closing the man's eyes.

Tiaan
had expected them to take Bilfis's body to the Well of Echoes, but Malien was
reluctant to do that given its unstable condition. They flew him up to the
icefield on the high plateau, higher than Tiaan had ever been, where the cold
was unrelenting. Malien melted a hole with the underside of the construct and
slid the body in. Within a minute the water had frozen again, leaving him
encased in ice as clear as glass. The Aachim sang a threnody in an archaic
tongue.

'He
loved the mountains,' said Malien, panting in the thin air. 'Bilfis would be
happy that we've brought him here, where no other Aachim foot has ever trod.'

'No
foot of any kind, I think,' said Talis the Mapmaker. 'No one could survive in
such a high place.'

'Including
us!' said Malien. A hundred thousand years from now he'll lie here unchanged.
That would please him very much.' She headed for the thapter. 'But what are we
going to do without him?'

They
continued on to Snizort, flying long hours every day. It still took four days.
Tiaan made measurements of the nodes whenever she got the chance, and marked
them on the maps. Incessant work helped to keep her thoughts at bay. They
passed by the battlefield, towards the Sea of Thurkad, and thence up the coast.
The following afternoon they came upon a large encampment in a long but narrow
inlet which had rocky ridges on either side. The camp was surrounded by a
palisade of sharpened timber, the new home of exiled Clan Elienor. Tiaan saw no
more of it, for as they approached Malien said, 'Go below.'

Tiaan
searched Malien's lined face. Am I in danger here?'

'I
don't know. It depends whether an outcast clan considers themselves bound by
clan-vengeance. I won't risk it. Stay hidden while we unload the food and other
supplies, and then we'll see.'

Tiaan
spent the afternoon huddled under a blanket, trying to shut out the world. She
could not erase her thoughts. The following morning Malien woke her. Talis and
Forgre were there too.