Alchymist (92 page)

'Well,
Seeker?' growled Ghorr.

'I ..,
can't see Flydd in my lattice,' she said. 'Nor Irisis.' It was the truth.
Lately her lattice had been ever harder to see and she could no longer deny it.
She dreaded that it would go completely, taking her unique life of the mind
with it.

'Have
you ever seen them, or any other sign of them, since we came west?'

'No.'
Sweat prickled in her armpits, in spite of the chilly weather.

He
skewered her with his all-seeing eyes. 'Then we must go up. We'll fly in a
square, south, west, north and east, and you'll keep watch.'

'Yes,'
she whispered.

They
flew south. 'Can you see them?' Ghorr asked, halfway across the traverse.

'No,'
she gulped.

They
flew west. 'Can you see them now?'

Ullii
shook her head. They headed north, then east, and ever Ghorr asked, and ever
the answer was the same. By late that afternoon he was growing impatient. 'If
all this has been for nothing ..." he said menacingly.

Fusshte
whispered in his ear. 'All right,' said Ghorr. 'You have my leave.'

Fusshte
gave Ullii the look that always made her skin creep. Ghorr broke people like
her, but Fusshte devoured them.

'Come
inside the cabin with me, little Ullii,' Fusshte said in that voice as dry as
the rustling of a snake's scales. 'I have some questions for you . . .'

'I'll
try harder' she squeaked.

'I
thought you might,' said Ghorr. 'Go east another two leagues,' he said to the
pilot, 'then turn south and keep going, expanding the square by two leagues
each circuit. If they're anywhere on Meldorin, we'll find them.'

Fusshte
looked like a viper who'd had his dinner stolen.

It
wasn't until the following evening that Ullii picked up a trace. She let out a
little gasp and tried vainly to conceal it, but the chief scrutator missed
nothing. 'You've found them.'

'I
can see something,' she said in a tiny voice.

Ghorr
was on her in three powerful strides. 'Who, Seeker?'

'I
don't recognise it.'

Ghorr
and Fusshte exchanged glances. 'It's a trick' Fusshte said in a low voice, but
not too low for Ullii's keen ears. 'She's trying to protect them. If she picked
up anyone, it would be Flydd. He's the strongest.'

'Maybe,'
said Ghorr. 'And maybe not. Her talent defies analysis. It could be anything.'
He turned back to the seeker. 'It's not lyrinx, is it?'

'No.'

'Not
a node or field?'

'No.'

'It's
human, isn't it?'

'Yes.'
She barely exhaled the word.

'Where?'
Ghorr seized her by the shoulders, but let her go at once. The time for threats
was past. 'Which way, Seeker?' He put on a kindly voice but his eyes were like
shards of glass.

Ullii
gestured. 'A long way. As far as I can see.' South-south-west,' said the pilot.

What's
down that way?' said Ghorr.

The
pilot consulted her map. 'We're here at the moment.' Her pointed fingernail,
which was tinted yellow, marked a range of hills that ran west from the
mountains almost all the way to the Silbis Drylands. 'Below us, according to
the map, there used to be towns and scattered villages, running to forest in
the east, up against the mountains. To the west it's just empty desert. Further
south the desert passes into scrub and then into the swamp forests of Orist,
which run on for fifty leagues, though much of that is said to be impassable.'

'Not
to us,' said Ghorr. 'I need more, Ullii. Where on the map do you sense this
person?'

Ullii,
after much prompting, drew a large circle with her finger. It covered most of
southern Meldorin.

'That's
not good enough!' hissed Fusshte. 'Seeker—'

'Leave
her,' said Ghorr. 'The talent only gives direction, not distance. Strong
talents, or strong Arts, she may pick up from hundreds of leagues away, while
insignificant ones could elude her from the other side of the hill. We'll
follow her path until the destination becomes clear, then wait for night. I
don't want to alert them — if it is them.'

'What
does it matter?' said Fusshte. 'We've got power enough in these sixteen
air-dreadnoughts to overcome any enemy. How can Flydd's ragtag band trouble
us?'

'They've
given us trouble aplenty over the past year,' snapped Ghorr. 'If Flydd realises
we're coming, he may find a way of hiding, even from Ullii. Take nothing for
granted, Scrutator.'

The
hunt continued, but the next time she looked Ullii found nothing at all. It was
not that their quarry had disappeared but, rather, as if something was blocking
that part of the lattice. By now she was so worn out with seeking that there
was no choice but to stop for the night. Ghorr was furious.

Gilhaelith
had spent the previous day lying on his damp palliasse, brooding. It was an
outrage that he should be controlled by such a collection of fools. He could
not suffer it. The attack on Nennifer would certainly fail and the scrutators
would come to Fiz Gorgo in force, to seize whatever Yggur had left behind.
Finding Gilhaelith here, they would slay him out of hand.

It
was clear that humanity was going to lose the war, so the safest place for him
was Alcifer. He was going back, even if he had to slog all the way through the
swamp forests of Orist. Nothing could stand in his way. Tiaan's remark about
the nodes being linked had opened up a whole avenue of possibilities. The key
to his project was not the nodes, as he'd always thought, but the way they were
linked and force transferred between them. He was just a whisker away from his
goal, but he needed the geomantic globe to prove it. And then, true mastery
would be his. And real power too, if he wanted it — enough to heal himself;
enough to ensure that he was never at the mercy of others again; enough to
control the power available to other mancers, if he cared to; enough, just
possibly, to protect the world he'd gone to such lengths to understand, from
all mancers.

How
to get away? He'd been stripped and searched carefully before they put him in
this cell. The guards had taken his clothes and given him fresh ones, in case
he'd had some device secreted about his person, as he had. He got up and began
picking moodily at ice that had formed below a seeping crack in the wall. It
was a dirty yellow colour, like urine. His breath steamed; it was miserably
cold and he wasn't used to it.

Someone
rapped at the door — a guard with his dinner. He rapped back, then moved to the
rear of the cell. If he didn't the brute would simply take it away. Two armed
guards watched the whole time the door was open. The third guard placed the
tray on the floor inside the door and went out.

Gilhaelith
cast an eye over the meal. Clear soup, invariably lukewarm, a piece of
overcooked fish, boiled vegetables and dry bread. Misery! He'd requested
freshly salted live slugs, pickled pigs' ovaries and other delicacies he'd been
used to in Nyriandiol, but the guard had given him a disgusted look and banged
the door.

'Excuse
me, Guard?' Gilhaelith said firmly. 'I'd like some salt, if you please.'

The
guard checked with his fellows, who shrugged. He disappeared, shortly returning
with a chunk of rock salt as big as a lemon, which he tossed to Gilhaelith. It
was almost as hard as stone. The door clicked and was bolted on the outside.

Gilhaelith
took up the bowl, slurping noisily at the soup, which wasn't lukewarm. It was
cold, had a grey scum around the rim and was utterly tasteless. Prising off a
piece of salt, Gilhaelith held it in his mouth and sucked the soup past it.

Something
occurred to him. Spitting the rest of the soup back into the bowl, he took out
the piece of salt and examined it in the dim light. It had crystal faces.

Salt
was of little use in geomancy unless the crystals were perfectly formed, and
even then it could take little power. But it was all he had. Using a tine of
his fork, he picked away at the chunk of rock salt, trying to separate it into
one or more crystals he could use. Gilhaelith was exquisitely careful, for the
tiniest scratch on a crystal face would ruin it for mancery. He quite lost
himself in his work, taking an hour to remove a flawed crystal as small as a
grain of wheat.

The
night passed, and the following morning. Gilhaelith laboured on, now holding
the remaining crystals in a rag torn from his shirt, for even the moisture from
his fingers would damage them. By the middle of the afternoon the last dross cleaved
away and he had a single, perfect cube of salt, transparent and with a faint
yellow tinge. He might be able to work some minor magic with it — slip the
lock, douse the lights in the corridor, possibly even put the nearby guards to
sleep, but that would be its limit.

Wiping
a patch of floor, he set his forgotten dinner on it and carefully placed the
crystal in the centre of the tray. A pair of guards passed down the corridor,
talking quietly. Gilhaelith dropped his rag over the crystal and lay back on
the palliasse, clenching his fists against the tension. The guards were
watchful and intelligent. Anything might arouse their suspicion.

They
looked in, saw nothing amiss and went by. He began at once. If the crystal did work,
he would have to get it right first time, for Yggur would allow no second
chances. It might be better to wait until he'd gone to Nennifer. No, Yggur
could have special plans for Gilhaelith in his absence. Do it now.

Gilhaelith
ever so gently drew power into the crystal — not enough to reveal himself, but
enough for him to sense any auras elsewhere in Fiz Gorgo. They could be due to
mancers or other sources of the Art best avoided. He picked up several: Yggur
and Malien close together, Flydd elsewhere, and various devices presumably in
Yggur's quarters. He wasn't worried about them, but something larger and more
tenuous, further out, did bother him.

It
was like a filmy cloud surrounding Fiz Gorgo, and he could detect nothing
beyond it. It must be a protection of some sort, to keep the outside world from
spying or even noticing that there were mancers here, or to keep people in.

Gilhaelith
withdrew, considering. Invisible to sight and touch the protection might be,
nonetheless it could prevent him from escaping. He probed it tentatively, to
discover how it had been made, and its strength. To his surprise it did not
resist him — it was set to protect from the outside, not from within.

He
took a little more power but the phantom fragments stung his brain like
sparklers. He lost control for a second and his probe went right through the
protection, burning a small opening like an eye. He withdrew hastily and it
closed over again. Too hastily! A final surge of power zipped through the cubic
crystal, cleaving it down the middle. He cursed, crushed it underfoot and threw
himself on the bed in disgust.

He'd
have to find another way.

Three
times now, Ullii had thought she'd found them. Three times she'd rebuilt the
lattice to try to uncover what had been hidden, but without success. Something
was out there, a long way south, but she could neither pinpoint nor identify
it. It pleased her that her failure was frustrating Ghorr and Fusshte, though
she dreaded being punished for it.

'I
don't like it,' said Ghorr. 'Is it deliberate, do you think?'

Ullii
could not answer that. She simply saw what was in her lattice. She had no idea
what was behind it.

In
the mid-afternoon the fleet had set down on the plain south of Flumen, by a
main road now partly reclaimed by grass and scrub, while he called the other
scrutators into a conference. They spent an hour at it, all the while
consulting instruments of their own, as Ullii squatted in the shadows waiting
on their pleasure.

'They're
hiding, but I don't think it's from as,' Ghorr concluded. 'Nothing suggests
that they know we're coming, and we must strive to keep it that way. It's just
a general cloaking, to conceal them from the lyrinx. We'll continue, more
carefully.'

He
turned to the seeker. 'Ullii, we are getting closer, are we not?'

'I
can't tell.' Fear grew in her: fear that the lattice was failing, for it was
harder to see each time; and fear of Ghorr and the scrutators, and what they
would do once they'd captured their quarry and had no further need of her. She
had to protect herself, which meant finding someone to look after her. But no
one on these air-dreadnoughts cared if she lived or died, or how much she
suffered.

She
idly scanned her lattice, started, and again Ghorr noticed her flinch.

'Yes,
Seeker?'

She
didn't want to answer, but she had to. 'J — just then, for a second, I saw an
opening like an eye.'

An
opening? In what?'

'I
can't tell.'

'What
else did you see? What was in the opening?'

'A
strange knot.'

'Tell
us more, Seeker' said Fusshte.

'The
knot shone out like someone peering from a hole cut in a cloud, then
disappeared.'