Alchymist (98 page)

Tirior:
A manipulative Aachim clan leader.

Troist:
An ambitious junior officer in the army destroyed by the lyrinx at Nilkerrand.
He formed a smaller army out of the survivors. Troist became a general much
loved by his troops. Nish rescued his daughters Liliwen and Meriwen from
ruffians, and again when they were lost in an underground labyrinth.

Ullii:
A hypersensitive seeker, used by Scrutator Flydd to track Tiaan and the
amplimet. She accompanied Nish to Tirthrax in the balloon and found Tiaan, but
Malien intervened. Nish and Ullii escaped in the balloon but a lynnx tore it
open and they landed in the trees. The nylatl attacked and Ullii helped to
defend Nish, after which they made love in the balloon. But it attacked again
and when Nish was carried away on the baUoon, Ullii was devastated. Her talent
failed her for a while, but subsequently she was used by Jal-Nish at the
manufactory, before being rescued by Flydd and taken to Nennifer, then west to
help in the war at Snizort. Flydd promised to help her find Mylii but lied to
her about it, and Ullii is furious with him.

Vithis:
Minis's foster-father; an Aachim from Aachan and the head of Inthis First Clan,
who led the Aachim to Santhenar. When all First Clan (except Minis) were lost
in the gate, he became angry and bitter. He forced Minis to repudiate Tiaan. He
subsequently led the Aachim across Santhenar but did not hold to his original
purpose, to seize land, instead pursuing Tiaan and her thapter across the
continent of Lauralin.

Xabbier
Frou: A lieutenant in Jal-Nish's army, and a long-lost childhood friend of
Nish.

Xervish
Flydd: The scrutator (spymaster and master inquisitor) for Einunar He is now
commander-in-chief of all the scrutators'forces at Snizori, charged with
defeating the lyrinx army there. Secretly, he was also required to sneak into
Snizori and destroy the lyrinx's node-drainer. He, Irisis and Ullii succeeded
but the device he'd been given was faulty, destroying both node-drainer and
node in a catastrophic explosion. The field vanished, rendering both the army's
clankers and the Aachim's constructs useless, and the soldiers defenceless
against the attacking lyrinx.

Yara:
A brilliant advocate, wife to Troist.

Yggur:
A great long-lived mancer of ancient times.

Alcifer:
The long-abandoned city of Rulke the Charon, in Meldorin. The entire city was
held to have been a magical construct and it still has an aura of barely
leashed power.

Amplimet:
A rare hedron which, even in its natural state, can draw power from the force
(the field) surrounding and permeating a node. Very powerful. Inexplicably,
Tiaan's amplimet shows signs of a crystal instinct or purpose, for in Tirthrax
it communicated with the node and woke the trapped Well of Echoes. It also
communicated with nodes elsewhere, denied Tiaan control when she wanted to take
the thapter places it did not want to go, and drew threads of force throughout
Snizort, including to the node and to Gilhaelith.

Anthracism:
Human internal combustion due to a mancer or an artisan drawing more power than
their body can handle. Invariably fatal (gruesomely).

Booreah
Ngrurle (the Burning Mountain): A large, double-cratered volcano in northern
Worm Wood with a blue crater lake. It has a strange and powerful double node.
Gilhaelith's home, Nyriandiol, is built on the inner rim of the crater.

Clanker:
An armoured mechanical war cart with six, eight, ten or rarely twelve legs and
an articulated body, driven by the Secret Art via a controller mechanism which
is used by a trained operator. Armed with a rock-throwing catapult and a
javelard (heavy spear-thrower) which are fired by a shooter riding on top.
Clankers are made under supervision of a mechanician, artisan and weapons
artificer. Emergency power is stored in a pair of heavy spinning flywheels, in
case the field is interrupted.

Construct:
A vehicle powered by the Secret Art, based on some of the secrets of Rulke's
legendary vehicle. Unlike Rulke's, those made by the Aachim cannot fly, but
only hover, and therefore cannot cross obstacles like deep, wide ditches,
cliffs, very steep slopes or rugged terrain (see Thapter).

Controller:
A mind-linked mechanical system of many flexible arms which draws power through
a hedron and feeds it to the drive mechanisms of a clanker. A controller is
attuned to a particular hedron, and the operator must be trained to use each
controller, which takes time. Operators suffer withdrawal if removed from their
machines for long periods, and inconsolable grief if their machines are
destroyed, although this may be alleviated if the controller survives and can
be installed in another clanker.

Crystal
fever: A hallucinatory madness suffered by artisans and clanker operators,
brought on by overuse of a hedron. Few recover from it. Mancers can suffer from
related ailments.

Field:
The diffuse (or weak) force surrounding and permeating (and presumably
generated by) a node. It is the source of a mancer's power. Various strong
forces are also known to exist, though no one knows how to tap them safely (see
Power). Non-nodal stress-fields also exist, though on Santhenar these are weak
and little used.

Flesh-forming:
A branch of the Secret Art that only lyrinx can use. Developed to adapt
themselves to the ever-mutable void they came from, it now involves the slow
transformation of a living creature, tailoring it to suit some particular
purpose. It is painful for both creature and lyrinx, and can only be employed
on small creatures, though the lyrinx seek to change that.

Gate:
A portal between one place (or one world) and another, connected by a
trans-dimensional 'wormhole.’

Geomancy:
The most difficult and powerful of all the Secret Arts. An adept is able to
draw upon the forces that move and shape the world. A most dangerous Art to the
user.

Hedron:
A natural or shaped crystal, formed deep in the earth from fluids circulating
through a natural node. Trained artisans can tune a hedron to draw power from
the field surrounding a node, via the ethyr. Rutilated quartz, that is, quartz,
crystal containing dark needles of rutile, is commonly used. The artisan must
first 'wake' the crystal using his or her pliance. Too far from a node, a
hedron is unable to draw power and becomes useless. If a hedron is not used for
long periods it may have to be rewoken by an artisan, though this can be
hazardous.

Mathemancy:
An Art developed by Gilhaelith, though since that time it has been discovered
independently by other mancers, notably Bilfis.

Nennifer:
The great bastion of the Council of Scrutators, on the escarpment over
Kalithras, the Desolation Sink. Nennifer is home to countless mancers, artisans
and artificers, all furiously working to design new kinds of Art-powered
devices to aid the war against the lyrinx.

Nodes:
Rare places in the world where the Secret Art works better. Once identified, a
hedron (or a mancer) can sometimes draw power from the node's field through the
ethyr, though the amount diminishes with distance, not always regularly. A
clanker operator must be alert for the loss and ready to draw on another node,
if available. The field can be drained, in which case the node may not be
usable for years, or even centuries. Maneers have long sought the secret of
drawing on the far greater power of a node itself (cf. Power, Nunar's General
Theory of Power) but so far it has eluded them (or maybe those that succeeded
did not live to tell about it).

There
are also anti-nodes where the Art does not work at all, or is dangerously
disrupted. Nodes and anti-nodes are frequently (though not always) associated
with natural features or forces such as mountains, faults and hot spots.

Nyriandiol:
Gilhaelith's home, fortress and laboratory on top of Booreah Ngurle; the entire
building is a geomantic artefact designed to protect him, ensure his control
and enhance his work.

Oellyll:
A lyrinx city in Meldorin.

Patterner:
A semi-organic device developed by the lyrinx to pattern torgnadrs and other
artefacts used in their Art. The patterner essentially copies a particular
human's talent into the growing torgnadr, greatly enhancing the talent and
allowing it to be controlled by a lyrinx skilled in the Art.

Pliance:
Device that enables an artisan to see the field and tune a controller to it.

Port-all:
Tiaan's name for the device she makes in Tirthrax to open the gate.

Power:
A mancer, Nunar, codified the laws of mancing, noting how limited it was,
mainly because of lack of power. She recognised that mancing was held back
because power came from diffuse and poorly understood sources. It all went
through the mancer first, causing aftersickness that grew greater the more
powerful it was. Eventually power, or after-sickness, would kill the mancer.

The
traditional way around this was to charge up an artefact (such as a mirror or
ring) with power over a long time, and to simply trigger it when needed. This
had some advantages, though objects could be hard to control or become
corrupted, and once discharged were essentially useless. Yet some of the
ancients had used devices that held a charge, or perhaps replenished
themselves. No one knew how, but it had to be so, else how could they maintain
their power for hundreds if not thousands of years (for example, the Mirror of
Aachan), or use quite prodigious amounts of power without becoming exhausted (Rulke's
legendary construct)?

Nunar
assembled a team of mancers utterly devoted to her project (no mean feat) and
set out to answer these questions. Mancing was traditionally secretive — people
tried (often wasting their lives in dead ends) and usually failed alone. Only
the desperate state of the war could have made them work together, sharing
their discoveries, until the genius of Nunar put together the Special Theory of
Power that described where the diffuse force came from and how a mancer
actually tapped it, drawing not through the earthly elements but through the
ultradimensional ethyr.

The
ultimate goals of theoretical mancers are the General Theory of Power, which
deals with how nodes work and how they might be tapped safely; and, ultimately,
the Unified Power Theory, which reconciles all fields, weak and strong, in
terms of a single force.

Secret
Art: The use of magical or sorcerous powers (mancing). Snizort: A place in
Taltid with a potent and concentrated node, near the famous tar pits and seeps.
The lyrinx took Gilhaelith there to help them find the remains of a village
lost in the Great Seep thousands of years ago. When he did so, they excavated a
tunnel into the seep by freezing the tar, and took out a number of crystals,
other artefacts and long-dead human bodies. After the node exploded, the tar
caught fire and Snizort had to be abandoned.

Strong
Forces: Forces which are speculated to exist, though no mancer studying them
has yet survived to prove their existence.

Thapter:
Tiaan's name for the flying construct she and Malien created in Tirthrax.

Torgnadr:
A device patterned by the lyrinx to drain a field dry, or to channel power from
the field for their own purposes. Torgnadrs are extremely difficult to pattern
and most attempts fail, though some result in weak devices such, as phynadrs
which can draw small amounts of power for a particular purpose. Tiaan was used,
with her amplimet, to pattern particularly strong torgnadrs, though the
patterning was not entirely successful.

Well
of Echoes, the: An Aachim concept to do with the reverberation of time, memory
and the Histories. Sometimes a place of death and rebirth (to the same cycling
fate). Also a sense of being trapped in history, of being helpless to change
collective fate (of a family, clan or species). Its origin is sometimes thought
to be a sacred well on Aachan, sometimes on Santhenar. The term has become part
of Aachim folklore. 'I have looked in the Well of Echoes.' 'I heard it at the
Well: 'I will go to the Well.' Possibly also a source; a great node.

The
Well is represented by the three-dimensional symbol of infinity, the universe
and nothingness. A Well of Echoes, trapped in Tirthrax, is held there only by
the most powerful magic.