Alchymist twoe-3

by Ian Irvine

  Flydd was staring at him, not breathing. 'And how did Ghorr react?'

  'He seemed delighted.'

  Flydd went so still that Nish wondered if he was alive. The lump of coarse bread was held out in one hand, the gourd of water in the other. His scarred and knotted jaw looked as if it had been cast from bronze. Finally he gave a great shudder, turned to Nish and handed him the bread.

  'Take this. I cannot eat.'

  'But…' said Nish, 'yesterday you told me I must eat to survive.'

  Flydd looked over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. 'What you've just told me makes my flesh crawl. There have always been people who would do anything, even sell their kin, to satisfy their lusts. I've met more than enough in my time. But for the chief of scrutators to encourage such a deed, to demand it as proof of worth to become a scrutator, shows that the Council is corrupt to the core.'

  'I always thought the Council would do anything —’ Nish began, but quickly censored himself.

  'We did what was required for humanity to survive. I've done many things I'm not proud of, though, as scrutator, I would do them again. But this …How can the Council not see?'

  'See what?' said Nish, gnawing at the hard bread, which had been milled so coarsely that many of the grains were whole. He spat out a particularly large grain, which turned out to be a pebble.

  'That this deed, alone, makes Jal-Nish unworthy to be scrutator, and Ghorr to be chief. A man who puts ambition before anything else can never be trusted to act for the common good. And a man who demands such an act lacks the judgment to be a lowly prober, much less a scrutator. Ghorr must be brought down, and the Council with him.'

  With a loud crack, the neck of the gourd shattered under the force of Flydd's grip, showering him with water. He put the ragged end to his mouth and drained it, then tossed the gourd into the mud.

  With a rueful smile he spoke, quietly so the next pair of slaves would not hear: 'Well may you laugh, to hear a slave plot the downfall of the scrutators. But I swear to you that I will do it, whatever it takes. This monstrosity, this abomination of the Council, must be wiped from the earth.'

  'Including my father?' Despite everything, Nish could not even think of revenge. All he felt was an empty bewilderment, that his father could have done such a thing to him.

  'Especially Jal-Nish.'

  Seven

  In the panic after the node exploded, and the disabled air-fioater crash-landed in the middle of the battlefield, everyone fled for their lives. No one noticed that little Ullii was not with them.

  Ullii was so furious with Flydd and Irisis that she stayed behind. The scrutator had gained her cooperation by telling her that he'd found her long-lost twin brother, Mylii, but it had all been a lie. Flydd had no idea where Mylii was.

  When the reverberations from the node had faded enough for her to open her lattice, the mental matrix by which she organised her unique view of the world, there were lyrinx everywhere. Huge lyrinx with bloodstained claws and shreds of flesh and skin between their teeth. Ullii stifled a gasp, jumpad over the side and ran after Flydd. Better him than the clawers, as she thought of them, but the bright sun burst up, right into her eyes. Covering her face, she lurched back to the air-floater, but couldn't find her mask or goggles. In daylight she was helpless without one or the other. Ullii was groping under the tilted deck for them when she realised that she was completely alone.

  'Wait!' she wailed, but her high, despairing cry did not carry. Despite Flydd lying to her, despite Irisis letting her down as well, in this nightmare of blood and violence Ullii could not do without them. 'Wait!' she shouted in her high little voice.

  It was impossible to hear anything above the battle cries of the lyrinx, the sound of weapons on armour, the hiss of spears and catapult balls, the screams of men and beasts in agony.

  Her ears hurt; even after plugging them with lumps of wet clay she could still hear the racket.

  Her burning eyes were streaming with tears and she could not leave the air-floater. Ullii searched for Irisis and Xervish Flydd. Since they both had a talent for the Secret Art, they should have appeared in the lattice. But Irisis and Flydd were far across the battlefield, and in the chaos Ullii could not pick them out. Thousands of lyrinx showed, and devices powered by the Secret Art. Only those capable of storing power were working now. Anything that relied on the field was dead.

  Ullii felt abandoned — it had been happening all her life. What was she to do? She couldn't survive by herself. And what about the little intruder growing inside her? She felt protective towards the baby because she and Nish had made it together, but sometimes she hated it. One day it would abandon her, too.

  The battlefield became so terrifying that Ullii had to shut down her lattice. She could not stand violence of any kind. The war was a nightmare brought to life and she did not know how to cope. Ullii did the only thing left to her. She crept into the smallest, darkest space she could find, a corner of the air-floater's tiny galley, curled up into a ball and closed down her senses one by one. The world vanished.

  All day the battle raged around her. Several times the wrecked air-floater was struck by running lyrinx, hard enough to shake the flimsy structure. Once a minor battle raged inside as four soldiers pursued a wounded lyrinx and dispatched it. Men and lyrinx died to her left, then in the rear. Ullii was oblivious. Thirst roused her in the cool of the evening. Uncoiling gracefully, she opened her crusted eyes. The galley was a mess. When the air-floater had flipped upside down, pans, pots, food and wine-had been scattered everywhere. Ullii found a battered pot, tapped water from a barrel and gulped it down, though it had an unpleasant metallic taste. She found dried fruit, stale bread and a piece of mild cheese that had gone hard and cracked in the heat of the day. It suited her perfectly, for Ullii could not bear any kind of herb or spice, or other strong flavours, which were to her overpoweringly intense.

  Sitting on the floor, she gnawed at the cheese while she used the lattice to sense what was going on around her. The fighting had paused; the battlefield was quiet apart from the piteous groans of the dying and the cackle of fires here and there. The smell of blood, excrement and raw flesh made her stomach heave.

  Other fires lit up the human camps, as well as those of the Aachim, but not the lyrinx. They did not need camp fires. And in the distance Ullii could see, and feel, and sense with every one of her senses, the baleful incandescence of the exploded node. It was still molten, concealed by impenetrable fumes, and spurting and dribbling white-hot rock like a miniature volcano. The fields that had once been such a vital part of it had gone, though Ullii still sensed something there.

  Once more she sought for Irisis and Xervish Flydd, but did not find them. There were too many people with uncanny talents, and too many devices employing the Secret Art. Her lattice glowed with them, like knotted stars in the heavens. Ullii did not look for Nish, though she longed for him. Having no Art, he did not appear in her lattice at all.

  But one point stood out like a nova in the night sky, and she recognised it at once. It was the glowing knot of the amplimet, twinned to a smaller knot that signified Tiaan. After months of searching for them, Ullii knew those marks the instant they appeared.

  They were not far away, though she could not tell where. The lattice was twisted up on itself, blasted out of shape by the sub-ethyric explosion from the node. Everything was warped and confused.

  Ullii did not feel safe in the air-floater but she had nowhere else to go. She had never felt so abandoned. Nish, she cried silently. Where are you? Ullii had last seen him as a prisoner of the Aachim, and he'd not seemed as pleased to see her as she'd been to find him. She suppressed that worry. Could he be at the camp surrounded by those shining metal constructs? Ullii dared not go to see; the Aachim leader was a harsh man, like the people who had tormented her in childhood.

  She ate some more bread, then slept, the baby kicking in her belly like the feathery brush of a fish's tail. The night passed. The fighting stopped briefly befo
re continuing, as brutal and bloody as ever. In the morning her sleep was interrupted by flashes brighter than the sun. One passed right across the air-floater, showing even,' rib, strut and wire of the collapsed gasbag, and her black glass goggles jammed under a bench.

  Scrambling for them, Ullii stared up at the sky. The fleet of air-floaters was impossible to miss. Their crystals appeared faintly in her lattice, a perfect formation of three by four. Something else showed, too. The presence was also faint, denoting only a minor talent for the Secret Art, but it had a signature she would have known anywhere — a festering corruption of mind and body that made her belly cramp and her skin crawl. Ullii had not felt it since their escape from the mine at the manufactory, months ago. It was the man she feared most — Jal-Nish Hlar.

  She tried to close down her senses again, but this time they would not obey her, for fear of what might happen when she was helpless. Scuttling into the galley, she closed the door and piled bags and barrels against it. Without a window, it was stiflingly hot — too hot for comfort — and though it was dim inside, for once that did not help.

  She closed her eyes, but again that beam passed over the air-floater, and light streamed in through a tiny crack in the wall, so bright that she felt it. Ullii was not safe anywhere. As she put her hands over the goggles, the earth began to shake as if thousands of heavy feet were pounding it. The clawers were on the move. If they came this way, one of them would eat her in a few bone-snapping, brain-spurting gulps.

  Clearing the door, Ullii crept out, peering fearfully through her goggles. Another blast of light seared from sky to ground. A great wail went up and she saw the enemy running for their lives, a horde of them heading directly for the air-floater. In their panic, they might crash right through the flimsy structure.

  Not far away a clanker lay on its side, torn open from one end to the other. It offered better shelter, since the beasts would have to go round it. Slipping over the side. Ullii bent low to the ground and ran. The enemy pounded towards her. Halfway to the clanker she encountered a dead dawer lying in a depression. Ullii froze, staring at the great hulk, whose eyes seemed to be looking right at her.

  It was almost her undoing. Ullii could not move, terrified that the creature would come to life and tear her in half. It didn't and, finding courage at the last instant, she leapt over it and scuttled the dozen steps to the side of the clanker. Pulling herself underneath its overhanging side, she closed her eyes and prayed.

  The mob thundered past, rocking the clanker. The metal frame creaked and groaned. Ullii shuddered and curled into a smaller ball, knowing that the clawers could find her by smell if they wanted to.

  The last went by, limping. She did not move. Not until the stampede faded into the distance did she dare to open her eyes.

  The air-floaters still shone their beam one way and another. Ullii slipped inside the clanker, looking for water and food. She did not find any, only blood on the floor, the srhell so sickly that she almost passed out.

  She hid underneath in the small patch of shadow, following it around as the sun rose higher then sank towards the west. By the mid-afternoon it became clear that the enemy were abandoning Snizort, but Ullii did not know what to do. Experience had taught her that few people could be trusted. Nor could she live alone, in the wild. Food, clothing and shelter had always been provided for her and, by herself, she would not survive a week. She could not kill another animal for food, nor eat its bloody, pungent flesh if she did.

  She would have to follow the clanker column and find a way to live off it without being caught. Though Ullii was a creature of the night, used to moving silently and secretly, that thought filled her with terror. Stealing from the army was a capital crime. Should she be caught, they would kill her like a beast. But she had to eat.

  Going back for water, she found the air-floater smashed to pieces. The gasbag, a good fifteen spans long, had disappeared. Searching in the mud she discovered a water barrel with a few handfuls of brown water in it, and drank the lot. There was nothing left of the food.

  It was growing dark. She circled around one of the camps, and around again, silent as a ghost in the darkness. Many times she came on ruined clankers, but the smell of blood and death was so strong she could not bear to crawl inside. She was ravenous, and so desperate for a drink that, not long before dawn. Ullii approached a dead soldier. Holding her nose with one hand, she went through his pack.

  She found nothing to eat or drink, but the next corpse had a stoppered skin of wine and a bag of flat honey biscuits. After wiping the mouth of the skin a dozen times, and suppressing a shudder, she put it to her lips.

  The wine was so sour that it took her breath away, and the taste made her want to wash her mouth out. She took another sip, then a mouthful. It had been watered and was weak, but Ullii had not taken wine before, nor any kind of alcoholic drink.

  Moving upwind of the corpse, she nibbled at one of the honey biscuits. It was delicious, though intensely sweet. She ate it all and took another sip of the wine, which now tasted even more sour.

  Ullii wandered off, alternately nibbling to break the sourness of the wine, then drinking to rid her mouth of the excessive sweetness. In this way she circumnavigated the camp again. To her right she heard cursing and the distinctive sound of the whip. Groups of harnessed men were attempting to drag clankers out of a bog. She turned the other way and shortly came upon a ruined clanker, just as the sky was growing light. Her head felt strange. Ullii giggled, staggered and threw up.

  The sun burst over the horizon, right into her eyes. Ullii stumbled around the clanker, found a hole in the side and crawled in. All around her echoed the roars of overseers and the groaning of slaves. There was only one consolation — the lyrinx had gone. In the core of her lattice she could see their columns, moving steadily away, abandoning Snizort and all they had made here.

  Not quite all — they carried a number of strange objects with them, thick with the aura of the Secret An. But they were shielded and Ullii could tell no more about them, even had she wanted to. She sought for the solace of sleep.

  Ullii woke with a terrible headache, for she'd slept the day through, and the night. The sun was beating down on the clanker now, which creaked and squealed as the metal plates expanded and slipped over one another. Her mouth tasted foul; she was thirstier than ever but could not stomach the wine. She ate a few more honey biscuits, sniffed the contents of the skin and poured it onto the ground.

  Not daring to go out in the daytime, Ullii lay panting in the clanker until sundown, growing weaker and weaker. Her headache was worse than before. She felt sure that she was dying.

  The clanker cooled quickly once the sun set and Ullii, idly trailing her fingers along the upper side, discovered that it was covered in beads of moisture. She licked her fingers. Her tongue was so dry that it felt crackly. Following the trail of drops down the side she discovered a small pool of condensation, about a cupful, in a metal hollow. After drinking it dry, she felt strong enough to look for more.

  Her senses were so acute that she could smell water, even among the fumes from the bodies that had been burned, and the putrid reek of those rotting where they had fallen. She found a gourd of water, drank her fill and went back to her hiding place, where sleep was her only escape from the stench. The next morning she finished the water and went outside. Something had changed.

  All was silent. The hauling teams had dragged the last of the undamaged clankers from the mire onto solid ground, and were now heading towards the nearest field. She was alone with the dead.

  Ullii followed the column for days, sleeping in a tree or hollow by day, creeping at the coat-tails of the procession at night, and living on the few meagre scraps she could find. She did not know what else to do.

  It was most unpleasant. Several times she saw the one-armed man in the platinum mask, and after that Jal-Nish's knot was always in her lattice, a shuddering horror. And even from half a league away, the smell of eighty thousand unwashed bodies w
as so strong than she had to plug her nose. The merest whiff made her gag, and it grew worse as time wore on. One night she found nothing edible at all, and was driven by hunger to creep to the front of the procession, where the noise and light were least, to see if she could steal anything.

  It was the boldest deed little Ullii had ever attempted. Her whole life had been spent in fear of people and their punishments. Now she must steal or starve. She crept along the line of the leading column, keeping watch in her lattice for Jal-Nish. He was over the other side, thankfully. A gentle breeze drifted the stink of the army away from her. Ullii took out her noseplugs. Smell was her most powerful sense and she needed it here.

  The column was still, the slaves taking a few hours' rest before the labour began again at dawn. She slipped closer, as quick as silk in the darkness. An errant breeze brought her an aroma from the camp ovens — fresh bread. Five hundred bakers had worked all night to feed the multitude their breakfast.

  Salivating, Ullii scanned the area. The bakers' wagons and their portable ovens, were well lit and securely guarded, so there was no chance of stealing anything there. She moved up the line, looking for something she could snatch. It had to be done secretly. If they saw her she would never get away.

  As she prowled, the wind changed, momentarily blowing from the head of the line. Even among the thousands of sweaty bodies, Ullii caught an elusive, familiar scent. Her eyes moistened. She raised her head, sniffing the air. There it was again. Her nipples stood up and Ullii felt an overwhelming flood of desire.

  It was Nish! Her beloved Nish, who had looked after her so tenderly before. If only she could get to him, she would be safe at last.

  Eight

  Irisis screamed as the pair of lyrinx leapt through the door; she couldn't help herself. With a backwards flip that she had not known she could perform, she fled the other way, expecting to find Flangers dead.