Chimaera

by Ian Irvine

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

  Booreah Ngurle (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 (but 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: An 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 where 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 for 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 for centuries. Mancers have long sought the secret of drawing on the far greater power of a node itself (see 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 with 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 aftersickness, would kill the mancer using it.

  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 could 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 she set out to answer these questions. Mancing was traditionally secretive – people tried (and often wasted 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 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. Related devices include zygnadrs (sentinels), and the flisnadr (power patterner).

  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 symbolised 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.

  DATES AND MEASUREMENTS

  The Santhenar year has 396 days.

  A span is roughly six feet or slightly less than two metres.

  A league is about three miles or five kilometres.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CONTENTS

  MAPS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Chimaera

  PART ONE: AMPHITHEATRE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  PART TWO: EIDOSCOPE

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  PART THREE: FARSPEAKER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  PART FOUR: GEOMANTIC GLOBE

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  PART FIVE: WELL OF ECHOES

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  GLOSSARY