Alchymist (62 page)

Heart
palpitating from the effort, he turned off the ramp at a great black door that
marked the gate between Oellyll and Alcifer. Another of those crab-like
sentinels stood beside it. He pushed past without incident and approached the
door, which was made of a black metal that shone in the lantern light as though
it had a hundred coats of lacquer. As he reached out, the door swung open
silently. He froze, then peered through, carefully. The floor was thick with
untracked dust, so the lyrinx had never been this way.

It
was so dark that he could not see what lay beyond -palace or rat hole. He
raised the lantern. Faint gleams appeared here and there, reflections off
distant surfaces whose shapes shifted as he moved. He stepped into Alcifer and
the darkness seemed to suck the light from his lantern. The floor shivered
underfoot. He scuffed the dust away with a toe to reveal solid stone, yet it
was quivering ever so slightly.

Go
back! came an errant thought. You should not be here. He shrugged off the
unease. Alcifer was a ruin abandoned an aeon ago. Nothing here could harm him,
save the decaying stone and mortar falling on his head.

Hours
he walked through haunted, magical halls where the dust lay so thick that his
boots made no sound. Hours more he sat on seat or rail, staring into the
darkness as he tried to gain a feeling for the building. He was searching for
the perfect place to work but a palace such as this confused the mind as it tricked
the eye. He could not take it in.

My
mind is definitely failing, he thought. Before my illness I could have
visualised the entirety of this palace, like rows and columns in a catalogue.
Am I reaching my end sooner than I'd thought? Please, not this way, with my
work so far from completion. If my mind is going, let me not fade dismally
away. Rather would I die in a cataclysm of my own making, as long as in doing
so I can approach my goal.

He
stood up, staring around him in the darkness and shivering like the very
stones. In all the years he'd worked on his study of the world, there was one
experiment he'd not been game to attempt. Though it held the best promise of
all, it was deadly perilous. Should he try it? If it succeeded, he might use it
to find and remove all the fragments of the phantom crystal at once and even,
faint hope that it was, repair some of the damage to his brain. He'd either
crash through to his goal, or crash to his doom. More likely the latter, but
what did he have to lose? Better to die violently than live this way, feeling
his faculties slowly fading, knowing he'd either lose his intellect and go mad,
or end up a vegetable that the lyrinx wouldn't deign to dine on. 'I'll do it!'
he said aloud. 'I'll dare the great experiment and curse the consequences.'
First, the place to work. Ignoring the dark, magnificent surroundings, he
dragged himself up a last set of stairs to a vast hall covered ankle-deep in
ash, through which occasional black tiles were exposed. The frescoed walls were
stained brown from flowing rainwater, for the roof had collapsed long ago.
Gilhaelith picked his way through the mess towards a tall pair of doors, wedged
ajar by a leaning pine that had grown between them. He squeezed through the gap
and out.

A
broad boulevard, knee-deep in crusted ash, littered with boulders and fallen
masonry, and overgrown with great trees whose roots had lifted the paving
stones, ran away from him up a round hill. Despite the debris, its noble
proportions were evident. The open space across the boulevard had once been a
park, it seemed, for the trees there were vast and gnarled with age. A partly
collapsed pavilion stood among them, to its right a marble fountain choked with
debris, the stone dissolving from the volcano's acid rain. On Gilhaelith's left
was an edifice of black stone, apparently the twin of the one he'd just come
out of, though this building had an intact roof of some green metal that
glinted here and there.

It
was a bright, sunny day but Alcifer felt cold and brooding in a way that other
ancient places did not. As if something — the city itself? — was waiting for a
master who would never return, to complete a purpose that had been overtaken by
time and treachery. The tilted paving stones in the street shivered underfoot, such
was the power leashed here.

But
there was no longer any point to Alcifer, Gilhaelith mused as he mentally
reviewed its Histories. Originally built during the chaos of the Clysm, the
city was said to have been one vast machine designed to open the Way between
the Worlds, but had never been put to use. Soon after its completion, Rulke had
been captured by his enemies and cast into the Nightland, a nowhere place that
had contained him for a thousand years. During his imprisonment he'd designed a
better artefact than Alcifer, reworked it until it was perfect, and on his
escape had built it in Fiz Gorgo and Carcharon -his construct.

The
constructs of the Aachim were based upon his model, though the original had
never been equalled. Rulke's had been a vehicle that could fly, a means of
attack and defence, and a device to open the Way between the Worlds.

After
his death, Alcifer had slumbered under its covering of forest and volcanic ash
for another hundred years, until the lyrinx were attracted to its extraordinary
node-within-a-node that now energised both Alcifer and Oellyll. He could sense
it from here: a pair of spheres one inside the other, each swelling and
contracting to its own rhythm. Their potent fields also expanded and shrank in
a complex dance that never repeated itself.

Gilhaelith
crossed the boulevard to the fountain and sat on a carved soapstone bench
covered in crumbs of volcanic ash. How could such a node have formed? Had it
anything to do with the dormant volcano to the north, or could it have been
transformed by that pinching-off of force that had created the rolled-up
dimensions of the Nightland? He felt awed in the presence of power so much
greater than any he'd dealt with before.

The
lyrinx had no fear of the place, nor of any hidden purpose it may have had long
ago. They had cleared some of its boulevards, built ventilation bellows powered
by the field, and begun to delve their own city beneath Alcifer. Getting up and
brushing the ash from his pants, he paced along the boulevard towards the hill,
wonder growing with every step. Alcifer was vast, but even under the volcanic
detriius and forest growth he could see that every structure, from the smallest
to the greatest, formed part of one harmonious whole. A single mind had shaped
each part of it, a single principle guided his hand — Pitlis the Aachim, the
greatest architect who had ever lived, and the biggest fool. Rulke had seduced
him with the creation of Alcifer, used it to uncover the defensive secrets of
Gar Gaarn, the Aachim's greatest city, and destroyed it.

Gilhaelith
spent days trudging the debris-strewn city, trying to understand it so as to
find the perfect place to work. His great experiment could not be done anywhere
— location was critical. Some places would assist the task not at all, while
others would hinder it or even make it impossible. Yet somewhere there would be
the perfect locale. It need not be vast or grand. The simplest of pavilions in
a park might suffice, but he would not know until he found it, and had tested
it with mathemancy, assuming he was still capable of it. One day a talent would
be there, the next it would be gone. And every attempt at using mancery caused
jagging pain in one part of his head or another, indicating that the phantom
fragments were still doing damage.

After
five days he was more confused about Alcifer than when he'd entered the city.
The genius of Pitlis's design, and Rulke's building, would take half a lifetime
to unravel. It humbled him and made his own achievements seem puny.

The
city consisted of arrays of buildings, great and small, set along seven
intersecting boulevards. Every side street was curved, the intersections being
circles or ovals. There were vistas only along the boulevards. Off them, every
corner revealed a new surprise, some vast and ornate, others simple — a mossy
cul-de-sac with a fountain, a set of elegant steps, a pond or a piece of
statuary. Although many of the buildings had been ruined by time, the bones of
the city endured, for they had been fused to the living rock with an Art no
human could duplicate.

Despairing
of ever gaining a mental picture of the whole of Alcifer, he begged Gyrull to
take him aloft, so he could view it from the air. She agreed readily, though he
was carried up by Liett, the small lyrinx with the transparent, soft skin, now,
covered with a paste to prevent it from burning in the sun. Despite her size
she lifted him easily, flying in circles over Alcifer for two hours while he
tried to impress the city's patterns on his mind. It still wasn't enough, though
on the way down he spotted a white building shaped like a five-pointed star
that he planned to take a closer look at from the ground-That afternoon he went
back on foot, accompanied by male lyrinx who spoke not a single word the entire
time. In the centre of the city, at the intersection of the seven boulevards,
stood the white palace, and it proved to be unlike any building he had ever
seen. It consisted of a core covered by a glass dome — no, not a dome, a
soaring shell — with five arms, or wings, each identical, spinning out from it.
The arms were roofed with a series of curving shells made of white stone so
polished that they had once dazzled the eye. Even now, weather-stained as they
were, the building was breathtakingly beautiful.

Gilhaelith
went up the broad steps and pushed at the left-most of the four bronze doors;
it grated open. The shivering of the stone grew as he paced down the hall. In
the very centre, where the five buildings fused, he entered an enormous, airy and
bright chamber, for the covering shell consisted of a single piece of glass.
Red water stains ran down the walls, rubble lay here and there, and dust
everywhere, but otherwise its magnificence was unmarred.

Just
off the centre of the chamber stood a circular bench, many spans across, made
of volcanic glass. The rest of the space was empty. Gilhaelith had a keen eye
for beauty, though this place held more than that. Without even taking the
numbers he knew it was exactly what he'd been looking for.

'Rulke
knew the ways of power,' he said aloud. 'He built this palace here because the
resonances were perfect, and so they will be for me.' Gilhaelith turned to the
silent lyrinx. 'I'll work here. Would you bring up my servants now?' The
creature turned away without answering, leaving Gilhaelith to wonder if Gyrull
would allow him any assistants. He no longer expected her to.

Somewhat
to his surprise the lyrinx returned the following morning with twelve slaves.
They were a rough-looking lot, to he expected after years of servitude. Before
they so much as picked up a crate, Gilhaelith had to ensure their loyalty, and
it would not be easy. They must see him as a traitor, and the only way to
overcome that was with naked self-interest, backed up by inflexible control.

My
name is Gilhaelith,' he said to the assembled group from the top step of the
white palace. 'Gyrull has given you to me. I'm not a harsh master, but I demand
instant and total obedience. In return, if you serve me faithfully until my
work is done, I'll see you freed and take you home to your loved ones.'

'Seems
to me your word is worth no more than any other stinking turncoat's,' said
their spokesman, Tyal, a hungry-look-ing fellow with a starkly white
complexion. His hands were covered in wiry yellow hairs, the hair on his head
was carrot-coloured and his beard was red.

'How
long have you been held prisoner by the lyrinx?' Gilhaelith said pleasantly.

'Nine
years,' said Tyal.

'And
in that time, how many prisoners have they freed?'

'None,'
he replied grudgingly.

'And
how many escaped from the lyrinx?'

'Couple
dozen got away in the early days,' said a short, greatly scarred woman from the
back of the group. 'Course, the lyrinx et them all. Weren't many escapes after
that, and they got et as well. Every one of'em, right in front of us.'

He
let them think about that for a full minute. 'So, Tyal,' said Gilhaelith,
giving him the cold stare that had quelled hundreds of minions over the years,
'it seems your only chance of seeing your loved ones again is through me. If
you can't trust me, go back and take your chances with the lyrinx.' He held
Tyal's gaze a moment longer before turning to the others. 'But to those who
stay, and do as I require, I promise you'll get your freedom. What is it to
be?'

They
all stayed, of course. Any hope was better than none. He smiled thinly. 'Bring
my instruments inside. Treat them like eggs.'

After
days of work the glass-roofed chamber had been cleaned to Gilhaelith's exacting
standards and his instruments arranged correctly. He took the omens with a
series of fourth powers, an effort that left him drained and shaking. In the
end, unable to do the calculations mentally, he'd had to call for pencil and
paper. It was another small failure, though the number patterns were, for the
most part, harmonious; not perfect but good enough. Dismissing the servants to
their quarters he stood in the geometrical centre of the room, by the great
bench, revelling. After months of chaos that had been torment to him, his life
was ordered again. He would soon control everything in his small domain.
Gilhaelith had little hope that he could reverse the slow decay of his mental
faculties, but his health might recover enough for him to complete his work and
die fulfilled. He'd last worked on his great project back in Nyriandiol in the
spring. It was late summer now and today he would make a new start. As he paced
beneath the glass roof, under bleak, rainy skies, he mused on what he'd learned
since being taken from Nyriandiol, trying to place it into a pattern he could
make sense of.