Alchymist (79 page)

He
knew Gyrull had set up hidden zygnadrs to spy on him but Gilhaelith pretended
they weren't there. He'd known he would be watched. Besides, the geomantic
globe was just a tool — it was what he planned to do with it that was
important, and she couldn't know that.

It
took two months of work, so all-consuming that Gilhaelith could do nothing
else, before the globe was as true as he could make it. Finally, one rainy
mid-autumn afternoon, he stood up, rubbing an aching neck, and allowed the
globe to rotate on its cushion of freezing mist. It looked so real that he could
have been seeing Santhenar from the void. Perhaps, in some strange duality, it
was real — a perfect microcosm of the world, and a device he could use to probe
its secrets, if he could probe and repair himself first.

Unfortunately
it no longer depicted all the nodes he knew of, to say nothing of their
individual natures. Sighing, he bent his head to the new task. He could never
put all the known nodes on his globe; it would be the work of lifetimes.
However, Gilhaelith did not think that would be required. As long as the
greatest nodes were there, the controlling ones (now where had that thought
come from?), the completed globe should enable him to reach a new understanding
of the world.

Gilhaelith
went back to the human-skin node charts. He had Tyal and another servant unroll
them for him; he'd become squeamish about touching human leather lately. What
if Gyrull killed him and made a map out of his skin? Disgusting!

He
began to remove the existing nodes from the world surface and place them in a
new layer, underneath the glass, that would allow him to include the nature of
each node. For this task, he suspended the globe on its air cushion in a
greentinged nickel bowl on a platform of turned rosewood. Near the outer edge
of the platform a series of concentric, graduated brass rings was inlaid into
the timber. Slender pointers could be slid around inner rings to make the
detailed measurements he required. Weeks went by, but finally the task was
done. Gilhaelith stood back, allowed the globe to rotate and brought a crystal
close to the glass surface. A series of nodes lit up. The geo-mantic globe was
as perfect a model of Santhenar as any man could make. It was the culmination
of his life's work. Gilhaelith felt sure that, with it, he could finally
understand how the world worked, and that would give him the key to the power
of the nodes, if he wanted it. It should not take long now, if his strength
held out and the accumulating mental damage did not prevent him.

'Masterly
work, Tetrarch,' said Gyrull, behind him.

Gilhaelith
spun around, seized by a sudden, blind panic. 'You've come for my globe,' he
cried, trying to think of a way out and knowing there was none.

'If
we wanted such a device we would make it ourselves,' she said with a curl of
her leathery lip. 'But you can help me another way, Tetrarch. Indeed, you must,
for you owe me.'

'The
debt was discharged!' He put on an arrogant air to conceal his nervousness.

'On
the contrary, it continues to accumulate. For your servants, the food and drink
we provide you and them, and for your every other request that I have
accommodated unquestioningly.'

'What
do you want?'

'It's
no great favour,' she said blandly. 'Just a series of measurements of the
field, from a number of points overlooking the city.'

'You
want me to go outside Alcifer? Didn't you say there are void beasts in the
forests?' That sounded cowardly, but it wasn't. Having come so far, he grudged
every moment spent away from his work. And having little time left, he couldn't
afford to waste a minute.

Gyrull
passed up the opportunity to mock him for cowardice. She was nobler than he'd
thought. 'You're quite safe. Our boundaries extend some distance from Alcifer,
and you'll have my guards with you.'

Can't
you take the measurements yourself?' 'We can, but I'm asking you to do it, as
part-payment of your debt. We have much to do, presently. The measurements
won't take much time at all. A few days, at most.'

Shortly
after sunrise, Gilhaelith was taking sightings through a calibrated spyglass
from a ridge high above the city, and noting field strengths on a map Gyrull
had given him. The readings were to be done every half-hour all day, from this
ridge, and from six other locations on succeeding days. Therefore the work
would take a week, not the few days Gyrull had mentioned. There was no time for
wondering why. No sooner was the first set of readings complete than it was
time to start the second, and so it went all day, and the next. All twelve of
his servants had been sent with him — keeping an eye on him for Gyrull, he
assumed — and two guards were watching them.

On
the third afternoon he was working on a higher ridge on the slope of the
dormant volcano. He'd just moved the glass to a new position when a powerful
distortion in the field led him to glance up the slope. The distortion seemed
to be moving, but its source was masked or cloaked and it took quite an effort
to see through it. To his astonishment, it was a thapter. The metal skin was
undamaged, so it wasn't Tiaan's. Someone else had uncovered the secret. Soon,
he supposed, the skies would be full of them.

The
thapter drifted in his direction. Gilhaelith squinted at it, trying to identify
the operator, but the machine was too far off. Whoever was inside it, human or
Aachim, was a threat to him. He ducked under the trees, praying that it would
turn aside.

Not
so his servants, who began screaming and jumping up and down.

Careful,'
he called. 'Most likely it's Aachim in that flier.'

'Do
they eat folk?' said the always irascible Tyal.

'Of
course not.'

'Then
they're a damn sight better than the enemy.'

If
the Aachim found Gilhaelith he would certainly be imprisoned for keeping the
thapter from them; he might even forfeit his life. Should the thapter be
possessed by the scrutators, however, he would be swiftly tried for keeping it
and the amplimet from Klarm, and as swiftly executed. That fate might await him
from Gyrull, too, but surely not until he'd tested the globe. The decision took
little time. Of his three possible fates, only remaining at Alcifer offered the
chance to complete his life's work.

'Not
for me,' muttered Gilhaelith, moving further into the shadows.

'So
that's how it is,' roared lyal. 'Look at him, hiding like the craven cur he is!
His promises were lies. He's a traitor, as I've always said, and the scrutators
will pay handsomely for him. Take Gilhaelith!'

Two
of the male servants threw themselves on him, while the others took up cudgels
and attacked the pair of lyrinx guards standing in the shade. The women began
capering madly in the clearing, waving items of clothing at the thapter, but as
Gilhaelith fell a cloaking spell renewed itself and the machine vanished.

Three
of the male servants lay bleeding on the ground before the lyrinx were
defeated. One was felled by an expertly thrown rock, the other went down under
the weight of four humans. A cudgel blow knocked it unconscious.

Gilhaelith
was dragged, struggling furiously, out into the open. Someone bound his wrists
behind his back with a length of cord. Gilhaelith prayed that there were more
lyrinx nearby, or he was finished.

Malien
came to Tiaan's room that night, very late, looking rather drawn.

'I'm
sorry,' she said on entering. 'I should have anticipated their reaction and
kept our business till later.'

'Of
course your people wouldn't want an outsider at their council,' said Tiaan, who
had been watching the patterns ebb and flow in the translucent walls. 'I should
have known better than to interrupt.'

'It's
just that it showed up their fatal weakness — an inability to agree on anything.'
Malien sat on the bed, a rhomboid frame of metal with a mattress as hard as a
plank. The other furnishings were equally minimal and unornamented. In
Tirthrax, every surface of every object had been decorated. 'It's worse than it
was before the council began.'

'Are
they like this in everything they do?'

Malien
sighed. 'Unfortunately, when they deal with the outside world, yes. In the past
we've allowed ourselves to be led to disaster because we lacked the courage to
challenge a powerful, charismatic leader, or because we believed the
unbelievable of him. The march of folly, I call it, and Tensor's folly became
so seared into our consciousness that no one wishes to be leader any more.
Every proposition is torn apart in the meeting room. We're so afraid of hubris
that we won't act at all; not even when the outside world burns.'

'And
Vithis is like Tensor, you said. Has Vithis been here?'

'His
envoys have, though not recently. The country is too steep and rugged for
constructs and, even from the lowlands of Kalar, west of these mountains, it
takes weeks to walk into Stasor. For the coming winter, which is six months
long here, it can't be done at all.'

'Except
by thapter. Do you know where Vithis is?' A long way away, Tiaan fervently
hoped.

'He's
gone north to the Foshorn, seized land there and closed the borders. No one
knows what he's up to.'

'I
was sure he would come after me,' Tiaan said softly.

'Another
of our failings, in times of duress, is to retreat into our fastness and shut
the world out.'

Tiaan
sagged with relief. 'What are you going to do, Malien?'

'I
don't know. I may return to Tirthrax, if Harjax will let me.'

'Why
wouldn't he?'

'My
people want the thapter. To gain such a prize, they may find the courage to
act.'

Are
you in danger?'

'I
hardly think so, though . . .'

Three
nights later, Tiaan was lying awake in the dark when the room was shaken gently
by an earth trembler. It wasn't the first she'd felt here, but the amplimet,
which had hardly changed since she'd escaped from the Aachim's nets, began to
blink rapidly. She sat up. The room shook again, violently enough to slide a
metal goblet off the table. It rang on the stone floor like a distant alarm and
the patterns in the walls went wild for a few seconds before returning to their
previous progression. Tiaan thought about investigating the source of the
trembler with geomancy, but that would require her to use the amplimet. She'd
not touched it since Tirthrax and was reluctant to now. The feeling that it was
waiting for something was stronger than ever.

She
got out of bed to pick up the goblet, then reached for her hedron. As she
touched it the field flashed into her mind, but it was all eaten away on one
side as if something was taking massive amounts of power from it. Was this what
the amplimet had been waiting for?

Without
dressing, she fleeted down the hall to Malien's room. The stone was frigid
underfoot, for the Aachim main-tained their city at a temperature considerably
lower than Tiaan found comfortable.

She
rapped on the door. 'Enter!' said Malien.

Tiaan
went in. Malien was sitting at the table with Bilfis, who had a glassy cube in
his hands, like a model of Stassor. Coloured patterns moved within it, and on
the outside. He was frowning.

Malien
was making marks, in the Aachim script, on a complicated diagram. Bilfis
rotated the edge of the cube, twisting it so that smaller cubes were revealed,
twenty-five to each side. He moved the smaller cubes into a new pattern.

Malien
made another series of marks. 'Worse!'

Bilfis
set the divination cube down on the table and ran his hands through his hair.

'What
is it, Tiaan?' said Malien.

'Just
after the earth trembler, the amplimet began to blink, and now something is
taking vast amounts of power from the Stassor node. I'm afraid—'

'It's
not the amplimet,' said Bilfis. 'My people are building a great defence against
attack by thapters or other kinds of flying machines.'

'That's
all right then,' said Tiaan. 'Isn't it?'

'We're
afraid they'll overload the node, or worse,' said Malien direly. 'If you
recall, Tiaan, I mentioned this worry in Tirthrax. But my people won't listen.
They're too afraid.'

'Of
what?'

Anyone
and everyone. Once the secret of flight gets out, and surely that won't take
long, Stassor will be vulnerable to attack by a fleet of thapters. Suddenly its
isolation will be a disadvantage rather than a protection.'

'I
see. And what could be worse than overloading the node?'

'Overloading
all the nodes.'

Tiaan
looked from one to the other. 'I don't understand.'

'We're
not sure we do either,' said Bilfis, 'but we're beginning to think that the
nodes might not be separate, as has always been thought, but linked!

Through
strong forces that can't be detected,' said Malien. Humanity has already seen
the lyrinx drain nodes dry. They normally recover within days of the
node-drainer being removed, though we don't understand how that can happen so
quickly. It should take years for a node to regenerate the field by itself.'