Alchymist (93 page)

'Did
it now? Whose knot was it?'

'I
don't know. It was strange but very strong. A mancer's knot.'

'Really?'
he said. 'The cloud must be some kind of protection. That gives me an idea,
Seeker.’

She
waited numbly for his orders.

'Do
you remember how you got Irisis out of her prison cell in Nennifer, Ullii?'

Of
course she did. It was only the second brave thing she had done in her life.
'Yes,' she whispered.

'You
held the magicked lock's knot in place and rotated the rest of your lattice
around it, and that opened the door without breaking my magic.’

'Yes.'
She felt faint just talking to him.

'What
if you were to do that now? Hold that knot, what you remember of it, in place
and redraw your lattice from the other side.'

'I'll
try,' she said softly, 'though I don't see what—'

'Just
do it,' he said. 'I won't punish you if you fail — only if you don't try hard
enough.'

Ullii
was so afraid that, at first, she could not see her lattice at all. When it
finally appeared, more pale and ghostly than she had ever seen it, she
recognised nothing but the bright knots made by Ghorr's scrutators and mancers,
and the controllers that powered the air-dreadnoughts. Ghorr had to calm her,
as unpleasant an operation as she could imagine, before she recovered the knot.

You
have it!' said Ghorr, dark eyes gleaming. 'Now, make your lattice anew, looking
the other way.'

Ullii
closed her eyes and put her hands over the goggles for good measure. Holding
the image of that strange knot, she dissolved the rest of the lattice, turned
the knot around in her mind and began to redraw the lattice from the other
per-spective. It became sprinkled with blotches, smudges and knots, near and
far. The blotches were objects that used some form of the Art like controllers.
The smudges were fields gen-erated by nodes, while the knots indicated people
who had some talent for the Art. A dim smudge was the cloud of protection but
she could see through it now. Inside, she recognised several knots. Irisis was
in the centre. Close by, Ullii saw Fyn-Mah, and Flydd, and other knots too,
some very strong.

'I've
found them.' She took her hands away from the goggles.

Ghorr's
head swung around and his eyes glowed like broken glass melting from
underneath. 'Where?' he hissed.

Her
finger traced a line along the map until it encountered a dot with two small
words beside it: Fiz Gorgo. 'There.' Ghorr purred and called the scrutators.
'To the air! We can be there by three in the morning. Plan number seven.'

Nish
went to bed early but tossed, turned and woke half a dozen times, uneasy,
though he had no idea why. Deciding that he was never going to get back to
sleep, he went down to the privy, relieved himself and headed back through the
frigid corridors. Worms of ice, frozen seepage, oozed through the dark walls.
Fiz Gorgo always seemed cold, even if it didn't have quite the perpetual dank
frigidity of the manufactory, and Nish didn't mind it. He had grown up in such
climes and Fiz Gorgo was more to his liking than the hot, parched plains of
western Lauralin, where he had spent much of the past year.

Still
wide awake, he turned up the narrow stone stairs to Yggur's lookout. As he
stepped out onto the crumbling stone balcony, he realised someone was standing
there, leaning on the rail. Nish smelt an aroma like liquorice. Yggur!

'Worried
about tomorrow, Nish?' said Yggur, not looking around.

'I've
been through too much to bother about the future,' Nish said untruthfully. 'I
can't sleep. My mind keeps going round and round, fretting in case I've
forgotten something.'

'Mine
too,' said Yggur. 'And no doubt you feel left out, and worried that we've
planned this mission in haste and unjustifiable optimism.'

'We-e-e-ll.
.'.' said Nish.

'You
can admit it. I'm not an ogre.'

'Is
such secrecy really necessary, surr?'

'Probably
not, but I'd rather not chance it. What do you think of the night?'

What
a strange question. 'It's very still.'

'Aye,
it can be at this time of the year. That's one of the things I like best about
Fiz Gorgo. When the wind's not blowing, and the forest creatures are curled up
in their holes, there's a stillness here that I've not felt anywhere else. It's
why I've always come back. I like it when nothing is happening.'

'So
do I,' said Nish. 'I'll leave you to it, then.'

'Stay
a moment,' said Yggur. 'I... I feel. . . No, tell me what you feel.'

'Is
something wrong, surr?'

'I
feel uneasy tonight, though I can't say why. What about you?'

'An
awful lot rests on this attack on Nennifer,' said Nish.

'Yes.
And so, despite the risk, there really isn't any choice.'

'I
suppose not.' Nish came to the rail, staring out. The darkness was complete,
save for occasional lights winking on and off in the invisible forest. 'What's
that?' he hissed.

Yggur
chuckled. 'Not lyrinx, you can be sure. It's just fireflies in the swamp.'

They
leaned on the rail for some time, not speaking. Yggur offered Nish a piece of
liquorice root. Nish chewed on it, reflectively. The night seemed to be
brooding, even ominous, though the dark always encouraged such feelings in him.

Yggur
spat over the rail. The aroma of liquorice filled the balcony. 'It was nothing.
I'm a morbid fellow at the best of times, and sometimes my dark thoughts just
go round and round. I'll bid you good night.'

'Goodnight,'
said Nish. 'I'll stay a while. I can't sleep, anyway.'

Yggur's
boots went down the steps. A cold breeze curled around the side of the wall and
Nish pulled his coat tighter about his neck. The night lent itself to
introspection. What would become of them? He wasn't just thinking of this
suicidal mission. Every year of his life the losses of the war had been
greater, until the lyrinx had seemed like a disease creeping across the world.
The climax was rapidly approaching.

Even
if they won at Nennifer, and replaced the Council, there was too little time to
be ready. Once spring came, every-thing he knew and loved looked set to be
swept away in a few weeks of violence. It was not a thought conducive to
further sleep, but he had to be rested for the morrow, so Nish headed back to
bed.

As he
reached the lowest flight, feeling his way in pitch darkness, a great
five-lobed shadow blotted out the stars to the north of Fiz Gorgo. Another
moved in beside it, and a third, drifting down the wind, its rotors silent.
More crept into posi-tion to the sides of Fiz Gorgo, and yet more. The night
became so still that even the wind seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for
the moment when all sixteen air-dreadnoughts were in place. Waiting for the
order to attack.

Irisis
rolled over in bed, trying to scrape the cobwebs from her brain. Something had
disturbed her. Her heart was thudding as if she'd just run all the way to the
top of Yggur's watch-tower. Her throat was dry, her hands sweaty. What was the
matter?

She
was reaching for the short sword that she kept on the chair beside her bed when
she heard someone coming along the corridor. Irisis sat up, panic prickling the
backs of her hands. Something was wrong. She slid her feet onto the frigid
flagstones. Ah, it was so cold.

The
footsteps came closer. She swung the sword back and forth, preparing to spring.
The dark figure cleared its throat, she realised who it was and the panic
seemed ridiculous.

'Nish!'
she hissed, weak with relief. 'What the bloody hell are you doing? I was about
to skewer you.'

Trisis?
What's the matter?'

She
sensed him peering this way and that, trying to pick her out of the dark. 'Come
in here.' She pulled him through the doorway of her room. 'What are you doing?'

'I
couldn't sleep so I went for a pee. Is something wrong?'

Her
knees went weak and she had to sit down on the bed, which annoyed her. 'Sorry,
Nish. I thought you were an intruder, coming to slice open our gullets while
we're asleep.'

'In
Fiz Gorgo?' said Nish. 'This has to be the safest place in Santhenar. Even the
lyrinx stay clear of it. What's the matter with you tonight?'

'I
had a feeling of doom. I suppose it was a bad dream.'

'You're
always having feelings of doom, Irisis.'

'Which
surely means it's on it's way.'

'I
was just up on the balcony with Yggur and I didn't see-'

'What
was he doing up there?'

'I
suppose he likes the solitude.'

'Well,
I don't,' she muttered.

He
sat on the bed beside her. 'I've never seen you so jumpy. At least, not since
we were back at the manufactory, when—'

'I
don't want to talk about that,' Irisis cut in more sharply than she intended.
'I've been having bad dreams lately.'

'What
kind of dreams?'

'The
kind where I come to a nasty end. I'm scared, Nish. We're not going to survive
Nennifer.'

'You're
being ridiculous. I can see you as a great-grandmother, with fifty
grandchildren and great-grandchildren around you.'

'I
can't, Nish. Not even one child, though I do so long for it.' He put his arms
around her. 'Hush. It's late, and dark, and you're just twitchy because things
haven't been going well. It'll all be better tomorrow I'm going back to bed.'
'Stay with me, Nish. Just for a little while.' She was warm and his bed was
cold. And she was his dearest friend. 'Just a few minutes. I've got a lot to do
in the morning.'

Nish
lay on the bed, holding her but fretting. Eventually realising that Irisis was
asleep, he eased himself out from her embrace, folded the covers over her and
headed to his own cold bed. He still could not sleep.

The
attack began not long before dawn, when the night was at its blackest. The
sixteen air-dreadnoughts had manoeuvred themselves perfectly into position
beforehand, fifteen surrounding the walls of Fiz Gorgo, the sixteenth on
station high above, keeping watch for flying lyrinx. They did not expect to see
any, and Ullii had spotted none in her lattice, but Chief Scrutator Ghorr was
not a man to take chances where his own life was concerned.

Crossbow
snipers checked the walls with hedron-enhanced night glasses, another new
development from the workshops of Nennifer. There were only four guards on duty
in Fiz Gorgo, for Yggur's walls protected him against anything short of an
army. No land force could come at him through the swamp forests of Orist, even
had they been able to evade thelyrinx further east. The guards were identified
before it was light enough for them to see the air-dreadnoughts, the snipers
picking all four off in the same instant. Fiz Gorgo now lay unprotected save
for certain defences Yggur had installed in the towers, but these were useless
at such a distance. Besides, they were unmanned, for the protection had been
broken without giving any warning.

In
Ghorr's air-dreadnought, a quarter of a league away at the northern point of
the compass, Ullii pinpointed each of Yggur's three defences.

'Very
good,' said Ghorr, once the locations had been relayed to his troops. 'Ullii, I
have here an ancient map of Fiz Gorgo. Mark out for me the positions of Xervish
Flydd, Irisis Stirm and Perquisitor Fyn-Mah.'

Ullii
studied the map. In the dim light she did not need to wear her goggles. She
took hold of the paper. 'I don't understand it.'

Ghorr
patiently turned the map around. It was beginning to get light. 'There's the
tower on the left. See it? And this line is the outer wall.'

'I
see it,' said Ullii.

'Where
are they?'

Ullii
shuddered. 'I — I-'

'Don't
let me down now, Seeker.'

She
said nothing. Ullii was in torment.

'You
do know,' said Ghorr, 'how I treat those who fail me?'

'Yes!'
she gasped.

'And
remember, those who made you suffer so cruelly are traitors all. Remember what
they did to your brother. They hate you, Ullii.'

She
closed her eyes, as if that could hide her, then opened them again. 'Irisis is
here.' She pointed to the map. 'Flydd along here. And Fyn-Mah,' she hesitated.
Ullii had no quarrel with the perquisitor. 'She is here.'

'You're
absolutely sure?'

'Yes,'
she whispered.

'Very
good. You may go.' She began to scuttle away. 'No, wait a moment.'

Ullii
came creeping back. This was the moment she had been dreading.

'What
else can you tell me about this place, Seeker? Can you see anything else in
your lattice?'

'Yes,'
she said faintly.

'What
is it? You can see magical artefacts, can't you?'

Hundreds!'
she rushed out, greatly relieved, 'Hundreds?' Ghorr frowned. 'But of course, it
must be the ancient trove of the great mancer Yggur, who dwelt here for
centuries. You'll come with us, Seeker, to show us where the hoard is.'