Alchymist

'What?' he cried. 'I've heard none of this.' 'The clankers and constructs stalled on the battlefield and the lyrinx overran them. Flydd was blamed for the disaster, though he did everything possible to avoid the battle.'

'A node was destroyed?' Yggur said incredulously, pushing past her down the steps and stalking towards the scrutator. 'Is this true, Flydd?'

'It made the most colossal explosion you can imagine,' said Flydd, his eyes alight. 'We were in an air-floater, five hundred spans above the ground, and the blast went up past us as high as a small thunderhead.'

Yggur stared down at him. 'And afterwards? Did anyone go to the node and look in, to see what had come of it?'

'I did, and Nish, and Ullii the seeker, who is no longer with us.'

'What did you see?' cried Yggur.

'Two metal tears, each larger than a grapefruit, and as shiny as quicksilver. I could not get to them -'

Yggur let out a sigh. 'So it can happen! What became of the tears?'

'Scrutator Jal-Nish Hlar took them, though we did not discover it was him for many weeks. He left the bodies of his guards in the pit, so that no one would ever know. He had the tears with him before the battle of Gumby Marth, near Gnulp Landing, for he forced Nish to touch them, and Nish was changed by it. It gave him a special sight afterwards, for half a day, though Nish has never had a talent for the Art.'

'Is that so?' said Yggur. Go on.'

'Jal-Nish used the tears to enhance his alchymical Art, but a mancer-lyrinx broke the spell. Jal-Nish was slain and eaten, and the tears disappeared. It is believed that the lyrinx took them.'

'I see,' said Yggur. 'Tell me, what were your doings thirty years ago, scrutator, that the Council did such mischief to you?'

'Surely your spies have told you?'

'I no longer have spies. The only news I hear from across the water comes from traders and wandering vagabonds as disreputable as yourselves, and it's usually months old.'

'I pried into forbidden secrets,' said Flydd. 'That's why they punished me.'

'For uncovering the scrutators' master?'

'Where did you hear that?' cried Flydd. 'It puts the lie to -'

'I told him, surr,' said Irisis.

'That secret was not yours to reveal,' Flydd said furiously.

'Then you shouldn't have told me about it in your cups,' she retorted.

'Well, Flydd?' said Yggur.

Flydd shook his head. 'I cannot speak of the secrets of the scrutators, surr, even to you. I am sworn and do not lightly break my oath.'

'I don't break sworn word for any reason,' Yggur said scornfully. 'I won't trouble your conscience further, for I can see it a fragile thing it is. Come down, Artisan. Have you given your sworn word to say nothing? Your sacred oath?'

'I said I wouldn't tell,' she said weakly.

'Oath or no oath?'

'No oath.'

'Then, since you boast about how well you know the Tale of the Mirror, and my part in it, you know that you will tell me.

Not even your scrutator can resist me, though I won't force him to break his oath to his corrupt masters.'

Flydd stood staring at her, gnarled hands by his sides. Just give the word, she thought, and I'll resist him with all the strength in my body. But Flydd said nothing. Perhaps he wanted her to reveal what he could not.

'The only thing I know,' said Irisis, 'and that was mentioned several times in.., extremis.. '.

'An excess of wine!' said Yggur. 'What price your oath now, Scrutator? Two cups? Three?'

'.., it was a reference to the Numinator,' Irisis finished.

'The Numinator?' Yggur said, puzzled.

'The person who gives the scrutators their orders, surr. The one for whom they have shaped our world.'

'Ahh!' He let his breath out. 'I've often wondered how such a collection of fools and incompetents came to gain such power; and how they maintained it for so long. Who is this Numinator?'

'That's all I know, surr,' said Irisis.

'It's enough. You've bought your master a refuge.'

'No man is my master,' said Irisis.

'Whatever you say. Well, Flydd, you may stay for a few days. We'll speak more about these matters tonight. Are you happy, now that you've gained what you wanted?'

'Time will tell if it was worth the price,' said Flydd.

Forty-six

Ghorr's air-floater carried Ullii back to the main camp. She did not say a word the whole way – she was overcome by a crawling horror of him and the scrutators, and her own folly. They'd trapped her with the bracelet and now controlled her utterly.

Ullii tried to retreat to her inner refuge by cutting off all her senses, as she'd often done in the past, but Ghorr just dragged her out again. She could find no comfort in her lattice, either, for it seemed to be fading. What had once been brilliantly clear was hardly there, and when she tried to make the lattice anew, her mind's eye was empty. It was one blow too many. She collapsed and lay on her sickbed for a week, raving with a brain fever.

As soon as she began to recover, Ghorr dragged her out of bed. Flydd and Nish had disappeared and she had to find them. Ullii looked for her lattice and it was back, though not as strong or clear as before. For days she sought in vain; Flydd was beyond its reach.

The search went on and, many troubled days later, high in the air-floater, she detected a faint trace of him at the battlefield of Gumby Marth. By the time Ghorr had assembled a force strong enough to brave that lyrinx-infested place, Flydd was gone again. Subsequently the news came that his ship had been lost and Flydd drowned. Ghorr refused to believe it and ordered a search of the entire Karama Malama, by ship and air-floater.

Three air-floaters, and a fleet of commandeered ships, criss-crossed the Sea of Mists for days until she found him again, but before Flydd could be taken he was rescued by a stolen air-floater in which Ullii recognised the knots of FynMah and Irisis. They flew out of range and, though Ullii lost the individuals, she was able to track the air-floater's crystals into Meldorin before they vanished yet again.

Ghorr held a furious conference with his fellow scrutators before heading to Lybing, the capital of wealthy Borgistry, in his remaining air-floater. There a number of the scrutators disembarked to continue prosecuting the western war. Ghorr's air-floater took to the air again, heading north across the Great Chain of Lakes, then east past the Ramparts of Tacnah, forbidding gateway to the Great Mountains. The country began to make distinctive patterns in Ullii's lattice, for they were reversing the route by which she'd come west with Flydd and Irisis last spring. Dread grew in her as she recognised their destination. They were heading for the scrutators' hidden bastion of Nennifer, between the Great Mountains and the arid depressions that lay to the north.

Nennifer, the most frightening place in all Lauralin, appeared before them. It lay on a narrow rim of plateau with the mountains rearing up, thousands of spans high, to the east, west and south. The northern side of Nennifer was truncated by a monumental cliff, a thousand spans high, at the base of which lay an oval of sunken land, the Desolation Sink, as desiccated and lifeless as the Dry Sea itself.

'Why are we going to Nennifer?' she whispered. The very stones it was built from were imbued with the odour of the scrutators, and it was full of wicked, cruel people.

Ghorr gave his vulpine, snaggle-toothed smile. 'I have plans.'

'Nish and Flydd are gone,' said Ullii. She no longer knew what to do about them.

"They killed your brother and must be punished. You'll find them, Ullii, and we'll do the rest. Nennifer is where we design the weapons of tomorrow. Two hundred and twenty-three mancers work night and day, utterly devoted to inventing new devices of terror. Four hundred and seventy artisans make controllers for these weapons, and find ways to draw on the fields ever more efficiently. A thousand artificers, and three thousand smiths and other workers, build and test these devices. Five hundred and thirty-five draughters create the plans and patterns that will be used by our manufactories, across the breadth of Santhenar, to make innumerable copies. We have made many breakthroughs since you left us so.., precipitously.' Ghorr chuckled at his meagre wit. Ullii and Irisis had escaped through a tunnel that discharged over the precipice into the Desolation Sink.