Alchymist

Malien looked pointedly around the magnificent room. 'Peace and prosperity for us, while old humans are being crushed on the anvil of war.' 'They are not our kind, Matah.' 'We sprang from them in the distant past.' 'That's a lie!' he cried, and the polite veneer was stripped away. 'Old humans are degenerate, not ancestral. Vithis's Aachim are our kind and we must support them!'

'They are the old kind, full of hate, prejudice and rivalry.' Malien spoke more reasonably than before, as if to throw up the contrast between them. 'They still adhere to clans, Harjax, and they see themselves as better than us. They come to take, not to share. To rule, not to meet as equals. They will grind old humans into the muck and then…' 'Yes?' he said coldly.

'We'll be next. We abandoned the clans before the Clysm, and we're the better for it. Vithis will bring back rivalry and revenge. He wants to make us tribes again, with himself as the chief. He's a barbarian dressed up as a civilised man.'

'I agree,' said an aged man who hitherto had done nothing but sip from a greatly elongated mug. 'Vithis is like Tensor reincarnated, only without the nobility. These Aachim are almost as primitive as old humans. We should be leading them.' 'Thus, the nub of our problem.' The new speaker was a man who seemed little older than Tiaan herself, a dark, handsome fellow with a square jaw and a nose like the prow of a ship. 'We cannot agree on anything. We'll still be arguing when the last old human is eaten. Only when it is too late will we understand what we have lost. Old humans have made this world safe for us, and we owe them our support.'

'Thank you, Bilfis. What would you do, Sulleye?' said Malien to the smallest of the women beside her.

'Old humans have wrought havoc on this world. To build their clankers, and the other powered devices they rely on utterly, they've razed mountains and fed whole forests into their reeking furnaces. These constructs reduce us to their level. They're an abomination we will long regret. We must abandon all such devices, including the nodes, and go back to the ways of the past.'

'How would we maintain Stassor, or any of our cities, without the Art?' said Harjax.

'By intelligence and hard work,' she snapped.

'The lyrinx would overrun this world all the sooner.'

'They rely on the Art more than you think,' said Bilfis. 'Without it they cannot fly, in which case their wings are a hindrance rather than an advantage.'

'Nor could they flesh-form,' said Tiaan.

Every Aachim stared at her, as if a servant had just spoken up in a king's council.

'Just so,' said Malien, smiling at their discomfiture. 'Neither could they use their spying devices. All they would have is their strength and native wit, which is less advantage than you might suppose, without a civilisation to support it.'

Harjax jerked his head at an aide, who took Tiaan by the elbow. 'Would you come with me, please?'

Tiaan shot up in her chair, thinking they meant to do her mischief, but Malien laid a hand on hers. 'Don't be afraid, Tiaan. My people only wish to discuss matters privately. You won't be harmed.'

Tiaan went with the aide, uneasily. Though she trusted Malien, she'd also heard such assurances before.

Forty-nine

Nish was standing by the air-floater early the following morning, when Yggur appeared at the front doors. 'Come with me, Cryl-Nish.' He strode across the yard.

Nish had to trot to catch up to him, which he found undignified. He followed the mancer up a set of stone stairs onto the outer wall, which was gravelled and as wide as a road, and down to a corner with a stone guard post, not presently manned, though Nish had seen guards there yesterday.

Yggur turned to face him. 'Tell me about these tears your father found.'

That endless night, and the hideous scene in Jal-Nish's tent, came crashing back as vividly as if Nish were there still.

It unreeled from beginning to end and he could not stop it: Jal-Nish without the mask, the rage against the world. His father thrusting Nish's hands into the box, inside the tears, and that extra dimension it had temporarily brought to his sight, his other senses, even his emotions. And finally, Jal-Nish's alchymical compulsion. Nish opened his mouth but found himself too short of breath to speak. He swayed on his feet, even now feeling the urge to go to his father. The compulsion was painfully strong.

Yggur reached out and steadied him. 'What secret are you hiding for your master?'

The compulsion faded. 'I have no master,' Nish said shakily.

'Another one!' Yggur gave a grim smile. 'It's no wonder the world falls into ruin.'

'I'm not hiding anything, surr. I-' Nish's knees buckled and he slipped through the mancer's fingers, to lie sprawled on the floor.

Yggur crouched beside him. 'What is it, lad? I touched a spell of sorts just then, didn't I?'

'My father put it on me.'

'Why, Artificer? Here, let me help you up. Calm yourself -take your time.'

The memories, or the spell, faded. Nish explained about his part, and Irisis's, in condemning his father to life in a ruined body, and all the rest of it. 'Jal-Nish has hated Irisis ever since, and despised me, and I can't blame him. No man should have had to suffer what he's suffered. I should have let him die.'

'Sometimes there are no right choices,' said Yggur. 'What was it like, when he put your hands into the tears?'

'It's.., impossible to describe. They were hot yet cold, hard yet yielding, metal yet liquid. They were far more than that, but I can't find the words for it. And then-'

'Yes?'

'Briefly, the touch of the tears heightened my senses. I think it was the tears, rather than the potion he forced me to drink. The moon became dazzlingly bright, and I could see through things that were solid. I saw the lyrinx twisted up and cramped into the rock pinnacles, stone-formed to ambush my father's army.'

'Briefly, you say?'

'By the following day it had faded, although the tears did change me.'

'In what way?'

'I-' Nish gave a shamefaced grimace. 'I used to be obsessed with myself; with achievement, success and being recognised for it. But after touching the tears, I saw things so much more clearly. I saw what the world would be like under tyrants like my father. What it will be like if the scrutator-remain in power.'

'The tears did not change you in that way, lad,' Yggur said softly. 'You simply grew up.'

'I have to fight this tyranny, whatever it costs me, but I'm terribiy, terribly afraid. I'm not a brave man, Lord Yggur.' 'Your companions tell a different story. About this spell – I wonder why it did not take?' 'Perhaps he'd not yet mastered the tears.' 'Let me see.' Yggur put his hands to Nish's temples and closed his eyes. 'Ah, I see it. It's made with a strange, alchymical kind of Art that I don't know much about.' It's still there?' cried Nish. 'Inside me?'

'Just a trace, fortunately. Had you not brought up the bulk of the potion, you'd have become his slave.'

Thanks to Xabbier's quick thinking. Nish wondered where he was now. 'Not for long. I'd have been killed with him.'

But you weren't. And unless the spell is removed, a trace will remain there until you die.'

'But-' said Nish. 'What if someone else compels me?' They could not, unless they had the tears.' That wasn't comforting. 'Can't you remove it?' 'Not without the tears.'

Day after day, Yggur sat at the big table in his workshop, reading or writing in his journals as though nothing had happened. Nish could see how frustrated the scrutator was. After five days of inaction, Flydd went to see Yggur, taking Irisis and Nish with him.

A map of the known world was spread out on the huge tabIe and Yggur was measuring distances on it with a pair of black calipers. He did not look up.

We've got to get moving,' Flydd said abruptly. 'The lyrinx mature quickly. If we don't strike them now, by spring they'll have another army and they'll be unstoppable.'