Alchymist

'We came at an opportune time. My people have just had vital news.'

'Oh?' said Tiaan.

'With Bilfis dead, only one person has the skills of geomancy and mathemancy to tell us how bad the node danger is, and how to avert it – the tetrarch, Gilhaelith. I now know where he's hiding.'

'Where is he?'

'He's north across the Sea of Thurkad, near a lyrinx city called Oellyll.'

Tiaan did not recognise the name, though it sent a shiver up her spine nonetheless. 'Is he a prisoner?'

'I don't think so. Word has it that he's made a deal with the enemy.'

Fifty-four

'What's the name of this place?' Tiaan asked as they were crossing the Sea of Thurkad.

Malien was at the controller. The sea here, almost eighty leagues north of the place where she had escaped from the Aachim nets, was more than twenty leagues across. In the distance she saw a gap in the range that ran down the east coast of Meldorin. The peaks were white, the flanks of the mountains dusted with an early fall of snow, for it was late autumn now. To the left, a steep-sided volcano fumed. There was no snow on its warm flanks, though similar dormant peaks to its north and south had caps of white.

Malien did not reply. She was frowning at the sullen water far below. 'Better go up; we could be seen at this height.' She lifted the thapter into the bumpy air inside the clouds.

'That's the Zarqa Gap,' said Talis, pointing, 'one of the few passes across these mountains, at least in the wintertime. See the ancient road?'

The thapter lurched. Tiaan caught another brief glimpse of the pass, then they were in opaque cloud again. Talis was silent until a second filmy gap appeared. 'It used to run all the way to the west coast, though already the forest is taking it back. The lyrinx eliminated the last people from these lands a generation ago.'

'Down south,' said Malien, 'further to our left, lie the ruins of Alcifer.'

There was nothing to see but cloud. 'I've heard that name,' said Tiaan. It gave her a shivery feeling.

'The city was designed by the brilliant architect Pitlis, for Rulke, and Rulke's seduction of him is the greatest betrayal in the Histories. Many people say that Alcifer was the greatest creation of any of the human species, anywhere in the Three worlds. It caused the downfall of my people, from which we have never recovered.'

The clouds broke and Tiaan pointed a spyglass where Malien had indicated. The mountains ran close to the sea there, and a flank of the volcano had been carved and sculpted to form the platform upon which Alcifer had been built. Great boulevards curved through it, and buildings great and small, their outlines just visible beneath aeons of growth, erosion and volcanic ash. From this distance no more detail could be seen.

On the slopes north of the city, the volcano had, long ago, formed a series of terraces covered in glittering crystalline salts, mud pools, geysers, fumaroles and the snaking lines of ancient lava tunnels whose tops had collapsed. Steam hung in wisps over the surface.

'That's chancy country,' said Talis, consulting an ancient gazetteer of the lands around Alcifer. 'When it rains, flows of mud and ash are dammed up against the edge of the terraces. They crust over in the dry season, though if you tried to walk there you'd go straight through.'

And slowly cook in hot mud,' said Forgre. 'Not how I'd choose to die.'

'In really wet years,' said Talis, reading from the gazetteer, 'the terrace walls burst and the hot slurry pours down the slope faster than a horse can gallop, sweeping trees and boulders away.'

'Chancy country indeed,' said Malien, rising into the clouds again.

'Is Alcifer in the Histories?' Tiaan asked.

'It's in the Tale of Tar Gaarn, which is in our Histories, but it's not much told these days. Rulke scarcely had the time to enjoy his creation, for soon after Alcifer was completed he was taken by the Council of Santhenar and cast into the Nightland; where he languished for a thousand years. Once freed, as far as is known, he never returned to Alcifer and it was never inhabited again. Who would dare?'

Have you been there?'

Malien shivered. 'No, and I'm not looking forward to it. I feel the threat, even from here.'

Tiaan opened her mouth but closed it again. Malien was the most level-headed person she know. 'Where are we going now?'

'We'll fly across the range, then swing back and come on the place at night, on foot.'

The idea seemed absurd. How could they hope to find Gilhaelith in such a vast city, with so many lyrinx below and nearby? And if they did, how could they hope to free him?

They crossed the range north of the Zarqa Gap, at a pass that bore just a dusting of untracked snow. Keeping to what cloud they could find, they continued west over grassland and forest. The sun was sinking over the impassable swamp forests of Orist as they made a sweeping curve south and then east, approaching the range at its widest point, well south of Zarqa. Malien worked a set of concealed controls beneath the binnacle, then took the machine down as the sun set, cruising in the light of the stars, just above the treetops. It was eerie; everything was black and white and Tiaan found it difficult to measure distance. Trees and rocky peaks rushed at them out of nowhere.

'Aren't you worried about being spotted?' said Tiaan.

'I've just put a concealment on the thapter,' Malien said cryptically. 'It's quite effective from this distance, though I don't know how long I can keep it up.'

They floated above the treetops for hours, Talis and Forgre staring at their maps and conversing in whispers, before Talis said, 'Go down onto that bare spur, just to the left.'

Malien settled the thapter expertly on a shelf of some pale-coloured stone, shaped like the bowl of a spoon. A tree with a split trunk, black against the white bark, leaned out to overhang the end of the ridge.

'This is as close as we dare go,' said Forgre, rubbing his i beardless cheek. 'We're but two leagues from Alcifer and Oellyll, the lyrinx city beneath it. Tens of thousands of lyrinx dwell there, and they hunt in these mountains.'

Are we close to those terraces we saw yesterday?' said Tiaan. She could smell brimstone.

'They're that way,' said Talis, pointing towards the sea. They run east for leagues, then north high above the coast.'

'If you listen closely,' said Malien, 'you can hear the geysers going.'

No one spoke for a while, and in the distance Tiaan heard a rushing sound that built up to a muted roar before fading away.

'It seems a little risky, going down to Alcifer on foot,' she ventured.

'You mean insane and incomprehensible,' Malien observed dryly. 'I daren't take the thapter any closer. No concealment is perfect.'

'How are you going to find Gilhaelith in such a vast place?'

'We have certain information about his whereabouts.'

'How can you be sure it's reliable?'

'That's Forgre's job,' said Malien. 'He's our most gifted spy. Apparently the lyrinx shun Alcifer itself, so if Gilhaelith is there, using power, he won't be hard to find. Once Forgre discovers where he is, we'll fly down and snatch him.'

'Just like that?' said Tiaan.

'I hope so.'

'If Gilhaelith's in Alcifer, he must be trusted by the enemy.'

'He may be assisting them,' Forgre said, 'but I doubt they trust him.'

'From what I hear of Gilhaelith, he's always out for himself' said Malien. 'I'd say they have some hold over him.'

Tiaan walked to the edge of the rock and stood looking down. The deep valley was like a pool of ink with a few pinpoints of light floating on it, starlight touching the tips of the tallest trees. She was so afraid, her knees would barely hold her up. Tiaan had sworn, after her captivity in Kalissin, that she would never go near the lyrinx again. But she had, and they'd put her into the patterners in Snizort. It was a horror she thought about every day.

Malien moved the thapter into deeper shelter and strengthened the concealment. 'That should be enough. It's a balance between doing enough to conceal the machine but not so much as to alert the enemy.'