Alchymist

'Go away!' he roared, sounding more frosty than usual.

Irisis faltered, but she had not got this far without being strong of will and thick of hide, so she turned the handle and went in.

'Get out!' he said without looking up.

'I brought you something to eat,' she said softly. 'It'll be a change from the gruel your cook provides, the same thing day after day.'

I like the same thing day after day.' He glanced at the tray, at her, back at the tray. He moistened his lips. 'Oh, very well, bring it here.'

She pushed the door shut with her foot and put the tray on the table, careful not to disturb his work. 'I've made-' she began.

'I can see! What do you want, Irisis?'

'I don't want anything…'

'I'm not stupid.'

'All right,' she said quietly. 'Let me be honest with you.'

'Why do those words always make me think I'm about to be conned?'

'I want to know what you're working on.'

And I don't want to tell you.'

'Don't you trust me?'

'I don't trust anyone except the one person who has never let me down. Myself.'

'I've never let you down.'

'Ah, but you will. Everyone does, in the end.'

She laughed. 'You're a sad man, Yggur.'

And you're making me sadder.'

'I'm doing you good. Anyway, I know what you're up to.'

Yggur selected a freshly baked roll, bit into it and leaned back in his chair, chewing reflectively. His black boots rested on the edge of the table. 'Go on.' He smiled, as if knowing she was going to make a fool of herself.

Perhaps she was. 'Until our last council of war, your door was always open and everyone could see what you were working on – either your little flying beetle, or the construct mechanism. You haven't touched them in weeks.'

'How do you know?'

She ran a fingertip over the iridescent surface of the beetle. 'Dust! The only devices free of it are the sphere of Golias the Mad, and this controller apparatus we took from the construct. And judging by the way you've rebuilt the controller, I can tell what you're doing.'

'Really?' he said mockingly.

'You're trying to combine the two so you can seize control of a flying construct, should one ever come this way.' It was just a hunch, but a good one.

The chair fell forwards and his eyes met hers. 'Go to the door, check that there's no one outside, and lock it.'

She did so.

'Sit down,' he said fiercely. 'Who else knows?'

'No one.' Irisis took the chair at the end of the table, not entirely comfortable. She knew his reputation of long ago. Yggur was a hard man, not averse to riding over others to get what he wanted. If she was a threat to him, he might even decide to be rid of her. She didn't think so – Irisis was a good judge of character – but you could never tell with mancers. 'I worked it out just then. It was a flash of insight, really.'

'Explain!'

'When you first showed us Golias's sphere, your eyes were positively glowing with yearning. I've not seen you that inspired about anything else, not even your little flier. You want Golias's secret more than anything.'

'I've wanted it from the moment I saw the device.' He took the glass sphere in his big hands, turning it this way and that, staring through its outer layer at her.

Irisis had a momentary loss of confidence. Yggur had lived more than a thousand years, had seen everything this world had to offer, yet he looked no older than a hale and powerful fifty. All her life and experience were no more than the blink of an eye to him. But she must go on. 'And then, when you told us about Tiaan surveying the nodes the other day, I saw that look again.'

'Continue,' he said softly.

'The clincher is the way you've rebuilt this construct controller. Controllers are my life, Yggur. My mother had me pulling them to pieces and putting them back together before I could walk. See here and here and here,' she touched in turn the flat coils of metal that whorled out from the cup holding the powering crystal, and the reciprocating rods that extended in six directions, 'these are surely to channel power from the crystal to the controlling levers, and these to convey it to various parts of the construct-'

'You can tell all that so quickly? I've spent weeks puzzling it out.'

'I've been working with fields since I was an infant.' Even so…'

'A construct controller is nothing like the controllers I'm used to, but it does the same thing – it draws on the field and uses that force to power and control the machine.' She indicated other parts, where the reciprocating rods were surrounded by red concretions and a network of glass filaments. 'These modifications of yours have no place in a normal construct. They can only be for one purpose – to seize control of a flying construct from its operator.'

He nodded. 'That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Do you think it will work?'

She thought for a minute or two. 'No, because this array of crystals will cancel out the effect of this one, here. But if you were to network these crystals in this kind of arrangement, tightly coil these filaments around them thus…'

Irisis began to sketch swiftly on a large piece of paper with a stick of charcoal, covering it with lines, shapes and symbols. Yggur leaned forward, watching the design grow. She smeared out a number of lines with a fingertip, cocking her head as she redrew them. Finally satisfied, without a by-your-leave she took tools from his bench and began to pull his controller apart.

Yggur said nothing during the next hour, just watched the deft movement of her fingers as she completely rebuilt it, adding in new sections from the boxes of crystals and silver wires on his table. Finally she laid the controller down, brushed her yellow hair out of her eyes and looked up. He studied the new arrangement for a good while, then suddenly smiled; it lit up his stern and craggy face. 'You're right, of course. Why couldn't I see that? You were going to say?'

'It'll work, assuming you've solved the other problem. How to communicate at a distance.' She rolled Golias's onion globe into her hand. It was as unfathomable as ever.

'I'm no further advanced than I was two hundred years ago. Do you have any ideas?'

She closed her hands over the globe. 'No. I can only think of one person who might, but-'

'Would that Tiaan were here,' he said shrewdly, 'rather than on the other side of the continent.'

Irisis pursed her lips, still feeling the rivalry after all this time. An idea occurred to her. 'Fyn-Mah scried out the scrutator in the middle of the Karama Malama, using only a crystal and a bowl of quicksilver-'

"To be correct, she scried out a special kind of lodestone he was carrying.'

'We might attune this controller to a flying construct's hedron in the same way.'

'I doubt it.'

'Let's ask Flydd.'

'What does Flydd know, pray?' Yggur said coolly.

'He knows more about the field, and devices to shape and use it, than anyone. For seven years he was in charge of the scrutators' secret project to develop new devices powered by the field.'

Yggur sat back with his eyes closed and fingers pressed to his temples. 'I can't bring myself to trust any scrutator, but in this emergency I suppose I must.' He put the globe away. 'Very well. On your say-so I'll ask to him. Anyone else?'

'Only me.'

Irisis was lying awake that night when she had another idea. She brought it up the following morning, as the group sat staring glumly at the controller.

'There are crystals,' she said thoughtfully, 'that can induce an aura around a hedron from some distance.'

And some are natural,' Flydd added. 'Certain ore deposits caused problems with clanker controllers, back when they were first invented, until we discovered a way to shield them.'

'We're not getting anywhere with Golias's globe,' said Irisis. 'We might be better off trying to discover how such auras are generated, and how they can affect hedrons, and at what distance.'