After five days he was more confused about Alcifer than when he'd entered the city. The genius of Pitlis's design, and Rulke's building, would take half a lifetime to unravel. It humbled him and made his own achievements seem puny.
The city consisted of arrays of buildings, great and small, set along seven intersecting boulevards. Every side street was curved, the intersections being circles or ovals. There were vistas only along the boulevards. Off them, every corner revealed a new surprise, some vast and ornate, others simple — a mossy cul-de-sac with a fountain, a set of elegant steps, a pond or a piece of statuary. Although many of the buildings had been ruined by time, the bones of the city endured, for they had been fused to the living rock with an Art no human could duplicate.
Despairing of ever gaining a mental picture of the whole of Alcifer, he begged Gyrull to take him aloft, so he could view it from the air. She agreed readily, though he was carried up by Liett, the small lyrinx with the transparent, soft skin, now, covered with a paste to prevent it from burning in the sun. Despite her size she lifted him easily, flying in circles over Alcifer for two hours while he tried to impress the city's patterns on his mind. It still wasn't enough, though on the way down he spotted a white building shaped like a five-pointed star that he planned to take a closer look at from the ground-That afternoon he went back on foot, accompanied by male lyrinx who spoke not a single word the entire time. In the centre of the city, at the intersection of the seven boulevards, stood the white palace, and it proved to be unlike any building he had ever seen. It consisted of a core covered by a glass dome — no, not a dome, a soaring shell — with five arms, or wings, each identical, spinning out from it. The arms were roofed with a series of curving shells made of white stone so polished that they had once dazzled the eye. Even now, weather-stained as they were, the building was breathtakingly beautiful.
Gilhaelith went up the broad steps and pushed at the left-most of the four bronze doors; it grated open. The shivering of the stone grew as he paced down the hall. In the very centre, where the five buildings fused, he entered an enormous, airy and bright chamber, for the covering shell consisted of a single piece of glass. Red water stains ran down the walls, rubble lay here and there, and dust everywhere, but otherwise its magnificence was unmarred.
Just off the centre of the chamber stood a circular bench, many spans across, made of volcanic glass. The rest of the space was empty. Gilhaelith had a keen eye for beauty, though this place held more than that. Without even taking the numbers he knew it was exactly what he'd been looking for.
'Rulke knew the ways of power,' he said aloud. 'He built this palace here because the resonances were perfect, and so they will be for me.' Gilhaelith turned to the silent lyrinx. 'I'll work here. Would you bring up my servants now?' The creature turned away without answering, leaving Gilhaelith to wonder if Gyrull would allow him any assistants. He no longer expected her to.
Somewhat to his surprise the lyrinx returned the following morning with twelve slaves. They were a rough-looking lot, to he expected after years of servitude. Before they so much as picked up a crate, Gilhaelith had to ensure their loyalty, and it would not be easy. They must see him as a traitor, and the only way to overcome that was with naked self-interest, backed up by inflexible control.
My name is Gilhaelith,' he said to the assembled group from the top step of the white palace. 'Gyrull has given you to me. I'm not a harsh master, but I demand instant and total obedience. In return, if you serve me faithfully until my work is done, I'll see you freed and take you home to your loved ones.'
'Seems to me your word is worth no more than any other stinking turncoat's,' said their spokesman, Tyal, a hungry-look-ing fellow with a starkly white complexion. His hands were covered in wiry yellow hairs, the hair on his head was carrot-coloured and his beard was red.
'How long have you been held prisoner by the lyrinx?' Gilhaelith said pleasantly.
'Nine years,' said Tyal.
'And in that time, how many prisoners have they freed?'
'None,' he replied grudgingly.
'And how many escaped from the lyrinx?'
'Couple dozen got away in the early days,' said a short, greatly scarred woman from the back of the group. 'Course, the lyrinx et them all. Weren't many escapes after that, and they got et as well. Every one of'em, right in front of us.'
He let them think about that for a full minute. 'So, Tyal,' said Gilhaelith, giving him the cold stare that had quelled hundreds of minions over the years, 'it seems your only chance of seeing your loved ones again is through me. If you can't trust me, go back and take your chances with the lyrinx.' He held Tyal's gaze a moment longer before turning to the others. 'But to those who stay, and do as I require, I promise you'll get your freedom. What is it to be?'
They all stayed, of course. Any hope was better than none. He smiled thinly. 'Bring my instruments inside. Treat them like eggs.'
After days of work the glass-roofed chamber had been cleaned to Gilhaelith's exacting standards and his instruments arranged correctly. He took the omens with a series of fourth powers, an effort that left him drained and shaking. In the end, unable to do the calculations mentally, he'd had to call for pencil and paper. It was another small failure, though the number patterns were, for the most part, harmonious; not perfect but good enough. Dismissing the servants to their quarters he stood in the geometrical centre of the room, by the great bench, revelling. After months of chaos that had been torment to him, his life was ordered again. He would soon control everything in his small domain. Gilhaelith had little hope that he could reverse the slow decay of his mental faculties, but his health might recover enough for him to complete his work and die fulfilled. He'd last worked on his great project back in Nyriandiol in the spring. It was late summer now and today he would make a new start. As he paced beneath the glass roof, under bleak, rainy skies, he mused on what he'd learned since being taken from Nyriandiol, trying to place it into a pattern he could make sense of.
Firstly, the variety of nodes and fields was greater than he'd ever imagined. He'd always thought that there had to be an underlying pattern — that nodes weren't just random concentrations of power — but he'd never been able to work out what it might be. If only he could, he knew it would form an important part of the puzzle.
Secondly, Tiaan's amplimet was, inexplicably, awake and able to communicate in some fashion with nodes. In Snizort it had drawn a network of filaments throughout the city and pulses had flowed along them. That implied some kind of purpose, if not necessarily intelligence, which was incomprehensible. It was, after all, just a lump of crystal. It had also drawn a filament to him and he must beware the amplimet in future.
Gilhaelith shrugged away the fear. He had always been supremely self-confident and his recent problems had not completely undermined that. He was still a great geomancer. Should the crystal reappear, he would control it, not it him! And, perhaps, if he could reproduce those filaments, he could learn to control a node as well.