Alchymist

'I couldn't let you die,' whispered Nish, recalling that horror up on the icy plateau. 'Despite everything, I couldn't…'

You made me this way. Jal-Nish thrust one finger into the yellow-green cavity where his nose had been. You and that cur Irisis.'

'But there must be a way, with the Secret Art, to restore you to what you once were.'

'Do you think I haven't sought for it? There is no way. Even with the alchymical power I now have, I can't repair what you did to me.'

'Then what good is seeking more power?'

'Revenge!' hissed Jal-Nish. 'It's the one pleasure I have left.'

'But, Mother—' Nish began, looking anywhere but at that ghastly face.

Jal-Nish caught his son by the shirt and pulled him close. He was ferociously strong. 'Your mother has cast me aside. She always looked down on me; now she can't stand the sight of me. Though I'm scrutator and will soon be elevated to the Council, I'm no more use to her.'

'No!' Nish whispered. 'Not Mother.'

All my life, women have betrayed me. My mother died, abandoning me to the monster. My wife has repudiated me. Irisis humiliated me and performed this butchery on me, from which I've not had a moment without pain since. Tiaan, by her treachery, has torn down everything I worked so hard for. Let me tell you this, Cryl-Nish! When I'm Chief of the Council of Scrutators I'll put them in their place. Women will go where they belong — to the breeding factories.'

'You're a monster/ cried Nish.

Jal-Nish gave him a pus-smeared smile. 'And who created me?'

'I'll hear no more of this.' Nish backed away. 'I'm leaving, Father. I repudiate you. You'll never see me again.'

'You're not going anywhere, Son. Now that you've come back, I see something in you I can use. You're mine and ever will be, and just to make sure—'

Nish leapt for the flap of the tent but Jal-Nish hauled him back. Hypnotised by that face, Nish could not defy him.

Jal-Nish dragged a small rosewood chest out from underneath the table. The timber had a sweet, spicy fragrance, Turning the key, he lifted the lid. 'Bend over the chest!' Nish looked in. The inside of the chest was as black as the void,, and a familiar humming set his teeth on edge. Jal-Nish flipped back a swatch of ebony velvet and the light from beneath was so dazzling that Nish stumbled backwards.

His father took hold of Nish's right hand and pulled it down into the box. It struck something both hot and cold, hard yet yielding, metal yet liquid. Nish cried out and tried to pull away but his hand would not move. Jal-Nish took Nish's left hand, forced it into the box and he felt the same sensations there.

Nish's hands clenched around, or within, those uncanny objects, while surges of force boiled through him. His vision inverted: black became white; colours turned into their oppo-sites. He saw the bones of his father's arm through the flesh. He saw right through the walls of the tent, the iron scales of nearby clankers, the rocks of the cliff face. He saw the world under Jal-Nish's rule: cities burning; people crowded into workhouses worse than the one in the refugee camp, fetters on their ankles; the guards lashing them with whips. He saw everything, and nothing.

Jal-Nish was no longer holding him down. He was standing at the table, holding high a flask that contained a red, fuming liquid and reciting some kind of rhyming spell. Nish tried to get away but his hands were stuck fast.

His father began another rhyme — a series of alchymical spells, Nish assumed. He recognised his name and several other repeated words: servant, slave, mine. Jal-Nish must be casting a spell of control or domination, but Nish, lacking any talent for the Art, could not tell more than that.

His hands grew increasingly painful. Nish resisted until his overstrained mind rebelled and he collapsed face-first into the chest.

Jal-Nish cursed under his breath, pressed Nish's hands more firmly into the globes and began the spell again. The sensation faded. Nish found himself on his knees, bent over the chest. He pulled his hands free. The objects rippled like balls of quicksilver then went solid again, and he understood what they were: the distilled tears created by the destruction of the Snizort node. Jal-Nish had been the man in the air-floater, the one who had taken the tears and left that pit full of smouldering corpses.

'Damnation!' cried Jal-Nish, beginning the spell for the third time. 'Why isn't it taking?' He poured liquids from one flask to a second, then a third. Yellow clouds belched up around him. 'Ah, that's better. Drink this!'

He threw Nish over onto his back and forced the contents of a small glass phial down his throat. It burned all the way.

'What have you done to me?' whispered Nish. His throat had the texture of sandpaper. 'I have woken you, Cryl-Nish!' 'What do you mean? Woken me to what?' 'Not the Art, if that's what you're hoping. You don't have the talent, nor can you acquire it — yet another way that you're less of a man than me.'

'Then what?' Nish screamed, the sound tearing at his tender throat.

'You'll see horrors no one has ever seen before. You'll hear what has previously been unheard. And you'll feel — well, I leave that to you to discover. The gift of the tears is not predictable. But you'll know what it is like to suffer. You will know what it is like to he your father, as you stand beside me for the rest of your life.'

'I have no father,' Nish mumbled.

'You had that opportunity, but you made the wrong choice; you held me to this existence and now I hold you to me. You were right, Son.' The lips writhed as Jal-Nish fought to form the words that had once come so easily to him. 'No father would be better than the one I've become. But I am your father, and ever will be, and nothing you say or do can change that. Be sure that you'll spend your life ruing it for, once the spell sets, you'll have no choice in the matter. You'll serve me all your remaining days.'

nash rose, holding his hands up before his face. They burned like icy fire, yet they were unmarked. The pit of his stomach tingled and he felt that a long-dormant bud inside him had opened. He shuddered to think what the tears had done to him.

'You're a monster, Father. The outside simply reflects what is within you, and I'll bring you down if it takes me all my life.'

'You won't, Cryl-Nish, because you're a blunderer, a failure and a fool. You're not my equal in any respect, and never can be. I often wonder how I came to have a son as unworthy as you, if, indeed, you are my son!' He bellowed the last words so that the whole camp might have heard. 'Lieutenant!'

Xabbier appeared smartly, and from the look in his eyes he'd heard all that had gone on. 'Yes, Scrutator Hlar?'

'Take Cryl-Nish to the punishment cells and lock him in. No one must go near him for four hours, until …'

'Yes?' said Xabbier.

'Never mind. Lock him up tight until the morning, Lieutenant.'

Jal-Nish saluted Nish with the platinum mask. An aura, shaped like a horde of jackals, streamed and snapped around him. Shuddering, Nish allowed himself to be led away. The mask snapped back over his father's head.

Part Three Tesseract

Twenty-seven

Those Aachim not engaged in moving constructs, or travelling to the southern camp inside them, were busy on a great memorial to their dead. The bodies had been recovered and buried as soon as the battle was over. In the summer heat they had to be, though it grieved the Aachim deeply to lay their fallen in alien soil.

Tiaan saw little of the construction, apart from a day on which she spent hours hauling stone with the construct, but it showed the importance they placed on the memorial.