Ian Irvine - Alchymist

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.

Thirdly, he'd gleaned that the lyrinx, on the closed-off eleventh level of Oellyll, were working on a new and powerful artefact. The war was escalating into a magical weapons race between humans, Aachim and lyrinx, with every new development requiring more power. Eventually it must drain the nodes past the point of no return. What then? Inexplicable things had already happened when nodes had been stripped of their fields. A whole squadron of clankers had once van-i ished into nothingness. Another time, the fragments of a hundred machines, and the people inside them, had been strewn across forty leagues of countryside, and for weeks after there had been green sunsets. What if that kind of catastrophe occurred worldwide? He could not allow it to happen.

Fourthly, a node could be completely destroyed, though that left a residue of unknown nature but disturbing potential. The residue from the Snizort node was now in the hands of the scrutators, assuming that Gyrull had told the truth. What would they do with it? And had the amplimet anything to do with the node's destruction?

Fifthly, there was some undiscovered potential about Alcifer, and it was more than just the remarkable node here. Whatever lay sleeping, it might just prove to be the last part of the puzzle.

Gilhaelith felt sure there was a way of putting these disparate discoveries together, to reach the understanding that he so craved, but his exhausted brain rebelled. Where the mind failed, it was his policy to put the hands to work. The great and perilous experiment required him to recreate his geomantic globe, incorporating all he'd learned about the world so far.

The pattern of nodes and fields was just the surface expression of tensions between the great forces that moved and shaped the world. If he could model them on his geomantic globe, he might uncover these ultimate forces. As the small is to the great, he thought — another of the key principles of the Art. But of course, his globe would have to be perfect, and he already knew of errors in it. There was much work to be done.

He turned to the globe, a glass-surfaced sphere half a span across, slowly rotating on its cushion of air above an ebony pedestal. It was so bitterly cold that moisture from the air formed wisps of vapour, drawn out to streaky clouds by its motion. Beneath the glass, so detailed that it looked like Santhenar seen from the surface of the moon, was his model of the world. The light reflected from its restless oceans, its glittering ice caps, and even the minute threads that represented great rivers.