Ian Irvine - Alchymist

'Well, Gilhaelith's dead, so it doesn't matter,' said Tiaan after a long silence. He was another painful memory. It reminded her of the one man who hadn't let her down: Merryl, last seen trudging around the side of the hill near Snizort. Had he just exchanged one form of slavery for another?

'How do you know?' said Malien.

Tiaan came back to the present. 'I don't suppose I do …'

'The matriarch of Snizort went to great lengths to abduct Gilhaelith. Surely, when she fled the tar pits, she took him with her.'

'And yet they left me behind.'

'That could have been confusion when Snizort was attacked.'

'Or because the torgnadrs they patterned on me turned out to be useless!'

Tiaan did not know what to expect of Stassor, except that it would be striking, beautiful and different, for each of the Aachim cities was unique. Tirthrax, carved out of the mountain's heart, bore no resemblance to the towers, pavilions and kidney-shaped dwellings she had seen in paintings of Aachan. Different again was Shazmak, their abandoned city on an island in the middle of the gorge of the River Garr, in the mountains of Meldorin. Tiaan had seen images of it in Tirthrax. Shazmak was a place of breathtakingly slender towers and pinnacles connected by swooping and coiled aerial walkways that looked as though they were made of glass. The city appeared so delicate that it might have been broken by a tap with a hammer, yet it had endured the gales for a thousand years. And still, in the end, it proved no match for treachery. The city's betrayer had been one of its own.

She was thinking these gloomy thoughts as they descended a long black slope streaked with ice, at the base of which lay an ice-filled basin bounded by crevasses. A glacier flowed out of its downhill lip. In the distance, partly concealed by a razor-topped ridge, Tiaan saw an isolated steep-sided mountain with four individual peaks, inside which nestled a field of ice. She surreptitiously checked the amplimet but it wasn't glowing at all. That didn't comfort her. Tiaan was beginning to feel that it was waiting for something; lurking; even preying.

As they approached the mountain with four peaks, Tiaan realised that the material between them was not ice at all, rather a vast silvery cube that reflected first one peak and then another, so that the whole top of the mountain appeared to shift before their eyes.

'Behold Stassor' said Malien. 'The greatest of our cities now.'

'It's nothing like I expected,' Tiaan murmured. 'It's so plain, so simple! Do the Aachim no longer care about their art and craft? In Tirthrax, every surface was decorated, every space shaped to perfection.'

'Time moves on and so must we. We yearn for simplicity now. Stassor is a new city built on the foundations of the old, but it has a beauty of its own. You'll see.'

'Tirthrax was hidden inside a mountain, yet Stassor stands on the highest peak around, for all the world to see. Do your people feel more secure these days?'

'Who could threaten us here? Not even a construct could climb these rugged passes, and what army could lay siege to Stassor? This entire land,' said Malien, a sweep of her arm indicating the white-tipped ranges on every side, 'is our land, and no one may cross its borders without our knowing.

'Besides, we no longer care to hide from the world. For thousands of years we looked back to Aachan, but our future is bound to Santhenar now. From the breaking of the Forbidding, two centuries ago, we began to take down old Stassor and build it anew, to celebrate our coming out. Do you not see its beauty now?'

The thapter had curved across a vast valley steeped in snow and up the other side, towards the four-peaked mountain. Tiaan caught her breath. With every movement the ice-coloured cube shimmered with colour — now like oil on water, now like the iridescence of a beetle's wing-case, now like the light of the sun fading from the sky. There were colours and patterns within its depths, too, and they resembled the shifting lines of sand on a wave-swept beach, or the flickering flames of a camp fire, or the play of colours in precious opal.

The thapter lifted sharply on an updraught. Tiaan's stomach lurched but Malien steadied the machine expertly and directed it towards the base of the great building, where a pattern of smaller cubes appeared to indicate an entrance.

She brought the thapter to ground on a paved rectangle outside the smaller cubes. Best if we show ourselves as friendly,' said Malien. 'My people have not seen a flying machine before. At least, not since Rulke was slain, and his was a weapon of war. Tiaan, I ask only one thing — that you say nothing about my part in the creation of this thapter.' Of course,' said Tiaan, 'but why?'

'My people may well suspect that I made it, but it would be better if they did not know. That way—' She broke off as shadows appeared behind the smaller cubes. 'Later' Tiaan reached for the pack containing the amplimet and her other possessions. 'Leave everything,' said Malien. 'They will be brought, after inspection.'

Were the Aachim just being careful or were they, for all their brilliance, insecure? Tiaan was reluctant to leave anything behind, least of all the perilous amplimet, but there was no alternative. She climbed down onto the platform, which was made of compressed ice. It was bitterly, bone-achingly cold outside, far worse than Tirthrax, and the air so thin that just placing one foot in front of another was exhausting.

As they approached the entrance, a dark line divided it vertically into two halves, which separated into four individual cubes on either side, and each of those into four more, a pattern which Malien described as cubular. The myriad glassy cubes seemed to float through the air, leaving an opening which exhaled a breath of warmth. Tiny crystals of ice whirled and tumbled and twinkled in the sunlight. Gilhaelith would have been enchanted, Tiaan thought. The tetrarch had an obsession with numbers.

'Come,' said Malien, and they entered. 'I'm afraid.'

'Just so Karan and Llian must have felt as they entered the forbidden city of Shazmak. But they were met there by Rael, my son, and treated with all the hospitality due to visitors, even unwelcome ones such as I.'

'What happened to him?' asked Tiaan, not recalling that part of the tale.

'Alas, he drowned, nobly helping Karan and Llian to escape their fate. I still think about him every day. You need have no fear, Tiaan.' Her eyes glittered and she turned away.

'I would like to talk to you about that tale, sometime,' said Tiaan.

'I would be happy to. Have you read it?' 'The original is a forbidden book. There is a new Tale of the Mirror, but it was rewritten by the scrutators before my birth. Malien stopped in mid-step. 'Rewritten? The greatest of the Great Tales retold by a gaggle of spies and torturers? How did this come about?' 'I don't know.'

'Llian of Chanthed, who wrote the Great Tale, must lie uneasy in his grave,' said Malien.

'He's now known as Llian the Liar, the chronicler who debauched the Histories.'

'The Histories have indeed been debauched,' Malien said coldly. 'We must speak further about this. Ah, our hosts are coming.'

'Did you know Llian?' said Tiaan.

'As well as I knew any human man! The Histories were his life and his world. Nothing could have compelled him to tell them falsely.' 'But…' 'Later.'

Malien strode forward, holding out her hand to a stocky man of middle years, whose black hair was marked by twin streaks of white sweeping back over his ears. Half a dozen other Aachim stood behind him, three men and three women, all dressed in robes that reflected the light like metallic silk. 'Harjax,' Malien said cheerfully. 'I heard of your elevation. You will make a fine autarch.'