Ian Irvine - Alchymist

He knew Gyrull had set up hidden zygnadrs to spy on him but Gilhaelith pretended they weren't there. He'd known he would be watched. Besides, the geomantic globe was just a tool — it was what he planned to do with it that was important, and she couldn't know that.

It took two months of work, so all-consuming that Gilhaelith could do nothing else, before the globe was as true as he could make it. Finally, one rainy mid-autumn afternoon, he stood up, rubbing an aching neck, and allowed the globe to rotate on its cushion of freezing mist. It looked so real that he could have been seeing Santhenar from the void. Perhaps, in some strange duality, it was real — a perfect microcosm of the world, and a device he could use to probe its secrets, if he could probe and repair himself first.

Unfortunately it no longer depicted all the nodes he knew of, to say nothing of their individual natures. Sighing, he bent his head to the new task. He could never put all the known nodes on his globe; it would be the work of lifetimes. However, Gilhaelith did not think that would be required. As long as the greatest nodes were there, the controlling ones (now where had that thought come from?), the completed globe should enable him to reach a new understanding of the world.

Gilhaelith went back to the human-skin node charts. He had Tyal and another servant unroll them for him; he'd become squeamish about touching human leather lately. What if Gyrull killed him and made a map out of his skin? Disgusting!

He began to remove the existing nodes from the world surface and place them in a new layer, underneath the glass, that would allow him to include the nature of each node. For this task, he suspended the globe on its air cushion in a greentinged nickel bowl on a platform of turned rosewood. Near the outer edge of the platform a series of concentric, graduated brass rings was inlaid into the timber. Slender pointers could be slid around inner rings to make the detailed measurements he required. Weeks went by, but finally the task was done. Gilhaelith stood back, allowed the globe to rotate and brought a crystal close to the glass surface. A series of nodes lit up. The geo-mantic globe was as perfect a model of Santhenar as any man could make. It was the culmination of his life's work. Gilhaelith felt sure that, with it, he could finally understand how the world worked, and that would give him the key to the power of the nodes, if he wanted it. It should not take long now, if his strength held out and the accumulating mental damage did not prevent him.

'Masterly work, Tetrarch,' said Gyrull, behind him.

Gilhaelith spun around, seized by a sudden, blind panic. 'You've come for my globe,' he cried, trying to think of a way out and knowing there was none.

'If we wanted such a device we would make it ourselves,' she said with a curl of her leathery lip. 'But you can help me another way, Tetrarch. Indeed, you must, for you owe me.'

'The debt was discharged!' He put on an arrogant air to conceal his nervousness.

'On the contrary, it continues to accumulate. For your servants, the food and drink we provide you and them, and for your every other request that I have accommodated unquestioningly.'

'What do you want?'

'It's no great favour,' she said blandly. 'Just a series of measurements of the field, from a number of points overlooking the city.'

'You want me to go outside Alcifer? Didn't you say there are void beasts in the forests?' That sounded cowardly, but it wasn't. Having come so far, he grudged every moment spent away from his work. And having little time left, he couldn't afford to waste a minute.

Gyrull passed up the opportunity to mock him for cowardice. She was nobler than he'd thought. 'You're quite safe. Our boundaries extend some distance from Alcifer, and you'll have my guards with you.'

Can't you take the measurements yourself?' 'We can, but I'm asking you to do it, as part-payment of your debt. We have much to do, presently. The measurements won't take much time at all. A few days, at most.'

Shortly after sunrise, Gilhaelith was taking sightings through a calibrated spyglass from a ridge high above the city, and noting field strengths on a map Gyrull had given him. The readings were to be done every half-hour all day, from this ridge, and from six other locations on succeeding days. Therefore the work would take a week, not the few days Gyrull had mentioned. There was no time for wondering why. No sooner was the first set of readings complete than it was time to start the second, and so it went all day, and the next. All twelve of his servants had been sent with him — keeping an eye on him for Gyrull, he assumed — and two guards were watching them.

On the third afternoon he was working on a higher ridge on the slope of the dormant volcano. He'd just moved the glass to a new position when a powerful distortion in the field led him to glance up the slope. The distortion seemed to be moving, but its source was masked or cloaked and it took quite an effort to see through it. To his astonishment, it was a thapter. The metal skin was undamaged, so it wasn't Tiaan's. Someone else had uncovered the secret. Soon, he supposed, the skies would be full of them.

The thapter drifted in his direction. Gilhaelith squinted at it, trying to identify the operator, but the machine was too far off. Whoever was inside it, human or Aachim, was a threat to him. He ducked under the trees, praying that it would turn aside.

Not so his servants, who began screaming and jumping up and down.

Careful,' he called. 'Most likely it's Aachim in that flier.'

'Do they eat folk?' said the always irascible Tyal.

'Of course not.'

'Then they're a damn sight better than the enemy.'

If the Aachim found Gilhaelith he would certainly be imprisoned for keeping the thapter from them; he might even forfeit his life. Should the thapter be possessed by the scrutators, however, he would be swiftly tried for keeping it and the amplimet from Klarm, and as swiftly executed. That fate might await him from Gyrull, too, but surely not until he'd tested the globe. The decision took little time. Of his three possible fates, only remaining at Alcifer offered the chance to complete his life's work.

'Not for me,' muttered Gilhaelith, moving further into the shadows.

'So that's how it is,' roared lyal. 'Look at him, hiding like the craven cur he is! His promises were lies. He's a traitor, as I've always said, and the scrutators will pay handsomely for him. Take Gilhaelith!'

Two of the male servants threw themselves on him, while the others took up cudgels and attacked the pair of lyrinx guards standing in the shade. The women began capering madly in the clearing, waving items of clothing at the thapter, but as Gilhaelith fell a cloaking spell renewed itself and the machine vanished.

Three of the male servants lay bleeding on the ground before the lyrinx were defeated. One was felled by an expertly thrown rock, the other went down under the weight of four humans. A cudgel blow knocked it unconscious.

Gilhaelith was dragged, struggling furiously, out into the open. Someone bound his wrists behind his back with a length of cord. Gilhaelith prayed that there were more lyrinx nearby, or he was finished.

Malien came to Tiaan's room that night, very late, looking rather drawn.

'I'm sorry,' she said on entering. 'I should have anticipated their reaction and kept our business till later.'

'Of course your people wouldn't want an outsider at their council,' said Tiaan, who had been watching the patterns ebb and flow in the translucent walls. 'I should have known better than to interrupt.'

'It's just that it showed up their fatal weakness — an inability to agree on anything.' Malien sat on the bed, a rhomboid frame of metal with a mattress as hard as a plank. The other furnishings were equally minimal and unornamented. In Tirthrax, every surface of every object had been decorated. 'It's worse than it was before the council began.'