Ian Irvine - Alchymist

'Over the saddle!' roared Malien. 'Get down into shelter, before it's too late.'

It was still a long way ahead, up a precipitous slope. Tiaan looked back. A tower at the top of the building had developed glowing crimson rings. The whole of the glassy cube of Stassor had gone black. A chill went up her spine. She hurled the thapter hard left, left again, right, up, then down and to the left once more.

The saddle approached, as sharp as a blade. She made for the middle of it, the lowest point. The rings were whirling up and down the tower, faster and faster. She could see them reflected on the glass of the binnacle.

Tiaan was almost to the saddle before she realised that it made the perfectly framed shot the Aachim were waiting for.

'Go left!' Malien's voice was a choked scream.

Tiaan was about to but, as her hand moved the yoke, an urgent sense of wrongness told her that the Aachim were expecting that. She flung the yoke hard the other way, veering right and shaving ice off the rising ridge crest with the base of the thapter.

The low point, as well as the left-hand side of the saddle, exploded in a spray of steam and molten rock, then they were over and hurtling down the sharp decline with an avalanche on their heels.

'Pull up,' said Malien, 'but keep well below the saddle. They might reflect the beam off the ice, even if they can't see us.'

Tiaan was already doing so. The Aachim picked themselves up from the floor, looking at each other. They were unharmed, apart from Bilfis, who had a fleck of blood on the back of his robes, below the right shoulder blade.

He rubbed it, examining his fingertip. 'Just a flying shard.'

'Where to?' asked Tiaan.

'We can't go to Tirthrax' said Malien. 'Not for long, anyway.'

'Or to any of our other known refuges.' said Bilfis, 'since they'll look there in their thaptersMalien considered. 'We've got little food or drink, and only the clothes we're wearing. Head south and west, Tiaan, for the moment.'

'What happened back there?'

'Harjax was uncomfortable with the story of your escape,' said Malien. 'As soon as their first thapter was free, he sent it to the Foshorn, to Vithis. We had a feeling the news would be bad, so we were ready to flee. The urgency of the envoy's return was alarm enough.'

And when he ordered the guards to fire on us,' added Bilfis, 'it confirmed the worst.'

Tiaan looked from one to the other. 'What news did he bear?'

'In your escape, you did more damage than you'd thought. Vithis suffered a broken arm and jaw, and three noble Aachim were killed in the construct that exploded underwater. But there was worse …'

'Minis!' Tiaan said, white-faced. 'I killed Minis.'

'You did worse than that, as far as Vithis is concerned.'

'How can anything be worse than death?'

'Oh, for some Aachim, there can be far worse,' Malien said grimly.

'Death in life,' Malien explained sombrely. 'You maimed him, Tiaan. He lost a leg, three fingers, and his pelvis was crushed. He may never walk again; he'll never be without pain. But worse still, he's no longer whole, and every Aachim knows it. To their eyes Minis is a ruined man. If Vithis lives another thousand years he'll neither forgive nor forget. He's declared clan-vengeance against you and all who aid you in any way. Any Aachim who does so faces exile or death.'

'Even your people?' Tiaan whispered.

'Harjax's envoy bound us as well. Perhaps he felt it was a way of allying our sundered kind. Or perhaps he felt as aggrieved as Vithis. I didn't wait to find out.'

And yet you three helped me, at the cost of your own lives.'

'It wasn't just for you,' said Malien. 'There's a higher danger and we can't do without you.'

'The nodes?' said Tiaan.

'The nodes. Bilfis has made a model of the ones near Stassor — those you've mapped — and they're more unstable than he'd imagined.'

'To put it at its bluntest,' said Bilfis, who was a pallid grey, and sweating despite the cold, 'I'm so terrified that I was prepared to break the code of clan-vengeance and become an outlaw. There is a higher duty, when the very world may be at stake.' Nodding formally to Tiaan, he went below.

The remaining Aachim seemed to be assessing her worth. The lean man was Talis the Mapmaker, whom Tiaan had met several times. The stocky one was called Forgre but she knew nothing about him. Without acknowledging her, he followed Belfis and Talis below. A mutter of voices drifted up, in which she heard her own name several times, though she made out nothing more.

Tiaan looked up at Malien, who was staring at her. What was Malien thinking? Was she regretting giving up everything to save her, Tiaan? And poor, maimed Minis, condemned to a living death. Other tragedies, other disasters, though arising out of Tiaan's actions, had ultimately been caused by others. She had done this terrible wrong by herself, out of terror for her life. No, call it by its true name: cowardice. She had maimed the man who, for all his failings, had loved her. He'd been going to help her, she felt sure of that now, and in return she'd hurt him grievously and run away.

'Clan Elienor were blamed for allowing you to escape,' said Malien, 'and have suffered the greatest penalty Vithis could impose. They've been cast out, exiled and their constructs forfeited.'

Guilt overwhelmed Tiaan. The control yoke slipped in her hand and the construct dipped sharply.

'I think you'd better let me take over. Go below and lie down.' Within seconds Malien had ejected the amplimet and taken the yoke. Grim-faced, she flew between the unclimbable peaks.

The day faded. Tiaan lay dozing on her bunk. Malien flew on, torn half a dozen ways. Exile could not hurt her as it did her companions, for among her own people she'd been an outsider since the Forbidding was broken. Even so, to actively defy the entirety of her kind was no small thing. And now Tiaan's life had been laid in her hands — a precious, vital life if the nodes were fading, as Bilfis suspected. What was she to do about that?

Not to mention Clan Elienor. Though the clans had disappeared on Santhenar thousands of years ago, every Aachim knew their heritage. Malien's was the House of Elienor and she was a descendant of the great heroine. Now Clan Elienor were lost somewhere in Taltid. Their homes and means of travel had been confiscated and they had been abandoned to starve in a land stripped bare and plundered by lyrinx as well as human scavengers. Her duty was clear. She must do what she could for her people.

Malien knew roughly where Clan Elienor had to be. They had been left on the coast north-west of Snizort, where they could survive for a time by fishing and collecting seaweed, though when the fish migrated south to the Karama Malama in the winter their position would be dire. There was only one thing to be done. Around midnight, Malien turned south.

Tiaan woke wrapped in blankets but still cold. The thapter was whining furiously, and someone was coughing, over and over. She touched a globe to brightness. It was Bilfis, dabbing at his lips with a cloth that was stained red.

Seeing her staring, he said hoarsely, 'It's nothing. I suffer from mountain sickness. We're much higher than Stassor, here.'

She went up the ladder. It was mid-morning and Malien stood at the yoke, as she had all night.

'We're going back to Tirthrax,' said Malien.

'But you said we wouldn't be safe there.'

'Not for long, anyway,' Malien said tersely. 'We'll fill the thapter with provisions and other essential items, then head west.'

Tiaan, full of guilt and feeling that she was only here under sufferance, asked no questions.

'I plan to share my exile with Clan Elienor,' Malien went on. 'And ask them about the node problem, though they may not be able to help. The nodes of Santhenar must be very different from those of Aachan. It's lucky I have Bilfis. He's the most brilliant of all our field mancers and if anyone can solve this problem, he can.'