Ian Irvine - Alchymist

Tiaan took turns with her, winding through the passes night and day, and they reached Tirthrax on the third evening after fleeing Stassor. Malien flew inside and the Aachim got out. Bilfis, still coughing blood despite the lower altitude, came last.

'Stay here,' said Malien to Tiaan. 'Keep watch and make sure it's ready to go at a moment's notice. Forgre, would you set a sentinel at the entrance? I doubt if Harjax's thapters could reach here before this time tomorrow, since he has no relief pilots and they must stop to sleep, but we'd better be sure.'

They were gone many hours, during which Tiaan had ample time to reflect on her own problems, though not to find any resolution. The Aachim reappeared after midnight, wheeling trolleys filled with food and wine, bags and boxes of tools and equipment, a number of volumes of the Histories, plus atlases and charts of the western lands. It took until dawn to pack it all inside.

The sky was clear when they departed, and there was no sign of pursuit. Malien ordered Tiaan to set a course southwest, in the general direction of Snizort, and went below.

After an hour in which she got no sleep at all, Malien came back up. They were now flying over the north-western corner of Mirrilladell, a land of a million lakes and bogs. It looked pretty from the air but was scarcely inhabited, being bitterly cold in the long winter, and a mosquito-ridden hell in the short summer. Folktales told that the insects could bite through metal.

'Would you set down, Tiaan?' she said politely. 'Bilfis is no better. Even this height is troubling him.'

Tiaan settled the craft on a bare island in a braided stream milky with glacier-ground rock. They helped Bilfis out. He could not stop coughing.

'I begin to wonder if it can be mountain sickness,' said Malien. She unfastened his coat. 'Hold! What's that?'

There was a fresh stain on the back of his shirt. Bilfis raised a limp hand. 'It's nothing. A chip of stone hit me during the escape.'

'But that was days ago — let me see.' She tore off his shirt. Just below the shoulder blade a little green blister bulged out, leaking pale fluid.

'It's a flac!' said Malien in a rigidly controlled voice. 'Talis, my healer's bag, quickly!' 'What's a flac?' said Tiaan. Malien did not answer.

'A tiny, burrowing dart,' Bilfis said weakly. 'It releases a slow poison into the blood that affects the breathing. It has to be cut out at once.'

And never to be used against our own kind,' said Forgre grimly.

'It was intended for you, Tiaan,' said Bilfis, 'but you swerved unpredictably and I obviously took it instead. An irony, some might think.'

Talis raced up with the bag. Malien selected various bladed tools as well as a long thin pair of tweezers.

'It's too late,' Bilfis said. 'It'll be part-dissolved by now, Malien.'

I have to try. Hold still.'

She began to cut into him. 'There, I see it; she said after some time. 'Tweezers, Talis.'

He passed them across. 'This is a big risk, Bilfis,' said Malien. 'It's very fragile. I don't think I can get it out whole.' 'If it stays in, I die. If you break it, I die more quickly. It's designed so. I'm ready, either way.'

'It never occurred to me that they would use a flac against us,' said Malien, shaking her head.

'It's a forbidden weapon, even in clan-vengeance,' Forgre explained.

'But not against me,' said Tiaan.

'Not against the lesser species.' Malien wiped sweaty hands. Her lips moved in an exhortation, or a prayer. Slipping the tweezers into the slit, she took gentle hold of the end of the flac and tried to ease it out.

They all heard the sound, like rotten metal crunching. Bilfis jerked and his eyes went wide, then Malien was desperately, furiously raking the fragments from the wound and reaming out the residue, heedless of his pain.

Forgre held a white dish to Bilfis's back, probing the bloody residue with a forefinger. 'I think you may have got it,' he said.

Bilfis looked down at the dish and gave a rueful smile. 'I never thought—' He stiffened, gave the faintest of sighs and, with no other sign, he died.

'I wasn't quick enough.' Malien covered her face with her long fingers.

'No one ever is,' said Talis, closing the man's eyes.

Tiaan had expected them to take Bilfis's body to the Well of Echoes, but Malien was reluctant to do that given its unstable condition. They flew him up to the icefield on the high plateau, higher than Tiaan had ever been, where the cold was unrelenting. Malien melted a hole with the underside of the construct and slid the body in. Within a minute the water had frozen again, leaving him encased in ice as clear as glass. The Aachim sang a threnody in an archaic tongue.

'He loved the mountains,' said Malien, panting in the thin air. 'Bilfis would be happy that we've brought him here, where no other Aachim foot has ever trod.'

'No foot of any kind, I think,' said Talis the Mapmaker. 'No one could survive in such a high place.'

'Including us!' said Malien. A hundred thousand years from now he'll lie here unchanged. That would please him very much.' She headed for the thapter. 'But what are we going to do without him?'

They continued on to Snizort, flying long hours every day. It still took four days. Tiaan made measurements of the nodes whenever she got the chance, and marked them on the maps. Incessant work helped to keep her thoughts at bay. They passed by the battlefield, towards the Sea of Thurkad, and thence up the coast. The following afternoon they came upon a large encampment in a long but narrow inlet which had rocky ridges on either side. The camp was surrounded by a palisade of sharpened timber, the new home of exiled Clan Elienor. Tiaan saw no more of it, for as they approached Malien said, 'Go below.'

Tiaan searched Malien's lined face. Am I in danger here?'

'I don't know. It depends whether an outcast clan considers themselves bound by clan-vengeance. I won't risk it. Stay hidden while we unload the food and other supplies, and then we'll see.'

Tiaan spent the afternoon huddled under a blanket, trying to shut out the world. She could not erase her thoughts. The following morning Malien woke her. Talis and Forgre were there too.

'Stay where you are until we're in the air,' said Malien.

Where are we going now?'

'West.'

Across the sea to Meldorin?' said Tiaan. 'Where the lyrinx are?'

'We came at an opportune time. My people have just had vital news.'

'Oh?' said Tiaan.

'With Bilfis dead, only one person has the skills of geomancy and mathemancy to tell us how bad the node danger is, and how to avert it — the tetrarch, Gilhaelith. I now know where he's hiding.'

'Where is he?'

'He's north across the Sea of Thurkad, near a lyrinx city called Oellyll.'

Tiaan did not recognise the name, though it sent a shiver up her spine nonetheless. 'Is he a prisoner?'

'I don't think so. Word has it that he's made a deal with the enemy.'

'What's the name of this place?' Tiaan asked as they were crossing the Sea of Thurkad.

Malien was at the controller. The sea here, almost eighty leagues north of the place where she had escaped from the Aachim nets, was more than twenty leagues across. In the distance she saw a gap in the range that ran down the east coast of Meldorin. The peaks were white, the flanks of the mountains dusted with an early fall of snow, for it was late autumn now. To the left, a steep-sided volcano fumed. There was no snow on its warm flanks, though similar dormant peaks to its north and south had caps of white.

Malien did not reply. She was frowning at the sullen water far below. 'Better go up; we could be seen at this height.' She lifted the thapter into the bumpy air inside the clouds.

'That's the Zarqa Gap,' said Talis, pointing, 'one of the few passes across these mountains, at least in the wintertime. See the ancient road?'