Ian Irvine - Alchymist

Sitting on the floor, she gnawed at the cheese while she used the lattice to sense what was going on around her. The fighting had paused; the battlefield was quiet apart from the piteous groans of the dying and the cackle of fires here and there. The smell of blood, excrement and raw flesh made her stomach heave.

Other fires lit up the human camps, as well as those of the Aachim, but not the lyrinx. They did not need camp fires. And in the distance Ullii could see, and feel, and sense with every one of her senses, the baleful incandescence of the exploded node. It was still molten, concealed by impenetrable fumes, and spurting and dribbling white-hot rock like a miniature volcano. The fields that had once been such a vital part of it had gone, though Ullii still sensed something there.

Once more she sought for Irisis and Xervish Flydd, but did not find them. There were too many people with uncanny talents, and too many devices employing the Secret Art. Her lattice glowed with them, like knotted stars in the heavens. Ullii did not look for Nish, though she longed for him. Having no Art, he did not appear in her lattice at all.

But one point stood out like a nova in the night sky, and she recognised it at once. It was the glowing knot of the amplimet, twinned to a smaller knot that signified Tiaan. After months of searching for them, Ullii knew those marks the instant they appeared.

They were not far away, though she could not tell where. The lattice was twisted up on itself, blasted out of shape by the sub-ethyric explosion from the node. Everything was warped and confused.

Ullii did not feel safe in the air-floater but she had nowhere else to go. She had never felt so abandoned. Nish, she cried silently. Where are you? Ullii had last seen him as a prisoner of the Aachim, and he'd not seemed as pleased to see her as she'd been to find him. She suppressed that worry. Could he be at the camp surrounded by those shining metal constructs? Ullii dared not go to see; the Aachim leader was a harsh man, like the people who had tormented her in childhood.

She ate some more bread, then slept, the baby kicking in her belly like the feathery brush of a fish's tail. The night passed. The fighting stopped briefly before continuing, as brutal and bloody as ever. In the morning her sleep was interrupted by flashes brighter than the sun. One passed right across the air-floater, showing even,' rib, strut and wire of the collapsed gasbag, and her black glass goggles jammed under a bench.

Scrambling for them, Ullii stared up at the sky. The fleet of air-floaters was impossible to miss. Their crystals appeared faintly in her lattice, a perfect formation of three by four. Something else showed, too. The presence was also faint, denoting only a minor talent for the Secret Art, but it had a signature she would have known anywhere — a festering corruption of mind and body that made her belly cramp and her skin crawl. Ullii had not felt it since their escape from the mine at the manufactory, months ago. It was the man she feared most — Jal-Nish Hlar.

She tried to close down her senses again, but this time they would not obey her, for fear of what might happen when she was helpless. Scuttling into the galley, she closed the door and piled bags and barrels against it. Without a window, it was stiflingly hot — too hot for comfort — and though it was dim inside, for once that did not help.

She closed her eyes, but again that beam passed over the air-floater, and light streamed in through a tiny crack in the wall, so bright that she felt it. Ullii was not safe anywhere. As she put her hands over the goggles, the earth began to shake as if thousands of heavy feet were pounding it. The clawers were on the move. If they came this way, one of them would eat her in a few bone-snapping, brain-spurting gulps.

Clearing the door, Ullii crept out, peering fearfully through her goggles. Another blast of light seared from sky to ground. A great wail went up and she saw the enemy running for their lives, a horde of them heading directly for the air-floater. In their panic, they might crash right through the flimsy structure.

Not far away a clanker lay on its side, torn open from one end to the other. It offered better shelter, since the beasts would have to go round it. Slipping over the side. Ullii bent low to the ground and ran. The enemy pounded towards her. Halfway to the clanker she encountered a dead dawer lying in a depression. Ullii froze, staring at the great hulk, whose eyes seemed to be looking right at her.

It was almost her undoing. Ullii could not move, terrified that the creature would come to life and tear her in half. It didn't and, finding courage at the last instant, she leapt over it and scuttled the dozen steps to the side of the clanker. Pulling herself underneath its overhanging side, she closed her eyes and prayed.

The mob thundered past, rocking the clanker. The metal frame creaked and groaned. Ullii shuddered and curled into a smaller ball, knowing that the clawers could find her by smell if they wanted to.

The last went by, limping. She did not move. Not until the stampede faded into the distance did she dare to open her eyes.

The air-floaters still shone their beam one way and another. Ullii slipped inside the clanker, looking for water and food. She did not find any, only blood on the floor, the srhell so sickly that she almost passed out.

She hid underneath in the small patch of shadow, following it around as the sun rose higher then sank towards the west. By the mid-afternoon it became clear that the enemy were abandoning Snizort, but Ullii did not know what to do. Experience had taught her that few people could be trusted. Nor could she live alone, in the wild. Food, clothing and shelter had always been provided for her and, by herself, she would not survive a week. She could not kill another animal for food, nor eat its bloody, pungent flesh if she did.

She would have to follow the clanker column and find a way to live off it without being caught. Though Ullii was a creature of the night, used to moving silently and secretly, that thought filled her with terror. Stealing from the army was a capital crime. Should she be caught, they would kill her like a beast. But she had to eat.

Going back for water, she found the air-floater smashed to pieces. The gasbag, a good fifteen spans long, had disappeared. Searching in the mud she discovered a water barrel with a few handfuls of brown water in it, and drank the lot. There was nothing left of the food.

It was growing dark. She circled around one of the camps, and around again, silent as a ghost in the darkness. Many times she came on ruined clankers, but the smell of blood and death was so strong she could not bear to crawl inside. She was ravenous, and so desperate for a drink that, not long before dawn. Ullii approached a dead soldier. Holding her nose with one hand, she went through his pack.

She found nothing to eat or drink, but the next corpse had a stoppered skin of wine and a bag of flat honey biscuits. After wiping the mouth of the skin a dozen times, and suppressing a shudder, she put it to her lips.

The wine was so sour that it took her breath away, and the taste made her want to wash her mouth out. She took another sip, then a mouthful. It had been watered and was weak, but Ullii had not taken wine before, nor any kind of alcoholic drink.

Moving upwind of the corpse, she nibbled at one of the honey biscuits. It was delicious, though intensely sweet. She ate it all and took another sip of the wine, which now tasted even more sour.

Ullii wandered off, alternately nibbling to break the sourness of the wine, then drinking to rid her mouth of the excessive sweetness. In this way she circumnavigated the camp again. To her right she heard cursing and the distinctive sound of the whip. Groups of harnessed men were attempting to drag clankers out of a bog. She turned the other way and shortly came upon a ruined clanker, just as the sky was growing light. Her head felt strange. Ullii giggled, staggered and threw up.