Ian Irvine - Alchymist

'You're conscious!' Irisis wished she did not have to pick her up again.

The perquisitor did not answer. Hefting her, Irisis followed the path to the bottom of the pit, around the base and in through a tunnel that had not been visible in the black wall. They were underground for only a few minutes before emerging in a larger pit. The air-floater was waiting across the far side, right where they had left it, its four guards with their crossbows ready. Irisis pushed Fyn-Mah through the ropes, fell through herself and lay on the deck without the strength to rise. Two of the guards carried Flangers aboard.

Muss was already there, gazing up at the rim. He had assumed his old persona — the slim, middle-aged man she'd first met in Gosport — though he still looked frustrated and unhappy. So he didn't get what he went in for, Irisis thought. I wonder what it could be?

'Where were you when we needed you?' she snapped. 'On other duties,' he said, impassive again.

'Where are our mates?' cried a young soldier.

'Dead!' Fyn-Mah tried to sit up but sagged back against the wall of the cabin. 'Go up,' she whispered to Pilot Inouye. 'Out of crossbow range.'

The grapnels were pulled aboard. Inouye twisted a knob on the floater-gas generator and gas whistled up the pipe. The air-floater shot up out of the pit, rising above the hummocks and tar bogs of Snizort, and just in time. A detachment of some hundred soldiers had come through the broken eastern wall and were advancing towards the pit. They stopped and someone waved. Pilot Inouye turned to Fyn Mah. 'They're signalling. I think they want us to land.'

'Keep going!' said Fyn-Mah, forcing herself to her feet. She hung onto the rope mesh, swaying dangerously. 'I have other orders. Guards,' she said to the four men, 'ready your weapons. We cannot be taken.'

The soldiers looked uneasy, but complied. Irisis felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She took a crossbow for herself. The loyalty of these men had already been tested. Surely it would take little for them to mutiny — if Fyn-Mah was taken, they would be condemned with her.

On the ground, there was a flurry or activity at the front of the detachment. A black-robed figure waved its arms, a perquisitor Irisis did not recognise. A soldier put a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

'Land at once, whoever you are,' he boomed.

'Go higher!' hissed Fyn-Mah. Clinging death-like to the ropes, she shouted down. 'I may not. I'm on a special mission for Scrutator Xervish Flydd.'

The robed figure snatched the speaking trumpet. 'There is no Scrutator Flydd, only the condemned criminal, Slave Flydd.'

Fyn-Mah let out a muffled cry. She turned to Irisis and Flangers. 'What do I do now?'

'Follow your orders,' said Flangers unhelpfully.

'Muss?' she called.

Eiryn Muss was squatting on the deck, deeply immersed in his own thoughts, and did not answer. Whatever was bothering him, it was more important than their imminent demise.

'Land immediately, in the name of Acting Scrutator Jal-Nish Hlar!' shouted the figure on the ground.

'Perquisitor Fyn-Mah,' said Inouye, 'I must go down. I have a direct order from your superior.'

Fyn-Mah covered her face with her hands.

If the scrutator had fallen, what hope was there for any of them? 'You're risking everything on Flydd,' Irisis said. 'Do you think he can possibly rise again?'

Fyn-Mah groaned, then mastered herself. 'Scrutator Flydd ordered me to go on, no matter what happened to him, and so, I must. No matter what the consequences.'

Irisis felt Death look up from his work on the battlefield, rub a testing thumb down the blade of his scythe, and smile grimly.

The scrutators will torment us all,' cried Inouye, desperately defiant.

'I'm taking the air-floater,' Fyn-Mah gritted. 'If you won't cooperate, we'll throw you down to join your friends and Crafter Irisis will take over your controller.'

Irisis doubted that she could operate it, or that Fyn-Mah would be so ruthless, but the pilot did not know that.

Inouye licked her wind-chapped lips. The bond with the machine was intense, and pilots, like clanker operators, had been known to go insane after their craft was destroyed.

'They'll slay my man and my little children,' she said in a barely audible voice.

'Not if you're forced to it.' said Fyn-Mah in more gentle tones. 'Flangers, make a show.'

Flangers liked it no more than the pilot did, but he took Irisis's crossbow and pointed it at Inouye, in full view of those on the ground.

'This will ruin us all,' wept little Inouye. She obeyed and the air-floater lifted.

'Go north, with all speed,' said Fyn-Mah.

The soldiers on the ground fired their crossbows but the air-floater was out of range and the bolts fell harmlessly back. Someone ran to the broken wall, climbed it and began to signal frantically towards the command area.

'I feared this was going to happen,' said Fyn-Mah. 'With the scrutator lost, there's only one option left.' She groaned and slumped to the canvas deck.

Behind them, three black air-floaters rose from the mound next to the army command area, and followed.

'Or maybe none,' said Irisis, picking the perquisitor up and carrying her inside.

Gilhaelith was slipping ever deeper into the bottomless pit of tar and there was nothing he could do about it. He'd tried everything, but his geomancy was useless without some kind of a crystal to serve as a focus, and he had none. He'd even attempted to use one of his ever-troubling gallstones, but under the strain it had burst into jagged fragments that were causing him agony. Before they passed, should he live that long, he'd be wishing he were dead.

His only other resort had been mathemancy, that strange branch of the Secret Art Gilhaelith had developed long ago. It proved singularly useless. Mathemancy was a philosopher's Art, ill-suited to any kind of direct action, much less such immediate peril.

Gyrull, Matriarch of Snizort, had abducted him to scry out the remnants of a village lost in the Great Seep seven thousand years ago. Afterwards, she'd kept Gilhaelith beside her, refusing him the use of his globe and the other geomantic instruments he'd brought with him as his means of escape. But the tunnel into the Great Seep had failed, its shell of frozen tar had cracked and hot tar had been forced in. The lyrinx had fled with their relics, just in time. Gilhaelith had tried to follow but he'd not been quick enough.

He took the numbers again, raising a series of random integers to their fourth powers to see what pattern they offered. It was awesomely bad. He tried again, with an even worse result.

The tar now reached to his hips, its suction far too great for him to pull himself out. Ribbons of liquid tar, from a breach in the roof, began to fold onto his head and shoulders, its bituminous reek burning his nose, throat and lungs.

And it was hot. Not burning hot, not enough to blister, but uncomfortable and getting worse. Eventually, if he survived long enough, he would simmer like a crab in a pot. Fortunately, he wouldn't survive. In a few minutes, when that great oozing clot came down on his head, he would suffocate.

A possibility slid into Gilhaelith's mind as if it had been whispered in his ear — to couple his two very different Arts. Geomancy was hopeless because he lacked a crystal to draw power and focus it. Mathemancy was not a tool for directing power at all. But what if…?

If he could create a phantom mathemantical crystal, and use it to draw power and focus it, might that be the solution? It was a last resort — such a crystal must pull power directly into his head. A little too much would cook him from the inside, a gruesome, slow death. A lot too much and he would suffer the agonising fate of anthracism, human internal combustion, though that would not take long to kill him.