Ian Irvine - Alchymist

'I'

'I told her to sit there, Scrutator!' Troist said coldly. 'And I'll thank you not to harass my healers, or anyone else under my command.'

'How dare you tell me what I may or may not do!' cried Flydd. 'I could break you to a common soldier for such insolence.'

Troist stood up. Though a compact man, he had to bend his head under the low roof. 'Then break me you must, Scrutator Flydd, for I will defend my healer, as I would any soldier in my army, to the last breath.'

Flydd hauled himself out of the seat, glowering at the general; Troist stood his ground. Nish trembled for what might happen.

Suddenly Flydd let out a great, booming laugh. 'I like you, General Troist. You're my kind of man.' He put out his twisted hand.

After a momentary hesitation, Troist took it, though it was some time before the wary look left his eyes. 'I'll see to the orders,' he said. 'We move in thirty minutes.'

Nish wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry. He hoped he'd done the right thing this time, but what if it all went wrong and the lyrinx attacked Troist's army instead of Jal-Nish's much larger one? That worry was soon dwarfed by another that had been growing ever since the possibility had first been raised. What would happen when he met his father again? Just the thought made his heart race and his palms sweat.

Someone was screaming, a long, drawn-out wail of anguish that rasped at Ullii's nerves. Having lost her earmuffs and earplugs long ago, she could do no more than push a finger in each ear. It made no difference — the dreadful wailing penetrated her entire body. It came out of the ground up her legs; down from the sky through her skull; it was everywhere. She ran into the night and the sound followed her.

Ullii burst through thickets, heedless of the brambles tearing through her clothes and scoring her baby-soft skin. She crashed over crumbling embankments, through sandpaper shrubbery and into a boggy wallow where buffalo came down to a creek to drink. She splattered through the muck but the ghastly sound went with her, as if a ghost had thrust its head inside hers and was screaming into her brain.

Ullii slipped in the mud, fell into cool water and, as she went under, the sound cut off. The relief was so miraculous that she lay on the bottom, thinking that she might stay there forever. She felt no urge to breathe; there was no reason to live. Her beloved Mylii was gone, snatched away the instant she'd found him. Killed, murdered by Nish, her lover. He'd done it deliberately, to hurt her. He must have, or he would have come after her and told her how sorry he was. But he wasn't sorry. He didn't care about Mylii, or the baby, or her.

Flydd and Irisis, once her friends, were nearly as bad, hey'd lied to her, used her, and when they didn't want her any longer, they'd simply abandoned her.

Her body's will to live drove Ullii to the surface. She stood op in the shallow water and breathed. The screaming had stopped but the pain was still there, and it was unendurable. Reaching inside herself, Ullii flicked the switch that severed her consciousness. Blessed oblivion.

An hour later she was still standing there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing.

A memory woke in her and Ullii realised that she was standing in waist-deep water, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her beloved Mylii lay in his blood in the clearing, alone and abandoned.

Ullii had no idea where she was. In that fit of madness and grief she might have run in any direction. She searched the lattice for her brother's knot, which had appeared so miraculously last night, but it was not there. Mylii was dead; his knot had vanished forever and she was lost.

The sense of abandonment grew stronger. Mylii, Mylii, lying on the hard ground all alone. Was there a way to find him? He'd left no trace in the lattice, nor had the other dead at the air-floater. Not even the unfortunate little pilot made a mark now, for death wiped all knots away.

But the air-floater was powered by a controller, and it must still have a working crystal. She sought for it but found nothing — Flydd had taken the crystal with him and he was beyond range. Deeper, further, she sought; there had to be some trace left. At last she picked up a tiny smudge of aura, a chip broken off the controller crystal in the crash. It gave her the direction. Ullii turned that way and started running.

It was only an hour off dawn when she got there. The declining moon slanted across the clearing to light up the canvas of the air-floater from behind. The collapsed airbag was a crumpled rag outlined by black struts and wires. The little pilot lay with her head over the side, her neck bent at an unnatural angle.

Ullii only had eyes for the slim shape lying in the moon-shadow: beloved Mylii. She did not run. Ullii was afraid to approach him too quickly.

Stopping on the far side of the clearing, she stared at her brother Unlike the pilot and the soldiers, who all looked dead, he just appeared to be sleeping. She felt as her sensitive eyes strained to pierce the blackness that she saw his chest rise and fall She tried to make out his features but they blurred into the dark.

She allowed herself to hope that it had just been a horrible nightmare. She did not want to wake him in case it turned out to be real. How could he be dead? Nish was a kind, gentle man who had done so much for her. He would not harm Mylii. It had to be a dreadful mistake, a dream that she had woken from. Or was it? She felt so confused.

Ullii took a slow, fluid step, careful to make no sound. Any noise might wake her brother and everything would turn out wrong. A warm breeze soughed through the treetops, curling round the clearing and tickling the back of her neck, lifting the hair of her nape just as it lifted the dry leaves on the floor of the clearing, sending them whirling like fairy dancers in a circle. It made her smile. Mylii would have loved to see it — he had always been fond of music and dancing.

She took another step, and her brother's prone form seemed to shift, as if moving to a more comfortable position, before settling back into sleep with a little sigh. The gesture was so familiar that it made her heart ache. Tears sprang to Ullii's eyes and suddenly she had to take him in her arms.

Her small feet made barely a sound as she ran. From halfway across the clearing, Ullii called her brother's name Again he seemed to move, then suddenly went still, and with every step she took Mylii grew more rigid. The silver bracelet on his wrist was a manacle fixing him to the earth.

'Mylii!' she cried, but he no longer seemed to be breathing.

She crossed the short distance that separated them and threw herself at him. 'Mylii!'

He did not move. Mylii was as unyielding as a log. Ullii pushed her arms under his back. A bubble burst in his throat and the remaining air sighed out of his lungs. The ground was damp beneath him. His whole back was wet, and when she withdrew her hands and held them up, his congealed blood was black in the moonlight.

'Mylii.' she wailed, picking him up in her arms, holding his body tightly as she rocked hack and forth, back and forth …

A faint ticker-tick-tick roused her this time. It was an air-floater, not far away. Ullii sat up, not so much listening as watching its knot in her lattice. It was roving back and forth across the country south of here, coming steadily closer as if searching. It had come after the wrecked air-floater, and something far more precious — Mylii the seeker.

The machine turned, flying directly towards the clearing. They were coming to take Mylii away. They must not get him. She tried to lift her brother, but he was heavier than he appeared. Ullii had him halfway to her shoulder when a sharp pain in her lower belly reminded her of the baby.