Ian Irvine - Alchymist

'I don't know where they are.'

You can find them.

'Flydd and Irisis aren't in my lattice any more. Nish never has been.'

Ghorr will help you find them. Wherever Flydd is, there Nish will be. Call Ghorr to you.

Ullii reached into her lattice, traced out Ghorr's jagged, angry knot and began to tug at the ends. As soon as she did, a feeling of dread crept over her, a cold shivering of the flesh.

He was a wicked man, even worse than Jal-Nish. Just looking closely at his knot made her shudder with terror.

He's not the worst. Cryl-Nish is the worst, for he pretends to be.’

‘Yes,’ she thought. Nish is worse, and I'll use these evil people to punish him. She plucked at the knot again, and all at once felt an alertness searching for her.

Withdraw.

She drew back, shivering, though the day was warm.

Reach out again, carefully. Don't alarm him and he won't strike at you like an enemy; just make him know that you're here.

Ullii reached out, touched the knot and turned it around, and as she did so she felt Ghorr thinking, Aaahhhhhh! There she is.

Withdraw and shut down the lattice. Go out into the open. See where that great tree has fallen and the wind has piled scrub and dead glass against it? Burn it.

'I've nothing to light it with.'

‘I will show you how.’

The voice had her collect dry grass and crush it between two stones until it was a bone-dry powder. Then it led Ullii around the fallen tree, picking up sticks and putting them down again until she found two different kinds of wood, one hard, the other softer, that were just right. She rubbed the hard stick back and forth across the softer one, pressing firmly, with a steady motion that she could keep up for a long time.

Eventually Ullii was rewarded by smoking wood-dust that set the grass powder ablaze. Lighting a handful of twigs, she thrust it into her prepared nest of kindling, and within minutes the timber was roaring. She stood back and waited for Ghorr's air-floater to find her. The voice in her head had gone. Ullii felt that she had taken command of her life at last.

The air-floater landed just before dusk, well away from the fire, which had consumed the centre of the vast trunk and was now creeping along the length of it. Ghorr got out. Ullii remained standing in front of the blaze, in full view. Her gut tightened as he headed towards her, robes flapping, followed by Fusshte and the dumpy old woman with the balding head.

Ghorr could have picked Ullii up in one hand; he was her peer. And yet, halfway to the fire, his stride faltered and he stopped, stung in ha.

Ullii did not meet his gaze. She did not have the strength for that kind of connection – he knew the balance had changed between them. She might be little and weak, but she had called him, and he had come. It made all the difference. Furthermore, she knew he was remembering those strange things she had done in Nennifer, that no one else on Santhenar could have explained, much less duplicated.

'I knew I'd find you,' Ghorr said.

'I summoned you.'

He smiled at her use of that word. 'Did you really? Why?'

She caught her breath. 'My brother, Mylii, is dead! The word sent a spasm through her bowel. 'Nish killed him. My baby is dead and that's Nish's fault too. He is evil and must be punished. I will find him for you.'

Chief Scrutator Ghorr's eyes narrowed. 'What about Ex-Scrutator Xervish Flydd, the greatest enemy of them all?'

'He lied to me, betrayed and abandoned me.'

'Will you find him for me?'

'I will find him,' said Ullii. 'Wherever he goes. There is nowhere on Santhenar that he can hide.'

'And Crafter Irisis Stirm?' He bared his hyena teeth.

After a considerable pause, for Irisis had not betrayed her as badly as the others had, she whispered, 'Her too.'

Ghorr raised his hands to the sky and roared in exultation. She had to stop her ears until he was done.

'I'll put it about that you're dead,' Ghorr said after some reflection. 'That way Flydd won't try to hide from your talent. Is that acceptable?'

'No one cares whether I live or die,' she said softly, sadly.

Ullii stood watching him, hating him almost as much as the others, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered but that she find the three who had tormented her, and bring them to justice:

'Well done, Scrutator T'Lisp,' Ghorr purred to the old man.

‘I never would have believed it possible, even with your talent, but you've excelled yourself.'

T'Lisp smiled and caressed a bracelet on her arm, identical to the one that now strangled Ullii's wrist. She said nothing at all.

'It was a stroke of genius, trapping her with Mylii's bracelet,'

Ghorr went on. 'She didn't realise for a second.'

Ullii looked from one to the other, her guts crawling with horror as she understood what they'd done. They'd set the snare and she'd put her head right in it. From the instant she'd slipped on the bracelet she'd been under their control, just as they must have controlled Mylii before. It hadn't been Flammas in her head at all, but wicked Scrutator T'Lisp. Ullii hadn't taken charge of her life; she'd simply done their bidding.

'Oh yes,' said Ghorr, sneering at her distress, her futile struggle to wrench the bracelet off. 'You're mine, Ullii, just as your brother was, and there's nothing you can do about it.'

The race to Gumby Marth had been plagued by breakdowns and mechanical problems that could not be allowed to delay the army. Where these could not be fixed at once, the affected clankers and their cargo of soldiers were left behind with an artificer, to catch up when they could. Troist fought furiously with the scrutator about it, for the general did not care to leave the least of his soldiers behind, but if they were to save Jal-Nish's army it had to be done. He had abandoned the idea of travelling at night, instead rousing the army before dawn so they could begin at first light, but still they were behind schedule.

Flydd spent most of his waking hours closeted in another twelve-legged clanker with the army's chief mancer, who went by the absurd name of Nutrid. He was an elongated stick of a man, quite meagre apart from an improbably round, quivering belly, like a jelly moulded in a bowl. His head was the shape of a hatchet, his eyes huge and glassy, and his fluted, constantly pursed lips had the look of an insect's proboscis.

Nish never spoke to Nutrid, nor even went close to his clanker. Mancers were particularly irritable when at work and Flydd's natural irascibility was growing as he recovered. Nish did glean, however, that the two mancers were trying to modify a cloaking spell to conceal the entire clanker fleet from sight and hearing, for the last day of travel. Camp gossip told him that Nutrid was dubious. Such spells had had limited success previously, and had never been attempted for an army as big as this one. The strain on the mancers, not to mention the field, would be prodigious. Twice on the first day of travel, and three times on the second, the entire column had to be stopped so the two mancers could test their makeshift spell. During the first three stops, nothing happened, though Flydd was so exhausted afterwards he had to lie down.

On the fourth attempt, as Nish was climbing out of Troist's clanker, the air turned a shimmering green and every anthill within two hundred paces of the column exploded, deluging the army with red clay and little green ants. Nish was still picking them out of his hair an hour later — and so, unfortunately, was the cook from his cauldrons. Lunch reeked so pungently of crushed ants that not even the hardiest soldiers could force it down.

The mancers tried again at sunset, as camp was being set up for the evening. Nish was taking his turn on watch when a burst of purple flame set fire to a row of canvas privies, sending the occupants hopping, trousers about their ankles, in fear of their lives. Unfortunately the chief cook was one of them and took it personally. He locked himself in his supply clanker and not even Troist could coax him out in time to supervise the preparation of dinner. That task fell to the under-cook, a good assistant but a disorganised supervisor, and the food he served three hours late was worse than lunch had been. A grim Troist, whose belly was giving him more trouble than usual, ordered the chief cook to his post at once, and the troublesome mancers to get it right or desist forthwith, before the soldiers mutinied.