Ian Irvine - Alchymist

nash rose, holding his hands up before his face. They burned like icy fire, yet they were unmarked. The pit of his stomach tingled and he felt that a long-dormant bud inside him had opened. He shuddered to think what the tears had done to him.

'You're a monster, Father. The outside simply reflects what is within you, and I'll bring you down if it takes me all my life.'

'You won't, Cryl-Nish, because you're a blunderer, a failure and a fool. You're not my equal in any respect, and never can be. I often wonder how I came to have a son as unworthy as you, if, indeed, you are my son!' He bellowed the last words so that the whole camp might have heard. 'Lieutenant!'

Xabbier appeared smartly, and from the look in his eyes he'd heard all that had gone on. 'Yes, Scrutator Hlar?'

'Take Cryl-Nish to the punishment cells and lock him in. No one must go near him for four hours, until …'

'Yes?' said Xabbier.

'Never mind. Lock him up tight until the morning, Lieutenant.'

Jal-Nish saluted Nish with the platinum mask. An aura, shaped like a horde of jackals, streamed and snapped around him. Shuddering, Nish allowed himself to be led away. The mask snapped back over his father's head.

Those Aachim not engaged in moving constructs, or travelling to the southern camp inside them, were busy on a great memorial to their dead. The bodies had been recovered and buried as soon as the battle was over. In the summer heat they had to be, though it grieved the Aachim deeply to lay their fallen in alien soil.

Tiaan saw little of the construction, apart from a day on which she spent hours hauling stone with the construct, but it showed the importance they placed on the memorial.

She now lived in fear of the amplimet. Though essential for her survival, as much as for the Aachim's, Ghaenis's fate had shown her how capricious it was. It might allow her another day, a week, a month, but eventually it would strike her down. If it chose to replace her with a more powerful servant, all it had to do was let the power flow after she'd tried to cut it off.

The Aachim had experimented with a number of node-sharing devices before settling on a silver helm, like three-quarters of a globe, whose inside and outside were polished to mirror smoothness. The outside was studded with rubies and garnets which had been set in swirling patterns into perforations in the silver. The inside was plain metal, through which the tips of some of the crystals could be seen, scattered like stars in the evening sky.

Tirior placed the helm on Tiaan's head but it proved too large, for Aachim had bigger heads than old humans. A leather headband was fitted and adjusted until the helm sat perfectly.

Subsequently the crystals were charged, not with the amplimet but via a device the like of which Tiaan had never seen before: a plain cube of black metal whose sides were not the length of Tiaan's forearm. The inside was as black as a pit. The helm was placed within, pushed towards the back wall, and promptly vanished.

It was not, as far as Tiaan could tell, an illusion or stage magician's trick. The helm, though solid metal, was no longer in the box. After a few minutes, a ruby flash came from within. Tirior reached in, her arm now disappearing to the shoulder, and withdrew the helm. The rubies and garnets were lit up, though the glow faded as the helm was brought into the light.

The instant Tirior placed the helm on Tiaan's head, the headache and the dull feelings vanished. Someone handed her the wrapped amplimet. As she unfolded the platinum sheet, thread-like silvery rays streamed out from the crystal in all directions and she saw something impossible: five other cubes were attached to the black box in ways that could not exist. It was a four-dimensional cube: a tesseract.

'I feel dizzy.' Tiaan closed her eyes. Artisans had gone mad trying to see into the fourth dimension. She swayed in the chair and Thyzzea steadied her.

'Is that better?' said Urien, standing over her.

Tiaan rubbed her eyes but the strange image was gone, the black box just a simple box again. 'I .., think so. It'll take time to get used to it. Just give me a few minutes.'

Thyzzea gave her a mug of water and Tiaan drank it in one gulp. Even sitting down, her knees felt shaky. 'I'm ready to try.'

Back in the construct, the amplimet was installed in its socket. Tiaan put the helm on her head and again, just for a few seconds, saw the creeping, impossible shapes of the fourth dimension. As she turned her head, fields swirled and ebbed all over the place, and all were brilliantly clear. It unnerved her — there was too much to take in.

'Time is precious, Artisan,' said Vithis from behind.

She drew power from the nearest field attempting to hold its image while she attempted a second Power flowed from both, and both fields stayed in her mind She looked for a third and took power from it as well, then a fourth and fifth. It was like a miracle.

'It's ready,' Tiaan said.

Tirior gave the signal and the construct crept forwards. Before the rope became taut, the construct following them began to move, then the one after that. Tiaan could see the distortions they made in the field, and now they did not have to be towed. Enough power flowed down the cables for them to propel themselves.

Looking back to the shooter's turret, Tiaan could see the raw emotion on Vithis's face. It was going to work after all.

Progress was slow at first. With so many machines attached by lines to the leading construct, a moment's inattention could damage dozens of them. Nonetheless, by midnight she'd done four trips. Another two hundred and forty constructs had been transported safely to the new field. On each return trip she ferried back supplies brought from the main camp at Gospett.

A day later the work had become routine. The best part of three hundred constructs could be moved in a day. Of the eleven thousand that had come through the gate, about six thousand had come to Snizort, though five hundred had been damaged in battle and must be abandoned. Vithis did this with great reluctance — the Aachim did not care for their constructs to be examined by allies or foes — but could do no more than break the controlling mechanisms to disable them.

Tiaan was too worn out to sit up, much less eat, and the operation would take at least seventeen more days, even if all went perfectly. Despite the helm, she did not see how she was going to survive it.

Withis kept Minis away, for which Tiaan was thankful. He was a problem that had no solution.

The following morning, Thyzzea replaced Vithis in the construct and for ten days all went well. On the morning of the eleventh, Tiaan woke so weak that she could hardly get out of bed. She felt eroded inside. The channelled power seemed to be eating away at her, as it had in Kalissin. She had lost all the weight gained in Nyriandiol, and more.

It made no difference to Vithis. She was carried to the construct and strapped into her seat. Other straps held her upright when she was too weary to do that for herself. Another three hundred constructs were hauled to safety that day, and so it went on, day after, day, until only three hundred or so remained. Most of these belonged to Clan Elienor, left to the last as always.

Despite her exhaustion, Tiaan had forced herself to practise walking in her room every night. After a week she could manage a hundred steps unaided. After two weeks it was a thousand.

Vithis had not mentioned flight again, which bothered her. If he'd dispatched one of the first constructs back to Tirthrax then, travelling day and night, it could have reached there days ago. Malien would reveal the secret and Tiaan would be dispensable. Worse than that: it would be dangerous to allow her to live.