Ian Irvine - Alchymist

It occurred to Tiaan that Minis might have come the other night in search of absolution. He wanted to please everybody and to have everyone like him. Minis jumped every time he heard his foster-father's voice.

She walked around and around her room, treading softly so she would not be heard. Her legs were now strong enough for an escape attempt, though she hadn't worked out how. Every Aachim kept an eye on her. Thyzzea and her family watched Tiaan especially closely, since her flight would mean their punishment.

To flee, she must have command of a construct, and that meant getting Vithis out of the way. Could she play on his obsession with his clan? If some of them had survived the gate, he would surely drop everything else to find them.

A plan began to germinate. She spent half the night working it out.

Thyzzea was woken in the early hours of the morning by moans from Tiaan's room. She slipped in through the open flap. 'What's the matter?' she said softly.

Tiaan jerked up in bed, the bedclothes falling all around her. 'I saw them!' she said, staring into an infinite distance.

The girl took her hand. 'Who did you see, Tiaan?'

"They were crying out, as in torment,' Tiaan whispered.

'What are you talking about?'

'It's my fault they were lost.' A tear ran down Tiaan's face. Her eyes closed and she sank onto the pillow, fast asleep.

Thyzzea went out. 'Just a bad dream,' she said to her mother Twice more that night the Aachim were disturbed by similar dreams, though Tiaan seemed not to be aware of them. However, when Thyzzea came to wake her at dawn, Tiaan would not rouse.

Thyzzea shook her by the shoulder. 'Tiaan, wake. Vithis will be here soon.'

Tiaan hid her face and began to wail and groan. 'All my fault. All my fault.'

Abruptly Thyzzea was thrust out of the way. 'What is your fault, Artisan?' grated Vithis.

Tiaan groaned, tossed her head from side to side and squeezed a tear out from under one eyelid. The Aachim's hand caught her shoulder.

'I saw them,' she whispered. 'Just as I saw Minis, after I first used the crystal. I saw lost Inthis—'

'My clan!' He screwed up his face in anguish. 'What did you see?'

In a single movement he heaved her out of bed and held her high. Tiaan almost gave it away then, for her borrowed nightgown was revealing. She had to force herself not to react, as if she was still asleep.

'They were crying out for help.' Opening her eyes wide like a sleepwalker, Tiaan looked wildly about. Her voice rose to a shrill cry. 'I saw them, standing by a broken construct.'

'Lord Vithis,' said Zea, who had come in quietly. 'This is not seemly.'

Vithis put Tiaan down. 'You saw Inthis? Where, Tiaan?'

'There was a man who looked like you,' she improvised. Last night, after working her plan out, Tiaan had dreamed it, over and over. Her dreams were especially intense after using the amplimet and now she could hardly distinguish what was dream and what was fiction.

'Like me?'

'Not as tall, and younger. There was no grey in his hair but he had your face.' An easy guess.

'My cousin, Nythis! Did you see anyone else?'

The desperate hope in his eyes almost undid her How could she work such a shabby deception on him? Though Vithis had used her, that did not make it right to give him hope where there was none. But if she did not, she was doomed.

'I did see others,' she said faintly, 'though not so clearly as the man. There were three children …No, four, and two young women, both tall and black haired. Or were there three? It's fading.' She used the commonest images of Aachim. Hope must do the rest, and make them into his lost loved ones.

'Gia and Mien, surely,' he said with an exhalation of breath. 'Is that all, Artisan? Just those few?'

She screwed up her eyes as if trying to see what was far awav. 'Other constructs lay in the distance — some were broken, others whole. There may have been more people; I couldn't see clearly.'

'Where, Artisan?' He reached for her, as though to shake her, but thought better of it.

An image from the dream came to her. 'It was no place I've ever seen before.'

'What did it look like?' he gritted.

Tiaan had not thought her plan through that far but another memory, or dream, sprang into her mind. All the land was white. White as snow, though I don't think it was snow.'

'Ice?' said Vithis.

'It could have been ice …There were no trees, no animals. The sky was so dark it was almost purple.'

'A purple sky? There are such places in the void,' said Vithis. 'But it is endless. They might be anywhere.'

He twisted his long fingers, then turned to Thyzzea, who stood in the doorway behind her mother. 'Call Urien; and find Larniz the Mapmaker, at once.'

Thyzzea glanced at Zea, who nodded. She hurried away. What else, Artisan?' said Vithis. 'You haven't given me enough.’

Tiaan didn't want to make up anything else. It would be too easy to be trapped by an inconsistency. She couldn't remember much about the time when the gate had opened, though she recalled the feelings very well; the cries, the torment, the loss. Wait; there had been something, just before Vithis had taken control of the gate. Clan Inthis, panicking, had ignored his pleas to stay back. A host of constructs had roared up the spiralling path to the gate, and she recalled that their smooth metal had a bluish tint. None of the constructs she had seen since had that colour. They were all black.

Tiaan hesitated. If she was wrong, it would ruin all the work she'd done so far. She gave a little shudder, opened her eyes and looked Vithis full in the face.

'What do you remember, Artisan?'

'The constructs were different to these ones. The metal was blue.'

His smoky brown eyes lit up. 'Are you sure? Only Clan Inthis knows the secret of working the blue metal.'

'They were blue,' she said. 'All of them. That's all I remember.' She closed her eyes again, as exhausted as if she had not slept at all.

Thyzzea came running in. 'I've sent word to find the map-maker, Lord Vithis.'

'Where's Urien? I need her counsel.'

'She has ridden to the main camp near Gospett.'

He scowled. 'I knew nothing of this. When did she go?'

'Last night. She planned to take a construct from Gospett and meet those returning from Tirthrax. Word came yesterday afternoon that they were on their way, I'm told.'

Tiaan went rigid under the covers. She could only hope the seed she had planted in Vithis would germinate before Urien got back.

'Why did she conceal this from me?' he said fretfully. 'How far away are they?'

'Near a place called saludith, south-east of here' said Thyzzea. 'Two days, if they travel hard'

'How may I help you, Lord Vithis?' The speaker was an extremely burly man, thick of arm and leg, with a bald head and a short, dense beard quite as black as coal.

The artisan has had a vision — at least, I hope it's a vision, and not an hallucination — about lost First Clan. She saw people in blue metal constructs, in a barren land that was all white, with a purple sky. Not covered in snow, but possibly ice. That's all you saw, Tiaan?'

'Yes,' she said faintly.

Where could they be, Mapmaker?'

'If not for the sky I would have said somewhere on this world, in the frigid south, or the doubtless equally frozen north. But a purple sky? Can it be the void?'

'Surely you know your trade, Mapmaker!' Vithis said imperiously.

'None of us has ever ventured into the void, Lord Vithis.'

'Then consult the archives!'

'Such records would be from the ancient past. We don't have them.'

'Why not?'

'Our libraries had to be left behind on Aachan, including most of what we know about the void.'

'So you can't tell where this place is,' Vithis said furiously.