Ian Irvine - Alchymist

The remainder of the lyrinx followed, arguing among themselves, leaving just Liett and her mother in the cloverleaf chamber.

Liett started after them but the matriarch laid a hand on her shoulder. 'Leave it for a while, my child.'

'But I'm right!' said Liett in a passion. 'Why won't they listen?'

'Their attitudes have been frozen by thousands of years of adversity, and all that time your kind has never been good enough. Until now, reverts, half-borns such as you and Ryll, have been a blight on our line.'

'But they're just designed for battle,' said Liett. 'It leaves nothing for any other kind of life. We're handicapped, Mother. We may win the war — it looks as though we will — only to find that humanity has transformed its whole society again, and come up with a weapon we can find no defence against. Humans are infinitely flexible, so we must be the same.'

'Or else,' the matriarch said provocatively, 'we must wipe every living human from the face of the world.'

'I used to think that way,' said Liett, 'but after working with their females in the patterners in Snizort, I came to see them as people, not just food animals. We must embrace the future before the war is over, Mother, and we reverts are the best equipped to do it.'

'You may be right, though it will take much to convince Inyll and her many followers.'

'Why don't you talk to them? They would follow you anywhere.'

'My time is coming to an end and I can't lead them where I cannot go myself. A new young leader is required for a bold new direction.'

'You could order them to obey.'

'Liett, Liett,' said Gyrull. 'You have much to learn, and many to sway, if you're to be chosen matriarch after me.'

'But I've worked so hard, at every task you've given me. I've done well —’

'At most. I recall a number of reprimands.'

Liett bit her lip.

Cyrull continued. 'You are intelligent, my daughter, a brilliant flesh-former and patterner, and your mancing talent is of the highest order. You have many of the qualities necessary to lead our people into the future, different qualities from those that I required. But Liett, you're too impetuous. You can't direct people to obey as though you know better than everyone else — even if you do. You must learn to persuade, to cajole, to lead! She turned and saw Gilhaelith in the shadows of the tunnel.

'Begone, Tetrarch! You have no place here. Liett, would you escort Gilhaelith back to his quarters? We'll talk more about this tonight.'

Gilhaelith returned to his room, thoughtfully. By the sound of it, the lyrinx were on the verge of a momentous transformation. If they did find the courage to make the leap, how would that change the balance? And could it have anything to do with what they'd found in the Great Seep?

He wondered if mathemancy might give him a clue. He began to calculate a series of fourth powers, a preparatory exercise before beginning the divination, but as soon as he finished the first calculation, the number resonated wrongly. This horror was far greater than his previous failure, for Gilhaelith prided himself on his utter mastery of numbers. He never made a mistake. Never! He did the calculation again.

Worst yet — he got a different answer and it was also wrong. Gilhaelith sank to his knees and pounded the floor in anguish, though cold resolve overpowered the impulse. This could not be happening; not to him. It was just another problem and he'd solve it as he'd solved every other difficulty in his adult life, with sheer, unconquerable will. Standing up to his full height, he took a series of deep breaths, ignoring the persistent gripe in his belly. I can do it. I must! Selecting a different number, 127, he raised it through its powers — 16,129; 2,048,383; 260,144,614. No, that couldn't be right. The last digit had to be odd, not even. About to try again, he discovered that the calculation had faded from his mind. Worse, though it was a simple operation, he'd forgotten how to repeat it. He was lost!

What if his other abilities were failing as well? If he could not complete his great work soon, he never would, and would die having achieved nothing. Achievement was all he'd ever had. Without it his existence had been meaningless.

Gilhaelith spent the next three days on his stretcher, refusing all food, just lying there with his eyes closed, raging against his fate and searching feverishly for a way out of it. He could not be beaten this easily. He had to know what was wrong with him.

After much labour he devised a series of tests to probe the workings of his mind. The results were conclusive. In escaping from the tar, the phantom crystal he'd created had drawn too much power and literally cooked one tiny segment of his brain. Small parts of his intellect had been lost forever, though other aspects might, with diligent mental exercise, be recovered. But that was not the real problem.

The explosion of the node had burst the phantom crystal into fragments that remained within his subconscious, doing more damage. Each time he used power, part of it leaked from the fragments and made the damage worse. Eventually it would progress beyond the point of recovery.

There was only one solution. As soon as his health recovered sufficiently, he'd have to use his Arts to locate and unmake every fragment. Not the tiniest shard could be missed. If he could do that, he would at least have the chance to retain most of his remaining intellect.

There was one more problem. Using his Arts in that way would require drawing a lot of power, and that risked destroying the faculties he was trying to save.

The following morning, when Gilhaelith went for his walk he discovered a sentinel, or zygnadr, sitting in the corridor outside his room. It was a weird, twisted object that looked grown though not alive, and was nothing like the mushroomshaped sentinels he'd seen in Snizort. This one, knee-high, was shaped like a ball wrenched into a spiral. Its surface looked vaguely organic, like the patterners in Snizort, and bore traces of a crablike shell and segmented legs. As he passed what appeared to be compound eyes rotated on nubby stalks to follow his movement. It did not hinder him to be kept going. He turned randomly right and left until he reached an area he was not familiar with. Oellyll comprised a maze of shafts containing lifts operated by ropes, declines that spiralled down in loops and whorls of varying diameters, and tunnels that ran in seemingly random directions. Often they followed particular layers in the rock. Some were broad thoroughfares, others barely shoulder width, or so low that they could only be navigated on hands and knees.

After half an hour of trudging, punctuated by several rest stops, he entered a decline that sloped gently down, lit at intervals by lanterns. Seeing no one to forbid him he headed along it. Partway down, he encountered a great shear zone where the upper rocks had ground over the lower. Below it the strata were crammed with fossils of every kind: the remains of little, creeping creatures; bones large and small; shells; rat-like skulls as well as feathery leaves like the fronds of ferns. Few of the fossils resembled animals that Gilhaelith had seen before, and some were oddities indeed. He crouched next to the lantern, studying the remains. Until now, he'd paid little attention to such relics of the past, and perhaps, for a geomancer, that had been a mistake. Gilhaelith stood up, rubbing an ache in the middle of his back, then trudged down to the next lantern. The fossils here were similar, though each kind bore subtle and curious differences to the ones above. At the lantern after that, which illuminated a lower layer of rock, they were subtly different again, and so it went, all the way down.

One particular fossil, a creature like a crab curled into a twisted ball, was especially common. It had big compound eyes on short stalks, and it was his fancy that they followed him as he moved.