"Alchymist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Ian)

Thirteen

Someone grunted. The bushes rustled and footsteps came in their direction.

'Hey! Any sign of the others, Plazzo?' the fellow continued. 'Ungghr.’

A body fell into the water, making a loud splash. Nish was hauled up by the arms.

'What a useless fellow you are,' said Flydd amiably. 'Wipe the mud off your face — you're giving us a bad name.'

Nish blew the muck out of his nostrils and followed. 'There's another of them somewhere.'

'He's already floating downriver,' Flydd said laconically, tearing leaves into strips as he walked. It made a zipping sound, like cloth being ripped, and Nish smelt a pungent odour that resembled mustard oil.

'Where's Ullii?'

'She's here. Being quiet!

They continued on a track winding through scrub. Ullii fell in beside Nish and took his hand. He made to pull away, knowing how badly he stank, but she clung to him.

'Where are we headed?' said Nish, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. The intimacy he'd had with her months ago at Tirthrax was long gone. Evidently her feelings were unchanged. He felt, as he had briefly when they'd met in the Aachim camp weeks ago, that she expected something of him. Nish could not work out what it was, and was too exhausted to think about it. He could have slept standing up.

'I'll tell you when we get there.' Flydd was still tearing leaves. Ullii was carrying them too — Nish could smell them on her.

't' s the red mustard bush; Flydd said quietly, 'since I know you're going to ask. Ullii found it for me. Puts dogs off the scent, hopefully.'

'But not people?'

'I hardly think so.'

The sky had clouded over. Judging by an occasional glimpse of the moon, they now seemed to be heading north. Nish wondered why, but didn't ask.

Long before daybreak he smelt tar and knew they were passing Snizort again, further east. Flydd continued north, bypassing the now abandoned command hill, before turning onto a north-westerly heading across undulating country covered in crunchy, withered grass.

After several hours of weary trudging, it began to get light. The cloud had passed and it would be another clear, hot day. They climbed a rocky mound, not big enough to be called a hill. Nish sank into the shade afforded by a boulder shaped like a two-humped buffalo, closed his eyes and began to doze off. Flydd scanned the scene, keeping to the cover. 'I don't see anyone behind us.'

Nish grunted. He'd eaten his bread long ago and was so hungry he could have bitten off his arm.

'Better fix your boot,' said Flydd. . 'With what?' Nish snapped.

Flydd tossed him the whip and knife. Nish unbraided several strips of leather, poked holes in the boot with the tip of the knife and began to weave the strips through.

Flydd picked shreds of cloth from around the tear in his left thigh, careful not to touch it with his dirty hands. The edges looked as though they'd been burned.

'What happened there?' said Nish.

Flydd waved the question away.

'Do you want me to bandage that?'

'Touch it with those filthy paws and I'm likely to get gangrene.'

Ullii squatted beside Flydd, staring anxiously at the wound. She was wearing a tent-like smock made from a piece of green cloth fastened at the throat, and baggy trousers. She knotted a mask out of a strip torn from the hem of the smock, and covered her eyes, nose and ears. Horizontal slits over her eyes allowed her to see, not that she needed to.

'You're hurting, Xervish, Ullii said, eyes blinking behind the mask as the light grew.

'Somewhat, Ullii.' Flydd touched her affectionately on the shoulder. 'I'll attend to it as soon as we find water.’

She packed surplus cloth into her nostrils and snuggled up to him, which Nish found extraordinary. Ullii was so wary of people. Gazing up into Flydd's eyes, she said, 'I forgive you, Xervish.'

Nish had no idea what she was talking about. Ullii turned to him then, as if challenging him, and her stare was so intense that he had to look away. What did she want? More of the intimacy they'd shared at Tirthrax? It felt like half a lifetime ago and, even though he cared about Ullii, Nish could not turn his feelings on like a tap.

She tossed her head, leapt up and stalked into the scrub. 'What was that about?' said Nish.

Flydd, bound up in his own troubles, answered the question he thought Nish had asked. 'A long time ago I promised to help find her twin brother, Mylii. They were separated when she was four and she hasn't heard from him since.'

'You mentioned him the other day,' said Nish.

'But I didn't tell you I'd lied to her in Snizort, at the node-drainer. Ullii was being uncooperative, so I told her Muss had found Mylii and was bringing him back. Unfortunately, she discovered that I'd lied.'

'Well, it's all over now.'

'I hope so,' said Flydd, 'though I've a feeling it isn't. Go and have a look around, will you?'

Nish was behind a tree on the other side of the mound when he caught a whiff of something burning, or at least extremely overheated. It was a-strange smell, nothing like burning wood or leaves, or flesh of human or lyrinx. The odour was like roasted rock. He called Flydd over. Ullii came out of the bushes, scowling.

'What's that?' Nish said, sniffing.

Unusually, Ullii answered. 'Iron tears.'

Flydd gave her a keen glance. The rising sun carved him out in profile, a black cut-out in a bronze wall. 'You've been here before, haven't you, Ullii?'

She adjusted her mask over her eyes, moving a little closer to the scrutator. 'Came with Irisis ages ago, looking for the node-drainer.'

'Is it the node?' Nish couldn't see anything unusual.

'What's left of it,' said Flydd. 'Let's take a look, shall we?'

'Shouldn't we try to get away while we can?'

'I've got to check something first.' Flydd scanned the landscape. There was nothing to be seen, though ten thousand soldiers could have hidden in any of the valleys still in shadow, or behind any of the stone-crowned hills. 'We've time enough. They haven't found our trail yet. Over there.' He indicated the hill to their left.

They wound up the hill, which was no more than a grassy undulation. From the top, not two hundred paces away, a black hole in the ground emitted wisps of steam.

Ullii stopped abruptly, her small head darting this way and that.

'What is it?' said Flydd. 'What do you see, Ullii?'

'A hole; she said.

'Of course there's a hole,' Nish muttered.

'Don't be a fool, boy! Ullii?'

'Hole in my lattice, Xervish,' said Ullii. 'A pair of holes.'

'A pair?' said Flydd. 'Are you afraid?'

'No,' said Ullii. 'They're empty now.'

Flydd's feet left pale trails in the dewy grass. Nish followed in silence, unable to make sense of it. Why was Flydd squandering their lead for the exploded remains of a node?

Shortly they began to encounter patches of burnt grass, each containing slaggy aggregations of melted rock which must have been blown out of the hole. The patches coalesced, the blobs of slag grew larger until the ground was knee-deep in them. The bigger ones were still hot enough to warm Nish's ankles as he wove between them.

The hole formed a perfect oval about forty spans wide by sixty long. Its rim was as sharp as cheese cut with a knife and crusted with exhalations of red, yellow and brown sulphur. Within, the land had subsided in a series of concentric oval rings, like a squashed spyglass. The outside ring, the highest, bore a hide of withered grass. On the next, the grass had been carbonised in place. The soil of the remaining rings was burnt bare. The centre of the hole was obscured by rising steam.

There were nine of these oval rings, each about the width of a span, the drop to the next being roughly the same distance. They formed a series of giant steps down to the centre, though the shimmering air obscured what lay below. The humidity was choking.

'You're not planning to go down there?' said Nish, eyeing the hole anxiously.

Flydd chuckled mirthlessly. 'Indeed we are.'

He lowered himself onto the first ring and held his arms up. Without hesitation Ullii slipped into them. Flydd could get her to do things that no one else could. The pair turned their backs and went to the edge.

Nish was reluctant to follow but Flydd was not a man for excuses. Going backwards over the first edge, he felt his chest tighten, his pulse quicken.

Flydd and Ullii were well below him as Nish climbed down to the next level. The sides of the oval rings, as smooth as polished stone, resembled a series of pistons one inside the other. At the ninth ring it was stifling, steamy. Waves of heat pulsed up from an oval trench five or six spans deep and, when the steam clouds parted, its base glowed red. Within the trench, a cylinder of rock rose from the centre, listing to one side. The once-smooth stone walls had run like toffee.

On its flat top, like a pair of teardrops on a pedestal, sat two shining globes of liquid metal, bright as quicksilver. They were shaped like drops of water, though each was the size of a soup bowl. A faint humming sound came from them. Ullii had taken her mask off and was staring at the globes as if entranced.

'My, oh my,' said Flydd. 'Can you hear the song of the tears?'

'What are they?' Nish sat near the edge, not too close, praying that Flydd was not going to go after them.

'The distilled tears of the node,' said Flydd.

'I don't understand.'

'No power is ever completely destroyed, Nish. There's always some residuum — and it's ever more complex, warped and strange. I wonder …Can this be an accident, or were they created?'

'Flydd?'

'According to myth, or rumour, the tears are the essence of the node, purified of all base elements by the blast that destroys it. They're believed to be made of the purest substance in the world, and desired by mancers more than any other. But no mancer has ever obtained so much as a speck of that matter, much less a complete tear. They represent the value of a continent.' Flydd gazed at the tears with greedy eyes.

'And you want them?' said Nish. 'Are they magic?'

'Empty,' Ullii interjected.

'Not at the moment,' said the scrutator. 'But their substance, which has been called nihilium, takes the print of the Art more readily than any other form of matter, and binds it much more tightly. Oh, I want them — to make sure no one else can have them.'

'How are you going to get across?'

Flydd gauged the distances. The oval trench was red hot, making it impossible to climb down and up the other side. The stone pedestal seemed cooler, though it still radiated such heat that they could not have gone within a couple of spans of it, even could they have reached that far. Besides, it was well out of reach, its top being three spans below them, and eight or nine out from where they stood.

'Even if we had a rope or a grappling iron we couldn't collect them,' Flydd muttered.

'And I dare say they're heavy?'

Flydd thought for a moment. 'If they have weight as we know it, they would be heavier than lead; they could have the weight of gold, or even platinum. But then again, they may weigh virtually nothing …Let's go up.' Flydd gave the tears one last, lingering look, then turned to the wall.

Nish boosted him up, then Ullii. Flydd reached down a hand to him.

'What are you going to do?' Nish wondered as they reached the top.

'I don't know. The time is all wrong.'

They repaired to the shade of a grove of trees some ten minutes' walk away. Flydd filled the overseer's pannikin from a tiny spring, kindled a smokeless fire under it with dry twigs, carefully washed his hands then lay back with his eyes closed.

'If the field is dead,' said Nish, 'how come you were able to make that blast back there, to save Ullii?' It had been preying on his mind ever since.

Flydd looked up irritably. 'Can you be quiet? I'm trying to think.'

Nish stared at the scrutator as if unable to make him out. Finally Flydd snapped. 'Damn and blast you, Nish! Go away.'

Nish rose abruptly but Flydd said, 'Oh, you might as well sit down. I've lost my train of thought anyway.' He peeled back his torn and bloody pants leg to reveal the jagged, blistered gash in his thigh. 'I had a charged crystal embedded in my leg a long time ago, for just such an emergency.'

'You had it all that time?' Nish exclaimed. 'Why didn't you use it to save yourself?'

'It was for emergencies.' snapped Flydd.

And being enslaved didn't count?' Nish found that incomprehensible.

'My life wasn't in danger, apart from being bored to death by you, I wanted to remain with the army for as long as possible, so I'd know what Jal-Nish was up to. You do know that yoar father plans to lead an attack on the lyrinx? An unbelievable folly that can only end one way.'.’

'I've heard the slaves gossiping about it,' said Nish. Now I'm out of contact, and that's bad.'

'What about the crystal in your leg?'

'Once used, it can't be reused.'

'Why didn't you sew two crystals into yourself? Or twenty, for that matter?'

Flydd sprang up, his face thunderous. 'Don't you ever think before opening your mouth? Nothing comes without a price, Artificer, and putting powerful crystals inside you exacts a hefty one. Discharging one —’ He shook his head.

It was a nasty tear, the length of Nish's little finger and burned at the edges. 'That must be painful,' Nish observed.

'You use words the way a blacksmith cuts flowers! Scrutators are trained to overcome pain, and I've had more practice than most, but this hurts like bloody blazes.' Tearing off the sleeve of his shirt, Flydd ripped it into strips and poked them under the boiling water. After a minute or two he fished them out, waved them in the air to cool them, then bound them around the injury.

'That'll do.' Turning away from the pit, Flydd began to limp towards a hill some half a league to the east.

'Where are we going?' said Nish.

'We can't recover the tears on our own. I've got to find help.'

It took the best part of an hour to reach the hill, which was mounded like a breast and topped with a cliffed nipple of gullied grey stone. Flydd panted his way up, emerging on a patch of flat rock some thirty paces across, bisected by a cleft from which a solitary tree sprouted. They sat in its meagre shade while he got his breath back.

'You'll have noticed that this hill is quite distinctive,' said the scrutator. 'Irisis and Fyn-Mah were to rendezvous here with the air-floater, if they got out of Snizort alive.'

'What were they doing there?'

'None of your business.'

'Did you know you were going to be taken prisoner?'

'Ghorr needed a scapegoat and there was nothing I could do about it without —’ He broke off, staring back towards the node. 'But of course, if Irisis and Fyn-Mah did escape, they would have been here days ago. Spread out. Look for a sign.'

It took the best part of an hour to find it, an ornamental dagger partly embedded in the ground, as if dropped from a height. Rudely scratched on the blade was: Yes, no, 3.

'What can that mean?' said Nish.

'It means Fyn-Mah found what she went into Snizort to find, that she was hunted and had to flee, and that she's gone to the third place I mentioned previously.'

'That being?'

'None of your business.'

Nish sighed. In this mood, Flydd was impossible to deal with. 'Then we have to walk,' he remarked gloomily. Despite its dangers, air-floating was the most pleasant of all means of travelling. 'Is it far away?'

The reply was pure Flydd. 'Further than the people hunting us.'

They were climbing down the cleft when something winked in the sun to the south. 'That's an air-floater!' hissed Nish. 'Could it be Irisis coming back for us?'

Flydd squinted at the object, which was moving low to the ground along a line of trees that marked the course of a creek. 'She wouldn't dare, in daylight.' The machine began to zigzag back and forth as if following something. 'What can they be doing?'

'Dogs!' whispered Ullii. She'd been so quiet since leaving the node crater that Nish had practically forgotten she was there.

'They've found our tracks,' said Flydd.

Nish hefted a knobbly stick. 'We'd better get ready to fight.’

'Stay down! We can't fight that many people.' A leathery tree grew horizontally out of the cleft before bending to, the vertical. Flydd pulled himself up into the curve and peered around the trunk. Nish crouched between two rocks splotched with bright yellow lichen.

The air-floater lifted and ran directly towards the node crater. Flydd groaned, the tortured sound two trees make when rubbed together in a storm. 'Let's pray no one recognises what's down there.'

The machine settled. Nine figures went into the pit: seven people and two dogs. The pilot and one other person could be seen moving about on the air-floater. Nish twisted his fingers, together. After some minutes it lifted, moved over the depression, bucking in the updraught, and drifted down.

'That's a dangerous manoeuvre,' said Flydd. 'If the walls of the gasbag touch something hot, they're dead.'

Time passed. They could see nothing but the top of the airbag. 'What are they doing?' said Nish.

'A really good pilot could bring it down right over the pedestal. Someone could simply pick up the tears.'

'They're taking a long time,' Nish said later.

'Be quiet!'

The air-floater crept out of the crater and hovered in the updraught, its bow pointing at their hiding place. 'Whoever it is,' said Flydd in a curiously flat voice, 'they have the tears.'

The air-floater lurched, turned away and began to drift, low to the ground, towards the army camp in the distance.

'We'd better make sure/ Flydd said.

They scrambled down the gully. 'I dare say the tears are more important than we are,' said Nish hopefully.

'They are, but the scrutators won't give us up, Nish.'

They could see the smoke well before they reached the hole. It was yellow-brown with threads of black, and smelled like burning hair and meat.

'I can't see anything.' Flydd was peering over the edge. 'I'll have to climb down.'

'Do you mind if I stay here?' said Nish. The stench was making him sick.

'Good idea. Keep watch. You too, Ullii. Ullii?'

She was hanging back, holding her noseplugs in. 'This is a terrible place,' she whispered.

'You don't have to come near.' Flydd eased his injured leg over the side.

Nish watched him go down. A surge of greasy brown fumes obscured Flydd as he reached the fourth oval. He bent double, coughing. Nish moved away from the edge. When he returned, after the smoke had thinned, Flydd was not to be seen.

'Is he all right?' he said to Ullii.

She gagged and doubled over, unable to speak. Nish circumnavigated the depression, seeking a better vantage point, but did not find one. After five or ten minutes, Flydd began to labour up again.

Nish helped him out onto the ground. The skin below Flydd's eyes had gone the purple of a day-old bruise and it took him quite a while to focus.

'Are the tears gone?' said Nish.

'Yes.'

'Who could it have been?'

'Ghorr is my guess, though it could have been any of the scrutators. Can you tell, Ullii?'

'No,' she whispered. 'Can't tell anything. Can't see anything.' In times of stress she sometimes lost her lattice.

'But whoever did take it,' said Flydd, 'they've made sure no one will ever know.'

'What do you mean?' said Nish.

'The trench at the bottom is clotted with bodies. Six soldiers and the air-floater's chart-maker. And the dogs. In an hour, the witnesses will be ash.'

All but us,' said Nish. 'And the pilot.'

'He needs her to get back to camp, but as soon as the air-floater lands, she's dead. He'll call it a seizure.'

And the soldiers?'

'He'll say I ambushed them and blasted the soldiers into nothingness with another crystal. No one will be able to prove otherwise.'

'If he knew we were watching, our lives could be measured in minutes, said Nish.

"He knows we've been there,' said Flydd. 'The air-floater tracked us to the node. Once the tears are safely hidden, he'll come after us.'

'Then we'd better get moving. Which way, surr?'

'North.'

They set off, keeping to the lowest ground. Ullii whimpered and moved close to Nish for comfort, though he was too preoccupied to notice. After some minutes she flounced away and took Flydd's hand. Flydd put his arm around her as he walked. She was red in the face and struggling to keep up, which Nish found surprising. When he'd last been with Ullii, she'd climbed the slopes of Tirthrax more easily than he had.

'Was this an accident?' Flydd mused as they rested among a pile of boulders a couple of hours later, 'Or was it planned from the beginning?'

'What do you mean?' said Nish.

'What if the device Ghorr gave me was designed to be faulty, so as to destroy the node and create the tears?'

'How could that be, surr? You told me it was tested, independently.'

'I don't know. Scrutator Klarm would not be easily fooled, but neither can I believe that the destruction of the node, and the creation of the tears, was an accident. But if it was planned, why didn't the perpetrator come to the node straight away?'

'Maybe he was delayed by the battle,' said Nish. 'Or thought that the tears would form at the node-drainer.'

'I hadn't considered that,' Flydd said appreciatively. 'And perhaps, until today, it was too hot to get near, too steamy to see if the tears were there.'

'Then why not put a guard on it?'

'That would announce that there was something special in the crater. Whoever he is, he wouldn't want anyone to know about the tears.'

'Not even the other scrutators?'

'Especially not the other scrutators …' Flydd toyed with a piece of gravel, deep in thought. 'There's more here than the eye can see, Nish.'

'I don't understand,' said Nish.

'Neither do I, but it bothers me that someone knows far more about the Art than any of us. Why were the tears made?'

"To further one man's ambition.'

'Or one woman's. Four of the scrutators are women, remember? It doesn't do to make assumptions. But what ambition could — ?'

Breaking off, he began to pace, glancing from Nish to a silent Ullii, who sat by herself, arms crossed over her belly, rocking back and forth.

'What is it, surr?'

Flydd jerked his head. Nish rose and followed him. 'Surely you trust Ullii, surr?'

'She doesn't need to know.'

'Do 1?'

'A half-baked mooncalf like you?' Flydd said fiercely. 'Certainly not, but you're all I've got. Breathe a syllable of what I'm about to tell you and you're a dead man.'

There wasn't a trace of levity in his tone. Nish swallowed.

'I'm wondering,' the scrutator went on, 'if this might not be an attempt upon a higher power:

'I didn't know there was a higher power than the scrutators.'

Flydd hesitated, as if having second thoughts. 'It's worth my head to speak about this, and yours, but since we're both outlaws in peril of our lives, and I desperately need a sounding board, I'll make an exception. It's the best kept secret of all. The scrutators make out that they run the world, but the Numinator pulls their strings, and has since the Council was formed.'

'Clawers,' called Ullii. 'Coming fast!'

Her eyes were covered again, her face was turned to the north-west. Nish couldn't see anything, but Ullii did not make mistakes. In a few minutes three specks appeared, flying high, directly towards the fuming node crater, which was now a good two-thirds of a league from their hiding place.

'What can they want?' said Nish.

They've worked out what really happened to the node/ said Flydd, climbing the jumbled boulders to get a better look. 'But they're too late.'

Two lyrinx flew down the fuming hole while a third circled, on watch. Within a minute, the two reappeared, rising high into the sky and flying in widening circles before heading in the direction of the human army.

'They won't find them,' said Flydd. 'The tears will be hidden by now. I wonder what they'll do?'

The lyrinx disappeared into the haze. 'Who is this Numinator?' said Nish.

'If anyone knows, they're not saying. Some scrutators think it stands for "The Numinous One", though anyone who styles himself as a divine power must be supremely arrogant. I can only say this: more than a century ago, soon after the war had become worldwide and the Council of Santhenar, as it then was, was struggling to form a united front against the enemy, the power calling itself the Numinator took command. There was a bitter struggle and many mancers died before the Numinator defeated them. The survivors became the Council of Scrutators. The Numinator, he or she, set down the rules by which the Council was to run the world, but afterwards took no part in day-to-day affairs. From time to time the scrutators have chafed under this regime, and even tried to rebel, but were always taught a brutal lesson.'

'And you were one of them?' asked Nish.

'That was long before my time. My crime was simply to inquire into matters that weren't my business. The scrutators taught me my lesson to avoid being punished themselves. They taught me well.'

Nish digested that. 'So you think the Council deliberately created these tears, so as to take on the Numinator?'

'Not the Council. One individual, who may want to control the Council, first!

'But why now, when the war is going so badly, and division could be fatal?'

'I don't know. It may have been decades in the planning. And there's no saying that the person who created the tears is the one who ended up with them.'

'Are we going to find out?' said Nish.

'Don't be a bloody fool, boy. Look at me!' Xervish Flydd held out his arms. 'See the scars, the warped and twisted bones, the very flesh scraped away. 1 was a handsome man when I was young, Nish, but not after the scrutators had finished with me. I should have died then. They did their best to break me, but were ordered to let me live. I was to be a lesson to the other scrutators, not to pry into what wasn't their business. I've often wished they had killed me; I've not had a day without pain in thirty years. But here I am, a living example. Take heed, Nish. Some secrets are meant to be kept.'

Despite his words, Nish could see the resolve in Flydd's eyes — he was going to find out. And what then?

'So why the breeding factories? Why rewrite the Histories? Why-?'

'Good questions for which there are no answers.'

'But—'

'Come on!' Flydd said roughly. 'As soon as the tears are hidden, he'll be after us. He can't afford to let us live.'