The machine leapt. The golden grass fled by. Missiles flashed overhead; others struck the sides. She pulled her head below the level of the sides, gritted her teeth and hung on. Time seemed to slow to nothing. The distance between the two constructs shrank. Vithis's arm moved, as if in slow motion. He seemed to be shouting at the other constructs, though she could hear only the roaring of the wind in her ears. There was nothing in the world but the two of them, and neither was going to give way. She wondered what the impact would look like from outside. At least it would be quick. His teeth were bared, the look in his eyes maniacal. He was not going to give way. Minis must be dead. Dead! She gave the construct more power. The distance closed swiftly. She braced herself for the impact that was going to reduce her to a splatter on the wall.

At the last conceivable instant, the other construct translocated sideways. Had she not accelerated, Tiaan would have missed it completely and been away, but the flared side of her machine struck Vithis's a glancing blow, thrusting it side-on into a tree so that Vithis was tossed out. Had she killed him too? Her own construct careered the other way, out of control.

She fought the levers, narrowly avoiding the trunk of a giant tree, darted between two others almost as big, and went flying into another clearing as large as the first.

Straightening up, she dared to look over her shoulder. There was no one behind her. Taking her bearings from the angle of the sun, she headed west as fast as the trees would allow her. Surely it could not be far to the sea now. She prayed that it was beyond the next patch of forest, for she could not do that again. She was limp with relief, though her heart was going like a threshing machine. She managed to make it into the forest before any of the constructs emerged from the other side, but Tiaan took no comfort from that. They knew which direction she'd gone, and would be heading to high points, to flash signals to other squads. Within the hour they could have spotters on every peak. Tiaan slowed, trying to slide smoothly between the trees. Her arm had developed a twitch and she almost went head-on into one. She was coming down from the rush too soon. The chase was nowhere near over.

The Sea of Thurkad could not be more than a league away - ten or fifteen minutes' travel at this speed. But a lot could happen in ten minutes. She kept on, trying to master herself. She was still trying to control her twitching arm when the construct shot out of forest into scrub somewhat higher than her head. The bushes had small leaves tipped with sharp points or hard grey needles. She roared along a bare strip of sand that ran up the side of an elongated ridge. As she rose over the top, Tiaan saw a series of parallel ridges, forming waving lines from south to north - sand dunes - and caught a whiff of the salt sea.

She could not see it from the top of the dune. The scrub cut off her view in every direction, and her passage too, unless she forced a way though it, which must make such a racket that the Aachim would hear her from half a league distant. Tiaan went back to the edge of the forest, turned north, then changed her mind and headed south.

The forest thinned in this direction. She climbed another long, shallow dune and from the top saw across the band of scrub land to the sea, and Meldorin beyond that. There were no constructs in sight. Tiaan allowed herself to hope. Temporary refuge was only five minutes away, if she could find a clear passage there.

And then she saw one - a series of scalloped blow-outs along the dunes, where the wind had torn away the scrub to reveal bare yellow sand which ran almost all the way to the water. A barrier of scrub blocked the last few hundred paces. She would have to crash through, trusting to speed and surprise to reach the coast before the Aachim could cut her off, and pray it did no fatal damage to the machine.

Taking a deep breath, she checked in all directions. Nothing. Tiaan moved on, steadily but slowly, so as to keep the whine of the construct as low as possible. She took advantage of every scrap of concealment, always travelling below the ridge of the dune and, where possible, on the shadowed side.

Before the scrub barrier she stopped, rinsed her dry mouth with what remained in her flask, wiped sweaty palms down her legs and cut off the flow of power. Silence fell, broken only by the creaking of metal as it came to rest, a gentle sighing of the breeze in the scrub and, more distantly, one bird chirruping to another. This was it. She gauged the density of the scrub The trunks were thinner than her wrist, but wiry. They could still do damage. Tiaan accelerated to a moderate pace, about the speed of a trotting horse. Too slow and resistance would bring her to a dead stop, too fast and she would not be able to avoid a large obstacle, like a trunk big enough to smash in the front of the construct.

The construct hit the wall of scrub, tearing through the bushes and sending a rain of branches and leaves into her face. She flipped the hatch down and continued. The racket was unbelievable; like being under a metal dome in a hail-storm. She could see nothing out the front but a hurricane of leaves and swirling bark. The construct struck something hard, evidently the trunk of a small tree. She heard the snap, then it went sliding by. Surely there could not be far to go now.

The machine burst through and there was nothing in front of her but bare sand, a dune that rose steadily, obscuring her view of the sea. Tiaan popped the hatch, wiped leaves out of the binnacle and dried her sweaty hands. So close. She looked around carefully. Still nothing. She eased the construct ahead, still at trotting pace, in case there was a cliff beyond the crest. Topping the dune, she saw a long gentle slope running down to a rocky shore. The wind blew strongly here and the sea was flecked with whitecaps. To her right the shore ran straight for half a league, just sand and dark patches of jumbled rock. To her left a black headland loomed, too steep and rocky for the construct to climb. She saw no sign of the enemy. It scarcely seemed possible, but Tiaan did not question her good fortune.

She kept going at a steady pace towards the shore. Scanning the rock masses for the safest passage to the water, she saw nothing odd about the curved black rocks to her left, nor those on her right. She saw nothing amiss until a net rose up from the sand and the construct drove straight into it.

It gave before her then began to pull taut. The webs of another net whipped against the back and over the top, enclosing the construct. Tiaan panicked, but instinct moved the controls. The construct lurched forwards but the ropes snapped tight, slowing her machine until it was barely moving. Now it was not moving at all. Now they began to pull it backwards.

Tiaan shot a glance over her shoulder. The huge nets were attached to three constructs on her left, two on her right. She could draw more power than they could, but not five times as much. Poured directly into this machine, it would either destroy it, or her. She took as much as she dared. Her backwards progress halted. She inched forward a few spans, stalled, and was dragged back. Now the net began to tighten as they reeled it in from the ends. As soon as she was immobilised, they would swarm all over her.

What if she turned and went for the join of the net? Unfortunately, its two leaves overlapped above her. Whichever way she went, it would hold her. And it was too strong to break; thus far she had not torn a single strand.

There was one last hope, though she had only seconds to do it. With the helm, and the skills the Aachim had taught her, she could draw power more precisely than ever before. If she could locate the spot from which the other machines were drawing power, she might be able to snatch that power from under their noses. It would only stop them for a few seconds, but it might just be enough. The problem was, how to tell which machine was drawing power from which part of the field.

Maybe it didn't matter. She could distinguish these five from the many distant constructs. Tiaan identified all the sources and locked onto the first, the second, then each of the others She did not draw power yet, but allowed the Aachim to pull her backwards. Let them think she was weakening. This must be hurting them, too.

Tiaan sensed an irregularity in one of the power draws. The field there was fluttering. She pounced, taking all the power she could. The tension on the right-hand side of the rope eased and her construct jerked forward. Sensing another flutter, she drew power from there as well. Another jerk, and there came a rending noise behind her and the net gave. It was now tangled around one of the three constructs. Back to her right it was still fixed, though one construct had lost power and was being dragged sideways. The other could not hold her by itself. Tiaan was now approaching the water. A long way to her right, hordes of machines were racing along the water's edge, flinging clouds of sand and mist into the air. She took power jerkily, trying to break free of the other two constructs. One rolled onto its side, jammed against a rock ledge and the ropes broke. The other was still attached and, no matter how she tried, Tiaan could not get rid of it. If she didn't, they would have her. She could now see hundreds of constructs. They were coming from her left as well, through the scrub near the black headland.

Her only chance was straight ahead. Tiaan gave it everything she had. Her construct leapt across the sand and onto the water, dragging the other machine. It struck a boulder in the surf, was hurled high and came crashing down, nose first, to plunge beneath the water. The sea hissed like a kettle, boiled over and, as the cold water came in contact with the hot innards of the construct, it exploded in all directions. Pieces of flaming construct hurtled skywards and, to her horror, several bodies. The net came away. Her construct soared like a skipping stone, came down hard and bounced, spinning sideways. Tiaan hung on grimly as the whirling force tried to throw her out. The machine hit the water on its base and skipped again.

Constructs were converging on her from all directions. Hundreds more - how had she not seen them? - had formed into a curving barrier further across the sea. There was just one small gap, to the south. She darted through and raced south down the Sea of Thurkad.

She was not going to make it across, for the seaward constructs were tracking her all the way. She could not get through them to the dubious security of Meldorin. Even if she did, its shore here was edged with impassable cliffs.

That first impact with the water must have damaged something, for Tiaan's construct now had no more speed than her pursuers. She curved back towards the Lauralin shore. Ahead, the Karama Malama, hung with banners of mist, was an endless expanse of slate grey. Just a narrow, scrubby peninsula now separated her from it.

She rounded the tip, looking east and west. More constructs were coming along the south-facing shore and down out of the scrub. There were thousands of them. She could only go one way. She turned due south, out into the centre of the Sea of Mists. Let them follow her there, if they dared.

The Aachim did follow, a great host of them, for an hour and more. At the end of that time they began to fall back, one by one, as the separation from the node became too great to sustain their motion. Soon there were only two left, then one Finally the last construct turned back. She was alone with her bleeding conscience on the empty sea.

Tiaan looked for another node, not knowing if there was one. Some seas were barren of them. If she could not find a node, any sudden failure of the fading field would sink her. Tiaan was no longer sure that she cared, but she did find another. It was nearly as distant as the first, with barely enough power in it to move the construct. She took some from each and continued.

Thirty-nine.

A week or more after his arrival in Oellyll, when Gilhaelith was trudging the tunnels in a vain attempt to regain his strength, he heard a number of lyrinx engaged in furious argument up ahead. He eased forward and peered around the corner. He was looking into an excavated chamber shaped like a cloverleaf, its roof supported by columns of fused stone. Two lyrinx stood at the far side, in one of the lobes of the room, before a crowd of twenty or more.

'This is our future on Santhenar,' urged one of the two out the front, 'and we must take it.' She was small with transparent unarmoured skin and magnificent wings that quivered as she spoke, casting rainbow reflections around the room. 'Now that we know, we cannot stay like this,' she said passionately.

Know what? Gilhaelith thought, sliding across the tunnel into a shadowed aperture where he could see but not be seen.

'Neither can we re-order the grains of time, Liett,' said the other, a muscular female, twice the size of the first. Her skin armour was scarred and battered as if from a lifetime of fighting though she was not old. 'No amount of flesh-forming can change what we are.'

'You fool - of course we can change! We must.' 'How dare you speak that way to me! You can't even take your place in battle - you have no armour.' 'I don't need armour,' Liett said furiously, 'and I'm just as good as you are. My work has saved many lives, and taken many of the enemy's.'

'You can't even skin-speak.' The big female's armour flickered a display of brilliant reds and yellows - a sneer at Liett's lack. You should have been drowned at birth.'

'How dare you!' Liett shook her wings at the other. 'Your kind came from the monstrosities we had to flesh-form in the womb, to survive in the pitiless void.'

'I am true lyrinx,' said the muscular female, 'and this is my nature.'

'You're has-beens. You're wrong for this world and must submit to amendment!

Amendment? Gilhaelith peered around the corner. Were they planning to flesh-form themselves anew, to better suit Santhenar?

The other lyrinx rose onto her toe claws, towering over Liett and extending finger claws.as long and sharp as daggers. 'You speak blasphemy! Take it back or suffer the consequences.'

Liett lowered her wings, though not in submission. 'I'm sorry, Inyll. I put it badly. Let me explain. I once thought as you do, but Matriarch has opened my eyes. We've become creatures designed for just one thing - perpetual war! We're prisoners in our own armour.'

Inyll tore the soft shale underfoot with her toe claws. 'War is our existence.'

'But don't you yearn for peace, and the chance to live our lives without fear?'

'What do I want with-peace? I am a warrior from a line of warriors. The line of battle is my life.' 'But surely for your children -?'

'My children yearn to do their duty, not change their nature to suit some selfish whim.' Inyll used the word as if it was obscene, which it was. To the lyrinx, placing oneself ahead of the group was the greatest evil of all.

'Ah,' said Liett, 'but we must change for the best of all reasons - to ensure our survival.'

'We're winning the war as we are. There's no need to change.'

'In so winning, we could be sowing the seeds of our ruin. I've been among humans, Inyll,' said Liett softly, carefully, and I used to hate and despise them too. I wanted to kill them all. But now I envy them, for the meanest of humans has something that we lost so long ago we cannot even remember it. Where is our culture? Where are our arts and sciences? We have none. In the void we rid ourselves of everything not essential to survival. In doing so, we cast away all that made us unique. We became machines.'

Liett raised her voice, threw out her arms and addressed the group. 'Listen to me, my people. Unless you want to go back to the void, our future lies on this world. We must transform ourselves so that we can embrace it. Creatures like me, which you see as deformed, half-born, are the future of the lyrinx. Yet even we must renew -'

'I'll hear no more of this . . , this sedition'.' Inyll cracked her wings and threw herself at Liett who, lacking armour, was at a severe disadvantage. She was brave, though. She bared her claws and stood up to her opponent, ducking one blow that could have taken her head off and just managing to sidestep another.

'Enough!' roared Gyrull, who had been standing behind a pillar out of sight of Gilhaelith. 'Inyll?'

The larger female drew back, bowing with ill grace. Liett, my daughter' said Gyrull sternly, Liett bowed to her mother, and to Inyll, flashing dark looks from beneath her heavy brows. Possessed of an aggressive nature and a powerful sense of her own rightness, she found difficult to defer to anyone.

'I have fostered this debate,' said Gyrull to the group, 'for it is clear to me, as matriarch, that we must change. In the void we gave up our culture, our humanity and, yea, our very identity, in our desperation to survive. It was necessary, but we have come to lament it. Think about what has been said here today. We'll meet again tomorrow.'

'To change now would be to warp our very souls,' said Inyll. I can't do it and I won't.' She stalked out, head held high, crying over her shoulder, 'Don't try to convince me, for I will never relent.'

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.

Gilhaelith turned away then spun back. It had just been his imagination, though the creature was shaped rather like the sentinel outside his room. The zygnadr must have been modelled on this ancient fossil. According to the Principle of Similarity, one of the primary laws of the Art, every specimen of this fossil could be linked to the zygnadr, in which case the whole of Oellyll might be spying on him. Was there nowhere he could go, in light or in darkness, where they could not monitor what he was doing? But then, did it matter any more?

Gilhaelith's stomach spasmed. His life had been out of his control for so long that it was killing him.

Gilhaelith was sitting in a large dining hall, picking at the unpalatable green sludge in his bowl and brooding about his decline into helplessness. Gyrull had promised to loan him a dozen human prisoners, some of them skilled crafters of metal, wood and stone, as soon as he was well enough to go to Alcifer. The others would cook, clean and assist him with the rehabilitation of a suitable workplace. The matriarch had returned his geomantic globe and other devices, though it would be weeks before he had the strength to use them. His physical recovery had proved painful, slow and incomplete.

The matriarch had allowed him to go wherever in Oellyll he wished, which suggested that she did not plan to release him. He'd set out to learn all he could about the city and was pleased to discover that the lyrinx did no flesh-forming here. Gilhaelith had few fears, but those creeping monstrosities inspired a particular horror.

There was a commotion outside and a band of travel-stained lyrinx burst in, led by a small, wingless male. Gyrull, who was studying a parchment, set it down with a glad cry. Liett, eating gruel from a wooden bowl the size of a bucket, dropped it on the floor. Her iridescent wings snapped out, two spans on either side, then she bounded across the room and threw herself at the wingless male. The impact knocked him to the floor, whereupon she sat on his chest and began pumelling him with her fists. He tried to catch hold of her wrists but she was too quick for him.

The other lyrinx were laughing, an extraordinary sight.

What was going on? Even Gyrull was beaming. 'Thlapp!' she said at last.

Liett got up, helping the young male to his feet and linking her arm sinuously along his. He was smiling too. 'Welcome, Ryll!' said Gyrull. 'We were afraid you'd been killed in the siege.'

'There were times,' Ryll said, 'when we were struggling to cross the sea in a boat no bigger than a human outhouse, that I wished I had been. But we survived even the dreadful waters.

He came to her with lowered head, a sign of deference, but she lifted his chin, speaking warmly to him in a dialect Gilhaelith did not recognise. Ryll's skin showed a cheerful, flickering pattern of yellows and blues. Finally he bowed and went out, Liett still attached to his arm.

Later that day Gyrull came to Gilhaelith's room with the young male close behind her.

'This is Ryll; she said, 'one of my most skilled young patterners.'

'I know you,' said Gilhaelith, trying to recall where he'd seen Ryll's face before.

'I fetched you to Tiaan, in the patterning room in Snizort,' Ryll answered coldly. 'She thought you cared for her, but all you wanted was her crystal.'

Gilhaelith shrugged. He wasn't going to explain himself to an alien. 'You speak as though she's your friend! The emphasis made that into an absurdity.

'Tiaan acted more than honourably to me,' said Ryll, 'and I deeply regretted having to use her to aid the war. In other circumstances we would have been friends.' 'What happened to her?' said Gilhaelith. In Nyriandiol, he'd begun to care about her in a way that had disturbed him, for it had meant losing control of a part of his life. To care at all was truly unusual - normally his feelings for other people were no more than efficiency required. People got in the way, made unreasonable demands, and therefore had to be controlled at all times. Abandoning Tiaan had been the easiest solution to his uncomfortable loss of control, but now he regretted it. He'd lost the chance to have an apprentice who would have complemented him perfectly. He'd also lost - what? The possibility of a friend? The chance of intimacy, both intellectual and - though he shied violently away from the recurring thought - physical.