'You think you know better than everyone else,' he said with a sorrowful air, though it seemed just a veneer of manners or custom. These Aachim were angry folk. 'You show us no more loyalty than you did in the past.'

'Stassor is more magnificent than ever,' she observed calmly. 'You've done well for yourselves, without me, as you've made clear many times.'

'For good reason. You don't cleave to your own, Malien.'

'I am Matah,' she reminded him, 'an honour specifically created to free the recipient from such burdens, and permit her to think outside the cube, as it were. Anyway, flight has been discovered, for good or for ill, and you must plan what to do with it.' She glanced at Tiaan. 'Must we quarrel in the yard, forgetting all courtesy to our guest, or will you offer Tiaan her due?'

All this time, the Aachim had given Tiaan not a single glance, but now he turned dark eyes on her, of such singular penetration that Tiaan could not meet his gaze.

'The last time an outsider was admitted to our precincts, it brought about the downfall of a city - beloved Shazmak.'

'And the death of my son,' Malien said pointedly. 'He's gone forever, yet Shazmak endures. We can go back if we choose.'

'To a land infested with lyrinx!'

'They cannot thrive in the high mountains. They are no threat to us, now we have the secret of flight.'

'But they are a threat to the order of this world and we must consider what to do about it. Come inside.'

They followed the seven Aachim down a broad hall into a rectangular room that appeared to be made of glass, though unlike any glass Tiaan had ever seen. The walls glowed like oiled opal, the patterns forever changing.

The Council of Stassor was called the year before last,' said Malien. 'What choices have you made?'

'The situation changes rapidly,' Harjax said, uncomfortable with her directness.

'Meaning you cannot come to a decision. I'm glad you didn't invite me. I could have died of old age before you did anything.'

Harjax grimaced, for to speak so plainly bordered on insult. He indicated a small table around which were distributed a number of oddly shaped chairs, each like a bean opened in the middle and the ends folded out. They sat and refreshments were brought in. Tiaan's chair proved surprisingly comfortable. She took nothing to eat, feeling out of place and unwelcome, but sipped at a mug of clear liquid as thin and clear as water, though more refreshing.

'But when we do reach our decision,' said Harjax, 'it will be the right one. Look what happened before, when we allowed unfettered power to a leader who was not worthy of it.'

'Tensor was a fool, and no one knows that better than I,' said Malien, leaning back. 'I rue every hour that I let him have his way. But that's ancient history. The world that existed when you began your council last year has been forever altered. Should you ever reach your right decision, it will already be irrelevant. And our fellow Aachim, from Aachan-'

'We've met with Vithis's emissaries,' said Harjax. 'We found much to talk about. Much to agree upon.'

'I found much to fear and more to dread,' said Malien. 'Not least the way they abused Tiaan. They forced her to use the amplimet all day and every day for weeks.'

Harjax squirmed in his seat. 'To what purpose?' "To save their fleet of constructs, stalled by the destruction of the node.'

A justifiable end, I would say. And after all,' he gave Tiaan a sideways glance, 'it's not as though she's . . .'

One of us! Have the decency to speak your prejudice plainly.'

It's not as if old humans are our equals.'

'In some respects they're our superiors, but that's not the point. We're all human.'

That's heresy!'

'And the cause of all our problems. I've spent my life trying to bring the peoples of this world together, and little has come of it.'

'Aye, and at the expense of your own kind,' growled Harjax. 'You might have taken back the Mirror of Aachan, yet you did not. You made alliance with old humans, forfeiting our own interests. And look what that led to.'

Malien looked pointedly around the magnificent room. 'Peace and prosperity for us, while old humans are being crushed on the anvil of war.' 'They are not our kind, Matah.' 'We sprang from them in the distant past.' 'That's a lie!' he cried, and the polite veneer was stripped away. 'Old humans are degenerate, not ancestral. Vithis's Aachim are our kind and we must support them!'

'They are the old kind, full of hate, prejudice and rivalry.' Malien spoke more reasonably than before, as if to throw up the contrast between them. 'They still adhere to clans, Harjax, and they see themselves as better than us. They come to take, not to share. To rule, not to meet as equals. They will grind old humans into the muck and then . . .' 'Yes?' he said coldly.

'We'll be next. We abandoned the clans before the Clysm, and we're the better for it. Vithis will bring back rivalry and revenge. He wants to make us tribes again, with himself as the chief. He's a barbarian dressed up as a civilised man.'

'I agree,' said an aged man who hitherto had done nothing but sip from a greatly elongated mug. 'Vithis is like Tensor reincarnated, only without the nobility. These Aachim are almost as primitive as old humans. We should be leading them.' 'Thus, the nub of our problem.' The new speaker was a man who seemed little older than Tiaan herself, a dark, handsome fellow with a square jaw and a nose like the prow of a ship. 'We cannot agree on anything. We'll still be arguing when the last old human is eaten. Only when it is too late will we understand what we have lost. Old humans have made this world safe for us, and we owe them our support.'

'Thank you, Bilfis. What would you do, Sulleye?' said Malien to the smallest of the women beside her.

'Old humans have wrought havoc on this world. To build their clankers, and the other powered devices they rely on utterly, they've razed mountains and fed whole forests into their reeking furnaces. These constructs reduce us to their level. They're an abomination we will long regret. We must abandon all such devices, including the nodes, and go back to the ways of the past.'

'How would we maintain Stassor, or any of our cities, without the Art?' said Harjax.

'By intelligence and hard work,' she snapped.

'The lyrinx would overrun this world all the sooner.'

'They rely on the Art more than you think,' said Bilfis. 'Without it they cannot fly, in which case their wings are a hindrance rather than an advantage.'

'Nor could they flesh-form,' said Tiaan.

Every Aachim stared at her, as if a servant had just spoken up in a king's council.

'Just so,' said Malien, smiling at their discomfiture. 'Neither could they use their spying devices. All they would have is their strength and native wit, which is less advantage than you might suppose, without a civilisation to support it.'

Harjax jerked his head at an aide, who took Tiaan by the elbow. 'Would you come with me, please?'

Tiaan shot up in her chair, thinking they meant to do her mischief, but Malien laid a hand on hers. 'Don't be afraid, Tiaan. My people only wish to discuss matters privately. You won't be harmed.'

Tiaan went with the aide, uneasily. Though she trusted Malien, she'd also heard such assurances before.

Forty-nine.

Nish was standing by the air-floater early the following morning, when Yggur appeared at the front doors. 'Come with me, Cryl-Nish.' He strode across the yard.

Nish had to trot to catch up to him, which he found undignified. He followed the mancer up a set of stone stairs onto the outer wall, which was gravelled and as wide as a road, and down to a corner with a stone guard post, not presently manned, though Nish had seen guards there yesterday.

Yggur turned to face him. 'Tell me about these tears your father found.'

That endless night, and the hideous scene in Jal-Nish's tent, came crashing back as vividly as if Nish were there still.

It unreeled from beginning to end and he could not stop it: Jal-Nish without the mask, the rage against the world. His father thrusting Nish's hands into the box, inside the tears, and that extra dimension it had temporarily brought to his sight, his other senses, even his emotions. And finally, Jal-Nish's alchymical compulsion. Nish opened his mouth but found himself too short of breath to speak. He swayed on his feet, even now feeling the urge to go to his father. The compulsion was painfully strong.

Yggur reached out and steadied him. 'What secret are you hiding for your master?'

The compulsion faded. 'I have no master,' Nish said shakily.

'Another one!' Yggur gave a grim smile. 'It's no wonder the world falls into ruin.'

'I'm not hiding anything, surr. I-' Nish's knees buckled and he slipped through the mancer's fingers, to lie sprawled on the floor.

Yggur crouched beside him. 'What is it, lad? I touched a spell of sorts just then, didn't I?'

'My father put it on me.'

'Why, Artificer? Here, let me help you up. Calm yourself -take your time.'

The memories, or the spell, faded. Nish explained about his part, and Irisis's, in condemning his father to life in a ruined body, and all the rest of it. 'Jal-Nish has hated Irisis ever since, and despised me, and I can't blame him. No man should have had to suffer what he's suffered. I should have let him die.'

'Sometimes there are no right choices,' said Yggur. 'What was it like, when he put your hands into the tears?'

'It's . . , impossible to describe. They were hot yet cold, hard yet yielding, metal yet liquid. They were far more than that, but I can't find the words for it. And then-'

'Yes?'

'Briefly, the touch of the tears heightened my senses. I think it was the tears, rather than the potion he forced me to drink. The moon became dazzlingly bright, and I could see through things that were solid. I saw the lyrinx twisted up and cramped into the rock pinnacles, stone-formed to ambush my father's army.'

'Briefly, you say?'

'By the following day it had faded, although the tears did change me.'

'In what way?'

'I-' Nish gave a shamefaced grimace. 'I used to be obsessed with myself; with achievement, success and being recognised for it. But after touching the tears, I saw things so much more clearly. I saw what the world would be like under tyrants like my father. What it will be like if the scrutator-remain in power.'

'The tears did not change you in that way, lad,' Yggur said softly. 'You simply grew up.'

'I have to fight this tyranny, whatever it costs me, but I'm terribiy, terribly afraid. I'm not a brave man, Lord Yggur.' 'Your companions tell a different story. About this spell - I wonder why it did not take?' 'Perhaps he'd not yet mastered the tears.' 'Let me see.' Yggur put his hands to Nish's temples and closed his eyes. 'Ah, I see it. It's made with a strange, alchymical kind of Art that I don't know much about.' It's still there?' cried Nish. 'Inside me?'

'Just a trace, fortunately. Had you not brought up the bulk of the potion, you'd have become his slave.'

Thanks to Xabbier's quick thinking. Nish wondered where he was now. 'Not for long. I'd have been killed with him.'

But you weren't. And unless the spell is removed, a trace will remain there until you die.'

'But-' said Nish. 'What if someone else compels me?' They could not, unless they had the tears.' That wasn't comforting. 'Can't you remove it?' 'Not without the tears.'

Day after day, Yggur sat at the big table in his workshop, reading or writing in his journals as though nothing had happened. Nish could see how frustrated the scrutator was. After five days of inaction, Flydd went to see Yggur, taking Irisis and Nish with him.

A map of the known world was spread out on the huge tabIe and Yggur was measuring distances on it with a pair of black calipers. He did not look up.

We've got to get moving,' Flydd said abruptly. 'The lyrinx mature quickly. If we don't strike them now, by spring they'll have another army and they'll be unstoppable.'

I have no grievance with the lyrinx,' said Yggur, making a notee in his journal. 'But you agreed to help us,' Flydd spluttered.

'I agreed to give you a refuge for a few days, Scrutator. That doesn't make us bedfellows.' 'But I thought-'

'You aroused my curiosity about the Numinator and the tears, but what I'm doing about that is my own affair. I'm not going to fight your wars for you.'

'You're up to something!' Flydd said furiously. To have power, as Yggur undoubtedly did, and not want to use it, was incomprehensible.

Yggur simply raised his hands in the air. 'Then leave. I didn't ask you to come here, consuming my supplies and disturbing my peace.'

'You don't care about the fate of your own kind.'

'If I were threatened by the lyrinx, would you have come to my aid?'

'That's different,' said Flydd.

'I see. Why don't you go to the Aachim?'

'Our alliance was not a fruitful one,' Flydd said uncomfortably.

'Meaning you've made enemies of your friends and now look to me to fix it for you.'

'Vithis is an unreasonable man, even by your standards,' snapped Flydd. 'Besides, he's withdrawn to the Foshorn, near the southern corner of the Dry Sea-'

'I know where the Foshorn is,' said Yggur. 'I've been there.'

'The Aachim have driven out the people that dwelt there and closed the borders. Vithis isn't going to help us.'

'Then you'll have to abandon Lauralin. Go north across the tropic ocean. You may find a haven in that hemisphere.'

'The lyrinx breed like maggots,' said Flydd. 'In a few generations they'd overrun Lauralin and come after us. Win or lose, the battle must be fought now.'

'You will lose,' said Yggur with such studied indifference that Nish wondered if he was testing their resolve before committing himself.

'When you're the last human left alive, you'll regret that you did nothing for your fellows.'

'I'm immune to emotional blackmail.' Nodding stiffly, Yggur went around the table and out.

'Arrogant swine!' said Flydd as they were walking back to their rooms. 'To have such power, yet refuse to use it.' 'How do you know he still has power?' Nish wondered. 'I don't suppose I do,' Flydd said slowly. I just assumed . . . Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he hides here because his power is failing.'

'But he does live in harmony with the lyrinx,' said Irisis. 'Why should he turn on them on our say-so? It's up to us,' she sighed. 'I suppose it always was.'

'But what can we do?' cried Nish. 'We're exiles cowering in our hidey-hole a hundred leagues from Lauralin. We've got no army, no coin, just a handful of weapons and a decrepit air-floater. We've no friends, no influence, and face instant death if we return to Lauralin. How can we hope to overthrow the scrutators? How can we do anything at all?'

No one spoke. They seemed shocked by the outburst, though Nish had only put into words what they'd all been thinking: they were deluding themselves.