'A pity,' Jal-Nish said indifferently. 'I wanted to see him suffer, first. And you, Cryl-Nish - what do you want?'

Panicky and unable to think clearly, Nish said the first thing that came into his head. 'I want to be free of you, Father. Forever!'

'What?' Jal-Nish looked disconcerted.

'You've ruined my life. Since I was three years old I've slaved to please you, but not once did you praise me or show you cared in any way. Not once did you comfort me, when I was little and had those awful nightmares . . .'

Jal-Nish opened his mouth, beneath the mask. 'I-' 'I haven't finished!' Nish said desperately, and, to his surprise, Jal-Nish allowed him to go on.

'Say it, whatever it is; he said, smiling malevolently.

'I know I've done stupid things, but I've suffered tor them. I've also done brave deeds, and clever ones, and not had a word of acknowledgment from you. That used to hurt me more than you can ever know, but it no longer matters. Do you know why? Because I no longer care! You mean nothing to me. I used to pity Tiaan because she had no father. Now I envy her, because no father at all would be better than one like you.'

Oddly, considering his heartless denunciation of his son, this rejection seemed to strike Jal-Nish to the core, but Nish ploughed on.

'I don't know what you wanted from life, or whether you're happy now, but I know one thing. As a father, you were a miserable failure and I'm happy to go to my death if it means I'll never see you again.'

Jal-Nish lurched backwards into the table and overbalanced. As he fell, the back of his head caught on the edge of the table, flipping the platinum helm off.

Jal-Nish looked up and Nish almost vomited. He well remembered the ruin of his father's face after the lyrinx attack, but that was nothing to what he saw now. The claws had torn three jagged gouges from ear to mouth, under which the flesh had grown back in ugly lumps and depressions. The scars were purple and blistered with pus-filled boils that even after three-quarters of a year had not healed. His left eye was a purple socket filled with bulging veins the size of earthworms, his once proud nose a crusted hole that could have accommodated a lemon. The mouth, a twisted ruin that would no longer close, leaked stringy green saliva with every breath.

Jal-Nish rose, but did not bother with the helmet. He approached his son. Nish tried to back away but Jal-Nish's hand caught his jaw in a crushing grip.

I too had a father, Cryl-Nish, and if you think I'm a bad one, he's the reason for it. He taught me all I know. He hated me because my mother died giving birth to me. He loathed me because I was clever and he was not. He despised me because I was handsome and he was a hideous little weasel.

You remember that, Nish? I was handsome, wasn't I?' His lips contorted in the most nauseating travesty of a smile Nish had ever seen.

Nish swallowed bile, wanting to look away but held fast by fingers as strong as steel. 'You were, Father. I envied you your looks and, yes, your easy charm.'

'He tormented me, Cryl-Nish. Every day for fourteen years he beat me black and blue. Before I was a grown man, I'd suffered more horrors than the soldiers in this army have in all their service. He was a small-minded man who wanted to be great, and failed, and ever after forced me into the mould he could not fill. I hated him and all he stood for, yet he's twenty years in his grave and still I have to drive myself higher, though every success only causes more pain. It would not have been enough for him, so it cannot satisfy me. I must be great.'

'But you are great,' Nish muttered. 'A scrutator, no less. One of the mighty who control the world.'

'It can never be enough until there's nothing left to achieve, because I must have it all.'

'And then?'

Jal-Nish gave another of those ghastly smiles and green crusts flaked off his lower lip. 'There'll come a time when I've finally beaten him. That's what keeps me going, even in this hideous state.' He thrust his face at Nish and Nish recoiled. 'You can't bear to look at me, though it was you who made me this way. I begged you to let me die, Cryl-Nish -remember? After the lyrinx tore me apart I pleaded for death, but you would not give it me. You had to save my life, so I could suffer ever after.'

'I couldn't let you die,' whispered Nish, recalling that horror up on the icy plateau. 'Despite everything, I couldn't. . .'

You made me this way. Jal-Nish thrust one finger into the yellow-green cavity where his nose had been. You and that cur Irisis.'

'But there must be a way, with the Secret Art, to restore you to what you once were.'

'Do you think I haven't sought for it? There is no way. Even with the alchymical power I now have, I can't repair what you did to me.'

'Then what good is seeking more power?'

'Revenge!' hissed Jal-Nish. 'It's the one pleasure I have left.'

'But, Mother-' Nish began, looking anywhere but at that ghastly face.

Jal-Nish caught his son by the shirt and pulled him close. He was ferociously strong. 'Your mother has cast me aside. She always looked down on me; now she can't stand the sight of me. Though I'm scrutator and will soon be elevated to the Council, I'm no more use to her.'

'No!' Nish whispered. 'Not Mother.'

All my life, women have betrayed me. My mother died, abandoning me to the monster. My wife has repudiated me. Irisis humiliated me and performed this butchery on me, from which I've not had a moment without pain since. Tiaan, by her treachery, has torn down everything I worked so hard for. Let me tell you this, Cryl-Nish! When I'm Chief of the Council of Scrutators I'll put them in their place. Women will go where they belong - to the breeding factories.'

'You're a monster/ cried Nish.

Jal-Nish gave him a pus-smeared smile. 'And who created me?'

'I'll hear no more of this.' Nish backed away. 'I'm leaving, Father. I repudiate you. You'll never see me again.'

'You're not going anywhere, Son. Now that you've come back, I see something in you I can use. You're mine and ever will be, and just to make sure-'

Nish leapt for the flap of the tent but Jal-Nish hauled him back. Hypnotised by that face, Nish could not defy him.

Jal-Nish dragged a small rosewood chest out from underneath the table. The timber had a sweet, spicy fragrance, Turning the key, he lifted the lid. 'Bend over the chest!' Nish looked in. The inside of the chest was as black as the void,, and a familiar humming set his teeth on edge. Jal-Nish flipped back a swatch of ebony velvet and the light from beneath was so dazzling that Nish stumbled backwards.

His father took hold of Nish's right hand and pulled it down into the box. It struck something both hot and cold, hard yet yielding, metal yet liquid. Nish cried out and tried to pull away but his hand would not move. Jal-Nish took Nish's left hand, forced it into the box and he felt the same sensations there.

Nish's hands clenched around, or within, those uncanny objects, while surges of force boiled through him. His vision inverted: black became white; colours turned into their oppo-sites. He saw the bones of his father's arm through the flesh. He saw right through the walls of the tent, the iron scales of nearby clankers, the rocks of the cliff face. He saw the world under Jal-Nish's rule: cities burning; people crowded into workhouses worse than the one in the refugee camp, fetters on their ankles; the guards lashing them with whips. He saw everything, and nothing.

Jal-Nish was no longer holding him down. He was standing at the table, holding high a flask that contained a red, fuming liquid and reciting some kind of rhyming spell. Nish tried to get away but his hands were stuck fast.

His father began another rhyme - a series of alchymical spells, Nish assumed. He recognised his name and several other repeated words: servant, slave, mine. Jal-Nish must be casting a spell of control or domination, but Nish, lacking any talent for the Art, could not tell more than that.

His hands grew increasingly painful. Nish resisted until his overstrained mind rebelled and he collapsed face-first into the chest.

Jal-Nish cursed under his breath, pressed Nish's hands more firmly into the globes and began the spell again. The sensation faded. Nish found himself on his knees, bent over the chest. He pulled his hands free. The objects rippled like balls of quicksilver then went solid again, and he understood what they were: the distilled tears created by the destruction of the Snizort node. Jal-Nish had been the man in the air-floater, the one who had taken the tears and left that pit full of smouldering corpses.

'Damnation!' cried Jal-Nish, beginning the spell for the third time. 'Why isn't it taking?' He poured liquids from one flask to a second, then a third. Yellow clouds belched up around him. 'Ah, that's better. Drink this!'

He threw Nish over onto his back and forced the contents of a small glass phial down his throat. It burned all the way.

'What have you done to me?' whispered Nish. His throat had the texture of sandpaper. 'I have woken you, Cryl-Nish!' 'What do you mean? Woken me to what?' 'Not the Art, if that's what you're hoping. You don't have the talent, nor can you acquire it - yet another way that you're less of a man than me.'

'Then what?' Nish screamed, the sound tearing at his tender throat.

'You'll see horrors no one has ever seen before. You'll hear what has previously been unheard. And you'll feel - well, I leave that to you to discover. The gift of the tears is not predictable. But you'll know what it is like to suffer. You will know what it is like to he your father, as you stand beside me for the rest of your life.'

'I have no father,' Nish mumbled.

'You had that opportunity, but you made the wrong choice; you held me to this existence and now I hold you to me. You were right, Son.' The lips writhed as Jal-Nish fought to form the words that had once come so easily to him. 'No father would be better than the one I've become. But I am your father, and ever will be, and nothing you say or do can change that. Be sure that you'll spend your life ruing it for, once the spell sets, you'll have no choice in the matter. You'll serve me all your remaining days.'

nash rose, holding his hands up before his face. They burned like icy fire, yet they were unmarked. The pit of his stomach tingled and he felt that a long-dormant bud inside him had opened. He shuddered to think what the tears had done to him.

'You're a monster, Father. The outside simply reflects what is within you, and I'll bring you down if it takes me all my life.'

'You won't, Cryl-Nish, because you're a blunderer, a failure and a fool. You're not my equal in any respect, and never can be. I often wonder how I came to have a son as unworthy as you, if, indeed, you are my son!' He bellowed the last words so that the whole camp might have heard. 'Lieutenant!'

Xabbier appeared smartly, and from the look in his eyes he'd heard all that had gone on. 'Yes, Scrutator Hlar?'

'Take Cryl-Nish to the punishment cells and lock him in. No one must go near him for four hours, until . . .'

'Yes?' said Xabbier.

'Never mind. Lock him up tight until the morning, Lieutenant.'

Jal-Nish saluted Nish with the platinum mask. An aura, shaped like a horde of jackals, streamed and snapped around him. Shuddering, Nish allowed himself to be led away. The mask snapped back over his father's head.

Part Three: Tesseract.

Twenty-seven.

Those Aachim not engaged in moving constructs, or travelling to the southern camp inside them, were busy on a great memorial to their dead. The bodies had been recovered and buried as soon as the battle was over. In the summer heat they had to be, though it grieved the Aachim deeply to lay their fallen in alien soil.

Tiaan saw little of the construction, apart from a day on which she spent hours hauling stone with the construct, but it showed the importance they placed on the memorial.

She now lived in fear of the amplimet. Though essential for her survival, as much as for the Aachim's, Ghaenis's fate had shown her how capricious it was. It might allow her another day, a week, a month, but eventually it would strike her down. If it chose to replace her with a more powerful servant, all it had to do was let the power flow after she'd tried to cut it off.

The Aachim had experimented with a number of node-sharing devices before settling on a silver helm, like three-quarters of a globe, whose inside and outside were polished to mirror smoothness. The outside was studded with rubies and garnets which had been set in swirling patterns into perforations in the silver. The inside was plain metal, through which the tips of some of the crystals could be seen, scattered like stars in the evening sky.

Tirior placed the helm on Tiaan's head but it proved too large, for Aachim had bigger heads than old humans. A leather headband was fitted and adjusted until the helm sat perfectly.

Subsequently the crystals were charged, not with the amplimet but via a device the like of which Tiaan had never seen before: a plain cube of black metal whose sides were not the length of Tiaan's forearm. The inside was as black as a pit. The helm was placed within, pushed towards the back wall, and promptly vanished.

It was not, as far as Tiaan could tell, an illusion or stage magician's trick. The helm, though solid metal, was no longer in the box. After a few minutes, a ruby flash came from within. Tirior reached in, her arm now disappearing to the shoulder, and withdrew the helm. The rubies and garnets were lit up, though the glow faded as the helm was brought into the light.

The instant Tirior placed the helm on Tiaan's head, the headache and the dull feelings vanished. Someone handed her the wrapped amplimet. As she unfolded the platinum sheet, thread-like silvery rays streamed out from the crystal in all directions and she saw something impossible: five other cubes were attached to the black box in ways that could not exist. It was a four-dimensional cube: a tesseract.

'I feel dizzy.' Tiaan closed her eyes. Artisans had gone mad trying to see into the fourth dimension. She swayed in the chair and Thyzzea steadied her.

'Is that better?' said Urien, standing over her.

Tiaan rubbed her eyes but the strange image was gone, the black box just a simple box again. 'I .., think so. It'll take time to get used to it. Just give me a few minutes.'

Thyzzea gave her a mug of water and Tiaan drank it in one gulp. Even sitting down, her knees felt shaky. 'I'm ready to try.'

Back in the construct, the amplimet was installed in its socket. Tiaan put the helm on her head and again, just for a few seconds, saw the creeping, impossible shapes of the fourth dimension. As she turned her head, fields swirled and ebbed all over the place, and all were brilliantly clear. It unnerved her - there was too much to take in.

'Time is precious, Artisan,' said Vithis from behind.

She drew power from the nearest field attempting to hold its image while she attempted a second Power flowed from both, and both fields stayed in her mind She looked for a third and took power from it as well, then a fourth and fifth. It was like a miracle.

'It's ready,' Tiaan said.

Tirior gave the signal and the construct crept forwards. Before the rope became taut, the construct following them began to move, then the one after that. Tiaan could see the distortions they made in the field, and now they did not have to be towed. Enough power flowed down the cables for them to propel themselves.

Looking back to the shooter's turret, Tiaan could see the raw emotion on Vithis's face. It was going to work after all.

Progress was slow at first. With so many machines attached by lines to the leading construct, a moment's inattention could damage dozens of them. Nonetheless, by midnight she'd done four trips. Another two hundred and forty constructs had been transported safely to the new field. On each return trip she ferried back supplies brought from the main camp at Gospett.

A day later the work had become routine. The best part of three hundred constructs could be moved in a day. Of the eleven thousand that had come through the gate, about six thousand had come to Snizort, though five hundred had been damaged in battle and must be abandoned. Vithis did this with great reluctance - the Aachim did not care for their constructs to be examined by allies or foes - but could do no more than break the controlling mechanisms to disable them.

Tiaan was too worn out to sit up, much less eat, and the operation would take at least seventeen more days, even if all went perfectly. Despite the helm, she did not see how she was going to survive it.

Withis kept Minis away, for which Tiaan was thankful. He was a problem that had no solution.

The following morning, Thyzzea replaced Vithis in the construct and for ten days all went well. On the morning of the eleventh, Tiaan woke so weak that she could hardly get out of bed. She felt eroded inside. The channelled power seemed to be eating away at her, as it had in Kalissin. She had lost all the weight gained in Nyriandiol, and more.

It made no difference to Vithis. She was carried to the construct and strapped into her seat. Other straps held her upright when she was too weary to do that for herself. Another three hundred constructs were hauled to safety that day, and so it went on, day after, day, until only three hundred or so remained. Most of these belonged to Clan Elienor, left to the last as always.

Despite her exhaustion, Tiaan had forced herself to practise walking in her room every night. After a week she could manage a hundred steps unaided. After two weeks it was a thousand.

Vithis had not mentioned flight again, which bothered her. If he'd dispatched one of the first constructs back to Tirthrax then, travelling day and night, it could have reached there days ago. Malien would reveal the secret and Tiaan would be dispensable. Worse than that: it would be dangerous to allow her to live.

It was time to put her plan into effect. Tiaan had learned much about the Art over the past weeks. Normally, in any of the Secret Arts, power was used as sparingly as possible. That was, she mused, like an archer only being allowed to shoot one arrow a week. After drawing on multiple fields for sixteen hours a day, Tiaan had more experience than most mancers would have gained in a lifetime.

Unfortunately, she lacked the background and knowledge to make sense of it. She had tried to fit it into the geomantic framework Gilhaelith had begun to teach her in Nyriandiol, but he had not taken her far enough. That did not matter here, where there were any number of Aachim mancers to guide her, and healers to pick her up when she fell. But on her own it would be a different matter.

She had to act now, ready or not. Once the last construct was moved, they would make sure she never had contact with the amplimet again.

Tiaan was woken by a commotion outside. The hanging door was thrust open and someone tall entered, carrying a lantern.

'Tiaan!' he whispered urgently.

It was Minis, and she was wearing only a flimsy sleeping gown. Her heart began to crash around in her chest. Tiaan pulled the covers up to her neck.

'What do you want, Minis?' she said coldly.

He fell to his knees. "To say how much I have wronged you, and to beg for your forgiveness. No more.'

She turned her face to the wall of the tent. 'You led me on. You made promises and refused to keep them. From the very beginning you used me, Minis. Everything you said to me was a lie. The Aachim must have been building constructs for a decade before you contacted me, so innocently. So accidentally'.

He reached for her. She thrust both hands under the covers and he stopped dead.

'I did break my promise, Tiaan, and I've never stopped regretting it. But I was used as much as you were.'