Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (15 page)

B
y the time a drizzling morning broke against Tiaan’s solitary window, the dormitory was in uproar and she could no longer distinguish between being awake and dreaming. A nurse checked her symptoms and called the healer, who shouted for the apothek. Between them they decided that Tiaan had gone mad and were about to put her in a straitjacket when Overseer Gi-Had came running.

‘What the blazes are you doing?’ He hurled them out of the way.

‘It’s crystal fever,’ pronounced Healer Tul-Kin gloomily. He reeked of parsnip brandy. ‘Her mind’s broken and will never recover. Might as well send her to the breeding factory.’

‘In a straitjacket?’

The healer shrugged. ‘It only goes to her waist. The business can still be done.’

‘My arse! We can’t do without her. Find out what’s wrong and
fix it
!’

They took Tiaan to the infirmary, where a nurse bathed her face and forehead, and fed her tea and barley broth. The waking nightmares continued until noon, when she suddenly sat up, saying, ‘What am I doing here?’

She remembered the mad episodes, but only as dreams that were rapidly fading. In an hour or so the details were gone. All that remained was the young man on the balcony and a world exploding. He
really
cared about her. She knew he did. It
was
more than a dream. He had been searching for her all this time. She had to find out who he was.

They let her go back to her workroom in the mid-afternoon. The prentices gathered round, delighted that she had recovered. They liked Tiaan, even if they weren’t her friends.

Irisis stood in the background, her face unreadable. Tiaan vaguely remembered the artisan’s face at the door, the pleasure her rival could not entirely conceal. She wondered about that. The whole episode was so strange, and becoming more unreal every second, that she could find no sense in it. Had it been crystal fever? She could not bring herself to believe it. It did not fit the pattern she’d been taught. But then, those with the fever could never be convinced that they had it.

Tiaan sent Gol to fetch the globe, crystal and helm from her room and got back to work. While she was waiting for him to return, old Joeyn came in, covered in dust from the mine. On seeing her, he beamed from ear to ear.

‘I was afraid,’ he said when the prentices had gone back to their benches. ‘Such rumours I heard! I was preparing to break down the doors and carry you away.’

Tiaan was so touched that tears sprang to her eyes. ‘You would condemn yourself to save me?’ She embraced him.

‘Life has already condemned me. What do I care how I die? But you have so much to live for, Tiaan. So much to give; and receive!’

She felt quite overcome. Gol came running with her globe and helm. ‘Did you bring the headache balm?’ she asked the boy.

‘You didn’t ask me to. Shall I get it?’

‘Never mind. Thank you, Gol. I’d like you to empty the baskets around the prentices’ benches.’

The lad raced out. Joeyn hefted the wire globe in his scarred fingers. ‘I’d better go. Take care, Tiaan. I’m afraid for you.’

‘I’ll be all right. I’ve just been working too hard.’

‘There’s more to it than that. There’s malice behind this, Tiaan, and we both know where it’s coming from.’ He looked over his shoulder. Irisis, at her bench, gave him a glare of cold ferocity. ‘If you’re ever in trouble, no matter what it is,
come to me
.’

He was gone. Overwhelmed by all the work she had to do, Tiaan bent to her globe again. She felt awful, hot and cold at once, as if she had a bad dose of the flu. It was withdrawal from her ruined pliance and there was only one thing to be done about it – work herself so hard that there was no room for anything else. But what if it
was
crystal fever? Overwork was just the way to bring it back, permanently. Tiaan tried to put that out of mind. She had to prove herself to Gi-Had. Tomorrow might be too late. She needed a breakthrough.

As Tiaan was puzzling over the problem, a few lines from Nunar’s book,
The Mancer’s Art
, came to her mind.
The process may generate a shifting aura about the crystal powering the controller
…
A nearby sensitive might be able to detect this aura, though in normal use it is expected to be insignificant
.

What had Nunar meant by
normal use
? Surely she’d had in mind small devices that used small amounts of power. At the time, more than ninety years ago, no one had conceived of such mechanical monsters as clankers, or the immense amount of power they would use. To completely empty the field around the node at Minnien the power drain must have been immense, and such power would create an enormous aura. That must be what that shadowy lyrinx had been doing, using some kind of device to pick up the aura of a controller from far away. Yes, that was why clankers could no longer move in secret! It was all connected.

Somehow the hedrons had to be shielded. What did Nunar have to say about that? Going back to her room, Tiaan went through the book, but learned nothing. Nunar had not foreseen the rapid development of controllers, much less that such things would be used by ordinary people instead of mancers, who had their own ways of protecting their work from the prying mind. Controllers had a fatal flaw: their aura – obvious in hindsight. Putting the book back in its hiding place, she returned to the workshop.

The problem was to prevent the hedron leaking an aura that could be sensed, while at the same time allowing it to trickle power to the controller. She tried various coatings – tar, wax, clay, paper, leather – but none had any effect.

Perhaps metal was the answer. Having a sheet of beaten copper to hand, Tiaan wrapped the hedron in it, wondering if it would work at all. If the metal blocked the aura it might stop the hedron drawing on the field as well. However, the hedron worked perfectly, and of course it would. Power was not drawn from the field through the material world, but via a sub-ethyric pathway. That was the very basis of mancing as set out in Nunar’s
Special Theory
.

She encountered another problem. The copper sheet stopped the aura but it also prevented power flowing from hedron to controller. Tiaan folded the copper back so that it was not touching the metal connectors. Now the signal came through, but the aura leaked as well.

She tried silver foil instead of copper. That was better, because the silver was softer, but she still could not stop the aura leaking. Tiaan fixed the controller-arm stubs onto the hedron facets with dabs of hot pitch. The arms worked as well as before; maybe better. What about gold leaf? Gold was more malleable than silver. Perhaps she could beat the layers together to a tight seal.

Going to the old crafter’s workshop she unlocked the door of the storeroom and took a small bead of gold from a bottle. Tiaan beat it out until it would have covered a bound book. Holding it up to the light, she checked for holes. None.

She carefully wrapped the hedron, with its pitch-covered connectors, in gold leaf. After tapping it down until there was not the least sign of join or crinkle, she tested it again. Just a trace of aura leaked from around one connector. After fixing that, the hedron was undetectable.

Covering the entire object in warmed pitch, being careful that it was not too warm, she smoothed it down with a spatula and made sure she got rid of all the air bubbles. Finally she pressed her personal seal all over the soft pitch. No one could tamper with the coating now without it being obvious. Nor could anyone expose the hedron to heat or sunlight without it being detected. She had solved both problems at once.

When the pitch had set she tested the controller, which worked perfectly. There was not a trace of aura. The problem
was
solved. She wrote up her journal, then a report to Gi-Had, describing exactly what she had done, and why.

Putting the report in her pocket, she yawned. Her head felt awful. Time to catch up on the sleep she’d missed last night. Time to dream about the young man. That brought a smile to her face. Tiaan set the controller to keep working overnight, to make sure it did not run down as the others had, locked the door and went to bed.

As Tiaan lay on her bed, waiting for sleep that would not come, the headache grew worse. She was thirsty but too tired to trot down the hall and fill her jug. Instead she rubbed a double dose of balm on her forehead and worked it in with her fingertips. It did not seem to help. The pain throbbed away, beating time to her heartbeat.

Slathering more on for good measure she sat up, listening to the wind blowing rain against her window. It was a cold night – much colder than any this autumn. The winter blizzards could not be far away.

She fell back on the pillow, sliding instantly into sleep. The dreams began at once: more intense, more prolonged, more terrible. A whole world was exploding, twenty thousand volcanoes erupting at once. The air was thick with ash, dust and fumes that made the lungs ooze yellow foam, like a snail crawling across a bed of lime. Burning clouds of ash, so hot that it was almost molten, rolled down the mountainsides, obliterating fields, forests and villages, entombing them in smoking mounds.

The young man stood on the balcony, screaming for someone to come to the aid of his world. No one came, and finally he bent his head and wept. The heat dried the tears before they touched his cheeks. He watched the flow grinding toward him.

In the darkest part of the night Tiaan’s door opened. A figure entered, closed the door and lit the candle by the bed. The room was frigid but Tiaan lay naked on top of the covers, bathed in sweat.

Putting on a rubber glove, the figure scooped out the contents of the jar of balm and rubbed it all over Tiaan – face, hands, breasts, belly, thighs, buttocks, back. Tiaan kicked once or twice then went still. When every speck of skin was gleaming with unguent, the intruder left the room as silently as he or she had come.

Not long afterwards the dreams resumed. Nothing remained of Tiaan’s logical mind to keep them at bay. Plunging off a precipice into a pool of lava, she began to scream aloud. Four hours later she was still screaming. And eight hours after that she was trying to, though she had no voice left. Her throat was a raw, red wound. When she opened her mouth, blood dribbled out. At midnight she finally ceased. Her cries rang inside her skull for hours more until reason fled. Her mouth was wide open, and her eyes, but nothing registered.

Irisis had been watching Tiaan for days and, after spying on her latest experiment, went to bed thoughtfully. Woken in the night by the artisan’s screams, she went down to see what the matter was. She stood in the background as the healers talked. Clearly Tiaan was mad with crystal fever. Irisis knew that her chance had come.

Using a master key, Irisis entered Tiaan’s cubicle. The journal told Irisis all she needed to know. She cut out the last page, destroyed it and took the completed controller, as well as another two as yet unfinished. In the workshop she found all the materials she needed. Locking the door, Irisis prepared to work for as long as it took.

Gi-Had had been to see Tiaan five times. He was not satisfied that she had gone mad. Crystal fever was not uncommon among artisans, but no one from this manufactory had had it in twenty years. He sat with the healer, the nurses, and even brought back the old healer, Ruzia, who had retired a decade ago.

‘She’s quite insane,’ Healer Tul-Kin said. His words were slurred, for he had been drinking all day. ‘If she does recover, she’ll never be an artisan again. Not one you can rely on.’

Gi-Had turned to the old healer. She was nearly blind and her head rolled from side to side, but her mind was still keen. ‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ she said in a reedy voice. ‘I don’t see any hope. Once their minds go in this way, they seldom recover.’

‘Curse you all to hell!’ Gi-Had cried. ‘I can’t do without her.’

‘You’ll have to,’ said Ruzia.

They debated the matter for another hour, and finally Gi-Had was swayed. If Tiaan was no use here, she must go where she could still contribute in some way.

At that moment Irisis reappeared and showed him how she had brilliantly solved the problem of the faulty controllers. He examined them carefully, and at last he smiled. One small ray of light in a disastrous day.

‘Thank you, cousin. I’m sorry I doubted you.’

Despite her youth, he offered Irisis the position she so coveted, that of acting crafter at the manufactory. Then Gi-Had signed Tiaan’s indenture over to the breeding factory.

A
week and a half went by, during which Tiaan experienced only fleeting moments of lucidity. She saw her mother’s face several times, a mixture of concern and irritation. She vaguely recognised several other women, as well as Tobey, a boy of five, one of her half-brothers. And Joeyn. Twice she woke to find him sitting by her bed, but Tiaan lacked the strength to keep her eyes open. She woke again and found the chair was empty. A woman and a man were talking but she could not turn her head to see who they were.

‘I don’t like it,’ said the man. ‘She’s not supposed to be here.’