Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (27 page)

No way back. Tiaan gathered her pack, started to head up the tunnel, then realised that a length of rope might mean the difference between survival and death. She sawed off a length, looped the heavy stuff over her shoulder and set off down the tunnel to nowhere.

Tiaan walked all day, through the labyrinth of tunnels and cross-passages, many flooded, of the ninth level. Finally, when it must have been well after dark and she had heard no sign of pursuit, she could drag her weary feet no further. Probably she would starve down here. Missing Joeyn terribly, she spread out her coat, lay on the floor with her head pillowed on her pack and tried to sleep.

That did not work either. Her body was worn out but her mind kept turning on the possibilities, none of which were pleasant. The luminosity of the crystal swirled in front of her. Its brightness had not changed in the days she’d had it. Surely that energy could not be coming from within or it would have run dry by now. Not only was the crystal awake, it must be drawing power from the field without human intervention. If it was, it was different from any hedron she had ever heard of. Maybe stronger, too.

Placing the hedron inside her wire sphere, Tiaan adjusted the beads into a pattern that pleased her and put the helm on. She sensed nothing at all. She rotated the beads on their wires. Still nothing, which was strange. From
any
hedron she could pick up the field. With the power of this one, focussed by globe and helm, she should be able to hear the ticking of the earth.

Perhaps it was too strong; too raw. Or maybe it worked in a different way. How little she really knew about the forces she’d been tinkering with for the past eleven years.

Putting it away, she began on the other crystal, which required a good bit of work with her toolkit before it would fit the bracket. She snapped the crystal in, took it out again and inserted it the other way round, made sure the brackets were tight and lowered the helm onto her head. Brilliant colours exploded in her mind: swirling, twisting, running back on themselves, vanishing and reappearing. They became brighter, more lurid, until everything went a brilliant white in which she could see nothing at all. Tiaan lost the capacity to think, to see, to be.

The next thing she knew, she was picking herself up off the floor. The helm lay beside her. There were cramps in her belly. The glow of the hedron seemed brighter and a tiny spark now drifted down one of the central needles, vanishing as it came to the bubble.

What had happened? She could not think straight. Tiaan leaned against the tunnel wall. It took ages for the cramps to go away. Had the crystal always been that way? Had it lain in that rock cavity for a million years,
waiting?
She felt a deeper chill. How could she hope to control a device that had been its own master for so long? Those patterns would be crystallised into its very matrix. Such a thing was not for her.

Her stomach felt awful and it could only get worse. Freedom no longer seemed so precious. Freedom for what – to starve to death in the dark? Was this really better than being pampered in the breeding factory, pleasuring the clients and being pleasured by them in turn? Tiaan had overheard enough talk about the business from her workmates – they seemed to enjoy it.

Her life was out of control and she hated it. That was why she’d worked so hard at her craft. It offered control over her existence. As soon as she entered the world of emotions Tiaan floundered. Relationships were like a blueprint where the lines had faded, leaving only a jumble of meaningless symbols. Now Joeyn, the only person she’d really cared for, was gone.

The cramps faded. Leaning back against the wall, she slipped imperceptibly towards sleep. One hand groped across the floor until it found the helm. Tiaan slid it onto her head, where it perched rakishly over her ear. Her hand dragged the globe toward her. Clutching it against her chest, Tiaan’s fingers moved the orbital beads on their wires. It felt good to be using a hedron again. Very good. She could never be parted from it.

Volcanoes exploded. Congealing lava bombs wheeled through an acid sky, slowly fading to nothing.

Her slender fingers found new positions, rattling the beads back and forth faster than a merchant’s abacus. The scene flashed into view – a colossal lava fountain, achingly beautiful. It vanished too.

Again she worked the beads and all at once the scene locked in, tuned perfectly to the man of her dreams. The balcony was white marble, stained ruddy red by flames not far off. His dark fingers gripped the rail and he stared at the distant mountains as if seeking an answer in eternity.

Help!
he mouthed.

An age later the cry came to her, or its echo.
Help!

‘I’m coming!’ she cried aloud, still in her dream.

His head snapped around.
Who are you? Where are you?

‘I’m Tiaan,’ she said softly. ‘I’m on the ninth level of the mine.’

Mine?
He sounded uncomprehending.
What mine?
He spoke in a rough, attractive burr, though with a speech pattern she had never come across before. He articulated every letter – m-i-n-e; h-e-l-p.

‘The one near the manufactory, not far from Tiksi.’

What is Tiksi?

In her dream, Tiaan wondered how intelligent this young man really was. But after all, it was only a dream. She knew that.

‘Tiksi is a city on the south-east coast of Lauralin, on a spur of the Great Mountains.’

Lauralin?
His astonishment could have been no greater if she’d said the surface of the sun.
Lauralin?
He let out a great roar that made her hair stand up.
Are you speaking to me from SANTHENAR?

Goosepimples broke out all over her scalp. ‘Yes, of course I’m on Santhenar. Where else could I be?’

Abruptly he disappeared from the balcony. She heard him say,
Be praised, uncle, an answer! From Santhenar!

The dream ebbed away, to Tiaan’s regret, and she did not get it back. She woke shortly afterwards, having tossed so hard that she’d cracked her head on the wall, leaving a painful bruise. She spent hours of frustrated wakefulness, turning the globe over and over in her hands, moving the beads into a thousand positions, but could not tune him in again. The young man was gone.

Tiaan slept, finally, and when she woke the dream was still there. It was definitely not a crystal dream for she could remember every instant of it, even replay it at will like one of her blueprints. It was seared into the fibres of her brain.

The young man
was
real, not some fevered hallucination. And that meant … Recalling her previous, sensual dreams, her cheeks grew hot. What if
her
dreams were also going to
him
? What would he think of her? Somehow that mattered more than anything.

T
here was no point arguing so Irisis did not bother, though she had no idea how to do what the perquisitor wanted. How could she work with Ullii, who shied at light and sound and touch. Who knew not how to communicate what she saw?

Going into Tiaan’s cubicle she sat, head in hands. Someone had lied to her. It was now clear that Tiaan had never been a spy or a saboteur. Irisis had allowed her feelings, and her ambitions, to blind her. She had wronged the other artisan and was going to pay for that folly. The existence she had so carefully constructed was being pulled down around her. After this it could not be put up again.

‘What progress, artisan?’

Jal-Nish’s voice roused Irisis from her despairing daze. She glanced across at the round figure filling the doorway.

‘It’s a different kind of problem,’ she said stiffly. ‘I have to think it through and then come up with a workable design.’ To her ears the lie was unconvincing.

‘It’s urgent!’ he said coldly.

‘There are many problems to be solved: communicating with Ullii; finding how her talent works and how to tap it; making a type of device that has never been made before. These are not tasks that can be done in an afternoon. What you want may never be possible.’

‘It had better be.’

Irisis let her forehead fall on the bench so hard that it raised a bruise. Worse than anything – death, even the breeding factory – would be to be exposed to her family for what she really was.

Irisis hated her family for what they had done to her, yet she craved their approval and desperately wanted to achieve their goals. This news would destroy her mother. Even more horrible, she, Irisis, would go down in the family Histories as the cheat and liar that she was. Her name would be black as long as the Histories endured, and on Santhenar that was a very long time indeed. The Histories were the core of civilisation and the root of everyone’s life, great and humble.

Even illiterate peasants knew their Histories by heart, back ten generations or more. Minor families had written Histories. Those of the House of Stirm went back twenty-six generations; eight hundred and seventy-one years. Years of her childhood had been spent learning them by heart. The greatest families recorded as much as three thousand years and had a personal chronicler at their elbows all the time to remind them. Her family Histories defined who she was. They were, at once, an ocean she was drowning in, and a lifeline.

She went out, locking the door, and stumbled up to Nish’s room. He was still sleeping soundly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she watched him until the light began to fade. Even Nish, who only weeks ago had begged for her body, had cast her aside. She could not blame him but it had proven unexpectedly painful. She should leave before he rejected her again, but Irisis had nowhere to go.

Kicking off boots and socks, she slipped under the covers. Nish was warm. She pressed her cold body against him, took a little comfort there, and slept.

When she woke it was dark. Nish rolled over carefully, putting an arm across her back. She drew him to her, mindful of his wound.

‘Irisis?’ he whispered.

Feeling the tension in him, she steeled herself. ‘Yes?’ she said in his ear. ‘If you want me to go away, just say so.’

He squeezed her hand, almost as if he cared. ‘You saved my life.’

She did not answer.

‘What are you doing here, Irisis?’

‘It was this or killing myself.’

‘
Irisis!
’

She let out a choked sob, which she tried unsuccessfully to turn into a cough. ‘I’m undone, Nish. I’m going to be exposed for the fraud I am.’

‘What are you talking about?’

She told him about the blind seeker, Ullii, and what Jal-Nish required of her.

‘A seeker!’ he exclaimed, but the cry turned into a moan and he fell back on his pillows.

She sat up. ‘Are you all right?’ It surprised her that she cared, for in his disgrace he could be no further use to her, but somehow she did care.

‘My neck feels as if someone hacked into it with a sword.’

‘It’s a nasty wound.’ She stared up at the ceiling, invisible in the darkness. ‘You’ve come across seekers before?’

‘I heard mention of them when I was a scribe, though I never met one. It may even have been Ullii that they were talking about.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘Wild theories and hope unsubstantiated, for the most part. My master held that they were the answer to our prayers. His friend, a damned lawyer, thought the whole idea a nonsense and a waste of precious time and money. Father was somewhere in the middle. If an idea works, he believes in it. From what I heard, seekers are strange people, highly unstable.’

‘That’s Ullii! She’s even more flawed than I am.’ Irisis gave a bitter snort.

‘What are you talking about? You’re still an artisan, and could well be crafter again, like your uncle. Some day you may even be chanic. And after your great deeds this morning, who could believe –’

‘Nish!’ She squeezed his arm hard and he broke off. He no longer minded her calling him that. ‘It’s true; I do come from a long line of artisans and crafters. Two reached the very pinnacle of the art and were awarded the honour of chanic. I’m not one of them, Nish.

‘The day my mother knew she was with child she began making plans for me. The first words I heard were not baby talk, but a map of my future, which was no more than a reflection of our past. You think my father and uncle were great achievers because they became crafters? In fact they let the family down. Once we were chanics, now we’re reduced to crafters. What next? Labourers in the pit? It was up to me to restore the family.

‘I was trapped in our Histories. Other children had toys; I was given a tiny set of tools, waste hedrons and old controller apparatuses that had been taken to pieces. I was putting them back together as soon as I could walk. Before I turned six I was making controller parts. By the age of twelve I could make anything: the tiniest part for a pocket chronometer, the most delicate jewellery, perfect lenses for a ‘scope. I wanted to be a jeweller; I knew I had a rare skill for making beautiful things. Even my controllers are works of art.

‘My family would not allow that for an instant.
A jeweller? A common craft worker!
I might as well have said a brothel madam, the way they reacted. I was to be the greatest artisan of all time, raising the House of Stirm back to the pinnacle it had fallen from. They told me that every day. You can have no idea how I suffocated under their ambition. There was only one problem.’