Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (34 page)

Four swordsmen were still on their feet, and Gi-Had. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their swords weaving, while the archers struggled to reload their clumsy weapons. A third lyrinx hurtled out of the middle tunnel. The soldiers had their backs to him and three fell without ever knowing why. The sergeant and Gi-Had fought on.

One archer fired again. The third lyrinx, which was smaller than the others, clawed at the back of its neck. It recovered, bounded across the cavern and took out both archers with single blows. A bolt shot vertically from the other crossbow, shattering a stalactite to pieces and raining down shards of limestone on the creature. A large piece struck it on the head, felling it. The second lyrinx had disembowelled Numbl, but was skewered between the thigh plates by Gi-Had. Purple blood gurgled out. Gi-Had feinted, ducked, darted to one side and ran for the tunnel that led back to the hedron mine. The lyrinx went after him, limping badly.

In all her life Tiaan had never seen such bloodshed and brutality. Everywhere she looked, men were thrashing, moaning, dying. She gave a last rasp of her bonds and they parted. She crept down to the battlefield. Twelve soldiers lay on the floor. Ten were dead, no question of it, and the others had not long to live.

One was handsome Pelf, the man who had wanted to molest her. A slash of the lyrinx’s claws had opened a rift between his ribs, from which pink foam oozed. Parts of one lung could be seen.

Despite everything, Tiaan could feel only pity for the man. She put a hand on his brow.

Pelf’s eyes opened wide as he relived the horror of the last few minutes. They drifted as aimlessly as fireflies, before lighting on her face. She saw his self-revulsion. ‘I knew I was doing the greatest wickedness of all,’ he said. ‘I brought all this down on us.’

Pelf twitched and a clot of pink foam shot from the chest cavity to land quivering on his trouser front. He watched it dribble down, then caught at her hand. ‘Take this dagger, girl. Put out my eyes that lusted over what they had no right to. Tear out my tongue that urged foul rape on you. Sever my treacherous member …’

‘Hush!’ said Tiaan. ‘You’re dying, Pelf. Make your peace before it’s too late.’

She ran to the other man. He was fatally wounded, blood pooling in the hollows of the floor beside him, and already unconscious.

She dared not go after Gi-Had, not with a live lyrinx between her and him. But she could not stay here with the mutilated dead, and maybe the lyrinx already on the way back. There had to be another way out. Perhaps that was what the tapping signified.

She’d need plenty of food if she was to venture outside, for it would take days to get back to the manufactory from here. Feeling in the unconscious man’s pack, she found some cloth-wrapped rations. ‘Have you food?’ she said hoarsely to Pelf. She felt uncomfortable about robbing the dead and the dying.

‘Take it all!’ he gasped. ‘I’ve gold in my wallet. Take that too!’

She took the provisions but not the gold, and rifled the sergeant’s pack as well, until she had as much food as she could carry. The torches were burning low now. The scene was like a twisted, classical painting of hell. Tiaan heaved the bulging pack on her back and went down between the two dead lyrinx toward the middle tunnel.

As she passed by, the smaller lyrinx grabbed her by the forearm. She tried to reach her knife but with a swift movement the creature caught that arm too, holding both in a clawed hand that could have spanned her skull. As it drew her forward, leathery elephant skin parted on its face to reveal an eye. It was large and oval, yellow with tawny specks and a star-shaped pupil.

The head was enormous, the mouth as wide as her skull. Tiaan had heard awful tales about lyrinx. It would torment her just for the fun of it. The mouth opened, revealing a large quantity of grey teeth. Its breath was strangely sweet. Chameleon colours flickered across skin that had been dark-grey.

‘Get it over with!’ she said limply.

I
risis sat in a leather chair in the master crafter’s old chambers, listening to the storm rage outside. The wind howled in the battlements and it was turning into a blizzard. The weather suited her mood. The experiment with Ullii was bound to fail. What was she to do then?

Another artisan might have fled to make a new life somewhere far away. Irisis could not. Her entire identity was tied up with her family and her trade. For all that she railed against them, for all that she neglected them, she would rather die, even in disgrace, than live without her family.

Nish brought the seeker down before dawn, when the manufactory was at its quietest. Even so, it was a trial for her. Ullii shied at every sound and whenever someone approached she shrank against the wall.

The crafter’s chambers comprised two rooms. The larger one was a combined office and workshop with an enormous rosewood desk in the centre, surrounded by three leather chairs. Along the far wall a wide bench was still cluttered with the equipment Barkus had been using when he died. Another wall contained a library of several dozen bound volumes, plus scrolls and fan-folded books. The smaller room was stuffed with artisans’ tools, charts and blueprints, mechanical devices complete and incomplete, and stores and materials of every kind. Irisis had found the reels of spider-silk there.

A tray beside the door contained food and drink. Irisis was tapping one foot when Nish came in, Ullii at his heels like a masked, earmuff-wearing dog. He closed the outer door and locked it, then the inner.

Ullii looked anxious. Irisis wondered if it was the unfamiliar surroundings, or what they expected of her. She stood against the inner door, head to one side, sniffing the air.

‘Would you like something to eat, Ullii?’ Irisis said loudly.

The earmuffs allowed some sound through and the seeker jumped, as if she’d not known the artisan was there. There were so many odours in the room that she had not picked Irisis out. It smelt of old books, mouldy carpet, the spicy bouquet of rosewood, oil and fuming acid from the bench, hot candle wax and an indescribable odour from the mounted swordfish over the fireplace. Irisis had half a dozen aromatic oil diffusers going over candle stubs: civet and rosemary and the sharp tang of cedar oil. She’d done it deliberately, to see if Ullii could be confused.

‘No, thank you,’ Ullii said, mimicking Irisis’s voice. She went around the room step by step, once bumping into the desk, another time a stool, though only on her first circuit. Occasionally she touched things, or brought them to her nose.

Nish stayed close behind. He can’t take his eyes off the little cow, Irisis thought. It made her angry. Could she be jealous of the seeker? Surely not.

‘Tell us what you’re doing, Ullii,’ said Nish softly.

Perhaps too softly, for she looked around as if trying to make out a whisper in the dark. He repeated his words more loudly. Ulli looked at Nish, using her own voice now, which was as soft and colourless as her hair. ‘The lattice is different here. It’s all twisted up and there are new knots in it.’

‘From the old crafter’s artefacts, no doubt,’ said Irisis. ‘If you can see the Secret Art, you’re in the right place. He had magical devices aplenty. He used to show them to me when I was little.’

‘I can only see two,’ said Ullii, in Irisis’s voice. She no longer used Nish’s. That irritated Irisis too. Ullii answered Nish’s question. ‘I am seeking out the lattice and trying to fit you into it.’

‘What does it look like?’ Irisis asked.

A stubborn expression crossed Ullii’s face, then she seemed to think better of it. ‘Did you make this?’ She held out the front of the spider-silk blouse.

‘Yes,’ said Irisis. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It feels lovely. Other clothes make me itch and burn all over.’ She shivered. ‘The lattice looks just how I want it to. I change it, sometimes.’

‘What does it look like now?’ asked Nish.

She frowned, just visible above the mask. ‘Fans.’

‘Fans?’ cried Irisis. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

For once Ullii did not cringe or bridle, though she moved closer to Nish. ‘I like fans!’ she said defiantly. ‘Mancer Flammas, who let me live in his dungeon, had hundreds of them. They were beautiful. All the colours; all the patterns. I used to peek through my fingers.’

‘Ullii, our minds can’t see what you see,’ said Nish. ‘We don’t understand what you mean by fans.’

‘My lattice is a fan. A great one comes out in front of me, folded in a hundred places.’ She held out spread arms. ‘It’s turquoise now, but I can change the colour if you like – ’

‘I don’t care what bloody – ’ Shushed by Nish, Irisis broke off.

‘Everything in front of me is on the fan, like a million scribbles. People look different to
things
. They’re brighter, but tangled. Sometimes I can unravel their knots.’

‘What people?’ said Irisis, intrigued. ‘You mean you can see everyone in the world?’

‘Of course not! Only people with
talents
.’ Her scorn was withering. ‘Most are just little tiny spots and I can’t see inside, but some people make bright tangles, especially ones who use the Secret Art. Jal-Nish taught me that.’

‘Can you see me?’ Nish asked eagerly.

‘You don’t have any talent.’ She said it so baldly that he cringed.

‘You can’t see me either,’ Irisis said in a dead voice.

‘Oh, yes. I can see
you
! But you’re not a knot, you’re a hard black ball.’

After a pause Irisis spoke. ‘You said
fans
.’

‘Another fan goes behind me. It’s azure now, much smaller. I can’t see it so well. And fans go out to the sides.’ She held her arms out. ‘And up, and down. The one that goes down is brown but I can’t see much on it.’

‘Brilliant!’ said Irisis. ‘That’s the talent we’ve been working so hard to tap?
She scribbles on fans?
We might as well ask the perquisitor to cut off our heads right now.’

Ullii froze with her arms out. Nish gave Irisis a furious glare.

Ullii slowly rotated, arms spread, until she faced Nish. ‘Cut your head off?’ she whispered.

‘If we don’t find Artisan Tiaan and get her back, that’s what will happen to us,’ said Nish. ‘What we were hoping, Ullii, was to make a magic device that we could use with you, to see where Tiaan might be.’

‘It doesn’t have to be fans,’ said Ullii. ‘It can be anything I want it to be. Sometimes the world is like an egg floating in the air, full of coloured speckles. Or –’

Irisis gripped a handful of yellow hair as if to tear it out. She began grinding her teeth.

Nish squatted down in front of Ullii. ‘The problem is, Ullii, that we don’t understand how you see the world. We don’t see in fans, or specks in eggs, and we don’t know how to use your lattice to find Tiaan. We have to find her or we will lose the war and the lyrinx –’ He broke off as she shrank away.

‘She has to know,’ said Irisis.

‘The lyrinx will eat us all,’ Nish finished.

Ullii choked, scuttled into the storeroom and curled into a ball. They did not go after her.

Nish carried the platter of food to the desk, offering it to Irisis. She refused. He took a handful of dried figs, tearing their leathery skins open with his teeth and sucking the grainy insides out. Irisis found the sound particularly irritating.

‘This isn’t going well, Cryl-Nish!’

He looked up, startled. ‘That’s the first time you’ve used my proper name in ages.’

‘Which should tell you how desperate I feel.’

‘I can’t believe
you’d
give up, Irisis.’

‘We’ll never do it. We’ll never see what she sees, and even if we could, I can’t make a device to hunt Tiaan down. You know why.’

‘I’m beginning to,’ said Nish.

‘What are you going to tell your father?’

‘That it’s impossible to make a seeker device because it would take years to work out how Ullii does it. That’s true enough, anyway.’

‘Yes! No need to say that it’s because I’m a useless, incompetent fraud!’

‘No need,’ Nish echoed. ‘We’re finished, then.’

He wandered the room, looking at the charts, books and scrolls, and the strange, half-finished devices on the bench. Irisis tore the end off a stick of cinnamon-flavoured sausage. She ate a small piece before laying it aside and staring gloomily at the dusty table.