Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (37 page)

By the time Tiaan’s knife-point skated across rock, she had closed in two-thirds of her ledge. The visibility was falling; two steps from her shelter she could no longer see it. She stamped down the drift next to her wall, hacked it into blocks and continued raising the wall. Finally it met the ledge above, sealing her in. The space, about four strides long but only two across, looked like a white sepulchre.

It was getting dark. She warmed her hands in her armpits, for the crystal had gone as cold as the rest of her world and was hardly glowing at all. If only there was a way to draw power into it to warm herself. She tried to sense out the field but found nothing. Perhaps she was too far from the node, though that seemed unlikely.

Tiaan ate another ration pack, this one an unidentifiable melange of dried fruit, nuts and suet. It lay in her stomach like a brick. After rubbing her feet in a useless attempt to warm them, she wrapped the fur-lined coat around her and leaned back against the wall, trying to rest without going to sleep. She found herself dozing a couple of times, jerked awake then slipped into a restless sleep.

Outside, the storm was approaching its climax. Snow fell as it could not have fallen since the last Ice Age, at half a span an hour. Across the range it reached halfway up the great gate of the manufactory, but here, piled against the flank of the mountain, it was much deeper. By midnight it was four spans deep and falling as fast as ever.

In her snow cave Tiaan dreamed only of cold. She could feel it seeping into the core of her. There was nothing but cold anywhere in the world. Nothing …

Help!

At first she did not know where it came from. It might even have been her own subconscious. The cry slid like an icicle along her congealing synapses.

Help!

A long dreaming, a slow cooling, a slowing down of every process in her body. Imperceptibly it crept towards the point from which there was no recovery.

HELP!

Tiaan shuddered in her sleep, slipping into a dream in which a single point of light moved slowly across a field of darkness. It left behind a few glowing specks. The point started another line, making a few more specks. Another line.

It was not until the hundredth line that her dazed dream-consciousness began to see an image in the specks. A series of horizontal lines, some verticals and two diagonals radiating up from one of the verticals. They made the sparest image that could possibly be made, though Tiaan’s sluggish mind could see nothing in it but geometry.

Suddenly he was there. It was the young man on the balcony, his arms thrown up in entreaty.

‘I’m here,’ Tiaan croaked. Her mouth felt frozen shut.

He could not have heard, for there was no change in the image.

Help!

She groped for the globe, hedron and helm, checked that the crystal was in its setting and put the helm on her head, glacier slow. The frigid wire burned her skin but that did not register.

Tiaan played with the beads and the orbiting wires, rotating them into position after position, tuning the globe to the hedron. Suddenly, with the smoothness of two streams of oil merging, they were as one. The image of glowing lines vanished and the young man was there.

Who are you?
he said directly into her mind, articulating every letter in that archaic mode of speech, W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u?

She spoke aloud. ‘I am Tiaan. We spoke once before. I am an artisan from Santhenar.’

Show yourself to me, Tiaan
.

Shyly, for he was obviously wealthy and of good family, while she was neither, Tiaan put together an image of herself. It was the one she had seen in the mirror at the breeding factory, after the attendants had done her hair and made up her face. That
was
her, after all. Not the ordinary her, but Tiaan nevertheless. She felt guilty about the little deception.

Tiaan!
he sighed.
You’re beautiful
.

She felt warm all over. ‘What is your name?’ she asked tentatively.

I am Minis, foster-son of Vithis, of Clan Inthis. First Clan!

She feasted on the image of him, so like the hero of her grandmother’s tales. But he was in mortal danger, and so was she. ‘I wish I could help you, Minis, but I am trapped.’

How?
he said abruptly.
I cannot read
your
future
.

Tiaan wondered about the emphasis. Did he mean that he
could
read others’? She explained her situation.

Minis vanished and with a terrible pang of loss she slipped from her dream into half-wakefulness. Her whole body was shuddering with the cold. Her little cave must be buried deep. Tiaan did as many squats as her legs would allow, but at the end still felt cold, and a little drowsy. Was the air being used up? She attempted to enlarge her cave by tunnelling along the rock. She dared not remove any blocks from her wall. If the snow collapsed, it would pour in until it filled her shelter.

Ti
…

Just the faintest whisper inside her head. Minis was calling her! Tiaan found the helm under a pile of snow, put it on and winced as the freezing metal seared her forehead.

Her fingers danced along the wires but she could not tune him in; her conscious mind knew not how to do what dream intuition had done previously. Tiaan panicked.

In her terror the loss of Minis seemed worse than the prospect of dying. She flung the wires and beads back and forth. It did not help. They were clustered together now and she knew that was wrong, but had no idea what arrangement had worked previously.

Tiaan lifted the globe and hedron above her head, shaking it furiously. She wanted to jump up and down on it until it was smashed into a tangle of wire.

Tiaan!

Startled, she dropped the globe. Her helm fell off and the little crystal rolled into the snow. She searched frantically for it. Everything was the same colour – the rock, the snow, the grey ice between her boots, the crystal. Ah, there it was!

She popped it into the bracket. Now, if only she could get …

Tiaan, stop it!

She froze at the peremptory tone, so reminiscent of Matron, Gi-Had and all the other authority figures in her life.

You’re panicking, child. I can’t find you
.

Even worse was the word
child
. She had been cursed by that title since the day she began as a miserable floor scrubber, six years old. For Minis to use it felt like a betrayal.

She tried to concentrate. She must.

‘I’m here, Minis.’

That’s better. Show me where you are
.

Tiaan concentrated on a mental image of her cave, and then of the mountain slope outside. She knew it was fuzzy but could do no better.

I don’t like it
, came another voice, a woman’s.

You’re wasting your time
, said a third, a flat, despairing male voice.
She’s going to die and so are we. It is written
.

Hush!
whispered Minis.
Tirior, Luxor, not so loud. I read our time lines, so there must be a way. Tiaan, show us the devices you used to contact me
.

She mentally imaged the helm and globe.

Incredible
, said the woman.
Where has she come by such artefacts
?

I don’t know, Tirior
. There was a mutter of talk in the background. Tiaan did not catch any of it.

Quickly, child!
said the woman, Tirior.
Where did you find these devices?

‘I’m not a child!’’ Tiaan tried to sound mature, dignified. ‘I made them.’

You
made them
? came the third voice, Luxor.
How? Who are you?

She said nothing. Tiaan was not going to be treated like a juvenile.

You’re intimidating her, Luxor
. It was Minis’s voice.
Please, let me talk to her. Tiaan, how came you to make such astonishing devices?

The praise set her heart soaring. ‘I am an artisan at the clanker manufactory in the mountains above Tiksi. Minis …?’

What is a clanker
? asked Tirior.

She described their construction, operation and purpose. ‘I make the controllers that draw power from the field, to make them go.’

What are these clankers for?

‘We are at war with the lyrinx.’

Lyrinx?
cried Luxor.
How did this come about?

‘When the Forbidding was broken, and Maigraith crossed the Way between the Worlds …’ She hesitated, afraid they would not know what she was talking about.

That is also part of our Histories
. Go on.

‘That was two hundred and six years ago …’

Three hundred and ninety of ours
, said Tirior,
but we have not forgotten
.

‘The lyrinx came to Santhenar at that time, as did other fierce creatures that lived in the void between the worlds.’

Some also came to Aachan
,’ said Tirior. Her voice sounded kindly.
They did not last long. Tell us about yourself, Tiaan
.

‘I am skilled in the working of fine metals, in forming ceramics and shaping and polishing crystals. That is how I make clanker controllers.’

What are controllers?
said Minis.

‘Mind-linked mechanical systems which enable an ordinary person to power and control a clanker.’ She sent an image of an eight-limbed clanker.

Amazing!
The flat voice of Luxor showed a flicker of interest.

His face appeared, so washed out that it was little more than outline.
Ingenious. How do you make it go?

She explained how certain crystals could be tuned to tap into natural fields that existed around nodes, to draw a trickle of that power into the controller, and thence into the clanker itself.

You build such controllers? Where did the pattern come from?

Tiaan was becoming impatient. What did it matter how she made controllers? But, after all, she was not going anywhere. ‘It’s an old pattern I was taught in my prenticeship. I have made a number of improvements to it.’

Show us this pattern
, said Luxor eagerly.

‘You are not our kind. That would be treason.’

Then we cannot help you
, he snapped.

Please, Luxor
, said Minis.
Tiaan, I don’t understand. You say you built these devices. How did you know how?

‘I needed something to amplify the signals from a faulty controller, so I simply made this globe and helm.’

That must have taken a long time. Months, surely?

‘It took me a few days,’ said Tiaan. ‘That’s what I do.’

Are there other artisans with your talent?
She sensed awe.

‘There are many artisans. I don’t know how many have my talent. I have not travelled to other manufactories.’ Then, with a trace of pride, ‘But ours is said to be the best.’

What powers this device, Tiaan? Is there a crystal at the heart of it too?

Tiaan remembered that she had not shown Minis the hedron. ‘A special hedron. I did not even have to shape it.’ She held up the globe, visualising the perfect bipyramid of rutilated quartz at the heart of it, the twin balls of radiating needle crystals inside, the spark drifting across that cavity, the faint glow.

There was a long silence. A stunned silence, she realised.

What is it?
said Minis.
What’s the matter?

The other two spoke among themselves.
Tell me!
cried Minis.

It’s an amplimet
! said Tirior in an awed whisper that clearly was not meant to carry to Tiaan.
There has not been one found in four thousand years. Just look at it!

Does she even know what she has?
Luxor’s voice glowed with excitement.
Could she be a budding geomancer?

Hush
! Minis was back.
Tiaan
…

‘Minis!’ Tiaan interrupted. ‘Why were you calling for help?’

Aachan is dying
! he said harshly.
Our beautiful world is finished
.

‘You are from Aachan?’ she said incredulously. Tiaan knew of Aachan, the second of the Three Worlds. It was at the very core of the Histories and every child of Santhenar learned about it. It had been the world of the Aachim, until the Charon fled out of the void, took Aachan and enslaved its people. But at the time the Forbidding was broken, the Charon had gone to extinction and the Aachim became masters of their world again.

To think she was actually speaking to someone across the void – it seemed impossible. Subconsciously she must have known that Minis was from another world, but had not taken it in. Her dreams evaporated like a flake of snow in a frying pan. She could not help him. They could never meet. ‘What is happening to Aachan?’ she asked miserably.

The whole world is erupting. The very crust has cracked open in rifts five hundreds of leagues long. Aachan will survive it, but we won’t! Our world may not be habitable for ten thousand years. Or ten million.

‘How has this come about?’

An after-effect of the Forbidding being broken, we think. It began at that time.

‘How long do you have?’

We think a few months. At the very outside, a year. Lava advances on us from all directions. The seas grow too hot to sustain life. Soon we will have no place to stand.

Tiaan went limp. Something caught in her throat, as if she had taken in a whiff of burning air. Minis was going to die.

Tiaan?

Tears flooded down her cheeks, forming icicles.

‘Yes?’ She choked. ‘You’re going to die and so am I. We’re all doomed.’ She was shaking. Tiaan could not help herself. Despair was a black Hürn bear, eating her from the belly out.

There may be a way!
Minis’s voice was a seductive whisper inside her head.

‘How?’

We may be able to save you, through your amplimet. In return, you can do something for us.

‘I will do anything!’ she said eagerly. ‘What would you ask of me?’

First we must save you. Listen carefully. Somehow you have stumbled on the ancient art of geomancy.