Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (38 page)

‘Geomancy? Reading patterns in sand?’ She could not conceal her scorn. It was the lowest fairground fakery of all.

Not that sad corruption
, said Tirior.
True geomancy is the most powerful of all the Secret Arts, for it draws upon the very power of the earth. Mancing is always limited by power. Most mages keep it within themselves, or store it in small devices, or channel tiny amounts of power from places they don’t understand. But geomancy offers unlimited power for those who have an amplimet and are able to use it. Imagine the power of an earthquake, the force that keeps your world in its orbit about the sun, the strength of the winds, the motion of the continents on their plates, the hot spots ascending from the very core of the planet. Those are the kinds of power a geomancer has at her disposal
.

But it is a dangerous power
, said Luxor.
Geomancy is the most difficult of all the Secret Arts, and the most deadly. Your amplimet is the key, and all that has saved you is the clumsy nature of your tuning. You tapped the merest trickle of power, fortunately, or you would not have survived it. Nonetheless, you must have a strong talent for it.

‘Many artisans have died at their work,’ said Tiaan. ‘Burnt black inside. My headaches have been much worse since I made these devices. My arms feel hot and twitchy, and I have begun to see strange, impossible things.’

Oh?
said Tirior sharply.
What kinds of things
? She glanced at Luxor.

‘It’s … hard to explain,’ Tiaan said. ‘Coloured shapes in the air that swell and contract, disappear and reappear somewhere else, different shapes and sizes and patterns. They remind me of …’ She broke off with a strangled cry. ‘I’m going mad, aren’t I? I’ve got crystal fever.’

What do they remind you of
? Tirior asked with another glance at Luxor.

‘Pieces of things!’ Tiaan said through her hands. She let out a crazed laugh.

You’re not mad, Tiaan. You’re seeing
beyond.

‘Beyond what? You mean into the void?’

Not exactly. You’re looking into the
hyperplane.

‘I don’t understand.’

You and I live in a three-dimensional world, Tiaan
, said Tirior.
Every object has length, breadth and depth. But the universe has more dimensions than that – as many as ten, some philosophers say, though we are incapable of imagining the others
.

‘I still don’t understand.’

You must have a most remarkable mind.

‘I think in pictures,’ said Tiaan. ‘I used to think everyone did, until people began to tell me how unusual that was.’

Indeed. The amplimet must have lifted your inner seeing onto the hyperplane. You’re beginning to see the fourth dimension.

It made no sense to Tiaan. ‘But what am I seeing?’

Fragments of the strong field permeating ethyric space.

‘It looks stronger than the field I’m used to.’

It is. That’s why it’s so useful. Since you can see it, you may be able to use it
.

‘There’s power enough in the weak field for me, when it’s there.’ As she said that, Tiaan recalled the failure of the field at Minnien, which had caused the loss of fifty clankers. Had the lyrinx drained it like a well?

Again that exchange of glances. What weren’t they telling her?

It’s a … safer way
, said Luxor.

Much safer
, Tirior said smoothly.
Power takes a more direct path into the amplimet. And you can use geomancy where you can’t see the weak field at all.

‘I don’t understand,’ Tiaan said. She felt utterly confused. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

There was a long silence. Tirior spoke low and urgently to Luxor, who grimaced. She put her lips to Minis’s ear. He shook his head. She took his arm, hissed something he did not catch. Minis shook her off, disappearing from Tiaan’s image. Shortly Minis reappeared, so close that he blocked her view of the others.

He looked into her eyes, smiled and her heart melted.
Tiaan, dearest
. Minis reached out as if to take her hand.
Please help me. I don’t want to die. I
– he caught his breath.
Oh, Tiaan!
he sighed, gazing lovingly at her.

Tiaan was smitten. Suddenly, no promise was too rash if it would bring them together. ‘Of course I will help you, Minis. If I can.’

Tirior edged into the image.
No one can understand the hyperplane, Tiaan. It’s beyond our imagining. But we can still use it, just as you use the field without understanding it
.

‘But what if I take too much power?’ That had happened occasionally, if a squadron of clankers drew heavily on a small node, inducing reverberating
strangenesses
in the field. Whole clankers had vanished into nowhere, so these days they travelled well apart and followed strict rules about how much power they could draw. ‘What if I tear open the wall between Santhenar and the hyperplane?’

Tirior staggered. Luxor’s mouth hung open.

‘What is it?’ Tiaan cried.

Tirior drew the others away, speaking urgently. After some minutes they returned.

Never you worry about that. Just do exactly as we say and you will come to no harm
.

‘My head is burning,’ said Tiaan.

The channelled power is leaking through you
, said Tirior.
We must work fast. When you first saw Minis, am I not right, you just had a clumsy, shaped crystal? You only found the amplimet recently
?

‘Less than a week ago. I’ve not used it yet, save speaking to you.’ She began to feel faint.

Do not use it! This amplimet can channel so much power that it would burn you to a cinder. But if you employ it carefully, exactly as we say, it can save you
.

‘How?’

You are in deadly peril, Tiaan, and not just from freezing to death. From the attenuation of your signal we believe there may be as much as ten spans of snow above you
.

Tiaan shuddered. That was the height of a good-sized tree. She could feel the cold weight of it hanging over her.

You cannot move until the storm stops and the snow crusts over. Even then you will be in peril of collapse, or avalanche. So you must wait for days. Have you food?

‘Enough for a week. But I’ll freeze before that.’

Listen carefully. You may be able to channel power through the crystal to keep you warm
.

Tiaan tried to concentrate as Tirior gave instructions. They were long, complicated and difficult to understand, dealing as they did with unknowable concepts like ‘topological morphometrics’ and ‘hyperdimensional wormholes’. Her arm began to twitch uncontrollably. She felt very cold.

‘I can’t hold the link,’ she gasped.

Just one more
…

Tirior faded away and Tiaan lacked the strength to get her back. Her toes were numb. Taking off boots and socks, she rubbed her feet. They were icy and her fingers had no warmth in them either. Frostbite could not be far off.

She could not think straight. How was she supposed to use the amplimet? She tried to work through Tirior’s procedure but knew she was missing a couple of steps.

First, identify a nearby source of power. That was not hard; there was energy all around. The mass of snow on the slope contained enough potential to boil rock, though it would be the height of folly to tap such an unstable source, even had she been an adept.

Putting on the helm, Tiaan swept out in all directions, searching the way she used to map the field. She was looking for power she could use, such as from a hot spring. She found none. All possible sources were too small, too great, too hazardous or too incomprehensible.

Pain shrieked through her chest. Tiaan screamed aloud, fell sideways and struck her ear on rock. The globe rolled across the floor, hit the snow wall and spun like a top. She could not reach it. Tiaan laid her head on the ground. It felt no colder than she did. It was too late.

W
ake up!
Cold! Galaxies of sluggish ice like frozen milk-mush, slowly solidifying again.

Wake, Tiaan!

Grinding glacier; gelid blood separating into red, yellow and clear. Eyeballs freezing from the outside in.

TIAAN, WAKE, MY LOVE!

That cracked the frozen crust. She groaned; she stirred. Scales of rime fell from her eyelids. Everything hurt, as if needles of ice were forming inside her.

You’re dying, Tiaan!

‘Want to. Better than this.’

No!
he cried as if in pain.
I care about you. Save yourself, Tiaan, and then save me
.

‘How can –?’ she whispered.

Use the amplimet. NOW!

‘Afraid.’

You’ll die if you don’t. It’s the only chance. For any of us.

She crawled towards the crystal, weeping icy tears. It hurt so much. Tiaan reached out but it was still beyond her fingertips. She could not go any further, until his shocking words galvanised her.
Tiaan, my love!

Tears of a different kind flowed out, sheer joy! Minis, her tormented prince,
loved
her. He’d said so. And of course she loved him, though she had not realised it before. She would do anything for him.

Tiaan clawed her way across the ice, breaking fingernails, scraping breasts and chin and knees. The wires burned as she cradled the globe to her chest and sought out for a source of power. The field of the manufactory node was weak here, as if some other force repelled it. There was not enough in it to light a candle.

She saw not the least trace of a field. It took a long time to work out why. She was trying to force the crystal and it was resisting her. It could not be forced. It wanted to be cajoled. As she let go, something faint and foggy appeared, only to fade away.

She sat back, allowing her mind to empty of everything but the aura of the crystal. The faintest tracery appeared, spidery filaments in the fog. She was seeing further with the amplimet, and deeper, but not the normal, weak field at all. It was as if she was peering through the solid earth.

Lines and planes, spheres and clusters began to resolve. Were they different
kinds
of fields? They seemed more concentrated than anything she had encountered before.

Tiaan had no idea what they were, or what forces they might contain. The Art required understanding but she knew nothing about how the earth was formed or structured. If she tried to draw on these sources, she would surely kill herself.

Then, as she scanned across those varied shapes, one reminded her of something she’d seen before. It was a long dull plane cutting through the rocks, with occasional bright lenses here and there. It resembled the shear zone bisecting the long tunnel through the mountain. This shape must be a field associated with it. Tension, built up along the shear over hundreds of years, was overdue for release.

Clearly it represented a source of power, enough to save her if she could tap it. She focussed on the planar field. The amplimet made that easy. Mindful of Tirior’s warning, she attempted to draw on the potential as gently as she could. Nothing happened. Tiaan went over the visualisation, the tuning. All seemed correct. She imagined the sub-ethyric path and tried again. Still nothing.

What was she doing wrong? The Aachim had talked about this aspect of geomancy but she had not understood what they were saying. Perhaps she was not meant to draw power by the sub-ethyric path, but via the hyperplane. In that case, how?

Tiaan tried to return to the state where her inner vision caught glimpses of the hyperplane but of course it did not come. She leaned back, more drained than usual. Foolish to think that she could learn a new Art with so little instruction.

Lacking the energy to take off the helm, Tiaan nibbled the corner off a food cake and tried to take a sip from her flask. The drink was frozen solid; the metal stuck to her lips. She let the flask fall. Her head sank. As Tiaan drifted towards sleep, circles and segments began to float through her inner eye.

It was the hyperplane! Bringing up the field of the shear zone, she searched for a path through the hyperplane. It was like trying to trace the way through a shifting maze. Things were there one second and gone the next. Then, for the barest instant, she saw a tiny, thread-like path and snatched at it. The amplimet lit up and the globe grew warm under her fingers, blessed warmth such as she’d never thought to feel again. But it was not enough.

She lost the path but found another and took a trickle more power. Deep in the mountain the veins began to shear, one by one. The ledge gave the faintest little tremor. The wires were hot now. Not painfully hot; deliciously so. Tiaan rubbed the globe over her face and ears, but it soon began to cool. More power was needed. She drew harder and again felt that little tremor, that
heat
. Taking off her boots, she put her toes in through the wires.

After each attempt she warmed herself and rested before trying again. But that kind of warmth could not last here – the cold overwhelmed it. What she needed was the warmth of a bonfire, not a teacup, though it was impossible to pull such power through tiny paths. She went hunting for a bigger one. Tiaan knew what she was looking for this time.