Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (39 page)

There it was, a broad pathway. She drew power as hard as she possibly could and suddenly the globe was too hot to hold. Smoke curled up from the collar of her coat. Tiaan beat out a little smouldering patch.

Under the mountain, the webbing of veins across the fault snapped and the entire shear zone, three leagues long, unzipped. The marble side moved down, the granite up by the width of a hand. Not much, but the energy released was colossal. The whole mountain shook, radiating shockwaves in all directions.

The world seemed to turn inside out. Heat blasted from the globe. It was as if she had walked past the open door of one of the manufactory’s furnaces. Orange streamers radiated out in all directions, ablating the snow away in a perfect sphere, as though washed out by boiling water. At a distance of several spans the surface froze as clear as glass. Tiaan opened her eyes, astounded at what she had done. Multi-coloured reflections sparkled off the ice. It was beautiful.

The mountain settled back in place and above her the snow began to flow like a white mudslide. It was little more than a bulge at first, but in a minute the whole side of the mountain was in motion. Inside her bubble the avalanche began as a whisper that swelled to a roar, louder than anything she had heard in her life. The snow layers sloughed away, one by one, and in places the weathered rock as well.

The stone at her back vibrated wildly. Tiaan held the hot globe and helm to her chest. The layers of the avalanche thundered over the ledge above her, plucking at her ice bubble and making a sound like an organ pipe. The surrounding snow was torn away, until with a shudder the slide had gone by, carrying its incomprehensibly huge load of snow, ice, rock, and an occasional tree, down until it half filled the valley bottom.

Silence. Tiaan opened her eyes, scarcely able to believe that she had survived. It was daytime, for she could see though the thick sphere of ice as if it were window glass. A wintry sun hung low in a clear sky. The storm had gone. Her sphere clung to the underside of the ledge like a soap bubble. Below and above were bare rock, a steep slope.

Minis, wonderful Minis, had saved her after all. Her heart swelled with love for him.

‘Minis?’

The response seemed more distant than before.
Tiaan, you’re alive! We thought
…

‘There was an avalanche, but I survived it. What must I do? Tell me how to help you.’

It may be too late
. He held a rag over his nose.
The eruptions grow ever worse
.

‘Anything!’ She was terrified that Minis would vanish before she ever met him.

Ah, Tiaan, you love too deeply and you trust too much. But if you would repay your debt, there is one way
…

She was conscious of the debt and wanted to repay it. It was a sacred obligation. Even so, his use of the word shook her.

‘Whatever it takes!’

Have you heard of a place called Tirthrax?

‘Of course!’ Tirthrax was the tallest and most famous peak in the Great Mountains, and therefore in the entire world. Some said in all the Three Worlds, though Tiaan knew not if that was true. Being interested in numbers, especially large ones, she knew that the monster peak was more than eight thousand spans high, or sixteen thousand paces, not that height was ever measured in paces.

And do you know that some of my people, the Aachim, once built a great city inside the mountain?

‘I know a little of the Histories,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know that Aachim slaves were brought to Santhenar by Rulke the Charon, thousands of years ago, in the hunt for the Golden Flute. They gained their freedom long ago and built cities in the mountains. I did not know they dwelt at Tirthrax.’

Then I beg you
– he seemed to be consulting a map –
make your way south across the mountains and thence west to Tirthrax. If … when you reach that peak, contact us and I will tell you how to get inside. Take the amplimet to the leader of the Aachim and beg him, or her, to use it. Only then will there be any chance for me.

‘What chance?’ she whispered. Strange emotions stirred in her.

To come to your world
. He seemed surprised that she had not realised.
It was foretold long ago, and again by me when I was a child
.

‘Are you a seer?’

Of sorts, though seldom taken seriously by my own people. Ah, how I long to see beautiful Santhenar. And you, Tiaan, most beautiful of all

Her heart leapt. These Aachim were a clever, strong species. They had beaten the lyrinx on Aachan. With their help, surely humanity could win the war. And, Tiaan realised, not only would she be with her love, as she was beginning to think of him, but she would be a hero. She would have helped to save Santhenar. No one would look down on her then. Her unfortunate birth would be irrelevant.

Can you do it?
said Minis.

‘Can you not see?’ she asked softly.

It is given to no seer to see his own future. Nor can I see yours. I know I am asking a lot. Are you a traveller, Tiaan?

He was asking the world. In her lifetime Tiaan had gone no further than Tiksi, just a few leagues away. To Tirthrax would be a colossal journey. ‘I am not, but for you,’ she gazed at his face longingly, ‘I will walk from one side of the world to the other.’

His eyes grew soft.
My little love. How I long to be in your arms. We have much to do, to be ready in time, and you have a great journey in front of you. You are our only hope, Tiaan. Whether you succeed, or fail, do so gloriously! In Tirthrax you will be honoured.

And, remember, tell no one; they would not understand and would only try to stop you. Do not speak about your amplimet, either. To those who understand the Secret Art it is a crystal beyond price.

‘Only one man ever knew, the old miner who found the crystal for me. Alas, my friend Joeyn lies dead in the mine.’

Minis stared into her eyes, then his face vanished. Tiaan stood looking at the space where his image had been, daydreaming of the first meeting with her lover, anticipating his caresses and their first night together. The thought was scary, but she was eager too. Tiaan was glad she’d had no other. She wanted Minis to be her first and only lover.

Another thought crept into her mind. Only one man ever knew about the amplimet,
and one lyrinx
! Foolishly, she had let Ryll see it. How was she going to keep it from him?

In a few minutes she was incapable of worrying, as the aftereffects of geomancy smashed into her – extreme lassitude, hot and cold chills, and pain like a thousand needles pricking her all over. She lay back and endured.

First she must find a way out of this ice bubble, one that did not involve her falling down the side of the mountain. She was still hot and the amplimet radiated heat, though not enough to melt the walls of her prison. The clear ice looked to be quite thick; perhaps the length of her arm.

Tiaan roused, from a daydream about her lover, to reality. She was afraid of those disabling emotions that she had never understood; afraid of embarking on a relationship in which she might lose control. Afraid of the journey, too. It was a long way to Tirthrax. Tiaan did not know how far, but hundreds of leagues, certainly. It would be many months’ journey, and she could not set out until spring.

The air felt stale. There had been plenty in the soft snow but none could penetrate the solid globe of ice. Before too long there would not be enough to keep her alive. The crossbow, she knew without trying it, would never break through.

Dare she try the amplimet again? There was nothing to lose. She sensed her way through earth and rock but the field of the shear zone was gone. She could not tell where it had been.

She sensed other auras though, near and far. The world was bursting with energies: the weight of rock on rock, heat seeping from deep in the earth, gas pockets below the limestone … But just because there was power, it did not mean she could tap it. Her skills were primitive, her control infinitesimal.

Seeking deeper, down in the wellsprings of the earth where the granite was cut by enormous veins, Tiaan came on a shifting aura about a crystal as large as an elephant, whose field was of a kind she had never sensed before. Created by pressure from the overlying rock, the force of the wind on the mountain and occasional little tremblers and avalanches, the field fluctuated wildly.

Tiaan sensed it out and in her mind’s eye drew a blueprint of the path she wanted the energy to take, through the hyperplane back to the amplimet and then out at the shell of ice. Taking a deep breath, she adjusted the position slightly, then, as the field waxed, drew hard.

A sizzling yellow ray burst from the amplimet and struck above her head, shattering rock into fragments. Pieces of hot stone rained down, setting her hair smouldering. She smacked it away.

Agony, as if all that energy had speared though her. Tiaan screamed; she could not stop herself. Her foot kicked the globe, which spun around. She jumped just in time as the yellow beam flashed by, spattering gravel out of the wall. Another second and it would have taken both feet off at the ankles. A blister the size of an orange began to grow on one shin.

The beam brightened and a slab of rock exploded, sending cinders in all directions. One burned right through her clothes before sticking to her side. She ripped it off and the skin came too. Tiaan beat at the smouldering fabric. Her coat, lying on the floor where she had discarded it earlier, was also smoking. More rock exploded from the wall, and more.

She tried to shut off the flow of power but did not know how. The beam was roaring out of the amplimet and if she could just point it the right way it must burn through the ice in a second.

But Tiaan could not get near; it was too hot to touch. Now the rock was melting, flowing down the shelf to hiss on the floor. Her sphere began to fill with steam. Tiaan felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice, having started something that she had no idea how to stop.

Snatching the helm off – it was hot too – she wrenched out its crystal. The yellow beam was unaffected. Molten rock poured down the ledge, melting into the ice.

Abruptly the beam went out. Tiaan squatted down, breathing through her sleeve. Minis had been right; geomancy was a deadly Art – far too dangerous for a novice like her.

The ice was pitted with hollows from fragments of red-hot rock. Molten rock had flowed halfway through the floor before its fire had been quenched.

The air was worse than ever. Tiaan brushed away the cooling cinders, packed up the geomantic globe, crystal and helm, and lay down on the shelf. It was growing dark outside. She closed her eyes, listening to the cooling rock slag cracking like toffee. There was no one to come to her rescue this time.

U
llii spent the night before their departure rocking. The shrieking of the blizzard even penetrated her earplugs, depriving her of the only perfect calm she ever got – sleep. She really needed it. The last few weeks had torn her from her self-contained existence and she was struggling to cope. For years she had lived in the little world of her mind. It was safe there, as long as she did not try to see too far, and was careful not to probe too deep. Some of those glowing knots in her lattice were not meant to be untangled. If she tried they would inflict terrible pain. She had been hurt in the early days, before she’d learned which were kind, or at least indifferent, and which cruel. Which were unknowing and which alert, constantly watching for spies, snoopers or those who, like her, were taking their first groping steps into the life of the mind. The powerful guarded their privacy jealously.

Now that refuge was lost. She was going to be thrust into the world outside, with its pitiless sun, constant racket and everything designed to torment her overloaded senses. Far worse, they would make her pick away at one of those cruel tangles in her lattice until she exposed what lay at its core. And then? The strong always attacked the weak. All she had to protect her was one young man, not an adept of any kind.

Nish had treated her kindly, but Ullii sensed something burning in him. What did he really want? She did not count Irisis at all. Ullii had met dozens like her, people who were kind when it suited them, or harsh when that was more to their advantage. Irisis might be brave and bold, but she was quite selfish.

What would happen once she gave them what they wanted? Would they abandon her
outside
? Exposed to the nightmare of the senses, she would go insane.

So why was she going? Because Nish had been kind to her and that inspired her loyalty. It was no more than that. Ullii had never hoped for love, though she knew what it was. Love was another nightmare, inconceivable and terrifying.

She did so long for kindness, though. The memory of Nish’s gentleness was a beautiful musty aroma tinged with spice and machinery oil. It was having her body caressed with spider-silk. Kindness was protection from splinters of light. Kindness was wax plugs in her ears. Kindness was absolute silence.