Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (56 page)

Another collected his pack, and Tiaan’s, and pointed toward the sinkhole. She moved that way. The remaining lyrinx had eased Besant onto the stretcher and were rigging ropes on a tripod above the hole. Tiaan was led down a narrow iron ladder whose rungs were uncomfortably far apart.

The first thing she noticed was the noise, or rather, music, a low droning that went up and down like someone blowing through long tubes. It was in the background all the time. Sometimes the sound went
so
low that she could feel it in her bones.

As she stumbled into the dark, Tiaan wondered if she would ever see the outside again. It was the strangest place she had ever been. The inside was like a frozen foam of grey, rust-streaked iron, every surface being curved like the interior of a bubble. A long way below, past various guard chambers and working spaces whose purpose she could not discern, she entered a large circular chamber shaped like two saucers, one right way up with another upside down on top of it.

She was taken down a sloping floor to the depressed central section. To one side stood a round table, a pitcher and a set of mugs the size of small buckets, all made of iron. Ryll was led in, followed by Besant on her stretcher, her breast plates streaked with coughed-up blood. The stretcher-bearers set Besant down on the rim. Some dozens of lyrinx took up positions around her.

A young female, whose skin plates were so soft and unpigmented that Tiaan could see her breasts through them, gently held up Besant’s head. A huge female bent over her, in the attitude Ryll had adopted when regenerating his hand. She stood up, shaking her head.

‘Would you speak, Wise Mother?’ she said.

Besant mumbled in her incomprehensible language. Every word brought bubbles foaming out of her mouth and nose. Again she spoke Tiaan’s name and everyone stared at her. A massively built male, with green eyes shaded by brow ridges like shelves, produced the amplimet. It lit up the room with streamers of radiant light.

He gestured to Tiaan. The big female, who had yellow skin plates and sagging wattles at neck and chin, spoke Tiaan’s language in a crackling voice. ‘I am Coeland, Wise Mother of Kalissin. Show us the devices, human.’

Not daring to disobey, Tiaan donned the helm, held the wire globe in her hands and waited. Everyone was watching her.

‘The amplimet goes inside,’ Tiaan said.

Coeland gestured; the male with the brow ridges brought the crystal across. Before he reached her Tiaan felt the potential of it, stronger than before. There had to be a powerful node here.

Her craving for the amplimet was unbearable. Tiaan’s eyes watered. She opened the globe so he could place the crystal inside. The light flared. He cried out and dropped the crystal. She caught it in her hands, a moment of painful bliss, then slipped it into the globe, closed it and fastened the catch. The lyrinx sprang out of the way as if it had bitten him.

Tiaan put down the globe. The field was so bright here that she could visualise it with her eyes open. The node must be a monster. She moved the helm on her head, afraid of the amplimet now. It was definitely channelling power by itself, much more than before. It had nearly killed her in the ice sphere, and there it had been much dimmer.

‘Show!’ Coeland said imperatively.

Tiaan adjusted her helm, reached for the globe, shrieked and snatched her fingers away. The wires were too hot to touch. Suddenly the metal table, pitcher and mugs were pulled up to the ceiling, where they stuck as if magnetised. Water rained down, sizzling on the wires. Her hair began to smoke. Ryll lurched forward and knocked the helm off with his bound hands. The light died down. He caught the falling table and pitcher, though the mugs clanged on the floor.

‘You see,’ he said to the Wise Mother. ‘It taps great power but it is a dangerous device to control. She does not know what she is doing.’

‘The field is strong here,’ Tiaan said shakily, inspecting her fingers, which had lines burned across them. What if they thought it too dangerous and disposed of her? ‘It takes time for me to learn a new field before I can control the flux of power.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said the elderly lyrinx. ‘Tell us about the tetrarch, human.’

Again that question. ‘I don’t know what a tetrarch is,’ Tiaan said

Again that interrogative stare, as if the lyrinx was trying to read her for the truth.

‘It is a person we would very much like to find.’ She turned to Ryll. ‘Besant accuses you of cowardice, wingless one! You were to remain behind. How do you defend yourself?’

Ryll shook his head. He sat holding his shoulder, which was inflamed around the crossbow wound. ‘No defence.’

‘Then Wyrkoe will be your defender.’ At her gesture a tall, slender female stood up.

‘No!’ said Ryll. ‘No defence.’

Wyrkoe sat again.

‘In that case you must take the consequences. You will be neutered at first light.’

Tiaan was shocked. What was the matter with Ryll? Was he too proud to defend himself, or had he given up? She looked around at the hard faces. After all he had done for her on the journey she could not see him treated so unjustly. Dare she?

‘I will defend Ryll!’

Her words exploded into the silence. Every head jerked up, except one. Ryll’s sank to his ankles. ‘No!’ he groaned.

Had she shamed him? It seemed so, from the malicious stares of the other lyrinx. One even laughed, or so she interpreted the braying sound. But to be
neutered
– how could he suffer that? It did not occur to Tiaan that it might be a blessed relief, an honourable way out.

‘Very well,’ said Coeland, ‘defend your
hero
, human.’

Tiaan took a deep breath. Ryll let out another groan but it was too late. The order had been given.

‘Had Ryll stayed behind I would have died and my crystal would have been lost, for I could not have caught Besant’s flier.’ She explained the details of the escape. ‘Had Ryll not jumped, carrying me, I would have been captured.’

‘He should have harnessed you in and cut himself free!’ thundered the Wise Mother. ‘Besant, the greatest of our clan, lies dying, sacrificed for a wingless travesty.’

‘I could not have flown the wing,’ said Tiaan. ‘My shoulder is dislocated.’ She had to explain the term.

The young female with the transparent skin took off Tiaan’s upper garments and worked the arm. Tiaan gritted her teeth. The lyrinx, with a quick movement that made Tiaan shriek, popped the shoulder back in place. She then put the arm in a leather sling and pulled Tiaan’s shirt over it.

‘Ryll might have done the same,’ Coeland observed.

‘I still would not have been able to use my arm,’ said Tiaan.

‘Pfft!’ Coeland made a dismissive gesture. ‘Such weak creatures.’

‘I could not have flown the wing!’ Tiaan said furiously. ‘And without Ryll giving me the warmth of his body I would have frozen to death. Anyway, had it not been for his foresight and courage you would never have had the amplimet at all.’

Coeland sat up at that and Tiaan was made to tell her whole tale. When it was finished the Wise Mother said, ‘Ryll is cleared of the charge of cowardice, though you should be aware,
human,
that he would have preferred life as a neuter than to be defended by you! Take him away and attend his injuries.’

K
alissin was a most special node, a place where the latent energies of the earth might conceivably be tapped – if someone was strong enough, and foolhardy enough, to try. Fifty thousand years ago a rock and iron comet from the depths of the void had plunged to ground here, making the planet ring like a gong and blasting up such a cloud of shattered rock that the entire globe had been plunged into darkness. An age of ice followed that had lasted for thirty thousand years.

The remains of the comet had buried itself deep in the crust of Tarralladell. The rocky parts were fused to glass but the iron core formed a deep molten pool that stayed liquid for twenty thousand years until, buoyed by up-seeping gases, it began to rise again. Expanding gas blew the iron into foamy cells that swelled until the mass forced its way to the surface, melted up though the receding ice sheet and set into a solid spire.

Now it made a pinnacle two hundred and sixty spans high, rising out of the island in the centre of the lake that filled the comet’s impact crater. Inside, the pinnacle was like a honeycomb built for giants, a frozen froth of iron. Outside, its upper parts, pointed like a collection of witches’ hats, were streaked red and rusty-brown. Clots of greasy green shattered rock and glass were welded to it here and there. The lower part was enveloped in country rock dragged up with the pinnacle and layers of windblown dust accumulated after the ice disappeared.

The skirts of the pinnacle were clothed in tall trees, quite unlike the spindly pines elsewhere in Tarralladell. Here and there lay steamy pools, ponds of bubbling mud and cracks from which warm water ebbed, coating the rocks in multi-coloured salts. The upper parts of the pinnacle were bare of all but lichen, though being warm in that frigid land they were a favoured nesting site of eagles and many other kinds of bird.

No one came to collect the eggs. Kalissin Spire had been known as a place of evil spirits long before the lyrinx secretly entered it. No humans crossed the uncannily warm waters of the lake. Just to look up told them what a forbidden place it was. The skies of Tarralladell were overcast for half the year but over Kalissin a circle of clear air was often ringed by great storms, and the iron fangs of the spire were struck by lightning more frequently than any other place in that land. The evil ones were recharging their death spears, folktales told, preparing to wreak havoc on the world in their night ridings. And just occasionally, a fisher on the furthest shore of the lake would look up to see winged creatures wheeling and soaring high above, and know it was all true.

Being a creature of the void from which the lyrinx had come, the remains of the comet drew the invaders to it. The crater, and particularly the honeycombed iron peak, were things they knew and understood – part of their own environment, in a way. But it was more than that. Comets are bodies of unimaginably vast energy, and this one had not expended all its potential in its fiery plunge into the ground. The fall, the impact, the melting and the rising of that iron froth had created an instability. The metal shaft which ran deep into the earth was out of equilibrium with its surroundings. That instability, that node, represented a mighty pool of energy waiting to be tapped.

Comets are strange things. Wandering the heavens for billions of years as they do, their matter attains inexplicable properties of great value to practitioners of the Secret Art. Lyrinx who had this ability coveted cometary iron above all things, and Kalissin Spire represented the very acme of their desires. They brought their best and most creative intelligences here, to envelop themselves in the energy fields; to eat, breathe and sleep surrounded by this, to them, most magical of all substances.

Kalissin was their greatest workshop and laboratory. Here the lyrinx in their individual cells went about their urgent project. Clankers had inflicted enormous casualties on them and they were not numerous enough to support such losses. They had to find a defence.

Unfortunately they had not discovered how to tap the power of Kalissin. Just being within the fields helped, but it was not enough. It was frustrating to be surrounded by more power than they could ever use, and not be able to draw on it. They wanted the amplimet; more importantly, to find out how Tiaan used it to take power from the field. All this Tiaan learned, directly or indirectly, in her first days in Kalissin.

A week went by. Tiaan was fully recovered, apart from a tenderness in her shoulder. The lyrinx had not treated her unkindly, and fed her better than she had ever eaten at the manufactory. At first she insisted on being shown the source of her meals, but soon realised that they respected her beliefs and taboos. The lyrinx would no sooner have fed her human flesh than they would have eaten their own dead. Besides, they mostly ate fish from the lake. Tiaan was soon sick of their diet: grilled fish, a kind of soupy algae, and a root vegetable like a pungent turnip. She had the same every day.

She was housed in a cluster of rooms near the top of the pinnacle. Their shape, like iron bubbles, was hard to get used to. The walls were curved, dark metal with streaks of rust. Her bedroom had a circular hole cut through to the exterior for fresh air, and a cap of green volcanic glass to close it when it was frigid outside. She seldom did. The iron conducted heat up from the depths, keeping the whole of Kalissin warm. The hole was too small to squeeze through.

The droning music was less audible here, and higher-pitched, more like a raspy oboe. The lyrinx had bored holes through the outer bubbles to make wind horns. The wind blew constantly around the heights and the horns never stilled their mournful voices.

None of these things gave Tiaan any comfort. Desire for the amplimet was a constant ache and the pangs grew worse every day, though she was helpless to do anything about her craving. She had learned to undo her door lock the first night but was caught within minutes. They did not harm her, but simply returned her to her room and fixed a bolt on the outside.