Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (72 page)

How
could
humans fly, without wings or a powered glider, or some incomprehensible force like the construct? He puzzled over that for the rest of the day; then, no closer to a solution, he decided to have an early night for once.

Nish roused toward the middle of the night with an answer. It came from a game he’d played with his brothers and sister when he was a child. They’d made bags out of scraps of paper glued together with flour and water paste, held them upside down over the fire and bet which one would fly up the chimney on the hot air and furthest across the yard.

Nish, being the youngest, had never won, but had kept making his models long after the other children lost interest. The primitive balloons were unstable, tipping over and falling back into the fire more often than they’d gone up the chimney. Then Nish hit on the idea of suspending a tiny weight on threads below the bag. His first balloon had floated straight up the chimney, across the backyard and landed in the next street.

Having succeeded, Nish had lost interest in balloons. Now he began to wonder. Leaping out of bed, he began to sketch furiously. Shortly he was banging on the scrutator’s door.

‘Surr, surr!’ he cried.

After considerable muttering and cursing the door opened. The scrutator stood there, completely naked, in the light of a single candle. The rest of his body was as gnarled and twisted as his fingers, while scars criss-crossed a torso so lean that every bone could be counted, every sinew traced. What torture had the man suffered?

‘What the hell do you want?’ snapped Xervish.

‘I have the answer, surr! A balloon powered by hot air.’ He held out his sketches.

Xervish snatched them, muttering, ‘Bloody fool!’ He stared at the papers for a full minute, stepped back and slammed the door in Nish’s face.

Nish shrugged. It was after midnight. He went back to bed. He’d done all he could.

O
n Tiaan hobbled, back to what she thought was the previous clearing, trusting to her instincts to carry her to the campfire.

They failed her. Shortly she encountered a gloomy copse that she had no memory of seeing before. Stopping at the edge, she reviewed her options. Without a fire she would probably die of exposure. Haani certainly would. But she had nothing to make one with – flint and tinder were at the camp.

Holding up the amplimet awkwardly, for Haani was getting heavy, she tried to work out what to do. The first clearing, and her tracks, might be only a snowball’s throw away, but which way? She dared not climb a tree to look for the fire, for fear the child would run away.

Haani moaned and shuddered. Setting her down, Tiaan took off her own coat, wrapped Haani in it, put her feet through the sleeves and tied the ends. With a piece of cord she made a sling around her neck and lifted the bundled child in. At least it left her hands free.

Leaning back against a tree, Tiaan tried to draw power into the crystal. It did not work. There was no field here. She could sense power deep in the earth, but only as the vaguest blur that was no use to her. It took a while to work out why, so sluggish was her thinking in the cold. With the helm and globe back at the fire, she had no way to focus the amplimet.

Pulling the child closer, she shut her eyes. There was some warmth between them, but not enough. Haani’s teeth chattered. If only she’d thought to bring the helm. Tiaan could visualise it now. That was her unique ability, one of the reasons she had done so well as an artisan. She could look at an image any way she chose, rotate it, even turn it upside down. If it was of a working mechanism, like the gears of a clock, she could make it run and see any flaws at once.

As Tiaan idly rotated the helm in her mind, she felt a tiny pull to the right. She looked that way: the pull now seemed to come from straight ahead. Could the amplimet be calling to the helm, or the other way around? That seemed absurd. She mentally turned the helm and as its crystal came into view it glowed like the amplimet. The glow faded as the helm revolved away.

Maybe the helm’s crystal
was
calling to the amplimet, and why not? Both had lain together in that underground cavity for an eternity. The Principle of Association told that the link must be maintained, even though they were separated by time or distance.

She turned the helm until its crystal faced her and the glow was at its brightest. Tiaan felt that pull again. She took a step towards it, then another. It was still there. Yes! she exulted. It can lead me home.

It led her somewhere, but after she had been walking for about as long as it had taken to find the child, Haani jerked, let out a wailing cry and the image vanished. By the time Tiaan calmed the child she could not get the helm’s image back. She kept going, hoping she would end up at the fire. A faint hope. In the thickening snow she might miss it by fifty paces and never see it.

Her shin began to trouble her. It would be worse in the morning, if she lived to see it. She kept going, long past the point where the fire should be. Haani had not run all that far; certainly less than a thousand paces. Tiaan was wondering which direction to go, and how much further she
could
go on her frozen feet, when she caught a whiff of smoke.

She turned into the wind, testing the air like a dog. There it was again. She headed that way, tracking the elusive smell. It was sometimes there, sometimes not; now definitely stronger. Tiaan felt like cheering. Stumbling on, in a few minutes she saw, beyond the trees, the light of the fire. Tiaan ran the last distance, laid Haani down next to the coals and pulled her feet out of the sleeves. She expected to see the dull white of frostbite but to her joy the child’s small feet, though deathly cold, were unmarked. She propped them close to the fire.

Tiaan’s own feet were in worse condition, though at least she had been wearing socks. She put them near the warmth, then dipped a mug of stew each. Haani’s hand came out of the coat and took her mug. The child did not look at her as she sipped. Tiaan did not know if she was angry or afraid. She did not care. Haani was safe. Nothing else mattered.

Soon the child began to droop. Tiaan put her in the sleeping pouch and got in with her. Haani lay rigidly in her arms. Finally she slept and, to Tiaan’s relief, snuggled up and her cold hand took Tiaan’s.

It was not the best night’s sleep Tiaan had ever had. Dreams of lyrinx, nightmares about the nylatl, a reproachful, let-down Minis, all were mixed in with Haani’s own fitful nightmares. Once more Haani woke screaming and thrashing, but with Tiaan’s arms around her there was nowhere to go. Soon the child slept soundly.

In the morning Haani was better, though she still would not speak. There was nothing to be done about that but wait it out.

Tiaan’s shin was little worse than before, though her muscles were very stiff. They ate a quick breakfast, got back on the river and skied all day, just going steadily. Haani seemed to need the activity – she was always first on her feet and last to sit down. It was all Tiaan could do to keep up with her.

Thinking about what had happened last night, Tiaan realised that the amplimet had been dull because she was too far from the node of Kalissin and there was no other node nearby. That was why she had been unable to contact Minis. He could still be alive.

The day passed and two more. It was the easiest skiing Tiaan had ever done – smooth ice covered with a thin layer of snow. They were making excellent progress, as much as seven leagues one day, by her estimate. They often passed villages but did not stop. Haani had no more interest in meeting strangers than Tiaan did. Maybe Haani was shy too. Probably was, living up there all alone.

Midway through the seventh day, the villages on the shore became more numerous and larger. They began to pass orchards and snow-covered market gardens. Late in the afternoon they reached the outskirts of a sizeable town.

Suddenly there were people everywhere. Hundreds of children played on the ice. Lines of porters skied to and from the smaller settlement on the other side, carrying huge loads on their backs, or sometimes their heads. Shabby little delivery boys mixed with well-dressed ladies and gentlemen gliding along the foreshores. The ice was their highway, a more convenient one than the frozen, rutted roads.

They continued until they reached a waterfront that appeared to be the centre of Ghysmel. After diligent enquiry Tiaan located the shipping offices. Going into the first, she asked about passage west down the sea. A tall, blond-haired woman came to the counter.

‘You’re in luck. We’ve had a thaw these last few weeks. The
Norwhal
is leaving tomorrow, and sailing all the way down the Milmillamel to Thryss and Flaha.’

‘I don’t know those places,’ Tiaan said. Catching sight of a faded chart on the wall, she picked the name of a destination, since she would undoubtedly be asked. The war had not come this far south so she presumed there would be no restrictions on travel.

‘I would like to purchase two tickets to Flaha.’ It was a town on the north side of Milmillamel, a good two hundred leagues away.

‘Cabin, hammock or steerage?’ the blond woman asked.

‘That would depend on the tariff,’ Tiaan replied carefully.

The cabins turned out to be reasonably priced, one gold coin and two silver. Tiaan had more than enough, having not yet touched the contents of Joeyn’s belt. The idea of living in a hammock for weeks, in a room with dozens of other people, probably dirty and smelly and prying into her business, could not be countenanced. She’d not shared a room since she became an artisan.

‘Cabin, please.’

The clerk checked the gold and silver with her teeth, weighed it on a small pair of scales, then wrote out a ticket in beautiful handwriting full of swirls and flourishes. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked casually as she worked.

‘What? Oh, Tatusti.’ She named a town upstream from Flaha, unwilling to divulge her true destination.

‘Tatusti?’ The clerk sounded incredulous.

‘The man I am betrothed to is there.’ Tiaan flushed at the sound of those words, often thought about but never before uttered.

The clerk melted green wax onto the paper and stamped it with a seal.

‘Thank you!’ Tiaan took the ticket. ‘What time is the tide tomorrow?’

‘No tides in Tallallamel. Where is your home town? You must have come a long way.’

A common enough question. Tiaan had said ‘Tiksi, over the mountains,’ before she realised.

The clerk nodded. ‘I thought so, from your speech, We see many travellers here, though few from that land. The
Norwhal
leaves at nine in the morning. Or ten. Or even eleven if the captain gets drunk again, which she usually does. Best be here at eight, to be certain.’

Tiaan thanked her, then turned back. ‘Can you name a good inn, not too far away?’

‘Go to The Mussel Gatherer, a few hundred steps back toward the town, that way. Ask for Pwym the porter. He’s my little brother and he’ll fix you up nicely.’

A most courteous young man, he did just that. In under an hour Tiaan and Haani were set up in a small but pleasant room on the third floor, overlooking the waterfront. A metal bath was brought up and filled with buckets of hot water. They scrubbed away the grime of weeks.

In the evening they went to the markets, purchasing clothes for the journey. Haani looked like a hillbilly child in her dirty furs. Tiaan bought a needle, strong thread and various other things she might need on the journey, then spent an entirely unnatural amount of silver on a special outfit, the one she planned to wear when she met Minis.

In the morning they arrived early and were shown to their cabin. It was tiny, airless but clean and neat. The captain had stayed sober, evidently, for the boat unfurled her sails and left on the gong of nine.

The trip to Flaha took fifteen days. They did not stop for the first week, but after that visited one port after another, sometimes only sailing for half a day before docking again.

Tiaan and Haani kept to themselves, occasionally walking on the cramped deck, which was cold and windy. Haani was clinging now – she was shy in crowds and would not answer when people spoke to her. Tiaan understood that, though she found it confining.

On the third day, through a gap in the clouds, she glimpsed a familiar flying shape, just for a second. Was the lyrinx hunting her or was it just a coincidence? She could not think so. After that she kept to their cabin, busying herself in making a new pair of boots to replace Haani’s worn-out ones. Tiaan enjoyed the work, using her artisan’s skills for the first time in ages. It was helping to prepare her fingers for another job, one she planned to begin as soon as the boots were complete.

Whenever she needed a hand, Haani was there and seemed to know instinctively what to do. Tiaan appreciated that, though she would as soon have done it herself. She was so used to working alone that having to share a room made her feel uncomfortable. Besides, Haani was being helpful because she had been brought up that way. It did not mean the child liked her. Tiaan was sure she did not.