Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (14 page)

The vortex coloured down through purple, blues, reds, yellows and finally turned black. Pain stabbed through her head, the pliance flared and for an instant an aura appeared inside the crystal. Tiaan locked the image in her memory, then something crackled and both field and aura disappeared.

‘I’ve done it!’ she exulted, feeling the special thrill of having tried something new and, against all the odds, succeeded. She examined the image frozen in her mind. There was something at its core. Rotating the image, Tiaan picked up an echo of power like none she’d ever come across. It felt intelligent: organic yet alien.

Her head began to throb. Tiaan pushed up the helm, rubbed balm onto her temples, and let it fall again. Another image flashed into her mind. An armoured, crested head; enormous yellow eyes; a mouth big enough to take in her own head; hundreds of teeth. The folded wings made it certain. A lyrinx! It seemed to be talking to someone human, probably a man. There was something familiar about the shape of the head, the set of the shoulders. The image began to fade and she could not hang on to it. Could it be the spy?

Tiaan rubbed her eyes. Feeling unaccountably tired and weak, she went on unsteady legs to the door.

‘Have you seen Gol?’ she asked Irisis, who was walking by with a coil of silver wire in one hand.

‘No!’ she snapped. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted him to fetch Gi-Had.’ Tiaan’s legs folded up under her and she slid down against the wall.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Just working too hard,’ Tiaan croaked, wishing Irisis would go away.

‘On what?’ Her blue eyes scanned the room. Irisis picked up the globe, gave it a gentle shake and laid it down. ‘I’ll tell Gi-Had.’ Irisis looked back at the globe. ‘I was going that way anyway.’

Tiaan was too exhausted to wonder why she was being cooperative. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, putting her head between her knees.

A rough hand shook her by the shoulder. ‘What the blazes is going on, Artisan Tiaan?’

‘O-Overseer Gi-Had,’ she said dazedly. ‘I wanted to see you.’

The man looked as if every drop of blood had been drained from his veins. What was the matter now?

Irisis came in behind him, to stand beside the door.

‘What are you doing down there?’ He lifted her to her feet.

‘I don’t know what happened.’ Tiaan was having trouble thinking straight. It was as if she was drunk.

‘Artisan Irisis has made a serious allegation about you,’ said the overseer.

Tiaan had no idea what he was talking about. ‘I’ve been sensing out what happened to the hedrons.’

‘She’s lying,’ Irisis said coldly. ‘The apparatus nearly killed me when I tried it last night. Maybe that was her intention. That’s why she broke her crystal and implied that I’d done it.
And now she’s broken her pliance, too
.’

Tiaan caught her breath. Irisis would say anything to get rid of her. ‘No artisan would ever break her own pliance!’ she said scornfully. ‘It would be like cutting off her arm.’

‘No
sane
artisan would,’ said Irisis. ‘But you’re suffering from delusions, Tiaan. Either you’re the spy or … you’ve got crystal fever.’

‘What are you talking about?’ cried Tiaan. ‘Overseer, she’s making up stories. She hates me.’

‘Am I?’ Irisis thrust one elegantly manicured finger in the direction of the globe. ‘Take a look at that!’

Tiaan threw herself on the globe, fumbling with the catch. It came open and the failed hedron rolled out. Its insides had gone milky.

‘Now she’s destroyed it as well,’ Irisis said. ‘You must be rid of her, overseer, for the good of the manufactory.’

Gi-Had fretted a scrap of paper to pieces. ‘There had better be a good explanation for this, artisan.’

‘I was reading the hedron,’ Tiaan said lamely. She snatched her pliance and its crystal fell to pieces in her hand. Tiaan stared at the fragments, uncomprehending. Her pliance was ruined. It would take weeks to make another. She wanted to scream.

‘Well,’ cried Gi-Had. ‘What do I tell the perquisitor?’

Tiaan fell to her knees and wept.

‘It’s crystal fever!’ Irisis repeated. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She can’t do her job, overseer.’

‘Shut up!’ Squatting before Tiaan, Gi-Had offered her a cloth. ‘You must help me, artisan.’

Tiaan mopped her face. ‘I was reading one of the failed hedrons,’ she sniffled. ‘I woke it anew and forced it to reveal its aura. I saw something there.’

‘She’s a liar!’ said Irisis. ‘She hasn’t been here all day.’

Gi-Had looked from one to the other, not knowing whom to believe.

‘I’ve been down the mine with Joeyn,’ said Tiaan, ‘risking my life on the sixth level to find a suitable crystal.’

‘You’ve done what?’ Gi-Had said.

‘It’s the only place I can find crystals of sufficient power. The others are no good at all.’

‘That level is forbidden! How dare you risk your life down there? What would the manufactory do if you were killed?’

‘Would it matter? You’d still have Artisan Irisis,’ Tiaan said with heavy sarcasm.

His lack of response gave Tiaan heart. He must have reservations about Irisis too. ‘My discovery might save hundreds of soldiers. And if these new crystals turn out as I suspect …’

‘What?’ he cried.

‘They’re much stronger, and there’s a lot of them. They might drive a clanker twice as fast as the other hedrons. And that might win the war.’

He softened. ‘Indeed, it was a brave and noble thing you did today.
Do not do it again!
If lives must be put at risk, let it be those that we can do without. What did you see in the hedron, Tiaan?’

Tiaan placed the helm over Gi-Had’s square head, put his fingers on the wire globe and, holding the milky crystal, recalled the image seen in its aura. He looked annoyed, then mulishly stubborn, then frustrated, as if what he was looking for lay forever beyond his reach. Suddenly he went rigid. Gi-Had stood up like a mechanical man unfolding, and his eyes were staring. ‘I saw!’ he said, turning to Tiaan. ‘I saw the face of a beast.’

‘A lyrinx?’

‘Yes!’ He gave a great shudder of horror. ‘It was crouched over a round thing on a stalk, like a luminous mushroom, as if it was spying on us. Then it looked up and it was talking to a man. The spy! The enemy knows our every plan. They’ll cut off our clankers one by one.’

Irisis could not contain herself. ‘She lies! She put the image in your mind. She knows nothing; she’s only worth the breeding –’

Gi-Had struck her across the face with his open hand. ‘Shut up, second cousin! We’re fighting for our lives. How dare you bring your petty jealousies into my manufactory!’

Irisis touched her cheek. ‘But I – Look at the evidence against her.’

‘I have,’ he said grimly. ‘And I see your hand in most of it.’

‘But … Uncle promised that I would follow him as crafter. She doesn’t even have a father. She comes from -’

‘And that’s where you’ll be going, artisan, if you cause any more trouble. Tiaan has just proved what a brilliant artisan she is. I can’t do without her.’

The fingermarks stood out red and purple on Irisis’s blanched face. ‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Desperate times, artisan. Someone’s been sabotaging the hedrons, the enemy can see our clankers, and now …’ Gi-Had went white, began to shake and had to be helped onto a stool.

‘What is it, cousin?’ cried Irisis. It was the first time Tiaan had seen her show concern for anyone. But then, he
was
family.

Tiaan offered the overseer a mug of water. ‘You said there was a disaster?’

He took a small sip, then looked to them both. ‘You might as well know,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It concerns us all, but especially artisans.’

‘What?’ Irisis took his hand.

‘Word came in a despatch this morning. It happened way up the coast, two hundred leagues north of here. A vital node has gone dead.’

‘Dead?’ Irisis echoed.

‘Well, of course the node is still there but its field faded to nothing, stalling fifty clankers on the plain of Minnien. The enemy destroyed the lot, then advanced fifteen leagues in a week. If the lyrinx can keep it up they’ll be at the gates of Tiksi by mid-winter.’

No one spoke. They were going to lose the war, and against the lyrinx, losers were eaten.

‘Does anyone know why it happened?’ Tiaan asked, forcing calm on herself. ‘Is it like what’s happened to the controllers, only larger?’

‘We don’t know. There seem to be two possibilities, one nearly as bad as the other,’ said Gi-Had. ‘The first is that the enemy has found a way to block the field, or destroy it.’

Tiaan digested that. ‘And the other?’

‘That clankers take too much power from the field. With so many of them drawing on it at once, they’ve drained it dry, like pumping too much water from a well.’

No one said anything. Gi-Had got up. ‘A state of emergency has been declared. I have authority to do whatever is necessary to produce clankers. Survival takes precedence over everything. And everybody!’ He waved a dismissing hand. ‘Though what is the use if we cannot power them …?’

‘If the enemy can detect our controllers by the aura,’ Tiaan said thoughtfully, ‘what we need is some kind of shield to render it invisible to their senses.’

‘A shield?’ He looked doubtful. ‘Is such a thing possible?’

‘It might be. I have an idea I’d like to try, surr.’

‘Very well. Leave your other work. Spend two days on this task, no more, then report to me. What ideas do
you
have, cousin?’

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ said Irisis.

‘Good,’ said Gi-Had. ‘When can I see your work?’

Irisis looked shocked but recovered quickly. ‘It’ll take a day. Or two.’ Giving Tiaan a look of purest malice, she went out.

With his hand on the latch, Gi-Had turned back. ‘The failed hedron, and your pliance, contain evidence of the traitor. Is there any way of telling who it is?’

‘Not without a new pliance.’

‘Do you mind if I take them? In case we find someone who
can
tell?’

‘They’re no use to me.’

Gi-Had wrapped the evidence in a piece of cloth. Tiaan choked as he carried the ruined pliance away. Incapable of thinking coherently, she went to bed. This time she locked the door and took the globe, helm and crystal with her.

She was still agonising two hours later. How were the enemy sensing the hedrons? Maybe lyrinx had senses that humans did not have. She had no idea, and with her pliance gone, how could she find out?

The loss hurt, physically and emotionally. Withdrawal was going to be worse, and for that nothing could be done except to replace the device as soon as possible. Weeks of misery lay ahead of her.

As she drifted off to sleep Tiaan found herself thinking about that glowing crystal in the mine again. She coveted it more than ever.

Help! Please help me!
It was a scream inside her head, a cry of absolute terror.

Tiaan could see nothing but smoke and yellow sulphur fumes that stung her nose. The manufactory must be on fire. She groped in the darkness for her clothes but could feel only coarse vegetation, like bracken or heath. Her toe caught on a root and she went sprawling among the shrubbery.

Something bright and hot curved across the sky, an irregular glowing object that rotated,
whoosh-thump
, as it went. It slammed into the ground not far away, the shockwave knocking her off her feet. The heath exploded into flame that flared high on a mist of leaf oils. A breeze drove it toward her.

She ran, sharp leaves tearing at her naked thighs, branches twisting themselves around her ankles. Over and again she fell. The last time, too exhausted to get up, she simply lay there as the flames rushed up and over. She screamed but once.

Tiaan woke gasping in her bed, scarce able to comprehend that she had not been burned alive. She fumbled for the lantern, clicking the flint striker over and over, even after the wick had lit. The room looked normal.

Feeling a growing pressure in her temples, she dug a finger into the jar of balm and slathered it across her forehead.

Someone started hammering on the door. ‘What’s going on in there?’

Wrapping a blanket around herself, Tiaan went to the door. Half a dozen of her fellow workers stood outside. ‘Sorry!’ she said. ‘A nightmare. Must have been working too hard. I’m all right now.’

Muttering to themselves, they went back to their beds. Tiaan locked her door and was just tucking the blanket in when she was flung back into that crystal dream, wide awake. This time she was standing on an island in the middle of a broad river. Behind was a pavilion with seven columns surmounted by a dome of beaten copper.

She was reaching into a basket of fruit when there came an explosion of steam and a wavefront of boiling water thundered down the river. She smelt cooked fish. The water divided on either side of the island before roaring past.

The level sank. Tiaan sighed, but a heart-stopping grinding noise came from upstream, followed by a blast of superheated air. Inexorably, around the bend rumbled a wall of lava – the red viscous ooze continually breaking through the blackened crust. On it came, and on, and nothing was going to stop it.

Tiaan ran back and forth across the island. Boiling water surrounded her. There was nowhere to go. She stood back, watching the lava crackle toward her. ‘Help!’ she cried uselessly.

Help!
echoed that handsome face on the balcony, the young man from her dreams. He looked her way, started, and gave a sweet, sad smile that brought tears to her eyes. He put out his arms. He cares for me, she thought, amazed. She began to run, then a wave of lava swept him away.

Again she screamed, again woke; again she reassured the increasingly angry crowd at the door.

Tiaan tried to sleep but was plunged back into the nightmare, running down the corridors of a palace as volcanic bombs fell everywhere, crashing through the ceilings, exploding and setting fire to the magnificent building. ‘Help!’

There was no answer.