Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (57 page)

Every day they questioned her about the amplimet and the nature of her art and craft. She refused to answer, though with each day’s separation from the crystal that grew harder. Soon, Tiaan knew, she would tell them everything, just to have it in her hands for an instant. And she had to have it. It was her only hope of getting free. Most important of all, it was the key to Minis’s survival. In all her troubles she never lost sight of that ultimate goal – to get the amplimet to Tirthrax in time.

How she regretted telling Ryll about withdrawal, but it was too late for that.

‘What are your people doing here?’ she asked Ryll on the eighth day. ‘Are you trying to make your own clankers? Is that why you’re so interested in my craft?’

‘We would hardly duplicate the weapons of our enemies,’ he said coolly. Relations had been strained since she’d defended him.

‘Why not?’

‘That way lies degeneration. It would be going against our own nature. Any device we use must come from the wellspring of our lives and traditions.’

‘But surely it would be easier …’

‘What do we care about
easier
?’ he said savagely. ‘We are not
human
! We do not exist to make things easier for ourselves!
Better
, yes! It is the struggle that matters, else we will soon be as depraved as …’

He had been going to say ‘as you’. She forbore to state that it would be worth it to win the war. It was already clear that, to them, the end did not justify the means. Only means that were part of their culture would ever be employed. ‘What
are
you trying to do?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

Another difference between lyrinx and humans. They did not lie, as a rule. They just refused to answer.

‘Then what do you want me for? Since I’ve been here I’ve done nothing but eat and sleep. I begin to worry that I am being fattened for your dinner table.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but was not convincing.

Undoing the cap on her window, he thrust his muzzle into the opening. When he finally pulled away there was a ring of ice around each eye. ‘We’re watching you and learning about your kind. We think you will be able to help us.’

Tiaan shivered. An icy wind was blowing straight in today. ‘Your own efforts with my amplimet have not been successful?’

‘What makes you think that?’ he said, interested.

‘Your manner with each other, and the tones of your voices. I am learning about lyrinx, too.’

‘What else have you learned?’

‘You never talk about your Histories, Ryll.’

He closed off at once. ‘We are the lost people. We
have
no Histories.’

‘What do you mean?’

She did not expect an answer, but after striding about the room in some agitation, and closing the door, Ryll came back to her.

‘We
patterned
our unborn children in the void, that our kind might survive. And we did. We thrived. Thereafter we did it again and again, patterning our babies in the womb to meet each new threat. We survived; we increased; but we do not
fit
. We no longer know who we are.’

There were hundreds of lyrinx in Kalissin and a good proportion had one deformity or another – lack of wings or claws, inadequate armour or pigmentation, inability to change the colour of their skin. Tiaan wondered about that. Were they reverting to what they’d been before they re-formed their bodies in the void? None of them, even the normal ones, quite seemed to belong. The following day she was taken down a series of iron ladders, some straight, others corkscrewed, to a series of rooms halfway down the spire. The temperature increased with every step and in these middle chambers it was unpleasantly warm.

Ryll led her into a chamber where the central walls of a cluster of bubbles had been cut away to make a room shaped like a strawberry. In one corner of that uncomfortable space a small female lyrinx stood at a bench made of honeycombed iron, surfaced with rock glass the palest tinge of green. She was the one who had fixed Tiaan’s shoulder at the trial, the one who lacked pigment in her skin. At the back of the bench sat a box made of iron wires and green glass, like a tank for fish.

The lyrinx wore Tiaan’s helm. The globe sat on the bench. The creature was manipulating the beads. Her claws were retracted and the thick fingers surprisingly dexterous, though the glow emitted by the amplimet was unchanged no matter what she did.

Tiaan was drawn to the crystal. She could not help herself.

‘This is Liett,’ said Ryll to Tiaan.

Tiaan did not hear. Stumbling toward the bench with a dazed look on her face, she reached out for the amplimet. Ryll dragged her back.

Desperate for it, Tiaan tore free, darted around the startled lyrinx and sprang. Ryll caught her in mid-air, carried her to her room and locked her in.

‘You will not touch the crystal again until you agree to help us. Do you hear me?’ Banging the door, he slammed the bolt home.

Tiaan paced the room all day, growing more despairing each minute. The craving was unbearable. She paced out the night too, finally collapsing on her bed at dawn.

Ryll woke her soon after. He had the crystal in one hand, no doubt to torment her further. Tiaan threw herself on him like a savage, clawing and biting. He seemed surprised by her fury but simply held her in one hand until she was spent.

‘Do you agree?’ he asked calmly.

‘No!’ she snarled. Tiaan felt dazed, unreal. This close to the amplimet she could pick up traces of the field spiralling about Kalissin node. Tears of longing poured down her cheeks.

He walked out and bolted the door. By the time he returned the following day Tiaan felt sure that she was going mad. She had not slept, her hair was a riot, her eyes yellow and brown pits. She had broken her fingernails clawing at the door. Her forehead was bruised from banging it on the wall.

She lay on her back, looking up at the amplimet. She no longer had the strength to fight.

‘Well?’ he said. One facet of the crystal flashed at her.

She laid her head on the floor. ‘I will help you,’ she croaked, holding out her hand.

‘Come down.’ He walked out.

Tiaan followed him back to that strawberry-shaped room. ‘This is Liett,’ Ryll said.

Tiaan repeated the name, ‘
Li
-ett,’ pronouncing it the way names were sounded in her part of the world.

‘No, Li’
et-t
.’ She emphasised the second syllable and ending with a distinct
t-t
sound, like tapping the bench with a fingernail.

Tiaan tried again. ‘Lee-
et
!’

The lyrinx parted her lips in a gesture that might have been a smile or a grimace. ‘Just call me Leet!’

Tiaan moved closer to the bench, distracted by a scuttling movement in the box. Inside crouched a creature like nothing she had ever seen before. It was about the size of a mouse, with the general form of a lyrinx-like biped, though a savagely distorted one. Fur took the place of chameleon skin and it had enormous pink eyes.

It scuttled about on all fours. Its feet were padded hoofs, while the muscularity of its back looked more suited to the carrying of heavy loads than to walking upright.

‘What is it?’ Tiaan asked.

‘A thramp!’ Liett replied. ‘Just observe, small human.’

Liett placed her hands around the walls of the cage, gently but firmly, and strained. Tiaan felt a fizzing sensation, though subtly different in pitch and
colour
from the one Besant had caused in the night flight. The sensation stopped and Liett jerked her hands away, panting with the effort.

She stood up, shaking her head as though trying to dislodge something caught in her colourless crest. Her fingers pressed the spot, over and over. Finally she sat down and closed her eyes.

Tiaan watched the little creature, which had fallen over and was kicking its back legs in uncoordinated spasms. Then, before her eyes, the pads of its feet began to thin and elongate. It happened so imperceptibly that at first Tiaan thought she’d imagined it. She had to compare what she was seeing now with its original self, like a blueprint in her mind, before she was sure.

‘Are
you
a flesh-shaper?’ she said to Ryll, recalling her dreams in the ice house.

‘Some of us are.’

Had they done this to
her
while she slept? Was she subtly altered from before? She inspected her hands and the horror must have been evident on her face.

‘Not you, Tiaan!’ Ryll seemed amused.

‘Why not?’ she cried, backing away.

‘Many reasons,’ said Liett. ‘But most important, you are too big.’

‘Oh?’

‘Even our greatest adepts can’t flesh-form a creature larger than a rat. It takes too much out of us. The work is painful and quite draining. We can’t channel power from outside us, as you do. Even if a dozen of us worked together, to flesh-form a creature the size of a cat would drive us to insanity.
Even here
.’

‘I saw you shape new fingers,’ she accused Ryll.

‘That was regeneration, which is quite different. I was replacing what was lost, not creating a new organism. Our bodies can regenerate even if we are unconscious.’

‘But in the void …’

‘Also different.’ He glanced at Liett. ‘We were subtly shaping our unborn selves. Gently.’

Tiaan went back to the thramp. ‘If you had a hundred working together, or a thou –’

‘That many wills can’t be focussed,’ said Ryll. ‘A hundred is worse than ten.’

‘Moreover,’ Liett went on, ‘you would know it if we tried to work on you. Flesh-forming is torture. This creature has been sedated. Even so, the trauma will probably kill it.’

The thramp was now lying on its side, panting. Its eyes were staring.

‘It does not look so bad.’

‘The worst is to come,’ said Ryll. ‘Liett has just transformed the skin and muscle beneath it. To mould the bones and organs will take days. Flesh-shaping is a very slow process, with many failures, despite what your tellers may have told you.’

‘Then why do it?’

‘Small creatures can be …’ She trailed off at a warning glance from Ryll, then continued. ‘We have a hundred shapers here, and more at other nodes, as you call them. Once one shaper finds the way, others can follow. But one day we will learn to use the power this place bathes in. We will not fear your clankers then,
human
.’

‘That’s why you wanted our controllers!’ Tiaan exclaimed. ‘And me. You can’t use the field and you want me to show you how. I won’t.
Never!
’ Why,
why
hadn’t she taken that chance to escape, back at the ice houses?

‘Oh yes, you will,’ said Liett, with a glance at the amplimet. ‘You will beg to help us.’

T
hat night Tiaan dreamed the earthly structure of Kalissin Spire and woke afraid. The very crust of the world seemed out of balance here. The land was imperceptibly rising, returning to its elevation before the ice sheets had weighed it down. Below, the fluid mantle drifted, immeasurably slow, to compensate.

Her dreams spoke to Tiaan after she was allowed to touch the amplimet. The fields churned all around her, and she sensed another potential. Beneath the iron spire the magma had subsided, leaving an empty chamber. Cooling, shrinking rock had cracked in concentric circles around the base of the spire, which was sinking, unleashing geomantic forces of many kinds.

Tiaan was woken by the wailing of pipes, not far away. They had been going for days now, playing the sorrowful songs that had been the life and death of Besant, Wise Mother of a lyrinx clan for more than eighty years.

The alien syllables rasped on, hour after hour. Another dream flooded back and Tiaan threw herself out of bed, kicking the sheet of woven rush fibres away. Her skin crawled.

Running to the window and tearing the cap open, she thrust her face through. Freezing air belted her in the face. She gulped down mouthfuls of it, so cold that Tiaan felt clots sinking into her lungs. She welcomed the frigid metal against her skin as she went through her second dream, over and again.

Flesh-forming was a talent unique to lyrinx, honed over the aeons they had spent in the void, when being able to physically adapt their young to new environments had been the ultimate way of surviving. In her dream they had been flesh-forming her, turning her into a monster, an eight-legged beast alarmingly similar to a clanker. When they were finished they would send her out to destroy clankers and kill soldiers, the ultimate betrayal of her own kind. As if she had not done enough harm already. By withholding the crystal, they could force her to do anything, no matter how degraded.

The room trembled, just a shiver. It might have been the spire contracting in the night cold, or an earth trembler far away. Or the stone at the base of the spire preparing to give way. That dream came back too, lifting the hairs on the back of her neck. This place had such potential, but the spire was hanging over an abyss.