Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (11 page)

‘Where did you spring from?’ Tiaan exclaimed.

‘Whistling while you work,’ said Malien. ‘This is a change from yesterday.’

‘I’ve missed my craft. Is it dinnertime already?’

‘It went cold ten hours ago. I came to call you to breakfast.’

Tiaan was astounded. Yes, dawn was outlining the hole in the wall of the mountain. ‘I had no idea. I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Why are you taking the whole front to pieces?’

‘I was planning to replace it with parts from one of the others.’

Malien squatted beside her, reached underneath and did something with her long fingers. There was a soft click. She did the same at the top and on the other side. ‘Pull this.’ She indicated a strut.

Tiaan did so, Malien tugged on the other, and the front section slid onto the floor.

‘How did you do that?’ Tiaan cried.

‘I understand Aachim design,’ Malien said.

Half an hour later, the undamaged front section of the other construct had been installed. Tiaan wiped her hands and stood back. The repaired construct, apart from the dust, looked as if it had just been built.

‘There’s still the bigger problem to solve,’ said Tiaan. ‘How to make it go.’

‘Best leave that for later. Aachim machines can be booby-trapped and even an expert would not work on one after a sleepless night. I’ll come down later and teach you a few words of our tongue. To understand what you’re doing, you’ll need to know the names of things.’

While Tiaan was sleeping, Malien returned to the Well. Even before she entered the conical chamber, she noticed that things were different. The entry passage was less frigid, the barrier cubes more brittle. The blue-illuminated mist around the Well was as thick as cream and now extended higher than her head. Malien felt resistance as she pushed though it to the Well.

She peered down anxiously. What if it had begun to unfreeze? She listened for the telltale tinkle of cracking ice – the first sign. Nothing. The tendrils still coiled lazily inside. The Well was silent, the depths still. She relaxed. Not yet. Malien was not sure she could restrain it by herself. Not sure that any one person could.

On the way back, she debated whether to tell Tiaan about her worries. Malien decided to keep them to herself for as long as possible. It would not benefit Tiaan to know.

That afternoon, Malien began to teach Tiaan the rudiments of the Aachim tongue, focussing on the words needed for this kind of work. Though Tiaan spoke three languages – the common tongues of the south-east, the west and the north – as most people did, Aachim speech proved difficult. It was always a relief to get back to the real world of her work.

She spent days studying the construct but could understand neither how it was powered nor what mechanism it used to hover and move. Maybe it was beyond her understanding. Vithis, and the other Aachim, had emphasised their mastery of geomancy and the limited scope of her own abilities. Eventually, more exhausted by this failure than by all her previous labours, she went to sleep inside the construct.

Malien woke her, bearing a mug in each hand. While they sipped their zhur, as the thick red spicy beverage was called, Tiaan explained why she was so downcast.

‘With your clankers,’ said Malien, ‘can anyone operate them?’

‘Of course not! The operator has to be tuned to its controller, and when he leaves he always takes it with him. Without it, nothing can make a clanker go.’

‘Except another operator with his own controller, presumably?’

‘Well, yes, but not always. Do constructs operate the same way?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Malien.

‘That isn’t much help,’ Tiaan snapped.

‘After Rulke built the very first construct,’ Malien said carefully, ‘at the time of the
Tale of the Mirror
, our finest thinkers devoted much time and thought to such devices. How they could be built, powered and controlled. They failed. The problem was too difficult.’

‘But later, humanity discovered how to use the field,’ said Tiaan. ‘Nunar’s Theory showed us how, and then we learned to build clankers.’

‘A primitive machine,’ said Malien. ‘I mean no insult,’ she added when Tiaan bridled, ‘but the one can hardly be compared to the other.’

You just can’t help yourself, Tiaan thought. Your Aachim superiority is bred into you. She spoke aloud, ‘Your people in Aachan succeeded.’

‘They were
more
desperate. And they had Rulke’s original to use as a model, wrecked though it was.’ She regarded Tiaan expectantly. ‘So there must be a key for the machine.’

‘I imagine they took it with them to prevent anyone else using it.’

‘There may be a way around that. Leave it to me.’

Tiaan climbed inside, took off the lower hatch to reveal its workings, and sat with her legs dangling into the cavity. She created a mental image of the mechanism and turned it this way and that, trying to
know
it. Not just the way an operator knew his clanker, but the way a master controller-maker knew the vagaries of the ever-fluctuating field that was the source of all power. Her talent for thinking in pictures allowed her to do that, and it had often helped her to solve problems.

How
could
a construct float above the ground? What held it up? She could not work it out. The controller mechanisms seemed wrong for the field as she knew it. But of course constructs did not use the weak field, so presumably they must employ one of the strong nodal forces Nunar had speculated about. Deadly forces, even to experienced mancers.

A thought occurred to her. One problem an artisan had to solve, each time she made a controller, was how to tune it so that it did not react against the field but drew power smoothly from it. But what if a controller was tuned to
resist
the field? It, and whatever it was in, might be
repelled
by the field. Could that be done?

In her mental image she worked the mechanism trying to see what made it go, and noticed something curious. Behind the glass binnacle a small, cup-shaped receptacle rotated on a shaft, and as it reached the vertical its cap flipped open. It was about the right shape and size to take a small hedron. Looking beneath the binnacle, Tiaan found the receptacle. It was empty but she picked up faint traces of a crystal’s aura. What if she put the amplimet in it?

She unfastened the drawstring, feeling that oneness she always felt when her fingers touched the glowing amplimet. She was about to slide it into the cup when Malien spoke from above.

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you.’

‘Why not?’ she asked testily.

‘I told you – the amplimet is deadly. And the people who built this construct had not seen one in four thousand years. Whatever crystal they used, it was nowhere near as powerful. The mechanism might burn out, or blow apart. Or melt the construct, and you and me, into puddles. If you must try such a dangerous experiment, do it with a lesser crystal.’

Tiaan could see the sense in that. ‘I’ve got an ordinary hedron. Should I try that?’

‘If you must; only know that anything you do here is a risk.’

‘Why?’

‘The Tirthrax node is one of the greatest in the world, and working so close to it may have unexpected effects. And then there is the Well …’

‘What about it?’

Malien hesitated, as if reluctant to speak of it at all. ‘It has a somewhat … uneasy balance with the node. I would not want to upset that.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘These are Aachim secrets, not for outsiders’ ears.’

‘How do you expect me to fix the construct if I don’t know what’s going on?’

‘Very well! There are some things I can tell you, but you must promise to keep them secret.’

‘Of course,’ said Tiaan.

‘The Well of Echoes has been captured but not tamed. Improper use of power might change it in an unpredictable way, or even allow it to
break free
! We are always careful with the Art here, and so must you be.’ She turned away abruptly, ending the conversation.

That raised a dozen questions but Tiaan knew better than to ask them. She took her hand off the amplimet. The more Malien told her, the less she understood.

Putting it away, she weighed her hedron in her hand. Her jaw was clenched tight. Tiaan tried to relax. Reaching down, ever so carefully, she lowered the crystal into the cup, then whipped her hand out of the way.

Nothing happened. She looked up at Malien questioningly. ‘What should I have expected?’

‘I don’t know.’

Tiaan was about to take it out when Malien said, ‘No, leave it there. Something else may be required.’

‘What?’ Tiaan cried in frustration.

‘Leave it until tomorrow. Things always seem better after a good night’s sleep.’

‘I like to keep going until I can’t do any more.’

Malien’s gaze was penetrating. ‘I wonder about you, Tiaan.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Tiaan uncomfortably.

‘What do you enjoy, apart from work?’

Tiaan did not understand the question. ‘I love my work.’

‘And I mine, but it is not
all
of me. What are you hiding from?’

‘I’m not hiding from anything,’ she yelled, turning away. ‘It’s why I’m such a good artisan; because I work harder than everyone.’

‘How old are you? No, you’ve already told me. You were twenty-one the day the gate opened.’

Tiaan hurled her wrench onto the floor. ‘So?’

‘Do you know my age?’

‘You look about sixty, but Aachim age slowly. And I know you were alive at the time of the Mirror. So I would guess, 250?’

‘I’m 385, a hundred years more than I ever expected to live, and I’ve a good few years in me yet, if I don’t take the Well. I’ve lived eighteen of your lives, Tiaan, and learned a thing or two. You can’t work all the hours of the day, and you can’t cover up other failings by staying at your bench day and night. You have to live!’

‘My
mother
used to say that.’

‘If you won’t listen to me, take her advice. Go to bed early and get up in the morning, refreshed. What is hard now will seem easy then. It may come to you in your dreams.’

Tiaan dreaded her dreams these days, though as she headed up the stairs she muttered, ‘I’m glad you’re not my mother.’

She had not thought of Marnie in ages. What would she be doing now? Tiaan could almost see her on the great bed, gorging herself and pulling her latest lover down on her enormous, fleshy expanses. Her mother did nothing
but
live.

‘I’m worried the lyrinx will come,’ she said as they reached the top. ‘This is the greatest opportunity of my life and I don’t want to miss out on it.’

‘I’m worried too,’ said Malien. ‘I think I’ll go to my eyrie for a while. I need to think.’

‘What is it? There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?’

After a long hesitation, Malien said, ‘I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Well. It seems to be unfreezing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Well is a dynamic object, like an energy whirlwind. It wants to run free, but that freedom would come at the expense of everything in the natural world that is fixed – rocks, forests, life of any kind! Tamed as it is, it’s a treasure. Set free within the plane of the world, it spells ruin for every solid thing it touches. It has been frozen in place ever since we came to Tirthrax, but now it appears to be thawing. Should it thaw completely, I would be hard pressed to hold it.’

‘Why is it thawing?’

‘I don’t know. Have you noticed anything different about the amplimet lately?’

‘No. You warned me against using it.’ She passed it over.

Malien studied it. ‘I don’t see anything, but keep an eye on it, and tell me if anything unusual happens.’

‘Do you expect it to?’

‘I don’t know. The thawing may have nothing to do with the amplimet. It might be due to the gate opening, or all the power the fleet of constructs took from the node.’

‘But you’re worried?’

‘I’m very worried.’

T
he tear was two-thirds of the way down the balloon but the air still gushed out. The balloon fell, not quite like a stone, but fast enough to be frightening. The lyrinx did not wait to make sure of them, but turned back toward Tiaan and the witch-woman.

Nish wondered what it would feel like to be splattered across the rocks. He hoped the pain would not last long. Ullii whimpered and tried to climb into her basket.

‘That won’t do any good. Come here.’ Nish took her in his arms.

Ullii pressed herself against him as if she was trying to get inside his skin. He hugged her tightly. The tearing wind had carried them a few leagues west of Tirthrax and down over the precipice. They were now dropping towards one of the spreading mounds below an icefall. The ice would be as hard as stone.

A sudden whirling updraught caught the balloon, driving them past the ice mound in the direction of a moraine of boulders, then beyond it toward an island in a frozen outwash river. Nish was sure they were going to smash right through the ice. However, the wind pushed them towards the forest covering the centre of the island.

The trees loomed up, tall conifers rather like fir trees, though the needles were blue. The balloon was not completely deflated but as soon as they hit the trees, a branch would tear the side right out.