Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (58 page)

She worked in her room, which was hard to endure. Over the past six months Tiaan had grown used to being outside in all weather, but with spies about that was not possible.

At first she could work only in short intervals, for her muscles had lost most of their strength. However, she soon began to make progress. Gilhaelith was generally in his organ chamber, working on an unspecified project. Nyrd the gnomish messenger came and went. Tiaan often saw skeets out her window. On the last day of her first month in Nyriandiol, Gilhaelith took dinner with her in her room.

‘The Aachim spies have gone, and Vithis has moved his forces north along both sides of Warde Yallock. They must think the thapter crashed in the wild country there.’

‘Why would they think that?’

He simply smiled. ‘But of course, that won’t get rid of them for long. Sooner or later something will tip them off and they will come in force.’ His eyes met hers.

‘Can your Art still conceal me?’ Her opinion of his powers had risen, as his had of hers.

‘Not from a direct search, so we must be ready to flee on short notice.’

‘But they’ll be watching.’

‘We’ll go in the thapter, if it’s ready. If not, I have another way of escape, though it’s not so secure now.’

‘You would just abandon Nyriandiol, and all you have here?’

‘After betraying Scrutator Klarm, and lying to Vithis, there’s no choice.’

‘Where will you go?’

He looked away. ‘I’ll decide when the time comes. In the meantime, there’s much to do. Shall we get back to work?’

He knows, she thought, but doesn’t trust me enough to say. We think the same way on that, too.

He now began to teach her the foundations of geomancy, though in Tiaan’s first week of study that Art was not once mentioned. It was like being back in her days as a prentice artisan.

Gilhaelith started with minerals and crystals. Tiaan had expected to find that easy, having spent most of her life working with crystals of various kinds. On the first morning she discovered that she knew nothing at all. Gilhaelith had hundreds of different minerals in boxes, all nested in the pale, papery bark of the sard tree. One entire room was devoted to them, huge specimens as well as little ones. Tiaan had to learn the name of each mineral, and recognise it no matter how poor or damaged the sample. Some came in a bewildering array of forms which seemed to bear no resemblance to each other, defeating even her visual memory.

At the moment she had before her four samples, all supposed to be of ironstone. One was made of a tangle of small dark plates as iridescent as mica, the second was a round crystal with many facets, the third resembled a dark-brown earth, while the last consisted of many small flat crystals grown together like the petals of a rose.

‘I don’t understand how they can all be the same,’ she said.

Her head was throbbing from the effort of remembering them and their geomantic uses. Ironstone had virtues in healing and could also be transformed into lodestone, though Gilhaelith had not told her how. He bade her take particular note of the rosette form, which had a variety of geomantic uses, some belying its appearance.

‘There’s too much to learn,’ she said wearily.

‘Just use your memory. Understanding will come in time.’

But there was never enough time. Each morning began with a recognition test, using hundreds of samples, none of which she had seen before. Gilhaelith expected no less than perfection which, even for Tiaan’s visual recall, proved impossible. Subsequently she had to list and describe, from memory, every mineral she had previously been shown. She made many mistakes, which did not please her master.

After only a week, he began her on rocks and ores of every conceivable sort, some identified by form, weight and colour, others because of the minerals they were made up of and the way they were arranged. And rocks, a week later, led to the forces that had formed them at the dawn of time, and all the ways that they had been shaped and changed ever since.

Gilhaelith’s instruction now became abstract and harder for her to visualise, much less understand. It suited the contortions of his mind, but not her own. As he plunged deep into the patterns of numbers that crystals made, his deficiencies as a teacher became apparent. When she stumbled over a concept or a principle, he simply repeated what he had said before, more loudly. He could not put himself in the mind of a prentice, or see the right way to teach her what had been so easy for him. Incapable of putting technicalities in simple language, he talked in abstruse jargon. Finally, when he was using numbers to explain the forces that caused volcanoes to erupt, and sometimes explode violently, she snapped.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t understood a thing you’ve said all morning.
Gilhaelith!’

He was staring at her bosom, which had grown over the past month. She had put on weight and knew that it suited her. He did not, she now appreciated, look out of lechery, but simply amazement that she could be shaped so differently from him. She had given up reminding him how rude it was.

Gilhaelith looked away, abashed. ‘I’m sorry. You are my first prentice and I’m an indifferent teacher. Would you care to come outside?’

‘I’d love to, if it’s safe.’

‘I have guards around the rim. No spy can come up without being seen. I’ll take you down into the crater – it may be easier to show than to tell.’

Since Tiaan’s controller was not yet ready, she was carried down on the back of a donkey. An uncomfortable journey, it made her back ache within minutes, but she soon forgot about that. Gilhaelith walked beside her, explaining how the lava formed deep in the earth, what force it had taken to blast the crater out, and why its walls had the shape they had. The trip taught her more than she had learned in the previous week.

The sheer cliff below the villa, made of layer upon layer of volcanic rock, looked as if it had been cut with a spade.

‘Three hundred years ago, a mighty explosion blasted everything else away,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘It blocked out the sun for a fortnight and the noise was heard in Tyrkir, hundreds of leagues to the south.’

‘And this could happen again?’ Tiaan looked around nervously.

‘
Will
happen again, and again.’

‘Then why risk coming down here?’

‘There should be signs for weeks beforehand – earth tremblers, geysers. The lake might boil or drain away.’

So much to learn, so little time.

At the bottom they stopped by a hissing spring surrounded with yellow salts. ‘The volcano is only sleeping,’ Gilhaelith explained. ‘The congealed lava is still liquid underneath, and the solid cap nearly as hot as a fire. The rainwater seeps down, boils and is forced up like water from the spout of a kettle.’

‘And these coloured crystals?’

‘Hot water dissolves minerals from the rocks. After it spurts out and dries up in the heat, crystals form –’

‘Like salt in a dried-up rockpool on the seashore.’ Tiaan remembered trips to the sea with her grandmother when she had been little.

‘Precisely.’

Further down, the vents were thickly coated with layers of yellow-brown sulphur, the source of much of Gilhaelith’s wealth. His workers were hacking it into lumps which they loaded into baskets, some carried on their heads, others on their backs.

They continued to the peculiarly blue waters of the lake. Gilhaelith lifted her off the donkey and to her surprise it felt pleasant in his arms. Setting her down where she could rest against a boulder, he began unpacking a picnic basket. She studied him surreptitiously as he laid food and drink on the cloth, a thick weave patterned with concentric squares in earthy reds, browns and yellows. He still looked awkward but it fitted him better now.

Gilhaelith set down plates, sawed grainy bread into perfect slices and placed two on her plate. He added a handful of a pickled vegetable rather like an olive, white lengths of cheese and slices of cooked gourd, and passed it to her. Looking up, he caught her watching him and grinned self-consciously. Tiaan, for the first time, smiled back. In contradiction of his statement about being indifferent to humanity, he seemed to like her. She discovered that she liked him too, in spite of his failings. She could
almost
, almost trust him, though she warned herself not to.

It was a pleasant lunch, as long as she did not look too closely at what he was eating. They just talked about whatever came to mind, and Tiaan was sorry when it was over. It was sweltering, without a trace of breeze. There was not a cloud in the sky and the dark rocks radiated heat.

Gilhaelith packed the basket, then said, ‘I’ll have a swim before we go up.’ Stripping off shirt, boots and socks, he waded into the water and began to flap about on his back, sending gouts of water up from hands and feet and blowing like a whale.

As Tiaan watched, her smile faded. It seemed to grow hotter by the second. Sweat ran down her back. Beneath the straps of the brace her skin itched unbearably. A tear stung her eye. She clenched her hands in her lap and waited.

He came out, still blowing and grinning like a loon, water pouring from his skinny chest. ‘That’s good. Not too warm, not too cool –’ He stooped. ‘What’s the matter, Tiaan?’ and slapped his thigh. A few drops landed on her face. ‘I’m a damned fool.’

‘I enjoyed watching you swim. It’s just that – it’s so hot …’ She rubbed her eyes and gave him a wan smile. ‘It’s all right. I was just feeling sorry for myself.’

‘I’d carry you out,’ he said, ‘but –’

‘I don’t mind getting my gown wet,’ she said eagerly. ‘It’d keep me cool on the way up.’

He took off her boots and carried her into the water. It was the perfect temperature – cool enough to be comfortable but not so cool that she could not have stayed in it for hours. The sea near Tiksi, on the few times she had swum in it, had been bone-achingly cold.

Gilhaelith laid her in the water, one hand behind her knees, the other under her back. She floated, weightless and perfectly content. Tiaan splashed water on her face, wiped it off and stared up at the blue sky. It quite took her away from all her troubles.

A droplet on her forehead roused her. ‘We’d better go.’

She smacked her cupped hand into the water, splashing him, and laughed. The most extraordinary look crossed his face, like a man trying to climb out through a mask. It tore but re-formed – one hundred and fifty years of self-control could not be broken that easily. He looked so stern that Tiaan quailed. No, she thought, there is a human being inside. She swung her arm again and the jet of water caught him right on the bridge of the nose.

Water dripped from his nostrils, hair and chin. He looked so ridiculous that she snorted. He cracked a little, tossing a scoop of water which only dewed her hair. Tiaan attacked him with both hands. Water went everywhere. He splashed her face and this time the mask cracked in two. He whooped. She laughed aloud, going two to his one, until a particularly energetic blow slid her off his arm and she went under. Tiaan did not have time to panic, for he caught her straight away, lifting her out and holding her as if she were a fragile toy.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course,’ she said gaily.

‘It’s late. We’d better go.’

The moment was broken and she was sorry about that, for something had changed between them. They were halfway up the winding track when Tiaan noticed a circling speck, high above. It could have been an eagle but she did not think so. ‘Gilhaelith! What do you think that is?’

He stared upwards, shading his eyes with long, knuckly fingers. ‘I’d say,’ he said slowly, ‘that it is a lyrinx.’

‘Is it watching us?’

‘I think so.’

‘Why would a lyrinx be watching Nyriandiol?’

‘Sulphur is needed for the war. It would inconvenience humanity if they had to obtain impure stuff from further away.’

‘Will they attack, do you think?’

‘I doubt it. Despite the war in Almadin, enemy territory is a long way from here. Even if they took this place they could not hold it, for the scrutators have a mighty army in Borgistry. No, they’re just spying.’

‘Could they recognise me from that height?’ she asked anxiously. Since Kalissin, she lived in fear of being used for flesh-forming again.

‘Lyrinx sight is not as good as ours in daytime, but best cover yourself in case it comes lower.’ He gave her a scarf to wind around her face.

The donkey grunted and groaned all the way up. The fractured rock and ash kept sliding beneath its weight. Once, the poor beast lost its footing and would have fallen, had not Gilhaelith steadied it.

‘The poor thing,’ said Tiaan. ‘It feels wrong to be on its back, doing nothing while it struggles so hard.’

‘It’s earning its keep, as we all must do,’ said Gilhaelith.

‘I’m not earning mine!’ she muttered.

‘Work hard; master your Art. We’ve little time left.’

Tiaan had been working hard, but a prentice would have spent years on crystals alone; she’d had a scant week. Even allowing for her experience it was no way to learn the Secret Art, much less master it. But the war, the world, her enemies would not wait.

Alie and Gurteys stood by the front door, and both frowned when they saw the state of Tiaan’s gown. She ignored their unfriendly glances. Did they think she was trying to take Gilhaelith away from them?

That night she drove herself harder than usual. She could not bear being dependent. It reminded her of her mother.

The next day Gilhaelith returned Tiaan to her attic hiding place as a local warlord appeared unannounced. He pretended to be checking on an order of brimstone, but as his eyes darted all around and his army of retainers wandered where they were not supposed to, clumsily questioning Gilhaelith’s servants, it was clear that he was really looking for the thapter, and Tiaan. Whether for himself, or as a paid informant to Vithis, it did not matter. Tiaan shivered all the while he was there.

Once he had gone the lesser servants, led by Gurteys, stood around talking in low voices, after which they sent a deputation to Gilhaelith. Tiaan was not privy to what was discussed, though afterwards he was unusually silent and distant. She gathered that her presence, and the thapter, threatened everyone.