Geomancer (Well of Echoes), page 60
The light was now so bright that she had to squint. Her vision narrowed to a horizontal slit that showed only the central section of the port-all. Tiaan forced, and something pushed back just as hard. The amplimet did not budge. Minis had not told her about this.
She could not fail this close to her goal. There must be a way through. Tiaan turned the crystal so one of its pyramidal ends pointed to the basket, and heaved. The amplimet went a little way and stopped as if she was pushing against a solid wall. The other end did not work either.
There was only one thing left to do and she did it most reluctantly, remembering Minis’s warning about using the amplimet here. Getting the wire globe from her pack, she placed the amplimet inside. The glow from the port-all disappeared. The whine was gone too. As soon as she put the helm on, the field sprang into view. It was different from other fields she had seen, consisting of multi-coloured billows and eddies radiating in all directions from the port-all. She felt she saw more than ever before, as if the swirls and whirlpools opened on a dimension she had previously been incapable of imagining.
The resistance proved as strong as ever. Tiaan went forward as far as she could go. Holding the globe straight out in one hand, she closed her eyes while manipulating the beads with the other. No matter how hard she tried, Tiaan could draw nothing from the field. She had no time to wonder why. She would have to try her fledgling geomancy again.
She sensed several sources of that kind of power. Great thrust faults lay below, where half a continent had been forced over another, pushing up these giant mountains. Such power was beyond the most powerful mancer’s ability to tap or even survive.
But there was one source she might be able to use. Tiaan had seen them on the way here – the glaciers all around. They ended in icefalls, and the energy released by one tiny crack opening should be enough to force her way in.
She sought out and discarded many before finding a glacier that seemed just right. It was a little one, moving down a truncated valley on the other side of the mountain. She’d seen it as she was climbing up. But even a little glacier had awesome power to grind and crack and crush. She sensed out its structure, just above the icefall, and located a weakness along which coloured haloes danced in her mental image. It was ready to crack open. Tiaan waited.
‘What are you doing, Tiaan? Why are you standing there like that?’ came Haani’s voice from behind.
‘Shh!’ Tiaan could not answer lest she lose her concentration. It was coming, it was coming! The crevasse cracked open. She drew power from it, clumsily. It had no perceptible effect on the glacier but Tiaan felt a surge of cold force stronger than anything she had handled before. It flowed into the amplimet, the spark lit up like a flash of lightning and Tiaan pushed hard.
The opposing force gave before her like a knife thrusting through a drum. She fell, almost crashing into the glass doughnuts. Regaining her balance, she slipped the amplimet from the globe, jammed it into the basket and banged the amber door.
The glow and the whine reappeared. The barrier came up so hard and fast that Tiaan was sent skidding twenty paces across the room. Fortunately there was nothing to crash into or she would have broken bones.
She lay dazed as Haani came screaming up. ‘Tiaan, are you all right?’
Tiaan got up, with the child’s help. ‘I think so.’ She dusted herself off, only to discover that the slide had torn a hole in the knee of her beautiful pantaloons. Not a large one, but it made her look like an urchin, rather than a beautiful woman rushing to meet her lover.
No time to change. The doughnuts were now dazzlingly bright, the amplimet glowed like a furnace through the walls of the basket, while tight beams of coloured light pulsed out of random parts of the device. The noises coming from it ranged from shrieks to barely audible rumbles. Every so often the whole machine vibrated as if to shake itself apart, and the twisticon was lit up by pulses of green light that formed standing waves inside.
‘I’ve got to do it now, before it breaks.’ Squatting down, Tiaan worked the beads in their orbits for what she hoped was the last time.
‘Minis, Minis, where are you?’ Blankness, struck through with brilliant beams of light. ‘Minis. Come to me. The port-all is built. It’s ready to bring you to safety.’
Still nothing. She ran through her memories of all the times she’d contacted him before. Suddenly she smelt smoke.
‘What are you doing, Haani?’ She could not look or she would lose it all.
‘Just sitting here,’ came a small voice beside her.
‘You’re not burning anything?’
‘Of course not!’ the child said indignantly.
‘It must be Aachan!’ Tiaan said to herself. ‘It has to be. Minis!’ she roared, and there it was, a great dome of an island, upon which lava flows were advancing, boiling the sea to steam.
On the ash-layered top she saw people in their thousands, sheltering under steep roofs collapsing under the weight of ash and cinder. Others huddled in the mouths of caves. Jagged volcanic bombs rained from the sky, some bursting open to reveal liquid interiors. Everywhere people were screaming, weeping, dying. She caught a stinging whiff of brimstone.
Her viewpoint drifted up a slope. A tower appeared, made up of dozens of slender spires, the sides of which were clustered with shiny silver buttons, or domes, or bowl-shaped caps. They must have been huge, for around the spires a road spiralled its way to the very top. The road was suspended from the towers by cables that from this distance looked as thin as hairs. At the top stood a metal plate the twin of the one on the wall behind her.
What on earth was the structure? Could it be their end of the gate? It must be, though the winding road just ended at the top. ‘Minis!’ She did not know that she had screamed it aloud. ‘Minis, tell me what to do!’
It’s Tiaan!
Just a whisper, but it made her skin shiver. She was going to succeed after all. ‘Minis, I’ve done it. I’ve made the port-all – the zyxibule.’ That word felt unlucky. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Why did you not call us, Tiaan?
She could not see him among the throng. How she wanted to. ‘I called many times. You did not answer.’
No matter. It’s too late. We can’t open the gate, Tiaan. We’re too weak now.
‘There’s power here. I can channel more if you need me to. Tell me how. I can make the gate from here.’
Voices were arguing; some she recognised. The harsh tones of Vithis, Minis’s foster-father. The calm, resigned voice of Luxor, and Tirior urging them on, to seize the opportunity.
What have we to lose? said Luxor. We’re going to die anyway.
I say we trust her, said Tirior. Tiaan has taken on every challenge so far, and succeeded against our expectations.
And if she fails? grated Vithis. We don’t die a noble death on beloved Aachan – we die trapped in the hideous void, to be eaten like carrion. Where is the dignity in that?
Then stay behind! roared Luxor. Go to the Well of Echoes and die with your precious dignity! I choose life for my clan.
And I, said Tirior. The Ten Clans have agreed on it.
I don’t like it, said Vithis. To offer such a secret to an old human, and one who is barely out of childhood. What will she do with it?
Time to worry about that if we survive, said Tirior.
Yes, said Vithis. And we will worry, you can be sure.
They voted and it was agreed. They would make the attempt. Minis came back and told Tiaan what to do.
Tiaan felt panicky to see the Aachim crammed there, dying. Their lives relied on her. She understood little about the deadly geomantic Art she would have to wield and get absolutely right the first time. If the great Aachim were afraid of the consequences, how could she hope to succeed?
But she had to. Her fingers worked desperately and Tiaan hurled her senses outward, skipping over the little glacier she’d used before. She needed a lot of power now. West she sped, to pick up the enormous glacier grinding down from the Tirthrax ice cap. It was the fastest of all – Tiaan imagined that she could hear it grinding in its bed. Yet even that pace was no faster than the creeping of a snail. The wait was agonising.
Where the glacier curved around the edge of the mountain toward the icefall, a fracture would open up from one side to the other. She could already see its field, like a concave lens. With desperate recklessness she seized upon the opening crevasse and took out every bit of power she could.
Ice screamed as it was torn apart and a paralysing cold rushed through her. Tiaan felt as if she had frozen solid. The whole port-all shuddered, exploding with light and sound. She thought it was going to tear itself apart.
The mountain shook. There came a noise like boulders being crushed and something went boom, so loud that her ears hurt. After that she heard nothing at all.
Haani was tugging desperately at her hand. ‘Tiaan, say something!’
Tiaan picked herself up from the floor, feeling that a long time had passed. Her vision of Aachan had disappeared. Lightning forked from the amplimet basket to the metal plate on the back wall. The glass doughnuts went out. After an instant of utter darkness the glow reappeared. Aachan was back, too.
A monstrous curving lens flashed into being at the very top of the road winding up from those spiked towers. For an instant she saw Tirthrax reflected on the lens. It must have been a reflection, for it was a mirror image, the toe of the glacier falling off the wrong side of the mountain. Tirthrax was the other way around.
A star appeared in the centre of the reflection, then a hole blasted right through the lens. There were screams and hoarse cries as an avalanche of snow erupted through, to the incredulity of the Aachim. It was like a white umbrella that melted in the hot air and fell as blessed cold rain.
The gate! The gate is open! she heard the multitude cry.
Hurry! Before it closes again.
People raced to machines that looked like clankers. Briefly she saw Minis’s face, and those others she had seen before – the ones who knew all about the gate.
Stop! Vithis cried. The little fool has made the zyxibule the wrong way round. It’s left-handed, not right. The gate may not work.
Too late to worry about that now, screamed another.
Clan Inthis! Vithis ordered. Stay back! It’s not safe. You are to go last, after the Ten Clans! Let them risk all; this will restore us to our rightful place.
Vithis ran to a complicated piece of machinery that vaguely resembled Tiaan’s port-all. Hurling himself into a suspended seat, he began working a controlling arm in three dimensions. Ball lightning fizzed out in all directions.
The image of Aachan turned upside down and back to front. Tiann’s lungs burned as if she had inhaled fire. Her control of the port-all was snatched away. A wormhole writhed across the ethyr like an electrified serpent.
No, Inthis! Vithis screamed, holding out his arms in entreaty as a squadron of blue-tinted constructs raced past. Wait…
They took no notice. Letting go the controlling arm, Vithis put his head in his hands and wept. A stampede of people and machines rushed up the spiral road towards the gate, but Tiaan lost them, and then she lost Aachan too.
On a mountaintop half a continent away, the tetrarch was observing the motions of the planets when, for an instant, they shook like jelly in a bowl. The field tied itself into knots. The globe-wide ethyr sobbed out a single note before returning to intangibility. Setting down his instruments, the tetrarch made a note on a slate.
Hundreds of leagues to the south, in a citadel on the frigid Island of Noom, a woman set down her quill, cocked her head to one side, and smiled. The long watch had borne its first fruit. She took up a lantern and headed down the Thousand Steps to her master.
SIXTY
‘I saw her!’ said Ullii. ‘Tiaan was standing there with these big streamers of light going in all directions. The whole mountain was shaking. She had a little girl with her.’
‘A little girl?’
‘She had green hair.’
Another thing to wonder about. ‘What was Tiaan doing?’
‘I did not understand.’ Ullii sagged. ‘I have to sleep!’ She ducked into the tent.
It was a dark night; too dark for climbing unknown mountains, though later on there would be a moon. Frustrated on several fronts, Nish tidied up the camp, stoked the fire and stared at the mountain. There was nothing to do but wait. Ullii was already asleep but that was not a possibility for him. He paced back and forth.
This was his big chance. If he could capture Tiaan and her crystal, and bring her back, it would make up for all his past failures. But what was going on up there?
‘Nish!’ Someone was shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Nish, wake up!’
He’d gone to sleep against a rock, a rather lumpy one. Nish rubbed an aching neck. ‘What’s the matter, Ullii?’
‘Come, come!’
‘Where?’ he said thickly.
‘Up the mountain. Tiaan is starting.’
‘Starting what?’
‘What she came to do. I can see her, standing in a great chamber inside the mountain. She’s using her crystal, Nish! She’s going to bring them here.’
He flung himself out of his pouch, stuffed feet into boots, tied the laces. ‘Bring who?’
‘I don’t know,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t see them. There’s too many! It’s all dark and smoky.’
A shiver crept up his back and suddenly he did not want to go anywhere near that mountain. But he had to. Nish took her by the shoulders. Her huge eyes glistened in a stray moonbeam. ‘What do you mean, too many?’
‘Too, too many! You have to stop her, Nish.’
That was a transformation, Ullii urging a course of action. She must be really alarmed.
Nish hurled food into his little chest pack, strapped on sword and knife, gave Ullii another knife that he doubted she could use, and left everything else.
They climbed up the slope past the balloon, still jammed between the boulders and so deflated that its ribs and wires were clearly visible. Nish fed the skeet, made sure it had water, then followed Ullii, who could see perfectly in the moonlight and seemed to know exactly where she was going. She was on a trail, probably made by bears or goats. As they topped a rise, the setting moon reflected slantwise off the vast front of the glacier.
After going a little way Nish realised that the seeker was not following. She was sitting on the ground, staring numbly at the knife blade.
‘Ullii,’ he called. ‘Come on.’
‘Afraid,’ she muttered, pulling her coat over her head.
He went back and, squatting down, took her hand. ‘Ullii, we can’t stay here. We’ve come all this way to find Tiaan. I’ve done my best for you. Now it’s your turn. Please help me.’
Snatching her hand free, she thrust it inside her coat and began rocking furiously.
What was he to do? Nish did know what Ullii was going through but he was not going to let her weakness stop him now, so close to his goal. If he could just get Tiaan, and the crystal, it would make up for everything. He must, even if Ullii had to suffer.
‘Then stay here by yourself!’ he snapped. ‘I’m going!’
He strode off as if she meant nothing to him. She let out a whimper. He did not look back, though Nish could practically feel her pain.
As he topped the rise, she gave a great wail of torment. ‘Nish, don’t leave me.’
He froze, one foot in the air, then hardened his heart and continued, heavy-footed.
Before he had gone another twenty steps she was beside him, running silently in her soft boots. He did not know what to expect, but suddenly Ullii was eager to please.
‘I will show you the way, Nish,’ she said, holding his hand so tightly that it hurt. ‘Don’t leave me alone again.’
‘I won’t,’ he said, looking up the mountain.
By the time the sun rose they were high above the camp. Mist formed in the valley, pouring over the icefall and blurring the glacier into insignificance. Ullii stopped to put her goggles on. It was a hard climb on steeply dipping slate and sugary quartzite. The icy slate offered little grip for their boots. Nish’s leg muscles were aching.
‘Where now?’ he asked as Ullii stopped on a ledge above which the face ran sheer.
For a moment she looked unsure. Ullii put her hand over the goggles, said ‘Ah!’ and headed off again.
Hours later they were level with the bottom of the ice. The rocks had changed to shiny laminated schists and then to contorted granite gneiss. They were going back and forth up the side of the mountain when there came an enormous crack and the grinding note of the glacier changed.
‘What’s that?’ said Nish.
The attenuated rumble made by its weight rasping against the bottom and sides of the valley had altered to a sharper, higher note. A mound of ice had been forced up and was tearing at the fresh rock of the mountainside above them. It sounded as if boulders were being crushed to pieces. Rock began to fall. Nish watched it coming and didn’t know which way to run.
Ullii screamed, caught his hand and jerked him to the right. She bolted up along the ledge that led away from the glacier. Nish fled after her. Rock roared and cracked above their heads.
This was no landslide but a chaotic fall of ice and rock plucked directly from the side of Tirthrax. A lump of mountain the size of his parents’ mansion started to roll. It went straight for a few tumbles, split, and the larger half careered in their direction. Nish could see it out of the corner of his eye.
He ran so hard that blood began to drip from his nose. He was still running after the boulder passed by and thumped down the mountain towards the distant trees. The noise was cataclysmic.
Ullii was already out of sight, amazing for someone who never took any exercise. Nish gained a ridge that formed a natural divide and hurled himself over. He had to roll in the air to avoid landing on the seeker, who lay curled up on the ground with her hands over the earmuffs, desperately trying to block out the sound. Her mouth was open and she was screaming, though he could not hear a thing.
