by Ian Irvine
Malien sat on one of the seats and began peeling fruit and cutting it into a bowl. ‘It hardly seems real to me, after all this time. If only I’d known …’
‘What?’
‘No matter. The past creates the future, Tiaan. Every little thing we do shapes the way the future evolves, so I’m partly responsible for the way the world is now. We all are, those who took part in that tale and allowed the Forbidding to be broken.’
‘As am I for the things I’ve done,’ said Tiaan, slicing bread and cheese and laying them on a cloth. ‘But if we did nothing, surely we’d also be to blame for the state of the world.’ She filled a pot with water. ‘There. It’s ready.’
Malien placed her hands around the pot, closed her eyes and gave a little quiver. The air shimmered around her fingers. Steam rose from the pot, which began to bubble.
‘I’ll never get used to seeing you do that,’ said Tiaan, taking a good handful of dried chard from a packet and stirring it in.
‘I’d prefer not to do it at all. I hate using the Art for trivial purposes.’
‘We’ll get some wood tomorrow. A nice crackling fire will be cheery. Tea?’
‘Thank you.’
After dinner they settled back with another mug of chard each and their coats wrapped around them. It was already chilly and the temperature was falling by the minute.
‘I’ve also got reservations. I’m worried about what they’ll do with my map once it’s complete,’ said Tiaan.
‘If the field controller can be made to work, it may swing the balance,’ said Malien, ‘and then it’ll be tempting to wipe the enemy out.’
‘I hate the way people talk about them as though they’re vicious brutes,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’ve known lyrinx who were every bit as decent and honourable as the best of us.’
‘To survive such a war, each side must make their enemies into monsters.’
‘And if the war is won and the lyrinx eliminated, what then?’
‘If we have to commit atrocities to win, it’s almost as bad as losing. And how will the world be shaped afterwards?’
‘At least there won’t be any need for scrutators, telling everyone how to live their lives.’ Tiaan tossed the dregs of her chard onto the salt and stared moodily at the stain.
‘Those in power can always find excuses to retain it. Your mapping may give Flydd and Yggur the secret that mancers have been looking for since the Art was first discovered – the power to shape the world.’ Malien prised off a chunk of salt with her knife and began to pick the crystals apart. She tasted one and made a face. ‘If such power is used by the best of leaders, for the best of motives and the benefit of all, it could transform Santhenar.’
‘I don’t see why the world has to be reshaped,’ said Tiaan. ‘Besides, even the best of people can be wrong-sighted, and in time there’ll be as many evil leaders as saintly ones. As many fools as there are wise folk; as many stupid, greedy and grasping ones as there are altruistic.’
Malien began arranging her crystals in a circular wall, saying nothing.
‘Once that secret is uncovered,’ Tiaan went on, ‘greedy men will fight to get it for themselves. There’ll be another war, as far removed from what we’ve suffered as our war of clankers, constructs and flesh-formed creatures is from the petty wars of two hundred years ago. Whole forests have been consumed in the furnaces of our manufactories, a thousand rivers poisoned, and a million people have died brutal deaths. We’ve abandoned our culture and given up our freedom to try and win this war. What will we sacrifice next?’
‘Something to think about,’ said Malien, ‘before you hand over your completed node maps.’
‘But what am I to do about it?’ said Tiaan.
It was a long time before Malien answered. ‘I don’t know.’
The days passed quickly, even though the work had taken longer than expected. Now the mapping was complete but for a diagonal strip beginning east of the Foshorn and running north-east across the sea in the direction of Tar Gaarn and Havissard. They heard occasional news of the war via the farspeaker. The enemy were closing in on Ashmode but battle, if there was going to be any, was some time off. Malien tried to reply at the appointed times but the slave farspeaker did not seem to be sending.
They’d just begun the final strip, and were flying past an isolated pinnacle north-east of the Foshorn, when Malien said, ‘What’s that, there on top of the peak?’
Tiaan stood up to see. ‘It looks like a tower.’
‘I wasn’t aware that anything had ever been built out here.’ Malien turned the thapter towards it.
There were hundreds of peaks and pinnacles in the Dry Sea, remnants of ancient volcanoes. This one was small, not more than a hundred and fifty spans high. The sides were precipitous, which was unusual, and an arrangement of winches big enough to lift the largest construct projected over the cliff on the western side.
On the flat top of the peak was as strange a structure as Tiaan had ever seen. A series of nine red spheres, the largest more than twenty spans across, were set on a black spire like marshmallows on a skewer. The largest sphere enveloped the base of the tower; the smallest enclosed the top, some hundred and fifty spans above the ground. Five constructs stood at the base of the western cliffs, on the salt. As the thapter approached, a number of Aachim ran out of the spire and stood staring up at them.
‘I presume this isn’t the work of your people?’ Tiaan said.
‘They’re constructs, not thapters. It’s Vithis’s doing.’
‘What for?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Could it be a weapon directed against humanity?’
‘Why would he build one out here?’
‘To take advantage of a particular node?’
Tiaan mapped the node, which had an unusual field, made notes on the tower and its occupants, and they continued on their path.
Two days later they were completing the last segment of their diagonal, one that Tiaan had left until the way back because of its complexity. The thapter was passing back and forth over an area south-east of the peak of Katazza, which featured in several Great Tales. Here black rock had been thrust up along fissures and torn apart along enormous faults and fractures. The country was so rugged that it would have been difficult to walk across. Steam wisped from a myriad of cracks and vents coated with red and yellow salts, while here and there along a crested ridge the black rock oozed molten orange lava. The nodes were complex in this area, which extended in a band from the northern end of the Dry Sea towards the southern, before curving around towards the Hornrace.
‘We’ll have to go lower,’ said Tiaan. ‘I can’t tell what’s going on from up here.’
As Malien was flying along the molten centre of the ridge, the thapter jerked and the whine of the mechanism broke into a series of buzzes.
‘Tiaan? Is there something strange about the field here?’
‘There are lots of fields and the nodes are long and thin, not round. They run along the ridges and the field weakens rapidly to either side.’ Tiaan took a closer look. ‘That’s strange. The field keeps changing from up to down; I suppose that’s why we’re jerking so much. Try going a little to the left of the ridge.’
Malien turned left and the jerking stopped. ‘Can you still map if I follow this heading?’
‘More or less.’
Twice more they had the same problem, when they passed over long faults in the rock that had shifted the mid-sea ridge to left or right. As Malien corrected yet again, Tiaan put a hand on her arm and pointed down.
‘Hey, that looks like a wrecked construct.’
‘What would a construct be doing way out here?’ said Malien as she turned the machine and headed lower. The mechanism began to stutter and she directed it away until it resumed its normal note.
Tiaan lost sight of the wreckage in the jumble of black basalt. ‘This country is too broken to hover across. Malien, what if it’s a thapter that crashed?’
‘It
must be – it was broken in half, as if it had fallen a long way. And it’s not one of ours, so it must be from Stassor.’
Malien went lower and turned back towards the place where they’d seen the wreckage. A construct came into view. ‘Is that it?’
A shiver worked its way up the marrow of Tiaan’s backbone. ‘It can’t be. The front is smashed in but it’s all in one piece.’
‘Two crashed thapters?’ said Malien. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I suppose the second came looking for the first and met the same fate – they weren’t experienced enough to cope with these fields. Look, there’s the first. Set down. There may be someone still alive.’
‘The impact has torn it apart,’ said Malien, circling about ten spans up. ‘No one could have survived that.’
‘Sometimes miracles happen.’
Malien settled the thapter down with some difficulty, for the basalt was scored, twisted and wrenched into stacks, blades and sheer-sided ravines. There wasn’t a piece of flat ground big enough to spread a tablecloth.
The jagged rocks proved troublesome to walk on, too. Malien reached the wreckage before Tiaan, who had to go the last twenty spans on hands and knees. Her back began to ache where it had been broken.
Malien looked in through the torn metal, which had a blue tinge. ‘There’s no one inside.’
Tiaan went round the other side and stumbled over a body before she realised what it was. It was the colour of dark tea, the flesh desiccated to strands of muscle covered by a few scraps of flaky skin. The clothes were gone, apart from the faded shreds of seams. ‘Malien, could you come here?’
Malien examined the remains. ‘A natural mummy. It’s so dry here that nothing rots, and the salt would help to cure it. He was a tall man, though you wouldn’t know it, the way the drying flesh has pulled his backbone into a curve. He was definitely Aachim – see the extra-long fingers?’ She took up a scrap of cloth, inspected it and let it flutter away.
‘He must have been dead a long time,’ said Tiaan.
‘Months would be enough to cure a dead man, out here.’
They found another body not far away, a woman whose skull was crushed. ‘Thrown out by the impact,’ said Tiaan.
‘One of the lucky ones. She would have died instantly.’
Others had been less fortunate. They came on a cluster of bodies twisted into positions that indicated painful, lingering deaths. Tiaan couldn’t bear to examine them.
‘Let’s go to the other machine,’ said Malien, the shadows growing under her eyes.
The second construct was only a hundred paces away, but it was easier to fly there than pick their way across the jagged ground. It was also made of blue-black metal and was full of bodies as mummified as the others, though a faint death smell lingered inside. The bodies were still clothed.
‘That’s … not how your people dress,’ said Tiaan. ‘Malien, these people are from Aachan.’
Malien appeared to be looking right through her. ‘That’s right.’
‘Does this mean that Vithis has thapters too? He’s certainly kept the secret well …’ Again that shiver along Tiaan’s spine.
‘Vithis has no thapters, Tiaan. They’re constructs. Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Up. There may be more. Can you fly the thapter?’
‘Is something the matter?’
Malien was too preoccupied to answer. Tiaan’s knees were shaking as she gripped the controller and took the thapter straight up. She couldn’t see anything but black rock and salt.
‘Higher,’ said Malien in a strained voice.
The sun reflected off something a good distance from the first two machines. Tiaan circled, scouring the rock. The wreckage was hard to pick out at first but once she’d found it, she soon saw more, and more. There were dozens of wrecked constructs down there, or pieces of constructs. Then, as the sheer scale of the site became evident, she amended that to hundreds. The sun still beat down on her but all the warmth had gone out of the day. She knew who they were.
‘It’s Vithis’s people,’ said Tiaan. ‘Inthis First Clan. They weren’t lost in the void after all.’
‘Not all of them,’ said Malien. ‘The gate must have whiplashed across the Dry Sea as it opened, scattering them here.’
They counted hundreds of constructs, strewn over an area a couple of leagues wide and about ten long. Most were wrecked, though a few machines bore only superficial damage. Then, in the middle of the area, they saw a round structure built from the metal skins of dozens of constructs.
Tiaan set the thapter down beside it. They did not get out at once. ‘Some of them survived,’ she said in a flat voice.
‘For quite some time,’ said Malien.
‘I wonder why they didn’t go for help?’
‘Even if they’d repaired one construct, this country is too rugged to hover across. And without knowing where to go, or how to find water on the way, anyone who left here on foot would have died of thirst.’
‘But there’s so many of them,’ said Tiaan. ‘There would have been thousands. Surely they could have found a way to send for help?’
‘Maybe they didn’t know what world they were on. Before the Forbidding cut off communication between the worlds, this was the beautiful Sea of Perion. They must have thought they’d been cast onto a desert world in the middle of the void.’ Malien rubbed her eyes. ‘We’d better go and see.’
They got out. The structure, built from the metal of as many as thirty constructs, was large enough to have accommodated some hundreds of people. The surrounding rocks had been smoothed, and paths constructed out of fragments so cunningly fitted together that they locked tight.
Tiaan walked around the building, marvelling at their ingenuity in creating so much with so little. The paths extended off in several directions to other, smaller structures, some of construct metal, others out of stone. The stonework was superb.
‘How did they live so long, without water?’ she said.
‘Each construct carries enough drinking water for several weeks. If most of the Aachim were killed in the crashes, the water would have lasted the survivors for months. And after that, there’s water in the Dry Sea, if you have the wits to look for it.’
‘Only salt water, and you’d have to dig through spans of salt to find it.’
‘Yes, but all it takes to turn salt water to fresh is sunlight or heat, and there’s plenty of both here. The problem wasn’t water, but food. Had everyone survived, the food would have been exhausted in a month or two. Since most were killed, it may have lasted a year, or more.’
‘It’s nearly a year and three-quarters since the gate was opened.’ Tiaan put her head inside one of the stone structures, then sprang out again. ‘It’s a graveyard.’
‘A mausoleum.’ Malien went to the entrance and stood for a minute, head bowed. ‘While any of First Clan had strength in their bodies, they would have honoured their dead according to longstanding custom.’
‘They mustn’t have found the first two constructs.’
‘I’d say not.’
They turned back to the metal building and Malien went inside.
‘I’ll wait out here,’ said Tiaan.
‘No, come in.’
‘I feel so guilty,’ Tiaan whispered.
‘Tiaan, you must not. You offered them the chance for survival and they took it willingly, knowing the risk. They’d been thinking about escaping through a gate for years.’
‘But … I made it wrongly. It was my fault.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Vithis told me so.’
‘Vithis sought to blame you for his own failing. I checked your port-all and it was correctly made.’
‘But Vithis said that left-hand and right-hand were different from their world to ours.’
‘They are, and it was known to the ancients, for I checked the records after you left Tirthrax. The failing was not in your port-all, but in the way they matched t
heir end of the gate to yours. Vithis must have tried to correct it after the gate opened but by then it was too late. It lashed the opening gate across known space, and unknown, before finally locking in place at Tirthrax. That’s why Inthis were lost, not through any failing of yours.’
‘I still feel responsible,’ said Tiaan.
‘And no doubt, deep in his heart, so does Vithis. But it was an accident, Tiaan. They took the risk and lost.’
The curving chambers of the building were decorated with such treasures as the Aachim had brought with them. Tiaan marvelled at small tapestries woven from threads of silk and gold, wire sculptures of astonishing complexity, subtle rugs and beautifully decorated pots and implements. Furniture had been made from native stone and salvaged metal. Everything was beautiful and harmonious, though the designs and proportions, even after her time in Tirthrax, struck Tiaan oddly.
They entered room after room. All were empty. ‘This building must have housed many people,’ said Tiaan. ‘But –’
‘As they died, the bodies would have been placed in the mausoleums which they’d already built. All except the last.’
They climbed a set of metal stairs, their feet echoing hollowly. At the top they entered an attic room with open windows looking to the east and west. Though a breeze blew through, it was hot. Malien turned the corner, stopped, then bowed her head.
Seven children lay on bedding on the floor as though asleep, though Tiaan knew that they were dead. Five were girls; two were boys. The oldest looked about thirteen, the youngest five.
‘They’ve not been dead long,’ said Tiaan.
‘No!’ Malien whispered. ‘They met their ends in the last week.’
‘They’re thin, but not starved. How did they live so long?’
‘We particularly cherish our children, Tiaan, for we Aachim, though long-lived, are not fecund like old humans. The adults would have gone without to feed the young ones, in the hope that, somehow, they might be rescued.’
‘And in the end?’
‘When the last adult was dying and all hope lost, the children would have been given a draught from which they would never wake.’
