by Ian Irvine
Irisis took a deep breath and turned Tiaan’s way, her eyes bright with anguish. ‘Farewell, Tiaan.’ She held out her arms.
‘You’re not coming?’
‘I can’t leave him.’
‘But Jal-Nish will crucify you!’
‘I’ll find a way round him,’ Irisis said lightly. ‘You know what I’m like with men.’
Not this one! Black icicles formed in Tiaan’s chest. ‘I’ll never see you again. I know it.’
‘Of course you will. We’ll be drinking together in Tiksi before the new year.’ Irisis hugged Tiaan, then quickly stepped back. ‘Farewell, Tiaan. It … knowing you has been the great privilege of my life.’ She wiped her eye, then pretended that it was just a speck of dust. ‘Go quickly, and do what you can for us.’
Tiaan went, Merryl at her side, slipping through the crowd, which opened before her and closed up tightly behind. She could not look back.
Before they reached the street corner and turned towards the little park, an officer shouted, ‘There they are!’
She darted a glance over her shoulder. Red-coated soldiers were forcing their way after them. Merryl took her wrist and ran. Malien and Gilhaelith were almost out of sight.
Tiaan was not used to running. She’d spent most of her time in the thapter, these past two years. There was a burning pain in her side, and the soldiers were less than a hundred paces behind. One had gone to his knees, pointing his crossbow. Merryl jerked Tiaan around the corner as he fired.
In the park, Gilhaelith was climbing into the thapter. Malien must have been inside, for it began to move. Tiaan was fading badly now. She could hardly run and her backbone was a mass of pain where it had been broken long ago. The thapter raced towards them as a soldier turned the corner, levelling his crossbow.
As he fired, Malien whipped the thapter between them and the soldier, so that the bolt slammed into the side. They scrambled in and the machine was up and away, climbing fast.
Then not so fast. Then, not fast at all.
‘What is it?’ whispered Tiaan.
‘I don’t know,’ said Malien. ‘It’s as if the air has turned to porridge and the thapter can scarcely force its way through it. Or …’
‘Or as if he’s holding us back with the tears. I’m doing everything I can but it’s not working. He’s too strong.’
Tiaan closed her eyes. Clutching the amplimet, she tried to sense the ebb and flow of the field, to see if there was anything linking them to Jal-Nish, but she sensed nothing.
‘What if I put the amplimet in its socket,’ Tiaan said suddenly, ‘together with your crystal? And we try to fly the thapter together?’
‘It’s a big gamble,’ said Malien. ‘It could make things worse.’
‘It’s only a gamble when you’ve got something to lose.’
As she was inserting the amplimet, the thapter lurched and stopped in mid-air, then began to creep backwards as if Jal-Nish were reeling them in. Tiaan put her hand on the controller and Malien her longer one over it, and both tried to draw power simultaneously.
The mechanism screamed as though trying to thrash itself to pieces. The thapter lurched backwards.
‘Stop!’ gasped Malien. ‘We’re pulling in opposite directions. Take your hand off. Let me control the thapter, Tiaan. Just try to deliver the extra force I need.’
Tiaan took her hand off and the strain eased, but the thapter gave another backwards jerk, and another, and the further it went the tighter the grip of the tears became.
‘Follow the way I use power,’ Malien added, ‘rather than trying to do it your own way. Ready?’
‘Yes. I think so.’ Tiaan drew power as gently as she could. A grinding sound issued from downstairs.
‘Gently,’ said Malien. ‘Close your eyes and just sense the flow, and go with it rather than trying to drive everything before you.’
This time, after some effort, Tiaan was able to follow the way Malien worked, though it was already giving her a headache.
‘More,’ said Malien. ‘But just a little more.’
Tiaan gave her more. The thapter stopped its fitful backwards jerking, floated at the point of balance for a moment, then slowly began to climb.
‘A trifle more,’ said Malien. ‘He’ll double the effort when he realises what we’re doing.’
The pull on them increased. Tiaan drew more power. The pull increased again. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ she said. ‘We’re giving him time to match us.’
‘I can’t do any more. I’m at my limit.’
‘Just keep doing what you’re doing. Leave the rest to me.’
Malien gave her a doubtful glance.
‘Trust me,’ said Tiaan. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose.’
She tuned her mind to the stored power in the crystal, which had been there since their trip through the gate to Tallallame, and took as much as her mind could bear.
The mechanism screamed, she felt a tearing sensation like glued paper being ripped apart and the thapter shot up into the sky, faster than it had ever gone. She kept the power flowing until, with a wrench that she felt inside her skull, the pull of the tears ceased completely.
Gilhaelith cried out and crushed his knotted fists to his temples. Tiaan had forgotten he was there.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Malien.
‘The recurrence of an old pain I can do nothing about,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘I’ll have to lie down. Could you give me a hand, Merryl?’
Merryl helped him down the ladder.
‘You had a plan?’ said Tiaan, removing the amplimet so Malien could take over again. She could use it, but preferred not to unless she had no choice.
‘I wondered if it might be possible to draw so much power from the node at Ashmode that it failed. It would send out a sensory reverberation that might –’
‘I don’t think there’s any way to draw such power without killing ourselves in the process,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’ve already thought about it. And there’s no saying it would work anyway.’
‘Then there’s nothing we can do for Flydd or Yggur, or any of them,’ Malien said heavily.
SEVENTY-NINE
‘It’s as if we’ve escaped under false pretences,’ said Tiaan wretchedly.
‘I know,’ said Malien, ‘though we would have wanted them to escape, even if we could not. Let’s not lose hope – we may yet find a way to do something.’
‘Then we’d better think quickly. Jal-Nish didn’t seem like a man who would gloat over-long.’
Malien turned to pass around Ashmode in a great circle, keeping to a safe distance. She described three more circles, but Tiaan couldn’t think of any way of attacking Jal-Nish. Her mind was like a blank room with the roiling quicksilver tears in the centre, their power overwhelming all other Arts. Then, as Malien turned again, Tiaan saw, out over the sea, the Well looming in the distance, as black as a thunderhead. The Well and the amplimet had once been linked, she recalled.
‘Malien,’ Tiaan said, ‘do you know anything about the link between the Well and the amplimet? They seemed to communicate in Tirthrax, remember?’
‘I could hardly forget it,’ said Malien.
‘Why would it do that? If the amplimet draws from nodes, and the Well is a kind of anti-node, wouldn’t it be a threat?’
‘I dare say. Perhaps the amplimet wanted to take advantage of the chaos a freed Well would create.’
‘What if we were to throw the amplimet into the Well? Could that destroy them both?’
‘No. The amplimet would be destroyed by heat at the bottom of the Well first.’
‘Oh!’ said Tiaan. Something else occurred to her. ‘The Well grows by sucking power out of nodes, and it’s a kind of anti-node. So why don’t node and anti-node come together and annihilate one another?’
‘That’s a question I’ve often wondered about. I think the core of the Well must contain a barrier to stop them getting too close.’
‘And there’s no way to overcome it?’
&
nbsp; ‘None,’ said Malien, ‘except a gate –’
Tiaan started. ‘What is it?’ said Malien.
‘I’ve had an idea. Well, it was your idea really. A way we might be able to save everyone.’
‘I think I know what it is,’ said Malien with a faint smile. ‘I’ll set a course for the Well then, shall I?’
Malien’s suggestion about setting off a sensory vibration through the ethyr had given Tiaan the clue. Jal-Nish had previously used the tears to direct the Well. If they could eliminate it, the subsequent vibrations might be reflected back through the tears to him. She couldn’t guess what the effect would be, but it might give their friends a chance.
She went halfway down the ladder to check on Gilhaelith, who was asleep on the floor. Merryl was watching over him from the bench. ‘Is he all right?’ she said. ‘Father?’
‘He’s better than he was,’ said Merryl. ‘Do what you have to do, Tiaan.’
She went back up again. ‘Malien?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you set the thapter to fly by itself for a minute? I may need Gilhaelith’s geomantic globe. It shows things that my field map doesn’t.’
They carried its box up, put it in the rear right corner and closed the hatch. Malien took the controller again. Tiaan opened the box and lifted it off the geomantic globe. It was revolving on its mist cushion in the green-tinged nickel bowl. She stood for a moment, admiring its perfection. ‘He’s done a beautiful job. Gilhaelith has captured every nuance of the fields, every peculiarity of the nodes.’
‘He’s a brilliant man,’ said Malien.
Tiaan tried to concentrate on what she had to do once they got inside the Well. She planned to create another gate with the black tesseract, though not between worlds. This would be just a simple portal between the node and the Well. She began to rehearse the process in her mind. There would be no time to think about it once they got there; she had to get it right first time.
‘What will the Aachim do now?’ she asked absently as she worked.
‘Life will go on as before, in isolation, until eventually my people die out.’
‘But surely not?’ said Tiaan.
‘They’re cowards who fear to live in the real world. Back in Aachan, they even went into slavery rather than fighting for freedom, and lied about it afterwards.’
‘What about the ones who came from Aachan?’
‘They plan to make a home in Faranda,’ said Malien, ‘in the mountains and the lands east of them. Luxor spoke to Flydd about it when Flydd went to the Hornrace, not long before it collapsed. Eastern Faranda is empty now, but with the Sea of Perion restored the rains will come again. They’ll make it blossom, in time.’
‘I hope so,’ said Tiaan, though all she could think about was Minis walking out onto the salt. His body would lie fifty spans below the water by now. Poor, sad, weak Minis. He’d redeemed himself in the only way he could. ‘The Aachim do deserve to find peace at last, and a land to call their own.’
Before Tiaan had the procedure complete in her mind, the Well rose up before them. It had changed direction again and was drifting parallel to the southern shore of the Sea of Perion, a few leagues out, moving in the general direction of the Hornrace. ‘It’s bigger yet, and higher,’ she went on. ‘Do you think we can reach the top?’
‘I don’t know.’ Malien frowned, then tilted the battered front of the thapter up until it began to climb.
Tiaan was painstakingly trying to think through all the consequences of what they were going to do. ‘If we do destroy the Well, could that drive the amplimet to the third stage – full awakening?’
‘No,’ said Malien firmly.
‘Why not?’
‘Full awakening can only come once the amplimet is at the second stage. Flydd drove it back to the first stage of awakening after Nennifer, and we later made sure of it.’
Gilhaelith stirred in his painful slumber, muttered under his breath and went silent again. When Tiaan looked down he was fast asleep. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said.
They continued climbing. Tiaan had a nagging feeling that she’d neglected to take account of an important detail. She went through her procedure again from the beginning, just to make sure. She found nothing wrong, but the worry remained.
‘I’m ready,’ she said.
‘You’ll be looking for the black box,’ said Malien. ‘It’s in there.’ She indicated a compartment with her foot.
Tiaan got it out and opened it with Vithis’s sapphire key. Recalling the true shape of the tesseract, she placed her mental model of the port-all inside and set it to open a gate from the core of the Well to the centre of the node it was presently drawing from. She checked the node on Gilhaelith’s globe to make sure she had it right. ‘That’s it.’ She began to close the box.
‘It has to be open,’ said Malien as they tracked along the edge of the whirling funnel.
‘Why?’
‘The gate will take the easiest path. If the box is closed, the gate may open via another world or another dimension. You don’t want that, for the same reason as we didn’t want the Well to go through the gate. Get ready. The thapter won’t go any higher, probably because of the damage some nitwit did, crashing it through the door of Nithmak.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Tiaan felt a fool.
‘So you should be,’ said Malien. ‘But it is a problem. Since we can’t fly high enough to go over the top, we’ll have to pass through the funnel wall of the Well.’
‘Is that possible?’
Malien considered, head to one side. ‘That’s a good question.’
Into the Well, Tiaan thought with a shiver. ‘Can we get out again?’
‘An even better question.’
Without warning, Malien turned the thapter sharply and plunged into the maelstrom. Tiaan clutched at the side rail. Everything went black and yellow, the thapter turned upside down, righted itself without any effort from Malien and they were through the inner wall. Tiaan was looking down at the bed of the sea as if the water did not exist, and even through the bed into darkness. In the abyssal depths something red gleamed – a moving node, perhaps, tracking through the solid earth below the Well.
‘Ready?’ said Malien. ‘Be quick. I don’t like being here at all.’
‘Is this like going to the Well without really going?’ Tiaan said perceptively.
‘In a way, though if we get it wrong we will be going to the Well, and more spectacularly than anyone has ever gone before.’
Tiaan took a deep breath, lifted the black box in both hands, held it open and tossed it over the side.
‘Now what do we do?’ she said, watching it fall, the door flapping.
‘We make sure we’re not still here when that gets to the bottom and the core of the Well materialises in the centre of the node,’ said Malien.
She hurled the controller over and flew at the wall. The thapter struck the whirling funnel at an angle and bounced off. She tried again. The same thing happened. Malien bit her lip.
The black box was already out of sight. Tiaan’s fingernails dug into her palms. She wiped sweat from her eyes.
Malien turned towards the centre of the Well, which was leagues across, curved back and hurled the thapter forwards as fast as it would go. It stuck the funnel hard, shuddered so violently that Tiaan’s bones felt like they were rattling, and passed into the maelstrom. Unfortunately it did not make it through to the outer side, but was whipped around in a circle, inside the roiling wall. Malien threw the thapter at the outer barrier, again and again, but could only strike it at a low angle, and the thapter kept bouncing off.
‘I can’t get through,’ she gasped.
‘Instead of crashing, what if you force?’ said Tiaan.
Malien tried that, creeping to the outside edge, putting the thapter’s battered front against it and pushing hard. The fabric of the funnel bulged out, out, out, finally enclosing them in a bubble that tore off and was fired away like a speck of mud from a whee
l.
Tiaan looked back. ‘Don’t look back,’ said Malien.
Tiaan ducked her head as a glow lit up the sky, brighter than a hundred suns. It became ever brighter, and the shock began to reverberate back and forth inside her head, building up and up and up until, finally, she had to let go.
‘Tiaan!’ Malien was shaking her. ‘Wake up.’
‘Don’t think I can,’ Tiaan said groggily.
Malien shook her harder. ‘You have to. We forgot one vital thing.’
‘Wassat?’ Tiaan slurred.
‘When the node and anti-node annihilated each other, it disrupted all the fields for leagues around. It’s destroyed my crystal, I can’t draw any power and we’re falling.’
‘So what can I do?’ Tiaan was too dazed to be worried.
‘Use the amplimet, if it works. Failing that, draw on its stored power to get us to the ground.’
Tiaan stood up shakily.
‘We’re falling fast,’ Malien said urgently.
Tiaan’s thoughts flowed as sluggishly as molasses. She staggered and had to hang onto the side rail.
Malien snatched the amplimet from around Tiaan’s neck, tore out her shattered crystal and put Tiaan’s in its socket. She brought Tiaan’s hand down on the controller.
‘Now, Tiaan!’
They were plunging to the ground like a meteor. ‘Thirty seconds,’ said Malien.
Tiaan’s head hurt, and she could hardly remember what to do to make the thapter go. ‘The amplimet won’t obey me. It won’t draw power from any field. It must have lost the ability, going through the gate.’
‘Twenty seconds,’ said Malien. ‘Use its stored power.’
Tiaan struggled but her mind remained blank.
‘Ten seconds!’ Malien slapped her hard across the cheek. ‘Wake up.’
Tiaan found just enough in her to pull the machine out, a bare few hundred spans above a line of arid hills. It jerked forwards, then sideways, bucking and shuddering like a buffalo in a pen. A long way behind them the steaming waters were already rushing in to reclaim the space that the Well had occupied.
Tiaan rode the careering thapter for as long as she could, which wasn’t even a minute. She could barely stand up. ‘I think –’ It lurched wildly. ‘Help me, Malien.’
