by Ian Irvine
‘That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time,’ Malien chuckled.
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Tiaan choked. ‘I could have wrecked it in the first minute.’ As she sat up, the world tilted, so Tiaan lay down again. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘It’ll pass. Tiaan, a construct is not a clanker. Strength with delicacy is the hallmark of our work, whether it be a bridge spanning the mightiest of abysses, or a dressmaker’s needle. The gentlest movements are all it takes to control a construct.’
‘I’m not sure I want to control one,’ said Tiaan, feeling as though she was being lectured.
‘I know you do,’ said Malien. She placed one hand on the flank of the machine. ‘There’s something strange about it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Except for the fitting out and the turret at the back, it’s just like the one Rulke made two hundred years ago.’
‘I suppose the Aachim copied his design.’
‘We are artists first, engineers or craft workers second. We never make the same object in the same way twice, yet these three constructs are almost identical. From what you say, the others were too.’
Tiaan recalled the images to mind. ‘They were all sizes, but the shape was always the same. So what?’
‘It suggests that they didn’t dare make changes, because they had copied what they did not understand. Not the way Rulke did.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Rulke’s construct didn’t just hover, it flew through the air. I saw it with my own eyes.’
The freedom of the skies! How she wanted it. Tiaan bit down on those feelings. ‘Maybe so, but all the cleverness of the Aachim has failed to uncover that secret.’
‘Perhaps they were looking in the wrong place.’
‘What are you up to, Malien? Do you hope I will solve it for you?’
Malien laughed, though it had an odd ring to it. ‘My adventuring days are well behind me.’
They returned to the machine. ‘What I don’t understand,’ Malien continued, ‘is how they could have rebuilt it. I saw Yggur’s blast pass across the void and turn Rulke’s construct into a glowing cinder. We all did, who were there that fateful day. How could they recover its design after such ruin?’
She answered her own question. ‘Metalmancy. They used mancery to recover the form and purpose of every part of it. That must have been a labour indeed, though they had two hundred years to do it, and the resources of a world. But even metalmancy could not have recovered the most fragile parts.
‘They never saw it used,’ Malien mused. ‘Not the way I did. Rulke’s machine was as hot as a furnace beneath, after it had flown.’
‘The Aachim constructs weren’t hot,’ said Tiaan. ‘They passed over snow and ice without melting it.’
‘Did they now! Vithis can’t have discovered the secret of flight at all.’ Malien turned away. ‘I’m going back to check on the Well.’
Tiaan, consumed by the thought of flight, the ultimate secret, hardly noticed her going.
She spent all the following morning practising with the construct, bringing hand and eye into coordination. It was more difficult than it seemed, especially under the pressure of time, though after a couple of hours she could manoeuvre it without too much risk.
She went back over everything the Aachim had taught her of geomancy. The more she compared that to what Nunar’s book had taught her, the clearer it was that someone was wrong. The construct did not seem designed to detect, much less draw upon, the strong forces. It used a weak field she had never bothered with.
A few hours later, Malien came down the stairs, exhausted. Tiaan told her what she had learned. ‘Maybe Nunar was wrong, and the strong forces do not exist.’
Malien sat on a carved bench and closed her eyes.
After several minutes, Tiaan said, ‘Malien?’
‘What? Oh, give me a look at the book.’
Tiaan showed her the passages in The Mancer’s Art.
Malien looked thoughtful. ‘I think I know how to test your theory. Wait here.’
She returned with two sheets of a glassy mineral somewhat like mica, though brittle. Laying one sheet over the other, she held them up to the light and rotated the top sheet. At one point it went black. ‘Make yourself a set of goggles from these. Put the goggles on, then use the amplimet to envision the field.’
Tiaan did so, and as soon as she put them on, the field streamed all around her.
‘Rotate the upper lenses until they go black,’ said Malien. ‘Now what do you see?’
‘Nothing. The field has completely disappeared.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No.’
‘Concentrate, as though you’re searching for a distant field.’
‘Still nothing.’
‘You’re too tense. Relax. Just let it flow.’ Malien’s hands went around her head, over the goggles.
Tiaan tried to relax. One of the lenses moved, allowing in a multi-coloured loop of the field. She moved it back to the dark position and saw a white-hot cross made of three planes intersecting at right angles. She cried out, the lenses slipped and the cross vanished. And then the truth came to her.
‘I saw it!’ she cried. ‘The strong forces do exist.’ Tiaan began to laugh.
‘What is it?’ Malien said, anxiously.
Tiaan took particular pleasure in telling her. ‘Vithis can’t be using the strong forces. The Aachim don’t know how.’
‘I don’t understand. Come, sit down. Tell me what the matter is.’
‘The Aachim always act so superior. To their mind they are superior, and make sure everyone knows it. Yes, you too, Malien. But they’re not even using the node field, just little local fields.’
‘Stress-fields,’ Malien said crossly. ‘They’re strong on Aachan but weak here.’
‘They don’t know as much as we do,’ Tiaan chortled.
‘Beware pride!’ snapped Malien, nettled.
‘Or false pride,’ Tiaan retorted. ‘The Aachim could never have made the construct fly. Flight requires power that only the strong forces can provide, as well as the ability to see them.’
‘Once the secret is out, they will soon learn. So, are you saying you can make the construct fly?’
‘I’m prepared to try.’
‘Try very hard.’
‘Is something the matter?’
‘The amplimet is still communicating with the Well, in spite of all my efforts. The Well is drawing power from somewhere and rapidly unfreezing. I can’t allow that to happen.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Either the amplimet leaves here, or I’ll have to destroy it, whatever the consequences.’
TEN
‘No!’ cried Tiaan. ‘You can’t.’ ‘Do you think I want to?’ said Malien. ‘No one knows better than I do, how precious it is. I know what destroying it would do to you, too. But should the Well unfreeze and break the bonds that hold it here, the consequences would be catastrophic.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Possibly, no more Tirthrax – city or mountain.’
‘How long do I have?’
Malien hesitated. ‘I’ve sent a skeet to Stassor, but no Aachim could get back here in less than two months. The construct would be no quicker – the country is too rugged for a hovering craft. But with flight, it could be there in a week. I sense that we’re close to uncovering the last secret of the construct. Dare I risk it? Come upstairs. I’m going to my eyrie. I need to think.’
Tiaan followed. Malien walked out the opening and stood staring down at the glacier. Tiaan watched, hoping and praying she would come up with something. Destroying the amplimet would surely drive her insane. To miss the chance of flight would be almost as bad.
Malien came running back, her cloak flapping behind her. Tiaan held her breath.
‘You have until tomorrow,’ said Malien. ‘I believe I can hold the Well that long. If you haven’t found the answer
by then, we must come to a decision: to take the amplimet away, or destroy it. And I dread what will happen if it leaves here – whose hands it will fall into. The choice almost makes itself.’
‘Please,’ said Tiaan. ‘I’ll take it. To destroy it would be to destroy myself. Though I don’t know where to go.’
‘In that case, I may have to come with you. Get to work and I’ll do the same, and tomorrow I’ll decide what is for the best.’
Tiaan studied the strong forces through her goggles. She had to know them perfectly before she could tailor the controller to them, and even then they would be deadly.
The hours raced by. She felt that she was making no progress at all. Malien came and went a number of times during the day, looking ever more careworn. Time was running out.
‘No luck?’ she asked that night.
‘No.’ Tiaan was exhausted too, but that was due to her own failure. ‘How about you?’
‘It’s holding, for the moment. Let me have a look down below.’ Malien went down into the construct. A good while later she came up with the black box in her hand. ‘This surely has to be the key.’
‘It isn’t connected to anything.’
‘The original must have been.’
‘Then why didn’t the Aachim’s mancery reconstruct it?’
‘Perhaps the vital parts were no longer there.’ Malien seemed to be looking right through Tiaan to the far wall. She often appeared lost in another world, or a distant time. Or perhaps she was holding the Well from afar.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Tiaan.
‘I hardly know myself. I’m thinking as I go. The original construct was destroyed by Yggur’s blast –’
‘Completely?’
‘There’s little in a construct to burn, but its parts would have fused. The crystals commonly used in the Art would not melt, though they may have shattered. Traces would remain, enough for Aachim metalmancers to reconstruct what was there. And yet …’
‘What?’ said Tiaan.
Malien looked frustrated. ‘I don’t know. Rulke’s construct flew. These are as exact copies as could be made, but they cannot fly. What did Vithis miss? What have I?’
Tiaan prised the top off the black box, which contained metal coils and shaped pieces of magnetic iron, as well as a number of evenly spaced ceramic plates on which were mounted rows of metal sockets. She held the box up to her eye. ‘There are dozens of tiny little holes in the back.’
Malien raised the box to the light. ‘Fifty-four of them. I wonder what they’re for?’
‘Perhaps it gets hot inside and they let the hot air out.’
‘They’re too small.’ Malien counted the metal sockets. ‘Also fifty-four pairs. That can’t be an accident.’
‘They’re meant to hold something.’
‘Whatever it was, all were the same size and shape.’
‘Small crystals?’ Tiaan said doubtfully.
‘How could small crystals draw such power that the construct would grow red-hot beneath? And why was no trace found of them?’
‘There are crystals that, when heated, simply evaporate, though none are any use in mancing …’
‘That’s it! Tiaan, name those crystals.’
‘Ice, sulphur, iodine … There must be others, but none are good for making hedrons –’
‘Some mancers use brimstone crystals.’
‘Not for drawing power. It would shatter them.’
‘Agreed. What else?’ Malien leaned forward eagerly. ‘What is the most powerful crystal?’
‘Diamond, of course, but diamonds are generally too small to use in controllers. And large ones are too precious.’
‘Not if they’re the only thing that will do,’ said Malien. ‘And Rulke had the best of everything.’
‘But diamond is the hardest of all. Why didn’t they find it?’
‘Because, unlike other crystals, diamond burns. That must be the answer: these pairs of sockets once held small hedrons made of diamond.’
‘How were they connected to the amplimet binnacle?’
‘Perhaps through these tiny holes in the back, no bigger than a cat’s whisker? And look, there are also fifty-four holes in the back of the amplimet cavity.’
‘If they were connected to the crystal there, why did metalmancers not recover the wires?’
‘Because they were not metal, and also vanished without trace.’
‘How can that be?’
‘What wires would disappear when heated, Tiaan?’
‘Ones made of thread, or spider-silk, or hair, though none are useful in the Art as I know it.’
‘Nor I. Wait here.’
Again Malien disappeared in the direction of the storeroom. She was gone for ages. It was after midnight. Tiaan lay on the warm floor of the construct. Only hours left …
Malien thumped into the operator’s compartment, waking Tiaan from a deep sleep.
‘Any luck?’ Tiaan called. She went up the ladder.
‘Possibly.’ Malien opened a small case that contained dozens of pink diamonds, all the same, and a leather sheet wrapped around a black cord made of braided threads. She drew out a single thread. ‘These are hollow whiskers made from soot, as is diamond itself. The whiskers are stronger than steel, yet they too would have burned leaving no more than a trace of smut. And the crystal calls to the whiskers, for elementally they are the same. It’s a perfect geomantic design, just right for controlling the strong forces. Feed them through.’
Tiaan fed fifty-four whiskers through the holes in the black box and up to the cavity while Malien inserted fifty-four woken diamonds in place. They made a three-dimensional pattern that seemed peculiarly appropriate to the strong forces. Once the whiskers were connected, everything looked so right that Tiaan knew this was the way it was meant to be. It was so beautifully simple.
They looked at one another.
‘Go on,’ said Malien.
‘I hardly dare,’ Tiaan said. ‘It was dangerous enough just scooting above the ground. I wouldn’t know how to control it, using the strong forces.’
Malien edged her out of the way without repeating her offer. ‘Then let me try.’
Tiaan was uncomfortable with that idea, and more so as Malien took the goggles and put the amplimet in. She hoped, selfishly, that the older woman would fail. If Malien could operate it, what chance was there for Tiaan ever to do so?
Tiaan pressed the amplimet down and closed the cap. The construct shook, rumbled and rose smoothly from the floor. Malien flicked down one of the finger levers and a blast of heat coiled up the sides. She pulled on the knobbed trumpet and the machine kept rising. She directed it around the ceiling, then took it down to the floor again.
‘You knew what to do all the time,’ Tiaan accused.
Malien had drops of sweat on her brow. It must have been harder than it looked. ‘I did not even suspect it until you discovered those little holes.’
‘Well, you’ve done it.’ It was a momentous discovery, an awesome moment. The world would never be the same again. What was Malien going to do now?
‘My people have sought this secret for two hundred years, here and on Aachan.’
‘But they didn’t find it. Is an amplimet necessary for flight?’ said Tiaan.
‘Probably not, if the hedron is strong enough, and the operator skilled.’
‘Did Rulke have one?’
‘I don’t know. Your turn, Tiaan.’
‘You’re going to let me fly it?’ It did not seem possible.
‘Why not?’
‘I just thought …’
‘The trumpet-shaped controller works the same way, but you pull up on it to climb and push down to descend.’
Tiaan took hold of the knob. Her heart was pounding.
‘Remember, do everything gently,’ said Malien beside her.
Tiaan swallowed, then pulled up the knob the way Malien had done. The construct jerked into the air.
‘Put it down, qui
ck!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Tiaan cried. ‘What have I done wrong?’
Malien pointed in the direction of the opening.
Tiaan set the construct down.
A lyrinx was descending onto the rubble in the entrance. Another settled beside it, a third, and then many more, too quickly to count.
ELEVEN
The beast was the size of a large dog, though lower to the ground, and all tooth, claw and spiky armour. Its head was massive, the maw surrounded with teeth and the crested head coated in rings of spines. The body was protected by segmented armour plates, spiny above and underneath. The tail was a knotted and spiked club. That was not the most frightening thing about it. Nor was the truly repulsive smell.
What scared Nish most was the lurking cunning, and the madness, in its eyes. It looked like a beast that lived to torment; to rend and devour. It could only be the nylatl Tiaan had mentioned. It must have tracked her down and he was to be a snack as it went by.
With those claws it could run up the tree as quickly as he could walk down a path. If he leapt to the ground, he would have a better chance with the sword, but that would leave Ullii defenceless. The creature would follow her scent upwards and devour her at its leisure. Nish imagined her terror, confronted by the beast. He could not give it the chance.
Here, on the lower branches, was a poor place to defend. The trunk was too big and the creature could come at him from behind, or even climb past him in a rush. He screwed a heavy green cone until it broke off. Thrusting the sword into his belt, Nish shifted the cone into his right hand and threw hard at the unblinking eyes. It went true, striking the nylatl on the ridges above and below its left eye. The creature yelped and scurried into the bushes.
The injury was minor, at best. The nylatl would be back in a minute. Nish scrambled up, hand over foot, faster than he had ever gone before. Five or six branches higher he missed a foothold, almost plunging all the way down again. After that he was more careful, but before he had climbed much further Nish knew that the monster was after him.
At a point where the trunk was no wider than his chest, and there was no way for the nylatl to get past, he prepared to defend. Here the branches stuck straight out from the trunk, as good a footing as he would find anywhere. The sword was not a long one, though its reach extended below his feet. Far enough to get in a good hack if the creature attacked that way, as it must.
