by Ian Irvine
Tiaan jerked away from the image. Neither face nor figure had moved Minis in the end. Dressing in the blouse and loose pants the Matah had left, she took enough food and drink to satisfy her. There was a kind of bread, or cake, stuffed to bursting with dried fruits, nuts, seeds and candied peel, then sliced so thin that she could see through it. There were roses and other flowers crystallised with solutions of honey. The flavours were so subtle and the creations so delicate that Tiaan could scarcely bear to touch them. There were exotic vegetables, none of which she recognised, preserved in oil as red as cedarwood.
Having eaten her fill, she was at a loss. Her dreams of revenge were foolish; futile. That armada of constructs must be twenty leagues away by now. Feeling her resolve fading, she went looking for the Matah and eventually found her on the frigid balcony.
‘Good afternoon, Tiaan,’ she said, without looking around.
Tiaan stood there, uncertainly. The Matah patted the stone seat. Tiaan perched uncomfortably on it, for the cold went right through her trousers.
‘What will you do now?’ the Matah said softly.
‘I must lay Haani to rest.’
‘Where is the child?’
‘I left her beside a great shaft that plunges down toward the mountain’s heart.’
‘What?’ The Matah sprang to her feet. ‘How came you to the Well of Echoes?’
Tiaan scrambled off the seat. ‘N-Nish hunted me there. I meant no harm.’
‘Be calm, child. You could do no harm there, though it might well have harmed you. How did you get into that place? It should not have been possible.’
Tiaan explained what she had done, and why. Coming up close, the Matah lifted the hedron on its chain but let it fall. She put her palms on Tiaan’s cheeks, thumbs resting on either side of her nose, the long, long fingers wrapped around her head. She stared into Tiaan’s eyes for a good while, then let go, shaking her head.
‘There is something about you, Tiaan …’
‘What?’ Tiaan said uneasily.
‘I cannot say, though it rings alarms. You are in peril. Either that, or you are peril. Come, I will take you to the Well.’
The Matah dissolved the re-formed cubic barrier with a gesture and they entered the tunnel. Tiaan had forgotten the cold of that place, even worse than outside. The smooth-as-glass walls of the tunnel were networked with feathery patterns of ice crystals. The whole tunnel felt to be breathing cold, for little whooshes of wind would rush past, ruffling her hair, only to turn and blow down the back of her neck.
Even when the breeze blew from behind, Tiaan found it difficult to move forward. Each step proved more difficult than the last. How had she entered so effortlessly the previous time? The Matah, who had been only a few strides ahead, had now disappeared around the corner. Tiaan forced herself on. It felt like the time she had tried to put the crystal into the port-all, before she opened the gate and brought her world to ruin.
She had done too much and could do no more. When the Matah came back, Tiaan was on the floor, hunched up against the cold. The Matah lifted Tiaan to her feet, taking her hand, and at once the opposing force was gone. Tiaan followed her to the room and the Well.
Though the room was a simple cone of rough-cut rock, its magic was manifest. Deep blue light from the shaft cut through the dark space, highlighting mist that drifted in lazy coils centred on the Well. The air was so fresh and crisp it tingled with every breath. Scattered snowflakes floated above the shaft. One landed on Tiaan’s sleeve and it was a perfect, six-pointed star, a crystal so lovely that she wished Haani could have seen it.
Haani lay beside the shaft as if sleeping. There was frost in her hair. Tiaan took her icy hand. The Matah went to her knees, probing Haani’s chest with her fingertips. ‘Poor child. Why is it always the young ones?’ She seemed lost in some tragedy of her own.
Tiaan stood with head bowed, waiting silently.
Eventually the Matah turned to her. ‘Is there a death ritual you wish to observe?’
‘I don’t know the customs of her people,’ Tiaan said. ‘As for my own, we bury our dead, but I can’t dig a hole through rock.’
‘Nor should she lie in the catacombs filled with our dead. Her spirit could not dwell comfortably in such a culture-haunted place.’ The Matah circled the shaft.
Tiaan looked in. Blue tendrils rotated down as far as she could see. The Well seethed with power, like a spring under tension.
The Matah put one knuckle against her lip and gnawed at it, then bent to stroke the hair out of Haani’s eyes. As abruptly, she stood up.
‘Wait!’ She strode off along the further extension of the tunnel.
Tiaan sat beside Haani, holding the frigid wrist, not thinking at all. After a long wait, the Matah reappeared with a basket in one hand and a roll of fabric in the other. Placing it on the floor, she offered the basket to Tiaan. It contained small bunches of cuttings from a black, glossy-leaved plant, at the tips of which were small flowers, purple outside and white within, crimped in the form of five-pointed stars.
‘We Aachim cleave more to metal and stone than we do to gardening,’ she said, ‘but there are one or two among us who care for growing things. These are the best I could find in this part of the city.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ Tiaan said. ‘Haani loved trees and flowers.’ Folding the child’s arms across her broken chest, Tiaan placed a bunch of flowers in her hand.
The Matah unrolled the cloth, woven of a thread like metallic silk in subtle patterns of green and gold. They wrapped the child in it, leaving just her face exposed.
‘I would, if you see fit,’ said the Matah, ‘send Haani to the Well. It is an honour accorded to the greatest of us after death, and occasionally taken before that, if we so choose.’ She looked sideways at Tiaan. ‘I do not know …’
‘She is dead!’ Tiaan said more harshly than she felt. ‘She does not care.’
‘The ritual is for the living as well as the dead. But only if you judge it fitting.’
‘I would honour her to the limit of my ability.’
‘Just so.’ Again the Matah went up the passage, returning with a metal object like a sled with three runners. Of blue-black metal, it was chased all over with intricate, interwoven patterns.
They lifted Haani onto the sled, binding her there with silken cords. She looked tiny. ‘Make your farewell,’ said the Matah, ‘then push her to the centre. The Well will take her in its own time.’ She walked away.
Tiaan stood over the child, thinking of all that might have been. Tears spotted Haani’s face, forming frost marks there. Tiaan murmured a prayer, remembered from her childhood, and then could stand it no longer.
She thrust the sled into the shaft. It sat in mid-air as if resting on a sheet of glass. Scooping a handful of flowers from the basket, Tiaan sprinkled them over the body. Errant petals moved about as though on a current of air. Some drifted around the shaft.
The sled moved down, almost imperceptibly at first. Staring at the little pinched face, Tiaan felt such a pang in her heart that she thought it was going to tear apart. Letting out a great cry of anguish, she leapt into the Well.
She landed on an invisible barrier that would not let her through, no matter how she screamed and clawed at it. The Matah had anticipated her. Tiaan went still, watching the sled drift down. The Matah, hands out, drew her back. They looked at one another.
‘The Well is only for those at peace with the world.’
‘And if you are not?’ said Tiaan.
‘I made sure it would not take you.’
‘You were going to the Well.’
‘I felt my time had come. Did you not say that you have much to put right?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’
The hand released her. ‘Don’t stand too close,’ the Matah said.
Haani’s body drifted down and out of sight. A long time later there was a bright flash in the depths. A shiny bubble came rolling up the shaft. Tiaan ducked
out of the way as it burst with a set of silver rays and a faint scent of flowers.
‘The Well has taken her,’ said the Matah. ‘Come.’
Rubbing her eyes, Tiaan followed the Matah back to her chambers, where she unsealed a flask of turquoise liquor, so thick that it oozed. Pouring a hefty slug into two goblets, she passed one to Tiaan.
‘Thank you, Matah.’ Tiaan picked up her goblet but did not taste it.
The Matah smiled. ‘Matah is a title, not my name.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s hard to say in your language. “Flawed” or “ambiguous” hero, perhaps.’
Tiaan’s curiosity was aroused. ‘Why flawed?’
‘My people are in two minds about my role in the Histories.’
‘What is your role?’
‘Was,’ she corrected. ‘It was a long time ago. I have outlived my own expectations. My people felt that I worked too hard for humanity, in all its forms, and not hard enough for my own Aachim kind. I am venerated, yet an outcast. That is why I remained in Tirthrax when everyone else went to Stassor last year. I was not welcome at their meet.’
Tiaan took a sip of her liquor and immediately regretted it. Its thickness clung to her tongue, trickling pulses of a burning floral pungency up her nose and down her throat. She would not have been surprised if steam had burst from her nostrils. It cleared her head though, blasting the last hours clear away.
‘Who are you?’ she said raspily, feeling the hot passage of the liquor all the way to the pit of her stomach. She put the goblet aside, searching through her memories of the Great Tales, and the lesser, for clues to the Matah’s identity. Many were the brave, and noble, and ultimately futile deeds done in the struggle with the lyrinx. Four Great Tales had been made in the last hundred years alone, though the Matah must predate them.
‘I played a part in what was once known as the greatest of all the Great Tales,’ the Matah said. ‘The Tale of the Mirror. Sadly, that tale has fallen out of favour with your scrutators.’
That reminded Tiaan of something old Joeyn the miner had once said to her. He’d said that the Histories had been rewritten. A question for another time.
‘I’ve heard that tale,’ said Tiaan. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Malien.’
Malien! A famous name from the Histories. The Aachim could be long-lived, Tiaan knew, but she could hardly take it in. She was in the presence of a legend. ‘You always seemed to be strong, yet kindly.’
Malien met her eyes. ‘I can be hard as stone if I must.’
In the early hours of the morning, growing feelings of longing for the amplimet, and growing unease, drew Tiaan down to the chamber with the glass gong. It was not exactly withdrawal, for she had not felt that since putting the amplimet inside the port-all and opening the gate.
She had often thought that the amplimet had some purpose of its own, developed over the thousands, if not millions of years it had lain in that cavity in the mine, after it had woken. Had she freed it to work on some purpose as aged as the very bones of the mountains? And what care would such a mineral awareness have for petty humans and their transient lives and deaths? Maybe it had been using her. How could she hope to understand the purpose of something that could, with perfect patience, wait out a million years? Tiaan was afraid of the amplimet now, yet she could not give it up.
She approached the hall tentatively, for it reeked with bitter memories. It was as cold as outside. An icy wind, whistling down the glacier from the ice cap, whirled in through the side of the mountain, frosting everything in its path.
Tiaan had entered from a stair that ended near the outer wall. As she paced toward the port-all, every step was a nagging reminder. Over to her right was the pile of rubble and ice Haani had sheltered behind. Before her lay one of the bags of platinum Vithis had thrown to her, wealth enough to buy the manufactory and everything in it. The bag had burst open, scattering slugs of precious metal across the floor.
Her boot struck something that tinkled. She bent down, then drew back. It was the ring, woven of precious metals, she had made so lovingly for Minis. Every strand held a wish or a dream. Impossible to identify with those girlish longings now.
Picking it up, Tiaan drew back her arm to hurl it out onto the glacier, but stopped in mid-throw. ‘I will use it against him,’ she said aloud. ‘I will see him beg for it, then spurn him the way he did me.’
Putting the ring on the chain about her neck, she gathered up the platinum. It might also be useful in her quest to bring the Aachim down. After some minutes she reached the place where the gate had opened. The stone floor was scorched and the three constructs that had locked together in the gate were nearby. One lay on its side, its skin of shining blue-black metal crushed. The second was upside down. The third sat on its base but the front was smashed in.
A little thread of curiosity tugged at her. How did the constructs work? Were they like clankers, or completely different? Tiaan wondered if they might be repaired. She walked around the machines but kept going. The call of the amplimet was stronger.
She continued to the room where she had assembled the port-all. Scattered mounds of rubble had been blasted out of the wall as the gate formed. Tiaan expected to find the port-all a slaggy heap of metal and glass but it looked exactly as she had built it.
Memories of using the port-all, and opening the gate, stirred her hackles. Why, when she had built it exactly as shown, had it gone so wrong? She ran through the memories. Could it have been the wrong-handedness of it? She tried to reconstruct her recollections but again something eluded her.
As she hurried forward, longing for the amplimet etched molten tracks across her heart. She ran around the side of the machine, trying to see through the network of glass, metal, wire, ceramic and shaped stone. She was looking for the soapstone basket that held the amplimet. There it was, inside that deformed doughnut of glass that Haani had called the twisticon.
With trembling fingers Tiaan reached out to open the basket, already seeing the amplimet in her mind’s eye. It was a bipyramid of quartz, inside either end of which were radiating balls of needle crystals. Single, extended needles ran down the long axis of the crystal, separated by a little central bubble half-filled with liquid. Most unusual of all, the crystal had glowed, faintly when it was a long way from a node, strongly when close. Here in Tirthrax, radiance had positively flooded out of it.
There was no resistance this time. Her fingers went straight to the catch. She flicked it and the soapstone basket sprang open.
Tiaan let out a cry of anguish.
The amplimet was gone.
Malien! Earlier, the Matah had not been able to control her desire for it. She must have come for it in the night. A pang of rage twisted Tiaan’s insides. Despite her vow, she could not bear anyone else to have it. Joeyn had died getting it for her.
Malien was not in her chamber. Tiaan searched her rooms but the amplimet was not there. Sinking on the bed, she put her throbbing head in her hands. Malien might have hidden it anywhere.
She became aware that Malien was standing in the doorway, staring at the mess. Tiaan felt an irrational surge of rage. Keep calm; don’t give yourself away. All in vain. She threw herself at the older woman, beating at her with her fists. ‘What have you done with it?’
Malien held her easily. Aachim were strong, even old ones. ‘What is the matter, Tiaan?’
‘The amplimet is gone!’
Malien turned and ran.
‘Where are you going?’ Tiaan ran after her. The old woman was moving faster than Tiaan’s weary legs could run. ‘Wait.’
Malien allowed her to catch up. ‘I haven’t taken it, which can only mean one thing.’
Nish, of course. Tiaan felt such a fool.
‘I should never have left it there,’ said Malien. ‘What if it falls into the wrong hands?’
‘What do you mean by the wrong hands?’ Tiaan panted.
‘Any hands but yours.’
; ‘Or yours?’
‘Even when I was young, I never wanted power. Besides …’
‘What?’
‘You had the crystal for months, and used it to do mighty works. By now it will be so imprinted with you that others may only use it at their peril.’
That was not as convincing as it sounded. Tiaan had seen the look in Malien’s eyes when first the amplimet had been mentioned.
At the door to the port-all chamber, Malien checked, as if afraid to go in. ‘If only this were a dream and I could wake from it.’ She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed through the door. ‘After the Forbidding was broken, we thought we were free of gates and what they brought. Only one man knew how to make them – old Shand – and he swore he would take the secret to his grave. I’m sure he did. We never thought that knowledge would return from across the void. Who would have thought it could?
‘Ingenious,’ Malien continued, walking around the port-all, giving Tiaan curious looks as she did. ‘You are quite a mechanician, Tiaan.’
‘I just put it together from a pattern Minis sent to me. I don’t claim to understand it.’
‘Few Aachim could have built this from a mental image.’ Malien sat on a piece of fallen stone, deep in thought.
Tiaan fretted. ‘He’s getting away, Malien.’
‘Let me think this through. It has to be your friend, Nish. Take this.’ She handed Tiaan a rod, about the length of a sword, made of black metal, though it was comparatively light.
Tiaan handled it as if it was about to explode. ‘What is it for?’
Malien chuckled. ‘To whack him over the head, if necessary. Have you clothes for outside?’
Tiaan ran to the room where she had left her pack, days ago, and dressed in her old down-filled pants, coat and boots. When she returned, Malien was standing by the crashed constructs. She wove her long fingers into a knot, tore it apart, then began to make another, which she also wrenched undone.
‘These things are just like Rulke’s machine. I’m afraid, Tiaan, as I have never been before. Afraid of my own kind.’
‘Were you not afraid of Rulke?’
‘Very. But he was only one man with one construct, and we knew his character, for we had the Histories to guide us. Rulke, within his own strange code, was an honourable man. This is different. Vithis, embittered by the loss of his clan, now leads a mighty force. It will tip the balance.’