by Ian Irvine
‘Which would disappear the instant the Aachim were threatened.’
‘And perhaps your own people would join with them to make an even stronger force.’
‘If pushed hard enough, they probably would.’
‘But not you, Malien?’
‘I will never betray my own kind, Tiaan. But I will do what I can for all humanity.’
‘And I!’ Tiaan swore. ‘Since I brought the Aachim here, I must make up for it.’ How, though? She was trapped by geography, hundreds of leagues from anywhere.
Malien sat forward on her chair, looking down at her boots. Her veined hands shook. She rested them on her knees. ‘I –’ She broke off.
Tiaan said nothing. What could Malien offer her but words? Words could change nothing.
‘You can never know what I felt when I heard about the amplimet,’ said Malien.
Not expecting that, Tiaan felt a surge of jealous anger. ‘Why?’ she said coolly. ‘What is it to you?’
‘The chance to look back to lost Aachan.’
‘You can’t have been born there.’ The Histories were clear on that.
‘I was not. We came to Santhenar thousands of years ago, mostly as slaves of the Charon. For that reason, few of us feel perfectly at home on Santhenar. Nor do I, despite that my children and my partners lie in their graves here. We forever look back to Aachan, mourning the world that we lost. We always hoped and planned to return. Now we never shall. But still I would use the amplimet, if I may, to take a last look at our lost world.’
‘But Aachan was destroyed,’ said Tiaan. The anger had gone but she still felt reluctant to let Malien have it, however briefly.
‘With the amplimet, and a strong enough will, I might look back into the depths of time. I might even see beloved Aachan as a paradise, before the Charon took it from us. Ah, Tiaan, you cannot know how I yearn for that.’ Malien shook her head and tears fell from her ageless eyes.
Tiaan found herself moved by the old woman’s anguish. ‘Take it,’ she said, unfastening the little pouch hanging between her breasts. ‘Look back to Aachan and be at peace.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Malien said softly, and the power and the confidence were gone. She was no more than an ageing woman whose life had seen more of tragedy than triumph.
‘That the amplimet has been corrupted by the gate?’
‘I fear that, but not as much as I fear what I will see on Aachan.’
Malien did not elaborate and Tiaan asked no more questions. She did not have the right. The crystal lay on her hand, glowing in a way that seemed vaguely menacing. They both stared at it.
Malien shuddered, then reached out to lift it away between fingers and thumb. It dragged as if anchored to Tiaan’s palm with sticky threads. Something went snap and suddenly the crystal was tumbling through the air, exploding with light. She cried out but Malien’s long fingers closed around it and the light was cut off.
Malien rose. ‘Come with me.’
Tiaan followed her to the stone bench on her lonely eyrie. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing, apart from being here.’ Malien sat on the bench.
Tiaan stood by the glass door, where it was a little warmer. There was still a core of cold in her from before, and Malien having the amplimet only added to that.
‘Isn’t it dangerous using it so close to the node?’
‘It is.’
Malien held the amplimet between her fingers, which were pressed together as though in prayer. The end of the crystal extended past the tips. She rested her elbows on her knees. Her posture was so rigid that Tiaan moved toward the edge of the precipice, the better to see.
Malien’s head turned sharply and Tiaan was shocked at her expression. She looked afraid. The amplimet, normally a luminous white or blue-white, had gone a baleful red. The glow rose and fell, and with each flare Tiaan felt a wrenching in her middle.
The crystal pulsed faster, more erratically. Some kind of struggle seemed to be going on between it and Malien, and Tiaan recalled Vithis’s fear – that it had been corrupted. Would it be a danger to her too, when she got it back? If Malien gave it back.
Abruptly the glow was gone. The illuminated globe inside the door also went out. The sun had set long ago and the night was black, apart from a shimmer of starlight on the distant ice sheet. That seemed ominous. Malien shuddered from head to foot, then rose from the bench until she was standing on tiptoe. She held the crystal above her head and let out a great cry that could have been ecstasy or anguish.
The crystal shone so brightly that Tiaan saw the blood running in Malien’s veins. It slowed, slowed, slowed. What was she doing? Tiaan tried to move but the world vanished and the next she knew, she was picking herself up from the frigid stone.
Some time had passed, for moonlight now glistened on the peaks and the icefield. Malien still held the crystal above her head, pastel rays streaming out between her fingers. It looked as though she had frozen in place. Gelid tears hung on her cheeks but beneath her eyelids her eyes were moving.
Tiaan crouched near the edge of the precipice, afraid to disturb her. The rays slowly thinned and dulled until they could barely be seen, until the light illuminated only Malien’s fingertips and her face, and finally even that went out.
Reaching up, Tiaan touched Malien’s hand. To her surprise it was warm. A great weight left her and Tiaan took the crystal from Malien’s fingers.
Malien turned stiffly, like a statue coming to life. Her eyes opened, shedding crescents of ice. ‘Tiaan,’ she said haltingly, as if so long had passed that she barely recalled how to speak.
‘Come inside.’
‘Go to the warm. I will follow directly. I have a deal to think about.’
Tiaan was reluctant to go, so concerned did she feel for the old woman, but she was freezing. She went creakily down the stairs to Malien’s chambers but could not get warm until she drew a bath of steaming water and slid in to it.
There Malien found her, hours later, fast asleep in the tub. She touched Tiaan on the shoulder. ‘Dinner is ready.’
‘What did you see?’ Tiaan asked after they had finished another magnificent repast, every item of which was strange to her. She was sitting in a comfortable chair, clad in a silky dressing-gown with a glass of something that vaguely resembled coffee, though richer and more aromatic, at her elbow. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude of me.’
‘I did not see what I expected,’ said Malien, ‘and I will not speak of that save to my own kind.’ She took a sip from her glass, made to say something, then went silent.
Tiaan did not prompt her. Aachan meant nothing more to her than visions, through Minis, of volcanoes and ruins. She finished her glass, went to bed and did not dream.
It was not until the following afternoon that Malien came to her. ‘You deserve an explanation, Tiaan. I must –’
‘Aachan is your affair. I don’t want to pry.’
‘Hear me. Aachan involved itself in your affairs and you must know what is going on. I believe Vithis did deal dishonestly with you, or if he did not, other Aachim used or manipulated him. You were right to impugn the honour of the Aachim of Aachan; I was wrong to rebuke you. Someone is playing a deadly game and the consequences could be more dire than anyone imagines.’
Tiaan opened her mouth but Malien held up a hand. ‘There is more, and this concerns you personally. The amplimet has been corrupted by the gate, or by what Vithis did to change the gate. That appears to have roused something in the amplimet that was formerly dormant.’
‘What?’ Tiaan whispered.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps a kind of mineral instinct.’
That was too close to what Tiaan had been thinking. From the very first, there had been something different about it. She had not needed to wake it to draw power, as with a hedron. The amplimet had already been drawing power, by itself. ‘What is it up to?’
‘I can’t say. Its purpose may be benign, malignant or indifferent, but it will try to follow it no mat
ter what.’
‘Should we destroy it?’ Her voice broke. It was perilous for an artisan to destroy any hedron she was intimately linked to. But to destroy an amplimet … She dared not think what that would do to her.
‘No!’ Malien cried. ‘It may be perilous but it is still a treasure. Guard it, protect it, and above all, beware of it, for make no mistake, it is deadly.’
‘To use, or just to have by me?’
‘I don’t know. You must leave as soon as you are able. The amplimet is … incompatible with the node here, and the Well. You’re lucky something drastic hasn’t already happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll be looking into that tonight.’
‘Maybe it made the gate go wrong,’ Tiaan said hopefully.
‘No. The gate corrupted the amplimet.’
More to think about. ‘Where am I to go?’
‘Where best your knowledge, and your skills, might be employed to bring good out of ill.’
‘If I went back to the manufactory it would take a year to get there,’ Tiaan mused, ‘if I got there at all. And if I dared risk their punishment. Going west would take months of equally dangerous travel. By then it would be too late, even if I knew what to do.’
‘You must work out your own path. I can’t advise you. But before you go, there is one thing you can do for me.’
‘Yes?’ said Tiaan, sure she was not going to like it.
‘You’re a skilled artisan,’ said Malien. ‘Perhaps you could pull the crashed constructs apart and make a working one from them.’
SEVEN
It shivered Tiaan from the roots of her hair to her toenails. From the moment she had set eyes on the constructs, she had longed to see how they were powered, controlled and built. It was fate.
‘I’ll begin right away.’ She leapt up. ‘This minute!’
‘I was about to prepare dinner.’
‘What if the lyrinx come back? I don’t dare miss the chance.’ In truth, she longed to feel metal in her hands again. Devices were logical, predictable, reliable. They did not lie or cheat or betray.
Malien smiled, though it had a faraway edge. ‘Dinner will be ready shortly.’
Tiaan hurried down the stairs, her heart pounding. As an artisan, new ways of seeing and doing had always fascinated her. Everything about these constructs must be new, since they had come from another world.
Down on the gate level, she walked around the three machines, frowning. Without understanding how they worked, it was difficult to know where to start. The one that lay on its top looked the worst damaged, and no doubt righting it would cause more. The second had its front smashed in; the third, one side crumpled, and its upper part warped. Tiaan tried to pull the metal back into place but could not budge it. Though just a thin, curved sheet, it had the strength of the plate armour on the side of a clanker.
Climbing the construct with the crushed front, she looked in through the hatch. It was more spacious than it had appeared, though it must have been dreadfully crowded with a dozen passengers inside. Above and behind the hatch, a cramped turret was fitted with a javelard-like weapon, similar to the one that had killed Haani. She turned her back to it.
Inside the hatch was a small ovoid compartment with space for half a dozen people to stand close together. Seats pulled out from the rear wall. At the front was a curved binnacle of coloured glass, the pale green of young lemon leaves. Below that was a bank of finger-shaped levers, several coin-sized wheels and many coloured knobs or buttons. Between the binnacle and the seat, a hexagonal rod came up from the floor, sprouting into a six-sided trumpet with a studded knob on top. The trumpet could be moved back and forth as well as from side to side and up and down. Nothing happened when she tried it. On the floor beside it were five crescent-shaped pedals.
She wiggled the levers and pressed the buttons and pedals, to no effect. Perhaps the mechanism was damaged, or there was a secret way of operating it.
To the left of the trumpet an oval hole gave access to the lower level. Stepping onto the top rung of a metal ladder, Tiaan went down tentatively. A lightglass began to glow. The egg-shaped interior was decorated with inlaid silver and other precious metals in the intricate Aachim way. Handles ran down the wall in front of her. She pulled one and an ingenious bunk unfolded. Another revealed a small cupboard containing mugs, plates and cutlery. A third seemed to be a weapons cabinet, though all it contained was a sword shaped like a cutlass and quarrels for a crossbow. A fourth held tools of unfathomable purpose.
Lifting a recessed hatch in the floor, she found what she assumed to be the driving mechanism. Some of its components resembled those she had used to build the port-all: crystals of various kinds, thick and robust glass tubes in the form of doughnuts and twisticons (as little Haani had called them), and other structures of ceramic and metal. The familiar shapes and components were comforting. The port-all had worked, therefore she might be able to make this construct operate.
Going back to the operator’s compartment, she checked it more thoroughly. Everything was as dead as before. Climbing out, she walked around the machine. It did not seem badly damaged, though a vital part might have been broken in the collision or the subsequent fall from the gate. But surely the Aachim would not build a war machine that could be disabled so easily?
She checked the one on its roof. The top of the machine was crushed; she could not get in. It was hard to imagine its vital parts surviving such an impact. The third construct, lying on its side, proved similar to the first but was badly damaged inside.
Returning to the first construct, she began to remove the damaged front section. The work required the utmost concentration, for she had to deduce how every part worked, and the right tool to use with it. Tiaan became so engrossed that she lost all track of time. She had part of the damaged section in pieces when she realised, with a start, that Malien was standing right behind her.
‘Where did you spring from?’ Tiaan exclaimed.
‘Whistling while you work,’ said Malien. ‘This is a change from yesterday.’
‘I’ve missed my craft. Is it dinnertime already?’
‘It went cold ten hours ago. I came to call you to breakfast.’
Tiaan was astounded. Yes, dawn was outlining the hole in the wall of the mountain. ‘I had no idea. I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Why are you taking the whole front to pieces?’
‘I was planning to replace it with parts from one of the others.’
Malien squatted beside her, reached underneath and did something with her long fingers. There was a soft click. She did the same at the top and on the other side. ‘Pull this.’ She indicated a strut.
Tiaan did so, Malien tugged on the other, and the front section slid onto the floor.
‘How did you do that?’ Tiaan cried.
‘I understand Aachim design,’ Malien said.
Half an hour later, the undamaged front section of the other construct had been installed. Tiaan wiped her hands and stood back. The repaired construct, apart from the dust, looked as if it had just been built.
‘There’s still the bigger problem to solve,’ said Tiaan. ‘How to make it go.’
‘Best leave that for later. Aachim machines can be booby-trapped and even an expert would not work on one after a sleepless night. I’ll come down later and teach you a few words of our tongue. To understand what you’re doing, you’ll need to know the names of things.’
While Tiaan was sleeping, Malien returned to the Well. Even before she entered the conical chamber, she noticed that things were different. The entry passage was less frigid, the barrier cubes more brittle. The blue-illuminated mist around the Well was as thick as cream and now extended higher than her head. Malien felt resistance as she pushed though it to the Well.
She peered down anxiously. What if it had begun to unfreeze? She listened for the telltale tinkle of cracking ice – the first sign. Nothing. The tendrils still coiled lazily inside. The Well was
silent, the depths still. She relaxed. Not yet. Malien was not sure she could restrain it by herself. Not sure that any one person could.
On the way back, she debated whether to tell Tiaan about her worries. Malien decided to keep them to herself for as long as possible. It would not benefit Tiaan to know.
That afternoon, Malien began to teach Tiaan the rudiments of the Aachim tongue, focussing on the words needed for this kind of work. Though Tiaan spoke three languages – the common tongues of the south-east, the west and the north – as most people did, Aachim speech proved difficult. It was always a relief to get back to the real world of her work.
She spent days studying the construct but could understand neither how it was powered nor what mechanism it used to hover and move. Maybe it was beyond her understanding. Vithis, and the other Aachim, had emphasised their mastery of geomancy and the limited scope of her own abilities. Eventually, more exhausted by this failure than by all her previous labours, she went to sleep inside the construct.
Malien woke her, bearing a mug in each hand. While they sipped their zhur, as the thick red spicy beverage was called, Tiaan explained why she was so downcast.
‘With your clankers,’ said Malien, ‘can anyone operate them?’
‘Of course not! The operator has to be tuned to its controller, and when he leaves he always takes it with him. Without it, nothing can make a clanker go.’
‘Except another operator with his own controller, presumably?’
‘Well, yes, but not always. Do constructs operate the same way?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Malien.
‘That isn’t much help,’ Tiaan snapped.
‘After Rulke built the very first construct,’ Malien said carefully, ‘at the time of the Tale of the Mirror, our finest thinkers devoted much time and thought to such devices. How they could be built, powered and controlled. They failed. The problem was too difficult.’
‘But later, humanity discovered how to use the field,’ said Tiaan. ‘Nunar’s Theory showed us how, and then we learned to build clankers.’
‘A primitive machine,’ said Malien. ‘I mean no insult,’ she added when Tiaan bridled, ‘but the one can hardly be compared to the other.’