by Ian Irvine
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Minis,’ he said, offering the jug of ale. ‘Come this way. Let me show you the view.’ He drew the young man over to the stone wall at the inner edge of the crater. The lake was particularly blue today. ‘This lake goes up and down with the seasons, and is warm enough to swim in, even in the winter. I often do so.’
‘On Aachan, our winters are bitter,’ said Minis, ‘though they don’t last long. Our year is little more than half of yours, I believe, yet our day is longer. But Aachan is a cold world compared to Santhenar.’
‘Winter here is cold enough, and lasts for a good hundred days,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘Don’t be fooled by today’s weather. It’s unseasonably hot for this time of year but, should it turn southerly, we could have snow next week. The weather is changeable here, and we are high up. Tell me, what is your profession?’
‘I … am in flux.’ The young man looked self-conscious. ‘My foster-father would mould me into a force commander.’
‘And that is not entirely to your liking?’ Gilhaelith enquired.
‘I will do whatever he requires of me,’ Minis said formally.
Gilhaelith changed to the subject he was really interested in. ‘The tale of this flying construct must be a fascinating one, though perhaps I should not ask questions of matters that may be … strategic.’
‘I would prefer that you did not,’ said Minis.
‘This woman who stole it – Tiaan, I think your foster-father named her – is not Aachim, surely?’
Minis started, and a tic developed at the corner of his mouth. ‘Tiaan is old human; from the province of Einunar.’
‘Einunar! That’s a long way from here. I would like to hear the tale of how she came to steal your flying construct. She must be a most talented woman.’
Minis began to sweat. ‘Most talented,’ he choked, and his admiration for her could not be disguised.
Well, well, thought Gilhaelith.
Minis looked over his shoulder at Vithis, who was in a huddle with the scriers, and went on. ‘Tiaan did not steal the flying construct, for we have not learned how to make them fly. She must have made it herself.’
‘Made it!’ Gilhaelith exclaimed.
‘We abandoned three damaged machines in Tirthrax.’
Gilhaelith had difficulty concealing his astonishment. Could Tian’s preposterous statements about the gate and the amplimet also be true?
‘How could she make it fly?’ He did not expect an answer to such a strategic question, but Minis, with another glance in the direction of his foster-father, continued.
‘I don’t know. We have sought Rulke’s secret for two hundred years, without success. But Tiaan is –’
‘How did she come to be in Tirthrax?’
‘I told her how to get inside the city, so she could make the gate.’
‘Are you saying Tiaan made the gate that brought you to our world?’ Oh, to have an hour alone with this indiscreet and desperate young man.
‘Yes, she did. Without her the Aachim of Aachan would be extinct. And in return we betrayed her. I can never forgive –’
Gilhaelith, seeing Vithis heading in their direction, cursed inwardly and interrupted him. ‘Perhaps, should we meet again, you could tell me the rest of the tale? I must rejoin your father. I have forgotten my manners.’
‘I would be happy to tell you now,’ Minis said. ‘She is –’
‘Ah, Vithis,’ Gilhaelith said breezily, quaffing his mug of ale, ‘would you care for a snack?’
He snapped his fingers and a servant presented a tray on which was arranged a series of shrivelled, oily, yellow-green objects. They made a square, seven to each side.
‘What are they?’ said Vithis, wrinkling his nose at the smell, which was nauseating.
‘The preserved gonads of the Parnggi walking fish,’ said Gilhaelith, picking up seven with his free hand and flicking them into his mouth with his thumb. The numbers, as well as Vithis’s reaction, gave him a little more control.
Vithis looked disgusted. ‘They smell rotten.’
‘An ancient method of preservation that greatly enhances –’
‘We must go,’ Vithis said tersely. ‘A large area to search and much else to do. I thank you for your hospitality.’
He limped back to the machines. The others followed and the constructs headed down the mountain road.
Gilhaelith watched them out of sight. He thought he had fooled Vithis, but if the man found a single witness to say otherwise, the Aachim would be back to take the place apart stone by stone.
So Tiaan had been telling the truth. When he’d believed her a thief and a liar, it had coloured his view of her talents. Now he veered to the opposite extreme. She must be a masterly natural geomancer, the rarest of geniuses. What might she be capable of if that talent was properly schooled? She could greatly help him with his own quest. He must find a way to gain her cooperation.
Tiaan was still tormenting herself when she heard the creak of the trapdoor and Gilhaelith crawled across. Though she hated and despised Minis, the sight of him had been unbearable.
Gilhaelith carried her to her room and sat in the chair beside her bed, offering her a piece of cream linen the size of a small tablecloth. She wiped her dusty face and hands.
‘You thought I was going to betray you?’ he said, regarding her fixedly.
He had strange eyes, she noticed. The pupils were slightly oval and of the most unusual colour, a streaky though warm blue-grey. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, and the admission broke something in her that had been holding her back all this time. ‘Why didn’t you? They must have offered you a great amount of platinum.’
Most men would have been offended by the implication, even if they had been tempted. He showed no sign that he was offended. He just kept staring at her.
‘Don’t you know that it’s rude to stare?’ she snapped.
He looked away, turned back, caught himself doing it again and angled his face to the window. A touch of colour appeared on his cheeks. ‘Is it? I did not know that.’
Something was different about him. He seemed less cold and machine-like. It was almost as if he cared about her. ‘It makes me uncomfortable,’ she said softly. ‘I feel as if … as if you’re feeding on me.’
‘I’m sorry. I would not have you think me ill-mannered. I have lived alone, with only my servants for company, for so long that perhaps I have not learned what I should. Or forgotten it a century ago.’
‘A century –?’
He smiled, which almost cracked his ugly face in half, but lit up his eyes. He no longer seemed so strange. ‘I am not offended. As it happens, I am 180 years old – a number with several unusual properties. The sum of consecutive cubes –’.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flushing.
‘What for?’
‘For so insulting you a moment ago.’
‘What about?’
‘Accusing you of being bought by Vithis.’
‘I might have turned you in, at one stage, but never for money. Anyway, you have a precious talent and I would prefer to foster that.’
Something had changed and, for whatever the reason, she had to use it. ‘Why would you jeopardise what you have here, for me?’
Gurteys put her head around the door, scowling at the pair, but at Tiaan’s words a convulsion of rage transformed her unattractive features. Tiaan shuddered. Gilhaelith turned toward the door but the healer had gone. More trouble.
‘The volcano could destroy it all tomorrow,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘That uncertainty keeps me vigilant.’
‘Vithis might also destroy you.’
‘In that case, I would be dead and it would not matter. All that matters, Tiaan, is my work. You are safe with me.’ He was staring at her bosom, oblivious.
She put her arms across her chest. ‘But what do you want of me, Gilhaelith?’
‘Not what you might be thinking,’ he said, belatedly realising what was bothering her. ‘I am a celibate. I have been so all my lif
e.’
‘All your life?’ Tiaan’s own urges were strong, though she had not yet mated. For a man to live to his age and remain celibate seemed impossible, not to mention wrong. In her country, not mating at all was a crime. ‘Is there … something wrong with you?’ She blushed scarlet. ‘I’m sorry. Again.’
His face set hard. ‘I never liked any woman enough to consider it. I never knew how to like a woman – I’m not good with people.’
‘Did you have a strange childhood, like me?’
‘I suppose so. Certainly no one liked me. I was too different, and I refused to conform. I always felt that it was me against the world, a game I couldn’t win. Instead of fighting, I rejected everyone and played the game I was best at – numbers.’
‘I was different, too,’ said Tiaan, ‘though I didn’t want to be. I just wanted a proper family, like other kids had. I only have half my family Histories.’
‘I have none of mine,’ he said bitterly.
‘Who were your parents?’ she said softly.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He hurled himself from his chair so violently that she cried out and covered her face with her hands.
He stood over her, breathing hard, then rushed out of the room. Before she could work out what had happened he was back. Tiaan shrank into the pillow.
‘Forgive me.’ He went down on his knees beside the bed. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. I would not deliberately hurt any living thing. I … my past causes me pain and I find it hard to control.’
He was trying hard to be what he was not – a man who could relate to a woman. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.
‘I was born of a dead woman, dragged screaming from a bloody corpse. I must have been the unwanted child of an important man, for I was carried away in the night by my loyal nurse. Far, far away we went, but she died of the plague when I was five, and then I had no one. I was brought up in an orphans’ home.’
‘I have a mother,’ she said, ‘but no father. He was killed in the war soon after my birth.’
‘A common thing in these times, to lose a father. I wonder about my own. It was hard, having no heritage at all, and being so different.’
Her eyes were on his but she said nothing, so he continued. ‘I spoke with my nurse’s accent, and I looked strange. The other children found me awkward and ugly. It hurt, but I learned not to care, for I knew I was cleverer than they. I could not play at ball-and-stick but I was better than my teachers at mind games. I pursued that world to the exclusion of everything else, until I became arrogant in my superiority. The other children were afraid of me – my first taste of power.
‘When I grew up, I wanted to play in the real world, so I took on the local merchants and traders. Before they knew what was happening, I had become immensely wealthy at their expense. Business was just a game to me, one I easily mastered. I knew everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, but I also knew the perfect time to buy and sell.
‘Within a few years, a whole city hated me, so, tiring of the game, I converted my wealth to gems, found a place where no one dared to live, changed my name and began to build Nyriandiol. That took forty years and I did not show my face in the world all that time. By then, my enemies were dead. No one knew who I was, not even the recently formed Council of Scrutators. I watched and played against them for years, and began to recognise a pattern behind what they did and said. But I abandoned that game as well – I was bored with the petty intrigues of humanity, ever the same, and always destructive.
‘By then I had no interest in rejoining the world, though I still traded, a good cover for my real work. I had become interested in the greatest game of all – the Art and Science of the earth and the heavens. The forces of geomancy: the natural processes that move and shape the sun, the earth, the planets and their moons.
‘Geomancy was the deadliest of all the Arts, but that gave it all the more appeal. The greater the risk, the greater the reward if I succeeded. I sought to understand, and then to master such forces. I knew that was an impossible dream for any mancer, though I had devised an entirely new Art – mathemancy – in order to do so.
‘I built greater and greater geomantic devices – my organ, my carillon of bells, my scrying globe – but mastery has always eluded me. The earth and planets are ever changing, and my knowledge of the forces that drive them must always be imperfect and behind the times. I could never learn enough.’
‘Is that why the amplimet so fascinates you?’ she asked shrewdly.
He hesitated long before answering. ‘It could help me to scry into secrets that no one has been able to uncover …’ He trailed off, deep in thought.
‘But if it is talking to the node –’
‘That would be something entirely new. Incomprehensible.’
‘What if nodes are the key? If a crystal can talk to a node, what would happen if a node talked to another node?’
Gilhaelith leapt up. ‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’
‘I just thought of the question. I don’t know the answer.’
‘Nor do I, but maybe I’ve been looking at the problem the wrong way round, all along.’ He sat, thinking, and did not move for ages.
Tiaan was still wondering about him. ‘You chose to be a celibate?’
Gilhaelith nodded. ‘I did.’
‘We have something in common. I am also a virgin.’
He rolled the word around in his mouth. ‘Virgin seems wrong applied to myself, but that is what I am. I do not regret it. It made an impossible life possible. I’ve lived a rich life of the mind. I wonder …’ He stared at her.
The admission built him in a new light, not so threatening. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I was wrong about you, and I apologise. Minis told me all you have done.’
So that’s why he had changed – he wanted to make use of her talents. Tiaan was not upset. Everyone had their place in this world and she needed to be a useful part of it.
‘I cannot make you walk again,’ he said, ‘but if there is anything I can do for you, I will.’
‘And, in return, what do you require of me?’
‘The amplimet has been overprinted with a new pattern, I think due to you. It’s too dangerous for me to use. Or anyone else.’
‘Or anyone else,’ she repeated. So whoever wanted the amplimet must have her too. A lifetime of being used. Still, it was better than the alternative. Why not cooperate, though she could not see Gilhaelith lasting long. All the more reason to get what she wanted – a working thapter she could take to the scrutators, and finally know that she had done her duty.
Could he be trusted? Tiaan thought so, but she had trusted Minis and would never be so gullible again. ‘Can the thapter be repaired?’
He considered the question as he paced. ‘My smiths have beaten the metal skin to shape. It’s not as fine as before, but it’ll fit. I’ve had them do some repairs to the mechanisms and left others I did not understand. Unless something vital has been broken, I expect it can be put right. I’ve a good workshop.’
‘I’ll help you,’ she said, ‘but I want the thapter.’
He took a long time to answer. ‘You may have it, but not the amplimet.’
His eyes met hers but she could not tell what he was thinking. Could the thapter be made to fly without the amplimet? Malien had thought so, though it would not be easy. Still, that was as good as she was going to get.
‘Agreed.’ She held out her hand.
He took it. ‘You shall direct the repairs. I’ll have a wheeled chair built for you, which you can move with your arms. Not as good as walking, but better than lying on your back.’
‘When can we start?’ she asked eagerly. Too eagerly. Control yourself, Tiaan. Don’t appear too enthusiastic. Don’t trust!
‘The sooner the better, if you are strong enough. I’m afraid –’ He broke off and went to the window, looking down into the crater.
‘Of what?’
‘There is no power on Sant
henar who will not want the thapter, once they hear of it, and I am not fool enough to think that it can be kept secret. Even my servants can be made to talk, if the reward is great enough. Or the torment!
‘And then,’ he went on, ‘there is you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You are a great prize, Tiaan.’
‘A cripple who can do nothing for herself?’ she said scornfully.
‘An artisan with a brilliant mind; one who can solve a problem that has eluded the genius of the Aachim for two hundred years – the secret of flight.’
Tiaan did not doubt that she was clever, but she could not consider herself brilliant. Her mother, and her superiors at the manufactory, had always talked her abilities down. Besides, Malien had made the key discovery, not she.
‘It was mere luck; I just happened to have an amplimet.’
Having changed his mind about her, Gilhaelith would not be dissuaded. ‘And the ability to use it. Tiaan, you made a gate between the worlds. You are a master geomancer.’
‘The slightest prentice! I understood nothing.’
‘Ah, but when you are trained –’
This conversation made no sense. ‘I have no one to teach me, even should I want to study the Secret Art.’
‘Why do you think I built my home on the edge of this mighty and perilous volcano?’
‘I have no idea.’ Now she was staring at him.
‘I have studied the Geomantic Art all my adult life. I am its greatest master, and it’s time I took a prentice.’
This was moving too fast. But suddenly, though Tiaan had never thought about it before, she did want what he was offering. She had felt such fulfilment, using her tiny geomantic skills to save the lives of the Aachim. Using power to do good. Artisans were just craft workers and had to do what they were told, but mancers were a law unto themselves. Geomancy meant freedom and she would seize the offer with both hands.
Out the window, wisps of steam trailed up from a sulphur-crusted fissure. On the terrace, Gurteys was talking to a group of servants. They all turned and stared at her window. Tiaan looked away from their hostile eyes.