Tetrarch (Well of Echoes)

by Ian Irvine

  ‘Put two feet in wet tar,’ said the lyrinx to his left, ‘and you would not have the strength to pull them out.’

  Gilhaelith finished his readings and this time did detect something. ‘That way.’ He pointed left of the tunnel centreline, down at a slight angle.

  The lyrinx adjusted their cooling ring and continued. They encountered other dead animals as the tunnel slowly extended: once a pair of seagulls, another time a house cat, and then a pair of snakes the size of pythons, wrapped around each other. After that they continued in clean, glassy tar. By the fourteenth afternoon the tunnel was shuddering all the time.

  As Gilhaelith walked back that night, a crack opened in the floor in front of him. A wedge of tar forced its way in, whereupon the lyrinx manning the nearest annulus worked her controls and extended the freezing zone. Another lyrinx broke off the solidified obstacle with a hammer. As Gilhaelith continued he saw other filled cracks. In some places there were more cracks than wall. The shell was barely surviving. The pangs in his belly grew worse.

  Gilhaelith tried many times to get back to his own work, but Gyrull always needed him somewhere else, even if just to stand around and watch. At night he was escorted to his room to sleep, without his equipment, and a guard waited outside the door. She was taking no chances. Did she suspect what he was up to? Gilhaelith tried every argument to get his devices back but none availed him, and without them he was helpless. Most nights he lay awake, brooding and suffering pangs of colic. He could do nothing about that either.

  He had not seen Tiaan again, and did not expect that he would. Gilhaelith had been touched that she’d cared enough to follow him, whatever her true motivation. She certainly had courage, unfortunately marred by an appalling lack of judgment, but he wished she’d stayed away. He cared about her. Not as much as for the amplimet, of course, but more than he cared for anyone else.

  It probably would not matter, in the end. This expedition into the Great Seep was foolhardy in the extreme and the probability was high, his mathemancy told him, that they would all die entombed in hot tar. The lyrinx must have been desperate to attempt the venture. He could only assume that some potent artefact had been lost in the seep in ages past. If they were prepared to risk an army to have it, they must be weaker than anyone expected. Or it must be an object of surpassing power and usefulness to the war.

  On they tunnelled, and on. Gilhaelith’s existence shrank to a stinking black hole. At night he dreamed he was still in it. They had reached the place his instruments told him to aim for, but found nothing there. The Matriarch was furious.

  ‘Your Art is less than I was led to believe, tetrarch!’ she said coldly.

  ‘I told you it would be difficult to find.’ Gilhaelith matched her glare, though inwardly he bitterly regretted the failure. If he had to die, he did not want it to be that way. ‘The Art is seldom exact.’

  ‘Search again. We’re closer now. Hurry!’

  ‘Mathemancy can tell me no more. I’ll have to scry with my globe and you must give me more to go on. What am I searching for?’

  ‘I cannot reveal that,’ she said.

  ‘Then I cannot help you.’ Again he held her gaze.

  Gyrull’s breast plates mottled green, while her belly went a dull cream and her massive thighs showed tortured patterns – red threads writhing on yellow. Indecision, he thought. She needed to tell him, yet was afraid she would give something away.

  ‘We’re looking for the remains of the village,’ she said, working her arms vigorously, as if uncomfortable, ‘that was built over the tar more than seven thousand years ago.’

  ‘What was in the village? I must have something to scry for.’

  ‘There may be relics,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Instruments made of brass and precious metals …’

  ‘Anything else? Crystals?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Even more reluctantly.

  ‘Crystals are easy to scry for, if I know the kinds.’

  She knew but did not want to say. Then it came out. ‘Perhaps brimstone.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But that is the one crystal I cannot find.’

  Her pupils narrowed to slits. ‘Why not, tetrarch? You claim to be a master geomancer.’

  ‘There is brimstone everywhere, here. The tar is full of it, and the hot springs all around.’

  ‘Try!’ she said coldly. ‘Without your globe.’

  So she did fear him using it. ‘I will, but should I scry brimstone, remember that it could be anywhere.’

  He did his best but, as before, the results were ambiguous. He calculated some random fourth powers, but they were no help at all. ‘If I am to help you, I must have my scrying globe.’

  Gyrull muttered under her breath but had it brought to him. He sensitised it to brimstone, moved his hands over the frigid surface and closed his eyes. Momentarily he saw those wispy filaments, a shock went though his brain and he envisioned a red-hot crystal above and to the right.

  Gilhaelith staggered and fell down. It felt as if his head was on fire. He weakly raised an arm, pointing in a circle. ‘That way! No more than ten spans.’

  The lyrinx regarded him dubiously but gave the required orders.

  Gilhaelith remained on the floor, without the strength to rise. He’d never had an experience like that before. It had been almost mystical, and he did not believe in such things. But he knew he’d found it this time.

  Gyrull gave new orders. They were to tunnel out in all directions, like the spokes of a wheel.

  ‘That will magnify the strain on the shell,’ said Gilhaelith.

  ‘Always excuses, geomancer.’

  ‘Currents in the seep will break it like a stick and we’ll lose everything, including our lives.’

  ‘This is more important than our lives!’ she snapped.

  A precious artefact indeed. ‘Not mine,’ he said.

  The lyrinx tunnellers set to, showing no fear. Whatever the orders, they carried them out just as enthusiastically. Finding nothing in any of the lower spokes, they allowed these to collapse and began again with a new set, sloping upwards. The pace slowed. It was taking longer than ever to freeze each new section.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the Matriarch demanded, late on the seventeenth day of tunnelling, their thirteenth in the Great Seep. At least, Gilhaelith thought it was late. Though he ate and slept at the same time each day, it was hard to keep track of time.

  ‘The field is fading,’ said the male in charge of the cooling ring. As they both spoke the common speech, they must have wanted him to know what was going on. ‘It’s taking an hour to do what once we would have done in minutes. You must beg the channellers to give us more power, else –’

  ‘Keep on,’ she said harshly, with a flickering of whites and blues down her front that Gilhaelith was unable to interpret. ‘Our enemies have come and their clankers take much from the field.’

  ‘Then we’ll never do it.’

  ‘We must, and quickly, else we lose an army for nothing.’ She called a messenger and spoke to her for some minutes. The woman hurried away. ‘The field must be conserved for us,’ Gyrull said to the male. ‘Power in Snizort will only be drawn for essentials. We will complete this work no matter what the cost elsewhere. And once that is done, we will drain the node dry and crush the enemy.’

  They no longer seemed to require him, so Gilhaelith crept away with his globe, and went back to his watch on the amplimet. Much had changed at the patterner – the torgnadr was gone and Tiaan was patterning another, though this one was not connected to the amplimet at all. Had it done its work here? The filaments were everywhere else, though, and light pulses now flowed furiously along them, so it was still doing something. Well, too bad. It was time to go. He began the laborious working that would, by the morning, get him out of here.

  ‘Come see this, tetrarch!’

  A lyrinx dragged him by the wrist down to the excavation face. The tunnellers levered at a cleavage section and the whole face fell down, revealing a wall ma
de of roughly sawn planks fixed to uprights with wooden pegs. The impact sent the tunnel shell into a slow shuddering that moved back and forth like waves along a rope. Cracks appeared along it and molten tar oozed through, before solidifying.

  ‘Matriarch!’ the tunneller on the left yelled. ‘Look here.’

  Exulting, she threw herself at the face and began prying away the timbers. ‘This is the place. Call the digging team.’

  Before they arrived (a dozen lyrinx equipped with saws, axes, buckets, chests and other equipment, including one who began sketching the scene), Gyrull had taken the timbers apart. They formed one wall of a tar-filled hut. The other walls were partly attached, though the structure had been crushed out of shape. They found nothing inside but household items – a wooden stool, pallets stuffed with straw, blankets and kitchen utensils. Every object was cracked out of the frozen tar, drawn and taken away as if it had some hidden value. Perhaps it did. Who knew what form mancery might have taken, seven thousand years ago?

  A tremor passed across the floor. ‘The siege has begun,’ said Gyrull. ‘We must work harder. Let the offshoot tunnels fail. Excavate out around the hut. Quickly, the field is failing.’

  Gilhaelith could feel it growing more erratic every minute. ‘How many huts would there have been in the village?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He did not get a chance to go back to his mancing. Over the next few days the lyrinx found another seven huts, similar to the first, with the same kinds of possessions in them. The fourth contained a wooden chest which proved to be full of clothes, in perfect condition, as the tar had not penetrated its seals. The clothing aroused considerable interest, for some reason which Gilhaelith could not fathom. The largest of the garments was small.

  In the eighth hut they found a body, a boy no more than five. His hair was pale, as was his skin, and his build stocky. He was as perfectly preserved as everything else. The body, still partly encased in tar, was laid on a stretcher and carried away.

  The next hut proved empty apart from a wooden bench. The one after that was full of bodies. The Matriarch carried the first out herself, laying it on the floor of the tunnel. There were twenty-five of them: eight men, seven women and the remainder children. They were a small people. Their skin was stained from the tar, their eyes blue, grey or pale-brown, their hair also light-coloured. They were strong-featured, but rather too stocky to have been called handsome, to Gilhaelith’s mind

  The lyrinx gathered around, staring at the bodies. What secret did they conceal? A vibration roused them, teams began to carry the bodies away and the diggers continued with the excavation.

  They found no more bodies that night, but did discover some beautiful crystals of yellow brimstone, all broken, as well as a bronze implement consisting of seven concentric circles marked with graduations and symbols. A bronze pin passed through the centre of each circle, allowing them to rotate. Inside the inner circle was another bronze shape, somewhat corroded: a crescent moon, or perhaps the blade of a sickle. Meant to be turned with a fingertip, it was stuck fast.

  As far as Gilhaelith could tell, none of these relics was the secret the Matriarch sought, and the excavations continued. It now being the middle of the night, he was escorted to his bed, where his dreams were disturbed by rods of light as thick as tree trunks, and the thrashing of people suffocating in tar.

  They came for him a few hours later. He could not see why, for nothing had changed at the face. The floor was piled with mummified bodies, shards of crystal, household objects and other items he had already seen many times.

  As he approached the work face, the workers were levering at what appeared to be the wall of a meeting house or chieftain’s hut, lying on its side. They pulled off the planks, began to break away the hard tar and suddenly liquid tar began to ooze through a crack.

  ‘Hoy,’ the Matriarch roared to the freezing team.

  They pushed up the annulus, pointed the mushroom in the right direction and worked their lever. Frost shimmered in the air. Tar continued to ooze through the crack.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she shouted.

  ‘There’s nothing left in the field.’

  ‘Get some planks over the crack. What’s gone wrong?’

  ‘Phynadr’s not drawing enough power,’ said the operator. ‘We must have drained the field.’

  ‘It comes and goes!’ said Gyrull. ‘Try again.’

  This time the annulus worked, though not very well. Behind them, near where the latest bodies and relics lay, a crack opened in the side of the tunnel, allowing in a hot spurt of tar that spattered across the pile. The hole sealed over, only to crack again. The tar kept ebbing in.

  This was his last chance. Gilhaelith had just started with the globe, developing the swiftest spell he could manage in the circumstances, when the Matriarch yelled, ‘Get the relics out of the tunnel. How are we going, Franll?’

  The operator shook his crested head. ‘I don’t see how we can do any more.’

  Cuttlefish waves of colours, pastel blues, greens and pinks, pulsed across her skin. ‘We must keep trying. The siege comes to a climax. Move everything to safety, including the tetrarch’s devices.’

  ‘And me?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘You stay here. Great human armies surround us, tetrarch, and the Aachim with their constructs.’ She hacked furiously at the frozen face. ‘We will lose Snizort within days. The enemy are trying to set fire to the tar.’

  Even Gilhaelith could read the other lyrinx’s skin speech – dismay followed by despair.

  ‘I’m afraid for you, Matriarch,’ said the operator.

  ‘I merely serve. Should I die, another stands ready to replace me.’

  In his mind’s eye, Gilhaelith could see himself, an ant at the end of a long, brittle tunnel made from something no stronger than cake icing. It would take no force at all to break it. He was not ready to die. There was so much to do. He felt a sudden pang of fear for Tiaan but there was nothing he could do for her.

  A dozen lyrinx were up at the face, furiously excavating. The hut had a circular hole through the roof, or so Gilhaelith interpreted the tangle of shortened framing timbers. Puzzled, he climbed up to take a better look.

  ‘These look as though they’ve been burned,’ he said, ‘but see how neatly. As if by a red-hot blade.’ The ancient documents had said something about that.

  She did not answer. More bodies were removed, all clad in bright, ceremonial vestments. On the far side, another lyrinx was working above his head, trying to free a decorated, coffin-shaped box sealed at either end. He broke the seals, lifted off the lid and grey dust poured out, covering him from crested head to clawed toes. He shook it off, flashed a toothy grin at his fellows and pulled hard. The coffin slid free. There was nothing in it but dust and bones.

  The work continued. The Matriarch was busy in a corner of the hut, where the side of a small wooden chest had been dug out. They hacked tar from around it and prised open the lid.

  Inside, wrapped in a pale-blue blanket, was a large yellow crystal protected in a golden basket. One of the lyrinx reached for it but she snapped, ‘Don’t touch! It’s very fragile.’

  ‘A brimstone,’ said Gilhaelith.

  ‘The brimstone.’

  ‘Is that what you came for?’

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her old face was expressionless but for an instant her shoulder plates sparkled in exhilaration. She seized hold of her breast plates and worked them back and forth, as if to settle them in place.

  He tried again, while they were distracted. Gilhaelith closed his eyes, trying to see the web of filaments, but caught only a few unbroken threads, moving as in a wind. The amplimet’s work must almost be done.

  A spasm of fear struck him. It was finished here, and it was in control of the node. And they were deep in the Great Seep, reliant on power. What was it doing? There had to be more. He had to see. Maybe he could draw on it to escape. All his equipment was gone, and all t
he relics, and there was not so much as a fragment of brimstone left. Only one thing to do. He reached within himself to those ever-troubling gallstones, and forced one to wake.

  The tattered webs appeared for a second but they did not show what he was looking for. Only one filament remained unbroken, so fine that he had not seen it before. Light pulsed along it, and it ran into the back of his head.

  He tried desperately to see what it was doing, but the gallstone exploded and shrieking agony drove him to his knees. The filament snapped and the tattered webs vanished. It was all too clear now. He had delved too deeply and the amplimet had caught him. How long had it been studying him, and what had it learned?

  A loud crack came from behind them. Half a dozen cooling rings back, the floor of the tunnel had sheared in two. Inflooding tar was pushing the sections further apart every second.

  ‘Matriarch!’ shouted one of the lyrinx. ‘It’s failing.’

  She closed the chest, tucked it under her arm and sprang down. Her impact with the floor shook the tunnel and one big foot went though the shell. She wrenched it out. Tar oozed up. The other lyrinx ran, carrying as much as they could.

  Gilhaelith forced himself to his knees, tripped, and fell sprawling. His insides were in agony, as if the fragments of stone were being forced down tiny ducts. Ahead, tar bubbled through the gap, already a couple of strides wide at the base. The tunnel now cracked at the top and a curtain of tar flooded in.

  The Matriarch hurtled past him and burst through the curtain. Gilhaelith followed, but as he tried to jump, the sections were wrenched apart and he plunged to his knees in the warm tar of the Great Seep. He threw out his arms and managed to catch a lump of hard floor. Gilhaelith tried to pull himself out but the tar clung too strongly.

  Like a fly on tar paper, he thought. I’m stuck. The lyrinx were already out of sight. Too late he felt the bitterness of regret. The game was lost, and Tiaan. And for what? He hardly dared to think.