Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (26 page)

It was no use. The young woman curled into a ball with her head tucked right under. Jal-Nish shrugged, indicated the door and took up the lantern.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Irisis said.

Closing the door, Jal-Nish led Irisis down the corridor. ‘She’s a strange little thing. All her senses are so acute that she can’t exist in our world. She’s practically blind in light, though she can see well enough in the dark. Noise is like physical pain to her – a shout or a cry, everyday sounds to us, are to her like being trapped inside a tank with a banshee. Touch is just as bad – she cannot bear to wear clothes. Even silk she finds irritating. She is frightened of everything and everyone.’

‘I wonder she was not put out of her misery long ago,’ said Irisis. ‘I would have, were she mine. She doesn’t seem all there.’

‘What a cold woman you are!’ said Jal-Nish. ‘She’s not an idiot; just overwhelmed.’

Irisis suppressed her impatience, waiting for him to get to the point.

‘Ullii sees things. In her mind,’ he said at last.

‘So do I.’

‘You don’t see the kinds of things
she
does. Let’s try again. And keep your voice down.’

It was
you
who upset her last time, Irisis thought.

They went back in. ‘Ullii, this is Artisan Irisis. Please say hello.’

She had unfolded. Turning toward Irisis, Ullii said, ‘Hello, Irisis,’ again mimicking the perquisitor’s voice. ‘I remember you from before.’

‘Hello, Ullii,’ Irisis said as quietly as she could. ‘Tell me what you see.’

She stood up, staring at the air above Irisis’s head. ‘I see shapes not far away. They’re all dark but they have crystals at their heart. Very weak crystals!’ she said dismissively, now imitating Irisis’s rather strident tones. Irisis wondered at the mimicry. Was it an attempt to deflect the words away from herself?

‘Your controllers!’ Jal-Nish said.

‘I’d already worked that out!’ Irisis hissed, though she had not.

Ullii started, began to curl up, then slowly unfolded again, like a ballet dancer imitating a flower. There was grace in her movements such as Irisis had never seen before. Her curiosity was aroused.

‘I see other shapes, further away,’ said Ullii. ‘Some strong. No one is using them.’

The crystals in the mine? Irisis wondered.

‘Go on,’ said Jal-Nish ‘Do you see anything else?’

She turned around, stiffened, and her owl eyes went wide. ‘I see clawers, many of them. Hunting, hunting! Searching. Aaah!’ She began to whimper. ‘They’re coming to eat me up! They’re coming! They’re coming!’

Irisis, uncharacteristically moved, would have thrown her arms about the young woman. Jal-Nish caught her sleeve, shook his head, and indicated the door. ‘Leave her! She can’t bear to be touched.’

Ullii was already curling up. They withdrew, this time for longer than before, and when they went back she took much coaxing before they could communicate with her at all.

The ‘clawers’, lyrinx presumably, were not far away. Ullii would say no more about them. She did not see them clearly, not in the way that she seemed to see the crystals.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Jal-Nish under his breath. ‘We can’t withstand a major attack. What are so many doing, so near?’

Ullii’s hearing must have been incredibly acute for she said, ‘Hunting her!’ now mimicking his voice.

‘Hunting whom, Ullii?’

‘The girl.’

‘Which girl?’

‘The girl with the bright crystal.’

‘Who is she?’ breathed Jal-Nish.

‘Her crystal is as bright as the moon,’ said Ullii.

‘Tiaan!’ Irisis cried, then quickly lowered her voice. ‘Is that who they’re hunting? Can she still be alive?’

‘I don’t know her name,’ replied Ullii, staring through the ceiling. ‘I can’t see her clearly, only the crystal. But when she touches it, it blazes like a shooting star.’

‘Where is she?’ hissed Jal-Nish. ‘Quick, girl. Which way?’

‘This way.’ Ullii pointed towards the door. ‘Or maybe that way.’ Down through the floor. ‘All ways are the same.’ Her eyes closed; she began to rock back and forth. ‘Same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same …’

Jal-Nish led Irisis out and closed the door. ‘Once she goes into that state it can be hours before she’s any good. We’ll come back later. I’ll send out more search parties, in case it is Tiaan.’

‘There’s another possibility,’ said Irisis.

‘Oh?’

‘That Ullii did not see her at all. She may just be parroting what she thinks we want to hear.’

‘I was careful not to talk about it in front of her.’

‘The whole manufactory has been talking about Tiaan. With Ullii’s hearing she might have picked up what was said at the other end of the corridor.’

‘Perhaps, but she’s all we have.’

‘I still don’t see why you showed me,’ Irisis remarked as they headed back to her workshop.

‘Don’t you? She can see forms of power, whether they be natural ones like nodes and crystals, or people who are working the Secret Art. No one has ever been able to do what she does. Think how she might help us on the battlefield, where the enemy uses the Art. To fly on our heavy world, lyrinx must use power to stay aloft. With her there, they won’t be able to surprise us any more. But we need an artisan, like yourself, to give sight to her seeings. I didn’t select you because you’re so brilliant, if that’s what you’re thinking. I chose you because you’re the best here, and because you’ve twice shown courage and initiative today. You will design and build a controller, specially to work with Ullii, so we can track down anyone using the Secret Art;
either lyrinx or human!
And when you’ve done that, you will find Tiaan.’

‘Why is she so important?’ asked Irisis. ‘There are thousands of artisans …’

‘Because the scrutator says so!’ Jal-Nish snapped. ‘It was your stupidity that drew her to his attention and now I’m ordered to get her back. As far as I’m concerned, what the scrutator wants, he gets! Succeed and this will be your reprieve! Fail and you’re dead! So get to work.’

I
t was hard to judge the passing of time in the unrelenting blackness. When her hunger pangs became severe, Tiaan judged ten hours had passed. She took a small slice of corned goat meat, some bread and a rice ball, and slept. There was nothing else to do.

On waking, she ate an equally meagre portion of breakfast and walked up and down the tunnel until she was bored witless. Her lantern had run out long ago. Tiaan did not miss it; she was used to walking in the dark and if she did want light, the crystal provided enough to see by.

She sat by the entrance with her legs dangling down the shaft, watching and listening. The silence was broken every so often by the rumbling of the great wheels carrying up filled ore buckets, or taking the miners up and down the shaft. There was a lot of activity the day after Joeyn died, while the search went on.

The day after that the normal routine of the mine resumed. The passenger wheel was busy twice a day, at around five in the morning and at the same time in the evening, as the miners came and went. Once, she heard the thunder of a roof fall, which created little avalanches of grit along her tunnel.

Occasional shouts or greetings echoed down the shaft. Conversations could be heard from top to bottom. They talked a lot of old Joe, and sometimes about the war. There had been lyrinx raids all along the coast, some not far north of Tiksi. Mostly, though, they yarned about mining, of this seam where the rock was brittle and difficult to work, or that place where the lode was unusually rich but hard to follow through the rock, or about the risk of the roof falling. It was tiresome and repetitive.

Tiaan often thought about that page from the bloodline register. She recalled the image perfectly but could not decipher her father’s name. She would have to find someone who had known him. If she ever got out of here.

Her thoughts kept going back to the glowing crystal and the strange field it had shown her. Just touching the crystal had been exhilarating, though the patterns of the field had stretched her brain to bursting point. Dare she make her new pliance from it? She missed it terribly, but if she used
that
crystal, would she be strong enough to handle it? It might bring on crystal fever. Maybe she should use the ordinary crystal instead, but what a pallid thing it now seemed. It had a dozen imperfections that would have needed attention, had she been in the workshop.

A crystal usually required careful cutting, then hours or even days of delicately attuning one’s mind, in a state almost trancelike, before it was ready to be woken into a hedron. The glowing crystal had not a single flaw; she might have used it in a controller as it was.

It felt as if it had already been woken. She desired it all the more, but feared it too. Surely the crystal was destined for a great mancer who had the strength to control it and the vision to see its true potential, not a humble artisan. Uneasy now, Tiaan put both crystals away.

On the third morning Tiaan heard nothing, which bothered her. The mine worked every day, apart from rare holidays, but there were none this month. Fashioning a hook from her toolkit, she tossed it up on a length of cord and pulled the nearest basket down. Carefully winding herself to the top, she peered over. There was daylight at the end of the tunnel and a crosswork pattern told her that the grid was down.

She edged to the entrance. It was a gloomy morning outside, blowing sleet. There was no one in sight. Something was wrong. It took her little time to pick the lock, ease up the grid and wriggle underneath. She headed through the forest up the steep slope to the manufactory.

It was hard walking in fresh snow. The path was unmarked, which was worrying. When she reached the edge of the shrubbery and saw the ugly walls of the manufactory ahead, Tiaan checked. The front wall was peppered with pale scars. Boulders clotted the road, while one of the great gates had been smashed off its hinges. Smoke curled up from inside the entrance.

The body of a lyrinx lay against the wall, one wing extended. Another made a dark blot to the left of the entrance. People milled about, keeping well away from the alien dead.

A lyrinx attack was the logical next step, she mused. Why wait until the clankers were complete? Controllers were easily concealed and conveyed elsewhere. Far easier to put the source out of action. No doubt the mine would be attacked next.

As she wondered whether she should declare herself, a tall, yellow-haired figure appeared. Irisis! Tiaan ducked into the bushes, but a branch snapped underfoot.

‘What’s that?’ came a nervous cry from the gate.

‘Lyrinx!’ cried another. ‘Kill it!’

Tiaan fled. Arrows whistled through the leaves. There were cries, crashes, then something shrieked through the branches above her. It was a ‘screamer’, a crossbow bolt with edges shaped so as to make an unearthly noise as it flew. The sound raised the hackles on her neck. This mob would shoot anything that moved and worry about what it was later; not that the death of a runaway breeder would worry anyone.

Her only chance was to outdistance them. Racing through the trees, she gained the track, skidded on a patch of ice, and raced on. Banners of fog wreathed across her path. It was getting gloomier by the minute. She hurtled around a bend and the cleared area appeared in front of her. Her pack was in the adit and she could not survive without it. The grid was barely visible through the mist. She ploughed through the snow, desperate to get to the entrance before they appeared. If she managed it, they might think the ‘lyrinx’ had gone to the miners’ village. Tiaan jerked up the grid and rolled under.

As she slid it down, the mob burst out of the forest. Was she in time?

‘There it goes!’ It was Gi-Had’s great bawling voice. ‘It’s got into the mine. Shoot it!’

Tiaan flattened herself against the wall. Arrows, bolts and screamers came through the grid, one striking sparks above her head. She grabbed the pack and, taking what shelter she could from the wall, ran back to the lift, leapt into the basket and wound herself down as far as it would go.

The basket slapped into water just below the ninth level. She threw her bag into the dark entrance. There came cries from above. A bolt plopped into the pool, followed by a rock that drenched her in stagnant water. If they pursued her down she was finished. Maybe they would not be so bold but she dared not take the chance.

Tiaan scrambled into the tunnel. Just as she put a foot on the shelf a rock went straight through the bottom of the basket. It began to wind back up. She rang the bell rope furiously. It stopped but jerked up again. Snatching out her knife, Tiaan hacked at the tough rope. She hung on with one hand, going up with the rope, but after sawing through three-quarters dared go no higher. She leapt free, onto the landing of the ninth level.

The rope moved, stopped, jerked again, then with a twang it broke. The short end whipped down, lashing the water into foam. The other end zipped up. Cries echoed down and she heard a threshing noise that must have been the wheel-housing stripping the baskets off. The rest of the rope, a couple of hundred spans, sizzled into the water. Silence came from above.