Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (40 page)

She knew it was the perquisitor. Having some talent for the Secret Art, as all perquisitors must, Jal-Nish made a recognisable knot in her matrix. He had struck her, that terrible day beside the frozen river. Ullii would never forgive him for it and would always fear him. In her experience, the strong preyed on the weak.

If only Nish were here. But Nish was lost with the balloon and she could not tell if he was dead or alive, for he left no trace in her lattice at all. Nish, Nish, Nish. She could not stop thinking about him. That day in the balloon basket, for the first time in her life, she had truly known love. Skin on skin. Flesh in flesh. Ecstasy. She had replayed it every day since, and every night, sometimes many times.

But the brilliance was fading like a message repeated too often. The memory was losing its power to move her. She wanted more of it, but Nish was gone. He had abandoned her, just as Myllii had. Her beloved twin brother was the only other person she had cared about. Love led only to abandonment. Her longings turned to despair.

Her nose picked up a faint, putrid odour. ‘Come out, seeker! You are required down the mine.’

It was that hated voice, the perquisitor himself. Ullii dared not disobey him. His knot in her mental lattice was different, now. It was much larger than before, a swollen clot of jagged tangles. That alone would have told her to avoid him.

‘Seeker!
At once
.’

She crept out from under the bed. The perquisitor stood at the door, with the scrutator behind him, and a dozen soldiers. The putrid odour was strong now, and it came from behind the mask. Ullii stood up, caught a stronger whiff and vomited on the floor.

A single speck landed on the perquisitor’s shiny boot. He quivered and Ullii quaked, expecting him to smash her down. He tore the cover off her bed, wiped his boot with it and tossed it aside.

‘Clean her up and bring her!’ he said coldly.

Less than an hour later they were gathered at the entrance to the mine, along with four clankers and forty heavily armed soldiers. These were led by the perquisitor’s captain, a completely bald man, even lacking eyebrows, but with a dense black beard clipped to the length of a week’s growth. Four of his front teeth had been knocked out. His compact frame was densely muscled.

The grid was up and the entrance appeared empty. ‘How many lyrinx can you sense in the tunnel, seeker?’ rasped Jal-Nish. Lantern light danced on the cheek of his mask.

The mask terrified her, for what was behind it, and what it allowed. Hidden behind it, no horror would be beyond him. ‘There are two,’ she said, and felt a deep foreboding. ‘And another one down near the lift.’

The captain relaxed visibly.

‘Do your business, captain,’ said the perquisitor.

The captain signalled. Soldiers moved forward in pairs, labouring under the weight of crossbows so large and heavy they had to be carried on a body frame. The clankers moved into position, well back from the entrance, two out on either side. Their javelards were trained on the tunnel portal.

The soldiers went in. The pair behind the first held up bright lanterns on poles. The lead soldiers readied their weapons.

‘Come with me, seeker.’ Jal-Nish reached for her hand.

She shuddered, but allowed him to take it. Ullii knew the penalty for disobedience.

‘There’s one!’ a lantern-carrier roared. The leading pair of soldiers fired their curiously shaped crossbows.

The lyrinx screamed, the sound echoing and re-echoing through Ullii’s head. The soldiers fell back to reload their weapons. Another pair took their places.

‘It’s clear down to the lifts,’ someone called.

They pushed forward to the fallen enemy. The lyrinx was dead, its chest a horrible mess. Ullii could smell the blood. She wanted to run away but the perquisitor would not allow her.

‘This weapon was my idea,’ Jal-Nish said conversationally to Ullii. She tried to get away from the body but he held her easily. ‘I thought of it after the disaster at the lyrinx ice-houses. Do you remember that, Ullii?’

She did not want to, but she did. All too well.

‘The enemy are too fast, agile and tough. They are hard to kill, yet one lyrinx can destroy half a troop of soldiers. How can we even the odds, I kept asking myself? And I came up with this answer – a crossbow that shoots not one bolt, but six. The centre one goes where it is aimed and the other five fan out around it. Six chances to kill the beast. If you’re close, they all hit the target. No need to worry about an injured lyrinx getting up again. Clever, eh?’

Ullii could feel a scream building up. She hated violence of any kind.

‘I’m speaking to you, seeker. Answer, or by the powers –’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Very clever.’

‘I had my artificers make one up and it worked so well they’re building five hundred more. A weapon like this could turn the war, seeker.’

‘Yes,’ she said faintly.

They found and killed another two enemy in the tunnels. The new crossbows were deadly here, for once spotted the lyrinx could go only forward or back, and either way they were vulnerable. Their chameleon ability did not help them, since Ullii always knew where they were. Before the end of the day the soldiers had secured the mine down to the seventh level, posting pairs of guards at the entrance to each, and half a dozen on the long tunnel where the creatures had gained entry. They kept going through the night. At sunrise the perquisitor returned to the manufactory. Standing in Flydd’s doorway, he reported with some smugness that the long tunnel had been collapsed, eight lyrinx were dead and the mine was secure.

‘What you failed to do in all your time here, I have done in a day,’ said Jal-Nish from behind his shining platinum mask. He nodded formally to the scrutator, who was sitting at his table. ‘I’m writing my daily despatches to the Council, if you have
anything
to report …’

Flydd did not reply.

‘I will also be reporting on your crafter’s incompetence.’

‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Flydd. ‘Her controllers are the best we’ve ever had.’

‘If you don’t know, it is another black mark against you. Irisis gets her artisans to do the work she cannot do herself. She is a liar and a charlatan, hardly fit to be called artisan, much less crafter.’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Flydd.

‘Where are her controllers? We have not seen any in a month.’

‘They only await suitable hedrons.’

‘Tell me,’ Jal-Nish said, ‘who is in charge of ensuring that suitable crystal is always available?’

The trap was sprung. Flydd did not bother to answer.

‘Crafter Irisis has failed and must pay the price.’ The perquisitor went out, then returned. ‘You can come out now.’ He was gone.

The cupboard door swung open and Irisis stepped forth. She looked haunted. ‘I could
smell
him, Xervish. It got into the cupboard and stayed there. Blood and dead flesh.’

‘And cloves and garlic,’ said the scrutator. ‘He’s addicted to nigah. That’s something I wasn’t aware of.’

‘After he was savaged by the lyrinx, we must have fed him a bucket of the stuff. He was so violent that we had to keep him sedated the whole time.’

‘He’s still in pain and has to take nigah constantly. The addiction is not going to help.’

‘What does it do, apart from taking the edge off pain and cold?’

‘And fatigue. He hasn’t slept for days. I made a study of nigah, once, to see if it was worth the risk.’

‘Was it?’

‘It was, if used carefully. Some mancers take it for the brilliant insights it offers, but addicts eventually lose track of reality and it exaggerates whatever failings they have. In Jal-Nish’s case, I’d expect him to become more paranoid, more angry and more unstable.’

‘That gives us something to look forward to,’ she said.

U
llii spent all her waking hours underground. The perquisitor had taken charge of the project to find the crystals and since he had little need of sleep, everyone else had to work until they were ready to drop.

Today she was riding down to the mine with Jal-Nish in his clanker. ‘What’s the matter?’ he snapped at the operator, a beardless boy with startlingly blue eyes. ‘Why are we going so slowly? I can walk faster than this.’

The operator was so terrified that he could not look at the perquisitor. The clanker lurched, stopped, lurched again then continued more smoothly. ‘It’s the field, surr,’ he squeaked.

‘What about it?’

‘It … it’s weak today. Much weaker than before.’

‘Go and talk to one of the manufactory operators. Find out how much it changes.’

The clanker kept going.

‘Now!’ roared Jal-Nish. ‘We’ll walk the rest of the way.’

Ullii had traced the source of crystals to a point below the partly flooded ninth level. The miners walled off the place, pumped it dry and began excavating a shaft in the floor. Before they had gone down the height of a man, water began to pour in. The miners scrambled from the hole.

‘It’s beyond us,’ said Cloor, chief miner. ‘The water –’

‘Damn the water, man!’ snarled Jal-Nish. ‘Keep working.’

‘It’s coming in faster than we can pump it out.’

‘Bring in more pumps.’

Soon the area around the shaft was thronged with screw pumps and the many people needed to work them, all gasping and grunting as they pounded their treadmills. They forced most of the water out and the shaft-sinking resumed. A day later it happened again, the water coming in so quickly that it went over the heads of the two miners. One caught the rope that Cloor threw to him and was pulled to safety, but the other miner did not come up.

Cloor was over the side in an instant, to disappear under the roiling water. Ullii held her breath, then his head broke the surface and he waved. The miners pulled and the other man’s head appeared. Someone went down on another rope and between them got the miner over the edge.

He had swallowed dirty water and was taken to the infirmary. Another pump and treadmill was called for. While it was being brought down, Jal-Nish called Overseer Tuniz across and spoke urgently to her. She sketched something on the floor. Perquisitor, overseer and chief miner spoke among themselves.

‘Get to it,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘No – wait. With fifty people on the treadmills there’ll be no room to move. Do something about that too.’

‘What did you have in mind, surr?’

‘Find a way of powering those pumps with the field,
and get it made
.’

‘I’ll speak to Irisis. She –’

‘Irisis isn’t going to be here,’ he grated. ‘Put a competent artisan onto it, overseer,
if you have one
. I want it done by the morning.’

‘Impossible, surr.’

‘If it’s not done, you’ll be cleaning out the drains for the rest of your life.’

‘We don’t have the crystal. That’s why –’

‘They’re
pumps
, not clankers. Surely the scrap crystals will do?’

‘I’ll speak to the artisans.’ Tuniz ran.

The perquisitor’s clanker operator appeared, looking around uneasily.

‘Well?’ barked Jal-Nish. ‘Don’t stand over there, boy.’

The lad crept forward, staring at the floor. ‘The field is unusually weak at the moment, surr. They haven’t seen it this way in the past ten years, which is how long the artisans have been mapping it.’

‘Incompetent fools. They’ll learn to do better when I’m in charge.’

That afternoon, as the shaft was finally pumped dry, one of the clankers hauled down two great curved sheets of iron. They were lowered to the ninth level and manoeuvred into the shaft, where they were fitted together to form a cylinder about two spans across and the same deep. The joins were liberally coated with tar and the two halves tightened with bolts to form a watertight lining. Pumps drew water from the outside. The miners kept sinking the shaft, cutting away the rock beneath the cylinder, while those on top hammered it down and added another section.

The following morning, just before noon, Tuniz and Artisan Oon-Mie brought down a mechanism to drive one of the pumps. It was a strange device of iron pipework topped with a bare controller, no more than a jumble of wires and crystal.

‘What the hell is that?’ snapped Jal-Nish.

Tuniz and the artisan had been up all night and the overseer had had enough. Tuniz stood up to her full height, a head taller than the perquisitor, and bared her filed teeth. ‘Are you questioning my competence, surr?’ she said in a silky-soft voice. ‘You asked for a pump controller and we have given you one.’

For a moment it looked as though Jal-Nish would explode, but he thought better of it. ‘If it works, I’m happy. If it does not …’

They set it up and attached it to one of the pumps. Oon-Mie drew power into the controller and water ebbed from the outlet of the pump.

‘Good,’ said the perquisitor. ‘Take its treadmill away and attend to all the others. By tomorrow.’

The miners worked at an equally furious pace. ‘I don’t like it,’ said Cloor the following day, as a third section was bolted on. The shaft was now five spans deep. ‘The water pressure is too great. If we hit a big fracture, water will burst in underneath and flood the shaft in seconds.’