Ian Irvine - Chimaera

The thapter skimmed up a gentle rise covered in short grass with a hint of green, unusual in this brown land, and sighed to a stop on the crest. Tiaan looked down a long slope, also sward-covered, to a rocky creek littered with boulders.

‘That’s it,’ said Malien. ‘The amplimet is finished, and so is the thapter.’

‘But …’ said Tiaan.

‘There probably isn’t a hedron within a hundred leagues that could replace the amplimet. It’s over, Tiaan. The thapter has no power. It’s useless metal. From here, we have to walk.’

Tiaan climbed down the side, took off her boots and socks and walked around the thapter, taking pleasure in the springy grass under her soles. The great adventure is over, she thought, and I’m tainted. A criminal. I’ll never fly a thapter again. She put one hand on the black flank of the machine and felt a tear well in her eye.

Merryl clambered down, rubbing his back. ‘I think I’ll walk down to the creek. I’ve spent too much of my life cooped up in caves and thapters.’

‘You’ll have all the walking you can take before we get home,’ said Tiaan.

‘I can’t wait.’ He grinned and set off, arms swinging. Tiaan watched him halfway down the hill, infected by his cheer.

Malien had just stepped off the ladder when there came a cry of terror from the thapter.

‘No!’ Gilhaelith cried. ‘No!’

Tiaan began scrambling up as Gilhaelith appeared at the top. He was shuddering, wild-eyed, and his woolly hair was sticking out in all directions.

‘The amplimet!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Where is it?’

‘It’s still in its socket,’ said Tiaan calmly, thinking he must have had a nightmare. ‘It’s all right. It’s drained of all power.’

‘Get it out! Quick.’ His head disappeared, then he heaved himself up onto the side, the geomantic globe in his arms, and slid down onto the grass.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Malien.

He ran about ten strides, put down the globe and knelt beside it. ‘I’ve just realised something that I should have understood a long time ago. Tiaan, do you remember when you flew over Alcifer a month or more back, and something very strange happened?’

‘Someone – Ryll I suppose – tried to bring us down with the power patterner,’ said Tiaan. It had been a week after they’d dropped the spores into the bellows. ‘And then, for an instant, time itself seemed to freeze.’

‘I did that, by accident,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘I was using my globe at the one place in Alcifer where power was still sleeping since the days of Rulke. But something else happened at that moment. As time froze, I was looking up through the dimensions and I saw the amplimet light up like a searchlight.’

‘What?’ said Malien, staring at him. ‘Do you mean it woke ?’

‘It must have been driven to the second stage of awakening,’ Gilhaelith said grimly.

‘And it’s been quietly biding its time ever since. And now the destruction of the Well could have tipped it over the edge to the third stage – full awakening .’

‘What does full awakening mean?’ said Tiaan, looking from one to the other.

‘You don’t want to know,’ said Malien.

‘But surely it can’t do anything here, with the local nodes disrupted and its stored power drained?’

‘In full awakening, it can take power from anywhere . Tiaan, grab the amplimet and chuck it down to me.’

Tiaan went up the side. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Just do it!’ Malien shouted, her jaw muscles spasming.

As Tiaan went up, Gilhaelith began moving the pointers furiously on his globe. She withdrew the amplimet, extremely gingerly. It didn’t feel any different; indeed, the light passing down the centre was dull red and beating sluggishly. Nonetheless, just holding the crystal sent a shiver up her back. She’d seen what it could do, too many times.

She tossed it to Malien but Gilhaelith shot up like an unleashed spring and plucked it out of the air high above her head.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Destroying it isn’t the way.’ Gilhaelith sat it on the ground between the geomantic globe and himself, and resumed his rapid but controlled movements.

‘It’s the only way …’ said Malien, but did not attempt to take it off him. ‘Tiaan?’ She walked away across the hill.

Tiaan followed. ‘What’s he doing, Malien?’

‘I would have thrown the amplimet into the red-hot compartment underneath the thapter and let the heat destroy it,’ she said. ‘Assuming it didn’t anthracise me first. But Gilhaelith is a truly great geomancer; perhaps his way is less risky.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Tiaan, admiring the way he worked. The geomantic globe was the most perfect device she’d ever seen. The nodes had lit up all across it, and threads of light were inching out from a number of the brightest. She went back and walked around it, keeping at a distance. There were seven bright nodes. One represented the node at Alcifer, another Tirthrax, and a third one was near Nennifer. The others were spread across the world at places she’d never been.

‘They’re the controlling nodes,’ said Gilhaelith, carefully adjusting his pointers.

And perhaps the ones to be controlled, she thought suddenly. Or used to take control of all of them .

Gilhaelith looked around, gave a great sigh, as if of bliss, and began to work faster. All his long adult life, more than a hundred and fifty years, he had worked to discover the secret of the great forces that moved and shaped the world. His great project, he’d called it in Nyriandiol. After coming back from Alcifer he’d claimed to have given up the search, but clearly he hadn’t. That must be what he was doing now. He wasn’t trying to curb the amplimet at all.

Tiaan could scarcely believe it. Was Gilhaelith prepared to risk everything to satisfy his own lust for knowledge, at such a desperate moment? Truly, she reflected, humanity doesn’t deserve the Art. We simply can’t be trusted to use it wisely.

And then Tiaan came to a far less pleasant realisation. The geomantic globe was too perfect a model of Santhenar. As the small is to the great was one of the key principles of the Art. The Principle of Similarity was another. What if the amplimet took control of the globe? It would provide the perfect conduit to control all the nodes in the world.

‘Gilhaelith?’ she called.

He shuttled his hands back and forth, then came halfway to his feet, knees bent, plucking at the back of his head as if trying to pull out an errant hair. What was the matter with him? Gilhaelith gave a great shudder and sat down again, his long, gawky legs crossed. He resumed his work, more mechanically now, as if his joints had gone stiff.

‘Gilhaelith?’ she said sharply.

He turned his head jerkily, stared at her with glittering eyes and turned back to the globe. The controlling nodes began to pulse slowly, in unison with the pulsing of the amplimet. The threads of light were still slowly extending from them. And when all the controlling nodes were linked? What then?

Tiaan’s heart gave a painful lurch as she realised what was happening. ‘Malien,’ she shrieked. ‘The amplimet is taking control of him.’

Again Gilhaelith turned, more stiffly than before, but this time she saw terror in his semi-crystalline eyes. His mouth came open. ‘Help me,’ he said in a brittle croak.

If she tried, the amplimet would seize her as well, and Malien wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And then it would take over the world. Tiaan knew she lacked the strength to fight the amplimet, and didn’t see how she could destroy it. It would kill her first. But if she did nothing, Gilhaelith would die an excruciating death.