Ian Irvine - Chimaera

He forced back with all his strength, reversing the crystallisation agonisingly, but the amplimet’s power was relentless. ‘Tiaan,’ he gasped, ‘for the friendship that was once between us, help me .’

Malien came running up, then stopped beside Tiaan, staring at the geomancer. She shook her head and drew Tiaan aside. ‘There’s nothing we can do to save him unless you’re game to snatch up the amplimet and toss it into the red-hot compartment. I’m not.’

Tiaan was remembering Ghaenis’s hideous death by anthracism. ‘Attacking the amplimet would be suicide.’

‘I know.’ Malien squatted down and put her head in her hands. ‘I should do it anyway, for the good of the world, but …’

‘I’m not brave enough either,’ said Tiaan after a long pause, for an idea was slowly coming into focus. ‘But I wonder if there’s another way.’

‘What other way?’

‘Help me!’ Gilhaelith reached out to Tiaan. The crystallisation had run up his fingers, across his hands and was now extending up his arms. His feet and lower legs had gone too, and his eyes had the most peculiar, faceted glitter.

‘I can’t,’ she said, turning away. She couldn’t bear to watch what was happening to him, and do nothing.

‘Which way, Tiaan?’ said Malien.

‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,’ she said quietly. ‘How no one can be trusted with the power to control the nodes. Especially not Jal-Nish.’

‘There’s nothing can be done to stop him,’ said Malien.

‘I think there might be.’

‘Oh?’ Malien said with a sharp intake of breath.

Tiaan’s eyes were drawn back to Gilhaelith, whose brittle hands were still moving over the globe, though very slowly and mechanically now. The threads of light would soon link all the controlling nodes. Four of them were connected already, and fainter threads had begun to extend from them to other, less powerful nodes. ‘I think I know how to close down all the nodes for good, and Jal-Nish’s tears with them.’

Malien’s head jerked around. ‘We talked about that once before, Tiaan.’

It would spell the end of the Secret Art, at least the way humanity had been using it since the great Nunar codified the laws of mancing. There would be no more thapters, air-floaters, constructs or farspeakers. No field-powered Arts or devices of any kind, save those that had been laboriously charged up in the ways known to the ancients. And maybe not them either.

‘You’re … not going to do anything, are you?’ croaked Gilhaelith.

‘I’m sorry, Gilhaelith,’ Tiaan said, and she was, for she did care for him. Tears pricked at the insides of her eyelids, as if crystals were forming there in mimicry of his transformation. She had to let him die. If she saved him, her friends would all be slain. ‘I can’t.’

He began to curse her, bitterly and unrelentingly, in a voice that sounded like someone walking over broken glass. Then Gilhaelith broke off in mid-word, his face twisted in agony.

‘ It did this to me,’ he whispered. ‘It planned it all long ago, and I was too stupid to see it.’

‘What did?’ she said.

‘Way back in Snizort, when I was trapped in the tar, I heard a whisper in my head telling me to create a phantom crystal and use it to save myself. I did so, but its fragments have been there ever since and no matter what I did I couldn’t get rid of them – it wouldn’t let them go. They just lay there, burning me whenever I used power, and doing more damage. But as soon as I brought the globe down here, the fragments came together in my mind and they were just like a model of the amplimet, linking it to the real one. I couldn’t resist it. I tried, Tiaan, I really did, but it was too strong.’

He was cut off by another agonised spasm. The crystallisation must be reaching his vital organs. And, from the corner of her inner eye, Tiaan could see filaments beginning to extend out of the geomantic globe, into the ethyr. The amplimet was using the globe to mimic the real nodes and the links between them. Once it had done that, it would be too late to stop it.

And she had to stop it, but if she just smashed the amplimet, or hurled it into the red-hot compartment, she would have lost the opportunity to do anything for her friends, or to stop Jal-Nish. Tiaan was determined to do both, even at the cost of all the nodes. Gilhaelith’s folly only reinforced her determination that such unfettered power could not be allowed to exist.

Her plan was desperately dangerous. In all likelihood, she would die even more horribly than Gilhaelith.

Just do it! She dived, snatched the amplimet from between Gilhaelith’s feet and held it high. It was pulsing even more slowly now, and the blood-red light glowed right through her hand, picking out the pale and fragile bones.

‘Don’t take the risk, Tiaan!’ shouted Malien. ‘Throw it into the heat under the thapter.’

If she tried that now, she would die. Tiaan stepped back a couple of paces and fixed on the geomantic globe, seeing its perfection in her mind and forming the sequence of links between its controlling nodes into a vast mental network. Now for the most desperate step of all – she had to act as if she were supporting the amplimet, doing what it wanted. To oppose it would be to suffer instant anthracism.

She drew power. Though there had been none just minutes ago, it was effortless now. Tiaan directed it into the controlling nodes, as if to reinforce what the amplimet had been doing. She sent power around and around that network, amplifying it at every turn, and pumping more and more power in. The nodes glowed brighter and brighter until she could no longer look at them. They were pulsing in time with the beat of the amplimet, and now the whole geomantic globe began to throb. Threads of mist rose from its northern pole.

This was it, the point of no turning back. If she succeeded, and survived, the aftermath would rob her of all that made her special – indeed, unique. Her inner talents, that had sustained her all her life, would be useless. Could she bear that?

Tiaan hesitated. In the background she could hear the crackling as crystallisation proceeded up Gilhaelith’s thighs and in across his shoulders. To the left she could see Malien’s frozen face. Malien could lose her great Arts too. All the world might. Was it worth it?

Tiaan didn’t know. She couldn’t think.

‘Use the globe, Tiaan.’ Gilhaelith’s voice was a screeching crackle. ‘You can reverse the crystallisation.’

But she didn’t know how. The controlling nodes were linked on the globe now. Soon the controlling nodes of Santhenar would also be linked to it, an endless source of power for good or evil. What would Gilhaelith do with it, if she saved him? What would Jal-Nish do, if she didn’t stop him? What would the amplimet do if it gained what it had been searching for so long?

‘We can fight it,’ crackled Gilhaelith. ‘We’re stronger.’

‘It means more war,’ said Tiaan. ‘More destruction, death and ruin. I won’t have it.’

‘Noooo …’ Gilhaelith said, in a hissing whisper that faded to nothing, for his lungs had crystallised and he could no longer breathe.

‘Don’t, Tiaan,’ said Malien. ‘You’ll only make things worse.’

‘How can they be worse!’ Tiaan cried, and as Malien tried to stop her, she sent an overwhelming surge of power into the controlling nodes, which emitted a burst of light so bright that it burned her skin. Gilhaelith jerked spastically and the crystallisation slowly proceeded up his torso to his throat.