Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

While Tiaan was sleeping, Malien returned to the Well. Even before she entered the conical chamber, she noticed that things were different. The entry passage was less frigid, the barrier cubes more brittle. The blue-illuminated mist around the Well was as thick as cream and now extended higher than her head. Malien felt resistance as she pushed though it to the Well.

She peered down anxiously. What if it had begun to unfreeze? She listened for the telltale tinkle of cracking ice – the first sign. Nothing. The tendrils still coiled lazily inside. The Well was silent, the depths still. She relaxed. Not yet. Malien was not sure she could restrain it by herself. Not sure that any one person could.

On the way back, she debated whether to tell Tiaan about her worries. Malien decided to keep them to herself for as long as possible. It would not benefit Tiaan to know.

That afternoon, Malien began to teach Tiaan the rudiments of the Aachim tongue, focussing on the words needed for this kind of work. Though Tiaan spoke three languages – the common tongues of the south-east, the west and the north – as most people did, Aachim speech proved difficult. It was always a relief to get back to the real world of her work.

She spent days studying the construct but could understand neither how it was powered nor what mechanism it used to hover and move. Maybe it was beyond her understanding. Vithis, and the other Aachim, had emphasised their mastery of geomancy and the limited scope of her own abilities. Eventually, more exhausted by this failure than by all her previous labours, she went to sleep inside the construct.

Malien woke her, bearing a mug in each hand. While they sipped their zhur, as the thick red spicy beverage was called, Tiaan explained why she was so downcast.

‘With your clankers,’ said Malien, ‘can anyone operate them?’

‘Of course not! The operator has to be tuned to its controller, and when he leaves he always takes it with him. Without it, nothing can make a clanker go.’

‘Except another operator with his own controller, presumably?’

‘Well, yes, but not always. Do constructs operate the same way?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Malien.

‘That isn’t much help,’ Tiaan snapped.

‘After Rulke built the very first construct,’ Malien said carefully, ‘at the time of the Tale of the Mirror , our finest thinkers devoted much time and thought to such devices. How they could be built, powered and controlled. They failed. The problem was too difficult.’

‘But later, humanity discovered how to use the field,’ said Tiaan. ‘Nunar’s Theory showed us how, and then we learned to build clankers.’

‘A primitive machine,’ said Malien. ‘I mean no insult,’ she added when Tiaan bridled, ‘but the one can hardly be compared to the other.’

You just can’t help yourself, Tiaan thought. Your Aachim superiority is bred into you. She spoke aloud, ‘Your people in Aachan succeeded.’

‘They were more desperate. And they had Rulke’s original to use as a model, wrecked though it was.’ She regarded Tiaan expectantly. ‘So there must be a key for the machine.’

‘I imagine they took it with them to prevent anyone else using it.’

‘There may be a way around that. Leave it to me.’

Tiaan climbed inside, took off the lower hatch to reveal its workings, and sat with her legs dangling into the cavity. She created a mental image of the mechanism and turned it this way and that, trying to know it. Not just the way an operator knew his clanker, but the way a master controller-maker knew the vagaries of the ever-fluctuating field that was the source of all power. Her talent for thinking in pictures allowed her to do that, and it had often helped her to solve problems.

How could a construct float above the ground? What held it up? She could not work it out. The controller mechanisms seemed wrong for the field as she knew it. But of course constructs did not use the weak field, so presumably they must employ one of the strong nodal forces Nunar had speculated about. Deadly forces, even to experienced mancers.

A thought occurred to her. One problem an artisan had to solve, each time she made a controller, was how to tune it so that it did not react against the field but drew power smoothly from it. But what if a controller was tuned to resist the field? It, and whatever it was in, might be repelled by the field. Could that be done?

In her mental image she worked the mechanism trying to see what made it go, and noticed something curious. Behind the glass binnacle a small, cup-shaped receptacle rotated on a shaft, and as it reached the vertical its cap flipped open. It was about the right shape and size to take a small hedron. Looking beneath the binnacle, Tiaan found the receptacle. It was empty but she picked up faint traces of a crystal’s aura. What if she put the amplimet in it?

She unfastened the drawstring, feeling that oneness she always felt when her fingers touched the glowing amplimet. She was about to slide it into the cup when Malien spoke from above.

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you.’

‘Why not?’ she asked testily.

‘I told you – the amplimet is deadly. And the people who built this construct had not seen one in four thousand years. Whatever crystal they used, it was nowhere near as powerful. The mechanism might burn out, or blow apart. Or melt the construct, and you and me, into puddles. If you must try such a dangerous experiment, do it with a lesser crystal.’

Tiaan could see the sense in that. ‘I’ve got an ordinary hedron. Should I try that?’

‘If you must; only know that anything you do here is a risk.’

‘Why?’

‘The Tirthrax node is one of the greatest in the world, and working so close to it may have unexpected effects. And then there is the Well …’

‘What about it?’

Malien hesitated, as if reluctant to speak of it at all. ‘It has a somewhat … uneasy balance with the node. I would not want to upset that.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘These are Aachim secrets, not for outsiders’ ears.’

‘How do you expect me to fix the construct if I don’t know what’s going on?’

‘Very well! There are some things I can tell you, but you must promise to keep them secret.’

‘Of course,’ said Tiaan.

‘The Well of Echoes has been captured but not tamed. Improper use of power might change it in an unpredictable way, or even allow it to break free ! We are always careful with the Art here, and so must you be.’ She turned away abruptly, ending the conversation.

That raised a dozen questions but Tiaan knew better than to ask them. She took her hand off the amplimet. The more Malien told her, the less she understood.

Putting it away, she weighed her hedron in her hand. Her jaw was clenched tight. Tiaan tried to relax. Reaching down, ever so carefully, she lowered the crystal into the cup, then whipped her hand out of the way.

Nothing happened. She looked up at Malien questioningly. ‘What should I have expected?’

‘I don’t know.’

Tiaan was about to take it out when Malien said, ‘No, leave it there. Something else may be required.’

‘What?’ Tiaan cried in frustration.

‘Leave it until tomorrow. Things always seem better after a good night’s sleep.’

‘I like to keep going until I can’t do any more.’

Malien’s gaze was penetrating. ‘I wonder about you, Tiaan.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Tiaan uncomfortably.

‘What do you enjoy, apart from work?’

Tiaan did not understand the question. ‘I love my work.’

‘And I mine, but it is not all of me. What are you hiding from?’

‘I’m not hiding from anything,’ she yelled, turning away. ‘It’s why I’m such a good artisan; because I work harder than everyone.’