Ian Irvine - Geomancer

‘Keep it steady.’ He nudged a wedge under the prop with the toe of his boot and tapped it in. After wedging the other side, he shook the pole. It did not budge. He did the same with hers. ‘You can let go, Tiaan.’

Now that the strain was off, Tiaan could not stand up. She crawled across to the far wall, laid her burning cheek on the cold floor and watched while Joeyn tightened the wedges, one by one, with his hammer.

He sat beside her. Tiaan began picking splinters out of her palms. ‘That’ll hold against a minor fall,’ he said.

‘But not a major one?’

Joeyn eyed the erection. ‘No, but it’ll only take a few minutes to get the crystal.’ He offered her his flask of turnip brandy.

This time she took a sip. The liquor tasted revolting, but it warmed her all the way down. Tiaan felt better, though she was not tempted to take a second.

Joeyn was back at the vein, staring up. ‘Come here. Pick the one you want.’

He linked his hands, making a step. She put her foot in it and was boosted up to shoulder height.

‘Oh, Joe, they’re the most perfect ones I’ve ever seen. They feel strong, too – even better than the crystal you got the other day.’ She exclaimed over one, then another. It was impossible to decide. Had she brought her pliance she might have tested them, to see which was most suited to her. Tiaan felt a pang of withdrawal. ‘But which are the good ones, Joeyn? No point me picking one out if it’s just ordinary crystal.’

‘I think they’re all good. I had a bit of a look at them when I brought the timbers in.’

‘You mean …?’

‘Yes. This vein is worth as much as the rest of the mine put together.’

Unimaginable wealth. If she owned one of these crystals, she could buy out her indenture ten times over. Tiaan edged a bit higher, searching for a crystal just a bit more perfect than the others. ‘Joe, look!’

‘What is it?’

‘The hollow goes in for ages, and it’s all lined with crystals. There must be hundreds of them.’ She gazed in wonderment. ‘Maybe thousands.’

‘I hate to disturb you,’ said he. ‘I know you’re only a slip of a woman, after all, but I can’t hold you up forever.’

‘Sorry.’ She had quite forgotten. ‘Do you need a rest?’

‘Not if you’ve found what you’re looking for.’

She selected a perfect hexagonal prism terminated by a pyramid. It was a delicate ruby-pink colour, almost transparent. ‘I’ve got one.’

‘Put your feet on my shoulders and I’ll pass up the hammer and chisel.’

Taking the tools, with a single, well-placed tap she knocked the quartz crystal off at the base. It fell back into the cavity. She reached in to recover the crystal. ‘Aah!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It felt like a hundred hot needles touching my skin at once. It’s all right; it’s gone now. Hello?’ She stood up on tiptoe. ‘What’s that ?’

‘What?’

‘Way up at the end, a crystal seems to be glowing by itself.’

‘How far in?’

‘A long way. Seven or eight arm lengths, I’d say. It’s the most perfect one I’ve ever seen. A bipyramid.’

‘Well, you can’t have it. There’s no way of getting it out.’

‘I don’t suppose …’ she looked down at him, ‘from the other side?’

‘That’d be weeks of tunnelling, even supposing the roof stayed up. Sorry, Tiaan.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said regretfully. ‘A pity. It looks so perfect.’ She jumped down.

‘They all look perfect from that distance.’ He began to tap one of the wedges out from under his prop.

‘Maybe you should leave that there for a while. In case something happens to this crystal too.’

‘Irisis?’

‘Or the saboteur, if they are different .’

‘Maybe I will.’ He kicked the wedge back in.

The new crystal proved much more difficult to wake, and even more draining. She had now woken three in a few days, which would have exhausted the greatest crafter in the east. After it was done, Tiaan did not don the helm at once. The way forward was no longer clear. Because of the headaches, she felt anxious about using her device. But then, everything about her life made her anxious.

Tiaan kept thinking about the strange crystal. She had never heard of one that glowed. She also wondered about her vision in the mine, that fragment of dream about the young man. Crystal dreams usually vanished when she woke up but she could remember his face perfectly. He had been so desperate. She recalled the sensual dreams that had followed. They made her hot in the face.

Don’t be stupid. They were just dreams! Cramming the helm on her head, Tiaan set to work, trying to trace the residues of use and purpose, the history of the failed hedron since she had made its controller weeks ago. She found nothing, but then had a brilliant idea. What if she forced the hedron to wake, then read its induced aura? It required her to use her pliance in a dangerous way but Tiaan could not see any other choice.

Taking it from around her neck, she unhooked the pliance from the chain and put it in the globe so it touched the failed hedron. She felt a moment’s anxiety. Anything might happen.

With gentle touches of her fingertips, Tiaan began sensing out the field. The familiar aurora flowed into her mind. It was particularly strong today, the billows and eddies tinged deep purple. Locating a suitable vortex, she drew power into her pliance just as she had done a thousand times before.

Pressing pliance and hedron together, she directed a flow of power into the failed crystal. It created no aura at all. The power vanished as if it had passed straight back into the field.

That was odd. Even a dead hedron should produce some aura after such a flow. She drew more power, with the same result. The hedron felt warm now. More than odd, it was downright peculiar.

Taking deep, slow breaths, she relaxed until her arms hung limp, her head lolled. Tiaan did not consciously try to visualise the field, but just allowed it to wash over and through her.

Her view drifted. She was looking for something greater than she had used before, a vortex so potent that it was tinged blue-white. Finding one, she traced the sub-ethyric path from it into the pliance and steadied herself. This could be quite dangerous. It might contain more power than she could safely handle. She allowed the vortex to drift towards the pathway. Now!

The vortex coloured down through purple, blues, reds, yellows and finally turned black. Pain stabbed through her head, the pliance flared and for an instant an aura appeared inside the crystal. Tiaan locked the image in her memory, then something crackled and both field and aura disappeared.

‘I’ve done it!’ she exulted, feeling the special thrill of having tried something new and, against all the odds, succeeded. She examined the image frozen in her mind. There was something at its core. Rotating the image, Tiaan picked up an echo of power like none she’d ever come across. It felt intelligent: organic yet alien.

Her head began to throb. Tiaan pushed up the helm, rubbed balm onto her temples, and let it fall again. Another image flashed into her mind. An armoured, crested head; enormous yellow eyes; a mouth big enough to take in her own head; hundreds of teeth. The folded wings made it certain. A lyrinx! It seemed to be talking to someone human, probably a man. There was something familiar about the shape of the head, the set of the shoulders. The image began to fade and she could not hang on to it. Could it be the spy?

Tiaan rubbed her eyes. Feeling unaccountably tired and weak, she went on unsteady legs to the door.

‘Have you seen Gol?’ she asked Irisis, who was walking by with a coil of silver wire in one hand.