Ian Irvine - Geomancer

‘They’re made for me. She wouldn’t want them.’

‘There’s something else.’ Joeyn held a piece of cloth under her nose.

The smell made her step backwards. ‘It’s my headache balm.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘From the apothek. The crystals gave me terrible headaches.’

‘Are you sure that’s where the headaches came from?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘My grandmother used herbs and warned me against this one – calluna root. I could never forget the smell. It causes visions, fits, madness, and if you take enough of it, you can choke to death.’

‘But why would the apothek put calluna in my ointment?’

‘I don’t know. He wasn’t a lover of yours?’ said Joeyn with a cheeky grin.

‘I have never had a lover,’ she reminded him primly. ‘Anyway, I hardly know the man.’

‘Perhaps he loves you secretly.’

‘I doubt it. People say that he’s … incapable.’

‘Could anyone else have interfered with the balm?’

She wrinkled her brow. ‘I was too busy to wait while he made it up. Hang on! Irisis brought it down. She wanted to be rid of me.’

‘And now she has, and there’s no way to prove she had anything to do with it. No way to unseat her either.’

‘’I thought …’

‘She’s your enemy, Tiaan. She’ll never allow you to come back.’

Tears formed in her eyes. ‘I don’t know why I keep hoping. I’ll go tomorrow, though I don’t know where to go.’

‘We can talk about that later. It’s dinnertime.’ He lifted the lid of the cauldron on the hob. A delicious spicy smell wafted out. Tiaan licked her lips.

Joeyn dug caked rice from another pot, shaped it into a raised doughnut on a wooden platter then ladled a good helping of stew into the centre. He handed it to her.

‘I can’t eat that much!’

‘Of course you can. The only way to set out is with a full belly.’

‘That’s not till tomorrow.’

‘It might be a long time until you get another meal as good as this one.’

True enough. She dipped her fork. It was a thick stew of meat and vegetables: rich, spicy and hot. Tiaan ate slowly, thinking about tomorrow. She was lost; just as lost as the young man of her crystal dreams.

Had they just been hallucinations brought on by calluna? Was the young man no more than the fantasy of a drug-addled brain? She could not believe that. The dreams were the only good things left in her life. Anyway, she had first dreamed of him the night before she got the balm.

Joeyn was gazing wistfully at her.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Oh, nothing really. It’s good to have someone to eat with. I haven’t, since my wife died.’

It was pleasant in his hut. Companionable. She felt at home here. ‘I usually eat alone, too. I … don’t know what to say to people, as a rule. They find me strange.’

‘People are strange. Here we are, you just starting out in life, and me at the end of mine.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘You’re my only friend, Joe.’

‘Then you’d better make some more. Not many miners get to seventy-six. I won’t see eighty, nor want to. What are your plans, Tiaan? I know you’ve something in mind, for you keep going all dreamy and vague, and smiling to yourself as if thinking of a distant lover.’

‘I’m going to go after my dream.’ She left it at that. There was no way to explain the young man, even to Joeyn. ‘There’s only one problem …’

He scraped up the last of the stew with a rice ball and popped it in his mouth. ‘What’s that?’

‘I need another crystal, Joe.’

‘Why?’ He stopped in mid-chew.

‘The helm and the globe are useless without one. It’s … I suppose it’s like not being able to find your reading glasses. You can see the words on the page but you can’t make out what they say.’

He gave Tiaan a keen glance. ‘Well, my roof props are still there. It wouldn’t be too dangerous to get another, I suppose.’

‘Any old crystal would do.’ Tiaan was already feeling guilty. ‘It wouldn’t have to be a specially good one …’ The craving was back again – crystal, crystal, crystal! She had to have another, whatever it cost.

‘I don’t suppose so. But on the road you’ll be travelling, you’ll need the best you can get.’ He broke off abruptly. ‘I’m going for a walk. I like to settle my dinner before bed. You’ll want to change, and wash, I suppose.’

‘Thank you.’

After the door closed she washed the platters and leaned them against the fireplace to dry. Taking off her layers of rag and gown, she bathed as thoroughly as she could with a bucket of water and put on knickers and singlet. Lying beside the fire, she pulled the rags over her and was soon asleep.

In the night she dreamed of the young man on the balcony and the catastrophe that had befallen his world, but this time the images were fleeting, hopeless, as if he had given up hope. The dream shifted into one of her grandmother’s tales, of a young woman going to the rescue of her lover, only the young woman was Tiaan. She shifted under her covers, sighed and slipped back into the wonderful dream.

Tiaan stirred when Joeyn came in around midnight. She sat up, gave him one of those faraway smiles, and went straight back to sleep.

Shaking his head, Joeyn took off his boots and turned to his own cold bed.

When she awoke just after dawn, his bed was empty. Tiaan dressed, glorying in her own clothes again rather than those hideous, confining gowns, and breakfasted on stew, rice and mint tea. Only then did she notice the chalk scrawl on a broken piece of slate near the door:

Gone down mine. Back by lunch. Keep a careful lookout, just in case. I left you a few old things. They were my wife’s .

On the bed lay a jacket and overpants lined with fur and filled with down, and a sleeping pouch of the same material. They were better quality than anything she had. Tiaan thanked him silently.

The Tiksi watch could be looking for her right now. She packed, including one of the sheets. You never knew when a rag might come in handy. Knowing Joeyn would not have her set out on the road with nothing to eat, Tiaan wrapped a stale loaf, the partly used leg of corned goat, a handful of rice balls and a lump of cheese, and shoved them in as well.

Rubbing off his note she wrote her own, a simple Thank you, Joe . Her preparations completed, Tiaan checked outside and slipped into the forest. She climbed a tree that had a view of the path and the village, and waited.

It was a clear, windy morning and the wind intensified as the day wore on, shaking the walls of the hut. It was exposed in her tree; Tiaan was glad of her new clothing. Nothing happened, except for occasional people passing up and down the path. Noon came and went. Joeyn did not appear. Anxious now, she went back to the hut for bread, cheese and water, then resumed her watch.

A long time afterwards, when Tiaan was beginning to think she should go looking for Joeyn, a short man appeared, striding down the path as if he owned it. He wore the uniform of an artificer. It was the detestable Nish.

Could he be looking for her? News of her escape would have reached the manufactory by now. Her discarded garments were under Joeyn’s bed but there was nothing she could do about them.

Joe had not appeared. She set off for the mine at a trot, trying to leave as few tracks as possible. There was no one in sight as she darted across the open ground and inside the adit. Lex was in his cavern, tallying quotas of ore on a slate. Crouching low, she made it past unseen, took a full lantern from the rack, lit it and hurried to the lift. She got into the basket and wound herself down to the sixth level.