FORTY

‘Whatever Vithis is building,’ said Malien, ‘he’s doing it with the utmost urgency. What he’s done in a few months is extraordinary.’

Flydd took the amplimet from Tiaan’s fingers and put it away. As they climbed, enormous camps became visible. Roads had been carved across the drylands, ravines dammed and aqueducts were being constructed.

‘He has the best part of ten thousand constructs, even after the losses he suffered at Snizort,’ said Flydd. ‘He could do a mighty lot of carrying, hauling and lifting with all of them. And don’t forget he has well over a hundred thousand disciplined adults to do his bidding.’

‘As long as he can compel their loyalty,’ said Malien.

‘Would you go over the biggest structure, Malien? I’d like a closer look.’

‘Be careful,’ cried Tiaan. ‘I went over another camp once and Vithis did something to the field. I nearly crashed.’

‘I remember you telling me,’ said Malien. ‘They won’t find this craft so easy to deal with.’

Nonetheless, she kept well up, circling while Flydd peered over the side with a powerful spyglass. ‘I wonder what he’s doing?’ said Malien. ‘Can Vithis be trying to span the Hornrace itself? That would eclipse the Rainbow Bridge and every other structure in the Three Worlds, but I don’t see the point of it. It would be a monument to hubris, nothing more.’

‘Or a way of staking claim to their portion of Santhenar,’ said Flydd. ‘In a manner that no one could dispute.’

‘And perhaps,’ Malien pursed her lips, ‘they plan to tap the great node here for some purpose we know nothing about.’

‘Or one we’d rather not know about,’ said Tiaan.

The headache and the visions returned at twice their former force and she doubled over, holding her hands over her eyes. Then, as they passed above the largest structure, for a fraction of a second it was as if they’d flown through a vertical beam of light. Tiaan saw right through Malien, her bones just shadows, even through the wall of the thapter to the world outside. She blinked and the spectral image was gone. The whine of the thapter stopped, and just as suddenly rose to a scream before settling back to its familiar whine. Tiaan closed her eyes but could still see the images.

‘What was that?’ came Flydd’s voice from beside her. He did not seem to be overly concerned.

‘Something to do with the node, I suppose,’ Malien replied, no less casually.

‘Did you see the light?’ said Tiaan.

‘What light?’

‘A boiling column of it. I saw something similar the first time I flew over an Aachim camp, before I crashed on Booreah Ngurle. It wasn’t as big as this one though.’

‘Curious,’ said Flydd; then, after a moment, added: ‘We’ve seen enough. Head for home, Malien.’

The pangs eased once they were over the sea. Tiaan went below and lay on the floor with her eyes closed. She could not work the node out. Its field radiated away in a perfect oval centred on the Hornrace, but inside that it gained strength in a series of concentric ovals whose fields were reversed to each other.

Still thinking about it, she fell into sleep and didn’t wake until the following morning. She couldn’t map at all that day, and fell asleep before Malien stopped for a few hours’ rest in the afternoon. She’d spent so long puzzling over the eight layers of the globe and how they fitted together that, even in sleep, her mind would not turn off. It ran the mental model over and over, rotating each layer this way and that. In the early hours it began to fall into place. The first and the second layer clicked together. The third.

The thapter hit a bump and Tiaan threw out her arms in the darkness, as if for balance. Shortly she turned on her side, pillowed her head on her hands and the dream continued. The fourth and the fifth layer snapped to the others, just a few seconds apart, then there was a long pause to the sixth, but straight after that, the seventh.

The last layer eluded her as she drifted from restless sleep to dream, to deep sleep and back again several times. But finally, not long before they began to pass over the swamp forests of Orist, the eighth layer slid into position. She had it.

Tiaan smiled in her sleep and turned the other way, giving a little sigh. She woke just as the thapter settled to the yard at Fiz Gorgo.

Tiaan wavered across the yard, still half-asleep. The great space was practically full now. Sheds had been erected everywhere, there were piles of dressed timber and rolls of canvas, stacks of firewood and cauldrons with black runs of tar down their outsides. On the other side of the yard stood the timber frames for the cabins of three air-floaters. And there were people all over the place: hundreds of labourers, carpenters, sail-makers, artificers and every other kind of craft worker imaginable.

Everyone was staring. Hadn’t they seen a thapter before? She supposed most had not. As she headed toward the front door, Nish came out, looking harried and thinner than before. He went to go around her then started.

‘Hello, Tiaan,’ he said distractedly. ‘How was your trip?’

‘Very good, thank you,’ she said formally.

She dodged around him and went inside, longing for a bath and time to herself. As she passed through the doors, something made her look back. Nish stood on the step, looking at her. She tossed her head and continued on. Going by the kitchens, she cadged some chunks of brown bread and a couple of boiled eggs from the red-faced, perspiring cook, and went to her room.

There Tiaan took off her boots and sat at the little table, munching bread. She idly spun one of the eggs on its pointy end, spun it the other way, then laid it aside uneaten. Taking out Golias’s globe, she weighed it in her hands. There was one final puzzle to solve but it still wasn’t clear how to begin.

She scratched her head. She’d not had a bath since Taranta, itched all over and hated it. After Nennifer, she couldn’t bear to be dirty. But she had to solve the puzzle first. She got out a box of crystals and her artisan’s tools and began to work. Then she planned to bathe, lock the door and luxuriate in being completely alone for at least a day.

Tiaan didn’t get the solitude she craved. Her hair was still dripping when she was called down to Yggur’s meeting chamber. She sat right up the back, in the corner, hoping no one would notice her, for she had much to think through.

‘You’ve done well,’ Yggur said after the scrutator had summarised their trip.

‘It went better than I expected,’ said Flydd, toying with the goblet in front of him. ‘Everyone knew about Ghorr’s fall and the destruction of Nennifer. They have a great hunger for news in the east and took great pleasure in hearing how the downfall of the old Council came about, though they were anxious about the new one. I believe I allayed their fears and gave them something to hope for.’

‘Splendid,’ said Yggur, leaning back and folding his arms. ‘Please proceed.’

‘We’ve made some friends, learned much useful intelligence about the enemy and done wonders for morale in the east.’

‘That’s all very fine, but how many clankers have you come back with? How many soldiers?’

‘None apart from Clan Elienor’s one thousand,’ Flydd said grudgingly. ‘And that was Malien’s doing. But I never expected to. Even if the east had men and clankers to spare, we can’t march them across the continent.’

‘The war will be won or lost here in the west, Flydd, and we can’t do it without armies. Have you got anything we can fight with?’

‘I have agreement that we can use a number of manufactories in the south-east to make the devices we need. And there are a few matters we need to discuss later, Yggur. Privately.’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Where’s Klarm?’ said Flydd, looking around the room.

‘Away in Nihilnor, or perhaps Borgistry by now, spending gold by the bucket. Truly, the man is a profligate.’

‘But worth it.’

‘We can talk about that later, too. Thank you, Flydd. I’ll give you a report on our progress, which will advance the war effort. Nish?’ said Yggur.

Nish came out the front. ‘I’ve got two experienced clanker operators presently training to operate air-floaters, as well as thirty-seven prentices, four training for air-floaters, the remainder for thapters. Most of the prentices show promise though the real test won’t come until we put them in thapters. I also have eight experienced clanker artificers, and thirty prentices training to maintain thapters. Lacking a thapter, I’m doing my best with drawings and models.

‘You saw the air-floater vessels outside; they’ll be ready in a few days. Unfortunately I can’t get enough silk cloth for the airbags. We’ve made one with silk gleaned here and in Old Hripton, but we can’t finish the others without cloth and there’s none to be had, even in Borgistry. Silk comes from the east but Ghorr used the lot for his air-dreadnoughts.’

‘What about the ones that crashed in the swamp forest?’ said Flydd.

‘They either burned or their airbags floated away. We haven’t recovered enough silk to make a pocket handkerchief.’

‘Well, Thurkad was the centre of the western silk trade for a thousand years,’ said Flydd. ‘There’s bound to be silk cloth in its abandoned warehouses.’

‘If the lyrinx haven’t burned them,’ said Nish. ‘Or moths eaten the cloth.’

‘The lyrinx aren’t wanton destroyers, despite their reputation. And the warehouses would have been protected against the moth, for a while at least.’

‘We can discuss an expedition later,’ said Yggur. ‘Irisis, your report.’

She stood up tall and confident and beautiful, and Tiaan slipped down in the seat, avoiding her eye.

‘My people have been busy making the assemblies to turn construct controllers into controllers for thapters,’ said Irisis. ‘We’ve completed seventeen assemblies so far, apart from the special parts Malien was going to bring from Tirthrax.’ She glanced at Malien, who gave the slightest of nods. ‘As well, we’ve readied the controllers and floater-gas generators, brought from Nennifer, for two of the three new air-floaters, should we obtain the silk.’ She sat down again next to Nish and casually draped an arm across his shoulder.

‘I’ve not been idle either,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve had artificers going over various battlefield devices we recovered from Nennifer, and they’re ready to hand over to the manufactories.’

‘What about your own project?’ said Flydd. ‘You were going to tell us how to move the thapters from Snizort. There’s no field there, remember? At least, only enough to power an air-floater.’

‘I’m still working on it,’ said Yggur.

‘What progress do you have to report?’

‘None that I care to speak about in a general gathering.’

‘If we can’t move the thapters once we make them,’ Flydd said with deliberation, ‘there’s no point to any of this.’

‘I’ve said it will be done,’ Yggur said frostily. ‘Is there anything else?’ His eye fell on Tiaan and he gestured for her to come up.

She did so reluctantly, hating to be the focus of everyone’s attention, and she hadn’t even had time to brush her hair.

‘I’ve extended my node maps,’ Tiaan burst out, but couldn’t think what to say next. She hastily unrolled her master map so they’d look at it and not her. Everyone did, and the tension eased.

Yggur took the other side of the map and beckoned to Nish, who held her side. Tiaan outlined the thapter’s flight track across to Tirthrax and Fadd, up the east coast to Roros, west to Taranta and back down the west coast of Faranda to the Foshorn.

‘I’ve learned a lot,’ she said, ‘as you can see from the map. It shows another seventy-eight nodes, some of them powerful, and the extent of their fields. Many were not previously known, as far as I can tell. Of course, this wasn’t a proper survey and there are many gaps. I had to sleep,’ she said apologetically. ‘All it really tells us is how little we know.’

‘It almost doubles what we know about the nodes of the world,’ said Flydd.

‘Some were very strange,’ she went on. ‘The one at the Hornrace –’

‘We’ll come to that later,’ said Flydd hastily. ‘Malien or I will tell that tale, if you don’t mind.’

Tiaan did not mind at all. She looked at Yggur, then hesitated.

‘Would you like to go down?’ he said kindly.

‘There’s … something else.’ She gasped it out.

‘About fields?’

‘No.’

‘Oh? Well, please go on.’

Tiaan had her hand in her capacious pocket, clutching the globe for comfort. ‘Before we left, you gave me Golias’s globe.’ She held it high and the lamplight gleamed off it. ‘You asked me to look at it in my spare time.’

‘Never mind,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve decided to begin again from scratch.’ He put out his hand.

Tiaan held onto the globe. She glanced around the room. Flydd was staring at her in puzzlement. Fyn-Mah was writing notes on a scrap of paper. Irisis played with a controller apparatus in her lap. Nish was staring into the fire.

‘Yes, Tiaan?’ Malien said encouragingly.

Tiaan flicked her wrist as if spinning a ball, but held the globe tight. Its internal spheres revolved, darting reflections in all directions, then she squeezed her fingers and the layers froze as if they’d been locked in place.

‘I’ve solved the puzzle,’ she said softly. ‘I know how the globe works.’

There was dead silence. Yggur set his goblet down with a clatter, looking to Flydd and Malien as if he suspected them of organising a joke at his expense. ‘How did you get it apart, and back together?’

‘I didn’t need to. As we were going along,’ she said, ‘I observed it closely and made a model of all the layers, in my mind. The first few were easy enough. The sixth, seventh and eighth proved rather difficult.’

‘We’ll take that as a modest understatement,’ said Yggur.

‘Once I knew how each of the layers was formed,’ Tiaan went on, confidently now, ‘and how they related to each other, it was a matter of using my artisan’s experience, and what I’d learned of geomancy from Gilhaelith and the Aachim, to work out how the globe could be used to farspeak. I like solving puzzles. Things are so much easier than people …’

‘Only to you, my little artisan.’ Yggur was smiling now.

‘But that was only half the problem,’ Tiaan said. ‘I knew there was something else at the core, but there was no way to see it without breaking the globe. It’s a lot heavier than the glass and metal foil the layers are made from, so the core had to be something very heavy. I weighed the globe, then again in water, and discovered that the core had to be heavier than iron, or even lead. But what elements are heavier than lead?’ She looked at each of them but no one spoke. ‘Only gold, platinum, and quicksilver.’

Putting the globe down on the table, Tiaan spun it hard. ‘It didn’t spin like a solid globe would. See how it wobbles? The core has to be liquid, and the only liquid metal is quicksilver.’

They were all staring at her now. Tiaan could feel a hot flush rising up her throat. ’But there was one last problem to be solved. The globe contains everything needed to act as a farspeaker, but how was it powered? There had to be a crystal at its core, in the quicksilver. What sort of a crystal? I could see nothing through the liquid metal.

‘I channelled power into the globe – so much power that even a dead crystal would have to respond. But this crystal wasn’t dead, and it gave forth such a strong aura that I could read it with my pliance. That told me what kind of crystal it had to be. It’s monazite.’

‘What’s monazite?’ said Irisis.

‘A stubby, hard yellow mineral Gilhaelith showed me once.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve heard of any mancer using monazite,’ said Flydd sceptically. ‘It doesn’t hold power at all.’

‘It doesn’t need to. Monazite has a particular and unique virtue,’ Tiaan said. ‘It generates power from within itself. Not much, but enough to power a farspeaker, and it lasts forever.’

‘Forever?’ said Malien.

‘Thousands of years, at any rate.’

‘But no one has ever been able to use the globe,’ said Flydd. ‘Some of the best mancers in the world have wasted their lives trying to.’

‘Including me,’ growled Yggur. ‘I can’t believe –’

‘I read some of their writings in Gilhaelith’s library,’ Tiaan replied. ‘In ancient times, mancers tried to recharge the globe, but the power was dispersed by the liquid metal. Besides, monazite can’t hold a charge.’

‘And recent mancers, such as my humble self?’ said Yggur. ‘Why did they not discover the answer?’

‘You know as well as I do, surr.’ The flush now covered her face up to the roots of her hair. Tiaan just wanted to get away.

‘Indulge me, artisan.’

‘Since fields were discovered a century ago, mancers seldom think of any other kinds of power. Malien and yourself are the only ones who still use the old ways. But the globe employs an entirely different force, forgotten aeons ago.’

‘Then why doesn’t it work?’ cried Yggur in frustration.

‘It’s a puzzle.’

‘A puzzle?’ he echoed.

‘No one else knew how to solve it because no one else could see all the layers at once, or understand how they worked together to create a farspeaker.’ She squeezed the top and bottom of Golias’s globe, then flicked her hand. The eight layers revolved. Tiaan stood with her eyes closed, visualising the moving layers, squeezed again, and all froze into place. ‘There.’ She held the globe out to Yggur but he did not take it, so she went on.

‘I work out the required alignment in my mind, spin the globe and, when the layers come to the right alignment, I stop them in place. The globe is ready to be used.’

‘So you say,’ said Malien. ‘But how can you prove it?’

From her other pocket, Tiaan took a small piece of crystal wrapped around with fine wires in intricate patterns. She carried it to the back of the room, sat it on a chair and returned to the front. Holding Golias’s globe close to her mouth, she said, ‘How can I prove it?’

A hollow, scratchy voice came from the crystal at the back of the room, fractionally delayed, ‘How can I prove it?’

Yggur’s eyes shone. ‘Oh, this is glorious! How far can you separate them, Tiaan?’

‘I don’t know. This is the first test.’

‘How did you know it would work?’ he exclaimed.

‘I didn’t. I almost didn’t mention it, I was so afraid of looking a fool.’

‘Let’s try it now, at once. This is marvellous, marvellous.’ Yggur leapt up and began striding back and forth in his excitement. ‘Tiaan, write something on a piece of paper and give it to Nish. Don’t tell us what it says.’ Yggur took up the wire-wrapped crystal. ‘Come on, everyone. We’ll go right to the other end of the fortress.’

Tiaan scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Nish. Everyone else trooped out after Yggur. Nish remained in his chair.

Tiaan wished he had gone too, but he didn’t budge. She gave them ten minutes to get to the other end of the building, then said, slowly and carefully, ‘I just want to go to bed.’

Five minutes later Yggur reappeared, panting. He’d run all the way. ‘ “I just want to go to bed”,’ he quoted.

‘That’s correct,’ said Nish, showing him the paper.

‘And as strongly as if you had spoken in my ear.’ Yggur came across and shook her hand. ‘This is it – the missing piece of our plan. You may just have won the war for us, Tiaan. Let’s sit down in the morning and work out a design for more farspeakers. Skilled artisans at one of Flydd’s manufactories can make them for us. It won’t be easy but it’s within their skills, Irisis tells me. And monazite isn’t a rare mineral. Tell me, can we use those to communicate with each other?’ Yggur held up the little wire-wrapped crystal.

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Tiaan. ‘Golias’s globe is the master farspeaker, while the other is just a slave, if you like.’

‘Go on,’ said Yggur.

‘The master drives the message out, but can only be used once the key has been set. The slave farspeaker only responds to that setting. It can call the master farspeaker, if the master is set to it, but it can’t call another slave. If someone with a slave farspeaker wants to talk to someone else with another slave, the message must go through the master.’

‘An excellent idea,’ said Flydd. ‘We must maintain control over what people say to each other. Free speech is a wicked thing.’

Tiaan, who had been imagining all the good things one could do with a farspeaker, such as talking to her mother, was so shocked that she couldn’t speak.

‘Spoken like a true scrutator.’ Yggur clapped him jovially on the shoulder. ‘Klarm will be tickled pink when he gets one. It’ll save him months of travel and give him so much more time for drinking and wenching.’

‘Presumably a message from the master farspeaker can be heard by all the slaves,’ said Flydd, frowning.

Tiaan didn’t want to answer, though the question was an interesting one. She thought for some time before replying. ‘It could, if all slave farspeakers were the same. But an artisan could tailor them so they only respond to one particular setting. Then you simply lock Golias’s globe at the correct setting and speak, and only the person you’re talking to will hear your message.’

‘Oh, very good,’ said the scrutator.

‘The message isn’t instantaneous,’ said Yggur. ‘I wonder why?’

‘Who knows what tortuous route it takes, via the ultra-dimensional ethyr,’ said Flydd. ‘Who cares if it takes hours to get from one side of Lauralin to the other, or even a day? Not even a skeet can beat it, and it can’t be intercepted.’

‘Nor will it tear your throat out, like a skeet will if you step too close to its cage,’ said Flangers.

They all gathered around, excitedly discussing the device and how it might alter the balance of the war. No one noticed Tiaan slip away quietly.

Malien realised that Tiaan was missing and went to her room.

‘I wasn’t joking,’ said Tiaan. ‘I just want to go to bed.’

‘I know. But tell me, you didn’t seem quite as pleased as everyone else, at the end.’

‘It was the way Flydd was talking about it,’ she said. ‘Wanting to control what people say. Farspeakers could be wonderful things. If only we all had them I could talk to Marnie now.’

‘You miss her terribly, don’t you?’

‘She’s the most annoying woman in the world, and we fight constantly when we’re together. She says the most awful things to me. But I do miss her – she’s the only family I’ve got. And I’m worried. She’s too old for the breeding factory now. What will become of her? She has no idea how to look after herself.’

‘She can afford a house and servants.’

‘If they’ll put up with her.’

‘I’m sure she’s all right. And Xervish is a good man.’

‘The way he talks frightens me. The powerful wouldn’t use farspeakers to help people, but to control them.’

‘But when the war is over, the whole world will be transformed.’

‘But how?’ said Tiaan. ‘For good or for ill?’

Later that evening, Malien, Flydd and Yggur met secretly, and Flydd told Yggur about what they’d seen at the Hornrace.

‘I don’t understand why the Aachim broke off their plans for conquest,’ said Yggur. ‘With all those constructs they could have swept from one side of Lauralin to the other.’

‘We Aachim have never been empire builders,’ said Malien. ‘Security has always been more important to us. And often, after a setback, instead of fighting back we’ve simply cut ourselves off from the world.’

‘Have you any idea what Vithis is constructing?’ asked Yggur.

‘It’s either a bridge – a gigantic arch – or a building spanning the gulf,’ said Malien. ‘Though I can’t imagine why anyone would go to such an immense labour.’

‘Any building to span the Hornrace would be a mighty one indeed,’ said Yggur. ‘I’d have thought it beyond the capabilities of any civilisation.’

‘We used to be fond of extravagant symbols,’ said Malien. ‘Vithis may simply be putting his mark on Santhenar in the strongest way possible.’

‘Do you think so?’ Yggur wondered.

‘If he is, it masks a deeper purpose,’ said Malien.

‘Such as?’

‘A gate to ferry the rest of the Aachim from Aachan? A device to change the weather and make the desert bloom?’

‘Could it be a weapon?’

‘It could. They are greatly advanced in geomancy. They taught Tiaan how to make a gate, something no one on this world could have done. They built eleven thousand constructs on Aachan in a couple of decades. They may be building a weapon that we cannot even conceive of.’