SEVENTY-SIX

They stopped halfway for a breather and Nish looked down through a slit in the stone. Lyrinx now clustered on every surface, wings folded. Others clung to the sides of the pinnacle and thousands more wheeled in the air. Far below, the water was flooding towards the lyrinx stragglers, still fifteen leagues away on the salt. Other lake lobes pressed towards the middle of the line, forcing the fleeing lyrinx further out into the Dry Sea. Water was pooling there in places, too.

As Nish and Malien ran through the broken door, their way was blocked by half a dozen lyrinx, Liett at their head. Her claws were fully extended.

‘I knew it was a lie,’ she spat. ‘Well, you won’t live to enjoy your revenge.’

‘The flood is not our doing,’ said Malien, putting her hands up.

‘You’ll die for it just the same,’ said Liett.

She sprang and, before Malien could do anything to defend herself, the claws went around her throat. Nish went for his sword, knowing it was hopeless, but it was knocked out of his hand.

‘This serves you not at all, Liett,’ Malien managed to croak.

She looked up and Liett followed her gaze. Another rock fell, smashing into the edge of the peak and spraying splinters of stone everywhere.

‘Those air-dreadnoughts rise higher than you can fly, Liett. One such missile, perfectly aimed, can destroy the tower and the port-all that creates the gate. And then we’ll all drown. You, me and all of your kind. But we can save you.’

At the word drown, Liett’s crest, the only part of her skin that had colour, shimmered with emerald green. She shuddered, then let Malien go. ‘After all that’s been done to us, I can’t bear to put my trust in humankind.’

‘I’m not humankind, Liett, I’m Aachim. My people have never waged war on lyrinx, and my record is inscribed in the pages of the Histories for all to read. Besides, it’s not necessary to trust, merely to gamble. Lyrinx are not averse to a wager, I’m told.’

It seemed to hit the right chord. ‘Everything in life is a gamble,’ said Liett, letting her go. ‘All right – go up in your flier. Already the water laps around my people’s ankles – I can sense their cries from here.’

Three air-dreadnoughts now wheeled high above the tower. ‘They’re armed with javelards,’ said Nish.

‘So are we,’ said Malien. ‘Get to your post.’

As soon as he was in the shooter’s position, Malien took the thapter straight up, relying on the lyrinx to get out of her path. The air-dreadnoughts were large, Nish saw, but had only a small crew, sacrificing everything to carry the greatest weight of stones and still rise beyond range of the lyrinx, whose claws could destroy an airbag in seconds.

Further off, two thapters cruised in circles, guarding the air-dreadnoughts. They turned towards him. Five against one – odds even Malien would be hard pressed to even.

‘I’ll go directly behind that one,’ she shouted over the wind, pointing at the nearest air-dreadnought.

Nish raised a hand, not sure he understood her strategy, but she was looking forward, intent on her course. His eyes were already watering. He wished he’d thought to bring goggles.

The thapter shot sideways. Had someone fired on them? Nish couldn’t tell. Malien whipped around in a circle and behind the air-dreadnought hovering over the tower. It dropped three rocks, one after another, as he fired his javelard at the rotors. He only had to hit one to disable the craft and felt sure he would, having done it before. Unfortunately the air-dreadnought rose suddenly as the weight was released, and his spear passed harmlessly below its keel.

Nish cursed and wound his cranks furiously. It took so long to reload. His eyes followed the rocks towards the tower. They seemed to be heading directly for it. He held his breath. One puff of dust rose beside the tower, and two more down the slope of the peak. Hitting the target must be harder than it looked.

The air-dreadnought moved off, though it was as slow as a tortoise compared to the thapter in Malien’s nimble hands. Nish took careful aim at the port rotor and pulled the lever. At this distance he couldn’t miss, and didn’t. The rotor shattered to splinters, some of which flew into the starboard rotor, destroying it as well. The pilot pulled the floater-gas release rope and the air-dreadnought dropped sharply away to the south.

Malien shot away, carving a wavy trail across the sky to avoid one of the thapters. Judging by the reckless skill with which it was being flown, Chissmoul was at the controller.

Nish felt a surge of pride at the prowess of his young pupil, until he realised that she was now an enemy trying to bring him down. He mechanically loaded another spear as he searched the sky.

The other air-dreadnoughts were hovering some distance away, waiting to see what happened. The thapters approached, one on either side, and Kattiloe was the other pilot. Nish had chosen them both, supervised their training and helped them through dozens of crises. He liked Kattiloe and Chissmoul. Moreover, for the past hundred and fifty years, women of childbearing age had been protected at all costs, for the survival of humanity. In a battle with another thapter, there was little to do but attack the pilot, but Nish wasn’t sure he could fire his javelard at a woman. Shooting Chissmoul or Kattiloe was unthinkable. He wondered if they felt the same. Probably not – men weren’t precious, especially not traitors like him. They would follow Orgestre’s orders and do their duty.

The thapter lurched, tilted sideways, dropped sharply then stopped in mid-air as if it had landed on a mattress.

‘What the blazes is that?’ Malien yelled.

Had something gone wrong with the field? Were they going to fall to their doom as the lyrinx had earlier? Bile froze in his throat. Malien was looking out to the left. He followed her out-flung arm.

A dark mass like a whirling funnel, or a tornado, had just slipped over the horizon. The funnel was black at the bottom, paling upwards to grey with flecks of yellow, and it was moving steadily across the bed of the sea in their direction.

‘It’s the Well, grown monstrously large,’ he said. ‘It looks as if it’s coming out of the ground, growing above it as well as below.’

Malien could not have heard him over the wind. ‘It’s the Well,’ she called.

‘What’s it going to do?’

‘I don’t want to know.’

In the tower, an hour or two had gone by but Tiaan still hadn’t worked out how to open the box. The sapphire rod was useless. It may well have been a key but there was no lock to put it in. Frustrated, she banged the box with her fist.

‘Perhaps it’s not meant to be opened,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘Can you use it without doing so?’

‘I can’t tell. I don’t understand anything, Gilhaelith. If this is the port-all, it’s completely different to the one I used at Tirthrax. That one filled a room and had hundreds of parts, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to this one. The box weighs nothing. It’s as if it’s empty.’

‘Keep trying,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘Irisis, what’s going on outside?’

Irisis tucked her spyglass under her arm. ‘I can see the end of the lyrinx column.’

‘That’s something. Go down and find out how close the leaders are, before it gets dark.’ Gilhaelith turned to Tiaan. ‘What if you were to touch the sapphire to the box?’

‘I’ve already tried.’ Tiaan showed him what she had done, touching the smooth stone to the faces, the edges and the corners. Nothing happened. The box was so perfectly built that there was not a seam visible. It looked as if it had been made in one piece.

Gilhaelith wandered over to the window and cried, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful; just beautiful.’

Tiaan put the sapphire down on the box and ran across.

‘It’s the Well,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘It’s coming right at us, like a geomancer’s dream.’

‘You don’t have the kind of dreams I do,’ Tiaan muttered. ‘Vithis said that all Santhenar would rue the day. Do you think he’s sent it at us?’

‘Not after he’s dead.’

‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that it’s coming straight for us, then.’

‘The node might be attracting it.’

‘What will the node do to it?’

‘Who knows? Make it stronger, probably.’

‘And if the Well meets the gate?’

He looked at her, opened his mouth, closed it again.

‘Gilhaelith?’

‘I wouldn’t like to imagine the consequences.’

‘Keep an eye on it.’ Tiaan didn’t know why she’d said that. Nothing could influence the path of the Well now. If it came, it came. Was it possible Vithis had set it to consume everything on Santhenar?

She raced back to the box, to discover that it had opened like a black flower, the front face drawing seamlessly inside. How had that happened? All she’d done was lay the sapphire down on top.

She looked in, but it was so black that she couldn’t see the sides. Tiaan rotated the box towards the light and her head spun, just like the time at Snizort when she’d looked into the tesseract and the incomprehensible fourth dimension had exploded all around her. Was this box another tesseract – a cube in four dimensions?

Taking the amplimet in hand, she tried to create a mental map of the inside. It should have been as simple as imagining the walls of a black cube, but it wasn’t. The walls kept shifting when she concentrated on them.

‘Just one at a time,’ said Gilhaelith, putting a hand on her hand.

Did he have any idea what she was trying to do? Tiaan supposed that he must. She fixed the left wall in her mind and attempted to attach the others to it, which was easier, though the walls still seemed to move around.

‘Now what?’ she said, looking up to him for advice.

‘Perhaps it’s all in the mind,’ he said absently. ‘I’m going below.’

‘Whose mind? Vithis’s? Yours? Mine?’

He was gone. Tiaan imagined passing through the rear wall of the cube and found herself in another space exactly like the original one: a cube attached to a cube, though she could not visualise how it connected to the first. She fitted it to her mental map anyhow and went through the right-side wall to another cube, which led back to the first. She recognised it because one wall was open and she could see her face staring in. The thought made Tiaan so dizzy that she fell off her chair.

Had Vithis been lying when he gave Malien the key? She didn’t think so, but how could she tell? He’d deceived and manipulated her from the beginning.

Maybe the gate was all in the mind, and the way would only become clear if she could imagine the unimaginable – the hypercube the way it really existed.

Tiaan recreated her mental image, passing through the black walls into cubes which only led to more cubes, and more that lay back to back with each other or with the first, the one that lay open in the upper room in Nithmak. She looked out but this time did not see the room at all. Tiaan saw only stars and constellations entirely foreign to her. She tried to go further but could not get through.

She backtracked and went at what she thought was the opening again, but this time looked out on nothing but green: a dense, verdant, dripping forest. She couldn’t reach it either.

Tiaan retreated, knowing she was getting further away from what she was looking for. She dismissed the images from her mind, whereupon the hypercube flashed into view of its own volition. It only lasted a second but that was enough. It was there! She had seen it, perfect and complete.

Tiaan tried not to dwell on it, for the four-dimensional image was impossible to think about logically and she might lose it. And yet, her visual mind had done it, and now she saw a box that she had never seen before. Its walls were thinner than the others and Tiaan could make out shapes and lights through them.

She went closer. One wall showed a double sun and a field of stars sprinkled across black silk. Another, a roiling miasma like the solidification, in jelly, of a multicoloured field. A third was a pattern of dots, extending regularly in all directions. A fourth she could not make out at all until she went up close, when she realised that it was a fanged, horned and whip-carrying monster the like of which must strike terror into even the fierce heart of a lyrinx. Was she looking into the void? The fifth was equally obscure, until it resolved into an eye staring back at her. Tiaan jumped and the eye disappeared. It was her own. The sixth wall led back to the box she had just come from.

She withdrew, knowing that a long time had passed. It had grown dark while she’d been working and the moon was shining in through the glass. The tesseract was empty. She’d been looking for a device like the port-all she’d assembled at Tirthrax, but there wasn’t one. And yet, there had been that aura.

What if the box itself was the device? It hardly seemed possible; how could an empty box open a gate? But on the other hand, there could be anything in compartments which were there one time she looked and not the next.

Could the port-all be all in the mind, something she must also visualise? Perhaps that was the answer. It wasn’t hard to recall her earlier port-all to view, for she’d often done so, trying to analyse why it had gone so wrong at Tirthrax. In her spare moments she’d tinkered with her mental image of the device, using her new-found geomantic knowledge to make it perfect.

She recovered the image of that port-all, mentally dusted it off and placed it in the tesseract. Nothing happened, of course, for there was nothing to power it.

Tiaan inserted her best image of the amplimet in the centre, just as she had placed the real amplimet into the port-all in Tirthrax that fateful day nearly two years ago. There was no resistance this time, which made her feel that she was on the right path. Or so far off that …

No, don’t think negative thoughts. It seemed as though the port-all ought to be ready. She began to operate it as she had the original. A whip crack shook the building and cries rang out from below.

Tiaan ran to the glass. Lyrinx were running everywhere, though she could not tell from what, or to what. Not the gate, at least, for Tiaan had not set any destination.

Nor could she. She had no idea where Tallallame might be, or how to look for it. That was Malien’s job but Malien had gone in the thapter many hours ago, and might not come back. So what was going on down below?

She hurried down the stairs. It took precious minutes and left her knees weak. In the open area at the bottom she walked into an opaque sphere filling most of the space between the bottom step and the wrecked doors. Was it the port-all? She edged around the side of the sphere and looked out. There were lyrinx everywhere and not all of them had wings. The fleetest of the runners had made it in under two days.

‘Ryll?’ she called hopefully. He might not have survived. And if he had survived, he could still be leagues away.

Her call was taken up in deeper, raspier lyrinx tones. Ryll, Ryll, Ryll…

The crowd parted and he pushed through, his heavy jaw set, eyes staring. ‘Is this the gate?’ His hand motion was dismissive.

‘Yes, but I don’t know how to find Tallallame.’

‘Then why did you call us here? The water rises towards the base of the peak. We’re clinging to it like moths, Tiaan, and there’s no room left.’ His great chest rose and fell like a bellows, his skin flickered with barely suppressed panic colours. ‘In half a day – no, sooner – we’ll be lost. Rather would we have died of thirst in the Dry Sea than be drowned in the Sea of Perion.’

‘Malien knows where Tallallame is. Have you seen her?’

He pointed to the sky. ‘She’s guarding the tower, circling higher than the other thapters can fly.’

If Tiaan didn’t make the gate soon, the rapidly approaching Well would consume all the nodes as it came. It stood out against the night, its black-and-gold-threaded funnel reaching up to the sky.

‘Call her down!’ cried Tiaan.

Ryll rapped out a few words in his own tongue and a lyrinx leapt into the air. Tiaan watched it in the moonlight until it converged upon the thapter, which lurched and headed down as erratically as an autumn leaf falling. The other two thapters pursued it until a cloud of lyrinx swarmed up at them, firing crossbows. The thapters turned away towards the Hornrace and the lyrinx escorted Malien down.

‘Malien!’ yelled Tiaan as it settled on a hastily evacuated space. ‘I’ve made the gate but I don’t know the way to Tallallame.’

They diverted around the opaque globe. Malien gave it a curious glance. By the top, her lips had gone grey and she was cold and sweaty. ‘That’s not a climb I care to do again. Show me the port-all.’

‘It – there is no physical port-all. It’s a mental construct, Malien. I imagined the tesseract,’ so easy to say, so difficult to do, ‘put my image of the port-all inside it, inserted the image of the amplimet and it created the cloudy sphere you saw below.’

Malien looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know that I can work the way you do, Tiaan.’ She sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, concentrating hard. ‘Give me your hand.’

Tiaan sat beside her and extended her hand. Malien’s was unexpectedly hard. Nothing happened for so long that Tiaan found her mind wandering, projecting the rise of the waters and the terror of the lyrinx as it climbed up their chests. It was the curse of her visual memory that she could still see the faces of the two lyrinx who had drowned, pursuing her from Kalissin ages ago. The naked fear in their eyes would never leave her.

She wrenched her mind back to the gate and saw clouds, though they seemed to have more colour than any clouds she’d seen on Santhenar. The image shifted, the view looked straight up and she saw a green sky. Another shift; she was looking at trees from above. Giant trees and blue hills.

A swooping drop that left her stomach hanging over one of the branches, and they were at ground level. Blue grass waved in the breeze and there were flowering shrubs covered in red berries. Someone was whispering to her in a foreign language.

‘Tiaan!’ Malien was shaking her. ‘It’s Tallallame. Fix the gate in place and open it.’

Tiaan found it hard to let go of the vision, but did as she was told, remembering how she’d done it before in Tirthrax. And then a great roar echoed up from below, as from a hundred thousand throats.

Malien helped Tiaan to her feet, for she had no strength in her bones. ‘The gate is open. Let’s go down.’

Tiaan began to follow her, then looked back at the box. ‘But the port-all …’

‘It will stay open until you close it, or until the field is no longer sufficient to power it.’

At the bottom Tiaan smelled a sweet fragrance, as strong as citrus blossom. A gentle, humid breeze was flowing through the gate from Tallallame. The lyrinx waited outside, craning their necks to stare into the gate. The ones behind were standing up on their clawed toes, for just the tiniest glimpse of their new world.

‘I thought you would be gone already,’ she said to Ryll.

‘I would thank you first.’ There were tears in his eyes, and Tiaan did not recall seeing that before. ‘It is beautiful. The most beautiful of all worlds.’ He bowed, and at his side, even more surprisingly, Liett did too.

Tiaan gave him her hand, then took Liett’s. Ryll clasped Malien’s hand, Nish’s, and even Gilhaelith’s.

‘We will never forget this,’ he said. ‘Humanity has a side we never expected to see. Your deeds will be inscribed on the first page of our new Histories.’

‘Tallallame may not be such a kind place as you think,’ she said.

‘I’m sure it isn’t, but we’re strong. We will survive, and thrive, and rediscover our humanity.’

‘I don’t think you ever lost it,’ said Malien.

Ryll smiled at a private thought, then waved the first lyrinx towards the gate. ‘Ryll!’ said Tiaan.

He turned. ‘Yes?’

‘Your relics are still in the thapter.’

‘Ah!’ said Ryll. He held up his hand and the lyrinx who had been about to step through turned to one side. ‘We thought … when you did not produce them, we thought you had left them behind. Truly, you ennoble us all.’

‘Don’t stop,’ said Tiaan. ‘Precious lives –’

‘No lyrinx would choose to go through before our relics,’ said Ryll.

He selected an honour guard, who carried the three crates to the gate. Ryll stood to one side, his skin colours flickering, and Liett on the other, her wings upraised. Liett spoke to the people straining towards the gate, in her own tongue. Ryll did likewise. Then the guard ran though and vanished.

After that the lyrinx went through five abreast, as fast as they could be formed into lines. No more than five could fit at once and the gate could not be widened. It had been designed for thousands, not half a million.

‘This is going to take hours,’ said Tiaan.

‘If the field lasts,’ replied Malien. ‘Your people are attacking it furiously.’

They squeezed along the walls and outside, eyeing the funnel of the Well, which was larger than ever and lit up the salt, and one side of Nithmak, brighter than moonlight. ‘Is it coming at us?’ said Tiaan.

‘It seems to be.’

‘Could it be the gate attracting it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Malien.

They watched it in silence. Nish came up beside them. ‘How is the field going?’

‘Slowly fading,’ said Tiaan absently.

‘And if it dies?’

‘The gate will close and we’ll be trapped here, as will all the lyrinx who haven’t gone through,’ said Malien.

‘Can we do anything to maintain the field?’ said Nish.

‘No. The amplimet’s being used for the gate,’ said Malien.

‘Would Flydd really do this to us?’ said Nish.

‘There may be no Flydd any more.’

‘What?’ he cried.

‘He may have fallen all the way,’ said Malien. ‘Many mancers could operate the field controller.’

Tiaan had to put that possibility out of mind. She couldn’t cope with anything else. She went to the edge of the pinnacle and perched upon a rock, looking down. The lyrinx were scrambling up the steps and the sides of the peak, hundreds every minute, but there was still a huge throng at the base. Half the visible bed of the sea was covered with water now. Irisis came and perched beside her, spyglass in hand.

‘They’ve mostly reached the base,’ Irisis said. ‘Though there are still several bands of stragglers out there.’

Tiaan put out her hand. Irisis gave her the glass.

‘There must be hundreds of them, running for their lives.’

‘And they’re all going to drown,’ said Irisis.

‘But …’

‘We can’t do anything for them, Tiaan. Malien could barely keep the thapter in the air before she came down. She’d have no hope of ferrying them back now.’

Tiaan knew she couldn’t do anything either, for that would require using her amplimet. It burned hot between her breasts, drawing power for the gate.

‘If only we’d started sooner,’ said Tiaan. ‘Another hour would have made all the difference.’

Irisis shrugged. She wasn’t one to waste any time on futile regrets. They watched the islands of salt shrink around the two blotches of lyrinx.

‘Tiaan!’ yelled Malien. ‘Quickly.’

Tiaan knew what had happened before she got there. The field was fading, and once it did, the gate would fade with it.

‘How many are through, Ryll?’

‘Nearly twenty thousand. The gate has been open for an hour.’

Tiaan calculated swiftly. ‘So it would take a full day and a night for everyone to pass through.’

‘Yes.’

‘The way the field is failing, we have another hour at most,’ said Malien. ‘Better try to draw from another field.’

Tiaan attempted to, but the nearby ones were under the command of the field controller and the more distant ones were too far away for the amplimet to use.

The Nithmak field was still under her control. Perhaps it was difficult to seize it with the Well so close. Unfortunately the Nithmak node, though potent, was a small one and the gate was draining it rapidly.

She walked back and forth, muttering to herself, then came to a decision. ‘Are there nodes on Tallallame?’ Tiaan said to Malien.

‘I have no idea.’

‘I’m going through the gate.’

‘Tiaan, no!’

‘Why not?’

‘Tallallame is a savage place and you don’t know what the effect might be, on you or on the amplimet. Or the gate, if the device powering it passes through to the other side.’

‘If I recall the Great Tales correctly, Rulke’s original construct passed safely though to Aachan.’

‘But it might not have. Look how the Mirror of Aachan was corrupted on its journey.’

‘I’ve got to take the risk, otherwise most of the lyrinx are going to drown when Nithmak goes under water. Anyway, my mental image of the port-all isn’t the same as a real, physical device. It probably won’t be affected by the gate.’

‘You don’t know that.’ Malien frowned. ‘All right, but wait until the last moment. If you fail, you doom everyone here, for the gate won’t remain open without you. Wait one hour and another twenty thousand will be saved.’

The hour seemed to fly by in minutes. The field continued to falter. ‘Will you go through in the thapter?’ asked Malien.

‘I’ll leave it for you, and enough in the field to get you away if the best happens. Or the worst.’ Tiaan shrugged her little pack on her back, snuggled a water bottle by her side and touched the amplimet for comfort. ‘Farewell,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ called Irisis. ‘I think I’ll come with you.’

‘And I,’ said Nish.

‘Are you sure?’ said Tiaan.

‘After this …’ Nish did not need to go on. What could be left for them here, after such a betrayal? Especially if Flydd was no more.

‘I’m coming too,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘No geomancer could be satisfied with just one world, if a second was on offer.’

The flow of lyrinx eased to allow them into the gate. Tiaan felt faint. Nish took her by one arm, Irisis the other.

‘I’m all right now,’ she said, but they held her anyway and it felt good to be among friends.

Tallallame was only a few steps away. Tiaan could see the grass, the trees; she could feel warm, humid air on her face, and smell spicy floral odours. The lyrinx made way for them. The passage seemed to take an eternity and, with each step, the link between her and the black box upstairs, with its port-all that was there and yet still here in her mind, grew ever more tenuous.

The cloudy exterior of the gate went milky, fading until they could see right through it.

‘The gate’s failing,’ she said, panicky. ‘This is going to break it. I’ll never be able to make it from the other side. You’ll all be trapped –’

‘We knew that when we decided to come,’ said Irisis, easing her sword in its sheath.

Gilhaelith had a crystal in his hand and it was glowing faintly. Tiaan couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. She took another step, and another. Darkness exploded in her mind and then they were through and stepping down, unexpectedly, onto grass that was more blue than green and unusually springy to walk on.

Tiaan let out her breath. The gate was still open after all; power still passed through to the port-all. They were standing in a clearing in the middle of a forest, though it was richer and more luxuriant than the cold forests of her distant homeland. The air smelt sweet and spicy. ‘What a beautiful place,’ she said.

‘The most beautiful world in the universe,’ said Malien. ‘So the Faellem used to say, before they lost it.’

The recently arrived lyrinx had adopted defensive positions. Some had gone up trees, others to the top of a mass of purple-brown boulders away to the left. A burly male stood by a stream and scooped water with one hand. He tasted it and smacked his lips.

‘Any sign of a node?’ asked Gilhaelith.

‘I haven’t looked yet.’ Tiaan scanned her surroundings in the usual way, amplimet in hand. She could sense no field at all. ‘Nothing!’

‘There’s no saying that fields on Tallallame would be the same as ours.’ Gilhaelith had his crystal out again, holding it high. It was still glowing.

‘Is that coming through the gate?’ asked Irisis.

‘I don’t think so. Let’s go over by that rock.’

They followed him around the other side. ‘Its glow seems a little brighter,’ Gilhaelith said, ‘though it could be that it’s gloomier under the trees.’

‘Too gloomy,’ said Tiaan. ‘This place might be a paradise but it’s a –’ She screamed and hurled herself backwards, landing in the leaves.

Irisis’s sword flashed and something went flying through the air. The leaves rustled. ‘Back to the clearing, quickly.’