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.