Malien turned to pass around Ashmode in a great circle, keeping to a safe distance. She described three more circles, but Tiaan couldn’t think of any way of attacking Jal-Nish. Her mind was like a blank room with the roiling quicksilver tears in the centre, their power overwhelming all other Arts. Then, as Malien turned again, Tiaan saw, out over the sea, the Well looming in the distance, as black as a thunderhead. The Well and the amplimet had once been linked, she recalled.
‘Malien,’ Tiaan said, ‘do you know anything about the link between the Well and the amplimet? They seemed to communicate in Tirthrax, remember?’
‘I could hardly forget it,’ said Malien.
‘Why would it do that? If the amplimet draws from nodes, and the Well is a kind of anti-node, wouldn’t it be a threat?’
‘I dare say. Perhaps the amplimet wanted to take advantage of the chaos a freed Well would create.’
‘What if we were to throw the amplimet into the Well? Could that destroy them both?’
‘No. The amplimet would be destroyed by heat at the bottom of the Well first.’
‘Oh!’ said Tiaan. Something else occurred to her. ‘The Well grows by sucking power out of nodes, and it’s a kind of anti-node. So why don’t node and anti-node come together and annihilate one another?’
‘That’s a question I’ve often wondered about. I think the core of the Well must contain a barrier to stop them getting too close.’
‘And there’s no way to overcome it?’
‘None,’ said Malien, ‘except a gate –’
Tiaan started. ‘What is it?’ said Malien.
‘I’ve had an idea. Well, it was your idea really. A way we might be able to save everyone.’
‘I think I know what it is,’ said Malien with a faint smile. ‘I’ll set a course for the Well then, shall I?’
Malien’s suggestion about setting off a sensory vibration through the ethyr had given Tiaan the clue. Jal-Nish had previously used the tears to direct the Well. If they could eliminate it, the subsequent vibrations might be reflected back through the tears to him. She couldn’t guess what the effect would be, but it might give their friends a chance.
She went halfway down the ladder to check on Gilhaelith, who was asleep on the floor. Merryl was watching over him from the bench. ‘Is he all right?’ she said. ‘Father?’
‘He’s better than he was,’ said Merryl. ‘Do what you have to do, Tiaan.’
She went back up again. ‘Malien?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you set the thapter to fly by itself for a minute? I may need Gilhaelith’s geomantic globe. It shows things that my field map doesn’t.’
They carried its box up, put it in the rear right corner and closed the hatch. Malien took the controller again. Tiaan opened the box and lifted it off the geomantic globe. It was revolving on its mist cushion in the green-tinged nickel bowl. She stood for a moment, admiring its perfection. ‘He’s done a beautiful job. Gilhaelith has captured every nuance of the fields, every peculiarity of the nodes.’
‘He’s a brilliant man,’ said Malien.
Tiaan tried to concentrate on what she had to do once they got inside the Well. She planned to create another gate with the black tesseract, though not between worlds. This would be just a simple portal between the node and the Well. She began to rehearse the process in her mind. There would be no time to think about it once they got there; she had to get it right first time.
‘What will the Aachim do now?’ she asked absently as she worked.
‘Life will go on as before, in isolation, until eventually my people die out.’
‘But surely not?’ said Tiaan.
‘They’re cowards who fear to live in the real world. Back in Aachan, they even went into slavery rather than fighting for freedom, and lied about it afterwards.’
‘What about the ones who came from Aachan?’
‘They plan to make a home in Faranda,’ said Malien, ‘in the mountains and the lands east of them. Luxor spoke to Flydd about it when Flydd went to the Hornrace, not long before it collapsed. Eastern Faranda is empty now, but with the Sea of Perion restored the rains will come again. They’ll make it blossom, in time.’
‘I hope so,’ said Tiaan, though all she could think about was Minis walking out onto the salt. His body would lie fifty spans below the water by now. Poor, sad, weak Minis. He’d redeemed himself in the only way he could. ‘The Aachim do deserve to find peace at last, and a land to call their own.’
Before Tiaan had the procedure complete in her mind, the Well rose up before them. It had changed direction again and was drifting parallel to the southern shore of the Sea of Perion, a few leagues out, moving in the general direction of the Hornrace. ‘It’s bigger yet, and higher,’ she went on. ‘Do you think we can reach the top?’
‘I don’t know.’ Malien frowned, then tilted the battered front of the thapter up until it began to climb.
Tiaan was painstakingly trying to think through all the consequences of what they were going to do. ‘If we do destroy the Well, could that drive the amplimet to the third stage – full awakening?’
‘No,’ said Malien firmly.
‘Why not?’
‘Full awakening can only come once the amplimet is at the second stage. Flydd drove it back to the first stage of awakening after Nennifer, and we later made sure of it.’
Gilhaelith stirred in his painful slumber, muttered under his breath and went silent again. When Tiaan looked down he was fast asleep. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said.
They continued climbing. Tiaan had a nagging feeling that she’d neglected to take account of an important detail. She went through her procedure again from the beginning, just to make sure. She found nothing wrong, but the worry remained.
‘I’m ready,’ she said.
‘You’ll be looking for the black box,’ said Malien. ‘It’s in there.’ She indicated a compartment with her foot.
Tiaan got it out and opened it with Vithis’s sapphire key. Recalling the true shape of the tesseract, she placed her mental model of the port-all inside and set it to open a gate from the core of the Well to the centre of the node it was presently drawing from. She checked the node on Gilhaelith’s globe to make sure she had it right. ‘That’s it.’ She began to close the box.
‘It has to be open,’ said Malien as they tracked along the edge of the whirling funnel.
‘Why?’
‘The gate will take the easiest path. If the box is closed, the gate may open via another world or another dimension. You don’t want that, for the same reason as we didn’t want the Well to go through the gate. Get ready. The thapter won’t go any higher, probably because of the damage some nitwit did, crashing it through the door of Nithmak.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Tiaan felt a fool.
‘So you should be,’ said Malien. ‘But it is a problem. Since we can’t fly high enough to go over the top, we’ll have to pass through the funnel wall of the Well.’
‘Is that possible?’
Malien considered, head to one side. ‘That’s a good question.’
Into the Well, Tiaan thought with a shiver. ‘Can we get out again?’
‘An even better question.’
Without warning, Malien turned the thapter sharply and plunged into the maelstrom. Tiaan clutched at the side rail. Everything went black and yellow, the thapter turned upside down, righted itself without any effort from Malien and they were through the inner wall. Tiaan was looking down at the bed of the sea as if the water did not exist, and even through the bed into darkness. In the abyssal depths something red gleamed – a moving node, perhaps, tracking through the solid earth below the Well.
‘Ready?’ said Malien. ‘Be quick. I don’t like being here at all.’
‘Is this like going to the Well without really going?’ Tiaan said perceptively.
‘In a way, though if we get it wrong we will be going to the Well, and more spectacularly than anyone has ever gone before.’