Tiaan took a deep breath, lifted the black box in both hands, held it open and tossed it over the side.
‘Now what do we do?’ she said, watching it fall, the door flapping.
‘We make sure we’re not still here when that gets to the bottom and the core of the Well materialises in the centre of the node,’ said Malien.
She hurled the controller over and flew at the wall. The thapter struck the whirling funnel at an angle and bounced off. She tried again. The same thing happened. Malien bit her lip.
The black box was already out of sight. Tiaan’s fingernails dug into her palms. She wiped sweat from her eyes.
Malien turned towards the centre of the Well, which was leagues across, curved back and hurled the thapter forwards as fast as it would go. It stuck the funnel hard, shuddered so violently that Tiaan’s bones felt like they were rattling, and passed into the maelstrom. Unfortunately it did not make it through to the outer side, but was whipped around in a circle, inside the roiling wall. Malien threw the thapter at the outer barrier, again and again, but could only strike it at a low angle, and the thapter kept bouncing off.
‘I can’t get through,’ she gasped.
‘Instead of crashing, what if you force?’ said Tiaan.
Malien tried that, creeping to the outside edge, putting the thapter’s battered front against it and pushing hard. The fabric of the funnel bulged out, out, out, finally enclosing them in a bubble that tore off and was fired away like a speck of mud from a wheel.
Tiaan looked back. ‘Don’t look back,’ said Malien.
Tiaan ducked her head as a glow lit up the sky, brighter than a hundred suns. It became ever brighter, and the shock began to reverberate back and forth inside her head, building up and up and up until, finally, she had to let go.
‘Tiaan!’ Malien was shaking her. ‘Wake up.’
‘Don’t think I can,’ Tiaan said groggily.
Malien shook her harder. ‘You have to. We forgot one vital thing.’
‘Wassat?’ Tiaan slurred.
‘When the node and anti-node annihilated each other, it disrupted all the fields for leagues around. It’s destroyed my crystal, I can’t draw any power and we’re falling.’
‘So what can I do?’ Tiaan was too dazed to be worried.
‘Use the amplimet, if it works. Failing that, draw on its stored power to get us to the ground.’
Tiaan stood up shakily.
‘We’re falling fast,’ Malien said urgently.
Tiaan’s thoughts flowed as sluggishly as molasses. She staggered and had to hang onto the side rail.
Malien snatched the amplimet from around Tiaan’s neck, tore out her shattered crystal and put Tiaan’s in its socket. She brought Tiaan’s hand down on the controller.
‘Now, Tiaan!’
They were plunging to the ground like a meteor. ‘Thirty seconds,’ said Malien.
Tiaan’s head hurt, and she could hardly remember what to do to make the thapter go. ‘The amplimet won’t obey me. It won’t draw power from any field. It must have lost the ability, going through the gate.’
‘Twenty seconds,’ said Malien. ‘Use its stored power.’
Tiaan struggled but her mind remained blank.
‘Ten seconds!’ Malien slapped her hard across the cheek. ‘Wake up.’
Tiaan found just enough in her to pull the machine out, a bare few hundred spans above a line of arid hills. It jerked forwards, then sideways, bucking and shuddering like a buffalo in a pen. A long way behind them the steaming waters were already rushing in to reclaim the space that the Well had occupied.
Tiaan rode the careering thapter for as long as she could, which wasn’t even a minute. She could barely stand up. ‘I think –’ It lurched wildly. ‘Help me, Malien.’
Malien placed her hand on Tiaan’s, on the controller, but the thapter shot left, twisted right then spun in a circle. ‘Oh, the amplimet’s all wrong now!’ she cried.
Tiaan’s bones felt plastic and her head was flashing from hot to cold in sickening waves. She couldn’t hold it up. She leaned it against the cold wall, which felt a little better.
‘Do you think we’ve made any difference?’ she said directly. ‘To Jal-Nish, I mean?’
‘I – I don’t think so, Tiaan.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I can’t. I just have a bad feeling, and I’ve learned to trust my feelings over the centuries.’
‘What if we were to sneak back to Ashmode? Could we mount an attack on Jal-Nish? Or his air-floater?’
‘Not a chance,’ said Malien, squeezing Tiaan’s hand. The mechanism was hardly making any sound, now, and the thapter was slowing rapidly.
‘Why not?’
‘There’s not enough power stored in the amplimet to take us there. It’s practically drained, and the fields here may be disrupted for weeks. There’s power in them but I can’t get to it.’
It didn’t seem right for the great adventure to end this way. ‘Where are we, anyway?’ said Tiaan.
‘Somewhere south of the Trihorn Falls, as they once were. Those are the Jelbohn Hills on the southern horizon.’
Tiaan stood up to look over the brown, featureless land. ‘How far is it to Ashmode?’ Once she would have known it instantly, but her mind couldn’t recall the map.
‘About eighty leagues. When we came out of the Well it hurled us away at colossal speed. We’re the best part of twenty days’ march away, in this trackless country.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ll head for the coast of the Sea of Thurkad. See it, across to our right?’ The mechanism sputtered and Malien put the nose down. ‘I can’t risk flying, in case we lose power suddenly. Once we do, this thapter will only be good for cutlery.’
‘Or ploughshares,’ said Tiaan. There was a gentle tap on the hatch. She pulled back the bolt with her toe.
‘I’ll hover it along the coast as long as the power lasts,’ said Malien. ‘When we get to a decent town you can take ship wherever you want to go. At least we’re not short of coin.’
Merryl lifted the hatch and put his head up, flashing Tiaan that heart-warming smile. ‘Did I hear some kind of a bang a while back?’
‘You could say that,’ said Tiaan. ‘We destroyed the Well, hoping it would disable Jal-Nish, too. Unfortunately it’s disrupted the fields and we can’t get back to Ashmode.’
‘Yggur and Flydd are resourceful,’ said Merryl. ‘I’m sure they’ll come up with something.’
Tiaan could not be so sanguine, though she appreciated him putting the best face on it. Not even two decades of slavery had been able to curb Merryl’s optimistic outlook.
The thapter skimmed up a gentle rise covered in short grass with a hint of green, unusual in this brown land, and sighed to a stop on the crest. Tiaan looked down a long slope, also sward-covered, to a rocky creek littered with boulders.
‘That’s it,’ said Malien. ‘The amplimet is finished, and so is the thapter.’
‘But …’ said Tiaan.
‘There probably isn’t a hedron within a hundred leagues that could replace the amplimet. It’s over, Tiaan. The thapter has no power. It’s useless metal. From here, we have to walk.’
Tiaan climbed down the side, took off her boots and socks and walked around the thapter, taking pleasure in the springy grass under her soles. The great adventure is over, she thought, and I’m tainted. A criminal. I’ll never fly a thapter again. She put one hand on the black flank of the machine and felt a tear well in her eye.
Merryl clambered down, rubbing his back. ‘I think I’ll walk down to the creek. I’ve spent too much of my life cooped up in caves and thapters.’
‘You’ll have all the walking you can take before we get home,’ said Tiaan.
‘I can’t wait.’ He grinned and set off, arms swinging. Tiaan watched him halfway down the hill, infected by his cheer.
Malien had just stepped off the ladder when there came a cry of terror from the thapter.