‘There’s nothing can be done to stop him,’ said Malien.
‘I think there might be.’
‘Oh?’ Malien said with a sharp intake of breath.
Tiaan’s eyes were drawn back to Gilhaelith, whose brittle hands were still moving over the globe, though very slowly and mechanically now. The threads of light would soon link all the controlling nodes. Four of them were connected already, and fainter threads had begun to extend from them to other, less powerful nodes. ‘I think I know how to close down all the nodes for good, and Jal-Nish’s tears with them.’
Malien’s head jerked around. ‘We talked about that once before, Tiaan.’
It would spell the end of the Secret Art, at least the way humanity had been using it since the great Nunar codified the laws of mancing. There would be no more thapters, air-floaters, constructs or farspeakers. No field-powered Arts or devices of any kind, save those that had been laboriously charged up in the ways known to the ancients. And maybe not them either.
‘You’re … not going to do anything, are you?’ croaked Gilhaelith.
‘I’m sorry, Gilhaelith,’ Tiaan said, and she was, for she did care for him. Tears pricked at the insides of her eyelids, as if crystals were forming there in mimicry of his transformation. She had to let him die. If she saved him, her friends would all be slain. ‘I can’t.’
He began to curse her, bitterly and unrelentingly, in a voice that sounded like someone walking over broken glass. Then Gilhaelith broke off in mid-word, his face twisted in agony.
‘It did this to me,’ he whispered. ‘It planned it all long ago, and I was too stupid to see it.’
‘What did?’ she said.
‘Way back in Snizort, when I was trapped in the tar, I heard a whisper in my head telling me to create a phantom crystal and use it to save myself. I did so, but its fragments have been there ever since and no matter what I did I couldn’t get rid of them – it wouldn’t let them go. They just lay there, burning me whenever I used power, and doing more damage. But as soon as I brought the globe down here, the fragments came together in my mind and they were just like a model of the amplimet, linking it to the real one. I couldn’t resist it. I tried, Tiaan, I really did, but it was too strong.’
He was cut off by another agonised spasm. The crystallisation must be reaching his vital organs. And, from the corner of her inner eye, Tiaan could see filaments beginning to extend out of the geomantic globe, into the ethyr. The amplimet was using the globe to mimic the real nodes and the links between them. Once it had done that, it would be too late to stop it.
And she had to stop it, but if she just smashed the amplimet, or hurled it into the red-hot compartment, she would have lost the opportunity to do anything for her friends, or to stop Jal-Nish. Tiaan was determined to do both, even at the cost of all the nodes. Gilhaelith’s folly only reinforced her determination that such unfettered power could not be allowed to exist.
Her plan was desperately dangerous. In all likelihood, she would die even more horribly than Gilhaelith.
Just do it! She dived, snatched the amplimet from between Gilhaelith’s feet and held it high. It was pulsing even more slowly now, and the blood-red light glowed right through her hand, picking out the pale and fragile bones.
‘Don’t take the risk, Tiaan!’ shouted Malien. ‘Throw it into the heat under the thapter.’
If she tried that now, she would die. Tiaan stepped back a couple of paces and fixed on the geomantic globe, seeing its perfection in her mind and forming the sequence of links between its controlling nodes into a vast mental network. Now for the most desperate step of all – she had to act as if she were supporting the amplimet, doing what it wanted. To oppose it would be to suffer instant anthracism.
She drew power. Though there had been none just minutes ago, it was effortless now. Tiaan directed it into the controlling nodes, as if to reinforce what the amplimet had been doing. She sent power around and around that network, amplifying it at every turn, and pumping more and more power in. The nodes glowed brighter and brighter until she could no longer look at them. They were pulsing in time with the beat of the amplimet, and now the whole geomantic globe began to throb. Threads of mist rose from its northern pole.
This was it, the point of no turning back. If she succeeded, and survived, the aftermath would rob her of all that made her special – indeed, unique. Her inner talents, that had sustained her all her life, would be useless. Could she bear that?
Tiaan hesitated. In the background she could hear the crackling as crystallisation proceeded up Gilhaelith’s thighs and in across his shoulders. To the left she could see Malien’s frozen face. Malien could lose her great Arts too. All the world might. Was it worth it?
Tiaan didn’t know. She couldn’t think.
‘Use the globe, Tiaan.’ Gilhaelith’s voice was a screeching crackle. ‘You can reverse the crystallisation.’
But she didn’t know how. The controlling nodes were linked on the globe now. Soon the controlling nodes of Santhenar would also be linked to it, an endless source of power for good or evil. What would Gilhaelith do with it, if she saved him? What would Jal-Nish do, if she didn’t stop him? What would the amplimet do if it gained what it had been searching for so long?
‘We can fight it,’ crackled Gilhaelith. ‘We’re stronger.’
‘It means more war,’ said Tiaan. ‘More destruction, death and ruin. I won’t have it.’
‘Noooo …’ Gilhaelith said, in a hissing whisper that faded to nothing, for his lungs had crystallised and he could no longer breathe.
‘Don’t, Tiaan,’ said Malien. ‘You’ll only make things worse.’
‘How can they be worse!’ Tiaan cried, and as Malien tried to stop her, she sent an overwhelming surge of power into the controlling nodes, which emitted a burst of light so bright that it burned her skin. Gilhaelith jerked spastically and the crystallisation slowly proceeded up his torso to his throat.
Suddenly it grew dark and cold, as if something had blocked out the sun. All around her the loops and whorls of the field flared to visibility and the sky was lit up by vast green and yellow auroras. The ground shook so hard that the thapter toppled onto its side, exposing the still-glowing cavity beneath. Tiaan might have tossed the amplimet into it, but that was even more dangerous now.
Malien threw herself at Tiaan and tried to tear the crystal out of her hand. Fighting her off, Tiaan staggered around to the other side of the geomantic globe. Gilhaelith laboriously extended a crystalline arm towards her but it was easy to evade his reach.
Tiaan knocked over the green nickel bowl and the globe rolled out, still spinning on its freezing mist on the short grass. She saw the horror in his eyes and averted her own. It had to be done.
The globe was icy and its cold burned her from here. She pumped more power into the controlling nodes, as much as she could draw. She could feel the amplimet’s triumph as she slipped it into her pocket.
Tiaan picked up the globe and lifted it above her head. It was incredibly heavy. She staggered under its weight.
‘Noooooo!’ Gilhaelith’s wail seemed to have been formed outside his throat, and then the disembodied voice began to curse her again.
Tiaan held the globe up for a moment, feeling her knees wobble, and hurled it down the hill. It resisted as if it didn’t want to leave her, then nearly took her with it, for her hands had stuck to the thick, frigid glass. Tiaan overbalanced and the globe pulled free, tearing skin off her fingers and palms. It landed a few spans away, unharmed on the springy grass, and began to roll down the slope.
The sky blackened to the colour of midnight, the hillside lit only by the shimmering auroras and the fading glow from the underside of the thapter. Rays extended out from the controlling nodes in all directions. One struck through her pocket, charring the cloth, and the amplimet fell out. She scooped it up in her bleeding hand as the fields went wild. The ground shook harder; the auroras flared so brilliantly that for a moment it became as bright as day.