‘Are there many of you?’
Some thousands…
Tiaan was relieved. Enough to help with the war but not so many as to cause problems.
We are prepared. A few lyrinx will not trouble us. Will you get ready now?
‘I will.’ She feasted on Minis for a few seconds more. Soon he would be here and they would be together, forever! ‘But, Minis, what if I can’t channel enough power, or something else goes wrong?’
He looked uncomfortable. It could be that the gate won’t open. Or it might open but close again before we can come through… He trailed off.
‘What else?’ said Tiaan. ‘There is something else, isn’t there?’
Minis looked away, then was thrust aside and the hard face of Vithis appeared. You know the risk of using the amplimet, artisan. It could happen that in channelling so much power you will be burnt from the inside out, or your mind destroyed but your body living on. The risk of that happening is considerable. Perhaps one in three or four.
‘Oh!’ she whispered, sinking to her knees on the hard floor.
Another possibility is an explosion so colossal that the whole peak of Tirthrax mountain will be blown apart, and everything destroyed for twenty leagues around. We don’t know, artisan. We never thought this plan would work. There was not enough time to properly design the zyxibule. We think we know how it will work but we can’t be sure until we try it. Then, if it goes wrong, it will be too late.
Well? he snapped. Are you still prepared to do this, to save what is left of the Aachim species? Do you have the courage? Do not raise our hopes falsely.
What about my hopes? she thought desperately. Do I not matter? Clearly not to this bitter man. As an artisan, Tiaan had always lived with the threat of anthracism, though it had never happened in her manufactory. But this was an entirely different risk. She would have given up, but for Minis. Her death would be quick; his slow, painful and inevitable.
‘I will do it,’ she said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘if you will just explain again what I must do.’
Vithis did so, for Minis had not come back. Remember, when you have tested the device and put the crystal inside, call us. Be swift! the hard man said, and faded away.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The room guarded by three sentinels took a deal of finding, for so far they had seen only a tiny part of the vastness of Tirthrax. Halls and chambers stretched in all directions, carved into the heart of the mountain, and there were countless other levels, above and below.
It was Haani who found the room, for she spent her time wandering the halls. There were a number of chambers guarded by triple sentinels, though only one had the swirling symbol on the door, like an image of infinity.
As Tiaan touched her crystal to it, a representation of the lock sprang into her mind. It was like no other lock she had ever encountered. How did it work? She imagined the orbital chambers revolving. At once the mechanism went shuss and the door opened to her touch. Tiaan went in with Haani trotting at her heels. The room was crammed with machines and devices great and small, though what function they performed no amount of examination could tell her.
One was enclosed in glass, like a bell jar the diameter of one of the roof pillars outside. Within sat a spongiform object of rough ceramic, rather like the fire bricks that lined the furnaces of the manufactory. From the myriad little holes protruded wire filaments or fine glass tubes, or sometimes both, the former inside the latter. The object was mounted on a rough-sawn slab of basalt with swirling patterns in copper fused to its polished top. A bundle of glass tubes came from a socket in the base. Some had threads of wire inside, not connected to anything.
Another was a single hexagonal prism of a dark-green mineral, striated down the sides, floating in a sealed glass dish of quicksilver. The crystal looked to be tourmaline, though more perfect than any Tiaan had ever seen. It would have filled a bucket.
There were many and various metal objects, some rough castings, others polished to the most brilliant lustre. Several objects had crystals or shaped pieces of smooth ceramic inset, or attached to protrusions, or connected by cables, wires or threads.
There were devices driven by a variety of mechanisms, some clockwork, though few of the cogs seemed to have a regular number of teeth and not all the gears were circular. Others had gears meshing with threaded rods, wheels driven by belts, or wound with wires, or mechanisms whose action was not apparent no matter how carefully Tiaan inspected them. In others, the workings were hidden inside cubes of crystal or onion layers of tinted glass.
Most seemed to have no input or output, which puzzled Tiaan mightily. She understood how a clock could be driven by a spring that eventually moved the hands, or how a mill powered by water could turn a grinding wheel. With these devices, she could find nothing to make them go in the first place, or what work they were supposed to do when they were going. And at the far end of the room, equally strange, was mounted an enormous metal slab, five spans high and three wide. It had no discernible function.
At least a day went by without Tiaan having catalogued the machines or worked out which ones she was to take parts from, or which connected to which. Tirthrax had few windows and the lightglasses stayed on whilever she was in the room, so she had little idea of the time.
Realising that it must be late, she looked around for Haani. The child was nowhere to be found and Tiaan could not remember when she’d last seen her. Certainly it had been hours ago. She went to the door. Haani was not visible. Where could the wretched kid have gone?
Tiaan called her name but there was no reply. She wandered across the floor of that vast space, her boots echoing. The child could be in any of a thousand rooms. She might have become hopelessly lost, or fallen down a shaft. Her mind roved over the infinite possibilities for disaster.
‘Bother!’ she said aloud. ‘I don’t have time for this, Haani.’
A childish shriek, high up. Tiaan ran screaming, ‘Haani? Where are you? What’s the matter?’ Why, why had she left her alone? Maybe some mountain predator lived in here. It was a perfect hideout. Now it had her and it was all Tiaan’s fault.
Another shriek came floating down but this time she recognised it for what it was. Haani was shrieking with laughter. Where was she?
As she scanned back and forth a movement caught her eye, a flash through the hole, at least twenty spans above, where the spiral staircase went up through the ceiling to the next level.
‘Haani!’ she shouted, thinking that the child was falling.
Haani shot around in a spiral. She wasn’t falling at all – the little wretch was riding the metal banister, swirling round and down like water going down a plughole. If she went off the edge …
But Haani did not. With a series of whoops and shrieks she slid the rail all the way down, shooting off the end and skidding across the smooth floor. ‘Whee!’
Tiaan came running. She did not know what to say; she wanted to smack Haani, to yell at her to never do such a stupid thing again. Tiaan did neither, just stood with her arms hanging down and the terror frozen on her face.
Haani looked up at Tiaan’s expression and the joy ran out of her. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I …’ Tiaan gulped. ‘I thought some wild beast was eating you. And then, when I saw you, I was sure you were going to fall and be killed. Oh, Haani, I was so afraid.’
‘I was having fun. I wasn’t going to get hurt. You just don’t want …’ She broke off.
Tiaan knew what she had been going to say. It saddened her because it was perfectly true. She cared for the child deeply but at the same time found her a burden, and resented her for it. What a selfish cow I am, she thought. She asks for so little, and even that I am incapable of giving her.