What on earth was the structure? Could it be their end of the gate? It must be, though the winding road just ended at the top. ‘Minis!’ She did not know that she had screamed it aloud. ‘Minis, tell me what to do!’
It’s Tiaan!
Just a whisper, but it made her skin shiver. She was going to succeed after all. ‘Minis, I’ve done it. I’ve made the port-all – the zyxibule.’ That word felt unlucky. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Why did you not call us, Tiaan?
She could not see him among the throng. How she wanted to. ‘I called many times. You did not answer.’
No matter. It’s too late. We can’t open the gate, Tiaan. We’re too weak now.
‘There’s power here. I can channel more if you need me to. Tell me how. I can make the gate from here.’
Voices were arguing; some she recognised. The harsh tones of Vithis, Minis’s foster-father. The calm, resigned voice of Luxor, and Tirior urging them on, to seize the opportunity.
What have we to lose? said Luxor. We’re going to die anyway.
I say we trust her, said Tirior. Tiaan has taken on every challenge so far, and succeeded against our expectations.
And if she fails? grated Vithis. We don’t die a noble death on beloved Aachan – we die trapped in the hideous void, to be eaten like carrion. Where is the dignity in that?
Then stay behind! roared Luxor. Go to the Well of Echoes and die with your precious dignity! I choose life for my clan.
And I, said Tirior. The Ten Clans have agreed on it.
I don’t like it, said Vithis. To offer such a secret to an old human, and one who is barely out of childhood. What will she do with it?
Time to worry about that if we survive, said Tirior.
Yes, said Vithis. And we will worry, you can be sure.
They voted and it was agreed. They would make the attempt. Minis came back and told Tiaan what to do.
Tiaan felt panicky to see the Aachim crammed there, dying. Their lives relied on her. She understood little about the deadly geomantic Art she would have to wield and get absolutely right the first time. If the great Aachim were afraid of the consequences, how could she hope to succeed?
But she had to. Her fingers worked desperately and Tiaan hurled her senses outward, skipping over the little glacier she’d used before. She needed a lot of power now. West she sped, to pick up the enormous glacier grinding down from the Tirthrax ice cap. It was the fastest of all – Tiaan imagined that she could hear it grinding in its bed. Yet even that pace was no faster than the creeping of a snail. The wait was agonising.
Where the glacier curved around the edge of the mountain toward the icefall, a fracture would open up from one side to the other. She could already see its field, like a concave lens. With desperate recklessness she seized upon the opening crevasse and took out every bit of power she could.
Ice screamed as it was torn apart and a paralysing cold rushed through her. Tiaan felt as if she had frozen solid. The whole port-all shuddered, exploding with light and sound. She thought it was going to tear itself apart.
The mountain shook. There came a noise like boulders being crushed and something went boom, so loud that her ears hurt. After that she heard nothing at all.
Haani was tugging desperately at her hand. ‘Tiaan, say something!’
Tiaan picked herself up from the floor, feeling that a long time had passed. Her vision of Aachan had disappeared. Lightning forked from the amplimet basket to the metal plate on the back wall. The glass doughnuts went out. After an instant of utter darkness the glow reappeared. Aachan was back, too.
A monstrous curving lens flashed into being at the very top of the road winding up from those spiked towers. For an instant she saw Tirthrax reflected on the lens. It must have been a reflection, for it was a mirror image, the toe of the glacier falling off the wrong side of the mountain. Tirthrax was the other way around.
A star appeared in the centre of the reflection, then a hole blasted right through the lens. There were screams and hoarse cries as an avalanche of snow erupted through, to the incredulity of the Aachim. It was like a white umbrella that melted in the hot air and fell as blessed cold rain.
The gate! The gate is open! she heard the multitude cry.
Hurry! Before it closes again.
People raced to machines that looked like clankers. Briefly she saw Minis’s face, and those others she had seen before – the ones who knew all about the gate.
Stop! Vithis cried. The little fool has made the zyxibule the wrong way round. It’s left-handed, not right. The gate may not work.
Too late to worry about that now, screamed another.
Clan Inthis! Vithis ordered. Stay back! It’s not safe. You are to go last, after the Ten Clans! Let them risk all; this will restore us to our rightful place.
Vithis ran to a complicated piece of machinery that vaguely resembled Tiaan’s port-all. Hurling himself into a suspended seat, he began working a controlling arm in three dimensions. Ball lightning fizzed out in all directions.
The image of Aachan turned upside down and back to front. Tiann’s lungs burned as if she had inhaled fire. Her control of the port-all was snatched away. A wormhole writhed across the ethyr like an electrified serpent.
No, Inthis! Vithis screamed, holding out his arms in entreaty as a squadron of blue-tinted constructs raced past. Wait…
They took no notice. Letting go the controlling arm, Vithis put his head in his hands and wept. A stampede of people and machines rushed up the spiral road towards the gate, but Tiaan lost them, and then she lost Aachan too.
On a mountaintop half a continent away, the tetrarch was observing the motions of the planets when, for an instant, they shook like jelly in a bowl. The field tied itself into knots. The globe-wide ethyr sobbed out a single note before returning to intangibility. Setting down his instruments, the tetrarch made a note on a slate.
Hundreds of leagues to the south, in a citadel on the frigid Island of Noom, a woman set down her quill, cocked her head to one side, and smiled. The long watch had borne its first fruit. She took up a lantern and headed down the Thousand Steps to her master.
SIXTY
‘I saw her!’ said Ullii. ‘Tiaan was standing there with these big streamers of light going in all directions. The whole mountain was shaking. She had a little girl with her.’
‘A little girl?’
‘She had green hair.’
Another thing to wonder about. ‘What was Tiaan doing?’
‘I did not understand.’ Ullii sagged. ‘I have to sleep!’ She ducked into the tent.
It was a dark night; too dark for climbing unknown mountains, though later on there would be a moon. Frustrated on several fronts, Nish tidied up the camp, stoked the fire and stared at the mountain. There was nothing to do but wait. Ullii was already asleep but that was not a possibility for him. He paced back and forth.
This was his big chance. If he could capture Tiaan and her crystal, and bring her back, it would make up for all his past failures. But what was going on up there?