Minis, wonderful Minis, had saved her after all. Her heart swelled with love for him.
‘Minis?’
The response seemed more distant than before. Tiaan, you’re alive! We thought…
‘There was an avalanche, but I survived it. What must I do? Tell me how to help you.’
It may be too late. He held a rag over his nose. The eruptions grow ever worse.
‘Anything!’ She was terrified that Minis would vanish before she ever met him.
Ah, Tiaan, you love too deeply and you trust too much. But if you would repay your debt, there is one way…
She was conscious of the debt and wanted to repay it. It was a sacred obligation. Even so, his use of the word shook her.
‘Whatever it takes!’
Have you heard of a place called Tirthrax?
‘Of course!’ Tirthrax was the tallest and most famous peak in the Great Mountains, and therefore in the entire world. Some said in all the Three Worlds, though Tiaan knew not if that was true. Being interested in numbers, especially large ones, she knew that the monster peak was more than eight thousand spans high, or sixteen thousand paces, not that height was ever measured in paces.
And do you know that some of my people, the Aachim, once built a great city inside the mountain?
‘I know a little of the Histories,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know that Aachim slaves were brought to Santhenar by Rulke the Charon, thousands of years ago, in the hunt for the Golden Flute. They gained their freedom long ago and built cities in the mountains. I did not know they dwelt at Tirthrax.’
Then I beg you – he seemed to be consulting a map – make your way south across the mountains and thence west to Tirthrax. If … when you reach that peak, contact us and I will tell you how to get inside. Take the amplimet to the leader of the Aachim and beg him, or her, to use it. Only then will there be any chance for me.
‘What chance?’ she whispered. Strange emotions stirred in her.
To come to your world. He seemed surprised that she had not realised. It was foretold long ago, and again by me when I was a child.
‘Are you a seer?’
Of sorts, though seldom taken seriously by my own people. Ah, how I long to see beautiful Santhenar. And you, Tiaan, most beautiful of all
Her heart leapt. These Aachim were a clever, strong species. They had beaten the lyrinx on Aachan. With their help, surely humanity could win the war. And, Tiaan realised, not only would she be with her love, as she was beginning to think of him, but she would be a hero. She would have helped to save Santhenar. No one would look down on her then. Her unfortunate birth would be irrelevant.
Can you do it? said Minis.
‘Can you not see?’ she asked softly.
It is given to no seer to see his own future. Nor can I see yours. I know I am asking a lot. Are you a traveller, Tiaan?
He was asking the world. In her lifetime Tiaan had gone no further than Tiksi, just a few leagues away. To Tirthrax would be a colossal journey. ‘I am not, but for you,’ she gazed at his face longingly, ‘I will walk from one side of the world to the other.’
His eyes grew soft. My little love. How I long to be in your arms. We have much to do, to be ready in time, and you have a great journey in front of you. You are our only hope, Tiaan. Whether you succeed, or fail, do so gloriously! In Tirthrax you will be honoured.
And, remember, tell no one; they would not understand and would only try to stop you. Do not speak about your amplimet, either. To those who understand the Secret Art it is a crystal beyond price.
‘Only one man ever knew, the old miner who found the crystal for me. Alas, my friend Joeyn lies dead in the mine.’
Minis stared into her eyes, then his face vanished. Tiaan stood looking at the space where his image had been, daydreaming of the first meeting with her lover, anticipating his caresses and their first night together. The thought was scary, but she was eager too. Tiaan was glad she’d had no other. She wanted Minis to be her first and only lover.
Another thought crept into her mind. Only one man ever knew about the amplimet, and one lyrinx! Foolishly, she had let Ryll see it. How was she going to keep it from him?
In a few minutes she was incapable of worrying, as the aftereffects of geomancy smashed into her – extreme lassitude, hot and cold chills, and pain like a thousand needles pricking her all over. She lay back and endured.
First she must find a way out of this ice bubble, one that did not involve her falling down the side of the mountain. She was still hot and the amplimet radiated heat, though not enough to melt the walls of her prison. The clear ice looked to be quite thick; perhaps the length of her arm.
Tiaan roused, from a daydream about her lover, to reality. She was afraid of those disabling emotions that she had never understood; afraid of embarking on a relationship in which she might lose control. Afraid of the journey, too. It was a long way to Tirthrax. Tiaan did not know how far, but hundreds of leagues, certainly. It would be many months’ journey, and she could not set out until spring.
The air felt stale. There had been plenty in the soft snow but none could penetrate the solid globe of ice. Before too long there would not be enough to keep her alive. The crossbow, she knew without trying it, would never break through.
Dare she try the amplimet again? There was nothing to lose. She sensed her way through earth and rock but the field of the shear zone was gone. She could not tell where it had been.
She sensed other auras though, near and far. The world was bursting with energies: the weight of rock on rock, heat seeping from deep in the earth, gas pockets below the limestone … But just because there was power, it did not mean she could tap it. Her skills were primitive, her control infinitesimal.
Seeking deeper, down in the wellsprings of the earth where the granite was cut by enormous veins, Tiaan came on a shifting aura about a crystal as large as an elephant, whose field was of a kind she had never sensed before. Created by pressure from the overlying rock, the force of the wind on the mountain and occasional little tremblers and avalanches, the field fluctuated wildly.
Tiaan sensed it out and in her mind’s eye drew a blueprint of the path she wanted the energy to take, through the hyperplane back to the amplimet and then out at the shell of ice. Taking a deep breath, she adjusted the position slightly, then, as the field waxed, drew hard.
A sizzling yellow ray burst from the amplimet and struck above her head, shattering rock into fragments. Pieces of hot stone rained down, setting her hair smouldering. She smacked it away.
Agony, as if all that energy had speared though her. Tiaan screamed; she could not stop herself. Her foot kicked the globe, which spun around. She jumped just in time as the yellow beam flashed by, spattering gravel out of the wall. Another second and it would have taken both feet off at the ankles. A blister the size of an orange began to grow on one shin.
The beam brightened and a slab of rock exploded, sending cinders in all directions. One burned right through her clothes before sticking to her side. She ripped it off and the skin came too. Tiaan beat at the smouldering fabric. Her coat, lying on the floor where she had discarded it earlier, was also smoking. More rock exploded from the wall, and more.
She tried to shut off the flow of power but did not know how. The beam was roaring out of the amplimet and if she could just point it the right way it must burn through the ice in a second.