Ryll led her into a chamber where the central walls of a cluster of bubbles had been cut away to make a room shaped like a strawberry. In one corner of that uncomfortable space a small female lyrinx stood at a bench made of honeycombed iron, surfaced with rock glass the palest tinge of green. She was the one who had fixed Tiaan’s shoulder at the trial, the one who lacked pigment in her skin. At the back of the bench sat a box made of iron wires and green glass, like a tank for fish.
The lyrinx wore Tiaan’s helm. The globe sat on the bench. The creature was manipulating the beads. Her claws were retracted and the thick fingers surprisingly dexterous, though the glow emitted by the amplimet was unchanged no matter what she did.
Tiaan was drawn to the crystal. She could not help herself.
‘This is Liett,’ said Ryll to Tiaan.
Tiaan did not hear. Stumbling toward the bench with a dazed look on her face, she reached out for the amplimet. Ryll dragged her back.
Desperate for it, Tiaan tore free, darted around the startled lyrinx and sprang. Ryll caught her in mid-air, carried her to her room and locked her in.
‘You will not touch the crystal again until you agree to help us. Do you hear me?’ Banging the door, he slammed the bolt home.
Tiaan paced the room all day, growing more despairing each minute. The craving was unbearable. She paced out the night too, finally collapsing on her bed at dawn.
Ryll woke her soon after. He had the crystal in one hand, no doubt to torment her further. Tiaan threw herself on him like a savage, clawing and biting. He seemed surprised by her fury but simply held her in one hand until she was spent.
‘Do you agree?’ he asked calmly.
‘No!’ she snarled. Tiaan felt dazed, unreal. This close to the amplimet she could pick up traces of the field spiralling about Kalissin node. Tears of longing poured down her cheeks.
He walked out and bolted the door. By the time he returned the following day Tiaan felt sure that she was going mad. She had not slept, her hair was a riot, her eyes yellow and brown pits. She had broken her fingernails clawing at the door. Her forehead was bruised from banging it on the wall.
She lay on her back, looking up at the amplimet. She no longer had the strength to fight.
‘Well?’ he said. One facet of the crystal flashed at her.
She laid her head on the floor. ‘I will help you,’ she croaked, holding out her hand.
‘Come down.’ He walked out.
Tiaan followed him back to that strawberry-shaped room. ‘This is Liett,’ Ryll said.
Tiaan repeated the name, ‘Li-ett,’ pronouncing it the way names were sounded in her part of the world.
‘No, Li’et-t.’ She emphasised the second syllable and ending with a distinct t-t sound, like tapping the bench with a fingernail.
Tiaan tried again. ‘Lee-et!’
The lyrinx parted her lips in a gesture that might have been a smile or a grimace. ‘Just call me Leet!’
Tiaan moved closer to the bench, distracted by a scuttling movement in the box. Inside crouched a creature like nothing she had ever seen before. It was about the size of a mouse, with the general form of a lyrinx-like biped, though a savagely distorted one. Fur took the place of chameleon skin and it had enormous pink eyes.
It scuttled about on all fours. Its feet were padded hoofs, while the muscularity of its back looked more suited to the carrying of heavy loads than to walking upright.
‘What is it?’ Tiaan asked.
‘A thramp!’ Liett replied. ‘Just observe, small human.’
Liett placed her hands around the walls of the cage, gently but firmly, and strained. Tiaan felt a fizzing sensation, though subtly different in pitch and colour from the one Besant had caused in the night flight. The sensation stopped and Liett jerked her hands away, panting with the effort.
She stood up, shaking her head as though trying to dislodge something caught in her colourless crest. Her fingers pressed the spot, over and over. Finally she sat down and closed her eyes.
Tiaan watched the little creature, which had fallen over and was kicking its back legs in uncoordinated spasms. Then, before her eyes, the pads of its feet began to thin and elongate. It happened so imperceptibly that at first Tiaan thought she’d imagined it. She had to compare what she was seeing now with its original self, like a blueprint in her mind, before she was sure.
‘Are you a flesh-shaper?’ she said to Ryll, recalling her dreams in the ice house.
‘Some of us are.’
Had they done this to her while she slept? Was she subtly altered from before? She inspected her hands and the horror must have been evident on her face.
‘Not you, Tiaan!’ Ryll seemed amused.
‘Why not?’ she cried, backing away.
‘Many reasons,’ said Liett. ‘But most important, you are too big.’
‘Oh?’
‘Even our greatest adepts can’t flesh-form a creature larger than a rat. It takes too much out of us. The work is painful and quite draining. We can’t channel power from outside us, as you do. Even if a dozen of us worked together, to flesh-form a creature the size of a cat would drive us to insanity. Even here.’
‘I saw you shape new fingers,’ she accused Ryll.
‘That was regeneration, which is quite different. I was replacing what was lost, not creating a new organism. Our bodies can regenerate even if we are unconscious.’
‘But in the void …’
‘Also different.’ He glanced at Liett. ‘We were subtly shaping our unborn selves. Gently.’
Tiaan went back to the thramp. ‘If you had a hundred working together, or a thou –’
‘That many wills can’t be focussed,’ said Ryll. ‘A hundred is worse than ten.’
‘Moreover,’ Liett went on, ‘you would know it if we tried to work on you. Flesh-forming is torture. This creature has been sedated. Even so, the trauma will probably kill it.’
The thramp was now lying on its side, panting. Its eyes were staring.
‘It does not look so bad.’
‘The worst is to come,’ said Ryll. ‘Liett has just transformed the skin and muscle beneath it. To mould the bones and organs will take days. Flesh-shaping is a very slow process, with many failures, despite what your tellers may have told you.’
‘Then why do it?’
‘Small creatures can be …’ She trailed off at a warning glance from Ryll, then continued. ‘We have a hundred shapers here, and more at other nodes, as you call them. Once one shaper finds the way, others can follow. But one day we will learn to use the power this place bathes in. We will not fear your clankers then, human.’
‘That’s why you wanted our controllers!’ Tiaan exclaimed. ‘And me. You can’t use the field and you want me to show you how. I won’t. Never!’ Why, why hadn’t she taken that chance to escape, back at the ice houses?
‘Oh yes, you will,’ said Liett, with a glance at the amplimet. ‘You will beg to help us.’
FORTY-TWO
That night Tiaan dreamed the earthly structure of Kalissin Spire and woke afraid. The very crust of the world seemed out of balance here. The land was imperceptibly rising, returning to its elevation before the ice sheets had weighed it down. Below, the fluid mantle drifted, immeasurably slow, to compensate.
Her dreams spoke to Tiaan after she was allowed to touch the amplimet. The fields churned all around her, and she sensed another potential. Beneath the iron spire the magma had subsided, leaving an empty chamber. Cooling, shrinking rock had cracked in concentric circles around the base of the spire, which was sinking, unleashing geomantic forces of many kinds.