Tiaan quaffed her wine. The fumes went up her nose, her head spun, she had a vague memory of the Matah laying her on a pallet and drawing a cover over her, and that was all.
When she woke, the sun was streaming in through a glassed porthole high on the western wall. It was mid-afternoon. Tiaan stretched aching limbs and rose. Food had been set out on a stone table and a set of clothes laid over the end of the bed. Nearby was a bathing room. Pressing down the levers for water, she tore off her stained rags – clothes selected so she would look her best for Minis. Tiaan looked back on that morning, only two days ago but a lifetime away, contemptuous of the naive trembling girl she had been. She had been a girl, though it had been her twenty-first birthday. That person, that life was over.
With a shudder of disgust, Tiaan hurled her rags into a refuse basket. Taking off the plaited leather bracelet Haani had made for her birthday, she laid it carefully on the bed. It was her most precious possession now. She stood under the warm water, brooding. She despised Minis for his fickleness, his treachery, but most of all because she had loved him with all her passionate heart and he had been too weak to stand up for her. Love was for fools! She would never love again.
On the way back, she caught sight of herself in a metal mirror mounted on the wall. Tiaan stopped to stare. Mirrors were rare in her part of the world and she had never seen a full-length one.
Neither tall nor short, Tiaan had a slender yet womanly figure which the matron of the breeding factory had rated well enough. Her skin was her best feature – it was silky smooth and the colour of honey dripping from a comb.
Pitch-dark hair, cut straight just below her ears, framed a neat oval face whose most striking feature was a pair of almond eyes, so deep-brown that they were almost purple. In better times they'd had a liquid sparkle; now they were fixed in a hard stare. Her mouth, full enough to be called sensuous, was compressed into a ridge that hid most of her remarkably coloured lips, the reddish-purple of blackberry juice.
Tiaan jerked away from the image. Neither face nor figure had moved Minis in the end. Dressing in the blouse and loose pants the Matah had left, she took enough food and drink to satisfy her. There was a kind of bread, or cake, stuffed to bursting with dried fruits, nuts, seeds and candied peel, then sliced so thin that she could see through it. There were roses and other flowers crystallised with solutions of honey. The flavours were so subtle and the creations so delicate that Tiaan could scarcely bear to touch them. There were exotic vegetables, none of which she recognised, preserved in oil as red as cedarwood.
Having eaten her fill, she was at a loss. Her dreams of revenge were foolish; futile. That armada of constructs must be twenty leagues away by now. Feeling her resolve fading, she went looking for the Matah and eventually found her on the frigid balcony.
'Good afternoon, Tiaan,' she said, without looking around.
Tiaan stood there, uncertainly. The Matah patted the stone seat. Tiaan perched uncomfortably on it, for the cold went right through her trousers.
'What will you do now?' the Matah said softly.
'I must lay Haani to rest.'
'Where is the child?'
'I left her beside a great shaft that plunges down toward the mountain's heart.'
'What?' The Matah sprang to her feet. 'How came you to the Well of Echoes?'
Tiaan scrambled off the seat. 'N-Nish hunted me there. I meant no harm.'
'Be calm, child. You could do no harm there, though it might well have harmed you. How did you get into that place? It should not have been possible.'
Tiaan explained what she had done, and why. Coming up close, the Matah lifted the hedron on its chain but let it fall. She put her palms on Tiaan's cheeks, thumbs resting on either side of her nose, the long, long fingers wrapped around her head. She stared into Tiaan's eyes for a good while, then let go, shaking her head.
'There is something about you, Tiaan…'
'What?' Tiaan said uneasily.
'I cannot say, though it rings alarms. You are in peril. Either that, or you are peril. Come, I will take you to the Well.' The Matah dissolved the re-formed cubic barrier with a gesture and they entered the tunnel. Tiaan had forgotten the cold of that place, even worse than outside. The smooth-as-glass walls of the tunnel were networked with feathery patterns of ice crystals. The whole tunnel felt to be breathing cold, for little whooshes of wind would rush past, ruffling her hair, only to turn and blow down the back of her neck.
Even when the breeze blew from behind, Tiaan found it difficult to move forward. Each step proved more difficult than the last. How had she entered so effortlessly the previous time? The Matah, who had been only a few strides ahead, had now disappeared around the corner. Tiaan forced herself on. It felt like the time she had tried to put the crystal into the port-all, before she opened the gate and brought her world to ruin.
She had done too much and could do no more. When the Matah came back, Tiaan was on the floor, hunched up against the cold. The Matah lifted Tiaan to her feet, taking her hand, and at once the opposing force was gone. Tiaan followed her to the room and the Well.
Though the room was a simple cone of rough-cut rock, its magic was manifest. Deep blue light from the shaft cut through the dark space, highlighting mist that drifted in lazy coils centred on the Well. The air was so fresh and crisp it tingled with every breath. Scattered snowflakes floated above the shaft. One landed on Tiaan's sleeve and it was a perfect, six-pointed star, a crystal so lovely that she wished Haani could have seen it.
Haani lay beside the shaft as if sleeping. There was frost in her hair. Tiaan took her icy hand. The Matah went to her knees, probing Haani's chest with her fingertips. 'Poor child. Why is it always the young ones?' She seemed lost in some tragedy of her own.
Tiaan stood with head bowed, waiting silently.
Eventually the Matah turned to her. 'Is there a death ritual you wish to observe?'
'I don't know the customs of her people,' Tiaan said. 'As for my own, we bury our dead, but I can't dig a hole through rock.'
'Nor should she lie in the catacombs filled with our dead. Her spirit could not dwell comfortably in such a culture-haunted place.' The Matah circled the shaft.
Tiaan looked in. Blue tendrils rotated down as far as she could see. The Well seethed with power, like a spring under tension.
The Matah put one knuckle against her lip and gnawed at it, then bent to stroke the hair out of Haani's eyes. As abruptly, she stood up.
'Wait!' She strode off along the further extension of the tunnel.
Tiaan sat beside Haani, holding the frigid wrist, not thinking at all. After a long wait, the Matah reappeared with a basket in one hand and a roll of fabric in the other. Placing it on the floor, she offered the basket to Tiaan. It contained small bunches of cuttings from a black, glossy-leaved plant, at the tips of which were small flowers, purple outside and white within, crimped in the form of five-pointed stars.
'We Aachim cleave more to metal and stone than we do to gardening,' she said, 'but there are one or two among us who care for growing things. These are the best I could find in this part of the city.'
'They're beautiful,' Tiaan said. 'Haani loved trees and flowers.' Folding the child's arms across her broken chest, Tiaan placed a bunch of flowers in her hand.
The Matah unrolled the cloth, woven of a thread like metallic silk in subtle patterns of green and gold. They wrapped the child in it, leaving just her face exposed.
'I would, if you see fit,' said the Matah, 'send Haani to the Well. It is an honour accorded to the greatest of us after death, and occasionally taken before that, if we so choose.' She looked sideways at Tiaan. 'I do not know…'
'She is dead!' Tiaan said more harshly than she felt. 'She does not care.'
'The ritual is for the living as well as the dead. But only if you judge it fitting.'