Hitherto Gilhaelith had paid no more attention to the patterning chamber than he had to the rooms where the lyrinx carried out flesh-forming and other dubious activities. Now he turned his attention to the growing torgnadr and realised that it was a node-drainer. And if the amplimet controlled such a device, it controlled all the power of the node.
A looming disaster for both lyrinx and humanity, but a fabulous opportunity for himself. It was the chance to learn much more about the amplimet, by seeing exactly what it did.
‘No progress today, tetrarch?’ snapped Gyrull.
Gilhaelith started and barely managed to control his face, but Gyrull had other things on her mind and kept going. The field was surging erratically and at present the freezing coils were too effective. The lyrinx had broken a number of matlocks, the metal going so brittle in the intense cold that the tools snapped on impact. It was retarding progress and had to be remedied quickly.
He went back to his work, keeping a wary eye out now. His scrying was a delicate business, for he knew not what the amplimet might be capable of, and did not want its attention to turn on him.
However, after several days of such work Gilhaelith grew bolder, for he was beginning to see the pattern. The amplimet seemed to be drawing filaments of force – almost invisible threads of gossamer – out of the field to itself, to the patterner and to many other parts of Snizort. Power did not flow along those threads, yet he could see faint pulses of light. Why this network?
‘Come, tetrarch, you are needed at the front,’ said Gyrull.
Reluctantly, he began to collect his gear.
‘Leave it! There’s no time. I’ll have it packed for you.’
Packed? Gilhaelith had no choice but to follow. He was not yet ready to break out and could not do it without hours of preparation, but her use of that word alarmed him.
The tunnel extended hour by hour, day by day. Cooling rings were spaced every ten paces along it, each with its mushroom-like phynadr maintaining the cold that kept them alive. The work was slower now; the broken tar had to be removed carefully in case they broke out of the frozen zone. Late on the tenth day of tunnelling, when they were nearly a hundred paces into the seep, Gilhaelith was called to try his scrying crystals again. His worries had proven fruitless; Gyrull still allowed him access to his tools, though only for a few minutes at a time.
In the middle of his reading, the pair of lyrinx at the face ceased their pounding and levered with a bar. A curving slab peeled away to reveal something lifelike embedded in the black material. Putting down his instruments, Gilhaelith went to see what it was.
It turned out to be the body of a wildcat, as long as Gilhaelith was tall, with a huge head and jaws that could have taken his leg off. It was so perfectly preserved that it might have been alive.
The following morning the diggers found another, smaller predator, more like a jackal, and that afternoon a wild bull with long curling horns. ‘The beast must have been trapped in the seep,’ said Gilhaelith, ‘attracting the predators which died the same way.’
‘Put two feet in wet tar,’ said the lyrinx to his left, ‘and you would not have the strength to pull them out.’
Gilhaelith finished his readings and this time did detect something. ‘That way.’ He pointed left of the tunnel centreline, down at a slight angle.
The lyrinx adjusted their cooling ring and continued. They encountered other dead animals as the tunnel slowly extended: once a pair of seagulls, another time a house cat, and then a pair of snakes the size of pythons, wrapped around each other. After that they continued in clean, glassy tar. By the fourteenth afternoon the tunnel was shuddering all the time.
As Gilhaelith walked back that night, a crack opened in the floor in front of him. A wedge of tar forced its way in, whereupon the lyrinx manning the nearest annulus worked her controls and extended the freezing zone. Another lyrinx broke off the solidified obstacle with a hammer. As Gilhaelith continued he saw other filled cracks. In some places there were more cracks than wall. The shell was barely surviving. The pangs in his belly grew worse.
Gilhaelith tried many times to get back to his own work, but Gyrull always needed him somewhere else, even if just to stand around and watch. At night he was escorted to his room to sleep, without his equipment, and a guard waited outside the door. She was taking no chances. Did she suspect what he was up to? Gilhaelith tried every argument to get his devices back but none availed him, and without them he was helpless. Most nights he lay awake, brooding and suffering pangs of colic. He could do nothing about that either.
He had not seen Tiaan again, and did not expect that he would. Gilhaelith had been touched that she’d cared enough to follow him, whatever her true motivation. She certainly had courage, unfortunately marred by an appalling lack of judgment, but he wished she’d stayed away. He cared about her. Not as much as for the amplimet, of course, but more than he cared for anyone else.
It probably would not matter, in the end. This expedition into the Great Seep was foolhardy in the extreme and the probability was high, his mathemancy told him, that they would all die entombed in hot tar. The lyrinx must have been desperate to attempt the venture. He could only assume that some potent artefact had been lost in the seep in ages past. If they were prepared to risk an army to have it, they must be weaker than anyone expected. Or it must be an object of surpassing power and usefulness to the war.
On they tunnelled, and on. Gilhaelith’s existence shrank to a stinking black hole. At night he dreamed he was still in it. They had reached the place his instruments told him to aim for, but found nothing there. The Matriarch was furious.
‘Your Art is less than I was led to believe, tetrarch!’ she said coldly.
‘I told you it would be difficult to find.’ Gilhaelith matched her glare, though inwardly he bitterly regretted the failure. If he had to die, he did not want it to be that way. ‘The Art is seldom exact.’
‘Search again. We’re closer now. Hurry!’
‘Mathemancy can tell me no more. I’ll have to scry with my globe and you must give me more to go on. What am I searching for?’
‘I cannot reveal that,’ she said.
‘Then I cannot help you.’ Again he held her gaze.
Gyrull’s breast plates mottled green, while her belly went a dull cream and her massive thighs showed tortured patterns – red threads writhing on yellow. Indecision, he thought. She needed to tell him, yet was afraid she would give something away.
‘We’re looking for the remains of the village,’ she said, working her arms vigorously, as if uncomfortable, ‘that was built over the tar more than seven thousand years ago.’
‘What was in the village? I must have something to scry for.’
‘There may be relics,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Instruments made of brass and precious metals …’
‘Anything else? Crystals?’
‘Perhaps.’ Even more reluctantly.
‘Crystals are easy to scry for, if I know the kinds.’
She knew but did not want to say. Then it came out. ‘Perhaps brimstone.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But that is the one crystal I cannot find.’
Her pupils narrowed to slits. ‘Why not, tetrarch? You claim to be a master geomancer.’
‘There is brimstone everywhere, here. The tar is full of it, and the hot springs all around.’
‘Try!’ she said coldly. ‘Without your globe.’
So she did fear him using it. ‘I will, but should I scry brimstone, remember that it could be anywhere.’
He did his best but, as before, the results were ambiguous. He calculated some random fourth powers, but they were no help at all. ‘If I am to help you, I must have my scrying globe.’