Geomancer

S EVENTEEN

It was hard to judge the passing of time in the unrelenting blackness. When her hunger pangs became severe, Tiaan judged ten hours had passed. She took a small slice of corned goat meat, some bread and a rice ball, and slept. There was nothing else to do.

On waking, she ate an equally meagre portion of breakfast and walked up and down the tunnel until she was bored witless. Her lantern had run out long ago. Tiaan did not miss it; she was used to walking in the dark and if she did want light, the crystal provided enough to see by.

She sat by the entrance with her legs dangling down the shaft, watching and listening. The silence was broken every so often by the rumbling of the great wheels carrying up filled ore buckets, or taking the miners up and down the shaft. There was a lot of activity the day after Joeyn died, while the search went on.

The day after that the normal routine of the mine resumed. The passenger wheel was busy twice a day, at around five in the morning and at the same time in the evening, as the miners came and went. Once, she heard the thunder of a roof fall, which created little avalanches of grit along her tunnel.

Occasional shouts or greetings echoed down the shaft. Conversations could be heard from top to bottom. They talked a lot of old Joe, and sometimes about the war. There had been lyrinx raids all along the coast, some not far north of Tiksi. Mostly, though, they yarned about mining, of this seam where the rock was brittle and difficult to work, or that place where the lode was unusually rich but hard to follow through the rock, or about the risk of the roof falling. It was tiresome and repetitive.

Tiaan often thought about that page from the bloodline register. She recalled the image perfectly but could not decipher her father's name. She would have to find someone who had known him. If she ever got out of here.

Her thoughts kept going back to the glowing crystal and the strange field it had shown her. Just touching the crystal had been exhilarating, though the patterns of the field had stretched her brain to bursting point. Dare she make her new pliance from it? She missed it terribly, but if she used that crystal, would she be strong enough to handle it? It might bring on crystal fever. Maybe she should use the ordinary crystal instead, but what a pallid thing it now seemed. It had a dozen imperfections that would have needed attention, had she been in the workshop.

A crystal usually required careful cutting, then hours or even days of delicately attuning one's mind, in a state almost trancelike, before it was ready to be woken into a hedron. The glowing crystal had not a single flaw; she might have used it in a controller as it was.

It felt as if it had already been woken. She desired it all the more, but feared it too. Surely the crystal was destined for a great mancer who had the strength to control it and the vision to see its true potential, not a humble artisan. Uneasy now, Tiaan put both crystals away. On the third morning Tiaan heard nothing, which bothered her. The mine worked every day, apart from rare holidays, but there were none this month. Fashioning a hook from her toolkit, she tossed it up on a length of cord and pulled the nearest basket down. Carefully winding herself to the top, she peered over. There was daylight at the end of the tunnel and a crosswork pattern told her that the grid was down.

She edged to the entrance. It was a gloomy morning outside, blowing sleet. There was no one in sight. Something was wrong. It took her little time to pick the lock, ease up the grid and wriggle underneath. She headed through the forest up the steep slope to the manufactory.

It was hard walking in fresh snow. The path was unmarked, which was worrying. When she reached the edge of the shrubbery and saw the ugly walls of the manufactory ahead, Tiaan checked. The front wall was peppered with pale scars. Boulders clotted the road, while one of the great gates had been smashed off its hinges. Smoke curled up from inside the entrance.

The body of a lyrinx lay against the wall, one wing extended. Another made a dark blot to the left of the entrance. People milled about, keeping well away from the alien dead.

A lyrinx attack was the logical next step, she mused. Why wait until the clankers were complete? Controllers were easily concealed and conveyed elsewhere. Far easier to put the source out of action. No doubt the mine would be attacked next.

As she wondered whether she should declare herself, a tall, yellow-haired figure appeared. Irisis! Tiaan ducked into the bushes, but a branch snapped underfoot.

'What's that?' came a nervous cry from the gate.

'Lyrinx!' cried another. 'Kill it!'

Tiaan fled. Arrows whistled through the leaves. There were cries, crashes, then something shrieked through the branches above her. It was a 'screamer', a crossbow bolt with edges shaped so as to make an unearthly noise as it flew. The sound raised the hackles on her neck. This mob would shoot anything that moved and worry about what it was later; not that the death of a runaway breeder would worry anyone.

Her only chance was to outdistance them. Racing through the trees, she gained the track, skidded on a patch of ice, and raced on. Banners of fog wreathed across her path. It was getting gloomier by the minute. She hurtled around a bend and the cleared area appeared in front of her. Her pack was in the adit and she could not survive without it. The grid was barely visible through the mist. She ploughed through the snow, desperate to get to the entrance before they appeared. If she managed it, they might think the 'lyrinx' had gone to the miners' village. Tiaan jerked up the grid and rolled under.

As she slid it down, the mob burst out of the forest. Was she in time?

'There it goes!' It was Gi-Had's great bawling voice. 'It's got into the mine. Shoot it!'

Tiaan flattened herself against the wall. Arrows, bolts and screamers came through the grid, one striking sparks above her head. She grabbed the pack and, taking what shelter she could from the wall, ran back to the lift, leapt into the basket and wound herself down as far as it would go.

The basket slapped into water just below the ninth level. She threw her bag into the dark entrance. There came cries from above. A bolt plopped into the pool, followed by a rock that drenched her in stagnant water. If they pursued her down she was finished. Maybe they would not be so bold but she dared not take the chance.

Tiaan scrambled into the tunnel. Just as she put a foot on the shelf a rock went straight through the bottom of the basket. It began to wind back up. She rang the bell rope furiously. It stopped but jerked up again. Snatching out her knife, Tiaan hacked at the tough rope. She hung on with one hand, going up with the rope, but after sawing through three-quarters dared go no higher. She leapt free, onto the landing of the ninth level.

The rope moved, stopped, jerked again, then with a twang it broke. The short end whipped down, lashing the water into foam. The other end zipped up. Cries echoed down and she heard a threshing noise that must have been the wheel-housing stripping the baskets off. The rest of the rope, a couple of hundred spans, sizzled into the water. Silence came from above.

No way back. Tiaan gathered her pack, started to head up the tunnel, then realised that a length of rope might mean the difference between survival and death. She sawed off a length, looped the heavy stuff over her shoulder and set off down the tunnel to nowhere.

Tiaan walked all day, through the labyrinth of tunnels and cross-passages, many flooded, of the ninth level. Finally, when it must have been well after dark and she had heard no sign of pursuit, she could drag her weary feet no further. Probably she would starve down here. Missing Joeyn terribly, she spread out her coat, lay on the floor with her head pillowed on her pack and tried to sleep.

That did not work either. Her body was worn out but her mind kept turning on the possibilities, none of which were pleasant. The luminosity of the crystal swirled in front of her. Its brightness had not changed in the days she'd had it. Surely that energy could not be coming from within or it would have run dry by now. Not only was the crystal awake, it must be drawing power from the field without human intervention. If it was, it was different from any hedron she had ever heard of. Maybe stronger, too.

Placing the hedron inside her wire sphere, Tiaan adjusted the beads into a pattern that pleased her and put the helm on. She sensed nothing at all. She rotated the beads on their wires. Still nothing, which was strange. From any hedron she could pick up the field. With the power of this one, focussed by globe and helm, she should be able to hear the ticking of the earth.

Perhaps it was too strong; too raw. Or maybe it worked in a different way. How little she really knew about the forces she'd been tinkering with for the past eleven years.

Putting it away, she began on the other crystal, which required a good bit of work with her toolkit before it would fit the bracket. She snapped the crystal in, took it out again and inserted it the other way round, made sure the brackets were tight and lowered the helm onto her head. Brilliant colours exploded in her mind: swirling, twisting, running back on themselves, vanishing and reappearing. They became brighter, more lurid, until everything went a brilliant white in which she could see nothing at all. Tiaan lost the capacity to think, to see, to be.

The next thing she knew, she was picking herself up off the floor. The helm lay beside her. There were cramps in her belly. The glow of the hedron seemed brighter and a tiny spark now drifted down one of the central needles, vanishing as it came to the bubble.

What had happened? She could not think straight. Tiaan leaned against the tunnel wall. It took ages for the cramps to go away. Had the crystal always been that way? Had it lain in that rock cavity for a million years, waiting? She felt a deeper chill. How could she hope to control a device that had been its own master for so long? Those patterns would be crystallised into its very matrix. Such a thing was not for her.

Her stomach felt awful and it could only get worse. Freedom no longer seemed so precious. Freedom for what – to starve to death in the dark? Was this really better than being pampered in the breeding factory, pleasuring the clients and being pleasured by them in turn? Tiaan had overheard enough talk about the business from her workmates – they seemed to enjoy it.

Her life was out of control and she hated it. That was why she'd worked so hard at her craft. It offered control over her existence. As soon as she entered the world of emotions Tiaan floundered. Relationships were like a blueprint where the lines had faded, leaving only a jumble of meaningless symbols. Now Joeyn, the only person she'd really cared for, was gone.

The cramps faded. Leaning back against the wall, she slipped imperceptibly towards sleep. One hand groped across the floor until it found the helm. Tiaan slid it onto her head, where it perched rakishly over her ear. Her hand dragged the globe toward her. Clutching it against her chest, Tiaan's fingers moved the orbital beads on their wires. It felt good to be using a hedron again. Very good. She could never be parted from it. Volcanoes exploded. Congealing lava bombs wheeled through an acid sky, slowly fading to nothing.

Her slender fingers found new positions, rattling the beads back and forth faster than a merchant's abacus. The scene flashed into view – a colossal lava fountain, achingly beautiful. It vanished too.

Again she worked the beads and all at once the scene locked in, tuned perfectly to the man of her dreams. The balcony was white marble, stained ruddy red by flames not far off. His dark fingers gripped the rail and he stared at the distant mountains as if seeking an answer in eternity.

Help! he mouthed.

An age later the cry came to her, or its echo. Help!

'I'm coming!' she cried aloud, still in her dream.

His head snapped around. Who are you? Where are you?

'I'm Tiaan,' she said softly. 'I'm on the ninth level of the mine.'

Mine? He sounded uncomprehending. What mine? He spoke in a rough, attractive burr, though with a speech pattern she had never come across before. He articulated every letter – m-i-n-e; h-e-l-p.

'The one near the manufactory, not far from Tiksi.'

What is Tiksi?

In her dream, Tiaan wondered how intelligent this young man really was. But after all, it was only a dream. She knew that.

'Tiksi is a city on the south-east coast of Lauralin, on a spur of the Great Mountains.'

Lauralin? His astonishment could have been no greater if she'd said the surface of the sun. Lauralin? He let out a great roar that made her hair stand up. Are you speaking to me from SANTHENAR?

Goosepimples broke out all over her scalp. 'Yes, of course I'm on Santhenar. Where else could I be?'

Abruptly he disappeared from the balcony. She heard him say, Be praised, uncle, an answer! From Santhenar!

The dream ebbed away, to Tiaan's regret, and she did not get it back. She woke shortly afterwards, having tossed so hard that she'd cracked her head on the wall, leaving a painful bruise. She spent hours of frustrated wakefulness, turning the globe over and over in her hands, moving the beads into a thousand positions, but could not tune him in again. The young man was gone.

Tiaan slept, finally, and when she woke the dream was still there. It was definitely not a crystal dream for she could remember every instant of it, even replay it at will like one of her blueprints. It was seared into the fibres of her brain.

The young man was real, not some fevered hallucination. And that meant… Recalling her previous, sensual dreams, her cheeks grew hot. What if her dreams were also going to him? What would he think of her? Somehow that mattered more than anything.