Tetrarch

T EN

'No!' cried Tiaan. 'You can't.' 'Do you think I want to?' said Malien. 'No one knows better than I do, how precious it is. I know what destroying it would do to you, too. But should the Well unfreeze and break the bonds that hold it here, the consequences would be catastrophic.'

'How do you mean?'

'Possibly, no more Tirthrax – city or mountain.'

'How long do I have?'

Malien hesitated. 'I've sent a skeet to Stassor, but no Aachim could get back here in less than two months. The construct would be no quicker – the country is too rugged for a hovering craft. But with flight, it could be there in a week. I sense that we're close to uncovering the last secret of the construct. Dare I risk it? Come upstairs. I'm going to my eyrie. I need to think.'

Tiaan followed. Malien walked out the opening and stood staring down at the glacier. Tiaan watched, hoping and praying she would come up with something. Destroying the amplimet would surely drive her insane. To miss the chance of flight would be almost as bad.

Malien came running back, her cloak flapping behind her. Tiaan held her breath.

'You have until tomorrow,' said Malien. 'I believe I can hold the Well that long. If you haven't found the answer by then, we must come to a decision: to take the amplimet away, or destroy it. And I dread what will happen if it leaves here – whose hands it will fall into. The choice almost makes itself.'

'Please,' said Tiaan. 'I'll take it. To destroy it would be to destroy myself. Though I don't know where to go.'

'In that case, I may have to come with you. Get to work and I'll do the same, and tomorrow I'll decide what is for the best.' Tiaan studied the strong forces through her goggles. She had to know them perfectly before she could tailor the controller to them, and even then they would be deadly.

The hours raced by. She felt that she was making no progress at all. Malien came and went a number of times during the day, looking ever more careworn. Time was running out.

'No luck?' she asked that night.

'No.' Tiaan was exhausted too, but that was due to her own failure. 'How about you?'

'It's holding, for the moment. Let me have a look down below.' Malien went down into the construct. A good while later she came up with the black box in her hand. 'This surely has to be the key.'

'It isn't connected to anything.'

'The original must have been.'

'Then why didn't the Aachim's mancery reconstruct it?'

'Perhaps the vital parts were no longer there.' Malien seemed to be looking right through Tiaan to the far wall. She often appeared lost in another world, or a distant time. Or perhaps she was holding the Well from afar.

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' said Tiaan.

'I hardly know myself. I'm thinking as I go. The original construct was destroyed by Yggur's blast -'

'Completely?'

'There's little in a construct to burn, but its parts would have fused. The crystals commonly used in the Art would not melt, though they may have shattered. Traces would remain, enough for Aachim metalmancers to reconstruct what was there. And yet…'

'What?' said Tiaan.

Malien looked frustrated. 'I don't know. Rulke's construct flew. These are as exact copies as could be made, but they cannot fly. What did Vithis miss? What have I?'

Tiaan prised the top off the black box, which contained metal coils and shaped pieces of magnetic iron, as well as a number of evenly spaced ceramic plates on which were mounted rows of metal sockets. She held the box up to her eye. 'There are dozens of tiny little holes in the back.'

Malien raised the box to the light. 'Fifty-four of them. I wonder what they're for?'

'Perhaps it gets hot inside and they let the hot air out.'

'They're too small.' Malien counted the metal sockets. 'Also fifty-four pairs. That can't be an accident.'

'They're meant to hold something.'

'Whatever it was, all were the same size and shape.'

'Small crystals?' Tiaan said doubtfully.

'How could small crystals draw such power that the construct would grow red-hot beneath? And why was no trace found of them?'

'There are crystals that, when heated, simply evaporate, though none are any use in mancing…'

'That's it! Tiaan, name those crystals.'

'Ice, sulphur, iodine… There must be others, but none are good for making hedrons -'

'Some mancers use brimstone crystals.'

'Not for drawing power. It would shatter them.'

'Agreed. What else?' Malien leaned forward eagerly. 'What is the most powerful crystal?'

'Diamond, of course, but diamonds are generally too small to use in controllers. And large ones are too precious.'

'Not if they're the only thing that will do,' said Malien. 'And Rulke had the best of everything.'

'But diamond is the hardest of all. Why didn't they find it?'

'Because, unlike other crystals, diamond burns. That must be the answer: these pairs of sockets once held small hedrons made of diamond.'

'How were they connected to the amplimet binnacle?'

'Perhaps through these tiny holes in the back, no bigger than a cat's whisker? And look, there are also fifty-four holes in the back of the amplimet cavity.'

'If they were connected to the crystal there, why did metalmancers not recover the wires?'

'Because they were not metal, and also vanished without trace.'

'How can that be?'

'What wires would disappear when heated, Tiaan?'

'Ones made of thread, or spider-silk, or hair, though none are useful in the Art as I know it.'

'Nor I. Wait here.'

Again Malien disappeared in the direction of the storeroom. She was gone for ages. It was after midnight. Tiaan lay on the warm floor of the construct. Only hours left… Malien thumped into the operator's compartment, waking Tiaan from a deep sleep.

'Any luck?' Tiaan called. She went up the ladder.

'Possibly.' Malien opened a small case that contained dozens of pink diamonds, all the same, and a leather sheet wrapped around a black cord made of braided threads. She drew out a single thread. 'These are hollow whiskers made from soot, as is diamond itself. The whiskers are stronger than steel, yet they too would have burned leaving no more than a trace of smut. And the crystal calls to the whiskers, for elementally they are the same. It's a perfect geomantic design, just right for controlling the strong forces. Feed them through.'

Tiaan fed fifty-four whiskers through the holes in the black box and up to the cavity while Malien inserted fifty-four woken diamonds in place. They made a three-dimensional pattern that seemed peculiarly appropriate to the strong forces. Once the whiskers were connected, everything looked so right that Tiaan knew this was the way it was meant to be. It was so beautifully simple.

They looked at one another.

'Go on,' said Malien.

'I hardly dare,' Tiaan said. 'It was dangerous enough just scooting above the ground. I wouldn't know how to control it, using the strong forces.'

Malien edged her out of the way without repeating her offer. 'Then let me try.'

Tiaan was uncomfortable with that idea, and more so as Malien took the goggles and put the amplimet in. She hoped, selfishly, that the older woman would fail. If Malien could operate it, what chance was there for Tiaan ever to do so?

Tiaan pressed the amplimet down and closed the cap. The construct shook, rumbled and rose smoothly from the floor. Malien flicked down one of the finger levers and a blast of heat coiled up the sides. She pulled on the knobbed trumpet and the machine kept rising. She directed it around the ceiling, then took it down to the floor again.

'You knew what to do all the time,' Tiaan accused.

Malien had drops of sweat on her brow. It must have been harder than it looked. 'I did not even suspect it until you discovered those little holes.'

'Well, you've done it.' It was a momentous discovery, an awesome moment. The world would never be the same again. What was Malien going to do now?

'My people have sought this secret for two hundred years, here and on Aachan.'

'But they didn't find it. Is an amplimet necessary for flight?' said Tiaan.

'Probably not, if the hedron is strong enough, and the operator skilled.'

'Did Rulke have one?'

'I don't know. Your turn, Tiaan.'

'You're going to let me fly it?' It did not seem possible.

'Why not?'

'I just thought…'

'The trumpet-shaped controller works the same way, but you pull up on it to climb and push down to descend.'

Tiaan took hold of the knob. Her heart was pounding.

'Remember, do everything gently,' said Malien beside her.

Tiaan swallowed, then pulled up the knob the way Malien had done. The construct jerked into the air.

'Put it down, quick!'

'What's the matter?' Tiaan cried. 'What have I done wrong?'

Malien pointed in the direction of the opening.

Tiaan set the construct down.

A lyrinx was descending onto the rubble in the entrance. Another settled beside it, a third, and then many more, too quickly to count.