Chimaera (103 page)

Maybe the gate
was
all in the mind, and the way would only become clear if she could imagine the unimaginable – the hypercube the way it really existed.

Tiaan recreated her mental image, passing through the black walls into cubes which only led to more cubes, and more that lay back to back with each other or with the first, the one that lay open in the upper room in Nithmak. She looked out but this time did not see the room at all. Tiaan saw only stars and constellations entirely foreign to her. She tried to go further but could not get through.

She backtracked and went at what she thought was the opening again, but this time looked out on nothing but green: a dense, verdant, dripping forest. She couldn’t reach it either.

Tiaan retreated, knowing she was getting further away from what she was looking for. She dismissed the images from her mind, whereupon the hypercube flashed into view of its own volition. It only lasted a second but that was enough. It was there! She had seen it, perfect and complete.

Tiaan tried not to dwell on it, for the four-dimensional image was impossible to think about logically and she might lose it. And yet, her visual mind had done it, and now she saw a box that she had never seen before. Its walls were thinner than the others and Tiaan could make out shapes and lights through them.

She went closer. One wall showed a double sun and a field of stars sprinkled across black silk. Another, a roiling miasma like the solidification, in jelly, of a multicoloured field. A third was a pattern of dots, extending regularly in all directions. A fourth she could not make out at all until she went up close, when she realised that it was a fanged, horned and whip-carrying monster the like of which must strike terror into even the fierce heart of a lyrinx. Was she looking into the void? The fifth was equally obscure, until it resolved into an eye staring back at her. Tiaan jumped and the eye disappeared. It was her own. The sixth wall led back to the box she had just come from.

She withdrew, knowing that a long time had passed. It had grown dark while she’d been working and the moon was shining in through the glass. The tesseract was empty. She’d been looking for a device like the port-all she’d assembled at Tirthrax, but there wasn’t one. And yet, there had been that aura.

What if the box itself was the device? It hardly seemed possible; how could an empty box open a gate? But on the other hand, there could be anything in compartments which were there one time she looked and not the next.

Could the port-all be
all
in the mind, something she must also visualise? Perhaps that was the answer. It wasn’t hard to recall her earlier port-all to view, for she’d often done so, trying to analyse why it had gone so wrong at Tirthrax. In her spare moments she’d tinkered with her mental image of the device, using her new-found geomantic knowledge to make it perfect.

She recovered the image of that port-all, mentally dusted it off and placed it in the tesseract. Nothing happened, of course, for there was nothing to power it.

Tiaan inserted her best image of the amplimet in the centre, just as she had placed the real amplimet into the port-all in Tirthrax that fateful day nearly two years ago. There was no resistance this time, which made her feel that she was on the right path. Or so far off that …

No, don’t think negative thoughts. It seemed as though the port-all ought to be ready. She began to operate it as she had the original. A whip crack shook the building and cries rang out from below.

Tiaan ran to the glass. Lyrinx were running everywhere, though she could not tell from what, or to what. Not the gate, at least, for Tiaan had not set any destination.

Nor could she. She had no idea where Tallallame might be, or how to look for it. That was Malien’s job but Malien had gone in the thapter many hours ago, and might not come back. So what was going on down below?

She hurried down the stairs. It took precious minutes and left her knees weak. In the open area at the bottom she walked into an opaque sphere filling most of the space between the bottom step and the wrecked doors. Was it the port-all? She edged around the side of the sphere and looked out. There were lyrinx everywhere and not all of them had wings. The fleetest of the runners had made it in under two days.

‘Ryll?’ she called hopefully. He might not have survived. And if he had survived, he could still be leagues away.

Her call was taken up in deeper, raspier lyrinx tones.
Ryll, Ryll, Ryll
…

The crowd parted and he pushed through, his heavy jaw set, eyes staring. ‘Is
this
the gate?’ His hand motion was dismissive.

‘Yes, but I don’t know how to find Tallallame.’

‘Then
why
did you call us here? The water rises towards the base of the peak. We’re clinging to it like moths, Tiaan, and there’s no room left.’ His great chest rose and fell like a bellows, his skin flickered with barely suppressed panic colours. ‘In half a day – no, sooner – we’ll be lost. Rather would we have died of thirst in the Dry Sea than be drowned in the Sea of Perion.’

‘Malien knows where Tallallame is. Have you seen her?’

He pointed to the sky. ‘She’s guarding the tower, circling higher than the other thapters can fly.’

If Tiaan didn’t make the gate soon, the rapidly approaching Well would consume all the nodes as it came. It stood out against the night, its black-and-gold-threaded funnel reaching up to the sky.

‘Call her down!’ cried Tiaan.

Ryll rapped out a few words in his own tongue and a lyrinx leapt into the air. Tiaan watched it in the moonlight until it converged upon the thapter, which lurched and headed down as erratically as an autumn leaf falling. The other two thapters pursued it until a cloud of lyrinx swarmed up at them, firing crossbows. The thapters turned away towards the Hornrace and the lyrinx escorted Malien down.

‘Malien!’ yelled Tiaan as it settled on a hastily evacuated space. ‘I’ve made the gate but I don’t know the way to Tallallame.’

They diverted around the opaque globe. Malien gave it a curious glance. By the top, her lips had gone grey and she was cold and sweaty. ‘That’s not a climb I care to do again. Show me the port-all.’

‘It – there
is
no physical port-all. It’s a
mental
construct, Malien. I imagined the tesseract,’ so easy to say, so difficult to do, ‘put my image of the port-all inside it, inserted the image of the amplimet and it created the cloudy sphere you saw below.’

Malien looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know that I can work the way you do, Tiaan.’ She sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, concentrating hard. ‘Give me your hand.’

Tiaan sat beside her and extended her hand. Malien’s was unexpectedly hard. Nothing happened for so long that Tiaan found her mind wandering, projecting the rise of the waters and the terror of the lyrinx as it climbed up their chests. It was the curse of her visual memory that she could still see the faces of the two lyrinx who had drowned, pursuing her from Kalissin ages ago. The naked fear in their eyes would never leave her.

She wrenched her mind back to the gate and saw clouds, though they seemed to have more colour than any clouds she’d seen on Santhenar. The image shifted, the view looked straight up and she saw a green sky. Another shift; she was looking at trees from above. Giant trees and blue hills.

A swooping drop that left her stomach hanging over one of the branches, and they were at ground level. Blue grass waved in the breeze and there were flowering shrubs covered in red berries. Someone was whispering to her in a foreign language.

‘Tiaan!’ Malien was shaking her. ‘It’s Tallallame. Fix the gate in place and open it.’

Tiaan found it hard to let go of the vision, but did as she was told, remembering how she’d done it before in Tirthrax. And then a great roar echoed up from below, as from a hundred thousand throats.

Malien helped Tiaan to her feet, for she had no strength in her bones. ‘The gate is open. Let’s go down.’

Tiaan began to follow her, then looked back at the box. ‘But the port-all …’

‘It will stay open until you close it, or until the field is no longer sufficient to power it.’

At the bottom Tiaan smelled a sweet fragrance, as strong as citrus blossom. A gentle, humid breeze was flowing through the gate from Tallallame. The lyrinx waited outside, craning their necks to stare into the gate. The ones behind were standing up on their clawed toes, for just the tiniest glimpse of their new world.

‘I thought you would be gone already,’ she said to Ryll.

‘I would thank you first.’ There were tears in his eyes, and Tiaan did not recall seeing that before. ‘It is beautiful. The most beautiful of all worlds.’ He bowed, and at his side, even more surprisingly, Liett did too.

Tiaan gave him her hand, then took Liett’s. Ryll clasped Malien’s hand, Nish’s, and even Gilhaelith’s.

‘We will never forget this,’ he said. ‘Humanity has a side we never expected to see. Your deeds will be inscribed on the first page of our new Histories.’

‘Tallallame may not be such a kind place as you think,’ she said.

‘I’m sure it isn’t, but we’re strong. We will survive, and thrive, and rediscover our humanity.’

‘I don’t think you ever lost it,’ said Malien.

Ryll smiled at a private thought, then waved the first lyrinx towards the gate. ‘Ryll!’ said Tiaan.

He turned. ‘Yes?’

‘Your relics are still in the thapter.’

‘Ah!’ said Ryll. He held up his hand and the lyrinx who had been about to step through turned to one side. ‘We thought … when you did not produce them, we thought you had left them behind. Truly, you ennoble us all.’

‘Don’t stop,’ said Tiaan. ‘Precious lives –’

‘No lyrinx would choose to go through before our relics,’ said Ryll.

He selected an honour guard, who carried the three crates to the gate. Ryll stood to one side, his skin colours flickering, and Liett on the other, her wings upraised. Liett spoke to the people straining towards the gate, in her own tongue. Ryll did likewise. Then the guard ran though and vanished.

After that the lyrinx went through five abreast, as fast as they could be formed into lines. No more than five could fit at once and the gate could not be widened. It had been designed for thousands, not half a million.

‘This is going to take hours,’ said Tiaan.

‘If the field lasts,’ replied Malien. ‘Your people are attacking it furiously.’

They squeezed along the walls and outside, eyeing the funnel of the Well, which was larger than ever and lit up the salt, and one side of Nithmak, brighter than moonlight. ‘Is it coming at us?’ said Tiaan.

‘It seems to be.’

‘Could it be the gate attracting it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Malien.

They watched it in silence. Nish came up beside them. ‘How is the field going?’

‘Slowly fading,’ said Tiaan absently.

‘And if it dies?’

‘The gate will close and we’ll be trapped here, as will all the lyrinx who haven’t gone through,’ said Malien.

‘Can we do anything to maintain the field?’ said Nish.

‘No. The amplimet’s being used for the gate,’ said Malien.

‘Would Flydd really do this to us?’ said Nish.

‘There may be no Flydd any more.’

‘What?’ he cried.

‘He may have fallen all the way,’ said Malien. ‘Many mancers could operate the field controller.’

Tiaan had to put that possibility out of mind. She couldn’t cope with anything else. She went to the edge of the pinnacle and perched upon a rock, looking down. The lyrinx were scrambling up the steps and the sides of the peak, hundreds every minute, but there was still a huge throng at the base. Half the visible bed of the sea was covered with water now. Irisis came and perched beside her, spyglass in hand.

‘They’ve mostly reached the base,’ Irisis said. ‘Though there are still several bands of stragglers out there.’

Tiaan put out her hand. Irisis gave her the glass.

‘There must be hundreds of them, running for their lives.’

‘And they’re all going to drown,’ said Irisis.

‘But …’

‘We can’t do anything for them, Tiaan. Malien could barely keep the thapter in the air before she came down. She’d have no hope of ferrying them back now.’

Tiaan knew she couldn’t do anything either, for that would require using her amplimet. It burned hot between her breasts, drawing power for the gate.

‘If only we’d started sooner,’ said Tiaan. ‘Another hour would have made all the difference.’

Irisis shrugged. She wasn’t one to waste any time on futile regrets. They watched the islands of salt shrink around the two blotches of lyrinx.

‘Tiaan!’ yelled Malien. ‘Quickly.’

Tiaan knew what had happened before she got there. The field was fading, and once it did, the gate would fade with it.

‘How many are through, Ryll?’

‘Nearly twenty thousand. The gate has been open for an hour.’

Tiaan calculated swiftly. ‘So it would take a full day and a night for everyone to pass through.’

‘Yes.’

‘The way the field is failing, we have another hour at most,’ said Malien. ‘Better try to draw from another field.’

Tiaan attempted to, but the nearby ones were under the command of the field controller and the more distant ones were too far away for the amplimet to use.

The Nithmak field was still under her control. Perhaps it was difficult to seize it with the Well so close. Unfortunately the Nithmak node, though potent, was a small one and the gate was draining it rapidly.

She walked back and forth, muttering to herself, then came to a decision. ‘Are there nodes on Tallallame?’ Tiaan said to Malien.

‘I have no idea.’

‘I’m going through the gate.’

‘Tiaan, no!’

‘Why not?’

‘Tallallame is a savage place and you don’t know what the effect might be, on you
or
on the amplimet. Or the gate, if the device powering it passes through to the other side.’

‘If I recall the Great Tales correctly, Rulke’s original construct passed safely though to Aachan.’

‘But it might not have. Look how the Mirror of Aachan was corrupted on its journey.’