Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (44 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flushing.

‘What for?’

‘For so insulting you a moment ago.’

‘What about?’

‘Accusing you of being bought by Vithis.’

‘I might have turned you in, at one stage, but never for money. Anyway, you have a precious talent and I would prefer to foster that.’

Something
had
changed and, for whatever the reason, she had to use it. ‘Why would you jeopardise what you have here, for me?’

Gurteys put her head around the door, scowling at the pair, but at Tiaan’s words a convulsion of rage transformed her unattractive features. Tiaan shuddered. Gilhaelith turned toward the door but the healer had gone. More trouble.

‘The volcano could destroy it all tomorrow,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘That uncertainty keeps me vigilant.’

‘Vithis might also destroy you.’

‘In that case, I would be dead and it would not matter. All that matters, Tiaan, is my work. You are safe with me.’ He was staring at her bosom, oblivious.

She put her arms across her chest. ‘But what do you
want
of me, Gilhaelith?’

‘Not what you might be thinking,’ he said, belatedly realising what was bothering her. ‘I am a celibate. I have been so all my life.’

‘
All your life?
’ Tiaan’s own urges were strong, though she had not yet mated. For a man to live to his age and remain celibate seemed impossible, not to mention
wrong
. In her country, not mating at all was a crime. ‘Is there … something
wrong
with you?’ She blushed scarlet. ‘I’m sorry.
Again
.’

His face set hard. ‘I never liked any woman enough to consider it. I never knew
how
to like a woman – I’m not good with people.’

‘Did you have a strange childhood, like me?’

‘I suppose so. Certainly no one liked me. I was too different, and I refused to conform. I always felt that it was me against the world, a game I couldn’t win. Instead of fighting, I rejected everyone and played the game I was best at – numbers.’

‘I was different, too,’ said Tiaan, ‘though I didn’t want to be. I just wanted a proper family, like other kids had. I only have half my family Histories.’

‘I have none of mine,’ he said bitterly.

‘Who were your parents?’ she said softly.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He hurled himself from his chair so violently that she cried out and covered her face with her hands.

He stood over her, breathing hard, then rushed out of the room. Before she could work out what had happened he was back. Tiaan shrank into the pillow.

‘Forgive me.’ He went down on his knees beside the bed. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. I would not deliberately hurt any living thing. I … my past causes me pain and I find it hard to control.’

He was trying hard to be what he was not – a man who could relate to a woman. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

‘I was born of a dead woman, dragged screaming from a bloody corpse. I must have been the unwanted child of an important man, for I was carried away in the night by my loyal nurse. Far, far away we went, but she died of the plague when I was five, and then I had no one. I was brought up in an orphans’ home.’

‘I have a mother,’ she said, ‘but no father. He was killed in the war soon after my birth.’

‘A common thing in these times, to lose a father. I wonder about my own. It was hard, having no heritage at all, and being so different.’

Her eyes were on his but she said nothing, so he continued. ‘I spoke with my nurse’s accent, and I looked strange. The other children found me awkward and ugly. It hurt, but I learned not to care, for I knew I was cleverer than they. I could not play at ball-and-stick but I was better than my teachers at mind games. I pursued that world to the exclusion of everything else, until I became arrogant in my superiority. The other children were afraid of me – my first taste of power.

‘When I grew up, I wanted to play in the real world, so I took on the local merchants and traders. Before they knew what was happening, I had become immensely wealthy at their expense. Business was just a game to me, one I easily mastered. I knew everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, but I also knew the perfect time to buy and sell.

‘Within a few years, a whole city hated me, so, tiring of the game, I converted my wealth to gems, found a place where no one dared to live, changed my name and began to build Nyriandiol. That took forty years and I did not show my face in the world all that time. By then, my enemies were dead. No one knew who I was, not even the recently formed Council of Scrutators. I watched and played against them for years, and began to recognise a pattern behind what they did and said. But I abandoned that game as well – I was bored with the petty intrigues of humanity, ever the same, and always destructive.

‘By then I had no interest in rejoining the world, though I still traded, a good cover for my real work. I had become interested in the greatest game of all – the Art and Science of the earth and the heavens. The forces of geomancy: the natural processes that move and shape the sun, the earth, the planets and their moons.

‘Geomancy was the deadliest of all the Arts, but that gave it all the more appeal. The greater the risk, the greater the reward if I succeeded. I sought to understand, and then to master such forces. I knew that was an impossible dream for any mancer, though I had devised an entirely new Art – mathemancy – in order to do so.

‘I built greater and greater geomantic devices – my organ, my carillon of bells, my scrying globe – but mastery has always eluded me. The earth and planets are ever changing, and my knowledge of the forces that drive them must always be imperfect and behind the times. I could never learn enough.’

‘Is that why the amplimet so fascinates you?’ she asked shrewdly.

He hesitated long before answering. ‘It could help me to scry into secrets that no one has been able to uncover …’ He trailed off, deep in thought.

‘But if it is talking to the node –’

‘That would be something entirely new. Incomprehensible.’

‘What if nodes are the key? If a crystal can talk to a node, what would happen if a node talked to another node?’

Gilhaelith leapt up. ‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’

‘I just thought of the question. I don’t know the answer.’

‘Nor do I, but maybe I’ve been looking at the problem the wrong way round, all along.’ He sat, thinking, and did not move for ages.

Tiaan was still wondering about him. ‘You chose to be a celibate?’

Gilhaelith nodded. ‘I did.’

‘We have something in common. I am also a virgin.’

He rolled the word around in his mouth. ‘Virgin seems wrong applied to myself, but that is what I am. I do not regret it. It made an impossible life possible. I’ve lived a rich life of the mind. I wonder …’ He stared at her.

The admission built him in a new light, not so threatening. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I was wrong about you, and I apologise. Minis told me all you have done.’

So that’s why he had changed – he wanted to make use of her talents. Tiaan was not upset. Everyone had their place in this world and she needed to be a useful part of it.

‘I cannot make you walk again,’ he said, ‘but if there is anything I can do for you, I will.’

‘And, in return, what do you require of me?’

‘The amplimet has been overprinted with a new pattern, I think due to you. It’s too dangerous for me to use. Or anyone else.’

‘Or anyone else,’ she repeated. So whoever wanted the amplimet must have her too. A lifetime of being used. Still, it was better than the alternative. Why not cooperate, though she could not see Gilhaelith lasting long. All the more reason to get what
she
wanted – a working thapter she could take to the scrutators, and finally know that she had done her duty.

Could he be trusted? Tiaan thought so, but she had trusted Minis and would never be so gullible again. ‘Can the thapter be repaired?’

He considered the question as he paced. ‘My smiths have beaten the metal skin to shape. It’s not as fine as before, but it’ll fit. I’ve had them do some repairs to the mechanisms and left others I did not understand. Unless something vital has been broken, I expect it can be put right. I’ve a good workshop.’

‘I’ll help you,’ she said, ‘but I want the thapter.’

He took a long time to answer. ‘You may have it, but not the amplimet.’

His eyes met hers but she could not tell what he was thinking. Could the thapter be made to fly without the amplimet? Malien had thought so, though it would not be easy. Still, that was as good as she was going to get.

‘Agreed.’ She held out her hand.

He took it. ‘You shall direct the repairs. I’ll have a wheeled chair built for you, which you can move with your arms. Not as good as walking, but better than lying on your back.’

‘When can we start?’ she asked eagerly. Too eagerly. Control yourself, Tiaan. Don’t appear too enthusiastic.
Don’t trust!

‘The sooner the better, if you are strong enough. I’m afraid –’ He broke off and went to the window, looking down into the crater.

‘Of what?’

‘There is no power on Santhenar who will
not
want the thapter, once they hear of it, and I am not fool enough to think that it can be kept secret. Even
my
servants can be made to talk, if the reward is great enough. Or the torment!

‘And then,’ he went on, ‘there is
you
.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You are a great prize, Tiaan.’

‘A cripple who can do nothing for herself?’ she said scornfully.

‘An artisan with a brilliant mind; one who can solve a problem that has eluded the genius of the Aachim for two hundred years – the secret of flight.’

Tiaan did not doubt that she was clever, but she could not consider herself brilliant. Her mother, and her superiors at the manufactory, had always talked her abilities down. Besides, Malien had made the key discovery, not she.

‘It was mere luck; I just happened to have an amplimet.’

Having changed his mind about her, Gilhaelith would not be dissuaded. ‘And the ability to use it. Tiaan, you made a gate between the worlds. You are a master geomancer.’

‘The slightest prentice! I understood nothing.’

‘Ah, but when you are trained –’

This conversation made no sense. ‘I have no one to teach me, even should I want to study the Secret Art.’

‘Why do you think I built my home on the edge of this mighty and perilous volcano?’

‘I have no idea.’ Now she was staring at him.

‘I have studied the Geomantic Art all my adult life. I am its greatest master, and it’s time I took a prentice.’

This was moving too fast. But suddenly, though Tiaan had never thought about it before, she did want what he was offering. She had felt such fulfilment, using her tiny geomantic skills to save the lives of the Aachim. Using power to do good. Artisans were just craft workers and had to do what they were told, but mancers were a law unto themselves. Geomancy meant freedom and she would seize the offer with both hands.

Out the window, wisps of steam trailed up from a sulphur-crusted fissure. On the terrace, Gurteys was talking to a group of servants. They all turned and stared at her window. Tiaan looked away from their hostile eyes.

‘I’ve always been interested in such things,’ she said. ‘Since I was little I wondered what forces could be so strong as to cause the earth to tremble, and volcanoes to burst forth flame and liquid rock. Why
do
the tides rise and fall? I wonder about that, too.’

‘Then will you become my prentice?’ His voice was a trifle unsteady.

Gilhaelith was an enigma, one she was not sure she was capable of dealing with. She had seen him lie to Klarm and Vithis. Why would he not do the same to her? ‘I’ll think about it tonight. I … my life is changing so constantly that I can’t keep up.’

‘Make your decision in your own time. I have been waiting for decades.’ He turned his head. ‘What is it, Nixx?’

His seneschal was standing in the doorway. ‘I felt you should know at once, master.’

‘Know what?’ Gilhaelith sounded as if he resented the interruption.

‘We watched the constructs, Gilhaelith, from the entrance of a lava tunnel halfway down the mountain. They could not have seen us.’

‘Get to the point, seneschal.’

‘Near the bottom they stopped. Six Aachim got out, carrying large packs, and went into the forest. To spy on us.’

Tiaan shivered. Sooner or later she must be discovered. So little time; so much to learn. Seize the opportunity while you have it. She looked up at Gilhaelith.

‘I will be your prentice.’

N
ish spent the night before the battle lying awake, as no doubt Troist was too, and Yara. His vivid imagination told him exactly what would happen in the morning – bloody ruin! The lyrinx force was at least eight hundred, more than a match for their own force, even counting the clankers.

The troops were roused well before dawn, knowing the lyrinx liked to attack at that hour. They did not attack. The sun came out, swiftly burning off the mist that had formed in hollows and along the line of the creek behind them. There was not a cloud in the sky and the wind blew warm from the north. It was going to be a bright, hot day.