'Where are you going, little outcast?'

She glanced at the entrance to the long tunnel. 'The other lyrinx went up there. I have to find another way.'

'You are brave,' said the lyrinx, 'but I fear you will die just the same. There is a blizzard blowing outside. Or ...' Ryll tilted his head, giving her a cunning look.

'What?'

'You could come with me.'

'No!' She backed away. 'I know what you want. I'm not going to be a little grub to feed your hatchlings.' The thought nearly made her scream. She imagined herself lying helpless in a food chamber while its vicious young tore out her soft parts.

'We give birth, just like you,' said Ryll. 'Do you know so little about us?'

She knew nothing but dreadful rumour and what she had seen with her eyes.

'Besides, I owe you,' he went on.

'I do not wish to insult you again,' she said carefully, 'but how do I know you have honour?'

'I could have killed and eaten you a dozen times.' Ryll slammed his mighty fist down and his skin changed to the uniform grey it had worn into battle.

Tiaan backed away hurriedly. 'Now you reveal your true colours.' The pun was unintended, though it pleased her nonetheless.

Taking a crossbow and satchel of bolts from one of the dead archers, she fitted a bolt into the weapon. 'I could kill you.'

His skin faded to a sludgy green. Ryll slid sideways, his cheek striking the floor. 'I do not doubt it, in my present state,' he said hoarsely. 'Are you going to?'

Had he attacked she would have shot him, but while he lay helpless, watching her, she could not. At the mouth of the middle tunnel she took out her crystal, which was glowing as before. Ryll's eyes widened and Tiaan regretted her action. However, he did not move. He resembled a collapsed balloon, nothing like the flesh machines the lyrinx had been before the battle.

She hurried down the passage. After a few minutes' walking she was brought up by a body lying on the rocky floor. The head lay some distance away, only recognisable by its white hair the unfortunate Hants. The eye with the cast was staring at her.

Stepping around the corpse, she continued, shortly coming to a dead end. The tunnel stopped at a smooth rock surface. The light revealed a lever down low. As she pulled it, the door rotated, letting in a blast of freezing air. The sky was gloomy grey, the same colour as the landscape. It looked ominous.

The wind went right through her. The cold was the worst she had ever felt. An icicle began to form on her upper lip. Tiaan ducked inside to put on the mountain gear that had belonged to Joeyn's wife. The gift warmed her and she spent a minute, head bowed, thinking of her dead friend. Opening the door again, she peered out. It was was a blizzard and only the lyrinx could have made her go out into it. a blizzard and only the lyrinx could have made her go out into it.

The door opened onto a narrow ledge on a steep mountainside. To her left a spindly tree was just visible through whirling snow, maybe a hundred paces away. To her right the ledge disappeared into white. The manufactory should be on the other side of the mountain, though in this weather she could not be sure of anything. On the other hand, she dared not go back inside. She mentally tossed a coin. Left looked marginally more attractive than right. She went left and began to trudge up the ledge.

Beyond the tree she came onto an exposed slope where the wind was like needles of black ice. Tiaan looked down and could see nothing. Up was the same. Gritty snow blew horizontally. Forward and back, she now lost the path within a dozen paces. It could have been any hour of the day. Which way should she go? She had no idea. Her steps grew reluctant.

A wild gust thumped her against the cliff. It might just as easily have carried her over the edge. The weather was deteriorating rapidly. She moved on and knew that she was failing. If I keep going, Tiaan thought, I'm going to die.

She headed back. Better the risk of the lyrinx than certain death by freezing. It might might hold to its word. hold to its word. Might Might be a creature of honour. The cold and wind was indifferent. It would kill her and scream defiance over her body. be a creature of honour. The cold and wind was indifferent. It would kill her and scream defiance over her body.

Head down, Tiaan plodded into the wind. Snow clotted in her eyes, making it impossible to see. It seemed much further, going back. Surely she'd walked a thousand paces and still there was no sign of the place. Plod, plod, one foot after another. Trudge, trudge, ice crystals growing on her eyebrows, her ears going numb. Every step took an effort of will.

At last she saw the tree. The door could be no more than a hundred steps away. She counted each step to make sure. The weather had closed in, but even so, by the time she had reached ninety Tiaan expected to see the door. It should be a black hole in the grey mountainside. She went down a slope. One hundred, one hundred and one ... Had she left the door open, or closed? If it was closed she would never find it. Ajar, Tiaan thought, but it was difficult to remember. Her brain felt like a frozen sponge.

One hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two. She must have gone past it. She scanned the rock face but everything was crusted with ice. Could it have been two hundred paces? Tiaan could no longer remember. Maybe it had been. She kept going, but when she reached three hundred, she knew she had gone way too far.

Turning back, she soon found herself descending a precipitous slope she definitely had not climbed before. Again she turned but the path was icy and she'd only gone a few steps before her feet went from under her. She went flying through the air and buried herself in a drift.

Struggling out, Tiaan plunged neck-deep into another snow-filled hollow. She feebly scratched her way onto a ledge and foundered. An overhang blocked the way up. The snow was now falling as heavily as she had ever known it. It was a mighty blizzard and she would be lucky to survive.

Exhausted, Tiaan put her head down on the pack for a minute. The hedron dug into her cheek. She picked it out. It had a faint warmth. Holding it in her hands, she laid her head on the pack and closed her eyes.

TWENTY-FIVE.

In the days Tiaan had spent in the mine, a deep, subpolar low had formed four hundred leagues south in the Kara Agel (the Frozen Sea) which lay between the boomerang-shaped Island of Noom and the steppes of N'roxi. It roared north across the Kara Ghashad (the Burning Sea), funnelled through the gap between the Smennbone Range and the Inchit Hills, passed directly across Ha-Drow on the Kaer Slass or Black Sea, burying the city of Drow under two spans of snow, then, still gathering strength, screamed across the inland sea of Tallallamel heading north. After dumping more snow on Lake Kalissi, a meteor crater with a curious spire island in the middle, it hurled itself against the ramparts of the Great Mountains in Tarralladell.

The mountains pushed the storm east where it found a gap in the chain, climbed the pass and began to empty its load on the branching ranges. Somewhere south of Tiksi the storm collided with a warm front moving up the coast from distant Crandor. The wildest blizzard of the century was about to strike the eastern mountains.

The wind had risen steadily all day. Now it screamed around the side of the mountain, scouring loose snow up into clouds. Tiaan began to feel really frightened. Unless a miracle happened she was going to die here.

Tiaan was trained to survive in the mountains, but this place was going to get colder and colder until it froze her solid. A snow cave was her only chance but it was too late to look for a suitable place. The best she could do was try to close off the space under the overhang.

She dug her knife into the snow plastered on the rock face. The blade went all the way in. Carving the compacted snow into blocks, she stacked them to make a curving wall on the outer part of the ledge. It was hard work, but useful, for the face turned out to be concave. Though not quite a cave, it offered shelter above and on either side.

By the time Tiaan's knife-point skated across rock, she had closed in two-thirds of her ledge. The visibility was falling; two steps from her shelter she could no longer see it. She stamped down the drift next to her wall, hacked it into blocks and continued raising the wall. Finally it met the ledge above, sealing her in. The space, about four strides long but only two across, looked like a white sepulchre.

It was getting dark. She warmed her hands in her armpits, for the crystal had gone as cold as the rest of her world and was hardly glowing at all. If only there was a way to draw power into it to warm herself. She tried to sense out the field but found nothing. Perhaps she was too far from the node, though that seemed unlikely.

Tiaan ate another ration pack, this one an unidentifiable melange of dried fruit, nuts and suet. It lay in her stomach like a brick. After rubbing her feet in a useless attempt to warm them, she wrapped the fur-lined coat around her and leaned back against the wall, trying to rest without going to sleep. She found herself dozing a couple of times, jerked awake then slipped into a restless sleep.

Outside, the storm was approaching its climax. Snow fell as it could not have fallen since the last Ice Age, at half a span an hour. Across the range it reached halfway up the great gate of the manufactory, but here, piled against the flank of the mountain, it was much deeper. By midnight it was four spans deep and falling as fast as ever.

In her snow cave Tiaan dreamed only of cold. She could feel it seeping into the core of her. There was nothing but cold anywhere in the world. Nothing ...

Help!

At first she did not know where it came from. It might even have been her own subconscious. The cry slid like an icicle along her congealing synapses.

Help!

A long dreaming, a slow cooling, a slowing down of every process in her body. Imperceptibly it crept towards the point from which there was no recovery.

HELP!.

Tiaan shuddered in her sleep, slipping into a dream in which a single point of light moved slowly across a field of darkness. It left behind a few glowing specks. The point started another line, making a few more specks. Another line.

It was not until the hundredth line that her dazed dream-consciousness began to see an image in the specks. A series of horizontal lines, some verticals and two diagonals radiating up from one of the verticals. They made the sparest image that could possibly be made, though Tiaan's sluggish mind could see nothing in it but geometry.

Suddenly he was there. It was the young man on the balcony, his arms thrown up in entreaty.

'I'm here,' Tiaan croaked. Her mouth felt frozen shut.

He could not have heard, for there was no change in the image.

Help!

She groped for the globe, hedron and helm, checked that the crystal was in its setting and put the helm on her head, glacier slow. The frigid wire burned her skin but that did not register.

Tiaan played with the beads and the orbiting wires, rotating them into position after position, tuning the globe to the hedron. Suddenly, with the smoothness of two streams of oil merging, they were as one. The image of glowing lines vanished and the young man was there.

Who are you? he said directly into her mind, articulating every letter in that archaic mode of speech, W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u? he said directly into her mind, articulating every letter in that archaic mode of speech, W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u?

She spoke aloud. 'I am Tiaan. We spoke once before. I am an artisan from Santhenar.'

Show yourself to me, Tiaan.

Shyly, for he was obviously wealthy and of good family, while she was neither, Tiaan put together an image of herself. It was the one she had seen in the mirror at the breeding factory, after the attendants had done her hair and made up her face. That was was her, after all. Not the ordinary her, but Tiaan nevertheless. She felt guilty about the little deception. her, after all. Not the ordinary her, but Tiaan nevertheless. She felt guilty about the little deception.

Tiaan! he sighed. he sighed. You're beautiful You're beautiful.

She felt warm all over. 'What is your name?' she asked tentatively.

I am Minis, foster-son of Vithis, of Clan Inthis. First Clan!

She feasted on the image of him, so like the hero of her grandmother's tales. But he was in mortal danger, and so was she. 'I wish I could help you, Minis, but I am trapped.'

How? he said abruptly. he said abruptly. I cannot read I cannot read your your future future.

Tiaan wondered about the emphasis. Did he mean that he could could read others'? She explained her situation. read others'? She explained her situation.

Minis vanished and with a terrible pang of loss she slipped from her dream into half-wakefulness. Her whole body was shuddering with the cold. Her little cave must be buried deep. Tiaan did as many squats as her legs would allow, but at the end still felt cold, and a little drowsy. Was the air being used up? She attempted to enlarge her cave by tunnelling along the rock. She dared not remove any blocks from her wall. If the snow collapsed, it would pour in until it filled her shelter.

Ti...

Just the faintest whisper inside her head. Minis was calling her! Tiaan found the helm under a pile of snow, put it on and winced as the freezing metal seared her forehead.

Her fingers danced along the wires but she could not tune him in; her conscious mind knew not how to do what dream intuition had done previously. Tiaan panicked.

In her terror the loss of Minis seemed worse than the prospect of dying. She flung the wires and beads back and forth. It did not help. They were clustered together now and she knew that was wrong, but had no idea what arrangement had worked previously.

Tiaan lifted the globe and hedron above her head, shaking it furiously. She wanted to jump up and down on it until it was smashed into a tangle of wire.

Tiaan!

Startled, she dropped the globe. Her helm fell off and the little crystal rolled into the snow. She searched frantically for it. Everything was the same colour the rock, the snow, the grey ice between her boots, the crystal. Ah, there it was!

She popped it into the bracket. Now, if only she could get ...

Tiaan, stop it!

She froze at the peremptory tone, so reminiscent of Matron, Gi-Had and all the other authority figures in her life.

You're panicking, child. I can't find you.

Even worse was the word child child. She had been cursed by that title since the day she began as a miserable floor scrubber, six years old. For Minis to use it felt like a betrayal.

She tried to concentrate. She must.

'I'm here, Minis.'

That's better. Show me where you are.

Tiaan concentrated on a mental image of her cave, and then of the mountain slope outside. She knew it was fuzzy but could do no better.

I don't like it, came another voice, a woman's.

You're wasting your time, said a third, a flat, despairing male voice. She's going to die and so are we. It is written She's going to die and so are we. It is written.

Hush! whispered Minis. whispered Minis. Tirior, Luxor, not so loud. I read our time lines, so there must be a way. Tiaan, show us the devices you used to contact me Tirior, Luxor, not so loud. I read our time lines, so there must be a way. Tiaan, show us the devices you used to contact me.

She mentally imaged the helm and globe.

Incredible, said the woman. Where has she come by such artefacts Where has she come by such artefacts?

I don't know, Tirior. There was a mutter of talk in the background. Tiaan did not catch any of it.

Quickly, child! said the woman, Tirior. said the woman, Tirior. Where did you find these devices? Where did you find these devices?

'I'm not a child!'' Tiaan tried to sound mature, dignified. 'I made them.'

You made them made them? came the third voice, Luxor. How? Who are you? How? Who are you?

She said nothing. Tiaan was not going to be treated like a juvenile.

You're intimidating her, Luxor. It was Minis's voice. Please, let me talk to her. Tiaan, how came you to make such astonishing devices? Please, let me talk to her. Tiaan, how came you to make such astonishing devices?

The praise set her heart soaring. 'I am an artisan at the clanker manufactory in the mountains above Tiksi. Minis ...?'

What is a clanker? asked Tirior.

She described their construction, operation and purpose. 'I make the controllers that draw power from the field, to make them go.'

What are these clankers for?

'We are at war with the lyrinx.'

Lyrinx? cried Luxor. cried Luxor. How did this come about? How did this come about?

'When the Forbidding was broken, and Maigraith crossed the Way between the Worlds ...' She hesitated, afraid they would not know what she was talking about.