Tiaan clung to the controller k.n.o.b. Already the gift had become a burden. It was not hers at all, but then, how could it be?

'I feel so alone, and I've not a friend in the world.'

'Apart from me,' said Malien, with the most fleeting of smiles. 'And if you should ever need me, come back. Or send word.'

'I will,' said Tiaan.

She drew power and the mechanism whined into life, lifting the thapter above the floor. She turned it to face the opening.

'One last thing,' Malien called.

'Yes?'

'Take care. Whatever you do to Vithis, or Minis, will come back on you tenfold.'

Tiaan went rigid. Malien had known her purpose all along, and still had given her this marvellous thapter. Almost afraid to look, Tiaan sketched her a stiff salute and pushed the k.n.o.b. The thapter shot forward, much faster than she had expected, and she was hard put to control it as she careered toward the ragged opening in the side of the mountain. She lifted the machine over the piles of rubble, down again to avoid pendant slabs of roof rock, and out into the sunshine. A soaring eagle had to brake in mid-air and was sent tumbling by the shockwave of her pa.s.sing. Above the glacier, the thapter turned east and disappeared into the mist.

Malien stood watching until the mist concealed it. Already the pain of holding the Well had begun to ease, thankfully. She was near the end of her strength. She would just sit down for a while, then go up and renew the great spell that kept the Well shackled inside Tirthrax. In a way, it was was Tirthrax. Tirthrax.

Malien sat on the bench behind the remaining two constructs, following Tiaan in her mind's eye, and fretting about her. She was flying into a maelstrom and Malien could do nothing about it. If only she could have gone with her. Perhaps she should have sent Tiaan to Sta.s.sor. No, better to avoid that dangerous complication.

'I could not even protect my own children,' she said aloud. 'I could not save either of them.' That was the worst part, and it made her unexpectedly long life all the more bitter. A mother should not outlive her children.

Not wanting to start all that again the useless self-reproach, the futile dwelling on what might have been she forced against the exhaustion of body and mind and got up. Hard work would keep those thoughts at bay, for the moment.

Pa.s.sing by the port-all chamber, Malien recalled that she'd previously planned to check it. She spent an hour there and all the while her disquiet grew. Tiaan had a.s.sembled the port-all perfectly, so why had it gone so wrong? It took a potent, subtle spell to find out.

As Tiaan opened the gate to Aachan, the Aachim had stampeded up that spiralling ramp. All that was very clear. Vithis, realising that the port-all was left-handed, not right, and fearing it, had ordered his clan to stay back. They had ignored him and were first into the gate. In desperation he had s.n.a.t.c.hed control from Tiaan, but the gate had gone wrong, hurling all those inside it across the unknown void. The failure had nothing to do with Tiaan.

But the more Malien studied the port-all, and divined what had happened, the more she felt that she had missed something. Or that something had been carefully covered up.

It took hours of the most exhausting toil to uncover it, hours she could not spare. Malien was uncomfortably aware of the unstable Well, and the risk she was taking by not attending to it. But this might be even more important, and once started she could not stop her divination, else those hidden vestiges would vanish like smoke.

And at last she had it. As Vithis took control of the gate, someone had twisted the wormhole, linking it to Tirthrax, inside out. Just for a fraction of a second, but everyone inside had been lost: the entirety of Clan Inthis and some hundreds of other Aachim.

Who could have committed such a monstrous, genocidal deed? Could it have been another Aachim clan? She prayed that it was not. If it had been, Tiaan was flying right toward them. And if not, who on Santhenar had the power, and the malice, to do such a thing?

With a heavy sigh, Malien headed up the stairs to set the Well to rights.

THIRTEEN.

The thapter turned over the icefall and headed west, which was where Tiaan's troubles began. The controller jammed and the thapter kept turning until it was facing Tirthrax again.

She hovered above the blue, deeply creva.s.sed ice not far from the icefall, and disconnected the flight controls. As the thapter settled, clouds of steam hissed up all around. She worked the trumpet but could find nothing wrong with it. She hovered again; the controller was fine now. Tiaan checked the linkages from one end to the other. Everything worked perfectly.

Setting off, she turned and headed west, and again the machine kept turning. It was as if it did not want to leave, though that was absurd. As she drew more power from the field, for a fleeting instant Tiaan saw coloured streaks streaming toward the mountain, and swirling into it. The amplimet must be trying to keep her here.

She set down hard in a vast billow of steam, trying to work out how to overcome the crystal. It was not alive. It could not move or speak. Tiaan could not understand how to deal with it. What could an inert piece of mineral want?

The crystal had already been awake when Joeyn had found it in the mine. It might have been in that state for a million years, and who knew what slow intelligence might have developed in it over that time? Why would it want to free the Well? And what next? She did not dare imagine. Tiaan wished Malien were here to advise her. She thought about going back, but that might be disastrous if the Well had unfrozen further. And whatever the amplimet wanted, she should try to do the opposite.

This time she took off and drew all the power she could handle before flinging the controller over hard. The thapter spun so sharply that her vision went black, but still it turned the other way. She took it down to the base of the cliff and again hovered. Removing the amplimet, she put it in her pouch. Tiaan disconnected the carbon whiskers as well, just in case. Drawing power through just the hedron in its cup, the thapter would no longer fly, only hover like any ordinary construct. Turning west, she thrust on the controller.

The thapter moved forward, away from Tirthrax, without resistance. She kept going all day. It was slow travelling in the broken country at the base of the Great Mountains and she had to constantly detour south around boulder fields, mounds of broken ice at the bottom of icefalls, gorges and other obstacles. The hovering thapter could not rise high enough to cross them.

By the end of the day Tiaan was less than a dozen leagues from Tirthrax. She ate her dinner on top of the thapter, watching the setting sun, then locked the hatch and slept inside. Next day she continued, making better time across untracked snow and through spindly forest, and by the morning after, felt that she might risk flying again.

This time she felt no resistance when using the amplimet they were beyond the influence of the Well. Tiaan flew on. She was bound to the amplimet now, reliant on it, yet it could not be trusted. Would it do the same thing when next she approached a powerful node? Or would it betray her at the most inopportune time?

Tiaan knew what she had to do fly straight to the nearest large city, find its scrutator or army commander and turn the thapter over to him. Humanity must be in despair at the Aachim threat. The thapter would give them hope, as well as a weapon better than anything the enemy could field against them.

But every scrutator would know her name by now, and what she had done, for Nish's skeet would have reached Flydd many days ago. While a far-sighted scrutator might recognise her value, a vindictive one would see only a traitor who must be made example of. From what Tiaan knew of them, the vindictive scrutators outnumbered the other kind, so she would be gambling with her life. First she must do something to prove her loyalty and her worth.

She decided to shadow the fleet of constructs, find out where they were going and, if she could, what their plans were. That would be valuable intelligence and the best she could hope for. Revenge was out of the question.

It did not take her long to pick up the trail, even after all this time. So many machines travelling close to the ground had left an unmistakable path of beaten-down bushes and broken branches. Where they had pa.s.sed over snow, the crystals had clumped together like grains of sand.

Tiaan followed every winding league of their path. She did not have to, for she could have tracked them from a thousand spans up. But she needed time to master flying the thapter and time to think, though that only emphasised her inadequacies. She had no place dealing with the mighty she was quite out of her depth.

At night she slept inside, in the most secluded place she could find. Tiaan was not afraid, thinking that most folk would avoid the alien machine on sight, but she did not want anyone to know she was there. She saw few people the north-west quarter of Mirrilladell was an empty land.

The fleet had headed west from Tirthrax, following the rind of the Great Mountains. Some hundred leagues to the west, the mountain chain turned south, and here the Aachim had spent days searching for a way across. Tiaan followed their trails up one path and another, but all ended in country that not even constructs could cross. They could not negotiate steep banks or cliffs, rugged or very rocky land, nor climb slopes greater than one-in-one.

Finally they had turned south and, near a vast landscape of swamps and mires called the Misty Meres, the dwindling range broke into strings of windswept hills that allowed them through into the west. Ruined guard towers crowned the hills like grey teeth in brown gums, last remnants of the Mirrillim, an insecure people long gone.

Winter had not completely relaxed its grip in Mirrilladell but the lands beyond the mountains now rioted in the luxuriance of spring. A narrow road, the Moonpath, ran west between two large lakes before meeting a broader northsouth highway, the Great North Road. It ran north across Lauralin for hundreds of leagues, and south nearly as far. Here the force of constructs had separated. Near Saludith she counted five trails splitting off the main one.

On her tenth day of travel she saw the fleet in the distance, running north toward a rich land ringed by forest and mountain. The map named it as Borgistry, and just south of Borgistry she found their camp. The deciduous trees of the Borgis Woods were already springing into leaf.

It was night when she drew near, keeping low to the ground to avoid being seen, though that was unlikely. The pa.s.sage of the fleet had raised a dust cloud five spans high. On the other hand, they might have sensing devices that she knew nothing about.

Tiaan flew east then north along the Great Chain of Lakes, to the point where a scattered line of volcanoes thrust up through the skirts of the forest. Judging by the luxuriance of the vegetation, it was a long time since any of them had erupted, though several were smoking. Setting down her craft halfway up the slope of the nearest peak, Tiaan checked her surroundings, made a campfire and prepared dinner. From here she could soon tell if the fleet moved.

She did not sleep that night. The promise, or threat, of tomorrow kept her awake. And also, though she suppressed the thought each instant she had it, of Minis. He was a lying, treacherous man whose word meant nothing to him. He had betrayed her. And still the memory sent her heart pounding.

Before dawn broke she was in the air, meaning to conduct a reconnaissance over the fleet. Tiaan hoped that, at this time of the day, and high enough up, she could do that undetected. If she did nothing else, she could learn valuable information about the disposition of their forces.

Her hand shook on the controller trumpet. She wanted to render the constructs useless. Wanted to see the Aachim left helpless, abandoned, bereft. And she wanted Minis to suffer. Or was she following Minis because, despite what he had done to her, she could not keep away from him? Was she truly that weak, that pathetic?

Yes, she was. She was bound to him by hatred now, because breaking free would be even more painful. And she would never be free until she felt neither love nor hate, only indifference.

That realisation was a release of sorts, though she was not strong enough to put Minis behind her. With her emotions fluttering like a b.u.t.terfly in a cage, she cruised across the camp, high in the dark sky.

The machines were drawn up in a seven-sided array around an open s.p.a.ce, in the middle of which several large tents, and dozens of smaller ones, had been erected. The larger tents touched each other, leaving a shadowed s.p.a.ce in the middle. The area was lit by globes on poles and she saw vast selections of weapons, piles of supplies, and ranks of soldiers practising battle manoeuvres or firing at targets. They were preparing for war.

As she pa.s.sed across the centre, Tiaan sensed a great distortion in the field, as if it was being warped by something centred on the array of constructs. Some device there was drawing mighty amounts of power, even more than the gate had taken. They must be testing some new kind of weapon. She had to get a better look.

Five larger constructs were near the main tents but the warping was not coming from them. Perhaps from one of the tents? The field distortion was spiralling in like a whirlpool. Was it some terrible weapon they had developed on their own world?

The whirlpool pulled her in one direction as she pa.s.sed over the large tents, then pushed her hard the other way. Incredibly, it seemed to be interfering with the controller. She looked down into the s.p.a.ce walled around by the tents. What was that? What was that?

Spinning the thapter around, she headed back, aiming to go right over the walled s.p.a.ce. Again the warp wrenched her off course, though this time she managed to correct enough to see down. Peering through her fingers, she looked into a whirling red h.e.l.l, like a captured tornado, that distorted everything around it. As she went over it, a rod of blue light burst forth from the centre of the red h.e.l.l, like a searchlight.

For an instant she thought she was being attacked, but the light angled away into the heavens as if searching the very void. It blinked on and off many times, then vanished. Were they signalling the other fleets to war? She had to go to the scrutators now.

Tiaan turned the thapter away from the camp, climbing toward the safety of a ridge of cloud. As she did, the sun rose and its first bright ray highlighted the thapter, a spark curving across the pale sky. She prayed that no one would notice, but a crowd of Aachim ran into the open, pointing to the sky, and a series of streaks rose up. Before they even knew who she was, they were shooting at her.

Since she'd been discovered, she might as well learn as much as she could about that strange device. Such intelligence could be vital. Flinging the front of the thapter down, she headed towards the largest tent, which was rapidly emptying. More glowing spheres came on, lighting up the clear area as bright as day.

A group of Aachim converged on a tall lean man, the last to exit the tent. Tiaan recognised Vithis instantly. He had a spygla.s.s trained on her. Vithis reeled backwards, gesturing furiously to the guards behind him. He must have recognised her. Two soldiers raised a kind of heavy crossbow to their shoulders and fired. Tiaan hurled the controller sideways, skidding across the sky.

A bolt slammed into the machine just behind her head. Others struck the outside with a clatter like hail on metal. She had done nothing to them, yet they were trying to kill her, just as they had killed Haani. b.l.o.o.d.y rage exploded and all her resolutions, her promises to Malien, went over the side. Vithis or her, it was time to end it. Flinging the thapter about, she went low to the ground and hurtled up between the rows of constructs. Aachim, running everywhere, threw themselves out of the way.

She roared through the open centre, coming at Vithis's command tent from the rear. Guards were shouting and loading weapons. More bolts struck the thapter. Tiaan went left, right, left, then saw Vithis straight ahead. She slammed the trumpet lever forward as far as it would go. Acceleration thrust her backwards and the thapter hurtled straight toward the leader of Clan Inthis.

Just before she hit, Tiaan realised that Minis was behind him. Vithis hurled Minis to his left and tried to go the other way, but the slick metal skin of the thapter caught the clan leader on the hip, sending him tumbling across the ground. She tried to turn but the tent came up too quickly. The thapter crashed through it, fabric wrapping itself around the machine. All she could do was pull up on the k.n.o.b and pray.

The thapter soared, fabric flapping, ropes lashing the sides, then the wind tore it away. She looked back but could not tell whether Vithis was dead or alive. Alive, she felt sure. Directly below, she caught a last glimpse of that h.e.l.lish tornado, and the searchlight spinning like a top. Its blinking blue light struck the machine, a blast of heat and dazzle. Her mental control failed, the controller slipped off-plane and suddenly she was falling in silence.

Tiaan waggled the lever but nothing happened. The machine arced down toward a patch of trees on the far side of the camp. The impact would turn her to jelly. She could not see the strong force at all. Tiaan reached under the binnacle and popped the cap, thrusting her hand in until her index finger touched the amplimet. The field flashed before her eyes and the thapter whined into life. She climbed away from the camp while she tried to work out what had happened. The blue ray fingered the sky as if they were trying to cook her alive. She hurled the thapter around to avoid it.

The mechanism stuttered but came to life again. Was that ray interfering with the machine, or the field? She couldn't think straight. Why, why hadn't she slipped quietly away as soon as she was seen? Her attack had been an insult to the pride and might of the Aachim, and to Vithis personally. She had brought disaster upon herself, risked everything for a moment of self-indulgence.

This thapter, and the secret of how it worked, was worth a nation. Flight could win the war; the world. What warlord, general, scrutator or Aachim would not kill to get it? She was friendless in a desperate world, and every time she set down to sleep or buy supplies, she would be in peril.

The first priority was to get well away and pray she did not lose the field again. Then, find a general or scrutator, and give him the thapter as well as her intelligence about what the Aachim were up to. That was her duty and she must do it. And then plead for her life. What she knew might be enough to save her.

She headed north along the Great Chain of Lakes, which ran up through the Borgis Woods before curving north-west to the Sea of Thurkad, a couple of hundred leagues away. To her right loomed the southern arm of the Great Mountains. To her left, up ahead, stood the jagged white pinnacles of the Peaks of Borg. Between them she made out the vast elongation of Parnggi, second-greatest of the lakes. Cloud covered this area and she pa.s.sed into it gratefully, guided only by the thin disc of the sun above.

Tiaan felt numb. They had tried to kill her. Now that Vithis knew about the thapter, he would hunt her to the four corners of the globe. Everyone else would do the same. She was doomed. Why, why had she been so foolish as to let him see her? Why hadn't she heeded Malien's warnings? Every time she allowed her emotions to govern her, it made things worse.

The Aachim had shown that Haani's death was not accident, but policy. She wanted to hurt Vithis and Minis, to humiliate them and, beyond all else, to thwart them in their plans for Santhenar. Most of all, she wanted to repay Malien's confidence in her.

But first she had to find a scrutator and work out what to say. Tiaan flew on, making plans and rejecting each. All foundered on the same reef how to find the right person, and tell her story, without being attacked or seized as a renegade.

She finally pa.s.sed beyond Parnggi around the middle of the night. Moonlight showed her the way. Forest still clothed the hills in all directions, though through a gap in the clouds she saw clear land well ahead and, some way to her left, a cl.u.s.ter of volcanoes dominated by one much larger and taller than the rest. Its flanks were covered in dense forest, part of the endless Worm Wood. She checked the map. It was Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain. It seemed to call to her, but she would not find a scrutator there.

Further back and to her left she made out a road the Great North Road again cutting through a rich and fertile land that must be Borgistry. Its princ.i.p.al city was Lybing. Surely it would have a scrutator.

There was no way out of it. Time to give up the thapter, and herself. She moved the controller to turn left. It moved back to centre. She tried again but the thapter was set on its course and would not turn the way she wanted.

It was flying north-west, quite slowly, for as the day pa.s.sed it had grown ever more sluggish. Dense forest pa.s.sed beneath. The thapter seemed to be heading for the cl.u.s.ter of volcanoes; for Booreah Ngurle. What was the amplimet up to now? Whatever it was was doing, she could not prevent it, for there was no place to land. Nothing but forest in every direction. doing, she could not prevent it, for there was no place to land. Nothing but forest in every direction.

The moon was hidden now. At least no one could see her. Unfortunately she could not see either. She dropped low over the shadowy trees, still flying toward the distant mountain.

Twice more she tried to turn away, and twice the controls refused to answer her. Just after dawn, the thapter approached the peak of Booreah Ngurle. She saw a great building off to her left, on the inner rim of the crater, and tried to turn towards it. The controls jammed. Why had it brought her all this way only to thwart her again? The node, of course an unusual one here, a double with one centre larger than the other.

Her fury flared again. She was not going to allow it to master her this time, or ever again. Tiaan looked for a place to set down, planning to take out the treacherous amplimet and smash it against a rock, and curse the consequences!

The ground was steep here, extremely rugged and clothed in dense forest the worst possible place to land. Spotting a tiny clearing, Tiaan hovered above the trees, planning her route down. As she nudged the lever forward, the field vanished. The thapter fell like a rock and crashed through the treetops in a cloud of leaves and shattered branches. It bounced off a leaning tree and hit a fallen trunk with an almighty thump. Tiaan was hurled against the binnacle and after that felt nothing, not the fall down the ladder, nor the impact with the floor below.

A long while later she came to. Something was running into her eye. She wiped blood off her forehead. It did not feel like a major injury, though her head had begun to throb and her ears were ringing. She could not work out what had happened, but she had an alarming suspicion that the amplimet had cut off the field. She prayed that the construct could still be made to hover.

Tiaan tried to get up, and that was when she realised that things were badly wrong. She could not move her legs. Tiaan lifted her head. Her pants were torn from hip to ankle and there was a long gash on her thigh, but she could not feel a thing. Again she tried to move her leg. She could not even wiggle her toes.

Her back was broken.

PART TWO.

REFUGEE.

FOURTEEN.

Nish checked the balloon, which was nearly inflated. He crammed in as much fuel as would fit and opened the damper all the way. Flames roared up the flue. Racing down the ladder he began hacking at the cane floor where it encircled the trunk.

'What is the matter, Nish?'

'Someone's coming!' He pointed in the direction of the yellow floater. 'Can you sense anything about it?'

'No, Nish,' she said, giving him sweet and loving looks.

He was too panicky to reciprocate. 'It can't be lyrinx, or you would see them in your lattice.'

'I can't see anything in my lattice.'

'What!' he roared.

Ullii slapped her hands over her ears, her face screwed up in pain.

He lowered his voice. 'What do you mean? Is it gone?' Had their lovemaking destroyed her talent? There were folktales about that kind of thing but he had always sneered at them.