Geomancer

T HIRTEEN

Tiaan slept and did not dream, to be woken after dark by Joeyn carrying wood inside. She yawned, stretched and sat up.

'Going to be a cold night.' He stacked the fire. 'Lucky you're not sleeping out in those rags.'

'Where did you put my clothes?' she asked, warming herself at the blaze.

'They're in the pack under the bed.'

She fell on it, pulling out woollen trousers, shirts, undergarments, socks and boots, a heavy coat of waxed cloth with a fur lining, brushes for teeth and hair, a few other personal items, the copy of Nunar's book, and at the bottom, most precious of all, her artisan's toolkit. She unfolded the canvas with its dozens of pockets, each containing a special tool. Tiaan remembered the day she'd finished making them. It had been the day she graduated from prentice to artisan. Her fingers lingered on the tools of her trade. She might never use them again but there was no way she could leave them behind. All her self-worth was represented by that small roll of canvas.

'Was there anything else?' she asked.

'Oh, yes!' He took a leather bag from behind the door.

She loosened the drawstring and opened the mouth of the bag. Feeling inside, her fingers encountered the helm and she had an instantaneous flash of the young man on the balcony, crying, 'Help me!'

She went still, looked up at Joeyn, began to say something then decided not to. Tiaan laid the helm on her lap, the globe beside it.

'Beautiful work,' said Joeyn. 'What are they for?'

'To sense out what was wrong with the controllers. The crystal we found the other day went in this bracket.' Just the thought of it set off her withdrawal cravings. She had to make another pliance. She was shaking with desire for it.

'There was no crystal in your room,' Joeyn said.

'Irisis would have taken it down to the workshop.'

'I wonder she didn't take these too.'

'They're made for me. She wouldn't want them.'

'There's something else.' Joeyn held a piece of cloth under her nose.

The smell made her step backwards. 'It's my headache balm.'

'Where did you get it?'

'From the apothek. The crystals gave me terrible headaches.'

'Are you sure that's where the headaches came from?'

'Yes. Why?'

'My grandmother used herbs and warned me against this one – calluna root. I could never forget the smell. It causes visions, fits, madness, and if you take enough of it, you can choke to death.'

'But why would the apothek put calluna in my ointment?'

'I don't know. He wasn't a lover of yours?' said Joeyn with a cheeky grin.

'I have never had a lover,' she reminded him primly. 'Anyway, I hardly know the man.'

'Perhaps he loves you secretly.'

'I doubt it. People say that he's… incapable.'

'Could anyone else have interfered with the balm?'

She wrinkled her brow. 'I was too busy to wait while he made it up. Hang on! Irisis brought it down. She wanted to be rid of me.'

'And now she has, and there's no way to prove she had anything to do with it. No way to unseat her either.'

''I thought…'

'She's your enemy, Tiaan. She'll never allow you to come back.'

Tears formed in her eyes. 'I don't know why I keep hoping. I'll go tomorrow, though I don't know where to go.'

'We can talk about that later. It's dinnertime.' He lifted the lid of the cauldron on the hob. A delicious spicy smell wafted out. Tiaan licked her lips.

Joeyn dug caked rice from another pot, shaped it into a raised doughnut on a wooden platter then ladled a good helping of stew into the centre. He handed it to her.

'I can't eat that much!'

'Of course you can. The only way to set out is with a full belly.'

'That's not till tomorrow.'

'It might be a long time until you get another meal as good as this one.'

True enough. She dipped her fork. It was a thick stew of meat and vegetables: rich, spicy and hot. Tiaan ate slowly, thinking about tomorrow. She was lost; just as lost as the young man of her crystal dreams.

Had they just been hallucinations brought on by calluna? Was the young man no more than the fantasy of a drug-addled brain? She could not believe that. The dreams were the only good things left in her life. Anyway, she had first dreamed of him the night before she got the balm.

Joeyn was gazing wistfully at her.

'What is it?' she asked.

'Oh, nothing really. It's good to have someone to eat with. I haven't, since my wife died.'

It was pleasant in his hut. Companionable. She felt at home here. 'I usually eat alone, too. I… don't know what to say to people, as a rule. They find me strange.'

'People are strange. Here we are, you just starting out in life, and me at the end of mine.'

'No!' she cried. 'You're my only friend, Joe.'

'Then you'd better make some more. Not many miners get to seventy-six. I won't see eighty, nor want to. What are your plans, Tiaan? I know you've something in mind, for you keep going all dreamy and vague, and smiling to yourself as if thinking of a distant lover.'

'I'm going to go after my dream.' She left it at that. There was no way to explain the young man, even to Joeyn. 'There's only one problem…'

He scraped up the last of the stew with a rice ball and popped it in his mouth. 'What's that?'

'I need another crystal, Joe.'

'Why?' He stopped in mid-chew.

'The helm and the globe are useless without one. It's… I suppose it's like not being able to find your reading glasses. You can see the words on the page but you can't make out what they say.'

He gave Tiaan a keen glance. 'Well, my roof props are still there. It wouldn't be too dangerous to get another, I suppose.'

'Any old crystal would do.' Tiaan was already feeling guilty. 'It wouldn't have to be a specially good one…' The craving was back again – crystal, crystal, crystal! She had to have another, whatever it cost.

'I don't suppose so. But on the road you'll be travelling, you'll need the best you can get.' He broke off abruptly. 'I'm going for a walk. I like to settle my dinner before bed. You'll want to change, and wash, I suppose.'

'Thank you.'

After the door closed she washed the platters and leaned them against the fireplace to dry. Taking off her layers of rag and gown, she bathed as thoroughly as she could with a bucket of water and put on knickers and singlet. Lying beside the fire, she pulled the rags over her and was soon asleep.

In the night she dreamed of the young man on the balcony and the catastrophe that had befallen his world, but this time the images were fleeting, hopeless, as if he had given up hope. The dream shifted into one of her grandmother's tales, of a young woman going to the rescue of her lover, only the young woman was Tiaan. She shifted under her covers, sighed and slipped back into the wonderful dream.

Tiaan stirred when Joeyn came in around midnight. She sat up, gave him one of those faraway smiles, and went straight back to sleep.

Shaking his head, Joeyn took off his boots and turned to his own cold bed. When she awoke just after dawn, his bed was empty. Tiaan dressed, glorying in her own clothes again rather than those hideous, confining gowns, and breakfasted on stew, rice and mint tea. Only then did she notice the chalk scrawl on a broken piece of slate near the door:

Gone down mine. Back by lunch. Keep a careful lookout, just in case. I left you a few old things. They were my wife's.

On the bed lay a jacket and overpants lined with fur and filled with down, and a sleeping pouch of the same material. They were better quality than anything she had. Tiaan thanked him silently.

The Tiksi watch could be looking for her right now. She packed, including one of the sheets. You never knew when a rag might come in handy. Knowing Joeyn would not have her set out on the road with nothing to eat, Tiaan wrapped a stale loaf, the partly used leg of corned goat, a handful of rice balls and a lump of cheese, and shoved them in as well.

Rubbing off his note she wrote her own, a simple Thank you, Joe. Her preparations completed, Tiaan checked outside and slipped into the forest. She climbed a tree that had a view of the path and the village, and waited.

It was a clear, windy morning and the wind intensified as the day wore on, shaking the walls of the hut. It was exposed in her tree; Tiaan was glad of her new clothing. Nothing happened, except for occasional people passing up and down the path. Noon came and went. Joeyn did not appear. Anxious now, she went back to the hut for bread, cheese and water, then resumed her watch.

A long time afterwards, when Tiaan was beginning to think she should go looking for Joeyn, a short man appeared, striding down the path as if he owned it. He wore the uniform of an artificer. It was the detestable Nish.

Could he be looking for her? News of her escape would have reached the manufactory by now. Her discarded garments were under Joeyn's bed but there was nothing she could do about them.

Joe had not appeared. She set off for the mine at a trot, trying to leave as few tracks as possible. There was no one in sight as she darted across the open ground and inside the adit. Lex was in his cavern, tallying quotas of ore on a slate. Crouching low, she made it past unseen, took a full lantern from the rack, lit it and hurried to the lift. She got into the basket and wound herself down to the sixth level.

Tiaan stepped out of the basket and took off the brake. If someone came after her, and thought to look, they might tell which level she'd gone to by the markings on the lift rope. Nothing she could do about that either.

Holding her lantern high, Tiaan made her way down the tunnel, praying that Joeyn was here. There was always the chance that she'd missed him, or he'd gone up to the manufactory first. Thus preoccupied, she did not give a thought to the unstable areas as she passed under them. What a change from her first time.

Not far now. She negotiated a tight squeeze, a gentle curve, and ahead were the triple dead ends. In her withdrawal Tiaan could sense the field strongly. She would tear crystal out of the rock with her teeth if there was no other way to get one. She ran forward, then stopped. The middle end was piled with rubble that had half-buried the props. Part of the roof had collapsed.

She moved forward slowly, hoping against hope. It could have fallen any time in the last two weeks. Then, as she swung the lantern, Tiaan saw a battered boot sticking out from under the rocks. She clutched at her heart.

'Joe?' she whispered. 'Joeyn?'

She ran around the pile. He lay on his face with one of the roof props across his back, weighed down with rubble the size of small boulders. Tiaan fell to her knees beside him. 'Joe?' She stroked the thin hair off his cheek. It was warm. Her heart leapt. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose. 'Joe?'

He gave the tiniest of groans, deep in his chest, and his eyes came open. 'Tiaan?'

'It's me!' She clutched his hand. 'What happened?'

'Want to send you off… best you could possibly have.'

She thought of that glowing crystal up the back of the cavity; the one she'd so coveted. He had dug out the vein at the front and dozens of crystals were piled against the wall. The craving urged her to throw herself on them, even with Joeyn dying here. She felt disgusted by her weakness.

'You shouldn't have, Joe. Any one of those would have done. How did you hope to get to it anyway?'

His eyes indicated a long pole with a wooden jaw on the end, closed by pulling on a string.

'Oh, Joe!' She stroked his brow. 'Let's get you out.' She began to toss the rocks to one side. Grit sifted down from the roof.

'Stop!' he gasped. 'There's more to come down, Tiaan. Maybe all of it.'

'I don't care! I'm not leaving you here.'

'Tiaan,' he gasped, breath bubbling in his chest. 'I can't feel anything from the waist down. My back is broken and I've burst something inside. I'm dying.'

'No!' she screamed. 'I won't let you.'

'This is the way it's meant to be. I'm a lonely old man. I've spent my whole life down here. Do you think I want to become a cripple who can't even wipe his bottom?'

'I want you to live,' she muttered.

'That's cruel. But I'd like you to do something for me.'

'Anything.'

'Take my belt off. I want you to have it.'

'I don't want your wretched belt.'

'Do as I ask, Tiaan.'

It was not easy, weighed down as he was, but at last she managed it. It was thick and rather heavy.

'It's a money belt,' he whispered. 'There's enough gold and silver in it to carry you a tidy stretch of your journey.'

'I'm not taking your gold,' she said stubbornly.

'I can't spend the gold where I'm going. I have no relatives left. Put the damn thing on, Tiaan!'

Shocked by his vehemence, she pulled it round her, found that it needed another hole to buckle at her small waist, and began to make one with the point of his knife.

'Take the knife too. It's a good one.'

Putting the belt on, she hung the knife from its loop. This was unbearable. Tiaan paced across the tunnel and back. Across again. Her eye lit on the pile of crystals he'd worked so hard to get. Picking out the best of them, she held it up. It did nothing for her craving, of course. It had to be woken first, and that would be a mighty job without her pliance. She squatted beside him. 'How are you feeling, Joe?'

'Not so good! I wouldn't mind a drink though.'

'I've got a bottle of water…'

'I don't want your bloody water. I'll die before I ever touch water again.'

Smiling sadly, she looked for his pack, which was propped against the far wall. She found the flask, lifted his head as best she could and held it to his mouth. He took in a small amount of the dreadful brandy.

'More!' He attempted a grin. 'It won't kill me, you know.'

'How can you joke about it?' She brushed tears out of her eyes.

'How can you not?'

She gave him a good-sized slug.

He gasped. 'That's better. This is the way I've always wanted to go, Tiaan. Would you bring my pick and hammer and chisel? I'd like them to hand.'

She laid them on the floor beside him.

'We've been together a long time, old friends,' he said. 'Let's go the last little step together, shall we?' His left hand extended to stroke the handle of his pick. 'You've served me well.' His eyes closed. He murmured a snatch of an old song, one that had been popular in his distant youth. 'Are you still there, Tiaan?'

'Yes,' she whispered, quite overcome. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

'Could I have another drop of brandy?'

She tilted the flask, although this time he seemed to have trouble swallowing. 'Joe?' She clutched his hand.

'Yes?'

'Is there any other way out of this mine?'

'Why?'

'They're looking for me. Nish the artificer went down to the village just as I was leaving.'

He said nothing for so long that Tiaan thought he must have slipped away. His hand was a rigid claw, clutching hers. She squeezed it and he spoke.

'There used to be a way out from the ninth level. A long, long adit that ran south to the Bhu-Gil mine. Its entrance was blocked up a long time ago, though it could have been unblocked since. We miners are a greedy lot; the things we get up to in our spare time, no one knows.'

'Any other way?'

'Not that… I know of. Not good, too many entrances to a mine. Gold just turns to air.' He gave a quiet chuckle. 'Probably flooded. Long swim, my girl.'

'Oh!' She remembered him saying that the other day. 'No other way out?'

'Who knows? Some miners are thieves, and the thieves don't tell the honest ones.'

That was not much help. 'More brandy, Joe?'

'Just a taste, to wet my tongue.'

She dribbled a little more into his mouth. It ran out again. His fingers stroked the pick handle, then lay still.

'Joe!' she cried. There was no answer. 'Joe?'

'Something for you,' he said in a whisper no louder than a sigh. 'Help you on your way.'

'I've already got the money belt.'

'Something else…' He tried to smile but the breath whistled out of him; Joe gave a little shudder and lay still.

He was dead. Tears swelled under her eyelids. Poor Joe, such a gentle, kindly old man. She kissed him on the forehead, closed his eyes and put his hand on the pick. As she did, something slipped out of his other hand, something that glowed faintly in iridescent swirls, like oil on luminous water.

It was the crystal she'd lusted after when she saw it up the far end of the cavity the other day. It was a bipyramid of quartz, blushing the faintest rose, but inside each end was a radiating ball of needle crystals finer than human hair. The two balls were almost joined down the length of the prism by longer needles, but there was a gap in the middle, a tiny bubble of air partly filled with liquid.

She picked up the crystal and light exploded in her mind, rainbow streamers that went in all directions, coiling, looping and whorling back on themselves endlessly. It was as if she was inside the field, but one unlike any she had ever seen before. Rather, there was more to it than before. Curves and circles and spheres appeared out of nowhere to drift across her view, constantly changing shape and size, disappearing then re-forming differently, as if she was seeing fragments of structures that had the wrong dimensions for this world.

The crystal was already awake – it had to be! It was ecstasy, not least because the withdrawal was gone instantly. It was disturbing too. Her head spun with the effort of trying to make sense of it all.

She had often seen rutilated quartz. It was common in this mine and many of the best hedrons were made from such crystals. But she had never come across anything as perfect or symmetrical as this one. It made her hair stand on end to think what, as an artisan, she might have done with it.

Tiaan wrapped the hedron in a scrap of leather and put it safely in her pack. Kissing Joe's brow, she took the flask. There was some bread and cheese in his pack. She ate that, sharing one last meal with her old friend, and saluted him with a tot of the turnip brandy. Laying his pack beside him, she took her lantern, leaving his to burn down in its own time, and departed without a backward glance.