Geomancer

F ORTY -F OUR

Ryll and Liett had solved one problem, but not the other. It was a killing strain to get their creatures to the size of a rat, but there the growth always stopped.

Tiaan was pleased about that. She did not like the look of the new creature, and the way it fed was absolutely terrifying. Once Ryll tossed in a live rat and after a few seconds of paralysed staring it tried to dart away. The flesh-formed creature was on it with a single bound and literally tore its head off. What would the creature be like if Ryll could grow it to full size? What was its full size?

There were several more crises in the following week. One day the creature began to race around in circles, snapping at its tail and convulsing as if it was trying to tie itself into a knot.

'Snizlet and rrhyzzik are trying to reject each other,' said Ryll.

'It's driving it insane,' said Liett, standing so close that her shoulder touched his. His broad hand lay on the shelf of her buttock. Their relationship had been transformed.

In the morning the animal lay on its side, panting. A line of sores had formed along the suture scar; red streaks radiated away from them. Tiaan could feel its pain as if it were her own. 'Put it out of its agony,' she begged. 'No thing should suffer so.'

'It's not going well, Ryll.' Liett slid her hand around his hip. 'What if we were to kill it, and build it anew?'

'The two haven't integrated yet.' Ryll slipped his own hand lower. Tiaan could not decide if she was fascinated or repelled by this public display. 'I think it would just make one, or the other.' He went to the cage. 'Tiaan, give me all the power you can. I'll try to force integration.'

'I don't like it.' Liett lay a soft-skinned hand on his arm. 'This risks burning insanity into its very makeup. Better to start again than create a creature we can't control.'

He looked deep into her eyes. 'Let's try first, shall we? If we fail we'll kill it and start afresh.' He pressed his hands around the cage but the field did not appear. 'Tiaan?'

She was still staring at the miserable creature. 'This is wrong. Let the poor thing die!'

'Make the aura!' he snarled.

'I won't help you any more.'

Ryll sprang across the room, furious in his wrath, and snatched the amplimet from her hand. One claw tore the skin of her palm and Tiaan felt an audible snap as her bond with the crystal was wrenched apart. It rocked her on her stool.

'No. This has gone far enough,' she whispered, staring at the bright beads welling up on her palm. This time Tiaan was held in a large spherical chamber at the bottom of the spire. It had no window and was stiflingly hot. The room was empty but for a bracket at the ceiling. Ryll hung the amplimet there and locked the door.

She sat on the floor, which proved so unpleasantly warm that she had to get up at once. Her eyes were drawn to the amplimet, hanging four spans out of reach and utterly unattainable. Withdrawal struck her in the face. Tiaan let out a wail of despair and longing.

Twenty-six hours she spent in that room, pacing back and forth. There was nothing to sit on, nothing to lie on. If she stayed in the same place too long her feet hurt. She did not sleep; could not; it was sweltering, and down here the amplimet emitted a harsh glare that she could feel through the back of her head.

Several times Tiaan dozed on her feet but the agony never stopped. It would just get worse and worse and in the end she would break as she always had.

On the morning of the second day she gave in. Rapping on the door with her boot, she said to the lyrinx who opened it, 'I will do it. Take me to Ryll.' The creature still panted on the floor of the cage. It looked thinner than before and so did Ryll, who had been working nonstop to keep it alive. Liett was not there; she had been called away to another project. Ryll often looked around as if to ask her something.

Tiaan climbed onto her stool and reached down for that source of power she had tapped before, the lines of force that surrounded and passed through the great magnets of the iron spire of Kalissin.

Over the past weeks she had gained some facility at drawing on that power, taking the barest trickle from it, though she was always aware that it was like filling a thimble from a waterfall. All around was power a billion times vaster than she could handle. One mistake and it would anthracise her.

'Hurry!' Ryll choked. 'It's failing.' He looked as if he was drying out inside. His skin had gone baggy.

She channelled power into the cometary iron strands, drip by drip. An aura sprang to life about the cage. Immediately Ryll looked less haggard.

They worked all evening, though Tiaan had no insight into what Ryll was doing. By midnight the red lines of inflammation were fading, the sores less swollen and scabbing over. They continued through dawn and the following day. Only when the sun was setting through a porthole did Ryll call a stop. The creature kicked once or twice then settled into sleep. The crisis appeared to be over.

Tiaan, after two nights without sleep, was so exhausted that she could not even take the helm off. She lay on the metal floor. It felt as if the channelling had worn parts of her away.

'Shall I carry you to your room?' Ryll said, bending down.

Pillowing her head on her arms, she snuggled down and closed her eyes. 'Perfectly comf…' Tiaan fell into sleep. Moonrise over a boggy plain. The luminous light reflected brassily off a hundred thousand little ponds, some no bigger than a tablecloth. Rushes threaded their way between them.

Tiaan was sitting on a reedy mound, the sole vantage point in that dismal scape. It moved as she did, like a sodden, floating haystack. There was no track through the mire; no escape!

A movement caught her eye, some way off. The reflection of the moon on one pond had been eclipsed momentarily, as if something had disturbed the smooth plane of water. She stared at the spot for ages. The blink did not recur, but as Tiaan resumed her watch there came another flash to the left of the first, and a third to her right. She looked behind her but saw nothing. All was dark there.

Turning back, Tiaan saw that the ponds were winking everywhere, the flashes of light and darkness getting closer. Whatever caused them was headed directly towards her.

The moon rose higher. A cool breeze made her shiver. Tiaan stood up, staring at the approaching streamlines. She caught the distant chuckling of agitated water, growing ever louder until it became a thrashing roar like the wind-driven paddle-wheels in the coastal fish ponds below Tiksi.

Then she saw it – an elongated shape diving into a pond not fifty paces from her mound. It thrashed across, thick legs moving like paddles and sending gouts of water high. The moonlight illuminated the translucent tips of spines. It resembled Ryll's creature, only grown monstrously large. An elongated head, an enormous mouth full of teeth, spiky sides and underneath, a spiked club for a tail. Worst of all was the glittering intelligence in its eyes.

Another creature left a trail across a nearby pond. They were everywhere, pounding toward the mound as if racing to get to her first.

She stood up on tiptoe. Now the dark behind her was cut by hundreds of phosphorescent trails. The moon reflected off bleached eyes and grey teeth. Tiaan whirled around and around. They were everywhere; thousands of them. She felt at her waist. No knife; no weapon at all.

The creature she had first seen was ahead of the others. It hurled itself into the pond next to her mound, sending up twin deluges. Mud and reeds were flung in the air. It was three times her size.

It reached the near side of the pond. The flat feet slipped on the wet stems of her mound. Claws snapped out, took hold, and it came out of the water in a rush. Its spiked snout gaped. It lunged. Tiaan screamed and woke up. It was just a crystal-induced nightmare, to be expected after such overuse of the amplimet.

As Tiaan stood, she saw something fingered in a beam of moonlight from the window. It was Ryll's creature in its cage.

Come closer.

She spun around, thinking that someone had whispered behind her, though the sound had been unlike any lyrinx voice. The room was empty. Tiaan approached the cage. The creature pressed its snout through the bars. Its eyes were fixed on her.

Closer, closer!

Tiaan stared at the little beast, which was like the one in her dreams, only small. It looked… She did not know what, but deadly.

Hungry.

Recalling the fate of the rats it fed on, she reached for a strip of dried flesh in a basket and held it out, carefully. The creature watched her, unmoving. It was not looking at the meat. Its eyes were fixed on her fingers.

Hungry!

Tiaan moved closer, reaching out until the strip touched its snout. She felt mesmerised by the eyes; the call.

It sprang, hitting the bars so hard that the cage jerked forward. The jaws snapped just a breath away from her fingers. She leapt backwards with a squawk and the forgotten helm fell off. Instantly the whispering in her head stopped, the mesmerising power of its eyes faded. The creature, vicious though it was, was just a wild animal.

It had bent the bars. Tiaan put a heavier cage over the first, weighed it down with a block of metal and went out. A guard escorted her to her room, where she locked the door behind her. Three times that night she woke in a lather and ran to the door, to check that it was still locked. Tiaan told Ryll about the incident, though not about the impulses it had put into her head via the helm. She did not want him to know that – he might be even more pleased with his creation.

The following morning she woke with a streaming nose and a throat so sore that she was unable to eat. She was confined to bed; there was no possibility of working.

Three days later, when she returned to work, Ryll's creature had grown to twice its previous length. It had a body the size of a small house cat, longer and thinner legs, and segmented armour plating through which the spikes grew. A reinforced cage was required to contain it.

'It's going wonderfully well,' Ryll exulted as she took her place on the stool. 'Come see.'

She did not move.

'Come on, Tiaan.' He took her hand and pulled. Her reluctant feet dragged across the floor.

The creature fell into a crouch, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on her. It began to hiss. The flattened spines erected and the neck skin inflated into spiked rings.

She stopped dead. It was trying to get at her mind and it felt stronger now. Had she been wearing the helm, Tiaan was not sure she could have resisted it. Hungry! was a whisper inside her head.

Ryll urged her forward by the elbow. She allowed herself to be drawn closer. No harm could be done to her while he was here. As Tiaan took the last step the creature launched itself at the bars. The cage, which had no bottom, rocked and might have toppled had not Ryll slammed a fist on it. The creature twisted and flashed for the opening but the side came down, pinning it to the bench by the tip of one spine.

Pulling away, it flung itself from one side of the cage to the other, letting out ear-piercing squeals of rage and frustration. It attacked the bars with its teeth, breaking several, then just as suddenly sat on what passed for haunches, staring at Tiaan. The look in its eyes made her catch her breath.

'It's a wild thing!' Ryll scratched his cheek cheerfully.

She was backing away when the animal protruded a rolled blue tongue through warty lips and squirted something at her. The fluid struck her brow, eyebrow and left eyelid, and immediately began to sting and blister.

She cried out, vainly trying to wipe the clinging, noisome stuff away. Ryll bounded across the room and heaved half a bucket of water at her face. The next second she was hanging upside down, her ankle clutched in his hand, while he scooped water and washed the poison off.

In a few minutes it was gone, though where the venom had landed was covered in fluid-filled blisters and the hairs of her eyebrow were falling out. Ryll sent a guard to her room for Tiaan's pack. She changed her clothes, washed the contaminated ones and spread them on the warm floor to dry. They continued their work. 'I'm afraid of this creature,' she said to Ryll that evening. 'It hates living things.'

'The rrhyzzik and snizlet aren't completely integrated. They're fighting each other; that's why its behaviour is so odd.'

It's more than odd, she thought. It's an obscenity, and I helped to make it. 'What if… you can't fix it? What if it turns on you?'

'Me?' He laughed. 'That little thing! I'd kill it and start again. It will be easier next time.'

She said nothing. If only she had pretended to be stupid from the beginning, this could never have happened.

An hour later the creature collapsed and began to twitch. The twitching became an epileptic thrashing that grew more violent every second.

'What is it?' Tiaan whispered. The sight was unnerving.

'Something has gone wrong with its brain,' Ryll replied. 'I'm not sure I can fix it.' He seemed more uncertain than usual, not a reassuring sign. 'I don't understand what the problem is.'

'Then let it die!' She prayed that it would, swiftly.

His face and throat went black, then green, then white. Was it anguish, resignation or resolve? Even after all this time she could seldom read his skin-speech.

'It's so close,' he whispered. 'Seventy years we've worked on this project. I know I can do it! Surely one more day will be enough.' His forehead blushed red and he seemed to make up his mind. 'Make the aura again. I have an idea.'

They went back to work, Ryll flesh-shaping the creature's brain, working in ways she could never understand, while she poured power into the aura around the cage.

He began to look haggard and baggy again. 'I need more, Tiaan,' he said in a cracked whisper.

'I can't safely give you more.'

'Then do it unsafely! I'm nearly there. I can't stop now.' There was a reckless gleam in his eyes.

Her head was burning, a bad sign. 'I'm afraid.'

'I'll protect you. Do it!'

How could anyone protect her from what she was afraid of? There was no protection. Setting the helm more tightly on her head, Tiaan tuned the amplimet to the looping fields surrounding the spire.

There was a barrier beyond which she dared not cross. Tiaan could feel the energy there, unlimited amounts of it, a great, worldwide field intersecting with smaller fields surrounding the spire. How to draw from it without taking too much?

As she considered what to do, Ryll let out a chicken-like squawk and crashed to the floor, where he began to twitch. This turned into a violent, uncoordinated thrashing. Had he driven himself over the edge, or had the creature taken over his mind? Should she stop, or keep going? What if she was just feeding power to the animal? Surely Ryll could stand more than it could. But could she?

Sensing out a minor loop of the field, she tapped it and a flood of power surged into her. Too much. Her head felt boiling hot; she grew faint and had to hold herself up with her arms.

Then, ever so slowly, a block began to dissolve, like a rock-salt door in the path of a flood. It softened, pinholed in the middle, and the current tore through it.

'Yes!' Ryll roared, kicked both legs in the air and lay still.

The creature screamed, the sound reminding Tiaan of a woman who had gone insane in the breeding factory. The little beast convulsed and tried to tear the spikes off its tail. Colours chased themselves across it.

Tiaan pulled off the helm. The flow of power ceased. She wobbled across to Ryll, thinking him dead. Strangely, that bothered her. They had been together for over three months, and in spite of everything, she liked him.

His lips had coloured an oily green, the rest of his skin fading to grey. He was breathing. She sat by him, wondering if she should run for help. He did not look unconscious; more like asleep. The creature lay on its back, legs spread like a dead cat, though it was also breathing.

Was this her chance? She staggered to the door. It was locked and her fingers weren't strong enough to work the fingerlock. She pounded on the door but it made little sound on the solid metal.

Tiaan went back to the bench. Ryll and the creature lay as before. There was nothing she could do. Taking up the globe, she saw that it was bent out of shape. Tiaan got out her toolkit and began to reconstruct it. The time passed quickly. It was good to be working with her hands again. She had not realised how much she'd missed that. When the job was done she lay on the floor and dozed. It was early morning when she woke and went to check on Ryll. He opened his eyes, giving her a warped smile. 'You saved my life!' His voice was a cracked rasp.

'A life for a life,' she replied more boldly than she felt. 'I hope you remember that.'

'I will.'

He looked across at the cage. Lyrinx smiles were always disturbing but this one showed more tooth than most. 'I believe we've done it, Tiaan.'

She did not respond.

'The snizlet and rrhyzzik have melded into one.'

The backs of her hands prickled. 'I only did it to save you; and myself,' she muttered.

'Look at the little beast. I don't know what you did, but it's worked. It may even grow to full size.'

She prayed that it would not. He trudged to the cage, but had to prop himself up on the bench. The creature was up on its back legs, gripping the bars. Its snout was cocked to one side as if listening. It was bigger than before, and leaner.

'I'm going to call it nylatl,' said Ryll. Reaching for the meat bowl he dug a hole in a piece of meat with one claw, pressed in a pellet the size of a grain of wheat and tossed the meat through the bars.

The nylatl stared at the food, turned it over and over on the floor and sniffed it carefully. Only then did it bolt the morsel in a single gulp.

'What are you doing?' asked Tiaan, keeping well back.

He held up his hand, watching the nylatl intently. After taking two steps the legs on its left side collapsed. It fell down; its eyes closed. Ryll prodded it with a piece of metal. It did not move.

He whipped off the cage, punched six tiny circles of flesh from the back of the creature and popped them in a jar of fluid. Ryll dug ointment from a jar with his fingers but, reaching over to put it on the wounds, he stopped, looking shaky. Resting both forearms on the bench, he said, 'Ah, I ache all over.'

A sharp pain cleaved through Tiaan's head. She lost vision for a second and in that darkness smelled the nylatl, a hot odour like slightly-off meat.

Hurt!

As her vision came back, the nylatl kicked one leg, flipped upside down and sank its claws into Ryll's arm.

Hate!

Before he could grab the creature it shot into the air and landed on his head. The back claws dug into his neck, seeking the joins between his skin plates. The claws of its front legs carved furrows across Ryll's long brow, going for the eye-sockets.

Ryll flung an arm across his eyes. The other hand flashed back, trying to rip the nylatl off his head. One of its poisoned spines penetrated his palm. Roaring in agony, Ryll snatched his hand away. Clear venom dripped from the spine. He tried again but the fearsome mouth took a piece out of his hand at the base of the thumb.

Hungry!

She watched, open-mouthed. Ryll tried to prise the creature off with an iron bar. It dug its front claws into his brow ridges and the rear ones into his neck, pulling its segmented body down over his skull like a cap. Venom began to seep from the down-pointing spines. Already Ryll looked disoriented. Soon those spines would plunge into his skull and inject their poison. Ryll would be dead and it would start on her.

Brains! Ahhhh!

Perhaps it was a paralysing venom and the creature would tear Ryll's head open and eat the contents while he was still alive. She watched helplessly as the nylatl tightened its grip.