Geomancer

T WENTY -F IVE

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.