Geomancer

HUNGRY! BRAINS!

The nylatl's thoughts crashed around inside her skull like a blind bat, full of incoherent rage. The forced integration must have broken its mind, but its was a deadly cunning insanity. The nylatl wanted to gouge its way into Ryll's head and take over his body as its own had been invaded. It wanted to make her suffer too, as it had suffered in the integration. And it wanted to destroy and consume, as its own nature had been destroyed and consumed. It was full of malice.

The spire's magnetic lines of force whirled about her, but even as Tiaan drew power from the field she knew it could not work. That power, the kind that had been used to create the nylatl and make it grow, only fed the creature. She had to have something different, stronger. So strong that the beast would be completely overwhelmed. No choice but to use her fledgling geomancy again. This nylatl could not be allowed to live. If it could overcome a lyrinx so easily, what would it be capable of when it was fully grown?

Down her senses went, to that hollow beneath the base of the iron spire of Kalissin, from whence the magma pool had retreated ten thousand years ago. The domed roof rock formed a series of concentric cracks under the weight of the spire, though the iron froth was still welded to the rock it had penetrated in its molten rise.

To make the roof fall was far beyond her powers, or anyone's. It might remain in place for another hundred thousand years before gravity finally pulled it down. But just the fall of a fragment into that pool in the distant depths would provide enough energy for her purposes. It might release more than she could handle, and then she would die. Tiaan hesitated, but only for a second. If she did nothing they would both die.

Ryll groaned, breaking her concentration. He was on his back, kicking feebly. His head was covered in purple blood. The bent arm still strained but he was failing.

'Help!' she roared, but no one could hear.

Bat's claws scored through her brain, the nylatl trying to stop her. The pain was excruciating. Tiaan could barely see though it, with her strange, three-dimensional artisan's vision, to that source below the spire.

Her sight began to break up. Pinholes appeared in everything she looked at. They grew larger and through each she saw a nylatl's staring eye. It was, despite her efforts, getting at her mind.

Her geomantic strange-sight passed through half a league of solid rock, scanning across the surface of the dome, seeking a piece so precariously held that the gentlest of nudges would release it. She tried one, then another, but the meagre skills the Aachim had taught her were not enough. Tiaan began to panic. She had no idea what she was doing. It could not work.

Ryll let out a ghastly, quivering shriek. She had to succeed. There – a small column of rock was jointed all around in a perfect hexagon, and it was almost cracked through at the top. She used what power she could gather from the fields but could not budge it. More! She drew more. Her head seemed to be boiling like a kettle. She felt the rock crack, but it did not fall.

Tiaan lost focus. With the mad shrieking in her head, and Ryll's cries and thrashing before her, she could not visualise the source.

Her eyes sprang open. Ryll's hand lost its grip on the nylatl and fell smack against the floor. The creature dug in its claws. One spine had pierced his scalp and was going up and down, trying to penetrate his skull. The nylatl's skin was striped in brilliant reds, yellows and blacks, like a poisonous caterpillar. Ryll flashed in delirious, psychedelic colours.

She could not waste a second. Tiaan found that hexagonal column again and suddenly she knew how to use it. The Principle of Similarity, one of the vital principles used by artisans, was the perfect choice here, for the rock column had the same shape as the amplimet. Power cascaded from the field into the crystal and she hurled it at the crack.

It parted. Friction held the column for a moment, and then it fell. She drew power from its motion, just a trickle at first but increasing as it accelerated into the magma chamber.

The bead of light in her amplimet swelled. A focussed beam burst forth. She directed it onto the nylatl. It was not bright enough to hurt it. Not yet. The nylatl arched its back. Ryll kicked weakly. The beam slipped off the creature.

'Don't move, Ryll!' She hoped his hearing had not closed down. Her head felt eaten away inside. The nylatl began to struggle desperately.

In her mind's eye Tiaan could see the column falling as if she was watching it in slow motion. It accelerated toward that glowing pool of magma.

Her head felt as hot as that magma; white heat licked down her backbone; every nerve fibre in her body was ablaze. Her senses were shutting down one by one. She could no longer feel her feet on the floor. The hot carrion smell of the nylatl vanished. Ryll's agonised wails cut off. The shrieking chuckle of the creature faded away.

Her sight began to break up at the edges; her eyes felt full of pinpricks. Tiaan clung grimly to sight; she must be able to see to aim. The last she saw, as her vision was going completely, was the nylatl arching up on Ryll's head, preparing to hurl itself at the real enemy – her!

The black column plunged into the pool, giving up its energy in a burst that blacked Tiaan out. She did not see the brilliant purple light that burst, fan-like, from the amplimet. She tracked the creature's leap through the field. Just the edge of the fan caught the nylatl, burning the ends off its spines and heating its skin to blister point. Its overheated muscles spasmed, hurling it against the wall so hard that it was knocked senseless.

She did not see the central pulse heat the wall to white-hot, until the metal ran down and puddled on the sloping floor. With an explosion of sparks the light burst through, carving a ragged hole to the outside. Tiaan saw and felt nothing. She lay senseless. The amplimet went out. There were shouts outside, the lock was forced and Liett scrabbled through the entrance, bent low, followed by Coeland. They stared at the destruction. A red pool of iron, large enough to fill a number of wheelbarrows, was congealing on the floor. Ash and cinders lay everywhere. The room was as hot as a sauna. Ryll crouched in a groaning, lacerated heap.

'What happened?' Liett shouted.

One of Ryll's arms twitched. Liett lifted his battered head onto her knee, wiping blood out of his eyes. She stroked his dull crest. He rolled his head and his eyes lit on the nylatl, lying against the wall. It was covered in pus-coloured blisters. Smoke curled up from several of the spines. Its skin was a bilious yellow. It looked dead.

'It tried to kill me, Liett,' Ryll gasped. 'Tiaan twice saved me. Is she…?'

Coeland bent over her. 'She lives.'

Ryll's eyes widened in terror. 'The nylatl moved. Kill it!'

The creature shot past them, hurtled through the doorway and disappeared.

'Sound the alarm!' Ryll choked. 'Find it, and destroy it!'

Coeland and Liett went after the nylatl. Ryll forced himself to his feet, glancing at Tiaan, who lay as before. He eyed the hole in the wall, saluted Tiaan with a shaky hand and went out. The door slammed. The lock clicked. Tiaan felt her senses coming back in the same order as they had disappeared. She tasted blood from a bitten tongue. Her scalp throbbed. She smelt lyrinx blood and carrion. And something else – fresh air on her face. Cold air!

The chance had come – the only one she'd get. She did not move as the lyrinx checked her, nor even as the nylatl got away and the two went after it. Only after Ryll had gone, locking the door behind him, did she climb to her feet.

The smell of freedom made her eyes water, or maybe it was the fumes. She opened her eyes and saw nothing. Tiaan almost panicked, then the room brightened as if a lantern had been turned up and her sight was back.

There was a gaping hole in the wall, large enough to get through. She put her head out. The metal was still hot but cooling rapidly. The spire, clotted here and there with rock, was steep, though not so steep that she could not climb down.

She had to take the chance even if she was caught within minutes. Tiaan stuffed her devices into her pack and threw it over her shoulder. A bare blade lay on the bench, the one Ryll had used as a scalpel. She took that too. The amplimet was on the floor. Tiaan pressed it to her lips, gave thanks for the miracle and packed it away. Finally she put a finger in a clot of Ryll's blood and wrote crudely on the wall, 'Two lives! My debt is paid!'

She doubted that it would stop the lyrinx from coming after her, but Tiaan wanted it to be on the record. If she was captured she would fight them to the death. Better that than be forced to collaborate again, even for Minis.

Laying a stool across the hot aperture, she crawled out and began to pick her way down. Tiaan felt hot and cold and shivery, an inevitable result of so abusing her talent. Still, she could walk, and climb, and defend herself if she had to.

It was further than it looked, and steeper. And much, much colder. After months inside the unnatural warmth of Kalissin, Tiaan was quite unused to the winter cold. Yet even the outside of Kalissin was considerably warmer than the rest of Faralladell. It would be perishing on the other side of the lake. Out of sight of the aperture, she put on her mountain clothing.

She hoped they had not yet caught the nylatl. With luck, not that she'd had much of that lately, it might be an hour or two before they discovered she was gone. Tiaan did not build up her hopes. The chance of getting away was remote.

She tried not to think of the nylatl escaping. Tiaan could still see the look in its eyes as it prepared to abandon Ryll and leap at her. She would have no chance against it, if it got out.

Not far to the bottom now. There was little likelihood of being seen from inside, for the windows were small and it was easy to keep away from them. Tiaan squinted across the lake but the mist-wreathed water blurred into the snowy shores beyond. There was no colour in this landscape. It might have been two leagues across, or five.

It was approaching noon by the time she made it to the bottom of the spire, which rose out of a collar of angular rubble clothed in dense broad-leaved trees. They looked quite out of place here.

The ground was warm – Tiaan could feel it through the soles of her boots. The air was too, though only near the ground. The wind blowing off the lake felt dank.

She negotiated her way through shoulder-high ferns. Cushiony mosses lay underfoot and the forest had a moist organic reek she had never smelt before, though she associated it with the warm forests of the north. It was not far down to the water. When she reached it Tiaan looked back.

The sun's slanting rays passed between the cloud layers to paint the dark spire in reds and browns. Halfway up she saw her ragged escape hole. There was no sign of pursuit. Perhaps Ryll, honourable creature that he was, considered the debt repaid. Had he given her this chance?

She turned away to cast along the shore for a boat. Tiaan felt sure there must be boats, for the diet in Kalissin normally consisted of fish, frequently fresh. She had to find a boat; the island was too small to hide on. She hurried along the edge of the forest, next to the strand. Even a log would do.

The sun emitted a gloomy, umbrous light that made the lake seem blood-brown. It was, Tiaan thought, the kind of light the afternoon sun would make setting through the reek and fume of a burnt city.

Her calves were aching. She'd lost fitness in Kalissin. Perhaps the lyrinx used lines, or nets, or even, unlikely as it seemed, scooped fish up from the air as a pelican did. She smiled. They would surely not waste the Secret Art that way.

Standing on the shore, she contemplated the sullen waters. Tiaan could swim, though she had not since childhood. She put one finger in the water. It was cold, but not freezing. She figured she could swim as far as she could see – about a hundred spans.

Walking on, she came to a path. Tiaan followed it up through the forest, peering into the dim undergrowth on either side. No boat. She crept along the upper edge of the forest and down the next path to the water again. No boat. What was she going to do? As she continued along the shore, something small and dark emerged from an open porthole at the very top of the spire and crept into the shadow. The nylatl had been hurt badly by Tiaan's blast and the impact with the wall. Muscles had been torn, armour broken. Its skin was weeping, the spines burnt to dribbling stumps and one rear limb dragged. The nylatl had an overpowering urge to find a dark space and hibernate for a month, while its body repaired itself.

It could not hide here. Even if it burrowed into the warm earth its enemies would find it. Besides, it had to feed first. It had to find the creature that had so damaged it, and the terrible crystal. It sniffed the air and caught a scent. The nylatl began the painful climb down.

Hungry!