THREE

The woman stopped inside the door. She was taller than Tiaan, about the height of a human man. Her pale face was lined, though that took nothing away from an austere and ageless beauty. Large grey eyes held just a hint of green. The red eyebrows were fluffed with grey. Her small ears were perfectly circular.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said in the common speech. Her voice was soft, low and without accent.

No one spoke. Tiaan glanced sideways at Nish, who was staring at the woman, brow furrowed.

‘Who are you?’ he burst out.

The woman turned those ice-grey eyes on him. ‘I am Matah. I am Tirthrax.’

‘What are you doing in this lyrinx nest?’

The Matah laughed, which made her young again. Tiaan found a smile. Nish was not as clever as he thought.

‘Tirthrax,’ the Matah said, ‘is the greatest city of the Aachim on Santhenar. It is more than three thousand years old. No lyrinx has ever come through its doors. Nor has any human, uninvited, until this day. I am Matah of Tirthrax. You will explain yourselves.’

Nish jerked Tiaan’s lead rope so hard that she fell. ‘What’s going on?’ Flecks of spittle spattered Tiaan’s face. ‘Who have you betrayed us to, artisan?’

‘Release her,’ said the Matah, in a tone cold as chips from the glacier.

‘Keep out of it, old woman!’

Ullii let out a squawk as the Matah spread her arms then slowly brought her hands together in front of her. A tiny golden bubble drifted from one fingertip. Floating through the air, it struck Nish on the forehead, bursting with a spray of sparkles. He went rigid, arched his back and gasped. His teeth snapped closed on his protruding tongue. With a muffled grunt, he fell to his knees. A scarlet bead formed on his lower lip.

‘I asked you to release her,’ the Matah said mildly. ‘Please do so.’

Ullii hooked her fingers into claws. Her breath simmered in her throat and she looked set to spring on the Matah. Despite her anger with Nish, Ullii would not tolerate any attack on him. How had he come to inspire such loyalty? Tiaan could not fathom it.

The Matah turned to Ullii, reached out with an open hand, and smiled. ‘I will not harm him, little seeker.’

Ullii went still, confused. She looked from the Matah to Nish, to the Matah again.

‘Ullii, help me,’ he gasped.

‘Give me your hand,’ said the Matah.

Ullii was a mixture of emotions: delight and terror. She slowly extended her tiny hand. The Matah’s fingers wrapped all the way around it, holding the grip for a long interval. Ullii let out an extended sigh and bowed her head, smiling enigmatically.

‘Ullii!’ Nish wailed, but she paid him no heed. He strained against bonds he could neither see nor feel.

The Matah flicked those long fingers and Nish was himself again. She inclined her head towards Tiaan. Moving as if he ached in every bone, he untied Tiaan’s ropes. He looked frightened and she took fleeting pleasure from it.

‘What is this talk of betrayal?’ the Matah asked.

‘Ask her!’ Nish spat. ‘She sold our world. Tiaan brought an army of constructs here through a gate.’

For an instant the Matah’s self-possession left her. She clutched at the glass to support herself.

‘Constructs? Through a gate? Is that why the mountain shook yesterday? Explain, humans! Who are you and where did you come from?’

Tiaan gave their names, then began on a halting explanation. ‘I was an artisan at the manufactory near Tiksi –’

‘You’re a long way from home, artisan.’

Tiaan acknowledged that. ‘I made controllers for battle clankers, which are armoured war carts driven by eight iron legs –’

‘I know what clankers are. What about your controllers?’

‘Mine were the best.’ Tiaan said it without pride. ‘I could see the field more clearly than anyone, and I was better at tuning the hedrons. I began to have strange crystal dreams. I dreamed that a young man cried out for help, because his world was exploding with volcanic fire. His name was Minis.’

‘Minis!’ the Matah said sharply. ‘That is an Aachim name. An ancient one.’

‘Aachan was dying,’ Tiaan said, ‘and Minis with it.’

‘And so will we because of your folly,’ said Nish. ‘Why could you not do your duty like everyone else?’

‘I was doing my duty,’ she replied coldly, ‘until you and your slut Irisis had me thrown out of the manufactory, and all because I refused to bed you.’

Again the Matah turned those glacier eyes on Nish, who tried to stare her down, flushed and had to look away.

‘It is the duty of every one of us to mate,’ he recited, ‘to replace those who give their lives in the war.’

‘Not against her will, surely?’ The Matah’s voice was frosty.

‘The population is falling,’ said Nish. ‘Will has nothing to do with it.’

‘In the breeding factory they kept a bloodline register,’ cried Tiaan. ‘A stud book!’

‘Is this what the world has come to?’ said the Matah. ‘What happened to the great romance?’

‘Romance has nothing to do with mating,’ Nish said loftily. ‘Mating is duty, love mere unruly passion.’

‘And you had a passion for Tiaan, or was your lust mere duty? Go on with your tale, Tiaan.’

Tiaan explained how Joeyn had found that strangely glowing crystal in the mine, one that had seemed to be drawing power from the field all by itself, without ever needing to be woken. And she told how she had fled with it.

‘Minis called to me,’ said Tiaan, ‘when I was trapped in a blizzard, dying of cold. He taught me about geomancy, the greatest magic of all.’

‘A most foolhardy young man,’ said the Matah. ‘A wonder it did not kill you.’

‘He taught me just enough to draw power into the crystal and save my life. The Aachim called it an amplimet and –’

‘An amplimet?’ The Matah gripped the edge of the glass.

Tiaan nodded. ‘In return for my own life, I promised to help the Aachim. They asked me to bring the amplimet here to Tirthrax. After many trials, including being captured by the lyrinx and forced to help them with …’ Her voice cracked. She shuddered. ‘I suffer dreadfully from withdrawal when the crystal is taken away. At least, I used to before the gate was made. Using that weakness, the enemy forced me to channel power for their flesh-forming.’ She told that story, including the tale of the nylatl. ‘Eventually I managed to escape, using the crystal, and brought it here.’

‘Here?’ the Matah asked hoarsely.

‘Minis told me to give it to your people, but I found Tirthrax abandoned.’

‘Not abandoned,’ said the Matah. ‘My people have gone, en masse, north to our other city, Stassor. The war comes ever closer and they are meeting to see what may be done about it. They won’t be back until next year. It is a long and hazardous journey.’

‘By the time I arrived,’ Tiaan continued, ‘the Aachim were too weak to do anything with the crystal.’ She glanced at Nish, then away. ‘I had to save them. They told me how to assemble a gate-making device, which I called a port-all. I put the amplimet into the core of it, followed their instructions and created a gate.’

‘You made a gate, from here to Aachan?’ cried the old woman. ‘Alone?’

‘Yes,’ Tiaan said faintly.

‘Where is the port-all now?’

Tiaan moved close and whispered in the Matah’s ear, watching Nish all the while. ‘It is in the hall by the great glass gong.’

‘Ah!’ said the Matah. ‘Continue, if you please.’

‘I did all the tests and called Minis. The gate opened but the Aachim began to come through, in constructs.’ She described the sleek metal machines and the way they hovered above the ground.

‘I know all about constructs,’ the Matah interrupted. ‘I saw the first one ever built. How many were there?’