a host of Aachim in thousands of constructs, mighty engines of war – the greatest army ever assembled on Santhenar. The rustic battle clankers built by human manufactories could never match such sleek, deadly machines. The Aachim must have been preparing for war long before Minis sent out his call. They had used her, betrayed her, and she had betrayed her world. Now she was paying for it.
‘She went that way, Nish!’ A high, colourless voice echoed in the great room.
Tiaan scrambled to her feet and the stair rocked as she took up her burden. Every step hurt. Three-quarters of the way to the top she looked down. Nish was running straight for the base of her stair. Letting out an involuntary gasp, Tiaan climbed harder. The triumph in his eyes, his crowing over her downfall, would be unbearable.
Finally, when she could not go another step, Tiaan reached the top. Glowing spheres lit up, pointers that would not allow her to hide. She was in an empty chamber with seven sides of unequal length. Aachim designs were often asymmetric. Small archways led through each side, though all the passages were dark. To one side of the centre was the most extraordinary set of stairs Tiaan had ever laid eyes on.
Five separate staircases arose from a slab of polished crystal one step high. Each stair spun out and up in irregular whorls, carving arcs through the air before looping back to the centre, coiling about the others and exploding out again. It was a ludicrous extravaganza, architecture for the sheer delight of it. The stairways were built of shining metal and faceted crystal, each different, and at the top they spiralled up into darkness.
It mattered not where they went; Tiaan could not have climbed them even if a nylatl had been at her heels. She did not think of laying down her burden. ‘I will never leave you,’ she had promised the dying child.
Below, Tiaan could hear Nish’s feet on the treads, his gasping breath. It was inconceivable that anyone could have found her here, but somehow he had. Why? She had been a fine artisan, the best in the manufactory, but not so brilliant that they would chase her halfway across the world. It had to be the amplimet: the strange, glowing crystal that had allowed her to reach across the void to Minis in the first place.
She became aware, deep down, of faint stirrings. Not withdrawal, just an indefinable longing for the crystal. She had been parted from it too long. Tiaan put the feelings out of her mind. If Nish wanted the amplimet, let him have it. It had been the cause of all her troubles. Dear Joeyn, the old miner who had been her first and closest friend, had died getting it for her.
The footsteps came closer. Taking up Haani, Tiaan staggered into the archway directly opposite. Spheres lit up, revealing a stone passage that curved away into darkness.
On she trudged, along a passage that seemed to have been curving forever. Tirthrax was unfathomable. It was as if she was inside an exuberant work of art, built solely for the pleasure of mastering its materials.
Her mouth was powder dry. She had not had a drink since opening the gate, a day and a night ago. Another passage slashed across the first and she turned left into it, but some twenty or thirty paces along, the passage ended in native rock. Or did it? As she headed back, from the corner of her eye the rock seemed to shift sideways into a cavity darker than black itself. She moved towards it, thinking it might be a place to hide. The blackness went back to rock.
Tiaan reached out with her free hand. Rock, unquestionably, but again as she moved her head came that flash of blackness, like a tunnel extending into the mountain. The moment she looked directly at it, it changed back into wall.
She turned her head back and forth. Blackness, wall, blackness, wall. Could she get through? There was an enchantment here and since Nish had no talent for the Art he probably could not follow.
Tiaan touched the crystal hanging on a chain around her neck – just an ordinary hedron — thinking it might help her to see more clearly. The rock vanished and a black tunnel opened up before her. She edged inside.
After several minutes, the blackness gave way to a faint glow which had no particular form, but quivered gently. It felt more like