‘What?’ said Malien, staring at him. ‘Do you mean it woke?’

‘It must have been driven to the second stage of awakening,’ Gilhaelith said grimly.

‘And it’s been quietly biding its time ever since. And now the destruction of the Well could have tipped it over the edge to the third stage – full awakening.’

‘What does full awakening mean?’ said Tiaan, looking from one to the other.

‘You don’t want to know,’ said Malien.

‘But surely it can’t do anything here, with the local nodes disrupted and its stored power drained?’

‘In full awakening, it can take power from anywhere. Tiaan, grab the amplimet and chuck it down to me.’

Tiaan went up the side. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Just do it!’ Malien shouted, her jaw muscles spasming.

As Tiaan went up, Gilhaelith began moving the pointers furiously on his globe. She withdrew the amplimet, extremely gingerly. It didn’t feel any different; indeed, the light passing down the centre was dull red and beating sluggishly. Nonetheless, just holding the crystal sent a shiver up her back. She’d seen what it could do, too many times.

She tossed it to Malien but Gilhaelith shot up like an unleashed spring and plucked it out of the air high above her head.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Destroying it isn’t the way.’ Gilhaelith sat it on the ground between the geomantic globe and himself, and resumed his rapid but controlled movements.

‘It’s the only way …’ said Malien, but did not attempt to take it off him. ‘Tiaan?’ She walked away across the hill.

Tiaan followed. ‘What’s he doing, Malien?’

‘I would have thrown the amplimet into the red-hot compartment underneath the thapter and let the heat destroy it,’ she said. ‘Assuming it didn’t anthracise me first. But Gilhaelith is a truly great geomancer; perhaps his way is less risky.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Tiaan, admiring the way he worked. The geomantic globe was the most perfect device she’d ever seen. The nodes had lit up all across it, and threads of light were inching out from a number of the brightest. She went back and walked around it, keeping at a distance. There were seven bright nodes. One represented the node at Alcifer, another Tirthrax, and a third one was near Nennifer. The others were spread across the world at places she’d never been.

‘They’re the controlling nodes,’ said Gilhaelith, carefully adjusting his pointers.

And perhaps the ones to be controlled, she thought suddenly. Or used to take control of all of them.

Gilhaelith looked around, gave a great sigh, as if of bliss, and began to work faster. All his long adult life, more than a hundred and fifty years, he had worked to discover the secret of the great forces that moved and shaped the world. His great project, he’d called it in Nyriandiol. After coming back from Alcifer he’d claimed to have given up the search, but clearly he hadn’t. That must be what he was doing now. He wasn’t trying to curb the amplimet at all.

Tiaan could scarcely believe it. Was Gilhaelith prepared to risk everything to satisfy his own lust for knowledge, at such a desperate moment? Truly, she reflected, humanity doesn’t deserve the Art. We simply can’t be trusted to use it wisely.

And then Tiaan came to a far less pleasant realisation. The geomantic globe was too perfect a model of Santhenar. As the small is to the great was one of the key principles of the Art. The Principle of Similarity was another. What if the amplimet took control of the globe? It would provide the perfect conduit to control all the nodes in the world.

‘Gilhaelith?’ she called.

He shuttled his hands back and forth, then came halfway to his feet, knees bent, plucking at the back of his head as if trying to pull out an errant hair. What was the matter with him? Gilhaelith gave a great shudder and sat down again, his long, gawky legs crossed. He resumed his work, more mechanically now, as if his joints had gone stiff.

‘Gilhaelith?’ she said sharply.

He turned his head jerkily, stared at her with glittering eyes and turned back to the globe. The controlling nodes began to pulse slowly, in unison with the pulsing of the amplimet. The threads of light were still slowly extending from them. And when all the controlling nodes were linked? What then?

Tiaan’s heart gave a painful lurch as she realised what was happening. ‘Malien,’ she shrieked. ‘The amplimet is taking control of him.’

Again Gilhaelith turned, more stiffly than before, but this time she saw terror in his semi-crystalline eyes. His mouth came open. ‘Help me,’ he said in a brittle croak.

If she tried, the amplimet would seize her as well, and Malien wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And then it would take over the world. Tiaan knew she lacked the strength to fight the amplimet, and didn’t see how she could destroy it. It would kill her first. But if she did nothing, Gilhaelith would die an excruciating death.

He forced back with all his strength, reversing the crystallisation agonisingly, but the amplimet’s power was relentless. ‘Tiaan,’ he gasped, ‘for the friendship that was once between us, help me.’

EIGHTY

Malien came running up, then stopped beside Tiaan, staring at the geomancer. She shook her head and drew Tiaan aside. ‘There’s nothing we can do to save him unless you’re game to snatch up the amplimet and toss it into the red-hot compartment. I’m not.’

Tiaan was remembering Ghaenis’s hideous death by anthracism. ‘Attacking the amplimet would be suicide.’

‘I know.’ Malien squatted down and put her head in her hands. ‘I should do it anyway, for the good of the world, but …’

‘I’m not brave enough either,’ said Tiaan after a long pause, for an idea was slowly coming into focus. ‘But I wonder if there’s another way.’

‘What other way?’

‘Help me!’ Gilhaelith reached out to Tiaan. The crystallisation had run up his fingers, across his hands and was now extending up his arms. His feet and lower legs had gone too, and his eyes had the most peculiar, faceted glitter.

‘I can’t,’ she said, turning away. She couldn’t bear to watch what was happening to him, and do nothing.

‘Which way, Tiaan?’ said Malien.

‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,’ she said quietly. ‘How no one can be trusted with the power to control the nodes. Especially not Jal-Nish.’

‘There’s nothing can be done to stop him,’ said Malien.

‘I think there might be.’

‘Oh?’ Malien said with a sharp intake of breath.

Tiaan’s eyes were drawn back to Gilhaelith, whose brittle hands were still moving over the globe, though very slowly and mechanically now. The threads of light would soon link all the controlling nodes. Four of them were connected already, and fainter threads had begun to extend from them to other, less powerful nodes. ‘I think I know how to close down all the nodes for good, and Jal-Nish’s tears with them.’

Malien’s head jerked around. ‘We talked about that once before, Tiaan.’

It would spell the end of the Secret Art, at least the way humanity had been using it since the great Nunar codified the laws of mancing. There would be no more thapters, air-floaters, constructs or farspeakers. No field-powered Arts or devices of any kind, save those that had been laboriously charged up in the ways known to the ancients. And maybe not them either.

‘You’re … not going to do anything, are you?’ croaked Gilhaelith.

‘I’m sorry, Gilhaelith,’ Tiaan said, and she was, for she did care for him. Tears pricked at the insides of her eyelids, as if crystals were forming there in mimicry of his transformation. She had to let him die. If she saved him, her friends would all be slain. ‘I can’t.’