Again that exchange of glances. What weren’t they telling her?

It’s a … safer way, said Luxor.

Much safer, Tirior said smoothly. Power takes a more direct path into the amplimet. And you can use geomancy where you can’t see the weak field at all.

‘I don’t understand,’ Tiaan said. She felt utterly confused. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

There was a long silence. Tirior spoke low and urgently to Luxor, who grimaced. She put her lips to Minis’s ear. He shook his head. She took his arm, hissed something he did not catch. Minis shook her off, disappearing from Tiaan’s image. Shortly Minis reappeared, so close that he blocked her view of the others.

He looked into her eyes, smiled and her heart melted. Tiaan, dearest. Minis reached out as if to take her hand. Please help me. I don’t want to die. I – he caught his breath. Oh, Tiaan! he sighed, gazing lovingly at her.

Tiaan was smitten. Suddenly, no promise was too rash if it would bring them together. ‘Of course I will help you, Minis. If I can.’

Tirior edged into the image. No one can understand the hyperplane, Tiaan. It’s beyond our imagining. But we can still use it, just as you use the field without understanding it.

‘But what if I take too much power?’ That had happened occasionally, if a squadron of clankers drew heavily on a small node, inducing reverberating strangenesses in the field. Whole clankers had vanished into nowhere, so these days they travelled well apart and followed strict rules about how much power they could draw. ‘What if I tear open the wall between Santhenar and the hyperplane?’

Tirior staggered. Luxor’s mouth hung open.

‘What is it?’ Tiaan cried.

Tirior drew the others away, speaking urgently. After some minutes they returned.

Never you worry about that. Just do exactly as we say and you will come to no harm.

‘My head is burning,’ said Tiaan.

The channelled power is leaking through you, said Tirior. We must work fast. When you first saw Minis, am I not right, you just had a clumsy, shaped crystal? You only found the amplimet recently?

‘Less than a week ago. I’ve not used it yet, save speaking to you.’ She began to feel faint.

Do not use it! This amplimet can channel so much power that it would burn you to a cinder. But if you employ it carefully, exactly as we say, it can save you.

‘How?’

You are in deadly peril, Tiaan, and not just from freezing to death. From the attenuation of your signal we believe there may be as much as ten spans of snow above you.

Tiaan shuddered. That was the height of a good-sized tree. She could feel the cold weight of it hanging over her.

You cannot move until the storm stops and the snow crusts over. Even then you will be in peril of collapse, or avalanche. So you must wait for days. Have you food?

‘Enough for a week. But I’ll freeze before that.’

Listen carefully. You may be able to channel power through the crystal to keep you warm.

Tiaan tried to concentrate as Tirior gave instructions. They were long, complicated and difficult to understand, dealing as they did with unknowable concepts like ‘topological morphometrics’ and ‘hyperdimensional wormholes’. Her arm began to twitch uncontrollably. She felt very cold.

‘I can’t hold the link,’ she gasped.

Just one more…

Tirior faded away and Tiaan lacked the strength to get her back. Her toes were numb. Taking off boots and socks, she rubbed her feet. They were icy and her fingers had no warmth in them either. Frostbite could not be far off.

She could not think straight. How was she supposed to use the amplimet? She tried to work through Tirior’s procedure but knew she was missing a couple of steps.

First, identify a nearby source of power. That was not hard; there was energy all around. The mass of snow on the slope contained enough potential to boil rock, though it would be the height of folly to tap such an unstable source, even had she been an adept.

Putting on the helm, Tiaan swept out in all directions, searching the way she used to map the field. She was looking for power she could use, such as from a hot spring. She found none. All possible sources were too small, too great, too hazardous or too incomprehensible.

Pain shrieked through her chest. Tiaan screamed aloud, fell sideways and struck her ear on rock. The globe rolled across the floor, hit the snow wall and spun like a top. She could not reach it. Tiaan laid her head on the ground. It felt no colder than she did. It was too late.

TWENTY-SIX

Wake up! Cold! Galaxies of sluggish ice like frozen milk-mush, slowly solidifying again.

Wake, Tiaan!

Grinding glacier; gelid blood separating into red, yellow and clear. Eyeballs freezing from the outside in.

TIAAN, WAKE, MY LOVE!

That cracked the frozen crust. She groaned; she stirred. Scales of rime fell from her eyelids. Everything hurt, as if needles of ice were forming inside her.

You’re dying, Tiaan!

‘Want to. Better than this.’

No! he cried as if in pain. I care about you. Save yourself, Tiaan, and then save me.

‘How can –?’ she whispered.

Use the amplimet. NOW!

‘Afraid.’

You’ll die if you don’t. It’s the only chance. For any of us.

She crawled towards the crystal, weeping icy tears. It hurt so much. Tiaan reached out but it was still beyond her fingertips. She could not go any further, until his shocking words galvanised her. Tiaan, my love!

Tears of a different kind flowed out, sheer joy! Minis, her tormented prince, loved her. He’d said so. And of course she loved him, though she had not realised it before. She would do anything for him.

Tiaan clawed her way across the ice, breaking fingernails, scraping breasts and chin and knees. The wires burned as she cradled the globe to her chest and sought out for a source of power. The field of the manufactory node was weak here, as if some other force repelled it. There was not enough in it to light a candle.

She saw not the least trace of a field. It took a long time to work out why. She was trying to force the crystal and it was resisting her. It could not be forced. It wanted to be cajoled. As she let go, something faint and foggy appeared, only to fade away.

She sat back, allowing her mind to empty of everything but the aura of the crystal. The faintest tracery appeared, spidery filaments in the fog. She was seeing further with the amplimet, and deeper, but not the normal, weak field at all. It was as if she was peering through the solid earth.

Lines and planes, spheres and clusters began to resolve. Were they different kinds of fields? They seemed more concentrated than anything she had encountered before.

Tiaan had no idea what they were, or what forces they might contain. The Art required understanding but she knew nothing about how the earth was formed or structured. If she tried to draw on these sources, she would surely kill herself.

Then, as she scanned across those varied shapes, one reminded her of something she’d seen before. It was a long dull plane cutting through the rocks, with occasional bright lenses here and there. It resembled the shear zone bisecting the long tunnel through the mountain. This shape must be a field associated with it. Tension, built up along the shear over hundreds of years, was overdue for release.

Clearly it represented a source of power, enough to save her if she could tap it. She focussed on the planar field. The amplimet made that easy. Mindful of Tirior’s warning, she attempted to draw on the potential as gently as she could. Nothing happened. Tiaan went over the visualisation, the tuning. All seemed correct. She imagined the sub-ethyric path and tried again. Still nothing.