Minis stared into her eyes, then his face vanished. Tiaan stood looking at the space where his image had been, daydreaming of the first meeting with her lover, anticipating his caresses and their first night together. The thought was scary, but she was eager too. Tiaan was glad she’d had no other. She wanted Minis to be her first and only lover.

Another thought crept into her mind. Only one man ever knew about the amplimet, and one lyrinx! Foolishly, she had let Ryll see it. How was she going to keep it from him?

In a few minutes she was incapable of worrying, as the aftereffects of geomancy smashed into her – extreme lassitude, hot and cold chills, and pain like a thousand needles pricking her all over. She lay back and endured.

First she must find a way out of this ice bubble, one that did not involve her falling down the side of the mountain. She was still hot and the amplimet radiated heat, though not enough to melt the walls of her prison. The clear ice looked to be quite thick; perhaps the length of her arm.

Tiaan roused, from a daydream about her lover, to reality. She was afraid of those disabling emotions that she had never understood; afraid of embarking on a relationship in which she might lose control. Afraid of the journey, too. It was a long way to Tirthrax. Tiaan did not know how far, but hundreds of leagues, certainly. It would be many months’ journey, and she could not set out until spring.

The air felt stale. There had been plenty in the soft snow but none could penetrate the solid globe of ice. Before too long there would not be enough to keep her alive. The crossbow, she knew without trying it, would never break through.

Dare she try the amplimet again? There was nothing to lose. She sensed her way through earth and rock but the field of the shear zone was gone. She could not tell where it had been.

She sensed other auras though, near and far. The world was bursting with energies: the weight of rock on rock, heat seeping from deep in the earth, gas pockets below the limestone … But just because there was power, it did not mean she could tap it. Her skills were primitive, her control infinitesimal.

Seeking deeper, down in the wellsprings of the earth where the granite was cut by enormous veins, Tiaan came on a shifting aura about a crystal as large as an elephant, whose field was of a kind she had never sensed before. Created by pressure from the overlying rock, the force of the wind on the mountain and occasional little tremblers and avalanches, the field fluctuated wildly.

Tiaan sensed it out and in her mind’s eye drew a blueprint of the path she wanted the energy to take, through the hyperplane back to the amplimet and then out at the shell of ice. Taking a deep breath, she adjusted the position slightly, then, as the field waxed, drew hard.

A sizzling yellow ray burst from the amplimet and struck above her head, shattering rock into fragments. Pieces of hot stone rained down, setting her hair smouldering. She smacked it away.

Agony, as if all that energy had speared though her. Tiaan screamed; she could not stop herself. Her foot kicked the globe, which spun around. She jumped just in time as the yellow beam flashed by, spattering gravel out of the wall. Another second and it would have taken both feet off at the ankles. A blister the size of an orange began to grow on one shin.

The beam brightened and a slab of rock exploded, sending cinders in all directions. One burned right through her clothes before sticking to her side. She ripped it off and the skin came too. Tiaan beat at the smouldering fabric. Her coat, lying on the floor where she had discarded it earlier, was also smoking. More rock exploded from the wall, and more.

She tried to shut off the flow of power but did not know how. The beam was roaring out of the amplimet and if she could just point it the right way it must burn through the ice in a second.

But Tiaan could not get near; it was too hot to touch. Now the rock was melting, flowing down the shelf to hiss on the floor. Her sphere began to fill with steam. Tiaan felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice, having started something that she had no idea how to stop.

Snatching the helm off – it was hot too – she wrenched out its crystal. The yellow beam was unaffected. Molten rock poured down the ledge, melting into the ice.

Abruptly the beam went out. Tiaan squatted down, breathing through her sleeve. Minis had been right; geomancy was a deadly Art – far too dangerous for a novice like her.

The ice was pitted with hollows from fragments of red-hot rock. Molten rock had flowed halfway through the floor before its fire had been quenched.

The air was worse than ever. Tiaan brushed away the cooling cinders, packed up the geomantic globe, crystal and helm, and lay down on the shelf. It was growing dark outside. She closed her eyes, listening to the cooling rock slag cracking like toffee. There was no one to come to her rescue this time.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Ullii spent the night before their departure rocking. The shrieking of the blizzard even penetrated her earplugs, depriving her of the only perfect calm she ever got – sleep. She really needed it. The last few weeks had torn her from her self-contained existence and she was struggling to cope. For years she had lived in the little world of her mind. It was safe there, as long as she did not try to see too far, and was careful not to probe too deep. Some of those glowing knots in her lattice were not meant to be untangled. If she tried they would inflict terrible pain. She had been hurt in the early days, before she’d learned which were kind, or at least indifferent, and which cruel. Which were unknowing and which alert, constantly watching for spies, snoopers or those who, like her, were taking their first groping steps into the life of the mind. The powerful guarded their privacy jealously.

Now that refuge was lost. She was going to be thrust into the world outside, with its pitiless sun, constant racket and everything designed to torment her overloaded senses. Far worse, they would make her pick away at one of those cruel tangles in her lattice until she exposed what lay at its core. And then? The strong always attacked the weak. All she had to protect her was one young man, not an adept of any kind.

Nish had treated her kindly, but Ullii sensed something burning in him. What did he really want? She did not count Irisis at all. Ullii had met dozens like her, people who were kind when it suited them, or harsh when that was more to their advantage. Irisis might be brave and bold, but she was quite selfish.

What would happen once she gave them what they wanted? Would they abandon her outside? Exposed to the nightmare of the senses, she would go insane.

So why was she going? Because Nish had been kind to her and that inspired her loyalty. It was no more than that. Ullii had never hoped for love, though she knew what it was. Love was another nightmare, inconceivable and terrifying.

She did so long for kindness, though. The memory of Nish’s gentleness was a beautiful musty aroma tinged with spice and machinery oil. It was having her body caressed with spider-silk. Kindness was protection from splinters of light. Kindness was wax plugs in her ears. Kindness was absolute silence.

Nish’s kindness kept her warm in the cold night. She wanted more of it. Whatever he wanted, she would give him.

Shouting woke Nish in the night. Jal-Nish was roaring at someone along the corridor. Time to go. Nish rolled out of his blankets. It was so cold! Having spent his youth in a centrally heated mansion, he could not get used to this place.

Dressed in five layers of clothing, he trotted to the refectory, where Irisis waited. They ate a hasty breakfast, by the end of which dawn-grey was highlighting the unwashed slit windows high above. Nish led Ullii down, only to hear Jal-Nish ranting again. The blizzard had left snow so deep that the gates could not be opened. It had to be shovelled away before the clankers, fitted with wide footpads, could be brought out to tramp down the area outside. They had just begun when the emergency bell rang from the gatehouse watch-tower.