I can just get free and signal her, she can take me away from here. He suppressed the thought that, after his previous behaviour, she might refuse.
He glanced up at Ryll, gauging whether it was the right moment, only to realise that Ryll had seen an entirely different possibility. With the flisnadr he could withdraw all the power from the thapter, no matter what node Tiaan tried to use. He could cause it to crash or bring it to ground just where he wanted it.
Ryll hurled the canvas out of the way and his big hands danced over the recesses and protrusions of the warty, chameleon-skinned flisnadr. He thrust his arms into two of the slits, up to the elbows, and the note of the thapter dropped sharply. Gilhaelith knew his opportunity had come.
He wasn’t going to be rash about it, though. One word from Ryll, even a gesture, and the mancer or the guards would slay him out of hand. Gilhaelith continued moving the pointers exactly as before, and kept the geomantic globe turning gently underneath them on its cushion of freezing mist.
The pattern of the fields – for the node-within-a-node produced two fields here – came into view, slightly blurred in his enfeebled mind. He had to focus the fields, and then, right here in this most perfectly designed place in all the world, wake the sleeping construct that was Alcifer itself. If he could correctly align the geomantic globe to do that, he would have power to blast his enemies into oblivion, drag the thapter to himself and make good his escape in it.
The thapter’s mechanism screamed, died away and screamed again as Tiaan tried desperately to escape. She was jumping from one field to another, trying to preserve her power, as Ryll took command of the fields. Her strategy had worked when she’d escaped from Alcifer the first time, almost a year ago, but it could not work now. Tiaan could not hope to defeat the power patterner in the hands of the lyrinx who had designed it.
Hurry! Gilhaelith told himself. If Ryll takes the thapter, or crashes it, all is lost. Gilhaelith ignored his own imperative. He must stay calm and, above all, be controlled. His mind was far less than it had been but his unquenchable will was as strong as ever. He could still do it. Focus. Focus the field!
Its grainy strands sharpened but then dissolved into a blur again. He could feel control slipping. With a supreme effort of will, Gilhaelith wrenched it back in place. The field came perfectly into focus and, the instant it did, he reached down to Alcifer’s core that had lain sleeping for over a thousand years, waiting for a master who would never return.
Gilhaelith reached out and down, deeper and deeper, and suddenly there it was. It faded; then, without any warning, the faint nodes beneath the glass surface of the geomantic globe lit up.
Gilhaelith drew a deep breath and willed himself to calm as Ryll spun around, staring at the globe.
‘What have you done?’ Gilhaelith cried, to forestall Ryll and make him wonder if he had done it himself, with the power patterner.
Ryll gave him a suspicious glance, withdrew one arm from the flisnadr and beckoned the watching lyrinx mancer over. The male came at a run, close enough to see into the bowl, then froze. The nodes were glowing more brightly than before, each according to its true nature. Now a slender thread of orange light began to extend from Alcifer’s node-within-a-node to another node, a quarter of the way across the globe.
‘Ah,’ breathed Gilhaelith. Tiaan had previously told him that nodes could be linked. He’d thought a lot about that but had never been able to work out how. At last he began to understand. The thread had now touched the second node, and other threads began to extend out from it towards yet more distant nodes. If he could duplicate in the world what he’d done on the globe, could the power of all the nodes become available to him? His mind reeled with the possibilities – survival, even reversal of the brain damage after all? He didn’t know – it was too much for anyone to take in.
‘Step away from the globe,’ snapped Ryll. ‘Then don’t move.’
Gilhaelith wasn’t quite ready, but it had to be now. He could feel power flowing into the globe and he drew on it to strike his enemies down.
Something low down in the bowels of Alcifer