‘That’s … not how your people dress,’ said Tiaan. ‘Malien, these people are from Aachan.’
Malien appeared to be looking right through her. ‘That’s right.’
‘Does this mean that Vithis has thapters too? He’s certainly kept the secret well …’ Again that shiver along Tiaan’s spine.
‘Vithis has no thapters, Tiaan. They’re constructs. Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Up. There may be more. Can you fly the thapter?’
‘Is something the matter?’
Malien was too preoccupied to answer. Tiaan’s knees were shaking as she gripped the controller and took the thapter straight up. She couldn’t see anything but black rock and salt.
‘Higher,’ said Malien in a strained voice.
The sun reflected off something a good distance from the first two machines. Tiaan circled, scouring the rock. The wreckage was hard to pick out at first but once she’d found it, she soon saw more, and more. There were dozens of wrecked constructs down there, or pieces of constructs. Then, as the sheer scale of the site became evident, she amended that to hundreds. The sun still beat down on her but all the warmth had gone out of the day. She knew who they were.
‘It’s Vithis’s people,’ said Tiaan. ‘Inthis First Clan. They weren’t lost in the void after all.’
‘Not all of them,’ said Malien. ‘The gate must have whiplashed across the Dry Sea as it opened, scattering them here.’
They counted hundreds of constructs, strewn over an area a couple of leagues wide and about ten long. Most were wrecked, though a few machines bore only superficial damage. Then, in the middle of the area, they saw a round structure built from the metal skins of dozens of constructs.
Tiaan set the thapter down beside it. They did not get out at once. ‘Some of them survived,’ she said in a flat voice.
‘For quite some time,’ said Malien.
‘I wonder why they didn’t go for help?’
‘Even if they’d repaired one construct, this country is too rugged to hover across. And without knowing where to go, or how to find water on the way, anyone who left here on foot would have died of thirst.’
‘But there’s so many of them,’ said Tiaan. ‘There would have been thousands. Surely they could have found a way to send for help?’
‘Maybe they didn’t know what world they were on. Before the Forbidding cut off communication between the worlds, this was the beautiful Sea of Perion. They must have thought they’d been cast onto a desert world in the middle of the void.’ Malien rubbed her eyes. ‘We’d better go and see.’
They got out. The structure, built from the metal of as many as thirty constructs, was large enough to have accommodated some hundreds of people. The surrounding rocks had been smoothed, and paths constructed out of fragments so cunningly fitted together that they locked tight.
Tiaan walked around the building, marvelling at their ingenuity in creating so much with so little. The paths extended off in several directions to other, smaller structures, some of construct metal, others out of stone. The stonework was superb.
‘How did they live so long, without water?’ she said.
‘Each construct carries enough drinking water for several weeks. If most of the Aachim were killed in the crashes, the water would have lasted the survivors for months. And after that, there’s water in the Dry Sea, if you have the wits to look for it.’
‘Only salt water, and you’d have to dig through spans of salt to find it.’
‘Yes, but all it takes to turn salt water to fresh is sunlight or heat, and there’s plenty of both here. The problem wasn’t water, but food. Had everyone survived, the food would have been exhausted in a month or two. Since most were killed, it may have lasted a year, or more.’
‘It’s nearly a year and three-quarters since the gate was opened.’ Tiaan put her head inside one of the stone structures, then sprang out again. ‘It’s a graveyard.’
‘A mausoleum.’ Malien went to the entrance and stood for a minute, head bowed. ‘While any of First Clan had strength in their bodies, they would have honoured their dead according to longstanding custom.’
‘They mustn’t have found the first two constructs.’
‘I’d say not.’
They turned back to the metal building and Malien went inside.
‘I’ll wait out here,’ said Tiaan.
‘No, come in.’
‘I feel so guilty,’ Tiaan whispered.
‘Tiaan, you must not. You offered them the chance for survival and they took it willingly, knowing the risk. They’d been thinking about escaping through a gate for years.’