‘The Well will be here in minutes,’ said Tiaan. ‘Do you think there’s anything we can do to turn it aside?’
‘It has the power of a hundred nodes,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘It’s irresistible.’
‘But if it’s being directed …’
Gilhaelith cried out. ‘I’ve got an idea. Nish, Irisis, could you give me a hand with the geomantic globe?’
They carried it in its box to the edge of the pinnacle, facing the Well. Gilhaelith unpacked it, set it up on its stand and slid the brass pointers around on their circular tracks, making sure that they moved freely.
‘I’ve been tinkering with my globe since the escape,’ he said to Tiaan. ‘Gyrull concealed some vital details from me, but I’ve added them from your maps and I believe the globe is perfect now. Let’s see what we can see.’
He began scrying with it, clamping small chips of crystal in the pointers and setting the globe spinning slowly beneath them. Tiny reddish pinpricks appeared under the glass surface, but that wasn’t what Gilhaelith was looking for. He tried another five or six crystals, which he took from a small padded box, then borrowed Tiaan’s amplimet and Irisis’s pliance. They did not work either.
‘It’s no use,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘If someone is directing the Well, they’re too cleverly hidden for me. We can’t do anything to turn it away.’
‘We’d better warn the lyrinx,’ said Tiaan. ‘And then, I suppose we’d better go. If we can …’ It didn’t seem right to fly away in the thapter and leave the rest of the lyrinx to their fate.
‘And take the black box too,’ Malien said suddenly.
‘Why?’
‘It would … not be good for it to be sucked into the Well.’
‘But if we take it, won’t that close the gate immediately?’
‘It will remain open until you close it, Tiaan, because you’re holding it in your mind.’
‘Can I leave the gate open after we go?’
‘No!’ said Malien sharply. ‘As soon as we’re in the air you must close it, or else the Well might pass through the gate.’
‘To Tallallame?’
‘It might go anywhere in the void. It might annihilate itself, the gate and half of Santhenar. Anything might happen. The void might be disrupted … It is … the Well must not pass through the gate. Though it came from Aachan in the beginning, this Well is now a creature of Santhenar, and Santhenar must deal with it.’
Malien went looking for Ryll and Liett. Tiaan headed up to retrieve the black box. It proved surprisingly light, as if it was, after all, no more than an empty box. When she reached the bottom, panting and weak in the knees, Malien was talking to Ryll. Liett was pacing back and forth, casting anxious glances at the Well and stormy ones at Ryll, which he was steadfastly ignoring.
‘As soon as the Well touches the side of Nithmak,’ Malien was saying, ‘we must close the gate. We can’t risk the Well passing through.’
‘Indeed not,’ said Ryll. ‘And then you must get in your thapter and fly to safety, knowing that you could have done no more.’
Liett beckoned furiously to him. Ryll gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, whereupon she drove her fist into the nearest wall and stormed away, shaking her wings.
‘I think Liett wants to talk to you,’ Tiaan said uncomfortably. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Just a disagreement about when I’m to go,’ said Ryll. ‘She wants me to leave now, but I can’t abandon my people to die.’
‘Are there many left?’
‘More than twenty thousand of us,’ said Ryll. ‘Too many. But we knew the risk.’
Of us, Ryll had said. But if he was staying to the last, he wouldn’t get through at all. He would drown here with the stragglers. Liett came storming back and took him by the arm, trying to pull him towards the gate. Ryll set his feet and did not move.
‘Will you not go, Ryll?’ said Tiaan.
‘Not while any of my people still cling to the side of this peak.’
‘You’ll drown.’
A shudder passed over him and his skin colours writhed in iridescent shades of purple and grey. ‘So will they, and without ever a sight of Tallallame. At least I’ve had that. Go, Liett.’
‘Not without you.’ She folded her arms across her chest.
‘I order you to go through the gate,’ he thundered. ‘As patriarch of all the lyrinx.’
‘I am the daughter of a matriarch,’ Liett flashed. ‘I take orders from no base-born unmated, wingless male.’
Ryll was so furious that his skin flashed all the colours of the spectrum, but