within a hundred leagues that could replace the amplimet. It’s over, Tiaan. The thapter has no power. It’s useless metal. From here, we have to walk.’
Tiaan climbed down the side, took off her boots and socks and walked around the thapter, taking pleasure in the springy grass under her soles. The great adventure is over, she thought, and I’m tainted. A criminal. I’ll never fly a thapter again. She put one hand on the black flank of the machine and felt a tear well in her eye.
Merryl clambered down, rubbing his back. ‘I think I’ll walk down to the creek. I’ve spent too much of my life cooped up in caves and thapters.’
‘You’ll have all the walking you can take before we get home,’ said Tiaan.
‘I can’t wait.’ He grinned and set off, arms swinging. Tiaan watched him halfway down the hill, infected by his cheer.
Malien had just stepped off the ladder when there came a cry of terror from the thapter.
‘No!’ Gilhaelith cried. ‘No!’
Tiaan began scrambling up as Gilhaelith appeared at the top. He was shuddering, wild-eyed, and his woolly hair was sticking out in all directions.
‘The amplimet!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Where is it?’
‘It’s still in its socket,’ said Tiaan calmly, thinking he must have had a nightmare. ‘It’s all right. It’s drained of all power.’
‘Get it out! Quick.’ His head disappeared, then he heaved himself up onto the side, the geomantic globe in his arms, and slid down onto the grass.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Malien.
He ran about ten strides, put down the globe and knelt beside it. ‘I’ve just realised something that I should have understood a long time ago. Tiaan, do you remember when you flew over Alcifer a month or more back, and something very strange happened?’
‘Someone – Ryll I suppose – tried to bring us down with the power patterner,’ said Tiaan. It had been a week after they’d dropped the spores into the bellows. ‘And then, for an instant, time itself seemed to freeze.’
‘I did that, by accident,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘I was using my globe at the one place in Alcifer where power was still sleeping since the days of Rulke. But something else happened at that moment. As time froze, I was looking up through the dimensions and I saw the amplimet light up like a searchlight.’
‘What?’ said Malien, staring at him. ‘Do you mean it woke?’
‘It must have been driven to the second stage of awakening,’ Gilhaelith said grimly.
‘And it’s been quietly biding its time ever since. And now the destruction of the Well could have tipped it over the edge to the third stage – full awakening.’
‘What does full awakening mean?’ said Tiaan, looking from one to the other.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said Malien.
‘But surely it can’t do anything here, with the local nodes disrupted and its stored power drained?’
‘In full awakening, it can take power from anywhere. Tiaan, grab the amplimet and chuck it down to me.’
Tiaan went up the side. ‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Just do it!’ Malien shouted, her jaw muscles spasming.
As Tiaan went up, Gilhaelith began moving the pointers furiously on his globe. She withdrew the amplimet, extremely gingerly. It didn’t feel any different; indeed, the light passing down the centre was dull red and beating sluggishly. Nonetheless, just holding the crystal sent a shiver up her back. She’d seen what it could do, too many times.
She tossed it to Malien but Gilhaelith shot up like an unleashed spring and plucked it out of the air high above her head.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Destroying it isn’t the way.’ Gilhaelith sat it on the ground between the geomantic globe and himself, and resumed his rapid but controlled movements.
‘It’s the only way …’ said Malien, but did not attempt to take it off him. ‘Tiaan?’ She walked away across the hill.
Tiaan followed. ‘What’s he doing, Malien?’
‘I would have thrown the amplimet into the red-hot compartment underneath the thapter and let the heat destroy it,’ she said. ‘Assuming it didn’t anthracise me first. But Gilhaelith is a truly great geomancer; perhaps his way is less risky.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Tiaan, admiring the way he worked. The geomantic globe was the most perfect device she’d ever seen. The nodes had lit up all across it, and threads of light were inching out from a number of the brightest. She went back and walked around it, keeping at a distance. There were seven bright nodes. One represented the node at Alcifer, another Tirthrax, and a third one was near