She acted without thinking. There wasn’t time, and physical force versus the Art normally only ended one way. Irisis swung her fist in a vicious blow to the bridge of Tirior’s nose. The heel struck it full on, her nose broke and Tirior went down. Her hand slipped off the controller, the mechanism died and the thapter fell.
Irisis caught Tirior’s hand, slammed it onto the flight knob of the controller and eased it up, gently. The thapter arrested, hovered, and Irisis let it down with just a minor crunching of metal, then stopped the Aachim’s mouth with her knee and held her fingers until, with a bound, Vithis was perched on the hatch.
The trial took little time, since the evidence was beyond dispute. The clan leaders were unanimous in their verdict, though given that Tirior was a clan leader herself, the sentence had to be confirmed by Urien. This she did with dispatch and Tirior was sentenced to be delivered upside down to the Well by all the clan leaders, an ignominious end that would result in the demotion of Clan Nataz to Last Clan. Tirior made no defence, no statement, no plea. She simply went to the Well as if it was beneath her dignity to remark upon it.
The revelation of her betrayal had washed Vithis’s despair away. First Clan hadn’t fallen, it had been brought down by treachery. He stood up straight, brushed the salt dust off his garments and there was a glint in his eye that Tiaan did not like at all. It was as if he’d found new hope.
‘Minis! Attend me!’ he said peremptorily, after the Well had taken Tirior with a brilliant yellow flare that lit up the salt-crusted basalt for hundreds of paces around, and a positive volley of echoes.
Minis, reluctantly, levered himself to his foster-father’s side and stood leaning on his crutches.
‘Foster-son,’ said Vithis, laying a hand on his shoulder, ‘I judged you ill and I’m deeply sorry. I blamed you for failings that were due to our clan enemy. You did not let me down then and I know you won’t do so now.’
‘Foster-father?’ said Minis.
‘I despaired when I should have put my faith in you. I will do so now. Minis, Clan Inthis must be created anew and only you can do it, for as you know I am sterile. You must put aside all other objectives until you’ve bred me sons and daughters – especially daughters. I will chose your partners from women of other clans, who have strong Inthis blood –’
‘I cannot, Foster-father,’ cried Minis.
‘If you lack desire,’ said Vithis carefully, ‘I have the remedy here.’ He withdrew a capped phial from his pocket.
Minis looked as if he was going to vomit with humiliation. ‘I am not … incapable, Foster-father.’
‘If you were a man, you would have mated already and produced the children that Inthis needs. You would have taken joy in it.’
‘I –’
‘No more talk, Foster-son. Take one of these today, now, and another every half-year. It will give you potency beyond any man alive. Women will flock to you, despite your disabilities.’
‘I am not a rutting machine, Foster-father.’
‘You have a duty to me and your clan. Do it, for once in your life.’
‘No, Father. I will not.’ Minis looked pale and terrified of the older man. Tiaan’s heart went out to him.
Vithis sprang, caught Minis around the chest and thrust a tablet into his mouth. Minis tried to spit it out. The older man held his nose until Minis had to open his mouth, then thrust it down his throat.
The crutches fell away and Minis collapsed on the ground, weeping with mortification.
‘Do your duty like a man,’ Vithis raged. ‘If you are a man. I have often wondered.’
Minis found his crutches and climbed onto them as tears of helpless rage flowed down his cheeks. ‘I am a man, Foster-father, and I will do what a real man must do.’ He clacked away behind the thapter.
‘You have always been a dutiful son, Minis,’ said Vithis, the rage gone as quickly as it had come. ‘I have every confidence in you.’
Tiaan suppressed an urge to run after the younger man, for it could do no good. In spite of her feelings about Minis, she could not bear to see him so humiliated.
‘And now you, Malien,’ said Vithis. ‘For your clan’s part –’
He broke off as Minis reappeared, carrying something in his cupped hands. Blood dripped from his knuckles. He walked up, held out his hands and pressed the red contents into Vithis’s hands.
‘Here, Foster-father, this is what you have always lacked. Now you may do my duty for me.’
Vithis looked into his hands and recoiled in horror. Dropping the mess onto the rock, he whispered, ‘You have … cut yourself?’
‘You castrated me long ago, Foster-father.’
Raising his gory hands to the sky, Vithis let out a scream of anguish that made the Well flutter. He looked into the Well, which was shivering like blades of grass in a breeze, and the Well seemed to respond. Its whirling slowed and the colours brightened.
Vithis bared his teeth in the grimmest of smiles. ‘All things must pass – I can accept it now. This is the end of Inthis, first and greatest of all the clans. We came from the Well, so it is fitting that we take our departure through it.’
‘And I will follow you,’ said Minis. ‘Life has nothing left for me.’
‘Begone!’ snarled Vithis. ‘You cut your life free from First Clan; now go and live it. You are no longer Clan Inthis. You are not my foster-son and I forbid the Well to you.’
Minis gave him a blank-faced look then turned away, stumbling blindly out into the waste. He fell over repeatedly, but always pulled himself up onto his crutches, as if, after a failed life, this was the one thing he could achieve.
Vithis stepped into the Well, though it did not take him. He hung at the top of the shaft to nothingness, watching the silent watchers, and a mad, eerie smile passed across his face. ‘My time is over, and I go to a better fate than anyone on Santhenar can hope for. But you – you will rue this day, Malien. All Santhenar will rue it.’
He made circular motions with his hands and snapped them down. The Well flared as bright as the sun and began to spin, pulling in loose gravel and salt dust. Vithis hung atop it a moment longer, then fell, disappearing with a purple flash and a crack that echoed up and down for minutes after.
Tiaan expected the Well to disappear, since Vithis had called it here, but it expanded right to the toes of her boots. She sprang backwards and everyone scrambled out of the way. The dark, which had come down when Vithis called the Well, suddenly lifted.
The Well began to drift away, pulling in bits of shattered rock, pieces of construct metal, shreds of cloth and every other loose object in its path. They watched it wander in the direction of the mid-sea rift.
Malien shuddered. ‘No, no, no!’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Nish, who had been holding Irisis’s hand ever since she’d climbed out of the thapter. ‘He’s gone. It’s over.’
‘The Well should have collapsed as soon as it took Vithis, but … it seems to be growing. He has set it to some dreadful purpose.’
‘Can’t you stop it, the way you bound the Well in Tirthrax?’
‘Not this one,’ said Malien. ‘This is the Master Well and not I, nor all my people together, can lay a finger on it.’
‘Then what are we going to do?’
‘Get into the thapter! We must go, and swiftly. There are still the lyrinx to deal with, remember? The world hasn’t stood still while we’ve been out here.’
The remaining people climbed in and Tiaan lifted off, keeping low.
‘What about Minis?’ said Nish. His thin figure was struggling over the rocks, away towards the distant salt.
‘It would be kindest to let him go,’ said Malien.
‘To die?’ whispered Tiaan.
‘No Aachim would want to live with his burden, Tiaan. Trust me. I do know my people.’
‘But to leave him out here, all alone? I just can’t, Malien.’
‘He won’t last long, poor fellow.’
There was a long silence, interrupted only by the faint whine of the thapter.
‘But you aren’t going to leave him, are you?’ said Tiaan.
‘How can I?’ said Malien. ‘Go down.’
Tiaan landed the thapter beside Minis. He gave it a fleeting glance and kept walking. She scrambled down the side. ‘Minis, wait.’
‘Go away,’ he said. ‘You only remind me that I have nothing to live for.’
She ran after him and took his stained hand. ‘Come back with us, Minis.’
‘Do you say that because you love me, Tiaan? Or because you pity me?’
How could she answer? She had loved him once, and for that reason she still cared. But the death of little Haani had undermined her love, and his vacillation at Snizort had killed it. She could not lie to him, not even to save his life.
‘Well, Tiaan?’ There was a nobility in his eyes that she had never seen before.
‘No, Minis. I don’t love you. But I do care for you.’ She was still holding his hand. The blood, already dried in the fierce heat, flaked off.
‘It’s not enough. If you truly care for me, let me go.’
As she released his hand, a single red flake fluttered on the breeze. ‘Please come, Minis. Life –’
‘I’ve seen enough of life,’ he said over her head to Malien. ‘Will you let me go, or would you take me against my will, to draw out my agony?’
‘I shall not take you against your will,’ Malien said softly.
He bowed to her, and then to Tiaan. ‘I have to atone. My life in return for the life of little Haani.’
‘It was an accident,’ said Tiaan. ‘And you weren’t responsible.’ For the first time since it had happened, nearly two years ago, she understood that. It had just been a tragic accident. No one was to blame, and her anger and bitterness afterwards had been due as much to hurt pride. Having been rejected, she’d wanted to hurt as much as she had been hurt. She too had much to atone for.
‘I know that,’ said Minis, ‘but atoning for her death is the only worthwhile thing I can do with my life.’
‘Then I won’t stand in your way. Thank you, Minis. Haani would have liked you.’
‘I’m sorry. So very, very sorry. I know how much you loved her.’ His big eyes searched her face, perhaps, even now, hoping against hope.
She could not say it. ‘I … I loved you too, Minis. Back then.’
‘Goodbye, Tiaan.’
He turned away, moving off the black rock into a gully filled with windblown salt, and away towards the centre of the Dry Sea.
Tiaan watched him till he was just a shadow and her cheeks were crusted with salt from evaporated tears. She wiped her face. When she looked again, she could no longer see Minis through the shimmering heat haze.
‘I can’t help but make the comparison,’ Malien said softly. ‘Flydd and Minis were both unmanned, the one by the torturer’s knife, the other by the impossible demands of his foster-father. Yet Flydd has risen above his maiming, while in the end, for Minis, the knife was the only way to escape.’
‘No trauma can bring down the truly great in spirit,’ said Tiaan.
‘Nor any privilege raise up the incurably weak.’
Behind them the Well boomed. ‘Come,’ Malien went on.
From above they saw it intersect the mid-sea ridge, where molten rock was squeezed out along a rift ten leagues long. Great booms and crackles reached them and the Well swelled again, now resembling a tornado whirling above and through the ground. It began to track south along the ridge.
Malien set off for the Foshorn with all the speed she could manage, to take the clan leaders home and then go on to Ashmode. Tiaan said not a word during that long journey. She was thinking about wrongs that must be put right; it seemed the one worthwhile thing she could do with her life, for Minis, and for all that might have been. But how?
Tiaan could no longer take pleasure in wielding her Art, as once she’d done for the sheer bliss of using her abilities to the limit. Employing her Art had destroyed too much, and too many people, and the little good that had come from it seemed outweighed by the evil. She felt that she’d been used, even controlled, for most of her life.
And she began to feel increasingly alone and estranged, even from Malien, Irisis and Nish. Tiaan began to think that there was only one way out – to use her geomancy one last time to do something that no one else ever would. One question remained. Did she have the courage?