Tetrarch

It probably would not matter, in the end. This expedition into the Great Seep was foolhardy in the extreme and the probability was high, his mathemancy told him, that they would all die entombed in hot tar. The lyrinx must have been desperate to attempt the venture. He could only assume that some potent artefact had been lost in the seep in ages past. If they were prepared to risk an army to have it, they must be weaker than anyone expected. Or it must be an object of surpassing power and usefulness to the war.

On they tunnelled, and on. Gilhaelith's existence shrank to a stinking black hole. At night he dreamed he was still in it. They had reached the place his instruments told him to aim for, but found nothing there. The Matriarch was furious.

'Your Art is less than I was led to believe, tetrarch!' she said coldly.

'I told you it would be difficult to find.' Gilhaelith matched her glare, though inwardly he bitterly regretted the failure. If he had to die, he did not want it to be that way. 'The Art is seldom exact.'

'Search again. We're closer now. Hurry!'

'Mathemancy can tell me no more. I'll have to scry with my globe and you must give me more to go on. What am I searching for?'

'I cannot reveal that,' she said.

'Then I cannot help you.' Again he held her gaze.

Gyrull's breast plates mottled green, while her belly went a dull cream and her massive thighs showed tortured patterns – red threads writhing on yellow. Indecision, he thought. She needed to tell him, yet was afraid she would give something away.

'We're looking for the remains of the village,' she said, working her arms vigorously, as if uncomfortable, 'that was built over the tar more than seven thousand years ago.'

'What was in the village? I must have something to scry for.'

'There may be relics,' she said reluctantly. 'Instruments made of brass and precious metals…'

'Anything else? Crystals?'

'Perhaps.' Even more reluctantly.

'Crystals are easy to scry for, if I know the kinds.'

She knew but did not want to say. Then it came out. 'Perhaps brimstone.'

'Ah,' he said. 'But that is the one crystal I cannot find.'

Her pupils narrowed to slits. 'Why not, tetrarch? You claim to be a master geomancer.'

'There is brimstone everywhere, here. The tar is full of it, and the hot springs all around.'

'Try!' she said coldly. 'Without your globe.'

So she did fear him using it. 'I will, but should I scry brimstone, remember that it could be anywhere.'

He did his best but, as before, the results were ambiguous. He calculated some random fourth powers, but they were no help at all. 'If I am to help you, I must have my scrying globe.'

Gyrull muttered under her breath but had it brought to him. He sensitised it to brimstone, moved his hands over the frigid surface and closed his eyes. Momentarily he saw those wispy filaments, a shock went though his brain and he envisioned a red-hot crystal above and to the right.

Gilhaelith staggered and fell down. It felt as if his head was on fire. He weakly raised an arm, pointing in a circle. 'That way! No more than ten spans.'

The lyrinx regarded him dubiously but gave the required orders.

Gilhaelith remained on the floor, without the strength to rise. He'd never had an experience like that before. It had been almost mystical, and he did not believe in such things. But he knew he'd found it this time.

Gyrull gave new orders. They were to tunnel out in all directions, like the spokes of a wheel.

'That will magnify the strain on the shell,' said Gilhaelith.

'Always excuses, geomancer.'

'Currents in the seep will break it like a stick and we'll lose everything, including our lives.'

'This is more important than our lives!' she snapped.

A precious artefact indeed. 'Not mine,' he said.

The lyrinx tunnellers set to, showing no fear. Whatever the orders, they carried them out just as enthusiastically. Finding nothing in any of the lower spokes, they allowed these to collapse and began again with a new set, sloping upwards. The pace slowed. It was taking longer than ever to freeze each new section.

'What's the matter?' the Matriarch demanded, late on the seventeenth day of tunnelling, their thirteenth in the Great Seep. At least, Gilhaelith thought it was late. Though he ate and slept at the same time each day, it was hard to keep track of time.

'The field is fading,' said the male in charge of the cooling ring. As they both spoke the common speech, they must have wanted him to know what was going on. 'It's taking an hour to do what once we would have done in minutes. You must beg the channellers to give us more power, else -'

'Keep on,' she said harshly, with a flickering of whites and blues down her front that Gilhaelith was unable to interpret. 'Our enemies have come and their clankers take much from the field.'

'Then we'll never do it.'

'We must, and quickly, else we lose an army for nothing.' She called a messenger and spoke to her for some minutes. The woman hurried away. 'The field must be conserved for us,' Gyrull said to the male. 'Power in Snizort will only be drawn for essentials. We will complete this work no matter what the cost elsewhere. And once that is done, we will drain the node dry and crush the enemy.' They no longer seemed to require him, so Gilhaelith crept away with his globe, and went back to his watch on the amplimet. Much had changed at the patterner – the torgnadr was gone and Tiaan was patterning another, though this one was not connected to the amplimet at all. Had it done its work here? The filaments were everywhere else, though, and light pulses now flowed furiously along them, so it was still doing something. Well, too bad. It was time to go. He began the laborious working that would, by the morning, get him out of here.

'Come see this, tetrarch!'

A lyrinx dragged him by the wrist down to the excavation face. The tunnellers levered at a cleavage section and the whole face fell down, revealing a wall made of roughly sawn planks fixed to uprights with wooden pegs. The impact sent the tunnel shell into a slow shuddering that moved back and forth like waves along a rope. Cracks appeared along it and molten tar oozed through, before solidifying.

'Matriarch!' the tunneller on the left yelled. 'Look here.'

Exulting, she threw herself at the face and began prying away the timbers. 'This is the place. Call the digging team.'

Before they arrived (a dozen lyrinx equipped with saws, axes, buckets, chests and other equipment, including one who began sketching the scene), Gyrull had taken the timbers apart. They formed one wall of a tar-filled hut. The other walls were partly attached, though the structure had been crushed out of shape. They found nothing inside but household items – a wooden stool, pallets stuffed with straw, blankets and kitchen utensils. Every object was cracked out of the frozen tar, drawn and taken away as if it had some hidden value. Perhaps it did. Who knew what form mancery might have taken, seven thousand years ago?

A tremor passed across the floor. 'The siege has begun,' said Gyrull. 'We must work harder. Let the offshoot tunnels fail. Excavate out around the hut. Quickly, the field is failing.'

Gilhaelith could feel it growing more erratic every minute. 'How many huts would there have been in the village?' he said.

'I don't know.'

He did not get a chance to go back to his mancing. Over the next few days the lyrinx found another seven huts, similar to the first, with the same kinds of possessions in them. The fourth contained a wooden chest which proved to be full of clothes, in perfect condition, as the tar had not penetrated its seals. The clothing aroused considerable interest, for some reason which Gilhaelith could not fathom. The largest of the garments was small.