Free Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) by Ian Irvine

into Tirthrax, Liett flew east.
    ‘What do we do now?’ Tiaan asked as they rested in the entrance.
    Malien unwrapped a food packet. ‘Have some filuvior.’
    Tiaan took a chunk of something that looked like green, crumbly cheese but dissolved smoothly in the mouth. It had a taste she could not put words to, a combination of aromatic, creamy and acrid. Her mouth tingled afterwards but she did feel better.
    ‘What is this stuff, Malien?’
    ‘A tonic for exhaustion, body or mind.’
    She took another piece. Tiaan did too.
    ‘This level of the city is undefendable,’ Malien went on. ‘And that’s a pity, because there are things here I would sooner the enemy never saw, not least of them the wrecked constructs. Fortunately I can seal off the upper and lower entrances. We have greater treasures there. I wonder what brought the lyrinx here?’ She looked questioningly at Tiaan.
    ‘The amplimet, I expect. They can track such things.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ Malien said sharply.
    ‘At the manufactory, when I was an artisan …’ Memories of her lost life came rushing back and for a moment Tiaan could not speak. ‘The enemy were locating our clankers from afar, and we could not tell how. I discovered that they could sense the aura given off by a working crystal.’
    ‘How? I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
    ‘I was never sure. They used something that resembled a large, leathery mushroom. I don’t know whether they made it, grew it or –’
    ‘Flesh-formed it,’ Malien said, with an uncharacteristic shiver. ‘Go on.’
    ‘I developed a way of shielding crystals from them.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I wrapped the crystals in gold foil, sealed them tight and covered everything with pitch. That cut off the aura and prevented the crystals being sabotaged by heat, too.’ She looked away. ‘I miss my work.’
    ‘What a remarkable young woman you are,’ said Malien. ‘I wish –’
    ‘What?’
    ‘No matter.’
    Malien activated sentinels – squat black cones – at the entrances to the lower and upper levels. Tiaan’s eyes lingered on the broken constructs as they went by. The design, and the workmanship, was magnificent. Were they powered by the field, as clankers were, or did they draw on an entirely different source? She wanted to get inside one and find out. Tiaan really missed her craft.
    They went up. It was not far, now that Tiaan knew the way, but they had to climb eight long swirling flights of stairs, one after another. By the last, the old woman was shaking.
    ‘This day has been rather too much for me. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Malien went into her room and closed the door.
    Tiaan had a drink of water and sat down until her heart stopped hammering. She was overcome by a deep melancholy. Such a small decision to care about Minis, such mighty consequences. Was the world already at war with the Aachim? Were innocent people being slaughtered while she sat here in luxury?
    Tiaan sprang out of the chair. She felt a mad urge to hurt herself, to make herself suffer as a way of connecting with Haani. Flinging the door open, she hurtled up the stairs to Malien’s lookout, rejoicing in the ache in her side. She slapped the opener with her palm. The glass wall slid back and Tiaan pushed out into the gale.
    The balcony was icy. Tiaan slipped, cracking her shin against the stone seat. Limping to the edge, she looked over. The air was perfectly clear, the distant peaks like etchings on glass. A low sun glinted bronze off the ice sheet.
    The view was magical but Tiaan could not see it, any more than Malien did in the hours she spent here every day. Malien looked across the void to Aachan, the ancestral world her people had been cut off from thousands of years ago. Now they would never return. The small, cold globe that was Aachan was no longer habitable. They were forever exiles.
    As was she. By the time the red sun plunged into a lake of mist, Tiaan was practically frozen to the