Free Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) by Ian Irvine Page B

feel perfectly at home on Santhenar. Nor do I, despite that my children and my partners lie in their graves here. We forever look back to Aachan, mourning the world that we lost. We always hoped and planned to return. Now we never shall. But still I would use the amplimet, if I may, to take a last look at our lost world.’
    ‘But Aachan was destroyed,’ said Tiaan. The anger had gone but she still felt reluctant to let Malien have it, however briefly.
    ‘With the amplimet, and a strong enough will, I might look back into the depths of time. I might even see beloved Aachan as a paradise, before the Charon took it from us. Ah, Tiaan, you cannot know how I yearn for that.’ Malien shook her head and tears fell from her ageless eyes.
    Tiaan found herself moved by the old woman’s anguish. ‘Take it,’ she said, unfastening the little pouch hanging between her breasts. ‘Look back to Aachan and be at peace.’
    ‘I’m afraid,’ Malien said softly, and the power and the confidence were gone. She was no more than an ageing woman whose life had seen more of tragedy than triumph.
    ‘That the amplimet has been corrupted by the gate?’
    ‘I fear that, but not as much as I fear what I will see on Aachan.’
    Malien did not elaborate and Tiaan asked no more questions. She did not have the right. The crystal lay on her hand, glowing in a way that seemed vaguely menacing. They both stared at it.
    Malien shuddered, then reached out to lift it away between fingers and thumb. It dragged as if anchored to Tiaan’s palm with sticky threads. Something went snap and suddenly the crystal was tumbling through the air, exploding with light. She cried out but Malien’s long fingers closed around it and the light was cut off.
    Malien rose. ‘Come with me.’
    Tiaan followed her to the stone bench on her lonely eyrie. ‘What do you want me to do?’
    ‘Nothing, apart from being here.’ Malien sat on the bench.
    Tiaan stood by the glass door, where it was a little warmer. There was still a core of cold in her from before, and Malien having the amplimet only added to that.
    ‘Isn’t it dangerous using it so close to the node?’
    ‘It is.’
    Malien held the amplimet between her fingers, which were pressed together as though in prayer. The end of the crystal extended past the tips. She rested her elbows on her knees. Her posture was so rigid that Tiaan moved toward the edge of the precipice, the better to see.
    Malien’s head turned sharply and Tiaan was shocked at her expression. She looked afraid. The amplimet, normally a luminous white or blue-white, had gone a baleful red. The glow rose and fell, and with each flare Tiaan felt a wrenching in her middle.
    The crystal pulsed faster, more erratically. Some kind of struggle seemed to be going on between it and Malien, and Tiaan recalled Vithis’s fear – that it had been corrupted. Would it be a danger to her too, when she got it back?
If
Malien gave it back.
    Abruptly the glow was gone. The illuminated globe inside the door also went out. The sun had set long ago and the night was black, apart from a shimmer of starlight on the distant ice sheet. That seemed ominous. Malien shuddered from head to foot, then rose from the bench until she was standing on tiptoe. She held the crystal above her head and let out a great cry that could have been ecstasy or anguish.
    The crystal shone so brightly that Tiaan saw the blood running in Malien’s veins. It slowed, slowed, slowed. What was she doing? Tiaan tried to move but the world vanished and the next she knew, she was picking herself up from the frigid stone.
    Some time had passed, for moonlight now glistened on the peaks and the icefield. Malien still held the crystal above her head, pastel rays streaming out between her fingers. It looked as though she had frozen in place. Gelid tears hung on her cheeks but beneath her eyelids her eyes were moving.
    Tiaan crouched near the edge of the precipice, afraid to disturb her. The rays slowly