A tremor pa.s.sed 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.

In the eighth hut they found a body, a boy no more than five. His hair was pale, as was his skin, and his build stocky. He was as perfectly preserved as everything else. The body, still partly encased in tar, was laid on a stretcher and carried away.

The next hut proved empty apart from a wooden bench. The one after that was full of bodies. The Matriarch carried the first out herself, laying it on the floor of the tunnel. There were twenty-five of them: eight men, seven women and the remainder children. They were a small people. Their skin was stained from the tar, their eyes blue, grey or pale-brown, their hair also light-coloured. They were strong-featured, but rather too stocky to have been called handsome, to Gilhaelith's mind The lyrinx gathered around, staring at the bodies. What secret did they conceal? A vibration roused them, teams began to carry the bodies away and the diggers continued with the excavation.

They found no more bodies that night, but did discover some beautiful crystals of yellow brimstone, all broken, as well as a bronze implement consisting of seven concentric circles marked with graduations and symbols. A bronze pin pa.s.sed through the centre of each circle, allowing them to rotate. Inside the inner circle was another bronze shape, somewhat corroded: a crescent moon, or perhaps the blade of a sickle. Meant to be turned with a fingertip, it was stuck fast.

As far as Gilhaelith could tell, none of these relics was the secret the Matriarch sought, and the excavations continued. It now being the middle of the night, he was escorted to his bed, where his dreams were disturbed by rods of light as thick as tree trunks, and the thrashing of people suffocating in tar.

They came for him a few hours later. He could not see why, for nothing had changed at the face. The floor was piled with mummified bodies, shards of crystal, household objects and other items he had already seen many times.

As he approached the work face, the workers were levering at what appeared to be the wall of a meeting house or chieftain's hut, lying on its side. They pulled off the planks, began to break away the hard tar and suddenly liquid tar began to ooze through a crack.

'Hoy,' the Matriarch roared to the freezing team.

They pushed up the annulus, pointed the mushroom in the right direction and worked their lever. Frost shimmered in the air. Tar continued to ooze through the crack.

'What's the matter?' she shouted.

'There's nothing left in the field.'

'Get some planks over the crack. What's gone wrong?'

'Phynadr's not drawing enough power,' said the operator. 'We must have drained the field.'

'It comes and goes!' said Gyrull. 'Try again.'

This time the annulus worked, though not very well. Behind them, near where the latest bodies and relics lay, a crack opened in the side of the tunnel, allowing in a hot spurt of tar that spattered across the pile. The hole sealed over, only to crack again. The tar kept ebbing in.

This was his last chance. Gilhaelith had just started with the globe, developing the swiftest spell he could manage in the circ.u.mstances, when the Matriarch yelled, 'Get the relics out of the tunnel. How are we going, Franll?'

The operator shook his crested head. 'I don't see how we can do any more.'

Cuttlefish waves of colours, pastel blues, greens and pinks, pulsed across her skin. 'We must keep trying. The siege comes to a climax. Move everything to safety, including the tetrarch's devices.'

'And me?' he said hopefully.

'You stay here. Great human armies surround us, tetrarch, and the Aachim with their constructs.' She hacked furiously at the frozen face. 'We will lose Snizort within days. The enemy are trying to set fire to the tar.'

Even Gilhaelith could read the other lyrinx's skin speech dismay followed by despair.

'I'm afraid for you, Matriarch,' said the operator.

'I merely serve. Should I die, another stands ready to replace me.'

In his mind's eye, Gilhaelith could see himself, an ant at the end of a long, brittle tunnel made from something no stronger than cake icing. It would take no force at all to break it. He was not ready to die. There was so much to do. He felt a sudden pang of fear for Tiaan but there was nothing he could do for her.

A dozen lyrinx were up at the face, furiously excavating. The hut had a circular hole through the roof, or so Gilhaelith interpreted the tangle of shortened framing timbers. Puzzled, he climbed up to take a better look.

'These look as though they've been burned,' he said, 'but see how neatly. As if by a red-hot blade.' The ancient doc.u.ments had said something about that.

She did not answer. More bodies were removed, all clad in bright, ceremonial vestments. On the far side, another lyrinx was working above his head, trying to free a decorated, coffin-shaped box sealed at either end. He broke the seals, lifted off the lid and grey dust poured out, covering him from crested head to clawed toes. He shook it off, flashed a toothy grin at his fellows and pulled hard. The coffin slid free. There was nothing in it but dust and bones.

The work continued. The Matriarch was busy in a corner of the hut, where the side of a small wooden chest had been dug out. They hacked tar from around it and prised open the lid.

Inside, wrapped in a pale-blue blanket, was a large yellow crystal protected in a golden basket. One of the lyrinx reached for it but she snapped, 'Don't touch! It's very fragile.'

'A brimstone,' said Gilhaelith.

'The brimstone.' brimstone.'

'Is that what you came for?'

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her old face was expressionless but for an instant her shoulder plates sparkled in exhilaration. She seized hold of her breast plates and worked them back and forth, as if to settle them in place.

He tried again, while they were distracted. Gilhaelith closed his eyes, trying to see the web of filaments, but caught only a few unbroken threads, moving as in a wind. The amplimet's work must almost be done.

A spasm of fear struck him. It was finished here, and it was in control of the node. And they were deep in the Great Seep, reliant on power. What was it doing? There had to be more. He had to see He had to see. Maybe he could draw on it to escape. All his equipment was gone, and all the relics, and there was not so much as a fragment of brimstone left. Only one thing to do. He reached within himself to those ever-troubling gallstones, and forced one to wake.

The tattered webs appeared for a second but they did not show what he was looking for. Only one filament remained unbroken, so fine that he had not seen it before. Light pulsed along it, and it ran into the back of his head.

He tried desperately to see what it was doing, but the gallstone exploded and shrieking agony drove him to his knees. The filament snapped and the tattered webs vanished. It was all too clear now. He had delved too deeply and the amplimet had caught him. How long had it been studying him, and what had it learned?

A loud crack came from behind them. Half a dozen cooling rings back, the floor of the tunnel had sheared in two. Inflooding tar was pushing the sections further apart every second.

'Matriarch!' shouted one of the lyrinx. 'It's failing.'

She closed the chest, tucked it under her arm and sprang down. Her impact with the floor shook the tunnel and one big foot went though the sh.e.l.l. She wrenched it out. Tar oozed up. The other lyrinx ran, carrying as much as they could.

Gilhaelith forced himself to his knees, tripped, and fell sprawling. His insides were in agony, as if the fragments of stone were being forced down tiny ducts. Ahead, tar bubbled through the gap, already a couple of strides wide at the base. The tunnel now cracked at the top and a curtain of tar flooded in.

The Matriarch hurtled past him and burst through the curtain. Gilhaelith followed, but as he tried to jump, the sections were wrenched apart and he plunged to his knees in the warm tar of the Great Seep. He threw out his arms and managed to catch a lump of hard floor. Gilhaelith tried to pull himself out but the tar clung too strongly.

Like a fly on tar paper, he thought. I'm stuck. The lyrinx were already out of sight. Too late he felt the bitterness of regret. The game was lost, and Tiaan. And for what? He hardly dared to think.

SIXTY.

Tiaan dreamed that Old Hyull, a glowing mushroom on his head, was stripping her backbone out from its surrounding skin and flesh, smacking his lips as he slurped down the slippery marrow. She woke squirming with horror, but it was only a dream and a ridiculous one. Backbones did not have marrow, did they? Or was it her spinal cord he was devouring?

Later she woke in what she supposed to be a different kind of patterner, hanging upside down in a collection of translucent spheres as green as gra.s.s. She felt blurred in the head, as if she'd had too much to drink. It wore off during the day but her back began to throb low down, where she had broken it. The pain grew until it made her cry out, whereupon Liett pulled her mouth open and forced in half a mug of sweet syrup. It sent Tiaan to sleep within minutes. When she woke, the pain was no more than a nagging ache. She felt that days had pa.s.sed.

Tiaan kept expecting Tutor to appear around the door, but he did not come. She had not seen him for days and missed him.

That afternoon she was taken to another room and put onto a curving platform covered in what felt like hide. It was mottled in shades of grey and was yielding yet firm beneath. Her hands were slid into receptacles like shoulder-length gloves, her legs fed into thigh-high envelopes of similar material. Suckers were attached to the back of her head, her neck and all the way down to her tailbone.

Ryll tightened leather straps across her body and nodded at a lyrinx standing to one side. She reached beneath Tiaan's head. The thigh envelopes began to move in constantly changing directions. Sometimes they went up and down, at other times round and round or from side to side, or made all of those movements at once.

Tiaan cried out as a series of pangs struck her backbone. Liett gave her a half-dose of syrup and her vision faded. People moved across the room from time to time, so slowly that it could not have been real. Time slowed to a standstill.

The exercises went on until Tiaan felt as though her bones were dissolving. She was removed and laid out to sleep on a couch at the far end of the room. As soon as she woke, the exercises began again.

There were many more sessions, over as much as a week, before Old Hyull seemed to be satisfied. Ryll carried Tiaan back to the patterner. The jellyfish mask went over her head and they began to repattern the faulty torgnadr. Again she woke weeping. The top of the device was beaded with her tears.

Tutor was sent for. He dried her face and sat unmoving until she stopped crying. 'Patterning had the same effect on me.'

She raised her head. 'They patterned you you?'

He smiled. 'They tried everyone, back in the early days when they were learning. They thought torgnadrs were going to win the war in a few weeks, by draining the nodes each time clankers went into battle. They probably would have won, had they been able to pattern enough of them. Fortunately for us, nearly all failed. The lyrinx got no torgnadr out of me, but I cried for a fortnight. I can still remember how it felt.'

'When was that, Tutor?' The t.i.tle still felt wrong. She did not like using it.

'A long time ago. Five or six years? You lose track of time down here.'

She felt closer to him. Tutor was a nondescript fellow, neither tall nor short, handsome nor ugly. He was thin, but every human here was. And pale; few of the prisoners ever saw the sun. His dark eyes were kindly, his brow lined. His hand was callused evidently they worked him hard and not only as a teacher.

'This torgnadr of mine, if they succeed with it, will cause the deaths of thousands. Are all these people in the patterners ?'

'No, Tiaan. I told you, torgnadrs are hard to make. The others are just patterning weak devices like limnadrs and phynadrs, and most of those fail too.'

'What are they?'

'Limnadrs are spying devices. They can sense moving clankers, though not well, since the design was changed last year. Phynadrs draw small amounts of power from the field, for one purpose or another. They're a bit like clanker controllers. I think they got a limnadr out of patterning me. Because of my gift for languages, you see useful for spying.'

'Yes. Do you mind if I call you Merryl? Tutor seems like a slave name.'

'Of course not.' Before he could say any more, Merryl was called away.

He came back several times, when she was overcome by melancholy. They did not talk much but she drew comfort from his presence. The other humans felt alien but he never did.

Tiaan wondered, as she often did, what they were doing with Gilhaelith. He had been kind to her in his own strange way, but in the end, like everyone else, he had made his choice. No doubt he was looking after himself, though she could not see how he could get the amplimet.

Old Hyull now inspected the torgnadr after every patterning session. After the fifth such visit he gave the faintest of toothy smiles as he hefted the bucket, peering through the gla.s.s from below.

Ryll spoke to him. Old Hyull shook his head violently. Ryll cast a glance at Tiaan. Old Hyull put down the bucket, rasping a series of orders in which all Tiaan could make out was her name and, once, torgnadr torgnadr. Old Hyull went out with the torgnadr.

'Is it fixed?' Tiaan whispered to Ryll.

'No,' he replied, after looking over his shoulder. 'And Old Hyull can't understand why not. But it's better than it was it will do.'

She wondered what she was responsible for. 'Aren't you going to take me out of the patterner? My skin feels all lumpy and hot.'

'There isn't time. We must pattern another torgnadr from the beginning and hope we can complete it.'

'No,' she whispered. 'I can't take any more, Ryll.'

'You must.' He did not meet her eyes.

The patterning began, exactly as before except that the sessions were much longer. Perhaps it was easier the second time. But if that was so, why did the enemy have so few torgnadrs? Maybe the second time was fatal.

The growing torgnadr was a blob the size of a large melon when the cavern shook, as if something had thumped into the ground overhead. Ryll set down the bucket. His eyes were huge. Threads of red and black inched their way up his arms. The sight made her afraid.

'What is it, Ryll?' she whispered.

'The battle for Snizort has begun and we are not ready.' Ryll closed his eyes. 'I can see Snizort burning. Fire! Fire!' he gasped, looking around like a desperate animal.

'Ryll?' Too late. He was gone.

Tiaan felt an urge to scream. If Snizort was was on fire, all she could do was await her death with whatever dignity she could muster. She took deep breaths, which was no help at all. She hoped it would be quick. on fire, all she could do was await her death with whatever dignity she could muster. She took deep breaths, which was no help at all. She hoped it would be quick.

Some minutes later, Ryll returned, his skin now showing camouflage colours. He approached, head hanging. 'I'm sorry, Tiaan. I am proven to be a rank coward. Fire is my greatest terror.'

She said nothing. The patterning resumed, but some minutes later the room shook again. Old Hyull bounded through the door and dragged Ryll out, flashing distress markings. Down the row of patterners, someone screamed, but thankfully no one else took it up. The women chattered among themselves in their own language, ignoring Tiaan as usual.

More lyrinx ran in, gathering inside the door and skin-speaking furiously. It looked like a general panic. There were two more thumps. The lyrinx disappeared again.

She was glad when Merryl came up the row a few minutes later.

'What's the matter?' she yelled. 'Are we being attacked?'

'Yes, but we're not in danger yet.'

'Then why the panic?'

'The old torgnadr has finally failed and yours is not proving as effective against the enemy as they had hoped.'

She was pleased to hear it. 'You mean at draining the node?'

'Yes, and channelling power to their great project.'

'How do you know?'

'One picks things up. But '

He looked around to see if anyone was watching. No one was, though Tiaan was uncomfortably aware of the growing torgnadr beside her, so similar to their spying devices.

'What are they going to do?'