Geomancer

She stood up, shaking her head as though trying to dislodge something caught in her colourless crest. Her fingers pressed the spot, over and over. Finally she sat down and closed her eyes.

Tiaan watched the little creature, which had fallen over and was kicking its back legs in uncoordinated spasms. Then, before her eyes, the pads of its feet began to thin and elongate. It happened so imperceptibly that at first Tiaan thought she’d imagined it. She had to compare what she was seeing now with its original self, like a blueprint in her mind, before she was sure.

‘Are you a flesh-shaper?’ she said to Ryll, recalling her dreams in the ice house.

‘Some of us are.’

Had they done this to her while she slept? Was she subtly altered from before? She inspected her hands and the horror must have been evident on her face.

‘Not you, Tiaan!’ Ryll seemed amused.

‘Why not?’ she cried, backing away.

‘Many reasons,’ said Liett. ‘But most important, you are too big.’

‘Oh?’

‘Even our greatest adepts can’t flesh-form a creature larger than a rat. It takes too much out of us. The work is painful and quite draining. We can’t cha

‘I saw you shape new fingers,’ she accused Ryll.

‘That was regeneration, which is quite different. I was replacing what was lost, not creating a new organism. Our bodies can regenerate even if we are unconscious.’

‘But in the void …’

‘Also different.’ He glanced at Liett. ‘We were subtly shaping our unborn selves. Gently.’

Tiaan went back to the thramp. ‘If you had a hundred working together, or a thou –’

‘That many wills can’t be focussed,’ said Ryll. ‘A hundred is worse than ten.’

‘Moreover,’ Liett went on, ‘you would know it if we tried to work on you. Flesh-forming is torture. This creature has been sedated. Even so, the trauma will probably kill it.’

The thramp was now lying on its side, panting. Its eyes were staring.

‘It does not look so bad.’

‘The worst is to come,’ said Ryll. ‘Liett has just transformed the skin and muscle beneath it. To mould the bones and organs will take days. Flesh-shaping is a very slow process, with many failures, despite what your tellers may have told you.’

‘Then why do it?’

‘Small creatures can be …’ She trailed off at a warning glance from Ryll, then continued. ‘We have a hundred shapers here, and more at other nodes, as you call them. Once one shaper finds the way, others can follow. But one day we will learn to use the power this place bathes in. We will not fear your clankers then, human.’

‘That’s why you wanted our controllers!’ Tiaan exclaimed. ‘And me. You can’t use the field and you want me to show you how. I won’t. Never!’ Why, why hadn’t she taken that chance to escape, back at the ice houses?

‘Oh yes, you will,’ said Liett, with a glance at the amplimet. ‘You will beg to help us.’

FORTY-TWO

That night Tiaan dreamed the earthly structure of Kalissin Spire and woke afraid. The very crust of the world seemed out of balance here. The land was imperceptibly rising, returning to its elevation before the ice sheets had weighed it down. Below, the fluid mantle drifted, immeasurably slow, to compensate.

Her dreams spoke to Tiaan after she was allowed to touch the amplimet. The fields churned all around her, and she sensed another potential. Beneath the iron spire the magma had subsided, leaving an empty chamber. Cooling, shrinking rock had cracked in concentric circles around the base of the spire, which was sinking, unleashing geomantic forces of many kinds.

Tiaan was woken by the wailing of pipes, not far away. They had been going for days now, playing the sorrowful songs that had been the life and death of Besant, Wise Mother of a lyrinx clan for more than eighty years.