Tetrarch

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 tu

‘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 tu

‘What’s the matter?’ the Matriarch demanded, late on the seventeenth day of tu

‘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 cha

‘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 co

‘Come see this, tetrarch!’

A lyrinx dragged him by the wrist down to the excavation face. The tu

‘Matriarch!’ the tu

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 tu

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 tu

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 passed through the centre of each circle, allowing them to rotate. Inside the i

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 a

‘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 a

This was his last chance. Gilhaelith had just started with the globe, developing the swiftest spell he could manage in the circumstances, when the Matriarch yelled, ‘Get the relics out of the tu