Read Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) for Free Online Page B

Pouring a hefty slug into two goblets, she passed one to Tiaan.
    ‘Thank you, Matah.’ Tiaan picked up her goblet but did not taste it.
    The Matah smiled. ‘Matah is a title, not my name.’
    ‘What does it mean?’
    ‘It’s hard to say in your language. “Flawed” or “ambiguous” hero, perhaps.’
    Tiaan’s curiosity was aroused. ‘Why flawed?’
    ‘My people are in two minds about my role in the Histories.’
    ‘What is your role?’
    ‘
Was
,’ she corrected. ‘It was a long time ago. I have outlived my own expectations. My people felt that I worked too hard for humanity, in all its forms, and not hard enough for my own Aachim kind. I am venerated, yet an outcast. That is why I remained in Tirthrax when everyone else went to Stassor last year. I was not welcome at their meet.’
    Tiaan took a sip of her liquor and immediately regretted it. Its thickness clung to her tongue, trickling pulses of a burning floral pungency up her nose and down her throat. She would not have been surprised if steam had burst from her nostrils. It cleared her head though, blasting the last hours clear away.
    ‘Who are you?’ she said raspily, feeling the hot passage of the liquor all the way to the pit of her stomach. She put the goblet aside, searching through her memories of the Great Tales, and the lesser, for clues to the Matah’s identity. Many were the brave, and noble, and ultimately futile deeds done in the struggle with the lyrinx. Four Great Tales had been made in the last hundred years alone, though the Matah must predate them.
    ‘I played a part in what was once known as the greatest of all the Great Tales,’ the Matah said. ‘The
Tale of the Mirror
. Sadly, that tale has fallen out of favour with your scrutators.’
    That reminded Tiaan of something old Joeyn the miner had once said to her. He’d said that the Histories had been rewritten. A question for another time.
    ‘I’ve heard that tale,’ said Tiaan. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘My name is Malien.’
    Malien!
A famous name from the Histories. The Aachim could be long-lived, Tiaan knew, but she could hardly take it in. She was in the presence of a legend. ‘You always seemed to be strong, yet kindly.’
    Malien met her eyes. ‘I can be hard as stone if I must.’
    In the early hours of the morning, growing feelings of longing for the amplimet, and growing unease, drew Tiaan down to the chamber with the glass gong. It was not exactly withdrawal, for she had not felt that since putting the amplimet inside the port-all and opening the gate.
    She had often thought that the amplimet had some purpose of its own, developed over the thousands, if not millions of years it had lain in that cavity in the mine, after it had
woken
. Had she freed it to work on some purpose as aged as the very bones of the mountains? And what care would such a mineral
awareness
have for petty humans and their transient lives and deaths? Maybe it had been using her. How could she hope to understand the purpose of something that could, with perfect patience, wait out a million years? Tiaan was afraid of the amplimet now, yet she could not give it up.
    She approached the hall tentatively, for it reeked with bitter memories. It was as cold as outside. An icy wind, whistling down the glacier from the ice cap, whirled in through the side of the mountain, frosting everything in its path.
    Tiaan had entered from a stair that ended near the outer wall. As she paced toward the port-all, every step was a nagging reminder. Over to her right was the pile of rubble and ice Haani had sheltered behind. Before her lay one of the bags of platinum Vithis had thrown to her, wealth enough to buy the manufactory and everything in it. The bag had burst open, scattering slugs of precious metal across the floor.
    Her boot struck something that tinkled. She bent down, then drew back. It was the ring, woven of precious metals, she had made so lovingly for Minis. Every strand held a wish or a dream. Impossible