Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (11 page)

knife.
'And a thousand, perhaps all Santhenar,' Mendark agreed gloomily. 'My life's
work is coming undone.'
'How is he?' Tallia asked, when they had cut the bloody rags of Llian's
trousers off to reveal his eroded calves. The bone was exposed on both shins.
Lilis looked quite ill at the sight.
'Sick and sore, but I expect he'll live.'
Malien went on with the delicate operation, picking dirt out of the collar of
abraded flesh around Llian's calves and shins while Shand and Asper sewed up
Xarah's wounds with a large needle. Xarah watched her surgeons with never a
complaint.
'She's a tough one!' said Shand admiringly, as they completed the stitches
across her belly.
Llian woke when Malien was nearly done. He moaned. His legs and feet were a
mess of pain.
'He's coming round,' he heard Shand say. 'Hold him down.'
Llian opened his eyes. Malien wiped sweat from his brow. 'I seem to have spent
half my life patching you up, chronicler,' she said with a pretence at
cheerfulness.
'Is it bad?' Llian asked, gritting his teeth as he tried to sit up.
'I think we can save your feet.'
He fell back. The self-destructive fever that had possessed him last night was
gone, frozen out of him. His helplessness had been proven all too vividly.
What could he do without feet?
'You'll hurt for a bit, but then I know what a philosophical attitude you
have.' She chuckled. The Aachim had a high
tolerance for pain and thought Llian to be rather feeble.
'But I will be able to walk?'
'It's a long time since I heard such heart-rending moans. I expect so,
chronicler, though you'll be limping for months.'
'I'm freezing!' His teeth chattered.
'Soup's nearly ready,' said Lilis, stirring a cauldron on the smoky fire. Her
eyes were red raw.
They fed Llian soup and wrapped him up again. He lapsed back into a
semi-comatose state, hearing snatches of talk. Once or twice, tormented by
helplessness and failure, he groaned Karan's name.
'We can't stay here,' he heard Yggur say. 'The Ghashad are out on the
mountain.'
'What about the thranx?' croaked Tensor.
'No sign of it, nor the other creature.'
'We've got to help Karan,' Llian mumbled, tossing on his stretcher.
"There's nothing we can do,' said Malien. 'Try to sleep now.'
One of the patrols hurried in to report a band of Ghashad gathered on the
slope above the forest.
'We'd better get down,' said Yggur. 'I don't like this place - we're too
vulnerable.'
'It'll be dark in a few hours. Call the guards in closer.'
They spent a miserable night in the pavilion, prey to all kinds of fears,
though the Ghashad seemed content to guard the track up to Carcharon. At the
first glimmer of dawn the bearers took up their stretchers and they all
retreated through the forest to the granite cliff.
Shand had equipped himself with a stave made of a hard wood almost as black as
charcoal. One end was knobbly and fitted neatly into his hand. The making of
this staff, or perhaps the possession of it, seemed to give him particular
pleasure. 'This reminds me of my wandering days. I feel that I could defend
myself against anything, with it.' He stroked his beard with his free hand.
'You delude yourself,' said Mendark coldly.
'It's a very comforting delusion,' Shand grinned. He liked to provoke Mendark.
They reached the edge of the plateau. Here the path came out of forest to
snake across a strip of wind-twisted scrub, no more than head-high, then

between massive outcrops of pink granite, crusted with lichens and capped with
snow, that marked the edge of the escarpment.
'We're too exposed,' Shand muttered.
Tensor lifted his head from the stretcher to sniff the air. He shivered.
'Let's move!' said Mendark. His voice cracked.
They skidded their way between the boulders with their stretchers and onto the
narrow path at the top of the cliff. It was icy, and an updraught sent
flurries of snow whirling and tumbling in their faces. They turned down the
track, treading carefully.
'Gothryme will seem like paradise after this,' said Tallia to Shand. They were
at the rear.
'And Tullin, heaven. I wish I'd never left,' said Shand.
Tallia and Jevi were immediately behind Llian, not speaking, but walking so
close together that their arms touched. Jevi's broken arm was in a sling and
the three fingers had been strapped together. At that moment the leader,
Basitor, recognisable among the tall Aachim by his bandaged head, stopped so
abruptly that Yggur bumped into him.
'Watch - ' Yggur broke off.
Standing before them on the path, looking like a devil from the deepest pits
of the void, with its wings forming a hood high above it, was the thranx. Its
skin was a threatening blood-purple colour, like a bruise, its belly swollen
from feeding. Massive thigh muscles rippled. Claws as long as knives tightened
on the path, crushing the ice and rotten rock beneath its feet. One thigh bore
a red wound, like a burn.
Yggur stood paralysed, as he had when Rulke's construct had appeared. One hand
groped for his sword hilt but did not recognise it. His mouth hung open.
Basitor whipped out his long sword and held it out before him. 'Stay behind
me, blind man!' he said contemptuously. He swung the weapon in the air. It
made a humming sound.
The thranx bared its teeth. Its mouth seemed to contain a hundred of them and
they were shiny brown. It could have bitten his arm off at the shoulder.
'Skunngg!' it said, purring.
'I think that means "breakfast!" ' Nadiril coughed.
To Llian, sitting up on his stretcher, the events seemed unreal: the thranx
smiling, Basitor waving his sword in circles as if winding himself up. 'He's
going berserker,' Llian said softly, 'just like he did in Katazza.' Lilis
gripped his hand.
Basitor humped his great shoulders, roared mad defiance and leapt at the
thranx. It continued to grin at him, then at the last possible moment its left
arm flashed. It held a flail tipped with little spiked balls, like the statue
outside the gate of Carcharon.
The lashes whipped around Basitor's chest, the balls embedding themselves in
his flesh with thuds like a butcher's meat mallet. Basitor screamed. The sword
fell from his hand. With a backhanded flick of the flail, he was lifted off
his feet and sent whirling through the air like a spinning top, to disappear
over the edge of the cliff in the falling snow.
The thranx, still grinning, snapped the bloody flail at Yggur. Llian, who was
directly behind him, saw Yggur's weak knee wobble. His fingers clutched at the
sword hilt but Yggur did not seem to have the strength to draw it. Surely this
time he was going mad, and they were all going to die.
A Transformation
Behind Llian someone was screaming. It took a long time to work out that it
was Lilis.
'You can do it, Yggur!' said Nadiril.
'Move aside!' said Yggur to the thranx, struggling to control his fear but
failing miserably. He wrenched out his sword. His knee wobbled again and he
sagged on that side. 'Fall back!' he gasped over his shoulder.
The thranx swung its flail at Yggur's head. He did not move, though the
whizzing balls went so close that they ruffled his hair. The thranx took
another step forward, and only then did Llian realise how huge it was. Yggur

was a tall man but it was shoulders and head above him and the arch of its
spiked wings as high again. It raised the flail. Yggur did not move. How can
he just stand there? Llian thought. It'll turn him into mince. He must be
paralysed with terror.
Yggur squinted at the flail hand through his thick glasses. It twitched, and
at the same instant the thranx shot out its other hand, which held a grey rod
tipped with black. From the end of the rod, black light sprang out at Yggur's
eyes.
Yggur slashed down his left hand. The cable of light writhed across the path
like paste squeezed from a tube. It struck the rock face, which crumbled. A
wall of shattered granite collapsed onto the path, burying the thranx to the
knees. A twitch of the cheek was its only acknowledgment of the pain.
The thranx lashed the flail at Yggur. He tipped up his long sword and four of
the five thongs whipped themselves around the blade, then fell to the path.
The fifth ball curled past the blade, embedding itself in his shoulder. The
thranx grinned and tore it free in a spray of blood. Yggur staggered, went to
one knee and dropped the sword. The creature thrust the flail in its belt,
half-freed a leg from the rubble and extended the claws of its empty hand.
Yggur's shoulder gushed blood. He's finished! Llian thought. And we're next!
Judging from the cries behind him, the rest of the company must have felt the
same.
Yggur came up with a knife in his hand and shot forward. The thranx's blow
carved the air behind him. While it tried to free its legs, he stabbed upwards
with his good arm at the creature's unprotected groin. The thranx screeched,
lashed out blindly and its armoured knee caught Yggur in the belly, flinging
him against the cliff. It took two limping hops, staggered and fell sideways
off the path, trailing purple blood from between its legs. It spiralled
downwards, the wings began to beat and it disappeared.
Tallia and Shand forced past Llian, sending his stretcher swaying dangerously
near the edge of the cliff. They feared the worst but Yggur sat up. There was
a bruise the size of a peach on the side of his head and his shoulder was
gruesomely lacerated.
'Bravely done, sir,' said Shand. 'The tellers will tell this tale for a
thousand years.'
'An incredible feat,' echoed Mendark, who had been at the rear. 'Though you
are my enemy, I praise you ungrudgingly. I hope I can show the same courage
when I'm put to the test.'
'There was no time to think,' said Yggur, his chest heaving. 'Sometimes we
surprise ourselves. But it's not finished yet. Let's get down before you have
to carry me too.'
Lilis was sobbing her heart out. 'Poor Basitor! What will happen to him?'
Shand put an arm about her shoulders. 'The fall would have killed him
instantly, child. His suffering is over.'
Asper bandaged Yggur's shoulder, then they hurried on. They stopped briefly
halfway down, on a platform just wide enough for all of them to stand
together. From here the way was very steep, making it hazardous to manoeuvre
the stretchers. Tensor went on foot for a while but his gait was so awkward
that he was always in danger of going over. Snow began to fall more heavily,
reducing visibility to a few paces and making the ground underfoot even more
slippery.
Llian and the injured Aachim had to be carried, while Nadiril was looking more
like a stretcher case every minute. Llian found it terrifying, for his Aachim
bearers swayed around hairpin corners as if the track was a garden path. He
wished Karan were there to hold his hand, as she had on the way up. But that
thought led only to unpleasant conjectures.
At Gothryme there were explanations to be made yet again. Llian was given more
dark looks by Rachis and the whole household. Karan's sitting room was turned
into a hospital. Nadiril went to bed with pneumonia. Xarah's terrible wound
had become infected and she tossed in a fever. The healers gathered round her
bed, fearing that she would not live the night. A messenger was sent across

the range to Casyme, where Yggur had a small garrison. Other messengers went
down the valley of the Ryme to warn the neighbouring counties of their peril.
The manor's paltry defences were readied.
In the morning two of the Aachim went back to search for Basitor's body, but
returned without it.
'We found where he fell,' said Old Darlish sombrely, 'but there was nothing
left except a bloody splash on the snow. The thranx had been there before us we saw its prints.'
'What a terrible day,' said Malien. 'It hurts us bitterly when we cannot lay
our dead to rest.'
Llian knew that the Aachim ever looked backwards, and every death made them
weep for lost Aachan that none of them would ever return to. They still
thought of it as home, though almost all had been born on Santhenar. The
Aachim could not bear to lay their dead in alien soil.
'What's to be done about Llian?' said Mendark that evening. 'I'm anxious to
get back to Thurkad.'
'He'll have to go there too. He needs medicines that we don't have here,' said
Nadiril from his bed. He was recovering , but still weak. A coughing fit cut
him off.
'Agreed,' said Shand quickly, before Mendark could say more. "Then let's get
on to the other matter - what to do about Rulke, and Karan.'
'A while ago we talked about finding enough gold to make the golden flute anew

-a weapon against Rulke,' said Men-dark. 'A way of making our own gates.'
'We don't have the gold,' said Yggur. 'I plan to go my own way now. This
partnership has failed.'
'I see!' Mendark said coldly. 'You were happy to ally with us when you were
weak. Now we don't matter any more!'
'We never pretended to be friends,' Yggur replied. He looked ennobled by his
great victory. 'I don't see any merit in your plan. I've always argued against
it, if you recall.'
Mendark leapt up from his chair. 'You want the construct for yourself!'
7 don't want it at all. My life has been transformed. I'm not afraid of Rulke
now, and I'm not going to help you with your scheming.'
'Gentlemen, please,' Nadiril croaked. 'We're doing Rulke's work for him.
Remember Katazza! United we can face him, but divided we're nothing. Let the
alliance stand, at least until we return to Thurkad.
'Well, Yggur?' he snapped after neither had made any move. 'What about you,
Mendark?'
They agreed grudgingly.
'I'd say the thranx shocked Rulke as much as it did us,' said Malien. 'We've
got to find out what happened up there.'
'Who would dare return to Carcharon now?' said Yggur.
'Where did the thranx come from?' asked Lilis. She was sitting on the floor by
the fire, brushing her long hair. Jevi sat back in the corner watching her,
and Tallia beside him with her long legs stretched out, enclosing Lilis.
'What anyone knows about the void is just rumour, Lilis,' said Nadiril. 'It is
a dark place between the worlds, from which, even before the time of the
flute, when some chance alignment allowed them, things sometimes crept into
Santhenar.'
'What kind of things?' asked Lilis.
'Sometimes wild beasts or monsters. Other times, cunning and clever creatures
that were almost human, like that lorrsk back there, though merciless in their
violence. In the void only survival matters. But all that ended with the
Forbidding, for afterwards nothing could get through. All we remember is a
rumour of terror and a name or two - thranx is one such. Llian might tell you
some of those tales, when he's better.'
Lilis's curiosity was far from exhausted. 'How can the thranx even fly? It's
nothing like a bird or a bat. How can its wings hold up such a big body?'
'Well, child,' said Nadiril, 'it doesn't fly that well - it mostly soars and
glides. But even that must require a prodigious expenditure of the Secret Art,