Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (31 page)

'Aeolior is dead, you cretin!' raged Mendark.
'Ah, but I think it will open to Maigraith - '
'I'm sure it began to,' Karan interrupted, 'way back when she first looked at
it in Fiz Gorgo. I thought it strange at the time.'
'Do you have something to say, Shand?' asked Yggur.
Shand, still scratching at that memory, took a long time to answer. 'The
ignorant have talked for long enough. Let Maigraith speak, if she cares to.'
'Yes, Maigraith, take up your birthright!' said Mendark, as imperiously as if
he was giving orders to a slave. 'Find what we need in it! Time is pressing.'
Maigraith darted a glance at Mendark, then away quickly. 'His arrogance
reminds me of Faelamor,' she said softly to Shand. 'I'm not going back to
that.'
Shand squeezed her hand. 'I expected to be doing this two hundred and fifty
years ago,' he said to the group. 'But after Aeolior . . .' He eased the
Mirror out of its case. A little tremor ran through him. Without looking at
it, he put the tight coil of black metal in Maigraith's hand. The bright
lights glinted on it, reflections shimmering down its length and back again.
'The first time I touched the Mirror, back in Fiz Gorgo,' said Maigraith, 'I
felt such a fascination and a yearning, as if a whole lost world was about to
open before me. Maybe it would have, if Yggur had not appeared.' Her eyes met
Yggur's and darted away. 'I felt it calling to me then. And in Havissard I
heard that call again.'
Abruptly, impatiently, she opened her hand and the coil of dark metal snapped
into ... the Mirror! It reflected her face perfectly; the silky, chestnut hair
that hung, quite straight, halfway down her back; the beautiful regularity of
her features; the skin that was the colour of honey and just as smooth; the
Charon eyes, indigo crossed with carmine. Only one thing was different from
the first time. Then she had been downcast, and her face had shown it. Now she
looked alive.
'Llian,' said Mendark peremptorily. 'Copy down those glyphs. That's another
matter you can work on.'
They watched in silence as Llian copied the glyphs on a piece of card, checked
them twice and passed the Mirror back.
'I don't know the script,' he said, 'though - '
'What?'
'It's strangely like . . . Yes!' he hissed. 'They're the mirror image of the
glyphs in Yalkara's book.'
'I wonder what that can mean?' said Shand.
Maigraith stared at the Mirror without seeing it. She was thinking about
Yalkara, her mother's mother. How often had Yalkara held it in her hands,
using it for what purposes no one on Santhenar, probably not even Shand, ever
knew? Had she wondered what her unborn daughter would be like? Had she wished
that the Mirror could give her a glimpse of Aeolior's future? Surely it had
not.
There was so much Maigraith wanted to know. Faelamor had taught her nothing
about Yalkara, her own great enemy. And even on their journey here, Shand had
scarcely spoken about her. Unravelling the past could occupy her for the rest
of her life. It was part of a great mystery, one to which no one knew the
answer.
'How am I meant to use the Mirror?'
'I don't know,' said Shand. 'My way cannot be your way, nor Aeolior's neither.
The wheel has turned and you must reflect the pattern of its turning.'
Maigraith moved the Mirror around in her hands, uncomfortable with these
strangers feeding on her so hungrily. Had she just exchanged one tyrannous
master for another? They were all staring at her, especially Yggur. All but
Shand alone, who was sunk in reverie, and Karan, snuggling her cheek against
Llian's shoulder. She seemed to have her hand inside his shirt. Maigraith
smiled inwardly. The others all wanted something from her. But she had not
gone though the past year to be mastered again so easily. She would look on
the Mirror, see what it had to say, and take her own counsel. No one would

tell her what to do, ever again.
'I can't think with everyone staring at me so,' she said to Shand.
'What do you want to do?'
'Everyone wants something from me. I have to get away. Perhaps somewhere by
the sea. Will you come with me, grandfather?' After a life of agonising about
who she was, the word gave her a small, tight feeling of pleasure and
contentment. She was someone; she had a past and now a future. She belonged,
and was loved for herself.
'I'll ask Tallia to find a place,' said Shand. 'She knows everything.'
Shortly Tallia reappeared with an address written on a scrap of paper. Shand
took it, then he and Maigraith hurried away from that abode of greedy faces to
a place on the eastern side of the city, just inside the Heads.
They turned off the road to the lighthouse, down a winding, stony track. It
was far enough from Thurkad that the city's stench could not be smelt, even
when the wind was blowing from the west, as it was today. The path curved
around a patch of wind-twisted scrub and they looked out across the outer
harbour, where the blue water was flecked with foam. Waves were breaking
across a bar at the entrance. Sails white, yellow and dun-coloured moved up
and down. They continued down the path and through a gallery forest, just a
strip in the bottom of the valley.
The path wound through the rocks and scrub towards a tiny bay. Another path
climbed to the top of the cliff. A gravel beach came into view. Maigraith
could have tossed her hat from one end of it to the other. A cottage, barely
bigger than Karan's forest hut, nestled among trees behind the beach. The
windows looked across the bay. The view showed trees, water and far-off sails.
They took off their packs and sat down on the porch.
'I've always wanted to live by the sea,' Maigraith sighed. 'I remember when I
was just a little girl, playing with a battered old shell. It would have been
bigger than my fist.' She looked at her hand.
'Someone told me - not Faelamor, you can be sure - that the whisper I heard
when I put it to my ear was the sound of the distant sea, captured there long
ago. And in my childish fancy I was sure that was true, for there were times
when the sound was just a whisper, the gentle waves foaming up the beach and
rushing back again. Other times I heard a roaring and a crashing and a
thundering that could only be the wild storm flinging grey water and green
weed (and perhaps a helpless mermaid or two) against the rocks.' She laughed
nervously. 'There was much violence, much tearing away from roots in my
childhood dreaming.
'I often dreamed that I lived by that sea, with my mother and my father, and
their mothers and fathers, a sister or two, even a brother. We would go for
long walks across the rocks together, picking over the wrack and the drift and
the strange things that lived in pools.'
'You must have been lonely,' said Shand, stretching his legs across the
weathered boards.
'I was terribly lonely. I yearned for all the things that other children had parents, brothers, sisters, cousins - but I was all alone. I was different.
That was the first thing I knew about myself. The other children knew it too.
Though I was only four or five, I was never allowed to play. I studied all day
and long into the evening. At first we lived among
the Faellem but when they found out what a terrible crime Faelamor had done,
we were exiled.'
She rested her head on Shand's shoulder, then quickly moved it again as though
afraid that he would object. Shand drew her back. Maigraith gave another sigh.
'Was Faelamor your teacher?'
'Not at first. When I was little I was mostly tutored by Hana. I don't know if
that was her true name. She was not Faellem. Hana was tall with brown hair in
a single plait that hung right down her back, and when she held me her skin
always seemed so soft and warm. I made her into a mother, I suppose, having no
other. She was kind to me. I desperately wanted a father too, but that was a
forbidden topic. I've no idea who he was.'

'Nor do I.' Shand got up in some agitation and stared out towards the heads.
The waves crashed and roared all around Shag's Rock and the Gap.
'I wish I knew. Hana understood what it was like for me because Faelamor had
abducted her. She was a teacher in her own society.
'When Faelamor was away, Hana would take me for walks down to the water. I
remember one place, a ridge between two lakes, the ground falling steeply to
the water on both sides. I seem to recall a broken watch-tower. In winter
everything was frozen, but in summer the water was so warm that we would take
off our clothes and swim out to an island. It was lovely, floating there with
Hana treading water beside me, watching over me.
'If it had not been for her I would have turned into a machine, which is what
Faelamor wanted of me. But Hana was so kind, so loving and warm, and I knew
that she, too, was a lonely prisoner. She gave me that shell and listened to
my dreams about the sea. She had not seen it either, but she knew all about
it. She told me stories of terrible shipwrecks, and oceans that are as warm as
blood and glow with light; of towers beside the water that sent strange
messages, and
astounding creatures that hunted in the depths; of cruel men who sailed on
tall ships, and women too, doing unspeakable things.
'But when I was eight she disappeared. One day Faelamor humiliated me for not
understanding my lesson, and that night Hana came to comfort me, wiping away
my tears and telling me little jokes until my misery was gone. Faelamor caught
us together. I don't know what she did, but Hana went white and clutched at
her head as if it would burst open. The next day she was sick and desperate.
Faelamor took me away for the day's lesson. The following morning I crept into
Hana's hut before dawn, but she was gone and I never saw her again.
'Faelamor was so furious that she could not speak. I suppose Hana knew too
much. Faelamor went after her and I was terribly afraid for my teacher, but
Faelamor did not find her. I think the Faellem must have helped Hana to
escape. How else could she have gotten away from Faelamor? Not long after that
the Faellem exiled us. We went far away, travelling through all the lands of
the south, never staying long in one place. We never had a home after that.
Never! How I wanted one.
'I often thought about Hana over the years, but she would be dead long ago
now. The night after she disappeared I lay in bed in the darkness, weeping
silently for my lost friend and for my misery. Later I woke. A full moon shone
in my window and I felt stirred by something. It was cold and quiet outside:
the dark shadows of the trees, the snow! I took out my shell but could not
hear the sea at all. Had Faelamor cast her miserable spell over it as well?
'I traced the spirals with my fingers, outside and inside. There was something
inside it, a scrap of paper folded into a pellet. It was Hana's writing. I
have it still,' she said, taking what appeared to be a golden bead from a
chain about her neck and twisting until it separated into halves. A tiny roll
of paper fell out. Unrolling it carefully she passed it to Shand.
'The Whelm took it from me in Fiz Gorgo, but Yggur gave it back.'
COURAGE, it said in the consciously well-formed script of a teacher. It was
written in the common speech of the south-east, which Shand knew though he had
not spoken it for many years. He felt his eyes grow moist for the gift of this
unknown woman.
'That saved me, many times,' she said. 'Many times I lost heart, especially
when I was becoming a woman. That was one of the most painful times for me.
Faelamor tormented me so. I never knew why. I suppose it was because I
reminded her of her enemy.'
'Yes, you are the very image of Yalkara,' said Shand. 'Though a smaller
version - she was a big woman.'
'It must have been torment for Faelamor, seeing me growing up to so resemble
her enemy. There's not much Faellem in me.'
'There's enough. It just doesn't show on the outside.'
'Do you know anything about my father?' she asked yet again, plaintively.
'Nothing. I'm sorry.'

'Faelamor came to realise that her plan had gone wrong. She had made me, the
triune that she needed, but I could not be forced into the mould she had put
so much effort into constructing. I was flawed, she told me, and I think she
despaired that all her work had been for nothing.
'There were times when I could think of no escape but to kill myself,' said
Maigraith. 'I often thought of that when I was growing into womanhood. After I
grew up it got better. I had achieved some mastery of the skills Faelamor had
spent so long teaching me. I was able to help her, and I took satisfaction
from what I was able to do, especially when it was something that she could
not.'
'In what way are you flawed?' asked Shand, scratching his chin.
'I had to be controllable. I could not act independently of
her, or seek power for myself. She could not make someone who would break away
to become a rival - that would be remaking the enemy.'
'Rather ironic then, that she has brought out Yalkara in you,' said Shand.
'Hardly!' Maigraith laughed. 'But she must have been afraid of what I could
become. She broke my spirit. That is why I failed in Fiz Gorgo, and where she
first realised it. I could not impose my will on others. Since then I have
developed that skill, to a degree.'
'Yet you forced Karan to go to Fiz Gorgo with you.'
'Poor Karan! That was not my will but Faelamor's. I would have done anything
to avoid having to confess that I had failed her. Anyway, Hana's message
brought me back from despair many times. But those days are so far away now.'
She rolled up the scrap of paper and put it back where it had come from.
Maigraith, after her initial explosion of joy in Elludore, had found it
impossible to break through the reserve built up over so many years, and the
demands of the company had sent her retreating back into herself. Now the
sound of the seabrought all the memories and associations flooding out as if a
dam had burst. 'I loved that old seashell,' she said with a shiver.
'What happened to it?'
'One night Faelamor found me sleeping, clutching it to me as children do with
the drabbest little thing that they have made into a treasure. She threw it
down and crushed it beneath her boot.'
It was too long ago for Maigraith to care, though the feeling of dumb hurt was
one that she was still familiar with. But Shand began to smoulder. 'I know the
terrible isolation and loneliness the Faellem felt, when they found themselves
marooned here in Santhenar. But not even Rulke would have done the things that
Faelamor has done. She is utterly corrupt. Thoroughly evil!'
'Is she? I never thought that. No, it's just that the Faellem
are a different human species, as the Aachim and the Charon are different. We
each put our own kind first, as a dog puts its interests above those of its
neighbour, the cat. She is single-minded about her own species, as you old
humans are about your own race. We make so much of the rights of humankind,
while denying animals any rights whatsoever.'
'But animals are not human,' said Shand in a tone that suggested that the
issue did not warrant debating. 'Well, I'm going to get this place into shape,
then I'll make dinner. Can I get you anything first?'
'I want to do it with you.'
And they did, enjoying the simple things like gathering wood and carrying it
between them back to a heap behind the house, chopping it into lengths,
collecting tinder and kindling. They made beds, cleaned away dust and cobwebs,
shook out rag rugs, and when the little place was as comfortable as could be
managed, and herbs and branches of aromatic shrubs had been hung up here and
there in lieu of flowers, they began to prepare lunch.
Maigraith's experience of cooking extended little further than the campfire it was not an art that Faelamor thought to be of value - and even there her
productions had been austere. But Shand loved good food and took equal
pleasure in preparing it. As he worked, kneading dough or beating eggs,
marinating meat or creaming butter and sugar, he explained carefully what he
was doing, and why, and Maigraith caught some of the pleasure from him. She