Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (57 page)

going to be all right after all.
The scene resolved. Rulke was arrayed in black with a scarlet cape. He was
standing astride his construct, the device potent beyond all potency, a
coruscation of ebony and adamant, exuding power, terrible in its strength.
Fear almost overwhelmed Mendark, but this time he would not give way to it. He
settled like thistledown on his balcony, made himself as comfortable as his
throbbing mouth would allow, and prepared to wait it out.
Karan had taken refuge in a larder in a part of the city abandoned since
Shazmak had fallen a year ago. She found edible food there: the pickled and
highly spiced meats that the Aachim so loved, as well as dried fruits and
vegetables, and cheeses protected in wax. After eating until she could cram
nothing more in, she tapped water from a glass tank, curled up on the floor
and slept for a few hours more.
This time she was woken not by nightmares but by surreal sensations, as if
something had shivered Shazmak to its foundations. It had to be the construct.
Rulke must be attacking the Forbidding again.
Karan gulped another drink, ducked her head out the door to check that the way
was clear and set off like a limping, hobbled wraith on the last leg of a
marathon. Her shredded trousers hung from her waist like a grass skirt. Her
senses had gone into overload, and occasionally she caught a glimpse, just
fleetingly out of the corner of her eye, though it was never there when she
looked directly at it, of the shimmering Wall of the Forbidding made visible.
The pit of her stomach alternated with fire and nausea. Faelamor was here
already, Karan was sure. She could sense an unpleasant shifting of reality
that might have been Faelamor, using her own mad instrument. Maigraith was in
terrible danger. They all were. She had to stop it before it was too late.
Running around a corner Karan saw a group of Ghashad deep in discussion, at
the other end of a long hall.
'The master is a fool,' said one, 'How dare he ally with Faelamor, his enemy
for all time?'
'He is still our sworn master,' said another fiercely.
'Well, I - '
She turned to run back the other way.
'Halt, Karan of Bannador!' someone shouted.
She raced back through the doorway, turned left and ducked up a narrow stair
onto a mezzanine level. Peering through the rail, she saw them flood after
her. Go the other way, she prayed, but of course a pair turned up her stairs.
She ran silently back, but before reaching the other side they topped the
stairs and spotted her.
'Stop!' came their harsh cries.
Karan flung the door open and slammed it behind her. It was only a matter of
time. And yet the overheard debate had given her a glimmer of hope. The
Ghashad were having second thoughts about their master. If it were to come to
a critical pass, and he did not have their help, there might be a chance after
all.
She continued up the stairs, quite mechanically now. The construct and the
Forbidding had fogged her mind with multiple dimensions. How changed Shazmak
is, she kept thinking. How familiar, for all the passages and stairs and
towers remained. Yet inside, how different it felt. The uniquely Aachim
feeling that had been here for a thousand years was quite gone.
She reached the top of the stairs, knowing that she was near her destination.
As she brushed past a squat Sentinel, it sounded, jolting her with a shock
that numbed her arm to the elbow. That had not happened before. She yelped and
jumped halfway across the corridor. The next one she passed went off too,
though she managed to avoid its charge. She began to despair of ever finding
Maigraith. There was no way to hide from the Ghashad now.
The lens in the Wall pulsed like a beating heart, developing
clear pinholes that slowly began to coalesce. Alarming body-parts pressed
against the transparencies - knowing eyes, serrated claws, leathery wings
tipped with spines. Soon the whole centre part of the lens was transparent,

and a wild thing clawed at it, trying to get out of the void into Santhenar.
Maigraith felt a black mist of foreboding settle over her. She glanced at
Faelamor, who was resting on her haunches like a panther about to spring.
'Don't do it, Rulke! Faelamor will betray you,' she said to herself. Maigraith
realised that she was sweating all the terrors of the world for him. Her way
became clear at last.
The construct drifted, passing between her and Faelamor, and Maigraith sprang
up on the side.
'I will help you!' she shouted, holding up her hand.
Rulke reached down and heaved her up beside him. With a great roar of triumph
he spun the machine around.
Faelamor attacked with a sickening hallucination that had Rulke clinging to
the side of the construct. He did not lose control for an instant. 'Do your
worst,' he shouted at her. 'I designed it to buffer your Art.'
He swung the lens of light directly at her. Faelamor screamed, the vision was
cut off and she writhed as if pinned to the floor with a spike. She clutched
her belly and groaned. She rolled from side to side and shrieked. She flung
herself about in marvels of dexterity that would have astounded a gymnast. She
did everything possible to get away, but could not.
Faelamor went absolutely still, then flung phantasms back at Rulke that had
the company on their backs. The images hurt Rulke but she could not break him,
nor escape the impaling light.
Finally she was spent. She stood still, her chest heaving, her clothes and
hair plastered to her skin with sweat. She was just a small woman, showing her
age in sunken eye and flabby skin, no match for the big man and the implacable
device that he rode.
Her shoulders dropped. She was defeated. She looked terrified, but Maigraith
felt no pity for her.
Then Faelamor looked up at Rulke, her face twisted and she screamed out a
word, a screech of desperation. 'Mariem!'
Maigraith felt a chill of horror, though she had no idea why. Rulke froze into
a pillar of ice. The blood drained away, leaving his dark face a muddy colour.
He swayed on the construct, having to embrace his levers to stop himself from
falling down. The construct lurched and its nose screeched across the floor.
'Where - did you get - that name?' he choked. His words came out in bubbles,
as if he spoke through a mouthful of blood. 'That is our secret name, the
single memory of our life before the void. It is all we have left from our
lost world.' His voice became a scream of rage and pain. 'Where did you get
that name?'
For a moment he was paralysed, and a moment was all Faelamor needed. She had
screamed the name in desperation. Nothing else could possibly have diverted
him. From the satchel over her shoulder she whipped an object made of red gold
and precious ebony wood. It was a Faellem nanollet, a small instrument with a
complexity of sounding boards and resonating chambers, and strung with layers
of golden strings. She tapped one of the chambers and a low drone came forth.
Rulke stared, unable to comprehend. Then suddenly he did. 'Tallallame!' he
cried. 'Tallallame, Tal-lal-la-me. Faellem. Fay-el-lem. Mariem. Mari-em!'
Tasting the words. The names. Feeling the pain. The loss. The crime. The
greatest betrayal of all - genocide!
He struck a knob with one knee and before Faelamor could use her nanollet she
was flung backwards against the barrier that kept the company at bay. She lay
limp as a rag, still clutching the instrument, spitting blood.
'It was you that cast us into the void to die! You!'
'Not I,' she said. Blood ran down her chin to soil her white gown. 'That was
generations before my birth.'
'The taint has passed down the generations. The stink of it is on all the
Faellem. You reek of it - you taunt me with it! I will torment you until the
end of time. I will never let you go.'
He spun a little wheel and the lens of light shrank to a pinpoint that drifted
in an oval around her heart. Her gown began to smoke.

'Tallallame was your home too,' she said. 'Now it cries out for aid. Would you
ruin your world for something done so long ago?'
'We were remade in the void. We have no world save what we take for
ourselves.'
'You are cruel,' she wept. An oval of cloth fell from the front of her gown,
but the golden skin beneath was unmarked.
'Cruelty we learned at the hands of masters.' Rulke was quite implacable.
'Everything I did was for my people and my world.'
'And what I do, I do for my own species. Now you die, Faelamor. And then you
die again, and again, and again'.'
He drew back his levers.
'Rulke,' Maigraith said urgently. 'Remember that the nan-ollet was made from
the gold of the golden flute.'
Again Rulke hesitated, but Faelamor's helplessness was another trick and she
was too quick for him. She struck a desperate chord, a mournful wail that
ended in a whip-crack, the sound of the Forbidding trying to tear itself
apart.
The transparency starred in the middle and, with a screech like air escaping
from the stretched mouth of a balloon, a tear appeared in the middle of the
lens.
'No!' he screamed. 'That gold is corrupt; you must never -'
Faelamor struck another chord. 'You give me no choice,' she whispered.
'It will destroy us all. It will be your nemesis,' said Rulke.
The world turned inside out. The internal spaces of the construct became its
outside. A vent opened in the Forbidding: gaping, uncontrollable, madly
swelling and contracting. A
multitude of creatures clawed at the opening, then it snapped shut again.
Rulke appeared, disappeared, reappeared, inside the construct and then out of
it. He wheeled through the air, crashed down on his back and did not move.
Maigraith scrabbled across the floor, touching his brow with moist fingers.
The vent tore open again and the boldest of the creatures thrust its head into
the gap. It was the size of a small barrel, with a red horny crest on top,
tipped with spikes.
Rulke groaned a word. The construct radiated a soft light on the vent. The
creature screeched, jerked its head back and the puncture sealed itself over.
Something clattered on the floor: an amputated horn, a bloody claw. The
Forbidding tried to shake itself to pieces. Rulke staggered toward the
constructlike a drunken man, and with Maigraith's help gained it. Faelamor
struck another chord on the nanollet. Another vent opened in the Forbidding,
and another. Rulke swung his lens of light and Faelamor was hurled between the
double staircases that spiralled around each other all the way up to the
translucent ceiling of that vast hall. She crawled into shelter, her nose
dribbling blood.
Llian, Shand and the rest of the company beat their fists on the glass
barrier. All they could do was watch. A horde of creatures now scratched at
the vents. If they broke through, everyone in Shazmak would die.
'Do something!' Llian screeched at Yggur.
'We've got to get in there,' said Tallia. 'Lend me your strength again,
Yggur.'
'There's nothing I can do,' said Yggur. He had already fired one of his
coloured blasts at Faelamor, but it had refracted unpredictably through the
barrier, destroying several treads of the glass staircase. Molten glass made a
fringe of threads that hung down from one step. 'If I try again I might kill
Maigraith. Maybe I should, since she's gone over to my enemy.'
Shand seized him by the collar and shook the big man.
'I'm sorry, Shand,' Yggur said meekly, his fury evaporating again. 'Take no
notice. My rage is all that's left of me.'
'Look!' called Lilis. 'It's Karan.' She pointed to a doorway, where Karan was
just staggering in. Karan looked over her shoulder then stumbled away as a
dozen Ghashad came after her. Her hair was wild, her face scarlet.

The sight of Karan set Llian mad with longing. Swinging a heavy metal chair
back over his head, he smashed it against the barrier with all his strength.
It bounced back just as hard, nearly knocking his head off. He skidded across
the floor on his knees while the chair went the other way. He looked up at
Shand and Malien.
'You'll not break it,' they said at the same time.
They tried everything they could think of, but the barrier was impervious.
They could not get round it either, for all the exits on their side of the
room were blocked by the same material. They were neatly trapped.
Extinction with Dignity
Karan lurched into the Great Hall and saw Rulke across the room. He looked
nearly as bad as she felt. Maigraith was next to him. She was safe! But
Karan's relief was changed to incredulity when Maigraith gave Rulke her
shoulder and they scrambled up onto the construct. What on earth had happened?
'What are we going to do?' she heard Maigraith shout.
Karan followed Maigraith's pointing arm. The clawing and scratching at the
Wall was deafening. She dashed around the side of the central stairs and was
brought up short by the glassy barrier, and by the sight of Llian banging on
it. He was in a frightful state. Practically all his hair was gone, what was
left was frizzed up in a clot on one side of his head, and his beard was
singed to stubble.
In her state it was all too difficult to take in. Llian was shouting at her
and pointing over her shoulder, but she could not make out what he was saying.
Going to the barrier, she pressed her hands against the outline of his. Malien
came up beside him, screaming through the glass. Karan knew what she was
saying. 'Stop Rulke, whatever it takes!'
'I'll try to hold it!' Rulke shouted to Maigraith.
'Maigraith,' Karan screamed. 'What are you doing?'
'It's Karan!' Maigraith cried.
Rulke sent the construct soaring her way. Karan watched the black object
hurtle toward her. She couldn't run any
more.
'Karan,' Maigraith yelled. 'You've got to help us!' Karan backed away,
thinking that Rulke had taken control of her. The company hammered frantically
on the barrier. What were they trying to tell her?
'Karan!' Maigraith roared. 'Faelamor will destroy the world.' Karan looked
from Llian to Malien, to Maigraith, to Rulke. How could she decide?
'She's lying!' shrieked Faelamor from up the stairs. 'She's in league with
Rulke.'
If there is one person I'll never trust it's her, Karan thought. Even Rulke is
a better choice.
She held up her hands, and knew as she did that Malien could never forgive
this betrayal. Maigraith hauled her up the side, sobbing and throwing her arms
around her.
'No time for that!' cried Rulke. 'Karan, show us the way to Aachan, before
it's too late.'
Faelamor began to crawl up the pearly stair like a decrepit old washerwoman.
'What about her?' said Maigraith. 'I haven't the strength.'
Karan was remembering the horrible finale to her previous attempt to find the
Way. 'I can't do it!' she gasped.
'What will they do to Gothryme when they get in?' Rulke said, pointing to the
Wall. 'And never doubt that Faelamor will let them in. If you truly can't do
it, we are all finished. But if there is an ounce of hope in you, I beg you,
try! I will support you.'
'You said that before,' Karan murmured. Her eyes slid past his gimlet eyes and
fixed on Llian, who had his hands flat out on the glass barrier in an attitude
of desperation. His eyes were as wide as soup bowls.
'I'll try,' she said, 'but I have had . . . something of a day already. I'm a
little tired.'
Gripping her hands, Rulke gave her a fiery kiss on the