Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (6 page)

of these came drifting towards her nose and she half-expected it to burst the
way a soap bubble might, but it just rebounded with no sensation at all.
Sometimes bubbles seemed to be forming on the other side too. Perhaps that was
what Rulke was trying to achieve. 'It thins!' he sang out. 'Can you feel it?'
The whine rose in pitch. The whole Forbidding reverberated like a gong. The
colours and motions made her feel bilious, then suddenly a corona of bubbles
soared past and right in front of her was a tiny perforation in the Wall.
Rulke was quietly triumphant. 'There it is! Now it's your turn, Karan. Find
the Way between the Worlds.'
She hesitated, wondering what would happen if the hole snapped shut while her
sensing was beyond. He must have known what she was thinking, for he said
quietly, 'Courage!
I won't fail you. But you must do it quickly. This takes a toll of my
strength.'
Great Betrayer! But, strangely, she felt safe. At least, as safe as he was.
'I'm ready.'
'I'll put you in a trance, else your eyes and ears will distract you.'
She submitted, and he did that. Her body sat motionless in Carcharon but now
her eyes saw nothing. Karan sought out through the Wall as he had instructed
her, her mind totally blank, only her senses live. All around her stretched
the void. She had thought it to be just emptiness, but in this state she saw
that it was a maze of spaces, ever changing, like the Forbidding itself only
extending in many dimensions. The structure of the void was impossible to
comprehend, but there was a Way through it; perhaps many Ways.
She floated past a murky clot that suddenly sprang against the layer between
her and it. It clung there like a black spider, bristly limbs rasping against
the barrier, trying to get at her. Karan was shocked out of her drifting
complacency. The void swarmed with violent life; she could sense it all
around. She knew that it sensed her too. Her disembodied spirit might not be
in danger, but those creatures would soon realise that there was a break in
the Forbidding. Freedom! A way out of the void! They would find it easily
enough, for the Ways between the Worlds were their garden paths. And her body
lay helpless before the portal in Carcharon, an invitation to a feast.
For a moment she lost concentration, but Rulke was there, steadying her across
the link. I am very afraid, she sent to him.
And you should be. There are things here that will rend us in an instant, if I
fail. But I'm protecting you.
The pressure of their violent urges hurt her, almost physically. How easy it
would be to go mad in this task. Rulke helped her to get control of herself
again. She kept on and at last found a track and knew that it was the Way to
Aachan. I've found it! she sang out across the link.
Back in Carcharon Rulke shouted with delight. He took his seat upon the
construct, his will locked totally to the task, trusting her as he must. The
Way, tenuous and ever-changing, skidded from her questing senses. The very act
of seeking and finding it, the seeing of it in her mind seemed to change it,
so that she must not only see what it is now, and how it will be then, but
must also know the unknowable - in what way it would shy away from her mind and put all these together into a path that Rulke could follow.
She slid her triune senses, that she barely knew how to use, along the Way,
preparing it as he had taught her to. The strain of holding it was terrible.
She could feel his struggle too.
It hurts! he cried.
Again Karan sensed an alien presence scratching at the boundaries of the Way,
sniffing it out even as she did. Then another! They began to move past, first
a trickle, then a flood of them, but though she cringed they passed by without
sensing her life force.
This Way was almost mapped now. Ahead Karan sensed the cold dark globe that
was Aachan. Behind her, through the link with Rulke, she felt the creatures
clustered about the pore through the Wall. How they clawed at it, trying to
get into Carcharon.

Karan felt a shock behind her as the first void-creature came up against
Rulke's will. Across the link she sensed his unguarded thoughts.
It's strong. Far stronger than I expected! We've been out of the void too
long. I'd forgotten how desperate they are. Unknowingly, his guard over the
pore through the Wall began to slip. She continued mapping the Way, though now
she could sense his whole body shuddering with the strain, his knuckles white
on the levers of the construct, his eyes staring but seeing nothing. I can't
keep it up! She felt the burning pain in his limbs as if he was being torn
between two straining
horses. Aaaaah! he screamed aloud, and did not realise it. I can't! I can't do
it! Then nothing.
Karan stopped at once, shocked at how quickly he had been overcome. What was
she to do? She hesitated, then the link was back. Rulke was back.
She felt the ache as he took control again. It's not far now. Once I get
there, they can't touch me. She's done a better job than I dared hope. Karan,
where are you?
Here I am. Karan remained where she was, afraid to map the Way any further,
afraid of the creatures in the void, afraid that Rulke would fail again.
Aachan! he exulted. I know the way from here!
Rulke put his body into a trance and sent his senses through the pore,
tracking her link, following the Way she had mapped. Consumed by his triumph
he raced past Karan, leaving her to follow as she might. But who was guarding
their bodies now? This thought distracted Karan so badly that she lost touch
with her own job. She forgot the Way.
Karan could hear Rulke calling the Charon with all his might, trying to reach
those to whom he had not spoken in thousands of years. Yalkara! Vance!
Grendor! We have a chance now, to survive on another world.
Lost somewhere in his turbulent wake, Karan sensed that they answered
cautiously. But so quickly had he disappeared, leaving such chaos behind him,
disrupting her seeing, that she could not follow. It was like being lost in a
gate, unable to remember the destination. Then the voices were abruptly cut
off. She had lost Rulke, lost the link, everything. Her physical body in
Carcharon was unprotected.
The little intangible part of her that had sensed out the Way now drifted in
the limitless void, lonely and terrified. She was so alone, while around her
everything was black, menacing and alien.
In the distance a fast-moving spark lit up the void, a comet that left a
luminous trail. A few lines of verse popped into Karan's mind as she floated
there.
A restless zephyr ruffles my soul, Sculpting chunks of darkness into form,
While from the emptiness around, Twin vortices of piercing sound, Whisper to
each other.
Where had that come from? Her father? The scribblings of mad old Basunez?
Wherever, it summed up the void at this moment.
Just then the invisible cord that led back to her helpless body twanged as if
something had plucked it. Karan couldn't sense what it was. Rulke had gone
where she could not follow. Her increasingly panicked sendings raised no
response. He had abandoned her - he didn't need her any more.
There came an unpleasant sucking sound. Her disembodied senses sought around
in the void. The cord vibrated again and she realised what it was. Something
had begun to haul itself towards the hole in the Wall. Her senses struggled
desperately to find the way home, but whatever the thing was, it blocked her
path. She sang out across the Way, imagining her body about to be devoured.
Would she even know, or would she just fade out to nothing? Using one of her
triune talents that Rulke had developed, by supreme efforts Karan roused her
flesh and bones from the trance, just enough so that she could see what was
happening in Carcharon.
The Wall had grown transparent around the hole, so that she could just make
out something approaching. It settled over the pore with a splatting sound. It
had the shape of a blob of stuff with tentacles; though its form was in flux.

It glistened wetly like a slug.
Rulke had said she was safe, that nothing could get past his protection
through the Wall. Clearly the slug-thing did not know that, for it extruded a
shiny pseudopod like a needle and slid it right through the pore. It
lengthened until
it extended halfway across the room, while the body on the other side grew
smaller and smaller, and eventually the last of it popped through. The
creature resumed its former blobby shape.
Karan tried to mobilise her limbs, jerking this way and that like a beetle
trapped in a spider's web, but could not come any further out of her trance.
She could not get away from the creature either, for it was attached like a
limpet to her life-cord. Now the void-leech, or whatever it was, glided up to
her, its mucus-covered foot squelching across the floor.
Karan screamed as it put out a slug foot at her face, slug tentacles questing
this way and that. She tossed her head but another pseudopod thrust at her
from the other side. It slurped across her cheek. Karan felt a pain in one ear
as it tried to drill into her head. She was almost insane with disgust and
horror.
Frozen Food
Karan felt horribly betrayed. Rulke's promises of protection had come to
nothing. He had abandoned her. And if those promises were lies, so was
everything else.
The void-leech extended its pulpy pseudopods around her head, trying to
envelop her face with its grainy matter so as to drill through her ears and
eyes and suck out her brain. But Karan was a prisoner of the trance. She could
barely move a finger.
The pain grew in her ear. She lost sight as the blob settled on her face. A
rude probe began to insinuate its way up her nose, questing for a way into her
skull. Another pressed against the jelly of her eyeball, a disgusting
sensation. Initially soft, it began to harden so as to spear right through.
Karan directed a furious sending of rage, hate and rapacious hunger at the
void-leech, trying to make herself seem like a rat or a hyena, something that
might prey on such creatures. It shot away a span or two, its transparent
mantle fluttering in what could have been agitation. Taking the opportunity,
she screamed, broadcasting her horror and betrayal right across the void.
Instantly Carcharon and her body vanished. She was a disconnected
consciousness in the void again. Now Rulke's path shimmered in front of her.
She flashed across the Way, following his trail to
Aachan and into the Council chamber of the Charon.
Who summons the Summoner? she heard someone roar in a voice of thunder.
It is I -
Karan spat her fury at them, broadcasting the horrible image of the void-leech
into all their minds. Betrayer! she screamed. Look how he keeps his promises.
He will betray you too!
She sensed the Charon shrink back as if they had embraced a viper.
Who are you? they cried. What do you want of us?
Unable to see her or Rulke, they must have feared that it was the first
skirmish of a war. Karan hurled the image of the void-leech, now pulsating as
it began to settle on her head again, right into their minds. Back in
Carcharon she was screeching out her terror. She flung that at them too.
Karan! Rulke exclaimed. She sensed his mortification, that he had failed to
protect her, though that was swiftly overlaid by regret at having to abandon
Aachan.
You deserted me! she sent to him, then blocked out the link and fled into the
folds and corrugations of the void.
You fool! he shouted. Let me help you. I can't find the Way back by myself.
We'll both die!
In that schizophrenic nightmare, her body in Carcharon, her conscious self
lost in the void, Karan felt the disgusting probe in her nose again. Whatever
Rulke had in mind could be no worse than that. She allowed him to find her and

all at once the Way back to Santhenar was clear. They hurtled back through the
mazes and corridors, and every passage they took, every wrong turn, she was
aware of the current of creatures surging toward the hole - their way out of
the void.
There was still some way to go when Karan felt a shocking pain in her ear. Her
head was completely covered by the void-leech. She arched her back and drummed
her heels on the floor. Her blind hands tore the mantle of the creature to
shreds but it just re-formed. In her trance-like state she could do no more;
she could not get it off.
They rushed down the last shimmering tunnel of the Way, leapt the last
barrier. The Wall appeared in front of them. They shot through the Wall; their
senses flashed back into their bodies. Her eardrum felt as if it had been torn
open. Karan let out a despairing wail, a sending that once more disturbed the
void-leech, temporary reprieve for her assaulted eyeball. The creature flopped
back down onto her face. Rulke! Her mind screamed at him. Rulke, help me!
Rulke lay motionless, unable to find the way out of the trance. It was up to
her. She fired up every painful, shocking and horrible emotion she had ever
felt, mixed them up with her disgust and terror of the amorphous thing now
flapping at her face, and bounced them back and forth between the mirrors of
her mind, amplifying them at every turn, until they burst out in all
directions, emotions so strong and raw that no one could resist them.
Rulke jerked as if he had taken hold of an electric eel and fell off the
construct, hitting his head so hard that she was sure he had fractured his
skull. However he turned over and came to hands and knees. 'Karan?' he said
dazedly.
Help! she screamed over the link, since her mouth was full of leech.
He crawled towards her, ever so slowly. With bare hands he ripped the
void-leech off her face and flung it at the Wall. It splattered into jelly
that slid down, already collecting itself together for another assault.
Hauling himself back onto the construct, he spun an aiming wheel then fell
against a purple knob. Light roared out of the front and boiled the creature
into a sickly sweet-smelling vapour.
It burned a crater right through the Wall. A bulge appeared in the fabric of
the Forbidding, then another. An arm thrust through the hole and out leapt the
most frightening thing Karan had ever seen. She felt the shock in Rulke's
mind, the memory of long ago: thranx! It leapt at them and its great
shoulder struck the construct, rattling that massive machine like a child's
toy.
Karan was slow to move. Her brain seemed to have lost the ability to control
her body. Experimenting with crawling, she lifted an arm and a leg at the same
time and toppled on her side like a baby. Her belly ached; her head spun. She
rolled sideways and tried to look like a piece of rubble, and knew that she
didn't.
The thranx went after Rulke, who was still clinging to his seat. A crack of
leather wings propelled it up on top of the construct, where it lunged at him.
He ducked, the construct rolled and he fell off again. The thranx leapt after
him, landed with a thud that shook the tower and slashed at Rulke with long
yellow claws. He scuttled backwards, darting and ducking around the other
side, and sprang from the floor up into his seat. Yellow light came out of a
rod at the front, searing the thranx's thigh and melting part of a low wall
behind it.
The thranx reared up, its wings soaring so high that they touched the mess of
tangled roof beams suspended above them. Though it made no sound, it screwed
up its face and clenched its fists. For an instant Karan sensed its agony, its
desperation to get out of the void and find a safe place to nest. Its emotions
flashed and faded like misty breath on a window. Karan was confounded. Its
fears and longings were similar to her own.
The light touched the winged creature's thigh again, tracing a fiery line
towards its groin. The thranx made a sound like a scalded cat, sprang at an
embrasure which was too small and went out the side of Carcharon in an