Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (8 page)

had piled against the uphill side, higher than her head. She made a shelter
the way she had seen her father do long ago, the snow hollowed out and packed
tightly to secure the walls and roof, leaving a tiny cave against the rock.
The door was a ball of snow that she could roll back or forward. The space was
just large enough for her to sit, or lie curled up on her cloak to sleep. The
only way she could be found was if someone walked right up to the rock, and it
was one among thousands.
Now her cares came back redoubled. Was her collaboration with Rulke the most
terrible crime of all? When the thranx had shaken the construct with one blow
of its shoulder, when it had gone through the wall as if it were made of a
child's blocks, she had felt truly afraid. The price of Llian's life might be
the death of everyone she cared about. And Llian too! And below, Gothryme lay
in its path.
It began to snow heavily, which pleased her. Karan emptied her pack on the
tiny patch of floor in front of her, sorting out her supplies. There were two
slabs of smoked eel, now frozen so hard that she risked breaking teeth on
them, the long stick of cheese, a string of purple onions, very strong, some
with bad spots, an orange-like marrim, a few pieces of dried fruit and half a
loaf of dark bread she had brought from Gothryme. The rest had been lost in
the snow. It wasn't much, but she could survive on it for a few days. Worst of
all, she had no knife. She missed her little knife, her companion on the road.
She put the fish inside her coat where it would warm and gnawed on the end of
the loaf. Stale even before they left Gothryme, now it was like eating
sawdust. She peeled away
the skin of the onion with her teeth, nibbling at the shoot end, which had
thawed a little in her hand. It was crisp and hot. Hunger improved the taste
immeasurably.
The dried fruit was unfamiliar, rust-coloured on the outside but crimson
within. Karan recalled seeing the Ghashad eating it once or twice. She tasted
a small piece, rather tentatively. It was leathery, like a dried apricot. The
first impression was a tangy flavour like ginger and just as hot, though the
aftertaste was strange, slightly off.
Her lips began to tingle. A warm glow ran all the way down to the pit of her
stomach. Little beads of perspiration sprang out on her forehead. Her heart
began to race and suddenly Karan felt hot all over. Even her fingers and toes
started to tingle. Her mouth tasted odd though. She put the rest of the piece
back.
The snow must have stopped, for the light was brighter now. Karan rolled the
ball of snow away and put her eye to the tunnel. She could see right across
the ridge. She wriggled out, trying not to disturb the opening.
It was still snowing, though not so as to impede her vision. The walls and
tower of Carcharon were clearly visible half a league below. Quite a lot of
snow had fallen since she had made her cave, enough to cover her tracks.
Occasionally the sun peeped through low, rushing clouds.
Karan scanned the slope - up, down, across. Nothing but snow, ice and rocks.
There was no sign of activity at Carcharon either. She backed into the
shelter, which now gave off a warm fishy reek that grew stronger every time
she moved. The eel had begun to thaw inside her coat.
Her lunch was a piece of fatty smoked eel, dry bread, hard cheese and the rest
of the onion. The eel had a river-bottom muddy flavour that was unpleasant,
and it was full of tiny wire-like bones that caught in her teeth and throat.
The onion fumes made her nose drip.
Karan curled up in the sleeping pouch and was soon asleep, but had troubling,
hallucinatory dreams that she was
being hunted by a blood-drenched lorrsk and woke sweating, almost unbearably
hot. Surely the weather can't have changed that much, she thought, taking her
coat off. She stuck her head out of the entrance to find that it was late
afternoon and the blast as wintry as ever.
Karan felt ravenous. Her supplies now looked even less appetising than before.
Wanting something sweet, she felt in her pack, found the piece of dried fruit

and popped it in her mouth. Instantly she felt the most delicious thrill
course through her veins. Her blood pumped like hot metal. Nothing was beyond
her - she could challenge Rulke himself for the construct.
'Yes!' she cried, leapt up and her head brought down half the roof of the
cave. It seared her roaring red cheeks and a clot of snow went down the back
of her neck. Another huge lump landed on her head, flattening her to the
floor. She felt suffocated in cold, all the more shocking because she had been
so hot. Choking, she coughed the piece of fruit out into the snow.
By the time Karan dug herself out and repaired the hole in the roof the
feelings of euphoria were quite gone. She now felt desperately cold. Even
wrapped in cloak, coat and sleeping pouch, she could not get warm. Her head
was throbbing in the beginnings of a migraine. Eventually she drifted back
into her alarming dreams.
When she woke it was long after dark, and still snowing. Once she made out the
lights of Carcharon, then a snow squall swept past and blotted it out. The
snow she had so painstakingly packed into her water bottle had melted,
generating less than a cup of icy water. She drank it, repacked the flask and
pulled her sleeping pouch up again.
She dozed off at once but did not sleep for long - one unpleasant dream
followed another, and all on the same topic: the hunting of her younger self a
year ago. Always running, always powerless. Not any more! She was wakeful and
cold, and the pressure of her rage built up until she felt
a sudden violent urge to strike; to make a link and transmit a killing impulse
across it at Rulke.
For a moment Karan revelled in this violent thought, this thrill of power, but
reality intervened. If she dared to make a link this close, after their minds
had been linked, he would have her instantly. Who was she to think of such
things anyway?
No, she would sit quietly, attempt nothing. They could not know where she was.
In a day or two she could go free. She dozed again.
'Skelaaarr!'
The guttural cry shocked Karan awake, for it came from not far away. Ghashad!
She crawled to the entrance, put her head out and recoiled in horror. A weak
sun shone on the snow, illuminating the dark figures of five Ghashad climbing
up the slope toward her. She watched them for a moment, just long enough to be
sure. They were heading directly toward her as if following a line drawn on
the snow.
Though she was faster and more agile, it would not help her here, for they
were spread out across the whole top of the ridge. She was trapped!
For a few moments Karan sat paralysed like a rabbit in a burrow; then she
stuffed her goods in her pack and darted hopelessly up the slope.
The Thranx
They waited in the arena for hours, staring at Carcharon. There was nothing
else they could do. Someone kindled a fire with sticks that the Aachim had
brought with them. The blaze was a meagre thing about the size of a plate,
always in danger of being blown out. It did little to warm or cheer them.
Llian's eyes darted back and forth over the company. It included a squad of
about a dozen of Yggur's guard, battle-hardened veterans who never relaxed.
Behind them the cold stick-figure of Vartila the Whelm stalked back and forth,
shaking with passion. Most of the Whelm had abandoned Yggur a year ago,
reverting to their old name - Ghashad - and serving their master of old,
Rulke. But a few, unable to recognise him, had remained loyal to Yggur. I am
blind to my master! Vartila had wept when Rulke first appeared. From the look
on her hatchet face, Vartila's loyalty was now being severely tested.
Yggur was talking to Vanhe by the fire. A squat, bullet-headed man, Marshal
Vahne had once led the First Army, but after the battle with the Second Army
in Bannador, and Maigraith's disappearance, Yggur had broken Vanhe to a common
soldier.
Yggur's adjutant, Dolodha, a nervous young woman perennially dressed in
ill-fitting robes, scuttled back and forth.

Her promotion from servant-girl had been equally abrupt and she lived in fear
of offending Yggur, who was notoriously unstable. No one could be a more
generous master when things were going well. However in adversity he became
dangerously capricious, changing in an instant to unforgiving brutality and
sometimes to a kind of madness, the echo of that insanity he had suffered when
Rulke was exiled in the Nightland. No one knew how to predict his mood.
Mendark, who looked more like a bird of prey every day, was perched on a log
staring into the fire. His guards, Osseion and Torgsted, were playing a game
of dice on a slab of rock. As Llian watched, Torgsted threw back his head and
roared with laughter. The firelight caught his broad, handsome face and the
mop of dark curls. Osseion, who was almost twice his friend's size, clapped
Torgsted on the shoulder and threw his dice on the slab.
On the other side of the fire sat Nadiril of the Great Library, with Lilis,
her father Jevi, and Tallia. Shand had also been with them but was nowhere to
be seen. Probably spying on Carcharon, Llian thought moodily. The Aachim made
a third group, equally spaced about the fire. There were a dozen of them,
including red-haired Malien, a silent Tensor and Old Darlish, an ancient
Aachim whom Llian had not previously met. He was thin in the limbs but round
in the belly, a rare thing in an Aachim. His hairy ears hung down to the level
of his voice-box and his chin was as pointed as a trowel.
'What are we waiting for?' asked Lilis.
'The end of the world,' said Tensor direfully.
'What mischief is he hatching now?' asked Old Darlish in a gravelly eastern
accent.
'Who can predict it?' said Nadiril.
They stood ankle-deep in soft snow, and there was ice beneath that. Once or
twice there were flurries of snowflakes, but even they seemed dispirited and
did not last. The potential of the construct overpowered them. It is fated to
be, the dark
moon told them. Almost as one they drew away from Llian. His culpability was
self-evident.
Tallia strode across to where he huddled in the snow, to check his bonds. She
wore a short sword on her right hip. Llian had not seen her bear arms before.
'Tallia .. .' he began, then went silent. What was the use? The sullen moon
washed the colour out of even her chocolate skin. Though her long face was
quite expressionless, she looked very beautiful. Her hair was blacker than the
night. Llian noticed, not for the first time, just what a striking woman she
was. But she could have been made of granite as far as he was concerned. His
thoughts were back in the tower.
He realised that she was speaking to him.
T said, is that too tight?'
'What does it matter?'
'I know not whether you're guilty or innocent. That will be a matter for
trial, if we survive. But I would not have you lose your hands, and that's an
easy thing on a night like this.'
Llian tested the bonds absently. Tight, but not too tight. She began to move
away. Something burst inside him - he made a groaning, choking sob.
Tallia peered into his face. The moonlight touched one cheek, leaving shadows
with tinged edges.
'So now you're feeling sorry for yourself! Or is it remorse?'
'I'm terrified for Karan.'
The tone of his voice seemed to unsettle her. She peered at him again, turning
him by the shoulder so that the light was full on him, as if trying to read
his face.
'That surprises you? You all think that I betrayed her.'
"There's good evidence for it,' she said. 'What have you to say for yourself?'
'Nothing!' Llian raged. 'Words mean nothing!'
He no longer cared what she thought of him. What was Rulke going to do with
Karan? That was the only question
with any meaning. She was a sensitive with rare abilities and Rulke would

never give her up.
Llian examined the bowed backs and defeated faces around him. No help there.
Tallia opened her mouth but whatever she had been about to say was cut off as
Mendark approached.
The fulfilment of the prophecy had come as a shattering blow to Mendark. He
was greatly diminished, and whenever he saw other people engaged in quiet
conversation his face would darken, as though he suspected that they were
libelling him, or laughing at him. Mendark's reputation meant everything to
him and he would do anything to protect his place in the Histories. He could
not bear for his long, long reign as Magister to end in such a failure.
The veil which had been hanging across the moon parted and it shone out, red,
purple and black, brighter than before. The light caught Mendark on the snow
and for a moment he hesitated. He was so changed from the man Llian had known
that he scarcely seemed to be the same person. The experience in Havissard a
few months ago had almost killed him, and trapped in the brambles there he'd
had no option but to renew his failing body one time too many.
Mendark now looked like a withered raptor - his formerly broad nose was
shrunken into a beak, hands to claws, narrow shoulders hunched forward. His
hair was lank and his beard scanty. Huge creases ran from the corner of his
mouth across half the length of his face and the skin hung loosely as if the
flesh beneath had all dried up. The once full lips were just hard slashes
across his face.
Hopping across the snow like a condor circling a corpse, Mendark also checked
Llian's bonds. 'What do you say now, chronicler?'
'Only that I'm innocent.'
Mendark bent to check the other leg, but so slowly and with such a shudder of
pain that Llian, even now, felt a flash of empathy for him. Mendark
straightened, even more painfully.
'Maybe you are, Llian, but your actions speak otherwise.' 'If I had died in
Yggur's dungeon in Thurkad, you'd still
be standing here, waiting on Rulke's whim!'
'Hmn,' Mendark said. He made his awkward way back to
the fire.
The night grew colder. Carcharon was silent. The Aachim went down the ridge to
their wood stockpile, to return hours later bearing huge bundles on their
backs. They built another fire in the most sheltered part of the amphitheatre
and everyone huddled between the two.
Later still, to Llian's amazement, Yggur brought him a mug of soup. Perhaps he
felt remorse for his earlier fit of madness. Llian wanted to hurl it in his
face but that would not help Karan. He took off his gloves to warm his hands
on the mug. His feet were turning to blocks of icy jelly. The soup was
scalding. He looked up and Yggur was watching him.
'You wanted me dead without trial, a month ago,' said Llian. 'Do you judge me
differently now, or do you want something from me?'
'Rulke has made no effort to possess me,' Yggur replied. 'I may have been
wrong about you.'
'Why don't you go after him then? You were brave enough with your armies at
your back, destroying half of Meldorin.' In his time as a tale-spinner Llian
had developed his teller's voice to a fine art, until he could move people to
almost any emotion he desired. His talents had not been much used lately.
Could he drive these cowards into some action that would help Karan? 'You're
supposed to be a great mage. Why don't you do something?'
Yggur smiled. 'You can't manipulate me so easily, chronicler, despite that I
am not what I was. It is a wondrous thing to have been great, and then to be
laid low; and then to try and rise again. Things that were once important now
seem trivial. Things that once had been of no account... But that is bye the
bye. About Rulke I can do nothing - I'm too afraid.
I admit it. The thought of being possessed by him again turns my bowels liquid