Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (9 page)

-'
At that moment a white light shot up from the cratered tower top of Carcharon.

Yggur ran to the lower edge of the amphitheatre, shielding his eyes from the
glare as he stared at the tower. He cursed and ran down the steps, and the
rest of the party followed.
Llian felt a momentary attack of vertigo. It was beginning! Karan was up there
because of him, and he was powerless to help her. He hobbled after the group
as fast as his irons would allow. They were hard with ice now. In a minute his
shins were a bloody ruin. Soon he was alone in the darkness.
He bumped down the steps, along the winding path and back up the steep track.
The rest of the company were already on the stairs below the gate, but the
light that had attracted them was fading. Now it disappeared, leaving them in
a blacker darkness, for the moon was hidden again. Llian hung back where he
could not be seen. He felt a vague physical discomfort in his guts, a certain
disorientation in his head, a veritable shivering of the spaces around him.
When he closed his eyes strange scenes, like the paintings of that alien world
of Aachan that he had seen in Shazmak, and yet unlike - a little more twisted,
a little more unreal -played inside his head.
He knew what it was; he had felt it only a week ago. It was the construct.
Rulke wasn't just flying it now, he was beginning to operate it. This
quivering of every inner cell was something that he had felt when Rulke flung
him out of Katazza. But this was different from the other time - much
stronger. This was the time!
High winds tore the clouds to shreds. It became a wild night, a gale howling
from the south, carrying frost crystals that tore the exposed skin. A night
when all the lower air was filled with ice, but the stars above were brittle
and cold. Blue-white auroras flickered across the sky.
The company waited on the gargoyle-haunted steps of Carcharon. Above them the
winged statues seemed to flex their wings as if preparing to ride the gale.
For a long time nothing happened, except that it grew ever colder, an empty
cold that drew every speck of warmth out of them. For a minute it was
completely calm, then the night fell apart.
A wind came thundering down the mountain, before which all previous winds were
nothing. They saw it coming, a formless shadow sweeping towards them, touched
with billows and eddies like the luminous air of the Nightland. It blasted
round the corners of the tower, so strong that they had to cling to each other
lest they be blown right off the stairs. Driven ice crystals eroded the snow
off the rail. Ice shards tore at their cheeks. The gale ripped away a section
of the ruined roof, hurling it over their heads to crash on the path below the
stairs right in Llian's face. He flattened himself, expecting it to sweep him
off like a jagged metal broom. It rocked there for a moment, then was flung
over the precipice. The blast whirled everyone around and was gone, racing
down the slopes and pulling up trees at the edge of the forest.
The moon sprang out of the stillness like a highwayman. It was soon blotted
from the sky by a harsh red light that leapt up from Carcharon; a light so
intense that the stronghold seemed transparent except for its bones - black
shadows against the red. A bright light that did not waver, and all in
silence.
A blast of hot air gushed out of the tower. The sky filmed over and rain fell,
a downpour lasting for a few minutes. Rain in the mountains in winter? But it
made no pools or cascades, for the water turned instantly to ice on the
ground, and the stair rails and the gate were hung with a curtain of icicles,
and the rocks were glazed with it.
Now the music began. An arrhythmic whistling and clicking and rattling like a
plague of cicadas all trying to sing in harmony was mixed in with a
subterranean boom as of a metal
drum the size of a house, and a graveyard keening that took only three notes
and repeated them over and over. Now the noise was so loud that the eardrums
hurt, now so soft and terrible that the hairs stood up all over Llian's body.
The light began to pulse in sequence with the wailing sound, and when that
broke off, the light throbbed in sympathy with those unearthly booms, which
was even more horrible. Then the glow faded and the sound was muted, though

both kept on.
The moon was almost overhead now. It began to snow, huge flakes falling out of
a clear sky, heavier and heavier until all that could be seen was a dim red
light and a dim dark moon, and the shadow of the tower against the snow.
A bright flare lit the tower from inside. Thuds shook the walls, dislodging
the last few slates to smash on the landing above them. They heard cries and
the sound of falling masonry. With a vicious shriek, something came through
the wall of Carcharon like a thunderbolt, in an avalanche of broken stone. It
landed on the narrow ledge that encircled the tower, sending up a great spray
of snow and ice. The creature hurtled toward them. They could hardly see what
it was, only that against the light it was larger than human. Was that a flash
of wings?
'Thranx!' screamed Shand. 'He's opened the way into the void. Run for your
lives!'
The Aachim were furthest up the stairs. Two of them took up Tensor's litter
and ran. They went only a few steps before the thranx flapped over the rail
and landed among them. The litter revolved in the air and Tensor fell
face-down underneath it. That saved him, but the nearest Aachim was broken in
a moment. Llian was exposed on the path. He clawed his way towards the stairs,
icy hobbles tearing the fresh scabs off his legs. In his terror he scarcely
felt it. What had happened to Karan? If this monster had fled, what was it
like inside? Gaining a shaded drift, he rolled into it. The company rushed
down the stairs without noticing him, and along the path toward the
amphitheatre.
The thranx stood up, a vast winged outline, gave one last retching gobble and
bounded into the air. It soared over Llian's head and down onto the path,
tearing apart one of Yggur's guards, smashing down another. It was a
monstrous, uncertain thing in the gloom; rapacious and desperate. Someone
screamed: it was a woman's cry, horrible in her pain.
'Light!' roared Tallia, then a blue light flared blindingly from Yggur's
upraised staff. The creature propped, and in its still menace Llian saw the
statue outside the gate. There was a momentary silence, through which the snow
fell softly. Behind Llian someone wailed. It sounded like Lilis.
Llian didn't know what to do. His hands were still bound. He could not see
Lilis; he could not get to Karan. He forced his face down into the snow. The
thranx raced down the path, half-bounding, half-flying. One of Tensor's guard
put a spear in it, though it might as well have been a bee sting. He found no
protection from the semi-dark, as his dismal cry testified.
In the flare from Yggur's staff, Llian saw that the company were almost to the
amphitheatre, fleeing for their lives. The thranx hurtled after them, arching
wings lifting it into the air at every bound.
A red light flashed some distance from Yggur's blue. The creature soared into
the air on pinions impossibly large. It glided down, taloned feet extended
like a hunting eagle, then the red light turned night into day. For an instant
the creature was a black shadow in the air, a claw-perfect cut-out. It gave a
hideous screech, beat the air, climbed above Mendark's head and disappeared
over the precipice in the darkness.
'Fall back!' Llian heard Yggur cry as another shape leapt through the broken
wall. This was smaller, more human-looking, but still menacing. The company
took up their wounded and scuttled into the uncertain safety of the arena.
Llian pressed down into the snow. The creature took the steps in a series of
bounds, not seeing him. When he finally
dared raise his head, he was alone. In Carcharon the light was almost gone,
the ghostly sounds faded to nothing, but through the snow he could just make
out the jagged outline where the thranx had come through the wall. The other
creature had disappeared too. There was a lumpy shape on the steps not far
above him, the remains of one of the thranx's victims.
He crawled past it, his heart pounding. 'Karan!' he cried weakly. 'Karan!' His
movements became slower and slower. He cracked his forehead on the next step
and lay down in the snow. Rulke had opened the way into the void.

The void! Even the chroniclers knew little about it, except that it was a
dark, desperate place that fostered only two urges: to survive; to escape. The
thranx! Equally unknown, but stronger, more cunning, more deadly than any
other creature that dwelt there.
How his legs hurt. Llian climbed painfully to his feet and promptly collapsed
again. Karan was within a stone's throw but he was too weak to crawl up the
steps to her. Whatever had happened to her, there was absolutely nothing he
could do about it.
For the first time he thought of his own safety, of being rent apart by some
unspeakable horror. There were Tales of the Void, his fevered mind reminded
him, though he had read few of them. His interests had lain in other
directions, and they were not tales at all as far as he was concerned, for
they seemed to have little basis in truth. So, for Llian and most of the
chroniclers and tellers they formed part of the Apocrypha, the pre-Histories;
the unproven or unprovable, not worthy of study.
He struggled to recall. By the time he became a master chronicler he could
remember perfectly anything that he had read twice. That was his training. But
the Tales of the Void had been learned much earlier, when he was a mere
journeyman, long before his training was perfected.
Shand had recognised the thranx. He could still hear the
panic in his voice, see the way he had flung up his hands, the red light from
Carcharon on his face. How would Shand know such a thing?
The snow began to fall heavily - a blizzard that blotted everything out. Blood
was freezing to slush in his boots. Llian's shivers turned to a convulsive
shuddering. Even the pain in his ankles was gone now. He could feel nothing
from the shins down. He forced himself to his knees but as soon as he tried to
move fell over again. Llian had just wit enough to realise that he no longer
had to worry about the thranx. He would be dead within the hour.
The Lorrsk
Lilis was standing halfway up the steps of Carcharon with Nadiril and Jevi
when the thranx came through the wall. Jevi, a small wiry man with long
platinum hair like Lilis's, knocked Nadiril down on the step and flung himself
on top of Lilis.
'Stay still,' he hissed in her ear. 'Don't move; don't scream.'
'I wasn't going to,' she muttered, her mouth full of snow. Though she loved
Jevi as much as anyone could, she had been looking after herself for so long
that she sometimes found his care smothering.
They lay motionless while the thranx gobbled its prey, bounded into the air
and attacked further down the track. Light flared from an upraised staff, then
it disappeared in the night.
'Quickly now,' said Jevi. 'Be careful on the path, Lilis.'
Nadiril did not move. Lilis bent over him, crying, 'Are you all right?'
'I'll live, child. I banged my head. Help me up!' But when they lifted him to
his feet the old man tottered. 'Leave me,' he said. 'Get down to the forest.
There might be more of them.'
'We're not leaving you. Jevi, please do something,' begged Lilis, in great
distress.
Jevi heaved Nadiril over his shoulder like a lanky bag of
bones and set off, Lilis close at his heels. In the dark they went past Llian
without seeing him.
'Such indignity,' said Nadiril in a chuckling wheeze.
At the dip in the path Jevi had to stop for a breather. It was slightly wider
here.
'Put me down,' said Nadiril. 'I feel better now.'
Jevi looked toward the steps that led over a lip into the amphitheatre,
gauging the distance. 'I think I can carry you that far.'
'What's that?' Lilis hissed.
A flare from inside the tower outlined something racing down the stairs of
Carcharon, a man-sized creature like a wingless thranx. 'It's a lorrsk out of
the void, child,' said Nadiril, staggering against Jevi's shoulder. 'More than

our equal, even were we armed.'
Jevi whipped out a short knife. 'Get behind me, up the steps,' he said
urgently.
Neither Lilis nor Nadiril was armed. 'Where are our friends?' the girl cried
in dismay. 'Tallia! Help! Help!' Her little voice was whipped away by the
wind.
Tallia was not far off, helping the injured up the high back of the
amphitheatre, when she caught the whisper of Lilis's cry. 'I'm going back!'
she shouted to Shand.
Shand did not look up. He and Malien were attempting emergency work on Xarah,
who had been clawed down one side from shoulder to hip. Several sausage coils
of intestine pressed out of the wound. They bound her up again. Any meaningful
surgery was impossible here.
'Tallia, quick,' screamed Lilis, as Tallia appeared at the top of the steps.
Jevi was defending the narrowest part of the path, wielding the knife
expertly, but the short weapon was no match for the lorrsk's reach and its
clawed fingers. With one furious slash it sent the knife flying. Jevi
retreated, step by step, ducking and dancing, but Tallia knew he must fall.
Tallia felt an unaccustomed pang in her heart. She hurled herself down the icy
steps, a barely controlled fall that landed her between Nadiril and Lilis.
Bounding to her feet she stabbed at the creature with her short sword. The
lorrsk tried to bat the blade away, cutting the heel of its hand. It ducked
back. Tallia pressed forward beside Jevi on the narrow track.
Lilis, squatting in shadows on the lowest step, began to pack snowballs and
hurl them at the lorrsk, to no effect.
'Try this one,' Nadiril said.
She threw it and it struck the lorrsk right in the eye. 'Take that!' she
yelled fiercely. 'I hope it hurt.'
It must have, for the lorrsk held its eye with one hand while slashing feebly
with the other. 'Was that a magic snowball?' Lilis asked breathlessly. 'Make
me another!'
'It had a not-so-magic rock in the middle of it,' said Nadiril with a grim
chuckle. 'Here you are.'
The lorrsk gave forth a wild shriek, leapt right over Jevi's head and lunged
at Lilis. She tried to hurl her weapon and fell off the edge of the steps, to
disappear without a sound.
The lorrsk reached out to gut Nadiril. He said calmly, 'Thuggah ghoe maddarha!
Vunc!'
The creature stopped dead, squinting into the darkness. 'Maddarhan?' it said,
then Tallia stuck it in the ribs. It leapt high in the air and went over the
side.
'I didn't know-you knew words of power,' she said. 'What did you say?'
'Words are power. I said, in one of the languages of the void, Stop! I am your
father! An excusable deceit under the circumstances. I can't even remember
where I read it.'
'Where's Lilis?' cried Jevi, running around frantically.
Nadiril looked around. 'She was standing just there.'
They peered down, but this slope was in the moon shadow and nothing could be
seen. 'I'm going down,' said Jevi.
'Could she possibly be alive?' asked Tallia.
'She could,' said Nadiril. 'It's a fair way down to the cliff just here. It
wouldn't take much to stop her.'
'We need light,' Tallia muttered. 'Jevi, run up and get a brand from the
fire.' He raced off.
'Why did you send him away?' asked Nadiril.
She whipped out her lightglass. Its glow revealed a steep slope blotched with
round outcrops and veneered with snow. 'He saved me from a chacalot. And
afterwards he was so gentle and kind, and expected nothing of me in return. I
can't let him go down there. Lilis adores him - '
'And so do you,' observed Nadiril.