A Shadow on the Glass (54 page)

Llian had become infected by her disquiet and found himself looking continually over his shoulder for a light. This was no good. If she lost confidence in herself they had no chance.

“A few hours,” he said. “They’d have to travel very quickly to make up that time before we get out of the caves.”

Karan stopped and searched his face for a moment, though for what Llian could not tell. She turned and made off again. I take the lesson, she thought, though I know you to be wrong. They will travel much more quickly than us, and if I make one wrong turning we are finished.

The left-hand tunnel ran along level for a while then plunged abruptly down. Water trickled along the slope beneath their feet The smooth rock floor was slippery and the path became so steep that they were forced to cling to each other to maintain their balance.

“We’d better use the rope now,” said Llian, after one slip had nearly dragged them both down. Karan stopped and he took the little coil from her pack and tied them together. The path continued steeply below, down and down and down. Shortly they came to a place where steps had been cut in the
rock, though there was no rail. A breeze moved up steadily past them, suggesting a straight passage of considerable length, but in the dim light of the globe its dimensions could not be guessed.

The steps were greatly encrusted with a deposit from the flowing water, smooth and slippery. The cautious descent seemed interminable. Finally they reached the bottom. Karan immediately sat down on a stone, talking to herself.

“The passage takes four or five hours, I was told. We’ve been going for three hours and more. We may yet escape, though from here the way is difficult to remember. Let me think for a moment—the sequence of turns is complex. It was so long ago and I never thought to come this way. I believe I remembered it only for the romance of it.”

Suddenly, as they sat there, a pale distant light appeared behind and above. ‘Tensor!” said Karan, dismayed. “Already he reaches the slope above the stair. They’re barely half an hour behind. There’s no escape.” She leapt to her feet, running this way and that.

Llian caught her arm, hissing urgently in her ear. “Quick; we don’t want them to know that they’re close.” He dragged her around the bend out of sight. “Can they have seen your light?”

Karan came to herself. “I don’t know,” she said, more soberly, though her voice still had an edge to it. “It’s quite dim, and I had it in front of me. But their senses are keen.” There was a pause while she thought. “We’ve no hope of outrunning them now, for I’m uncertain of the way. He won’t be.”

“Then if speed will not suffice, we must use cunning,” said Llian. “Can we hide from them?”

“No,” said Karan, shaking her head as she walked along. “This close he would sense our presence. They might even be able to smell us.”

“We can’t fight them, reason with them, hide or outrun them,” said Llian slowly. “Then there’s nothing left to do but go somewhere that they can’t.”

“If we found a cave that we could creep through, but was too small for them, that would serve,” said Karan. “There have been lots of small fissures and caves leading away from the path, but whether they go anywhere or just end in blind tunnels, who can say? Still, we must take any chance, no matter how fragile.”

They hurried on, passing the mouths of many other tunnels. Each time Karan took the lower way. The path was steep and winding now and they did not see the light behind them again. In half an hour they came to a larger cavern with a deep pool of water on its floor. The cavern was cut across diagonally by a crevasse that intersected the floor at the water level. Beyond the pool, caves large and small went off in several directions.

“That’s the way the path goes,” said Karan, pointing along the larger tunnel that ran ahead. “Let’s try these others.” They scrambled into several tunnels but all turned out to be caves that ended no great distance away or narrowed to conduits too small for even Karan to slip through. She sat down at the end of the last and squeezed her head between her hands in frustration and despair. “This is the end,” she whispered. “Oh, Llian, I tried, and it wasn’t good enough. I’m so sorry.”

For the first time since the trial Llian realized just what danger he was in. “What will they do to us?”

“I don’t know. Probably flay us alive, for starters!”

“But…”

“But the Aachim are so civilized, you think. Not when they see themselves betrayed, Llian. If they catch us it is the end, and a nasty one it will be.”

Then Llian saw what had been staring him in the face.
“No! You saw it! Water was running down into the crevasse from the pool. It must lead somewhere or it would have filled up. Quickly.”

They leapt up and ran back to the main chamber, splashing across the pool to the crevasse. Karan took off her pack and, holding it sideways in front of her, slipped into the crack. As she did so they heard the rattle of a dislodged stone from up the tunnel. Llian thrust himself in after and followed as closely as he could. It was a tight fit, and many times he forced his way past projections of rock until his ribs were scored and bruised, and though he favored the side that he had damaged, the healing ribs pained him terribly. The crevasse meandered down steeply, and soon they knew that their tiny light could no longer be seen from the chamber. They pressed on.

It was only a few minutes later that they heard the echo of voices and the splashing of feet. Llian tapped Karan on the shoulder. She thrust the globe into a pocket, just to be sure, and stopped at once. Let them go past, Llian prayed, squeezing her hand. The noise died away to a rustling in the distance.

“They must be searching all the tunnels,” he whispered in Karan’s ear.

They crept on, silently. The crevasse shrank down and widened out, finally becoming a low-roofed tunnel down which the water still flowed.

They crawled along steadily, dragging their packs behind them. Suddenly, without warning, a vast roar seemed to come from up the tunnel and at the same time from within themselves. For a moment Llian’s thoughts were paralyzed. He looked around at Karan, who was behind him now, his eyes staring. She touched him on the cheek with two fingers and tried to smile.

“Be still,” she said softly. “Tensor has retraced his path
and discovered how we made our escape. He tries to bewilder and confound us, and thereby make us come back to him.” This time she managed a wan smile. “It shows his desperation; if we stay calm we just might be able to get away now. Either he doesn’t know where the crevasse comes out, or he knows but cannot reach it. The compulsion won’t work at such a distance. If he continues it’ll only tire and confuse him. Let’s hope that he does.”

The roars continued for a while, then all grew silent again. Absolutely silent. Even the trickle of water made no sound, as they crouched there in the embrace of the indifferent rock. They crept away.

The tunnel continued to slope down, though the going became easier now. The trickle became a flood that tried to overbalance them. Then it split and became a trickle again, and eventually fell over a ledge into a pool, four or five paces wide and extending before them beyond the light shed by Karan’s globe. The pool was waist-deep and cold.

“Now we can rest for a few moments,” said Karan.

Llian said nothing, but he took her hand again and held it tightly. They sat together on the driest part of the ledge with their feet dangling over the pool and ate bread and preserved fruits from his pack. “What will they do now?” he wondered.

“They won’t give us up. Some will search all the springs and caves around the base of the cliff. Others will wait along the main path to Name, in case we’ve found a way back to it. We’ve earned ourselves a little breathing-space, but once we get out of the caves our perils begin again.”

They waded out into the pool. After thirty paces or so the roof began to decrease in height, so that they had to walk bent over, and shortly it plunged beneath the water. Llian turned to Karan. “What now?”

“It may not extend very far. I’ll go and see.”

She stripped down to singlet and knickers and packed her clothes carefully in a bag made of waxed cloth. With the globe in one hand, Karan pushed past Llian, dived into the water and disappeared. Llian waited anxiously, but very soon the water swirled in front of him and she reappeared, water cascading from her hair, her face mottled blue and red from the cold.

“Had you waited for a moment I would have volunteered …” he began in a dubious and unconvincing tone.

“That’s why I didn’t,” she interrupted rudely, her teeth chattering. “I didn’t want to have to find you under there. Besides, I’ve done this kind of thing before.”

“It’s a long swim—almost a minute,” she went on, after she had wrung the water from her hair. “And longer with our packs. Can you do it?”

He nodded. He had always been a good swimmer; it was the cold that he found hardest to bear.

They swam the tunnel. It was, as Karan had said, a long swim, though not a difficult one. Llian was not greatly troubled by it, except when he caught his pack on a projection and struggled for what seemed an age before wrenching it free. Once on the other side the floor sloped gradually upwards, and all at once the roof was higher and they could walk upright again. They pressed on, and ten minutes later, to their great surprise, daylight appeared at the end of the tunnel. They crept closer. Karan turned to Llian in puzzlement.

“That’s strange,” she said. “I can’t sense them at all. It’s as though there’s no one there.” They walked cautiously through the entrance, blinking in the light of the setting sun. Suddenly Karan laughed out aloud and threw her arms around him. There on their right was the waterfall and the River Garr, flowing away to the south-east.

“I don’t understand,” said Llian, holding her tightly.

“Somewhere underground we passed right under the river and now we’ve come out on the other side,” she replied. “The stair of the Aachim opens on the eastern side, but we’re on the west.
We’re free!
There’s no crossing the river before Name and that’s more than two hard days’ walk downstream. No wonder Tensor despaired, if he knew. We don’t deserve such good fortune. Perhaps my luck turns at last.”

“Won’t they be waiting for us at Name? You said so yourself.”

“Undoubtedly, but that’s a long way away, and much can happen. Besides, we’re in Bannador now. Let’s get clear of the falls; then we shall eat and rest and make our plans.”

They had come out right at the base of the cliff and the ground was a vast pile of broken and shattered rock which they must negotiate before they could find their way free to the south. Eventually they passed beyond the scree and as it grew dark found themselves in a hilly country, thickly forested and shrouded in drifting mist from the falls. They were still high up but the hard cold of the mountains had gone; the air was moist and spicy between the trees.

“A forest,” said Llian. “I thought there were no trees left in the world, after Shazmak.” He sat down on a mossy log and gave himself over to contemplation.

They spent two more days in that country, making their way slowly through the dense forests, and it was hard going. The land was corrugated by steep valleys, tributary to the Garr, that cut directly across their path. They started off near the river bank, but shortly the country became so rugged that they had to climb up into the foothills of the mountains to find a clearer way. At last they came across a narrow path that led more or less in the direction of Name. Here the land
was broken into small ridges like ripples on a beach, and as the path led across them they were forever trudging up the gentle slope and peering uneasily along the ridge line before plunging down the steep side and splashing through the creeks that trickled in every gully.

It was late on the second afternoon now. Llian labored along behind, following Karan without thought, hoping that the top of each succeeding ridge would show the town of Name below. The trip had become an ordeal. How he hated traveling, if this was what it was all about. How could he ever have thought that there was romance in tales such as this? But at least they had lost their pursuers; there had been no sign of them since the caverns.

Just then Karan stopped. “This is close enough. Let’s find a place to camp. It’ll be dark shortly.”

“Can’t we go on to Name?” Llian pleaded. “It’s so close. I’m so sick of walking. I want to sit in an inn beside a fire with a great bowl of wine in front of me and a hundred other people doing the same.”

“You’ll have to wait until Sith!” Karan replied. “Name is across the river and late at night we’d have to signal for a ferry. We know Tensor will go to Name, and he will be watching all the ways. It’s too small a town for us to hide. Even in the daytime, in a crowd, it will be difficult. Anyway, Name is not a friendly place.”

They came to a spot where the path crossed a brook, the clear water running silently in its stony bed, and Karan turned upstream. Shortly they found a grassy mound where the forest drew back from the water; there they made camp. The grass was soft, green and welcoming. The tall trees made a wall around the clearing that seemed somehow protective. Fragrant herbs grew in the damp soil at the edge of the water. The atmosphere was so soothing that Llian, sitting
beside the pile of twigs he had collected for the fire, put his head in his hands and fell fast asleep.

In a while he was awakened by Karan, who had gone into the bush with her hatchet and now returned, whistling and dancing, with an armload of wood. He began to get up guiltily, but she put her hand on his forehead and pushed him down again. “You have not done badly,” she said fondly.