Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (16 page)

extraordinary. The food would have delighted Maigraith had it not brought up
childhood memories that she would rather had stayed forgotten. But in the end
she was glad, for what she had to offer them, gathered and preserved by her
own labour, seemed very pallid stuff.
They spoke only of trivial things while they ate - the beauty of this spot
that Faelamor had chosen, the hard march of the last few days over the
mountain spur, the quality of the light here - and as they drank small cups of
a straw-coloured vintage which they flavoured with chips of rosemary wood,
they remarked on the colour, bouquet and palate of the wine. The wine was not
their own, of course. They had purchased it only last week, but it was better
than any Maigraith had tasted since Thurkad.
The wine was put away, the cups and plates washed, and a bowl of yelt placed
steaming before each of them. Faelamor had no taste for yelt, indeed she took
little pleasure in food or drink, happy to have the same stuff month after
month. Accordingly, Maigraith had long ago adapted her own tastes
to monotony. She remembered yelt, though seemingly from another world, another
life. She licked her lips. It was as much a dessert as a beverage: thick, rich
and sweet, with a flavour like a creamy, custardy chocolate mousse but with a
subtle coffee-bitterness.
She sipped her yelt. It was everything she remembered. She looked up at
Gethren. His old eyes were on her - all their eyes were. She shivered. They
noticed that, but did not look away.
'Now you will tell us Faelamor's story,' said Gethren in that melodic voice.
Maigraith was in a bind. 'I owe a d-duty to Faelamor,' she stammered. 'My
whole life is duty - the first lesson she taught me, and the one most often
beaten into me. She bade me say no more than I have done already.'
'Faelamor owes a duty to the Faellem that is binding, for she fought for the
honour to lead us and she swore to uphold the duty. Whereas you owe her no
duty at all, and cannot! You are not one of us. Your very existence is a great
sin!'
'What are you saying?' Maigraith whispered. From these people the simple
statements, that would have been obvious to anyone but Maigraith, cleaved
through her conditioning like a thunderbolt.
'You are not born to duty, as our species is. You owe Faelamor only what is
due for your education and your upbringing, and that was paid back long ago.
Neither have you sworn to us of your own will. Faelamor indoctrinated and
compelled you, and that is no true duty.'
Maigraith looked from one to the other, confused.
Ellami grimaced. Her face showed more than the other two. 'Duty cannot be owed
in isolation,' she said. 'You do not owe her duty merely because she says it.'
Her voice was harsh, after Gethren's. 'It is Faelamor who fails in her duty
-to the Faellem. Duty to be one among the Faellem. She was always arrogant.
She has done a great wrong, to you not least of all. Tell us your story. Omit
no part of it.'

'She said that the Faellem are like a hive: she is the queen bee and you are
the workers, carrying out her will with none of your own.'
Ellami smote her bowl of yelt right off the table. 'Faelamor is proud and must
be brought low.' Her eyes pierced Mai-graith's like needles. 'What does she
think we have been doing in the hundreds of years since we expelled her for
her villainy?'
'Why did you expel her?' Maigraith asked tentatively. She had often wondered.
She thought that it was over the great crime her unknown parents had
committed, a secret that Faelamor refused to disclose. The quest for her own
background had obsessed Maigraith all her adult life, yet still she did not
know who she was or where she had come from.
'We cast her out over the sin of your mother and you. Since then we have
managed our lives quite well without a queen bee. The tale, if you please!'
Maigraith told the whole story, beginning a year and a half ago when Faelamor
had sent her to steal the Mirror from Yggur, and how she, Maigraith, had

forced Karan to go with her. Maigraith sipped her yelt as she told her tale,
and when the bowl was empty another was put in front of her. So the afternoon
passed. Late in the evening she paused, losing her voice, and Gethren prepared
dinner. Ellami and Hallal went walking together down by the river. One of
them, just a shadow in the firelight, pointed up at the sky. The glowing
scorpion nebula was setting, the dark moon past the three-quarters. Only a few
days till hythe. The scorpion reminded Maigraith of Rulke. She trembled.
The two came back and Maigraith continued. The nebula set. The dark moon
passed westwards. In the early hours of the morning the wind swung around and
snow begun to fall. Hallal and Ellami rose as one to fetch larger logs for the
fire.
Dawn came. Maigraith's voice was cracked and her eyes were red. The tale was
almost done. She told them about Faelamor's gate. 'An outrage!' Gethren said.
And about the
visit to Havissard too. She told them everything except how she felt there and
what she found - the silver stylus and the piece of paper bearing the name
'Aeolior'.
They questioned her at length about the gold and the book, but Maigraith knew
not why Faelamor had been looking for the former, nor much about the latter
either.
'This gold was Aachan gold, you say?' Ellami was speaking now.
'So I believe. It had an unpleasant feel, but Faelamor was triumphant after
she found it.'
'It must be Yalkara's own golden jewelry,' said Gethren, 'that was lost after
she went through the gate to Aachan. So, she didn't take it with her after
all!'
'A powerful artefact,' breathed Ellami.
'Perilous too!' Gethren was the cautious one. 'Too perilous for us. Where is
it now?'
'I don't know,' said Maigraith. 'Perhaps in one of our store caves. I've not
seen it since the day we came back.'
'Take us there at once!' cried Hallal. 'It must be taken apart and scattered
across the world so that it can never be used again.'
They hurried up to the caves, searching everywhere and using their Faellem
arts to reveal that which had been hidden. They found no trace of the gold.
'I don't like this,' said Ellami. 'I fear she will commit a great evil with
it.' They headed back to camp.
'Tomorrow,' said Hallal, 'we shall scan the whole valley. It must be found.'
Gethren made pancakes, poured syrup over them and offered them with another
brew, this time coffee so aromatic that it was intoxicating.
Maigraith concluded her tale. 'Rulke is in Carcharon now, and Faelamor has
gone to find out why. She is very afraid.'
'As are we,' said Gethren. 'This year will see a transformation, one way or
the other. Nothing will ever be the same again.'
The tale, the confession, had left Maigraith utterly drained. She ate the
food, drank the coffee and sat waiting. But their eyes dismissed her, and
something akin to pity showed on Ellami's face once again. She took
Maigraith's hand and led her to her shelter, even knelt down and eased her
boots off, and made sure she was well covered with her blankets. Maigraith was
more weary than she should have been from a night without sleep.
She lay for a while, listening to their voices: Gethren's soft, lilting tones
contrasting with Ellami's harder, rougher and more excitable voice. And over
them both, the quiet authority of Hallal, the one who had been rival to
Faelamor aeons ago, to lead them, and perhaps should have been chosen.
Maigraith sensed a tinge of resentment there.
She could not make out what they were saying, except a phrase here and there
of Ellami's, and a word or two from Hallal. But of Gethren, nothing. She
drifted off to sleep.
Later she woke again, or was woken by loud argument. The snow fell thickly
now. The Faellem had an icing of white on their broad felt hats, an epaulet of

white on each shoulder.
'I dread what she is up to,' said Hallal. 'She has made a gate! How can we
follow someone who commits such crimes?'
'We must put her down!' cried Ellami heatedly.
'I'm afraid,' said Gethren. 'This will destroy us. I say we abandon her and go
back to Mirrilladell.'
A Bloody Footprint
Karan wanted to scream, to shriek and kick the snow and beat the rocks with
her fists, to have a child's tantrum, get it out of her system and be better
again at the end of it. She could not face being hunted by the Ghashad again.
But she was, and there was nothing to do but do it all over again. She bolted
up the steep slope, the pack hammering her back and her heart thudding just as
loudly at her sore ribs. She ran until tears of terror froze and gummed her
eyelids together, until her breath burned in her side and foam accumulated on
her lip and she tasted blood in her mouth.
Then, as she stumbled up the ridge, Karan saw a bloody print on the ice. She
did not stop for an instant, but took it in so clearly that later on she could
have drawn it perfectly from memory. Her skin broke out in goosepimples.
No human footprint this - it was the print of an unshod foot, but a foot more
like a hand, with a huge square palm that could have covered her whole face,
and long spread toes like clawed fingers. One side of the print was indented
and the hollow, from the gouge of the claw all the way down to the heel, was
filled with frozen blood so dark as to be almost black. She knew what it was one of the lorrsk that had attacked Rulke. She scanned the snow and ice as she
ran, but there was no sign of it.
Lorrsk! The hairy, human-shaped creatures that were deadly in their cunning
and clever enough to work the construct on sight. Even wounded it would be
match for a dozen of her. Karan wondered which one it was. Both had been
injured. One had taken a gash in the thigh, while the other had fallen on its
backside into that puddle of molten metal on the floor. To end up in the belly
of some beast that did not even come from her world was somehow worse than any
other fate she could contemplate. She had nothing to defend herself with. She
ran on.
Looking back Karan saw that the Ghashad, slow as they were, were gaining on
her. The pack was holding her back but she was dead without it. She forced
herself harder, but the ridge was steeper here, and icier, and it got her
nowhere. Her legs hurt; everything hurt.
She looked up. The ridge ran up, steep and broken as far as she could see.
There was nowhere to hide. They would soon wear her down. Look at them, their
bony shanks moving like machines! They never seemed to tire.
She thought to roll rocks at her hunters but all the rocks were embedded in
snow and ice. She imagined a snowball, getting bigger and bigger as it raced
down. Unfortunately the soft snow had been swept away by the wind. On she
staggered, swaying from side to side in her exhaustion.
Karan looked down into the gorge. The walls were almost vertical here. It
narrowed above to a vertical cleft that might have been made by a single
furious hack with an axe. No, more as if the two sides of the gorge had been
prised apart, for a swarm of black dykes cut across it at an angle, bridges of
resistant rock but all broken in the middle.
The nearest of the Ghashad were almost within bowshot now, not that they
carried bows. They bore no weapons. They needed none but their minds, already
whispering in hers, terror and despair. Had Rulke given them that power?
The lanky figure leading them was ominously familiar. Idlis again, her
perpetual hunter, her nemesis. Already she
knew how his rubbery fingers would feel on her throat - like the grip of a
corpse. Despair began to drain her strength away.
Above, the cleft narrowed, though it was still wider than the most desperate
leap. It was a long way up to where the adjoining ridge joined hers. Not far
up the gorge, the broken dykes were plastered with wind-driven snow that
sometimes formed an arch of ice spanning the gap, a soaring bridge that looked

as strong as steel.
Karan was not fooled for an instant. Such snow and ice bridges were
commonplace here. She knew them well from walking these ridges with her father
as a child. They were quite treacherous.
Karan found herself thinking that it would almost be better to throw herself
into the gorge rather than be caught, or even to run across one of the
bridges. Better any chance than no chance. The gorge was narrow here, only
about ten paces across. It would almost be possible, she told herself, eyeing
an arch of ice and snow just above her.
Never, never, never trust a snow bridge, she heard her father say. He had said
that a dozen times, and he had been wise in the mountains. They are made by
the mountain sprites to trap unwary travellers. Step on one and you will fall
down and be smashed to bits on the rocks, and the sprites will feed on your
scraps for a month.
It was a long time since Karan had believed in mountain sprites, but she knew
Galliad had been right. She looked over her shoulder. If she could get past
the Ghashad there was a slim chance, for on a downhill run her agility would
have the advantage over their endurance. But they were spread evenly over the
ridge top, and below them she saw another line. No chance! Rulke was
determined to have her.
She looked up, estimating her chances. Nil! The ridge and the ravine continued
up forever. What was the point? She stopped above another ice bridge. The
snow-covered ridge ran down into a lip on either side that swept out to the
gentle
arch of ice, a span so narrow in the middle that she could have put her arms
around it. It looked strong, but she knew it was like the first ice on a pond

-it would not even support a child's weight. Besides, it would be too
slippery to stand on.
Karan pressed on but the brief rest had sucked all strength from her legs. Her
knees wobbled and she fell down on her face. She struggled up again to see
that Idlis was close.
'I can't go back again,' she gasped.
'Oh yes!' he burbled. 'The Master has a new plan.' He smiled, a grotesque
sight.
'I'll die first!' said Karan.
'We won't let you,' said Idlis, spreading his arms wide and springing at her,
stiff-kneed like a walking pair of scissors.
No point running now. Karan spun around then darted straight at him. Idlis
laughed, but just in front of him she skidded sideways on her heel, ducked
between him and the next and raced down the hill. The shock of each stride
threatened to collapse her knees. The other Ghashad moved across to cut her
off.
Karan knew with an awful certainty that she would not get through. 'You'll
never get me,' she roared. She saw the ice arch out of the corner of her eye
and a mad idea sprang into her head. I'll sled myself across. It's the only
way. And if I fail, well, it can't be any worse than going back.
Body sledding was a dangerous sport that she had achieved a rare mastery of as
a child, until one of her friends had fractured her skull and it had been
banned by Karan's furious mother.
She ran straight for the edge of the ridge and dived over, landing hard on her
chest and accelerating down the dip toward the ice arch. I'm going too fast!
she thought, trying desperately to line herself up to come out the bottom of
the dip along the line of the bridge. Even a slight angle and she would go
straight off the edge. Karan shot down the wind-packed snow on her belly,
steering with her outstretched
arms, leaning to the left. She was still on the wrong angle.
I'm going to go over! The thought was a scream of terror. Then a little bump
appeared in front of her, Karan smacked her hand against it with just enough
force to straighten up and shot out of the dip heading along the centre line
of the bridge. She spread her arms apart, tracking the sides of the arch. Her