Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (17 page)

chin banged on the ice, but as she hit the upcurve of the bridge she felt it
crack beneath her - the crack of her doom. She rocketed across, lifting
slightly in the air as she passed the crest and the bridge curved down
underneath her. She settled back down light as a feather, but the ice cracked
again. Karan felt herself sliding off the side, pushed back up, then just as
the whole arch fell into the gorge she shot off the bridge and crashed into a
mound of snow and rock on the other side.
Karan felt sure that she was going to slide back down into the chasm, but
couldn't do anything about it. Opening her eyes she found that she was wedged
between shattered black rocks. She worked her arms and legs. Nothing seemed to
be broken though her arms, thighs, shoulders and breasts throbbed. She felt
battered black and blue. There was blood on the snow - her chin was scraped
raw.
She sat up. The Ghashad stood in a silent line at the other end of the broken
arch.
'I salute you!' rasped Idlis. 'But I will still have you.'
The Ghashad turned like a row of machines and began to jog up the slope. Karan
looked up. It would take them hours to reach the place where the two ridges
joined, but that did not mean she was safe. If they were able to call to
Carcharon, Rulke could reach the bottom of her ridge long before she found
safety in the forest.
'You'll never have me!' Karan gasped, and staggered off. She did not stop for
an hour. Then she rested for just a few minutes and continued until dusk, when
she came on the familiar path that led up to Shazmak.
There she received another shock - Ghashad footprints
in the snow, three or four of them. The marks were un-mistakeable, long,
narrow and deeply indented, much more so than her own prints. She looked
around nervously but the dark was rolling in with the snow and she could not
see far enough. Squatting down, she checked the prints in the fading light.
Definitely Ghashad, for there was the little uptick at the front from their
characteristic scissor-walk. They were heading up to Shazmak, under heavy
loads.
What could it signify? Had Rulke gone? Or had the construct been damaged so
badly that they had to carry it back in pieces? Or did it mean nothing at all?
There was no way of telling.
She groped her way down in the dark, terrified of running into more of them,
and equally terrified that if she stopped to rest Idlis's band would catch
her. Just as dawn was breaking, after a miserable night prey to every fear
that she could possibly conjure up, she realised that the slope was growing
gentler. There was only half a league of open land between her and the bridge.
Across the bridge and into the forest, and down to the cliff path to Gothryme:
safety. She crept down to a vantage point where she could see the bridge.
Easing her head up, Karan squinted into the distance. Three stick-figures were
approaching the bridge from the other side.
Had they seen her? She doubted it - their eyesight was poor. Ducking over the
side of the gorge, which was less steep here, Karan climbed down toward the
frozen river. She crossed it without incident, scrambled up the further side
among the boulders, over the windswept crest and out of sight. She tried to
follow a path where there was no telltale snow, though anyone determined
enough could track her. Finally she took to her heels and ran, and did not
stop until she reached the glorious shelter of her own Gothryme Forest.
The previous night a most unhappy creature had smashed apart its snow cave on
the ridge above Carcharon and stood
up, sniffing the air. It was the lorrsk that had fallen in the puddle of
molten metal, and it was in agony. One buttock had been burned away and was
now covered in huge black scabs that broke open with every movement, to leak
blood and straw-coloured fluid onto the ice.
The lorrsk could barely move for the pain. Every crabwise, lurching step sent
shrieks of agony from the back of its heels to the top of its head. The cold
seared its bare feet. Hunger gnawed at its guts like a plague of rodents. The

lorrsk raised its head higher and the scent of warm flesh came on the wind.
It crossed the ridge back and forth until it struck the trail of a creature
that led back to a snow cave like its own. It knew the scent: the small
red-haired female that had been in the tower when it first escaped from the
void. There were only a couple of meals in it, but it would be sweet, tender
flesh. The lorrsk began to track Karan up the mountainside.
Shortly it came upon another trail, many people this time, eventually
following Karan and the Ghashad to the broken ice bridge. The lorrsk squatted
at the end of the bridge for a long time, measuring the distance. Had it been
whole it might have attempted the leap, but realised that it did not need to.
It was not a long climb to the place where the two ridges joined. The lorrsk
followed the trail of the Ghashad up and across onto the adjacent ridge. Here,
even through the covering of recent snow it could smell the scent of many
travellers. It had found the path to Shazmak and there was fresh meat not far
away.
Everything will be perfect when we get back home, Karan kept thinking. In
spite of her situation, she could not stop making plans for her future, for
herself and Llian (if he could ever forgive her), and for Gothryme. How to
rebuild it, and get free of the burden of debt and tax hanging over it.
But she was afraid. Afraid to head to the cliff path that was the only way
down, therefore surely guarded; afraid to
stay here; and afraid that if she somehow did get home, Rulke would come for
her anyway. But hiding here availed her nothing, so after a sketchy breakfast
she made her careful way through the forest toward the cliff top. As she
approached she kept picking up schizophrenic flashes - Hunt! Hunt! -and was
sure that she was sensing Ghashad.
Karan crept closer, using all her bushcraft and cunning, then shinnied up an
evergreen tree near the edge of the forest. She did not need to go very high.
From halfway up she could see that the top of the path was guarded, by at
least four of them. There was no other way down.
She sat in the crook of her tree, wondering what to do. She wanted to link to
Llian, to be sure he was safe, but even if she could reach him from here, she
did not dare with Rulke so close.
There was really only one option - hide in the woods until they gave up or her
food ran out. She headed back into the forest. It was a still, beautiful place
after the snow. Karan drank up the smell of the wood, the feel of it, the
calm, solitude and renewal. But it did not ease her own conflict: the rights
and wrongs of what she had done in Carcharon, and what Llian must think of her
for doing it.
At the most northerly extent of the Forest of Gothryme there was an old stone
hut, a one-roomed dwelling sometimes used by hunters or gleaners, though
seldom in the winter. It had the forest at its back and looked over the
escarpment across Faidon Forest to Elludore, and east towards the Sea of
Thurkad. From where she was now, near Black Lake, it was three or four leagues
away; a couple of days' hard walking, in these conditions. No one would ever
know she was there, if it snowed enough to cover her trail. No one would think
of looking there for her.
When darkness fell Karan was still a good day from her destination, so she
continued on, knowing that the moon would rise before too long. Over the past
days she had grown used to walking and working in the darkness, and this was
an easier, less dangerous trek than the others had been. There was a path of
sorts, an old forest trail, now seldom used except by animals. But after
walking in the darkness for about an hour she lost the path, or it petered
out. She found herself struggling across a succession of steep gullies and
ridges and could not work out where she was. Had she wandered down toward the
escarpment, or up to the base of the mountain slope? There was no way of
telling. It was now overcast, pitch dark.
As she floundered through the snow, the edge of a steep bank collapsed under
her, precipitating her into a gully floored with rocks. A broken branch end
jagged her lip. She tasted blood.

Karan stopped abruptly, feeling the gash with her fingers. It wasn't serious.
She forced her way through a thicket of saplings, then without warning found
herself sliding down a greasy slope. She lost her footing and crashed through
ice into water. Plates of ice bumped at her knees. The water filled her boots
and burned like a cold flame.
Karan was furious with herself. Now she'd have to make camp and a fire, and
damn quick, else she would get frostbite. All other dangers must be ignored.
Not daring to wade across in case there were deep holes, she found that where
she'd fallen in was too steep to climb out. Part of the bank had collapsed,
leaving a sheer overhang. Skidding along the edge for an agonising minute, she
ran into the roots of a tree hanging down into the water. They were slippery
with ice but she made it up and sat down on a root to empty her boots.
The wood on the ground would be wet; she didn't even try there. Karan felt
around for dead branches whose twiggy ends might be dry enough. Her labour
resulted in only a handful, as the trees branched high over her head. Twice
she lost her camp and once went close to going in the river again. She made a
platform with wet wood to raise her pathetic pile of kindling above the snow.
Her feet were numb. Karan took off her boots and turned them upside down to
drain. Ice cracked from her socks as she peeled them off. She had other socks
but only the one pair of boots. She dried her feet carefully and put another
pair of socks on, the best she could do.
Karan had tinder in her pack; she always carried some for such eventualities.
She struck sparks into it but it would not catch. She felt around in her pack,
hoping that there might be a scrap of paper. There wasn't. Her fingers
encountered the round shape of a marrim, a fruit like an orange only smaller,
more oval and with red flesh. Like the orange, its rind contained oil. She
remembered how, as a child, she had squeezed the oil into the fire, making
little flares.
Peeling the marrim with her teeth, Karan ate the mushy, half-frozen pulp. She
struck sparks into her tinder, blew on it gently until she had a little patch
of red, folded over the marrim skin, pointed it at the glowing patch and
squeezed the skin. The tinder went out.
She tried again, holding the skin further back. This time she was rewarded by
a spurt of flame that leapt up through the tinder to the nest of twigs above.
A tiny, timid flame, but how welcome! It warmed her hands and her heart. But
not her feet, unfortunately, and now she had to find bigger wood quickly. The
light made it easier.
Soon the fire was blazing and she had enough fuel for the rest of the night.
Now, hot drink and lots of it. She went in her socks down to the stream, and
while the water heated, Karan put her poor feet out to the fire and at last
brought some life back to them.
All she had to drink was chard, but nothing to sweeten it with. Unsweetened
chard was barely palatable. She dug out the remains of the dried fruit, tore
them into little pieces with her teeth and dropped them into the brew, one by
one. Her lips began to tingle.
Karan toasted a hunk of bread, threw an onion into the
coals, made a platform above the fire and put a large piece of eel on it. The
mug of chard went down in one gulp. It burned all the way and the ginger
hotness lit a fire in her belly. She finished the fish and the bread, dipped
another mug of chard and sat back feeling better. Picking out a piece of the
Ghashad fruit (as she thought of it) she sucked at it, though again the sickly
aftertaste made her spit it out. One boot was beginning to smoke; she turned
them hastily. They were still soaking inside. Then something very strange
happened.
All of a sudden she felt dizzy and nauseous. Her head spun, her stomach
churned and the forest trees seemed to be hanging upside down. Karan stood up
and promptly fell over. Her whole head now glowed with warmth - a tingling,
burning feeling. Instantly that disappeared, the trees and the fire too. The
whole world vanished and her identity with it.
What had happened? Where was she? The ground - no, the floor - seemed to be

jerking up and down beneath her. How could it be floor? Where was the snow?
Her feet thudded nerveless on hard tiles. Her head felt awful, a dizzy,
whirling sensation, like too much wine. The back of her neck prickled as if
someone was standing right behind her. She tried to spin around but her body
would not obey. The prickling grew - there was definitely someone there - it
felt as if someone was inside her!
She was not alone. She - they - were walking along together and the other
person was just as confused as she was. Karan became aware of a terrible
wailing and shrieking behind her. It was a very familiar noise.
Opening her eyes, she knew where she was at once. The wailing was the sound of
a gale howling through wires and around slender towers. There were engravings
and thread paintings on the walls - the walls of a vast empty city. She was
walking down a long hall and into a meeting room. She was in Shazmak. At
least, her consciousness was.
Now she felt something rise up, as to the surface of a murky
pond. Something clutched at her, trying to pull her under, trying to climb up
her body to air, life and liberation. Something that was horrified and
horrifying. With a shudder of realisation she understood what had happened the reverse of that night at the campsite above Name. Her sending, her whole
psyche, had leapt across space into the mind of one of the Ghashad, and it did
not like it any more than she did. She thought of the Ghashad as alien, yet
this mind was revealed to be a human being like herself, perhaps cruel and
terrible, perhaps noble in its own way, but now uncomprehending and terrified
(or perhaps comprehending too well). Certainly it was as frightened as she
was.
Its mind was very strange. It seemed to think in broken sentences mixed with
images, like reading a book where many of the words had been replaced with
pictures that were warped, barely recognisable.
Then it began to understand that what had happened was an accident. That Karan
had no idea what she'd done. That she was not trained to the control of others
nor even had any knowledge of how it might be done. The other mind was no
longer frightened. It calculated what to do and with ferocious intensity began
to assert itself.
Other Ghashad appeared in front of her, giving her strange looks. She heard
words forced out of her mouth - Fliox vumggh hwoe! - but the language was
unknown to her. Karan struggled desperately to hold on to her identity.
Suddenly the room spun, everything went blank and the next she knew she was
looking up at the ceiling. A gaggle of Ghashad stared down at her, helping her
back up. Now they were speaking at her, saying encouraging things, and slowly
the Ghashad that was trying to get back into her mind began to force her back
against a wall, giving her no way to escape. Then their voices blew away like
feathers on the wind, replaced by another face; another mind. This one she
could do nothing about. It was Rulke.
He roared with laughter. My little friend, you must be very
hungry if you have to eat hrux to keep alive. I thought it was you the other
night, but nothing more happened. Perhaps you didn't like the taste. No matter