Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (18 page)

-it grows on you. How much did you eat this time? Be careful, my dear Karan.
Too much can kill you. One whole piece would end you, I think. You're such a
little thing. Even a bit the size of a pea will give you bad dreams. Half a
piece and you will not be able to keep away from it. You'll keep coming back
for more, and every time you come back you'll end up here. Soon you won't want
to go away again.
Don't look at me in that reproachful way. It's none of my doing. This is
Ghdshdd work, and no one made you take the fruit. No one will force you to
have more. That will be as you will. See, I warn you freely.
Karan's mind was boiling with terror. What had she done to herself? The one
whose mind she occupied advanced on her again. She could no longer resist him.
She could feel him compressing her into a tiny space up against the wall of
his mind. She was losing her identity, being submerged completely, soon to
become a creature under the control of the Ghashad.

Llian, she cried out. Llian, help me! There was no answer, could not be any,
for she was not linking, just sending, and he was too far away. But just the
thought of him helped her, and perhaps the effects of the small piece of hrux
were wearing off.
Karan kicked out with all her strength and will, and the Ghashad whose mind
and body she occupied kicked just as hard. She felt an awful pain as he broke
his toes on the stone wall. Suddenly she found herself back in the forest,
screaming. She had kicked the fire, scattering logs and coals across the
campsite. There was a ragged gash on the end of her big toe, from which blood
poured out onto the snow.
Shaking with horror, Karan hurled the contents of the pot and the mug down the
bank. For good measure she washed them out with clean water, three times. Then
she rebuilt the fire, gathered huge quantities of wood and built another fire
nearby. She burned the remainder of the hrux and searched her pack in case
there was more.
Another piece was trapped in one of the side seams, down near the bottom.
Karan fished it out and put it to her lips, only realising what she was doing
at the last minute. Even then it was hard to put it down, not to eat it, and
the longer she held it the harder it became, until with a great effort of will
and revulsion she hurled it into the hottest part of the fire and watched it
shrivel away to nothing.
Karan fixed her bleeding, throbbing toe and made another pot of chard - plain,
ordinary, bitter old chard. She sat between the two fires, revelling in the
unpleasant flavour until all the hrux aftertaste left her mouth, the last
semblance of warmth was gone from her lips and belly, and the inside of her
head no longer glowed.
I will not come! she said to herself. You underestimate me, Rulke. I will
fight you to the end.
Suddenly he was back in her mind, as horribly near as if he whispered in her
ear. He seemed amused. You are clever, little Karan, and I respect you for it.
Enjoy your triumph while you may. One day I won't need to hide in Shazmak, and
then I'll call for you again. Nothing will stop me then.
'Get out!' she shrieked aloud. 'Get out of my mind. You'll never find me.'
I don't need to, he chuckled. You will come of your own accord, when the time
is right. Then he was gone.
She sank to her knees beside the fire, thanking her luck that most of the hrux
had fallen out in the snow at Carcharon and been lost; and that she found the
taste so unpleasant. Otherwise by now she would be in Shazmak, or on her way
there, prisoner and addict. Or dead from it. And she had learned something
useful too. Rulke had fled to Shazmak with his construct. Llian was safe for
the moment; perhaps they both were. She could sleep easier for that. Unless he
was lying. Unless he was hunting her now.
The snow began to fall heavily, enough to cover her tracks.
Karan slipped into her sleeping pouch, pulled it up around her shoulders and
sat sipping her chard. Finally she fell into a sleep tormented by nightmares
even more strange and hallucinatory than her previous one.
A Feast in the Forest
In the morning Karan continued. Several more times she sensed those strange,
fractured, word-and-picture sentences, and knew that the Ghashad were still
looking for her. She finally reached the cottage in the late afternoon. It was
snowing again but the wind had swung around to the east and over in that
direction, toward Thurkad, the cloud was beginning to break up. The morrow
promised good weather, not what she wanted at all.
She had been to the hut as a child. It had seemed much larger then. Now she
saw that it was small, rustic and in need of repair. It was just a one-roomed
cottage built of stone gathered nearby, roughly shaped slabs of schist laid
flat like brickwork and held together with burnt limestone mortar. The roof,
which overhung two tiny window holes, was clad in green slate crusted with
lichen. Many of the slates were slipping. The roof overhung the windows. A
scrap of veranda faced the escarpment.

To the east the forest thinned. She could see grass and heath through the
trees. In front of her the escarpment curved around to run east-west. Below
and beyond was the endless expanse of Faidon Forest butting up against the
mountains. Not far west the mountains rose up sheer and bare, for here the
plateau was only a few hundred paces wide.
Karan took her pack inside. The earth floor was pitted where the roof had
leaked. There was a rude bench and stool, and a small supply of dry wood
stacked on the hearth. It must have been there for ages because as soon as she
struck sparks to tinder it blazed up. There was nothing to eat of course, and
her own supplies were almost gone now.
In a minute, smoke began to belch out into the room. None seemed to be going
up the chimney at all. It must be blocked. Just what I need, Karan thought
wearily.
She climbed onto the roof, clambered up the chimney and peered inside. It was
completely clogged with old bird nests and leaves. Karan got down again,
searching for a long stick to poke the mess through into the fireplace. Before
she found one there came a furious roar and flames leapt out the top of the
chimney. The accumulated rubbish was on fire.
Nothing she could do about it. She had experienced chimney fires before, and
knew that they weren't dangerous as long as the chimney was properly built. On
the other hand, the clouds of smoke made an unmistakeable signal, should
anyone come this way looking for her. Going inside, she stood by the warmth.
Putting water on to boil, she watched the fire gloomily, munching a lump of
cheese. She'd have to go looking for food in the morning. Karan contemplated
that prospect without enthusiasm. Precious little to find at this time of
year, up here.
After her tea, Karan busied herself gathering wood and stacking it on the
veranda until there was enough for a week of bad weather, always a risk in the
mountains. Making a broom by binding dry reeds to a stick, she swept the
earthen floor and removed the accumulated cobwebs. She carried water from a
trickle issuing out of a gully below her, until the cauldron on the fire was
full. By then it was dark. Food she could do nothing about until the morning.
Tomorrow she would repair the roof, if the weather allowed.
She sat down by the fire. The room stank of burnt soot. Everything that could
be done to occupy her mind had been done. She felt neither sleepy nor hungry.
All she could think of was what she had done back in Carcharon, and wonder
what would be the consequences of it.
She dozed, only to be woken by a sharp crack. Karan sprang up, searching for
the source of the noise. Crack, crack, crack came from the chimney, then one
whole side fell out into the snow. The chimney blaze must have weakened the
mortar.
Wind howled in the gap, sending sparks, ash and smoke billowing through the
room. Karan ran outside to see if she could plug the opening, but the stones
proved too hot to handle. Going back inside she skimmed floating ash and
charcoal off the top of her pot and made chard. It tasted like sooty mud. The
hut was frigid now. Curling up in her sleeping pouch in the most sheltered
corner, she closed her eyes.
She could not get to sleep. Was the Forbidding still the same now that Rulke
had punctured it? What about the creatures that had escaped? One man was dead,
at the least. If she'd not helped Rulke, he would still be alive. What other
tragedies had resulted from her betrayal?
A little short-tailed mouse crept out of a crevice beside the fireplace, its
pointed snout questing this way and that. Sitting up on its hind legs, it
twitched its nose. Intelligent eyes watched her.
Karan flicked a scrap of cheese at it. The mouse scurried back to its hole,
displaying a fluffy white flag of tail. After peeping out of the crack for
some time, it darted out, seized the morsel in its front paws and sat up,
eating it delicately. Karan tossed it another piece and went back to her
deliberations.
The revelations about her father were another puzzle. Had Basunez discovered

some great secret up there? No doubt that Galliad thought he had, and had lost
his life trying to find out. Karan couldn't help but feel that there was more
to it, though - that somehow everything was connected, including her, the
triune!
Hunger woke her at dawn. It was a fine day and she spent all morning searching
for food but found absolutely nothing. After lunch, eel and onion and not much
of either, she attempted to repair the chimney. More had collapsed after the
fire cooled, and now she was faced with a hole larger than a door.
With no mortar to stick it together again, the best she could do was attempt a
dry-stone wall, but that would take more stone than she had. It turned out to
be an incredibly slow process and her fingers were raw by the time darkness
put an end to the work. The job was not even half done.
The next day passed the same way. Again her search found no food. She used up
all the stone, managing to block the gap sufficiently to keep the fire alight,
though it gave no warmth unless she squatted right in front of it.
By the following day the need for food was becoming desperate. None of the
trees nearby was of a kind that bore nuts, and she saw not a single animal
track in the snow. The land here seemed to have been sterilised of anything
edible, but she was afraid to go too far from the hut. Every footprint in the
snow was a signpost to her enemies.
Her nights were troubled by dreams of Rulke - lingering effects of hrux, no
doubt - where he appeared, always good-humoured, and called her back to him.
And despite her resistance she always went.
Her options were running out as rapidly as her food. She was not so pleased
with the mouse these days, for it had eaten the remaining piece of her eel.
Karan was constantly hungry now. Tomorrow she'd have to leave, no matter who
was looking for her. There was nowhere to go but to Gothryme. She was aching
for home but dreading it, too, with this burden of guilt hanging over her.
She went out the back for firewood, savagely attacking a
small dead tree. It was hard work, because her hatchet was blunt and she had
no sharpening stone. She gave a last hack and the tree fell, to splinter on
the ground. The trunk split open. There was not much firewood in it, for
inside it turned out to be full of fat white grubs nesting in digested wood.
You can eat wood grubs, if you're hungry enough. Her father's voice was in her
head, from one of their camping trips in the mountains. He had always been
pointing out such things - where to find water, or honey, or bird nests, what
could be eaten and what must be left alone.
She eyed the grubs. Each was as big as her thumb, with a swollen body that was
purple on the end, tiny brown stubs of legs and brown mouth parts at the front
of its blind head. Somehow she couldn't imagine eating it. But surely grub was
better than starving.
Gathering the grubs into her jacket, Karan hurried back to the hut. There she
spilled her catch onto the bench and stared at the creatures.
Some of them started to wriggle, a blind questing about, as if reluctantly
woken from hibernation. She picked one up, brought it to her mouth and put it
down again. She arranged the grubs in rows. She changed the rows into a
circle, then into lines that spelled out her name, then Llian's.
Her stomach hurt. Got to have something to eat! She closed her eyes, brought
the grub to her lips again and her eyes came open involuntarily. The swollen
white and purple body twitched disgustingly. Closing her eyes again she forced
it into her mouth. It lay on her tongue while she tried not to vomit. Suddenly
Karan felt a sharp pain. The wretched creature had bitten her. She tried to
spit it out but it would not let go, even when she accidentally crushed it
between her teeth.
The grub burst like a grape, flooding her mouth with what felt like thick,
bitter jelly. It was disgusting! Gagging, she spat it into the fire, ripped
the mouth parts off her tongue and washed her mouth out with cold chard.
She was about to fling the grubs out the door when it occurred to her that she
should have cooked them. She dried her chard pot, threw the grubs in and put
them on the edge of the fire to bake. It did not take very long. Picking one

out, she found it withered, brown and reduced to a third of its former size.
It smelled like food.
She was salivating. Karan popped the grub into her mouth, crunched it up and
found that it now had a rather pleasant, sweet nutty flavour, though it felt
rather scratchy as it went down. The legs, she supposed. She had just put a
handful in her mouth when out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a tall
figure going past the window hole. She snatched up a half-rotten piece of
wood, her only weapon. How had this intruder come so close without her talent
warning her?
The door was thrust open with a creaky groan. She raised her stick.
'Karan, is it you?'
'Glmph!' she said with her mouth full. She swallowed furiously. 'Tallia!'
Dropping her weapon, Karan embraced Tallia like a lost sister. 'How did you
find me?'
'What are you doing here?'
'Hiding! The Ghashad are after me.' Karan moved the pot so Tallia could not
see the contents.
'I think they've given up. I haven't seen any sign of them for a couple of
days.'
'You mean I can go home?'
'First thing in the morning!' Tallia said cheerfully.
'Well, come have some chard and tell ... Is Llian all right?'
'Yes, though Carcharon was a disaster we haven't recovered from.'
And I caused it, Karan thought, sobering up rapidly. 'What happened?'
'It was a rout!' said Tallia.
'Oh!' Karan said.
'Why did you go to Carcharon, Karan?'
'Surely Llian told you?'
'He did, but I'd like to hear your version.'
Karan had an inkling that things had not gone as well as she'd expected for
Llian. 'To bargain with Rulke for him. It was the only way to free Llian. And
the strange thing was, Rulke never really wanted him at all. You were all
wrong about that. It was me he was after, all along.'
'What for, Karan? Why did he want you so badly?'
Karan did not want to talk about it, but Tallia's eyes burned into her, and
Karan knew she could keep the secret no longer. 'I'm triune!' she whispered,
expecting Tallia to shrink from her in horror or disgust. 'I also have a
Faellem ancestor.'
Tallia could not contain her astonishment. 'Triune!' She began to pace up and
down, darting Karan sideways glances. 'That explains ... a lot. Mendark and I
often wondered about you. And then what happened?'
'Once Llian was free I had to do my part of the bargain. I found the Way
between the Worlds for Rulke, but everything went wrong.'
'So Llian talked you into going to Carcharon?'
'Don't be stupid! It was my idea! I was sneaking out when he caught me and
refused to let me go by myself. Llian was magnificent!' Karan's eyes shone.
'You should have seen him! It was the bravest deed I've ever seen, the way he
faced Rulke like that. Of course in the end it came to nothing. Where is Llian
now? Is he safe?'
'He was when I left him in Gothryme,' said Tallia carefully. She sat down at
the bench.
Remembering the grubs, Karan grabbed the pot. 'Tea?' she asked casually.
'What are you eating?' said Tallia. 'Can I have some?'
'Haven't you got any food?' Karan held the pot well away, mortified at nearly
being caught.
'Plenty!' said Tallia. 'I just wondered . . .'
Karan casually emptied the grubs into the back of the fire, washed the pot out
and filled it with water. They drank their chard from a pair of wooden mugs,
rudely carved by some previous inhabitant. 'How did you find me, Tallia?'
Tallia explained what she was doing up here. 'I've been enjoying my freedom,