Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (3 page)

'Don't interfere, chronicler!'
'But Karan - ' Llian wept.
'It's a choice between her life and our world, Llian!' But still Mendark
stared at the construct and did not give the order.
Nadiril the librarian was bent right over on his walking staff, looking
frailer than ever. Shand, a head shorter beside him, held his arm. Lilis stood
by Nadiril, hopping from one foot to another, crying, 'Stop them, Nadiril!'
'This deed will come back to haunt you, Yggur,' said Nadiril. 'She - '
'Just do it!' Yggur screamed.
'No more will I do evil,' said Malien softly, 'even if the greatest good comes
out of it. Xarah, put down your bow.'
Tensor slid his legs over the side of the litter and with a convulsive wrench
forced himself to his feet. He was as gaunt as a skeleton now, the once huge
frame nothing but bone and sinew that was all twisted from Rulke's blow in
Katazza last summer. Llian tried to claw his way over the snow but Basitor's
huge foot slammed into the middle of his back, pinning him down.
'A chance,' Tensor rasped. 'A chance sent for my torment!
What evil did my forefathers do that I should suffer so? Do you give the
order, Malien?'
'No!' she whispered, and a tear froze to crystal from each eye.
'You have always been true,' he said, clinging to her for a moment.
Tensor took a lurching step toward Xarah, and another. He wavered toward her
like the grim reaper, an animated skeleton covered in skin. She watched him
come, the long bow hanging from one hand, the red-feathered arrow in the
other. At the last moment she tried to put them behind her, but the look in
his eyes paralysed her.
Tensor plucked the bow from one hand, the arrow from the other. The arrow went
to the bowstring. The string was drawn back. Llian's arms and legs thrashed as
if swimming in the snow, but Basitor's boot held him in place.
'I'm sorry, Karan,' said Tensor ever so gently.
'Shoot, damn you!' cried Yggur, shaking so hard that his head nodded like a
child's toy.
Karan's red hair looked to be on fire in the boiling glare from the tower. Her
face was a white blotch, but Llian had no doubt that Tensor could hit her eye
from here. Before he even released the arrow, Llian could see it flying
straight and true toward her lovely face, to spear straight through her skull
with a shock that would carry her backwards off the construct and down, down
dead onto the rocks at the bottom of the gorge.
'No!' Llian shrieked with every fibre and atom of himself, broadcasting his
love and terror across ridge and valley and mountain, trying to speak back
across the link Karan had closed down only a few days ago.
The company stopped their ears against the curdled shriek. Twisting around,
Llian sank his teeth into Basitor's calf. Basitor yelped and sprang backwards.
Tensor did not even shiver. He stood up straight, sighted along the arrow and
let it fly. It disappeared into the night.
At the same time the construct lurched sideways like a
puppet whose strings had broken. It shuddered in the air and fell like a rock.
Rulke was suspended above it for a moment then stood up straight and tall, his
hands dancing. The machine slammed into solid air, bounced, drifted around in
a circle and veered back toward Carcharon, listing like a sinking yacht. Karan
was nowhere to be seen.
Rulke almost had it under control, but it shuddered again, the front tilted
and it began to glide downwards, accelerating and plunging straight towards
the rocky ridge side. Llian held his breath. Rulke struggled desperately,
mastered it a moment before impact and began to inch it back up again.
'We've done it!' Yggur shouted. 'He's weak! Do you dare use power against him
now?' he challenged Mendark.
Mendark hesitated, then, 'Yes, yes! Together!' They shot out their arms. Red
and blue fire flared out, writhing like coloured cables across the night. The
Aachim fired as one. A dozen arrows arched in formation toward their target,

but immediately an opaline spheroid sprang into life around the construct. The
fiery blasts reflected dangerously back at them, melting the snow into glassy
patches as they ducked for shelter. The arrows sighed harmlessly into a
dough-like barrier, then one by one fell free, quite spent.
'That showed him!' Tensor crowed. 'He won't be so bold next time.'
Mendark's wit was quicker. 'You're a fool, Tensor,' he said in a dead voice.
'He uses our power against us. The construct is proof against any force we can
direct at it, and I was a bigger fool to think any different.'
The construct regained its even keel, lifted smoothly and hung on the ruined
brass lip of the tower. Rulke reached down with one hand, hauled up Karan and
shook her at his enemies. She was still alive! He roared defiance, then the
machine slipped back into the tower like a black egg into its nest. As it went
down, the walls bulged outwards around it like a snake swallowing a chicken.
The eerie red glow reappeared.
'What was that all about?' asked Tallia.
'Intimidation,' said Yggur. 'Maybe he's not ready.'
'He's ready!' said Shand.
The moon rose higher, its blotched face illuminating the scene raggedly. They
stood together on a bowl-shaped rim of the ridge top. In front of them the
living rock had been carved away to form a small amphitheatre that looked back
to Carcharon. Its shallow lower lip dropped in a series of steep steps that
narrowed downwards to a winding track running along the knife-edged crest of
the ridge. The track was barely wide enough for two abreast, and deadly on
account of ice and gale. On either side the rock fell steep, sometimes sheer,
into a mighty chasm. The track wound down and then back up, broadening at the
other end before a long, steep and upwards-flaring stair which terminated at a
landing outside the brass gates and iron-plated doors of Carcharon itself.
Carcharon had once been an ugly tower of nine uneven sides, squatting on the
sheerest part of the ridge. A high wall ran from the back of the tower,
steeply up one side of the ridge and down the other, enclosing a large yard.
The tower was built of glassy-smooth gabbro, violet-grey in colour. Its walls
were covered in clusters of rods, hooks, vitreous spheres and opaline spines
like those of a sea urchin. The roof had been a spiky helmet of brass and
green slate, but the slate was scattered and the brass remnants now hung down
like metal petals. The place had never had harmony or proportion, but with the
roof torn open and the walls deformed as if they had begun to melt, it was
hideous.
Behind the company the high back of the amphitheatre descended by a steeper
stair onto a winding, soaring ridge-top track, down and down and down for
hours, eventually to reach a strip of plateau cut by ravines, encircled on the
lower side by granite cliffs and covered in Karan's magnificent but
inaccessible Forest of Gothryme. Below the cliffs lay Gothryme, her
impoverished estate in the valley of the Ryme, and further on, Tolryme town
and the road to Thurkad.
The red light sank to an uncanny glare. A freezing wind
sprang up, so they moved into the shelter of the arena. Llian lay on the snow.
If his rage had been a weapon, Yggur and Tensor would now lie dead among the
rocks. His legs hurt, a torment that gave him no rest, but at least Karan was
alive. He had to get her out. He knew she would do the same for him.
'Lilis!' he whispered.
Lilis came scuttling across. Her thin face was pinched. Her cold nose touched
his even colder cheek. She was shivering.
'What you warn't?' she said, reverting for a moment to her street-brat argot.
'I've got to get inside. Will you help me?'
Lilis visibly took herself in hand. A street brat no longer, she was an
apprentice librarian now and the great Nadiril was her tutor. She schooled her
voice to calmness. 'What do you want me to do?'
'See if you can get these shackles off.'
Lilis bent down, her hair caressing his boots. 'Oh,' she said. 'Your leg is
all bloody. And your other leg too.'

Llian couldn't have cared less. 'The ice scratches the skin. It's not
serious.'
Her fingers worked at the irons. 'They're locked,' she said. 'Do you know who
has the key?'
'Mendark! I don't suppose - No, it's too much to ask.'
She moaned under her breath and stood up. 'Poor Llian,' she said, looking into
his eyes. In the light from Carcharon hers were the size of apricots. 'Of
course I'll go. For you I will even rob Mendark himself; though I'm very
frightened.'
'I'm ashamed to ask you, dear Lilis.' He hugged her thin frame. 'But I've got
to get in.'
She crept across the snow and ice. Llian was more ashamed than Lilis realised,
for she was just a diversion. She would be discovered as soon as she tried to
rob Mendark, but it might just give him time enough. He did not wait to see
what happened.
Everyone else was huddled at the back of the amphitheatre out of the worst of
the wind. No one seemed to be watching
him. Llian slipped down between the snow-covered stone benches. He was just
above the steps and the path to Carcharon.
There came an outcry from the other side of the platform. Lilis must have been
caught! Llian slid over the edge and crashed down the steps feet first,
bumping hard on his bottom. Landing right at the edge of the ravine, he
staggered as fast as his hobbles would allow him along the treacherous path.
'What are you doing, you little thief?' he heard Mendark roar. Lilis's
frightened squeak of an answer was inaudible. A minute later Mendark roared
again, 'He's gone! After him!'
Llian redoubled his efforts, his terror of being caught before he found Karan
more powerful than his fear of Rulke, or the hideous pain in his legs.
He reached the bottom of the steps that led in an up-curving arch to the front
gate. He dragged himself up fifty or sixty steps, but near the top had to
rest, no matter what. Llian slumped over the stone rail. At least there was
one here, though each of the balusters was covered with gargoyle faces of
profound hideousness, all grinning and jeering at him. In his fevered mind the
railing seemed to move beneath his hand, as if they reached out for him. Llian
snatched his hand away and looked up to be confronted by a sight even more
palpitating.
At the top of the stairs was a landing, on the far side of which the stairs
curved away from the gate to meet the side of Carcharon tower. In the open
space between the left-hand rail and the wall loomed a vast menace out of
legend, a creature half-human and half-beast, with short though massive legs
and a barrel chest, long hanging arms and overarching bat-wings that cast the
crested head and fanged mouth into shadow. Its hands were the size of Llian's
head, with retractable claws. The joints of its wings and the bony crest of
its head were tipped with spikes. In one hand it clutched a flail, each lash
being tipped with a spiked ball like a tiny morning-star, while the other hand
gripped a rod like a wizard's baton.
Llian fell back against the railing before realising that the beast was just a
statue, though a brilliantly lifelike one. It was made of brass, impervious to
time and the elements. On the other side of the landing crouched another of
the creatures, equipped with a spear in one hand and a set of pincers in the
other. This one had wings that soared out on either side and the chest armour
was curved to accommodate a pair of breasts as large as melons.
Between the statues was a great gate of wrought-iron, clustered with heads and
faces and squatting gargoyle figures. The gate was ajar but beyond was a solid
door set with decorated metal plates. Even knowing that the statues were mere
metal, Llian could not move, they so embodied the mythical terrors his
childhood had been steeped in. Then, looking back, he saw his pursuers emerge
out of shadow below the arena. They were only a minute away. Basitor was well
ahead, his impossibly long legs flashing.
Squawking in terror, Llian clawed his way up the remaining steps like a lame

crab. One, two, three, four, five. Five to go! He could see the fury on
Basitor's face; the snarl; the bared teeth. No mercy there! Basitor would dash
out his brains against the steps, or throw him over the side without a
thought.
Llian hurled himself up the last high step, stuck for a moment as his hobbles
caught on the broken stone, then with a tremendous heave freed himself,
skidded across the landing, flung the gate open and crashed head first into
one of the decorated plates on the door. It clanked; something inside gave
forth a hollow boom that echoed on and on. He bashed at the door until his
knuckles bled. It was too late. Basitor was already at the bottom of the
steps. He leapt up, four steps at each stride.
'Got you, you treacherous swine,' he gasped, striking Llian a blow in the
belly that doubled him over helpless. 'I should have done this a year ago.'
He picked Llian up by the collar and the seat of the pants, shaking him until
his brains felt like jelly. Llian tried to kick
him but Basitor was too big and strong. The rest of the company was still too
far away to do anything, even supposing that they cared to.
'You're dead!' raged Basitor, holding Llian out over the precipice and
punctuating every phrase with another shake. 'Do you remember Hintis? Dead
because of you! Do you remember Selial, Shalah, Thel, Trule?' He went on with
a litany of names, most unknown to Llian, as if he blamed him for every death
in Shazmak and since, and planned to list each one too. 'Do you remember the
kindness my brethren in Shazmak showed you, treacherous Zain? Do you remember
Rael? All dead because of you. Because of you beloved Shazmak lies in ruins!
This is the least I can do for them.'
Llian looked down. The gorge was bathed in the baleful glare from the dark
moon. The beckoning rocks were as clear as daylight. Basitor shook him until
it all became a blur again, then drew back his arm.
As he did, Llian's hand struck one of the many metal projections that stuck
out from the walls of the tower. He gripped it like a drowning man, heaved and
his knee struck Basitor in the eye. Basitor fell against the wall, relaxing
his grip for a second. Llian kicked free and went hand over hand up the wall,
using the rods and hooks like a ladder. His fear of heights was nothing to his
terror of Basitor. One of his hobbles snagged on a hook and he almost fell. He
freed himself, his upstretched hand caught the lip of an embrasure and without
looking he threw himself in head first.
Eventually his brain stopped whirling, his eyes uncrossed. He was in the upper
chamber where the great telling had been held a week ago. There was a mound of
wreckage on the floor - beams, tiles and metal, the remains of the roof -but
the space around the construct was swept clear as if the rubble had been
repelled from it. Snowflakes drifted down through the broken roof and covered
every surface, though the construct was as black and clean as ever.
Llian lay on the floor, literally unable to get up. His body had suffered too
many injuries, too many insults in the past two weeks. He lifted his head.
Rulke was sitting on the high seat of the construct concentrating hard on
something. As his eyes adjusted, Llian saw that the room was hung with a
ghostly web of light, like a barely visible fishing net curving from one wall
to another. The fibres of the net began to glow more brightly, the light
spreading and smearing out until the net became a shimmering wall, a barrier
across which iridescent lights danced. Ripples passed gently across its
surface.
It was the Wall of the Forbidding made visible, curving through the ten
dimensions of space and time. It touched all parts of Santhenar, the Three
Worlds and even the Nightland equally, while separating these inhabited spaces
from the Darwinian nightmare of the void. Rulke's tale of a week ago had told
Llian all that he cared to know about the violent creatures that dwelt in the
void, and what they would do to Santh if they ever got out.
Where was Karan? He picked her out across the other side, sitting cross-legged
on a window ledge with a brazier glowing in front of her. Her eyes were closed
but she looked alert, concentrating intensely on something.