Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (38 page)

covers in Ellami's face and scrabbled across the floor, desperately trying to
focus on her assailant.
'No, Ellami!' she screamed.
Ellami felt shamed, but could not acknowledge Maigraith. Untangling herself
from the covers she sprang, slashing wildly. She missed again; Maigraith's
training had given her lightning reflexes. Now Maigraith caught her by the
foot, twisted and Ellami felt her knee give - something had torn inside it.
She tried to kick, overbalanced and fell on the knife.
It carved through the soft membranes of her stomach, almost coming out her
back. Ellami wrenched free, scratched
across the floor and ran for the door, the knife still buried in her belly.
Ellami tore the knife out and stopped the wound with her fingers. The pain was
terrible. Behind her she saw Maigraith following. Ellami used a spell of
concealment and vanished. Outside, the trail was washed away by rain on the
dark cobbles.
Ellami barely made it to her inn. She burned the book in the fireplace of her
room, stirred the ashes to dust and called frantically with her mind to
Faelamor. That was a clumsy way of communicating at the best of times, but she
got a message through, that the book was destroyed but both Karan and
Maigraith were safe. Then she collapsed and bled to death on the hearth.
Karan had not recovered from Elludore, or Carcharon either. Every night she
had nightmares where she watched the army marching to their deaths, powerless
to prevent the disaster. In between those nightmares were other, older dreams,
about Rulke and the construct, or the void-leech trying to drill in through
her ear to suck her brains out. That ear still ached at times, and she did not
hear as well as on the other side. Once she dreamed about hrux, the dried
fruit that the Ghashad used to link their minds together, and woke sweating,
her whole body craving it.
She could not concentrate at all. Her mind was loaded with those torments, day
and night, and it did no good to talk about it with Llian or anyone else. For
this ailment, talking was useless. She was afraid to do anything, for her
every decision resulted in a cascade of ill consequences. Not even Llian could
help her. She felt quite unsupported.
The morning before the attack on Maigraith, Karan had gone out and walked the
streets of Thurkad. The politicking in the citadel had no interest for her.
She was chafing to get back to Gothryme. She wrote to Rachis every day,
wanting to know everything that was happening there, from the state
of the weather to the minutest details of agriculture and animal husbandry,
but as yet there had been no reply.
The failed raid must have discharged her obligation though, for neither
Mendark nor Yggur seemed interested in using her talents again. Yggur was
bitterly angry with her, still blaming her for the disaster in Elludore.
Mendark, however, always taking the opposite side to his enemy, was more
friendly than he had ever been.
After a while she found herself at the waterfront, next to the vast old
wharves. She still did not like Thurkad, but she could bear it now. Even the
wharf city, that had given her horrors on her first visit as a child, she now
saw to be merely squalid, rotten and overcrowded.
Karan paced along the waterfront hoping to find Pender, but though she spent
hours looking she did not see The Waif, and the people she spoke to had not
heard of him. She was in the wrong part of the port, where the larger ships
unloaded cargoes from Crandor and other faraway places. Pender would go to the
other side where the smaller coastal vessels docked, and the barge traffic
from the river. She knew vaguely where that was - a long way from here, for
the wharves stretched the best part of a league around the shoreline. Too far,
in the rain.
Pulling her floppy hat down around her ears, Karan headed back. Likely that
Pender would be in a tavern anyway, on a day like this. There were hundreds to
choose from along the length of the waterfront. She picked one that looked
less grimy than the others and went inside, but it was a dark, stinking place

where people spat on the floor and everyone stared with the resentful glower
of those whose sanctum has been invaded.
She had taken her hat off as she entered, and her bright hair sprang out. She
stood with her hand on the latch, wondering whether or not to damn them, then
decided that prudence was better and went out into the rain again. A second
tavern was as bad as the first. A man who had no
teeth made ugly jokes as soon as he caught sight of her. On the bar sat a
wooden cage in which a sad little creature squatted with drooping shoulders,
staring at the floor. It looked a cross between a monkey and a possum, with
huge, watering eyes. Karan felt caged too.
The other inns looked the same. As she walked along, she came to a drab little
market, a collection of half a hundred stalls, though few had customers.
Stopping at a spice booth, she bought some tea spiced with citrus rind. The
shopkeeper, a diminutive woman who wore dozens of filigree bracelets up one
slender dark arm, weighed the tea out carefully, looked up at her with a
smile, added a pinch over the weight for good measure and folded it in a
little scrap of cloth.
'Good tea?' asked Karan, the way one does when unsure how much of the language
the other person knows.
'Ya,' she replied, giving Karan a dazzling smile that revealed few teeth but a
lot of gold. 'Good tea. Very, very good.'
At another stall Karan bought a large slab of honeycomb. She broke off a small
piece, picked the remains of a bee out of it and popped the lump in her mouth
as she wandered along the wharf. The wax softened in her mouth and the
beautiful strong honey dribbled out. Karan walked along, chewing the aromatic
wax after all the sweetness was gone. She felt out of place in Thurkad. Llian
would still be in the archives. She did not feel like going back to her room
and drinking her tea alone.
Wandering off the waterfront at random through the back streets, Karan
realised that the building across the road was vaguely familiar. It was the
one where Shand had nursed her back to health after the Conclave. Memories of
that terrible time welled up. She followed them down the alley and through a
tangle of streets. Yes, here was the place where they had been interrogated by
Yggur's guards. Further on she came to the steps down which they had fled into
the wharf city.
At the top she looked down on the green scummy water. The steps were not as
steep as she remembered, nor as long.
The tide was low, exposing the platform where she had nearly drowned. The
stones and beams were covered in green and pink growths. She could recall
every step of that previous journey, even how she had felt - cold inside,
sick, lost. She didn't feel much better now.
Karan had not intended to go any further but she suddenly found herself at the
bottom, picking her way across the slippery platform, avoiding the many places
where rotten timber had collapsed, or would as soon as an unwary foot stepped
on it. On the other side she looked up at the huge piles and beams of the
wharf city. The tarred wood was covered in weed and barnacles. She stepped
into the reeking dark and stopped abruptly. Two of the lanky robed Hlune, the
masters of this place, stood quite still, watching her.
Karan had been frightened of them before. But then, in the war their very
existence had been threatened. The life of the city had settled back into its
old grooves since then. Karan came to a sudden decision.
Holding out her hands, palms up, she said slowly and clearly, 'I have come to
see the Telt!' She referred to the smaller race who toiled for the Hlune. They
had sheltered her a year ago, before her escape with Shand. The Telt had
treated her kindly, for no reason other than that she had been their guest,
and an uninvited guest at that. 'My name is Karan,' she added.
They looked at her blankly. She realised that there might be thousands of Telt
in the wharf city. And back then she'd had dyed black hair. What was the name
of the young woman who had been kind to her?
'I have come to see Cluffer the Telt. My name is Karan. I was here with Shand,

one year ago.'
The names did not seem to mean anything to them. They each took an arm, not
roughly, and led her to the meeting place with the panelled walls where she
had been questioned before. After a considerable wait, Karan was brought
before the pair of elderly Hlune, who presided there on their red
cedar chairs as before. The two wore only ceremonial loincloths. The man's
chin-whiskers were plaited into at least a hundred braids, signifying his
exalted rank. The woman's hair was similarly divided, hanging down in a fan
that covered most of her chest.
'Shand is my friend,' she said. 'I am Karan Fyrn, of Ban-nador.'
This time Karan was recognised, though when she repeated her request they
looked bemused.
The woman felt her arm. 'Karan?' she said, clicking her tongue. Then, 'Shand,
hah!'
'I have come to visit the Telt who sheltered me a year ago,' Karan said,
speaking very slowly.
The elders seemed puzzled. Perhaps the Telt never had visitors, or perhaps
they never came this way.
'Telt!' Karan repeated. 'I have come to see Cluffer the Telt.'
'Who is Cluffer?'
Karan spelled the name out with a wet finger on the wall.
'Cluffer?' The man popped his cheeks as he followed the letters with his own
finger, sounding the name out to himself. 'Cluffer?'
Then suddenly he laughed. 'No, no,' he said, crossed out Cluffer with his
finger and painstakingly spelled out C-L-O-G-H-E-R. 'Cluffer,' he repeated,
with a subtle but almost imperceptible difference in pronunciation. 'You see!'
'Cluffer/ Karan agreed.
The woman smiled, a leathery drawing-back of the lips, and gestured to the
Hlune who had brought her in. Karan was taken through the dark-timbered, wet,
rotting passages of the wharf city to a room like every other room there. It
was just a box of raw timber with a floor that was awash and a platform
halfway up, above the tide level, on which sat half a dozen barrels and a pile
of jellyfish. A dozen Telt worked there, a small, slender, pale-skinned,
dark-haired, broad-nosed people. Men and women wore the same solitary
garment, a scanty loincloth of drab material. They were a smiling folk,
despite their miserable existence.
The Telt were busy at packing jellyfish into barrels. The vile smell of
foul-jelly assaulted Karan's nostrils. The stench of the fish oil on their
hair was equally overpowering. They turned and stared as one, not recognising
her.
'I am Karan,' she said. She reached into her pocket and took out the tea and
the honeycomb, offering it.
Someone recognised her voice and smiled. It was Cluffer. Putting down their
tools, they washed in the sea and shook hands, each clasping her two hands in
their own. The man she remembered as Cluffer's lover, a slender young fellow
whose hair gleamed with fish oil, went over to the urn and set the flame
glowing.
They were quite reserved, much more so than before, glancing at one another
but not at her. Karan realised that they did not know what to make of her.
Back then she had been like them, for all she'd had in the world was a
borrowed loincloth. Now she was richly dressed by their standards, far beyond
them. It was too high a barrier to be overcome. Then she thought of a way.
Karan took off her coat, shirt, boots and socks, rolled her trousers up at the
knee and sat down on the bare boards again, more than a little embarrassed.
Goosepimples sprang up on her exposed skin. The damp went straight through her
trousers. She wondered how they would react.
The Telt laughed and clapped. One by one they embraced her, then they formed a
circle and hugged her in its centre. Their skin was warm and very comforting.
After that they drank her spiced tea, cup after cup, until the light began to
fade. One or two tiny lamps were lit, and Karan gestured to the jellyfish

vats, indicating that she would be glad to take a turn at cleaning and packing
them, and pressing them for their jelly. The Telt seemed to find that idea
very amusing.
'Holiday!' said Cluffer with a merry grin.
They sat on the upper floor for dinner. The food was put on a single wooden
platter which was worn and stained black. Before any of them took a morsel for
themselves (and they all ate with their fingers) each one picked up a choice
titbit and offered it to their neighbour, or to Karan as the special guest.
The one who accepted the gift first bowed, and after eating, licked the
fingers of the offerer to signify appreciation. This custom was not expected
of Karan, their guest, but nonetheless she copied their manners, and their way
of taking food, as closely as she could. They took food only between the thumb
and first two fingers of the right hand, with a fluttering movement of the
free fingers, and politely licked their fingers before picking up a morsel to
offer it, or to take a piece for themselves.
Dinner was not what Karan would have described as a feast, being based on
jellyfish cake, the stringy material left over after all the jelly had been
squeezed out. However there were other more palatable dishes. She ate spiced
seaweed, mussels in a fermented bean sauce and slug-like black things that
they must have gathered by diving and feeling around on the surface of the
mud. The platter also held thin strands of red algae pickled in a vinegary
fish sauce that stank abominably but tasted rather fine, though the algae were
hard to chew and harder to swallow, being rather like eating fishing line. And
at the end were served little brown pods like the bladders of a seaweed. They
popped in the mouth releasing a thin, intensely sweet but slightly
fish-tasting syrup.
It was good to be in the company of people who expected nothing from her. It
was a delightful meal, and Karan found herself chattering away to her friends
about all sorts of things, important as well as trivial, for she found their
speech easier to understand than before. At the end of the meal they passed
the platter to her, as guest of honour. Karan felt embarrassed, not knowing
what to do with it. Then she realised that it was her privilege to lick it
clean. After she had done so they clapped again and put it to one side.
A young man ran out, returning shortly with a large black bottle sealed with
wax. Karan offered her knife, which they marvelled at. The wax was chiselled
out and saved. The wooden tea cups appeared again. A small measure of thick,
milky liquid gurgled into each.
Karan eyed hers dubiously. She had not much of a head for strong drink, and
this looked very strong. Cluffer, who was directly across the table from her,
raised her cup. The others did so too, then roared something that sounded like
'Caranda!' and drained it to the last drop.
'Caranda!' she roared back, and hurled it down her throat. The liquor was
horrible, very bitter, burning and strong, with a pungency that went up her
nose like mustard, taking her breath away. Tears sprang into her eyes.
Everyone laughed.
The first cup was followed by another almost at once. While recovering from
that, Karan sat back against the wall, her bare shoulders touching warm
shoulders on either side. Some of the Telt took out pipes and other
instruments and began to play. Their songs were melancholy, for the most part.
Lovely skirling melodies, but about shipwrecks or lost children, bloody
battles and terrible revenges.
She wondered about the Telt. What did they want out of life? Did they dream of
living free of the wharf city? But she was not sure it would be polite to ask
such questions. The drink pulsed in her veins. Karan felt herself sinking into
a dreamy state, and might have gone to sleep if not for the fact that her
bottom was so cold and wet.
In an hour or so there was another bout of Caranda! followed by dancing, a
slow, sinuous, complex, interwoven ballet. Karan allowed herself to be led out
and they taught her a few steps, though she soon realised that it would take
years to master, even if her head were not spinning. She sat down again,