Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (44 page)

'Well enough. I don't need any kind of a gate structure any more - I can make
gates with my mind now.'
'Isn't that dangerous?'
'It can be, especially if the gate goes wrong. It can be ... difficult to find
the way back. But it gives me a lot of freedom, too.'
'Do they often go wrong?'
'Only once, so far. The gate opened into a whirling nightmare and I had to
drag myself straight home. It almost killed me; I was bedridden for a day
after.'
'So you weren't in a fever at all?'
'I was, but only briefly. The rest of my sickness was from the gates. I'm
always exhausted now. I'm not strong enough.'
'For what?'
'I panic every time I think about what lies ahead. How am I to break the
Forbidding and restore the balance between the worlds, without destroying
everything? I have no idea, and there is no one I can ask.'
A few days later, Llian came running in to the dining room. 'Quick!' he
shouted to Karan and Maigraith. 'There's something going on down at the
bakehouse.' He ran out again.
'What?' Maigraith called, pounding after him.
'I don't know. I heard Yggur ordering his troops down there on the double,
then he and Mendark went after them.'
By the time they reached the bakehouse there were guards everywhere. Mendark
stood on the top step and Yggur beside him. Mendark thumped the hilt of his
knife on the door. Karan, Maigraith and Llian pushed to the front of the
crowd.
'Open up, Tensor! The building is surrounded!'
Shortly the doors did open and they were allowed inside. 'Your treachery has
been uncovered, Tensor!' Mendark roared. 'Where is the flute?'
Tensor stood at the far end of the building, the Aachim lined up behind him.
The frightened goldsmiths and woodworkers were behind them. They were all
haggard, so hard had Tensor worked them.
Tensor stalked forward with little sign of the back injury that had formerly
troubled him. He was furious. 'I don't know what you're talking about!' he
said. 'We've kept our part of the bargain.' He lifted an ebony and brass case
off the bench, pulled on silken gloves, snapped the catches and from a bag
made of black velvet silk he drew it out - the golden flute remade. Under the
bright lamps it shone like liquid metal.
'It's beautiful,' said Karan, reaching out to touch the wondrous thing.
'Don't touch it!' Tensor snapped, pushing her back. 'You'll mar its finish.'
Karan darted a glance at Maigraith, whose eyes were moist with desire for it.
Mendark was staring at the flute with an equally desperate longing. 'It is
surely your finest work,' Maigraith said.
Tensor nodded stiffly. 'Its tones - '
Maigraith was stabbed by envy and rage. 'What? You have played my birthright!
How dare you use it!'
He glared at her. 'We have not used it. We didn't want - '
'I doubt that anything would happen except music, without the player willing
it,' Mendark interrupted dryly. 'That is the very foundation of the Secret
Art. The power may reside in the instrument, but it takes will and talent to
bring it out, otherwise any fool could pick up the flute and bring all the
world to chaos.'
'How do you know it will play in tune, if you have never played it?' Llian
asked.
Tensor gave him a frigid stare. 'In Aachan we have been making flutes for ten
thousand years. Our mathematics described the instrument perfectly before it
was made. When it is played every note will be perfect.'
Maigraith put her hand out. 'Thank you. I will take my birthright now!'
'Stand back!' he said harshly, and the Aachim put their hands on their
weapons.

'But it's mine! My gold, my flute.'
The Aachim guard moved to flank Tensor, five on each side. Karan could read
their desires too. They thought the flute could take them home to Aachan, and
all their vows meant nothing before that desperate need. Even Malien, beside
her, was quivering with emotion.
We will fight Rulke with whatever weapon comes to hand, Malien had said. So
this was what she'd meant.
'Not you too!' Karan whispered. 'Malien, I can't believe that you would betray
us for the flute.'
Malien raked her fingers through thick red hair. She looked around wildly,
hardly recognising Karan.
'Malien!' Karan cried out.
Malien shook herself. 'You can't possibly understand what Aachan means to us,'
she said softly.
Karan took her hand, wringing it frantically. 'Does it mean more than
friendship, than the bonds of kinship, to say nothing of all we've endured
together?'
Malien shook off her hand. 'Aachan, Aachan!' she whispered.
'I will not give it up to you!' Tensor screamed at Maigraith.
Karan turned back to the main conflict.
'But that was the agreement!' Maigraith was bewildered, uncomprehending. Tears
poured down her face. She looked around at the company for aid, but everyone
seemed captivated by the flute.
'And it dishonours me to break it, but I have watched you, Charon!' He spat
the word out. 'Every day you grow more like them. One day you will betray us
to Rulke. I regret giving you that little golden ring, but I will destroy the
flute before I let you use it to bring Yalkara back to Santhenar.'
So that was what was behind the betrayal! 'What about your promise to me?'
Karan said furiously.
'Not even to you!' Tensor replied.
Maigraith spun around and bolted for the door. Shand cried her name but she
did not appear to hear.
Mendark stood watching Tensor with narrowed eyes. 'You planned this all
along,' he said. 'If my spies had not told me of your treachery you would be
gone with it by now.'
'My kind must come first,' said Tensor. 'Surely you realise that, Mendark. I
won't give it up.'
'You few can't stand against my army,' said Yggur.
'Should you attack, my instructions are to destroy the flute the way Shuthdar
did. In which case Thurkad, and everyone in it, will cease to exist,' said
Tensor.
'He'd do it too,' Mendark murmured in Yggur's ear.
'Then it remains here!' said Yggur. 'My guards will make sure it does!'
They went out. Outside the door Karan looked for Maigraith but she had
vanished.
Malien caught Karan's arm and led her down the side of the building. 'Your
time is now, Karan. Are you for us? If you're not, you are against us. There's
no middle ground here!'
'I'm for people keeping their promises!'
'So am I. You might have thought of that when you were keeping the Mirror from
us.'
'And look what Tensor did with it! I did the right thing and you know it.'
'Not when you worked with Rulke to show him the way back to our world, so he
could keep Aachan in slavery and do the same to Santhenar!'
'You're wrong about him!' Karan said weakly.
'Four thousand years of our Histories aren't wrong! Karan, we're desperate!
You've got to help us!'
'I thought the Aachim had great plans under way to deal with Rulke.'
'We do. An army is forming right now but it won't get to Shazmak in time. The
flute is our only chancel'

She looked desperate too. Karan remembered all the good things about the
Aachim, and all the kindnesses Malien had done her.
'What can I do?'
'Maigraith is the key. She can make us or unmake us. Keep watch over her.
Wherever she goes, follow her, and report back to me.'
The company withdrew back to the citadel, arguing furiously.
'We've got to get it back,' said Mendark. 'Tensor is bluffing!'
'I don't think so,' said Yggur.
'Who do we have that can use it anyway, if Maigraith is disbarred?' asked
Llian. 'And if no one, what use is it?'
'A question that had been better asked before it was made!' said Yggur.
'I ... may be able to play it,' said Mendark. 'I was once an accomplished
flute player, as you know, and I am sensitive too. I will - '
'Ha!' said Yggur, instantly suspicious. 'You've manipulated us very cleverly,
Mendark. All along you wanted this, while raising false obstacles so we
wouldn't realise what you were up to.'
'It was proposed by Shand as long ago as the Dry Sea!' Mendark snapped.
'Deciding who to use it has always been our greatest difficulty. I have
studied the arts and sciences of the flute ever since. Have you not?'
'Gentlemen!' said Shand. 'Suppose that Mendark can use it; let us work out a
plan. A better one than the fiasco at Elludore. The flute can open the Way
between the Worlds and take its user to any destination they can imagine.
Perhaps it can even dissolve the Forbidding, but it is not a weapon! Even were
we to use it to enter into the very heart of Shazmak, we would still have to
defend ourselves by other means. Whereas Rulke's construct is a gate-opening
device, a weapon and a shield.'
'I propose that we gather our weapons, seize the flute and attack Shazmak
before it's too late,' said Mendark.
'How?' said Shand.
'I'm working on a plan,' Mendark replied.
'It will be a bigger disaster than our last,' said Yggur, 'and where will we
be then?'
'We won't be standing here, whining helplessly,' spat Mendark, 'while Rulke
and Faelamor carve up our world.'
Maigraith went back to the little cottage by the water and sat there, all
alone. Why did I give up my birthright? she raged, over and over. Why, why?
Everyone wants something from me but no one will help me in my need.
The thought of Tensor using her flute against Rulke was
a sickening violation. She could feel the fury building up inside, overcoming
her self-control as it often did. Imagining Tensor there, she stormed around
the room, letting out random bursts of power that left the kitchen in a
shambles. Immediately she was ashamed. She had loved her time here with Shand.
She swept up the broken crockery and splintered timbers, put the furniture
back in place and sat down on the porch outside, staring at the slate-coloured
sea.
Now she was overcome by a profound melancholy, another emotion that she was
prone to. The wind turned around, blowing directly across the harbour at her
and whirling the spray in her face. Maigraith sat there all day, abandoned and
alone. The light faded. She allowed the dark and damp to mould itself around
her, drawing all warmth and human fellow-feeling out of her. She plunged back
into that state of tristesse that she had spent most of her life in, where
nothing really mattered because she lacked any identity, any self. She was
just a tool in the hands of others.
It must have been the middle of the night when something aroused her. She was
shivering in great spasms, soaked to the skin. What would Shand say if he
could see her now? The thought of her grandfather's kindly scolding made her
smile in the darkness, but the humour soon disappeared. She had let Shand
down. She would never reunite him and Yalkara now.
The flute is mine, whether I dare to use it or not! Whether I want it or not!
How dare Tensor refuse me? After a lifetime of obeying Faelamor's orders, no

one is going to deny me my precious inheritance!
Maigraith stripped off her wet clothes, dried herself and lit the fire. Then,
as she was dressing she realised that Tensor might have done her a favour
after all. By constantly insulting her Charon ancestry, he had made her think
about her heritage. Everything that was Faellem she rejected, and old human
was what she had been all her life. It was ordinary to her. Worse than
ordinary, since they were allied to the Aachim who had just betrayed her.
Maigraith reached out for that unfulfilled Charon part of her that Havissard
had awakened and Yalkara's message strengthened. If Tensor was her enemy, and
Faelamor too, then maybe Charon meant friend! Perhaps it was her destiny to
seek out Rulke. She began to work on a plan, to take back her flute and go to
Shazmak.
PART THREE
The Fifth Way
It was four in the morning and Maigraith was exhausted. She knew Karan was
spying on her, and getting away from her had taxed Maigraith's powers. For
three nights now she had watched the workshop, and not once had Yggur's guards
relaxed their vigilance. They paced, swapped over, paced again, to a complex
routine. There was no time when the door was not monitored. There were Aachim
guards too, inside as well as out, and they were equally vigilant.
She had already experimented with using a gate to get inside, but that had
failed. The Aachim had defences against gates. Short of using power to smash
the doors wide open -not what she wanted - there was only one way left. The
Aachim guards swapped over, the inside and the outside, roughly every two
hours. It was the only time the door was unbarred.
Maigraith brought her mind to the pitch that would allow her to direct her
power. It would have to be focussed very precisely, to take out all the guards
at once. Then, just before the door opened, she happened to glance at a small
building across the yard and caught a faint white flicker. That was odd! She
recalled seeing it before. She had thought it just a chance reflection, but
now realised it was a signal. Watching the door, she caught the answering
blink. Another Aachim
was watching the changeover. If the signal did not come the alarm would be
sounded.
Taking care of that guard was easier than she expected; the woman was not an
adept. Maigraith paralysed her and snatched the signalling globe, but by then
the guards had changed and the doors were closed again. Moving closer, she
covered most of the globe so that the light would seem further away, and
waited for the next change.
The interval was a longer one than usual, and Maigraith worried that dawn
would come first. Finally she saw a tiny blink of light. She felt that she was
quite slow to respond, but the signal eventually came. The door opened. The
inside guards appeared. Maigraith weighed how much power to use against them.
She did not want to kill anyone. She cut back the strength of her spell.
Her conjuration whispered in the night. Every guard fell down. Racing across
the paving stones she leapt through the door, bolted it, ran to the other end
of the workshop and ripped open the catches on the ebony case. The flute was
wrapped in fold after fold of black silky-velvet as soft as a baby's skin. She
drew it out. Such a beautiful thing; it seemed almost alive when she touched
it. The workmanship was exquisite.
Something thumped the door and slithered down. One of the guards recovering
already? Maigraith almost panicked -she must not have used enough strength. No
way to get out now without being seen, unless she killed them, an unthinkable
act for her. Unless she used the flute!
No time to admire the instrument. Could she make it work? She put it to her
lips, searching with her mind for the one place where she knew a gate would
open - the rooftop from where they had gone to Saludith. She played a note,
and another. Nothing happened.
She tried again. Still nothing! But Maigraith began to feel a faint unease, as
if the world she knew had twisted slightly. She paused, unpleasantly