Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (65 page)

night in Gothryme Forest after her second dose of hrux.
She found herself in an alien, desperate mind, more in pain than she was. She
saw though its eyes, felt it raise its good arm to tear Llian apart, and with
an effort that was like lifting a boulder she tried to seize control. Fighting
muscles that were ten times as strong as hers, fighting a will the equal of
her own, all Karan could do was force the swing to go high. The blow passed
just over Llian's head. The lorrsk bellowed and flung her back out again.
Then, with her own eyes she saw the most incredible sight. Llian came to his
knees and hurled the sword underarm up at the creature as if he was pitching
manure with a shovel. It was a hopeless, agricultural throw. Karan was just
steeling herself for another sending when the razor edge carved along the side
of the lorrsk's neck, bursting an artery. The creature danced around in a
circle and fell flat on the floor in front of her, dead.
She looked down at the ruined hand. The two remaining claws were broken to
stumps. That was all that had saved Llian from being disembowelled.
Llian wobbled across. There were two great gouges across his ribs. 'Don't say
it,' he said as he put his arms around her.
'I've come to save you?' She gave a muffled giggle. 'I wasn't
going to.'
'I never wanted to be a hero anyway, just a teller. 'Well, you are now. A
genuine hero. But then, you always
were to me.'
Forever Exiles
In the morning Idlis reappeared with a metal and leather frame made to fit
over the plaster casts. It ran from Karan's waist to her feet. They put her in
it and he adjusted the straps and the tension of various springs which pulled
on her feet and kept the bones straight.
'This will keep everything in place until the bones have grown back together,'
he said to Llian. 'She must stay in it for at least six weeks, and may not be
moved for two.'
Llian eyed the contraption. 'It looks hideously uncomfortable. And how will
you . . .?'
Karan laughed. 'Attend to my bodily functions, you mean? I will have a nurse,
of course. If you truly love me you will do that for me, and when I finally
get out I will reward you. And myself, naturally.'
Idlis took Karan's small hand and kissed it. Her skin no longer shrank from
the rubbery feel of his skin. He felt like a friend to her now.
He said, 'I will come to Gothryme on this day once a year, in case you need
hrux. There is no other way of getting it, for no one else knows how it is
made. If you should need me, send a message to Pymir, a place on the southern
shore of the Karama Malama - the Sea of Mists. I must go after Yetchah.' His
eyes were moist. 'Fare well!'
'Fare well,' said Karan. 'There is a future for you now. Come to Gothryme if
ever you need me.'
Malien came over, to stand by Karan's stretcher. 'Do you hate and despise me?'
Karan asked in a small voice.
Bending over, Malien pushed the hair from her brow. 'You are kin, Karan, and I
will always love you.'
'But I betrayed my kin and helped Rulke.'
'And once again you were right to do so. It's done with, Karan.'
Karan heaved a vast sigh.
'But can you forgive us, Karan, for all the Aachim did to you and your
family?' It was Malien's turn to look anxious.
'Malien
'Yes, Karan?'
'You didn't finish brushing my hair,' Karan said, referring to their fight in
Thurkad weeks ago.
'I'll do it right away.' She laughed. 'And to show my contrition, I'll even
use my own brush, since no doubt you've lost yours.'
'Now that is a favour!' Karan said cheekily. 'First your boots, then your

hairbrush. When I next go east, maybe you will give up your bed for me too.'
'Don't push it!' Malien laughed.
The Aachim closeted themselves with Tensor, prepared the body and kept vigil
over it for a day and a night, playing their plangent instruments and speaking
their threnodies. The following dawn they buried him in the tomb reserved long
ago, in the catacombs of old Shazmak, sealing him in with a simple, dignified
ceremony.
'He will not leave his beloved Shazmak again,' said Malien. 'And none of us
will ever go home to Aachan. We are forever
exiles.'
'Does that matter after all this time?' Llian asked. 'Your ancestors were born
here, surely?'
'They were, but the longing is burned deep into our souls.
Aachan is a place we all dream of making our pilgrimage to.' She sighed
heavily. 'I'm worried now. Did you see the volcanoes erupting? What's
happening to my world?'
'Is there anything you can do?'
'No!' said Malien. 'Whatever fate is in store for my people on Aachan, good or
bad, they're on their own.'
'What will you do with yourselves now?' Llian wondered.
'We'll go off to our eastern cities, I expect, and make our way in the world
somehow. We were never as great as we thought we were, but we're survivors.
Our long march of folly is finished. And it gives us heart to know that our
slavery on Aachan is over. We could have ended it ourselves four thousand
years ago, had we the courage to challenge the Charon. Had we known how
vulnerable they really were. But we didn't.'
Mendark they entombed in Shazmak too, and the other dead. All that remained of
the nanollet was a film of gold and soot on the floor. The Aachim smashed the
tiles to powder and threw it bit by bit into the Garr, along with the ashes of
the dead creatures that had come out of the void. In its last flight the
construct had passed over the flute and melted it into a puddle that had
seeped into the cracked floor. They chiselled that out and cast it into the
Garr as well. It was not what they had pledged to do before the flute was
made, but it was the best they could manage now.
When all that work was done, Karan, still in her plaster and her frame, was
bound to a stretcher. Only ten days had gone by but they could delay no
longer. There was much to be done in the real world, the only one they'd ever
know.
They made their way out of Shazmak for the last time, on foot, for Shand's
gate had failed when the Forbidding dissolved. All those who knew how to make
gates were dead now, or lost, except Shand alone. He was a downcast automaton.
Having lost Yalkara and now Maigraith, there seemed no reason to go on living.
'Why don't you try to make another gate, just to get us
safely to Gothryme?' Llian asked as they stood at the end of the glorious
cobweb bridge. Karan was already suffering.
'I don't want to know if gates still work,' Shand snapped. 'The secret will
die with me! There are some things we are better off without.'
'What about you, Yggur?'
'If I had a hundred gates at my disposal 1 wouldn't make one to help her,' he
said coldly. He blamed the loss of Maigraith on Karan too.
The road was steep and long, and the nights hard, especially on the windswept
track beside the Garr. Karan was hideously uncomfortable, for every careful
step by her bearers sent such a jolt of pain through her that she wept, and at
night it was still cold enough for the tears to freeze on her cheeks. She lay
awake, remembering how hrux had taken the pain away, and wanting it now. It
wasn't a desperate longing, no more than an itch, but always there.
On the way Llian took Shand aside. 'Some time back, you said you would make up
for what you did to me.'
'I did,' said Shand indifferently. 'What do you ask of me?' 'Karan had an old
silver chain that we found in Katazza. You pawned it for her when I was in

Yggur's cells in Thurkad. The chain is very precious to her. If you can get it
back ...' Shand jerked like a pair of frog's legs on an alchemist's battery.
'It might be ... difficult to recover. Because of the war, I mean.' 'Will you
try?'
'I will,' Shand spoke to the other side of the road, and strode on ahead.
At their pace it took five days to travel out of the high mountains and onto
the ridge path that led down past Carcharon to Gothryme Forest. Late on the
sixth day they passed the bleak ruin, standing on its ridge like a broken
bottle. Karan's eyes misted over, thinking about her father. Her yearning for
the solace of hrux grew stronger.
They kept going that night, unwilling to camp on the path,
and at the bottom crossed over the stone bridge. The gullies she had walked
across after hythe were running now and soon would be impassable torrents.
Spring was on the way at last.
They broke their fast in the pavilion by Black Lake, rested for an hour and
then headed on. The stretcher-bearers trod carefully down the cliff path. The
steps were wet with melt. Llian, taking his turn at the back of Karan's
stretcher, was lost in memories.
'What's the matter?' Karan asked.
'Oh, I was just thinking. Last time I came down I was on the stretcher. And
then, just here the thranx appeared.'
'Well, you don't have to worry about that - it's long dead.'
'But how many more are at large now?'
The last part of the journey seemed interminable, but finally they were down,
splashing through mud among the granite tors where the first green shoots of
spring had begun to appear, and along the well-worn track to Gothryme Manor.
Karan had a momentary fear that some disaster had befallen her home, but its
stone chimneys and green slate roofs appeared over the top of the hill.
Gothryme stood before them just as it always had looked, a little, old place,
rather shabby, with the weathered scaffolding extending down one wing and the
gardens drab and bare.
'It looks deserted,' said Karan, fretting.
They turned around between the two wings and saw half a dozen children chasing
one another across the garden beds, and in and out through the half-built
walls. One of the cherry trees in the orchard was just coming into bloom. The
children shouted and ran to stare at the strangers. People appeared at the
back door, and among them Karan saw the white hair and tall stooped figure of
old Rachis, the mainstay of Gothryme and of her life since her father's death.
She let out a great sigh. Everything was going to be all right after all.
They wanted to carry her up to her bedroom and put her in the great square
bed, but, although in considerable pain, Karan was having none of that. 'Put
me down just there,'
she said, indicating the space between the fire and the window in the old
keep. 'I'm sleeping there until my plaster comes off. I want to see
everything.'
That night they had a banquet, feasting on surplus Aachim food carried down
from Shazmak (though more than one of the Gothryme folk complained about the
weird foreign stuff), and wine from Karan's cellar. A whole stack of wood was
burned, so that everyone could bathe away the mud of the past week. Karan
itched unbearably under her plaster but had to be content with a wet cloth.
At Gothryme they heard news for the first time in weeks, and it was not good
news. Strange creatures had appeared from nowhere, all over Meldorin.
Creatures out of mythology: intelligent ones like lorrsk and thranx, but wild
beasts too, large and small, in every form imaginable. Elludore Forest was
especially thick with them.
The following afternoon Karan was back on her stretcher, checking on the
condition of the gardens and the rebuilding work, when a stranger rode up to
the front door with an escort of two soldiers. 'Who can that be?' she wondered
idly, making pencil marks on her garden plan.
'One of Yggur's lieutenants with despatches, I suppose,'

said Llian.
'I'd better go and make him welcome. Carry me in, please.'
Entering the hall she saw a rather thickset man with black eyes and a crooked
nose, talking to Yggur. His legs were long and spindly, making him look
top-heavy. 'He doesn't look like a soldier,' she said. 'He looks like a
clerk.'
'Or a tax collector!'
She stared at Llian. Karan had forgotten about that problem.
Yggur gestured in her direction, whereupon spindleshanks headed across to her.
'Karan Elienor Melluselde Fyrn?'
'That is my name.'
'I am Garlish Tunk, tax collector for the district called the Hills of
Bannador. Here is my warrant.' Opening a leather
case he displayed a document inscribed on parchment with black ink. It bore
Yggur's seal at the bottom.
Karan did not even glance at it. It was hardly likely that he was an impostor.
'I know who you are.'
'Your remit,' said Tunk, 'is assessed at 540 tars. Here is the audit.' He
handed her a paper scroll tied with a black ribbon.
'An appropriate decoration,' she said, not looking at it either.
'Please check the audit,' said the tax man. 'The rule of law applies in
Yggur's realm, and he requires everything to be done regular.'
Karan read the paper. So many tars for her house; so many for the land, the
road and the bridges; a head tax on her tenants and workers; the tax on her
fishing rights to part of the River Ryme; another tax on the forest of
Gothryme.
'What's this? A tax on the forest?'
'It contains much valuable timber.'
'It's worthless. There's no way to get it down.'
'Do you relinquish the title then?'
Karan said nothing. Give up the title to land! It was unthinkable.
'I cannot pay your 540 tars,' she said.
He frowned. 'How much are you unable to pay?'
'Any of it! I have no money at all.'
'Cannot pay!' He wrote that down. 'Then what steps are you prepared to take to
discharge your obligation?'
'I have no obligation!' she said furiously. 'Bannador is a sovereign realm.
Why should I pay to repair the damage of the war your master brought against
my country, destroying the land and ruining me? Damn you! I refuse!'
'I will take that as being an appeal to Lord Yggur,' he said, and called him
across.
Karan glared at Yggur, scarcely able to believe that he required such a sum of
her after all that had happened. 'A quarter of that sum would bankrupt me.'
'The realm is in ruins and has to be rebuilt,' he replied
with icy calm. His rage against her was as strong as ever.
'It was you who ruined it!' she snapped.
'That's history! Everyone must contribute.'
'You had no trouble raising money for your stupid wars!'
'You have more than most, Karan. Surely you have ways of paying the debt.'
'I have none,' she said. 'All my resources are used up. There is only one
possibility.'
'And what is that?'
'Faelamor owed me a debt of some hundreds of tars.'
'Really?' said Yggur. 'How so?' His eyes glinted dangerously.
She hesitated. 'Payment for my trip to Fiz Gorgo to steal your Mirror.'
Yggur almost had a fit. 'You're not improving your case!' he snapped.
'What she left in Elludore is mine, if I can get it.' Karan fingered the ebony
bracelet that would dissolve the illusions there.
'What good is that to me? The roads and bridges must be repaired now. Elludore
is rife with beasts. It may never be safe to go there.'