Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (19 page)

to be perfectly honest.'
'Carcharon has been abandoned, you say?'
'It was when Shand and I came up. That was on the fourth day after hythe,
three days ago. Anyway, this morning, as I wandered near the edge of the
escarpment about a league from here, I chanced across a small footprint in the
snow. It was quite fresh; who else could it have been but you?'
'It wasn't me,' said Karan. 'I came though the forest. And it's snowed since
then.'
"That's curious.' Tallia sipped her tea. 'I had no idea where to look so I
just continued along the edge of the cliff. Even then I only discovered the
hut by accident.'
'A small footprint?' Karan exclaimed. 'That rules out Rulke or any of the
Ghashad. There's no one missing from Gothryme? No child or girl?'
'Not when I left. Everyone was keeping close to the manor, with the thranx
about. I'm hungry. Let's see what we've got.'
There was plenty: an uncut loaf, still wrapped in waxed cloth and relatively
fresh; a small wheel of hard cheese, very pungent; dried meat, two kinds - one
plain, the other pickled in hot spices. Tallia had the northerner's taste for
spicy foods. She also had some salt fish, as well as a whole side of smoked
fish.
'Smoked fish\' said Karan. 'I stole some smoked eel from Carcharon and I can
still taste the wretched stuff.'
'You should have known better than snaffle the food that they eat, but don't
dismiss mine so lightly. Bamundi is the best of all fishes, and this is the
best smoked bamundi. The food of princesses.'
'Smoked bamundi?' said Karan. 'I don't know ...'
Tallia pretended regret. 'Suit yourself. I'm a glutton when
it comes to the stuff. You know, I can't help thinking that Shand must have
sneaked it out of Mendark's supplies.'
'Mendark's bamundi! That's entirely different. I think I will try some.'
Tallia smiled and continued pulling things out of her pack: a box of pastries
filled with nutmeal and honey and flavoured with blossom water. Karan was
especially fond of sweet things. A bag held various spices wrapped in twists
of paper. Other packets contained dried fruits and vegetables.
'In fact there seems to be everything we need for a feast, except only onions.
It's quite impossible to eat smoked bamundi, especially that finest of all
fish, stolen from the Magister's own larder, without onion.'
Karan, who, despite her delight about the feast spread out in front of her,
had been feeling more and more delinquent about her hostly duty to provide,
looked up with a grin.
'I have two onions,' she said cheerfully. 'One each.'
'Excellent! Now look what I found in Carcharon.' Tallia handed Karan her
knife. Karan felt quite sentimental and embraced her once more.
'Dear Malien gave that to me. I was lost without it. Do you have any more
surprises?' she asked in a voice muffled by the front of Tallia's coat.
'Well, I wouldn't call it a surprise, but it will finish the feast off
perfectly.' Tallia reached into the bottom of her pack to retrieve a metal
flask that Karan recognised.
'Yes, it's Shand's. The amount he drank while we were at Carcharon, I didn't
think he'd begrudge me the rest.'
Privately Karan thought that was a bit mean, but it wasn't going to stop her
enjoying it when the time came.
Karan sipped her coffee, nibbled at a pastry and had a tiny sip of Shand's
magical liquor. She tossed scraps to the short-tailed mouse, which had become
friendly. Karan was glad to share her dinner with it now, and with the tiny
heads sticking out of the crevice beside the fire. She did not know where
to begin, just knew that she felt terribly guilty.
Suddenly she stretched out her arms across the table. 'I know I've done wrong,
Tallia. Take me - I won't resist.'
Tallia pushed her hands away. 'It's not my place to judge. Just tell me what

you did.'
'Llian matters more to me than anything. But now I'm afraid. How many people
have died because of the thranx? How many more before it's put down? How will
the world be changed?'
Tallia reached across and put her finger across Karan's lips. 'What happened?'
Karan took another big sip of her coffee and a small sip of the liquor and
began her story. It turned into a very long tale, for though it began in
Carcharon it reached back a lot further, and out in all directions - back to
her childhood, to her half-Aachim father Galliad, to Tensor and the Aachim. It
touched on the Nightland, and on what Tensor had revealed to her that night in
the Dry Sea, and on her poor sad mad mother too. But especially on Llian and
her love for him that was stronger than the earth.
Llian's every seeming act of duplicity was turned over and examined - in the
Nightland, the night in Tullin, even the incident in Shazmak where he had
searched her room for the Mirror. All were brought out into the light,
examined, left on the table, and finally dismissed. All his splendid deeds
were reviewed too: burning down the house in Narne, at the top of the tower at
Katazza, his torments in Gothryme. Last and greatest of all, his magnificence
in Carcharon. Her eyes were shining when she described Llian's telling.
'After all that, how could I do less for him?'
'I see you have glossed over Mendark's role in this,' Tallia observed. 'Please
don't omit that part.'
Karan sighed. 'You are his deputy.' . 'I prefer the blunt Karan. Be honest
with me.'
'From the moment I met Mendark I mistrusted him, as he hated me. Now I despise
him!'
'He doesn't hate you, Karan. It's just that you won't do what he wants. He has
to command; to dominate and be known for his power.'
Karan made fresh chard and passed Shand's flask to Tallia. They each took a
generous swig.
'Had we succeeded,' said Karan, 'it would have been one of those deeds that
are sung about in the sagas. But we didn't.'
'It will be sung about nonetheless,' said Tallia.
'Probably. The Aachim have a great admiration for the noble failure, more than
for the all-conquering hero. Maybe that's why I still feel a trace of respect
for Tensor, in spite of all his follies. Anyway, it's over now, and so is my
part in the whole affair. I'm going home, and then I'm going to shut my door
and have nothing more to do with the world. All I want is to look after my
land and my garden, and begin to repair the damage of the war. And most of all

-'
'You can't,' Tallia interrupted. 'You are one of the great now. The world
won't let you shut it out.'
Karan laughed nervously. 'Nonsense. I'm just a poor farmer who can't pay her
taxes. And I - '
"The great are made by their deeds! People look up to you, and I'm one of
them. You have a duty to aid your country and your world. I'm sorry? What were
you going to say?'
Karan was very still. 'It hardly matters,' she whispered. 'All this turmoil
and trouble, and it's not finished yet. It's the wrong time! What will become
of Gothryme after I die? I desperately want to have a child.'
Tallia spoke without thinking. 'But triunes are sterile!'
Karan went as still as a statue, and the blood slowly drained from her face
until she resembled a marble mask. 'You have just taken away my future.'
Tallia could have bitten her tongue out at the root. She sprang up but Karan
stopped her with her hand. They remained in their respective positions for
ages, then Karan
gave a great shuddering sigh and wiped the tears away.
'Thank you for telling me,' she said in a tiny voice. Now she understood
Rulke's reaction when she had told him.
Tallia said no more. They were each silent, sipping their liquor and staring

into the flames. Outside, the wind had come up and began to rattle the door.
Karan put a block of wood against it, threw more wood on the fire, took
another of the honey pastries and sat down again.
'How is Llian?' She made an effort to keep emotion out of her voice.
'Well enough, considering.'
Another long pause. 'And there were no ... problems after he ... came back
without me?'
'It looked bad when he returned and you did not.' Tallia did not go on.
Karan paced the room. She squatted down abruptly in front of Tallia. 'There's
something you're not telling me. Was he treated well? Mendark found him, you
say?'
Tallia looked embarrassed and ashamed. 'When the thranx burst out he was left
behind. He nearly froze to death, and his legs were badly injured from the
shackles.'
'He was abandoned, in chains, on that terrible night?' Karan whispered. 'Oh,
Tallia, did no one care what happened to him?' She buried her face in her
hands, living what Llian must have gone through as only a sensitive could.
'I make no excuses. It was chaos when the thranx came.'
'Go on!'
'The lorrsk attacked us. Karan, it would take half the night to tell you all
that happened before we got back to Gothryme. But Llian was recovering well
when we left.'
'You left him in Yggur's and Mendark's care? His enemies?'
'Many things have changed.'
'Not enough!' said Karan coldly. 'Be warned, Tallia, anyone who has harmed
Llian is my enemy. I'm going at dawn, whatever the weather. You can please
yourself.'
Reality and Illusion
Karan had withdrawn into herself, brooding on Llian's sufferings. She
responded to Tallia with just grunts or nods. After a while Tallia gave up and
they walked along in a difficult silence for hours.
It was a miserable day. The sun had come out briefly at dawn but then the wind
turned hack to the west, spilling down the mountain and spitting sleet at
them, hard little pellets like grains of rice. Even had they been of a mind to
talk it would have been difficult, the way the wind howled in the treetops.
It had snowed heavily during the night and the forest was knee-deep in new
snow, a fluffy carpet that concealed humps and hollows, fallen trees and
ankle-twisting gullies. At mid-morning they passed into a stand of elderly
conifers, strange trees whose blade-like needles sprouted in semicircles like
dancers' fans, directly from the black branches. As the pair trudged along,
the day grew more gloomy. No matter how they hurried they did not seem to be
getting anywhere. Every direction looked the same.
'We're lost,' said Karan, coming out of her introversion. She leaned against a
sapling, which dropped a clot of snow onto her shoulders.
They hadn't gone much further, floundering in soft snow,
before Tallia tripped over a rock, barking her shin.
'Ow!' she yelped, pulling up her trouser leg to reveal a straight cut that
oozed a few drops of blood.
'Funny-shaped rock!' She brushed the snow off to reveal a hexagon of stone.
They cleared the snow away from the sides. It was a pillar like a flat-topped
obelisk with writing down each side, names and dates in angry letters.
Clearing the snow out of the rudely formed characters, Karan read them aloud.
'Here fell Tartim and Tartam, Hulia and Dalan, Mellusinthe and Byrn. Cursed be
the name of Basunez and his workings until the seventh eternity.'
'Mellusinthe!' said Tallia. 'That's like your middle name, Melluselde. Was she

-?'
'She was one of Basunez's seven grandchildren,' said Karan, shivering. 'They
all were. They came up here to picnic in the forest. The oldest was only
eighteen. Six of the seven died here, torn to pieces by a mountain cat, it
says in our family histories.'

'Then why does it curse Basunez?'
'I have no idea. That was long ago. When I studied my family histories this
was just another tragedy that no one knew much about. At least I know where we
are now. Let's get on.'
But as they continued, Karan found herself drawn back to the children
picnicking in the forest, wondering what had really happened to them. She
could almost hear their cries for help, nearly sense their terror. Mountain
cats had never been common here, nor did they attack with such indiscriminate
violence. After seeing the statues at Carcharon, she had an unpleasant idea.
What had Basunez let out?
After a few more hours of labour they found themselves in a part of the forest
where the ground sloped down into a tangle of gullies. It began to snow even
harder. Several times Karan went to turn one way around a rock or a fallen
tree, only to realise that her feet had taken her in the opposite
direction. It's like walking around the top of a funnel, she said to herself.
The way I want to go is always the hardest, but I'm afraid of the easy option.
She stopped abruptly. 'This is crazy! I know this forest, but I haven't got
the faintest idea where we are.'
Tallia jerked her thumb to the east. 'If we go downhill, sooner or later we
must reach the edge of the escarpment.'
Repressing her worries, Karan followed, but the further they went in that
direction the thicker the forest became, until finally in front of them it
turned into a pole thicket, the slender trees growing so close together that
they had to squeeze between them side on.
The ground became even steeper. 'Surely this must be the edge!' exclaimed
Karan irritably. 'The whole wood is only half a league wide here. We could
walk through it in an hour or two.'
'Look!' Tallia pointed. 'An open space. We must be almost there.'
'I don't remember it!' Karan pushed past her, anxious to get out.
'I feel stupid,' said Tallia. 'I walked right by here just yesterday.'
'It's a very old forest. I doubt that a tree has been cut since Basunez's
time. It's always felt strange to me. My father used to talk about it.' Karan
pressed on quickly.
She wriggled between the last poles, having to take off her pack to do so, and
found herself in a small dell, shaped like a bowl. The snow was smooth and
white, with not a mark on it. In the centre the thread of water they had been
following tumbled into an oval pool, about as long as Karan was tall, and ran
away again. Both rivulet and pool were frozen solid. It looked just like a
bowl and spoon.
'How odd,' she said, so distracted that she did not take account that the
thicket continued on the other side, the poles if anything even more closely
spaced than where she had entered.
She turned around to Tallia, who had been just behind her. 'That's odd ..."
she began, but Tallia was nowhere in sight. 'Must have been further over,' she
said to herself, heading to the right. There was no sign here either. No, she
had been right the first time. There were her tracks emerging from the forest.
A shiver crept down the back of Karan's neck. Perhaps Tallia had stopped to
relieve herself, though it was odd that she had not sung out.
'Tallia,' she called softly.
There was no reply. Dropping her pack on the snow, Karan followed her tracks
back into the forest. At least she tried to, but the trees were much closer
together. Karan couldn't even get her head between the trunks now. Yet the
footprints went straight through.
'Tallia!' The shiver began again, starting at the top of her head and going
down her back and her arms, and up again until every hair stood on end. She
ran a few paces to her right, where the thicket seemed more open, but it
turned out to be as impenetrable as everywhere else. She ran back the other
way. Worse yet!
'Tallia,' she cried despairingly.
The trees soaked up her voice. She had called as loudly as she could, but all