Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (20 page)

she heard was a frightened squeak. Black clouds squeezed out the light. The
clearing became grey and threatening. High above, the slender branches
interlaced, cutting the sky into drab triangles.
Karan sat down on her pack, trying to think. Things like this did not happen
of their own accord. They were made to happen. But made by whom? She whirled,
as if someone had whispered behind her, but there was no one there.
'This is all an illusion,' she thought suddenly. 'I know how to deal with
illusions. They can be disbelieved out of existence.'
She marched back to the place where she had come out of the forest and walked
confidently up to it, retracing her footsteps. She walked straight into a pair
of trees, taking the impact on hip, shoulder and forehead so hard that her
head
rang. The poles were as solid as the bars of a cell. She might as well have
been in one.
Rulke! she thought miserably. After that night with the hrux he knew where I
was. All he had to do was bring the construct back to Carcharon, when he had
done his more important tasks, and attend to this minor detail. How could she
have expected otherwise? He needed her.
Karan squatted by the frozen pool, slowly coming to realise that it was not
Rulke at all. Illusion was not his way. He would be much more direct. The
prickling began to creep up the back of her neck again. She turned, the blood
congealing in her veins. An even more deadly foe, though one she had almost
forgotten about over the past half year. The one who had wanted her dead in
Katazza, and in Thurkad even before that. Faelamor!
Tallia had been just behind Karan, but approaching the clearing she felt a
sharp pain in her instep, as if something had bitten her. That was odd. There
weren't any insects at this time of year. Pulling off her boot she found a
welt on her instep, a dull red blotch about the size of a fingernail. It began
to throb. Rubbing it only made it worse.
Tallia put her boot back on and continued, but soon was confronted by the
problem that Karan had encountered: though the tracks continued on, the
thicket was impenetrable. She could no longer see into the glade at all.
Everything had become quite gloomy.
Once she heard a cry, as if someone a long way away had called her name, but
it was no more than a whisper on the wind. Another time she saw a flash of
movement that might have been Karan's red hair. Then as it grew darker she
could no longer tell where the clearing was. Each time she blinked it seemed
to recede further.
Tallia did not lose her presence of mind. Being an adept of the Secret Art
herself, she recognised that this was illusion, and how cleverly she had been
separated from Karan.
Remembering the small footprint, she was almost certain that it was Faelamor.
Illusion was a form of the Secret Art that many practised but few mastered,
and from the seamless nature of this one it had to be worked by a great
master.
Tallia could not break the illusion but she knew what to do to minimise the
bewilderment. Karan could not be far away. Noting the direction of the tracks,
she made her own markings. Faelamor could only conceal what she knew was
there.
She had no hope of breaking Faelamor's glamour but tried anyway: all the
dispelling charms that she'd learned in her apprenticeship in far-off Crandor;
other cantrips she'd learned from Mendark. Nothing made the slightest
difference. The illusion was unshaken.
'Faelamor!' Karan whispered, realising that she was defenceless. Her knife was
in the bottom of her pack. She looked sideways at it.
'Don't!' said Faelamor, a small woman with skin like polished rosewood and
eyes as deep as the spaces between the stars.
'What do you want of me?' Karan's voice wobbled, in spite of all attempts to
show no weakness.
'To talk.'

'Talk! In Katazza you wanted me dead.'
'Things have changed. Perhaps I'll let you go, if you tell me what I want to
hear.'
T have no idea what you want to hear,' Karan said.
'Don't toy with me - you're nothing!'
'Ah,' said Karan, 'but a nothing who got away from Rulke.'
'Brave words, from a liar, a cheat and a murderer.'
This reminded Karan of another occasion when she had been so accused. 'What
you accuse me of, you have done a hundredfold. You betrayed Shazmak! Your
crimes are legion.'
'The Aachim are not our species,' said Faelamor indifferently. 'Anyway, they
are failures, scarcely human. Nothing
done to another species can be a crime, else every butcher and fisher on this
planet would be in the dock.'
'They are as human as you or I! And I realised something as I was departing
Carcharon,' Karan went on.
Faelamor was drawn. 'What was that?'
'I realised that Rulke had been done an injustice,' Karan said. 'I never found
him to act other than with the honour peculiar to his kind.' This was not
entirely true, but true enough to say to Faelamor. 'The Charon fight for their
very survival.'
'So do we fight for the survival of our world and our species,' she replied
coldly. 'What did you learn about the Charon?'
Karan sorted through her memories. 'I saw Rulke's overwhelming power,' she
said. 'He could crush you and your puny illusions in an instant. He made an
opening in the Forbidding. Even a thranx out of the void fled in terror from
the power of his construct.'
The walls of the clearing shook. It might have been someone rattling at the
pole-like trees. Faelamor took control again with a gesture that sent Karan's
head spinning. 'What's that?' cried Faelamor. 'Who else is out there?'
'Tallia,' gasped Karan, her head shrieking and unable to lie.
'She is strong,' Faelamor conceded. She moved her fingers and the trees around
the dell hardened into an impenetrable wall.
Karan felt very frightened. 'What do you want of me?' she choked. The past few
minutes had been just a game, a momentary distraction to Faelamor, and now she
had shown just how potent she was. In Katazza Faelamor had wanted her dead and
she still didn't know why.
Faelamor moved closer. Karan flopped on her face. She would sooner have faced
Rulke again; at least his motives were comprehensible. At least he laughed.
But not this enemy. Nothing seemed to crack that face like waxed timber.
So cold; so unyielding. Did love matter to her? Did pain? Karan understood why
Maigraith was the inhibited, closed-off person that she was, having been
brought up from infancy by Faelamor. Was that why Maigraith had never been
able to break away from her?
'Where's Maigraith?' she asked abruptly. 'What have you done with her?
Faelamor ignored her. 'What really happened in Carcharon?'
'Carcharon?' Karan stalled, trying to see where Faelamor was aiming.
Faelamor was not only humourless but impatient. Waves of sickness crashed
together in Karan's head, to burst like an over-ripe boil.
'He used the construct,' Karan said between spasms, 'to open the Wall of the
Forbidding.'
'I know that! What else did he do? What did he want you for?' The soft voice
was a threat. The pressure grew greater. Karan gagged into the snow. She
looked up at Faelamor, her eyes running.
'He wanted me to find the Way between the Worlds for him, the path to Aachan.'
'So!' said Faelamor in triumph. 'He cannot find it himself, despite his
wonderful construct. I didn't think he'd be able to. That's very interesting
news. And did you find it?'
The nausea was coming again, in waves each bigger than the previous. Karan
choked; her eyes flooded; her face went red and white. Despite what Rulke had

done, Faelamor was far worse. She wasn't going to give her a weapon to use
against him or anyone. Could she disguise a small lie? Then make it part of
the character that Faelamor believed she had.
'He tried to force me,' Karan repeated. 'He spent days training me for it. It
was so hard! My mind could not hold what he wanted me to do. No mind could
contain all that,' she said, putting a whine into her voice. 'I thought I
understood it, and he thought I did, and we almost achieved it too.' She
looked dreamy for a second. 'What a mind! What a man! You cannot understand
what it felt like to work with him.'
Faelamor looked contemptuous. 'You're just like every other woman on this
wretched planet. How Rulke must have sneered as you fell under his spell - the
least of all spells. All he has to do is smile and look into their eyes and
they swoon. Did you share his bed as well?' She bent down over Karan.
'Disgusting whey-faced creature! Surely he would not sink so low!'
'But then I saw those awful things in the void,' Karan went on, enhancing the
little-girl whine. 'They pressed up against the Wall, slavering and rending. I
was so frightened, the way they stared at me! One actually came through the
Wall! I had to get away. Rulke should never have put me in such danger.' She
almost broke into a lisp. Don't overdo it, she thought. 'It wasn't my fault.
He should have protected me better. I begged him but he ignored me. So I broke
the link when he was on the way to Aachan. How was I to know what would
happen?'
Faelamor's contempt was absolute. 'How did Rulke let you live after such a
craven display?' She gripped Karan by the coat and dragged her forward. 'What
happened then?' she burst out.
'I can hardly remember. Rulke was struggling to stop the Forbidding from
tearing right open.' Karan tried to convey an air of childlike stupidity.
'There were monsters, horrid creatures everywhere. I heard him cry out
"Thranx!" and a great winged man-beast sprang at him. They fought and he
blasted it with the construct. It fled, but others came. Lorrsk! he called
them, and while Rulke was struggling with them I ran away. I escaped,' she
corrected primly.
'I was right about you the first time,' Faelamor said. 'Treacherous, whining
little wretch! I almost feel sorry for Rulke, thinking that he could use you.
How he must regret ever seeing you. But you've taught me a great deal. He
tried and failed. His confidence must be shaken. He's weak! Not
even a thranx would have cowed him before the Nightland.
'Hold on,' she continued in afterthought. Faelamor was given to soliloquy.
'Don't underestimate him! When she let go it would have been a terrible blow it would have torn his mind.' Yet Faelamor allowed herself to crow a little.
'Rulke is weaker than I'd dare to hope, and now he'll have to look for a new
sensitive. Well, what am I to do about this one? If it hadn't been for the
warning about the triune, I might have let her go. One so treacherous would do
my enemies more harm than me.'
Karan sat listlessly in the snow, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. Her eyes
were dull. 'Perhaps it is better to be sure,' Faelamor said, flexing her
fingers.
Tallia was still trying to find a way around the illusion. She knew what kind
it was now, and that helped a little. Sometimes she even caught a glimpse of
them as they moved. She wondered how the glamour was formed. It certainly felt
solid, but it could not be solid. Manipulating solid matter was an entirely
different branch of the Secret Art, one even the most powerful rarely
mastered.
She might have cut her way into the clearing, had she an axe, but somehow she
doubted it. Probably she would be unable to strike what she was trying to cut.
She considered all the ways she knew to break such glamours, but none would
work against the greatest illusionist of all.
Suddenly a way occurred to Tallia. How cunningly it was made must depend on
what Faelamor knew about them both. An illusion that was impregnable from all
possible approaches required her to visualise each such attack and make

something to foil it. But one that was proof against the mind of Karan, which
Faelamor had some knowledge of, might not succeed so well against the very
different mind and training of Tallia, whom she did not.
How high did the illusion go? The trees here were poles about the size of her
upper arm, with only an occasional
twig-like branch to right or left. She moved back beyond sight of the
clearing, took off her boots and socks and packed the pockets of her jacket
with cones. They were the feeblest of missiles but there was nothing better.
Choosing one of the more sturdy poles, Tallia began to climb. It was hard
work, for the other trees pressed in on her, snagging her clothing so that the
climb was a perpetual struggle. Sometimes, with her heavy, swaying progress,
her pole would clash against another, grinding her foot between their rough
bark. She almost cried out the first time it happened. When she snatched her
foot out, a strip of skin was gone from either side, and blood began to drip
on the snow below.
The second time it happened she was better prepared, escaping with just a
mashed big toe, and as the trunks narrowed and the bark grew softer she had no
more trouble.
When she was high up, seven or eight spans, she found that the illusion did
weaken, up where there had seemed no need for it. Tallia could see the
clearing through the branches. She crept from one trunk to another, in mortal
danger if she slipped. In a few minutes she was as close to the rim of the
clearing as she dared go, only a few trees from the edge. Parting the needles
she peered down.
The illusion shimmered the air like a mirage but she made out Faelamor and
Karan some distance away, across the other side of the dell. Faelamor's back
was toward her and Karan was facing her way, though she looked dazed and fell
down several times.
Tallia felt a cone out of her pocket and weighed it in her hand. It wasn't
much of a weapon. Moreover, the twigs and branches were still too dense to get
a good shot. It would have to be perfect, with such an inadequate missile. In
Karan's present state she might not be able to help herself.
Karan fell again, and this time did not get up. Tallia hurried from trunk to
trunk, gripping the thin poles with fingers and toes. She reached the edge of
the clearing and
drew back her arm. The pole swayed alarmingly under her. For an instant she
thought it was going to snap. It did not, but to her horror the tree bent
outwards and kept going, for there were no trees to support it on that side.
It accelerated under her weight. The snow rushed toward her.
She would land well behind Faelamor and probably injure herself. Grasping the
opportunity, Tallia pushed herself off and up like a pole vaulter. The pole
snapped back, she arched through the air and as Faelamor turned at the noise
she struck her in the chest with her knees and all her weight behind them.
Faelamor went down as if she'd been charged by a bull and lay still with her
face in the snow. The impact shook Tallia too. She wrenched Faelamor's hands
behind her and bound them.
'Karan! Are you all right? Quickly, she might come round any second.'
Karan sat up, looking dazed. She felt dizzy but the nausea was gone. The trees
no longer appeared to be close together. The illusion had disappeared. They
could walk out any way they chose.
'What are we going to do with her?'
'I know what we should do,' Karan said.
Tallia silently handed her a knife.
'Should do, I said. Not will do. I can't kill a helpless person, not even
her.'
They turned her over. Faelamor was unconscious but breathing. 'Leave her,
then,' Tallia said, 'Stop her mouth and blindfold her. That will curb her
powers.'
They did that, quickly, and by the time they'd finished she was beginning to
stir. 'Come on!' Tallia screamed. They ran across the clearing, gathered