Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (23 page)

are like. Every fact must be proven - they will check the evidence themselves.
You must give me every document I ask for, and nothing will be changed save
what can be proven to be wrong. Without these conditions, even if it turns out
to be the greatest tale of all, it will never become a Great Tale.'
Mendark looked furious, but before he could speak Yggur appeared at the door.
'Of course!' said Mendark rather too quickly. He gave an insincere smile.
'This is incredible!' snapped Yggur. 'The world is falling to pieces around us
and all you can think of is your reputation. What will Rulke be doing while
you two make your fairy tales together?' Spitting on the floor by Mendark's
boot, he went out again.

The next day, Llian was sitting at his table by the window. He had made a
start on sorting the first crate of Mendark's papers, but his heart was not in
it. He could not concentrate for thinking about Karan. There came a tentative
rap on the door.
'Come in!' he shouted, not getting up. His healing legs were extremely
painful, every step pulling at the scoured and sunken flesh.
Lilis put her head in. 'Can I sit here with you, Llian?'
'Of course. How is Nadiril this morning?'
'He is sleeping.'
'And your father?' He already knew the answer to that question, for Jevi had
been avoiding him ever since their conversation on the cart.
'Gone with Pender down the sea to Ganport.'
'Leaving you all alone.'
'He has to do his work,' she said stoutly.
'Even with those broken bones?'
'There's plenty he can do.'
'And you have nothing to do, eh?'
'No! I'm lonely. I miss Jevi, and my friend Tallia.'
That was a detail Llian was curious to tease out. 'Tell me, Lilis, what does
Jevi think of Tallia?'
Her face was a mixture of emotions. 'He thinks she is the most wonderful woman
in the world.'
'And what do you think?'
'I love Tallia with all my heart.'
'So, what is Jevi going to do?'
'He's afraid to do anything. Oh, Llian, it's a fairy tale. He thinks that a
poor sailor can never . . .'
'I don't think that would matter to Tallia,' said Llian.
'Of course it would not matter to my Tallia,' Lilis said scornfully. 'But he
doesn't know that. He doesn't understand women at all.'
'Maybe he needs your help,' said Llian.
'He does! Oh, Llian, this is too hard!' She changed the subject. 'I wish I was
back in the Great Library; it's lovely there.' Her thin little face was quite
animated for a moment.
'Well!' Llian sat back with a smile. 'Here's a good idea. Why don't you help
me with my work?'
'Oh!' said Lilis, looking as if she had just been offered the moon. 'But
you're so clever. How can I possibly help you?'
'Most of my work is quite ordinary, actually - checking papers, putting things
in order, finding books in the archives, copying. It's only when it's all put
together that it seems clever. Look at this!' He indicated the waist-high pile
of documents Mendark had given him. 'It's all got to be sorted and
catalogued.'
'Please say I can do these things for you. There's so much to learn, but since
we left the library we - ' she broke off, feeling disloyal. 'Nadiril has been
busy with important work, and now he's ill.'
'Not everything you need to know can be found in books,' said Llian. It was a
lesson he had been slow to learn. 'Of course you can work with me. Actually, I
need your help rather badly. Come, I'll show you what to do.'

The next few days passed very pleasantly, with Lilis's bright presence there
every day, and the documents were soon arranged in such order that he only had
to think of something and it was in her hand. Sometimes too soon, for after a
while he found her constant hovering to be distracting.
'Lilis,' he said.
She was at his elbow in an instant. 'Lilis, I'm sorry, (but I just can't
concentrate with you watching me all the time.'
Her face dropped halfway to her ankles. 'You want me to go? Of course I will,'
she said, trying to look dignified and totally failing.
'Of course I don't want you to go. But this isn't good for you, or for me.
What can I get you to do?'
Lilis froze with her hand on the knob. 'I will do whatever you require of me,'
she said, still looking hurt.
'There's one job that needs doing desperately, but it must be done perfectly.
Can you copy?'
'That was the first thing Nadiril taught me,' she said stiffly.
'And was he satisfied with your work?'
She hesitated. 'Not completely.'
'Can you make a clean copy of this?' He handed her a piece of paper covered in
his own fine hand, but full of crossings-out and amendments in various inks.
'But remember, there can be no mistakes. If there's anything you don't
understand, you must ask.'
She sharpened a fresh quill and bent her head to the task. In less time than
he had expected she was at his elbow again.
'You need to check something?'
'It's done!'
'So quickly?' He took the paper. The page was beautifully scribed in a rather
ornate hand in the style of Nadiril's. Though old-fashioned, it suited the
text perfectly. He inspected
every letter, loop, whorl and curlicue, and checked it with the original.
'Close to perfect,' he said beaming. 'Good enough!' whereupon Lilis threw her
arms around him and kissed him on the cheek.
'Is that all?' she wondered.
He laughed. 'That's not even the beginning. I have the biggest job you've ever
seen. Look here.'
On the floor beside his desk sat three volumes bound in leather of various
colours. Two were quite battered and worn, but the third was. relatively new.
'This is my Tale of the Mirror, a Great Tale surely.' He crossed his fingers
behind his back as he spoke, for that prerogative the master chroniclers
protected jealously.
'You want me to copy out your tale?'
He misunderstood her. 'It's a very big task, I know. Look at the mess it's
in.' He opened the first volume, which was far worse than the sheet she had
just copied. It was a sea of coloured inks, corrections, numbered emendations,
inserts, loose sheets, and many of the pages were written across as well as
down.
'But this is a job for a master scribe. It's too great an honour for me.'
'An honour that great scribes charge handsomely for, and I'm penniless.
Anyway, how could I work with a scribe's sour breath whining in my ear all
day? I like you much better, Lilis. But if it's too hard, or you don't want '
Lilis snatched up the volumes and held them to her youthful bosom. 'Of course
I want to!' she said with high scorn. 'I want it more than anything, and no
one will work harder to make it perfect. Where do you keep your writing
paper?'
'Paper! I hadn't thought of that,' said Llian. 'I don't have the money to buy
even a small book. I'll see what I can scrounge or beg from Mendark. Put them
back; maybe we can start after lunch. You can't use the third one anyway. I
haven't finished writing up that tale yet. And the fourth,
I don't even have a book to write it in. Now, where are my crutches?'

Llian managed to glean a small leather-bound volume of blank pages, too small
for any of his tales, but it was all he could get. It was a long time before
Lilis reappeared. His legs were aching. In the mid-afternoon he hobbled over
to the window, staring out through the bars at the yard and the knobbly tree.
Lilis staggered in with a large bag over her shoulder.
'What's that - your lunch?' he said jovially.
Lilis opened it up and pulled out four thick packets of paper that were creamy
soft to the touch.
'But .. . that's silk paper, the finest there is!' Llian exclaimed. 'Where did
you get it?'
'I had money saved up to search for my father, but I never used it, so I
bought it myself.'
For one of the few times in his life Llian was speechless. Silk paper cost an
absolute fortune, at least two gold tars a ream, and she had bought four of
them. He could live for a couple of years on a single tar.
'I can't let you do that,' he said, feeling weak at the knees. 'I can never
repay you such a sum.'
'I'm not poor any more, Llian,' said Lilis. 'After the war began, I led the
Council out of the Great Hall to safety. Some of them were rich, and Tallia
got the price of their lives out of each of them for me. And Mendark paid me
handsomely for my help on the way to Zile last year. I put all that by to find
Jevi, but didn't use much of it. Nadiril actually pays me to learn, can you
believe it?'
'But such a sum!' said Llian, sinking down on the tatty rug. He'd only had one
tar in his entire life.
'A Great Tale deserves the best,' she said simply.
This tale would sing even if it were written on blotting paper, he thought
immodestly.
'Besides,' she went on, 'it wasn't as much as you might
think. The paper merchant knows me well now. I promised to speak to Nadiril
about the contract for the Great Library, and so I will. The fellow gave me a
very good price.'
Llian went back in his chair. To think he had thought of her as a child. Lilis
was a young woman and maturing fast. But then, after growing up on the streets
and all she had been through since, how could she be anything else? In many
ways she was older and wiser than he was.
He realised that she was still speaking.
'I said, have you anything else for me to copy? I want to do some practice
before I start your tale.'
'You can copy into this little book; I just got it.'
'What do you want me to copy?' Lilis asked.
'I'll see what I can find.'
Foretelling and Prophecy
Osseion opened the door of Llian's room. 'You are called to a council,' he
said, 'and Mendark requires that you wear these bracelets. "The first lesson!"
he said to tell you.' Osseion held up a long loop of chain attached to a pair
of wrist manacles.
Lilis was horrified. 'Osseion,' she cried. 'What are you doing?'
'Have no fear, Lilis child,' said the soldier. 'Llian is not in danger.'
'Mendark wishes to remind me of my debt,' said Llian, groping for his
crutches. He felt quite calm now. The past months had scorched the youth out
of him. What could Mendark do to him that he had not already survived? He
would smile and give him what he wanted, but all the while be working quietly
at his own goal. Llian held out his hands and Osseion clicked the manacles
closed.
He was taken to the Magister's sumptuous apartment in the citadel. These rooms
were decorated in baroque extravagance with the very best Santhenar had to
offer - tapestries woven with gold and silver thread, carpets of the costliest
silk, and furniture made of ebony, leopardwood and other rare timbers, inlaid

with pearl and jade. At the meeting were Yggur, who had just returned from the
hunt, Tensor, Mendark,
Shand, recently back from Carcharon, and Malien. Nadiril was not well and had
not come.
'We tracked the thranx by the ruin it left behind it,' Yggur said, looking
even more confident and commanding than before. His triumphs had truly
ennobled him. 'It was hiding in Faidon Forest, west of Muncyte, but Nadiril
was right - it could not fly any distance. Eventually we cornered it there and
killed it, though it did great damage first.'
'And the baby?' asked Llian, remembering the birth, the blood, the fierce-eyed
infant.
'It too. It was a wild little beast!'
Llian could imagine the little creature struggling for its life.
'I heard the tale at the city gates,' said Shand. 'They say that you struck
the thranx some mighty blows, Yggur, including the one that ended it.'
'I was there,' said Yggur. 'It took the blows of many to defeat it, and we
suffered many casualties. I was lucky not to be one of them.'
'Modest as always!' said Mendark caustically. He was toying nervously with a
tiny chest of drawers, shaped like a whorled shell.
'Unlike you, I don't care to be praised for something that I don't deserve!
What news from Carcharon, Shand?'
'Rulke's abandoned it, for the moment.'
'Here's our chance,' said Mendark. 'Let's get to work on the flute.'
'We don't have gold enough,' snapped Yggur.
'Faelamor has,' Mendark pointed out.
'And her plans must be well advanced, for the Faellem have been sighted coming
out of the south-east,' said Malien.
'I believe she is hiding in Elludore Forest,' said Yggur.
'What if - ' Mendark began. 'No, it would never work.'
'If you've an idea, spit it out!' Yggur growled.
'I was going to propose a raid on Elludore, to seize the gold. But that's no
place to take an army ..."
Yggur sprang up, pacing back and forth.
'I'm afraid what Faelamor will do with the gold,' Mendark went on. 'But . ..
she's the match of the best soldiers I've ever seen.'
'Perhaps the flute is the way, after all,' said Yggur. 'But it must be planned
surpassingly well'
Mendark smiled to himself, though only Llian noted it.
'We had a foretelling about this business,' said Malien thoughtfully.
'About Faelamor?'
'No, an answer to Rulke's foretelling. Remember what he said as we hurled him
out of Katazza:
'When the dark moon is full on mid-winter's day, I will be back. I will crack
the Forbidding and open the Way between the Worlds. No one has the power to
stay me. The Three Worlds will be Charon evermore.'
'What was your reply, Shand?' asked Yggur.
'Break down the golden horn, Wish the glass unmade, Fear the thrice born, But
beware the thrice betrayed,'
said Shand.
'A load of child's nonsense!' sneered Mendark.
'It's not the first time Rulke spoke his foretelling,' said Malien, deep in
thought. 'I heard it mentioned as a child, and a different reply, but I can't
recall how that went.'
'The one thing that might save us and you don't remember it!' Mendark said
sarcastically. 'So much for the Histories of the Aachim.'
'We have a thousand foretellings,' croaked Tensor. 'In our slavery we baked
prophets as a baker bakes buns, a dozen for every conceivable disaster, and
the inconceivable too. I don't recall it either. Come, Malien; the tide won't
wait.'
'Where are you going?'

'Across the sea,' said Malien. 'To a gathering of our people. We'll be away at
least a month.'
'Do you know anything about such an Aachim prophecy?' Mendark asked Llian
after lunch. The Magister kept shifting on his chair as though in pain.
Llian mentally ran through what he knew. 'Um, there was something in Tales of
the Aachim,' he said after a minute.
'What?'
'It was in a book of Aachim Histories that I read in Shazmak. The Nazhak tel
Mardux, which loosely renders as Tales of the Aachim. Something struck me
about it even then.'
'I'll strike you if you don't get to the point,' said Mendark, shredding a
piece of paper. 'What was it?'
'I don't recall. I ...'
'What sort of an excuse for a chronicler are you?'
Llian refused to be provoked. 'The book was not in any of my languages. I had
to decipher it bit by bit, and ...'
'And you left it in Shazmak.'
'It would have been a great dishonour to take it.'
'You have a very selective sense of honour, you who are accused of making a
pact with the greatest enemy of all'
'Falsely accused!' Llian said sharply, rising to the bait despite his vow. 'To
you honour is just a boast, another of the currencies you use to buy your
ends. Why is it important anyway?'
'It could be the key to our dilemma,' Mendark replied evasively.
Llian laughed and rattled his manacles at him. 'Will things be different now
that you need me?' He allowed the moment to drag out as long as he dared.
Mendark looked ready to explode. 'You forget that I was a master chronicler.
Twice I read that book, every word; I will never forget it. That is my
training. Any of us could do the same.'
'But you said.. .' Mendark massaged his swollen knuckles. 'Tell it, damn you!'
'In this case it's not so simple,' said Llian. 'I remember it in the language
it's written in, which I know only haltingly. I'll have to recite it back to
myself, in that tongue, and translate it as I go. It'll take all night.'
'We have all night,' Mendark replied, 'and all tomorrow if need be. If the
answer is there, we've got to have it.'
Llian searched in his memories for the beginning of the book. He found it, and
it took him back to that room in Shazmak more than a year ago, and the wind
wailing outside.
'Remember that it's in a language I barely knew. I learned more with Tensor in
Katazza, but I wouldn't say that I'm fluent.'
'Begin!' said Mendark impatiently. 'You chroniclers must qualify everything.
You can check with Tensor, if he ever comes back.'
The tale unreeled in Llian's mind. The Aachim were a people proud and strong
but never secure; noble and steadfast allies but too often betrayed; the
makers of great but ill-judged alliances; artists and builders of the greatest
skill yet looking always to the past; finally retreating into isolation. And
always, always plotting revenge on Rulke, who had brought them to Santhenar in
the first place. He was the architect of all their misfortune. Back then, I
hardly knew that the Aachim existed, Llian thought. But how very true the book
was.
'Stop daydreaming, chronicler!' Mendark's cry broke into his thoughts. 'Get on
with it!'
Half the night passed before Llian found what he was looking for - a single
paragraph that told of Rulke's foretelling and how it might be averted.
'There will appear an "instrument" - the precise expression is
khash-zik-makattzah - and if a way can be found to use it, Santhenar can be
... I think the word is redeemed. But at the end the instrument will be lost.'
Llian rubbed his forehead. 'I
think khash-zik-makattzah means the-three-and-the-one, but it could be thirty
and one. I'm not sure. It's a dead language. You'll have to ask Tensor.'