Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (36 page)

The mist began to clear and Osseion said in wonderment, 'But ... this is not
the way we scouted. How - '
'What proud fools we were!' said Mendark. Further down the track a shadow
moved. Their feet clapped the mud down to Yggur.
'It's over,' said Yggur in a dead voice, standing up on the edge of the
precipice. 'It's all over.'
'What ...?' Osseion began.
'They're dead, every one,' said Yggur, teetering as if to follow them. Dolodha
caught his hand and eased him back. 'They marched straight over the cliff in
the fog and never knew it until they smashed on the rocks below. We have met a
foe beyond us. Faelamor has crushed us utterly.'
An updraught carried the tang of blood. 'I'll go up,' said Osseion, wanting to
be anywhere but here, where a thousand of Yggur's finest, and Torgsted, the
dearest friend he'd ever had, had just fallen to their deaths.
'Karan tried to give the warning,' said Osseion, 'but Faelamor was too strong.
She must have known we were here from the beginning.'
'She knew everything,' said Yggur in a dull voice.
'Yes,' said Mendark. 'She was in control the whole time. She simply showed us
what we wanted to see until our illusionists thought that they had beaten her.
Then she worked her own seeming to make us see the path turn left where it
went right. Simple, beautiful and deadly. Ah, Tallia, how I will miss you.'
Tallia crept through the forest. Maigraith's directions were imprinted on her
brain. The confusions began to ease now. She reached the entrance of the cave
undetected and saw outside a clay furnace fired with charcoal. It was still
glowing. Arranged about it were moulds and wooden trays filled with sand.
Crude work! They must have been at their forging just as the alarm went. The
gold could not be far away.
She trailed her hand through the trays of sand. One was still hot but there
was nothing in it. It must be in the cave. She turned and Faelamor stood
directly behind her. Tallia jumped. It was surely over for her, yet Faelamor
looked deathly pale in her aftersickness.
Faelamor forced a smile. 'You are cleverer than I thought. Cleverer than
Mendark, but not enough. Your diversion has failed and I've already hidden
it.' She edged to one side.
Then why are you trying to draw me away from here? Tallia thought.
'I haven't forgotten what you did to me in Gothryme Forest,' said Faelamor,
edging further sideways so that Tallia had to turn away from the furnace to
keep her in sight.
She's sick and alone, and she knows I am not. Strike, strike now! Tallia
feinted at Faelamor with her right hand and when she ducked flung a handful of
casting sand from the other hand into her eyes. For an instant Faelamor was
helpless and Tallia seized that moment to kick over the casting boxes. Sand
flew everywhere and an odd-shaped golden object thudded into the dirt. Tallia
snatched it up and ran, and as soon as she reached the trees roared for her
soldiers.
'Protect my back,' she gasped as they raced up the track, but though the
illusions were now as thick as jelly they lacked their previous power to
confuse and entice. They seemed half-hearted.
They did not encounter any Faellem in their upward rush. It was all too quiet.
Maybe they were waiting further on. Halfway up they stopped for a moment's
rest. Someone struck a light in their cupped hands so that Tallia could
examine the golden object in the dim glow. She knew at once why the escape had
been so easy. The casting was not near heavy enough for gold. It was bronze,
just a trial with base metal.
She felt the failure keenly, but without support she could have done no more.
She slipped it back in her pocket and they continued.
'I sent them to their deaths!' Mendark sat down, put his head in his hands and
wept.
Yggur paced back and forth like a stone automaton. He could not weep; he was
rigid with grief and despair. 'Why did I let you manipulate me?' he raged.

'This is your fault, Mendark!'
Catching sight of Karan frozen to her seat, he screamed at her. 'You did this
to me deliberately!' There was a froth of foam on his upper lip. He ran across
and began to beat her about the head with his open hands. Karan looked up at
him but made no attempt to defend herself.
'Stop it, you fool,' shouted Mendark. He hobbled across and tried to pull
Yggur off Karan. Osseion joined him and they carried Yggur away, still raging.
'You caused this, Karan!' screamed Yggur, pulling free and running back to
attack her again. Mendark shielded her with his body. 'I'll never forgive you.
Never!'
Mendark struck him across the face. 'Be a man, Yggur!' he said with absolute
contempt. 'You and I made this disaster, and Faelamor, and Karan had nothing
to do with it.'
Yggur collapsed on the ground. Two of the watch dragged him into a tent and
stood guard over it.
'Is there any way to recover our dead?' asked Osseion. He had lost most of his
friends today. 'If I'd just given the alarm sooner, they could have been
saved.'
Mendark did not answer. A thousand lay dead at the bottom of the cliff - ten
for each left alive.
'Gather your tents and your tails,' said Mendark, 'and put them between your
legs. We're going back to Thurkad.'
They made stretchers for the comatose, including Karan, struck camp and got
ready to depart. Then out of the fog an exhausted band of seven appeared.
'What went wrong?' cried Tallia. 'We were so close.'
Mendark wept for a moment of joy in the blackest of nights. 'We were sure you
were dead.'
'Where is the army?'
'Every one of them is lost.'
'All for nothing,' she said, telling her tale and showing the cast piece of
bronze. 'All for nothing!'
The sadly depleted caravan wended their way back down the ridge and out of
Elludore Forest. Of the eleven hundred that had come in, less than a hundred
departed. Yggur looked even worse than ever he had when Rulke had defeated him
in Katazza.
Mendark was lower than Llian had ever seen him. His reputation had taken a
blow it would never recover from. His body was blotched all over with bruises.
His raw eyes leaked red tears that formed crusts on his eyelashes. He coughed
constantly into a rag, and when not wiping blood off his lips, he was trying
to stop it oozing out of his nose. His skin flaked off in pieces large enough
to cover strawberries.
Fifteen illusionists had survived - nine women and six men - but they were
badly shaken, in most cases their talents reduced to nothing. Karan was a
silent, staring shadow of herself, filled with guilt. Llian walked beside her
all the way to Thurkad.
'I saw it coming,' she said over and over. 'I saw it coming!'
The days and the nights of their journey home were the same to her, a waking
nightmare repeated again and again. One by one the flower of Yggur's armies
turned left where they should have turned right and plunged to their deaths
over the cliff. She kept seeing it, and she kept trying to scream out a
warning, but something kept her from getting the words out.
Mendark fell in beside Llian on the second day.
'You look awful - ' Llian did not finish it, expecting the Magister to snap at
him as he would have of old. But Mendark did not.
'I'm dying, Llian, and it terrifies me.'
'I thought - ' began Llian. 'You've lived so long . .. But then, I suppose the
longer you live, the longer you want to.'
'You misunderstand me. I'm not afraid of death, but if I die, who will defend
the world against Rulke?'
Llian instinctively glanced in Yggur's direction. He was limping along, head

down, arms dangling.
'I once thought so,' Mendark said in a low voice. 'Especially after he
defeated the thranx. But Yggur will never recover from this failure.'
'He's risen from adversity before,' said Llian.
'And each time he falls, he goes further down. Look at his behaviour in
Thurkad after he failed to catch me. Look what he did in Katazza, and to the
Second Army. No one can predict his behaviour, and no one can rely on him.'
'You've done - '
'Of course I have, terrible things. But always to advance the cause I was
fighting for. I never condemned an army to death because my lover had
abandoned me!' Mendark spat blood into the grass and fell silent.
The Burning Mountain
After Shand and Maigraith left the meeting they slowly climbed up to the top
of the fortress, to look out over the city through the yellow fog of a hundred
thousand chimneys.
'Yalkara had two gifts for Aeolior,' said Shand, after making sure that there
was no one to overhear. 'The Mirror, and her golden jewelry. It consisted of a
thick gold chain with the links irregularly shaped, an intricate bracelet and
a torc. The chain was almost too heavy for the neck. She always wore her gold.
It was her only vanity. At least, I thought of it as vanity, but now I'm not
so sure. I never saw her without it, except on the day she left Aeolior with
me.'
'Would there have been enough to make a flute?' Maigraith asked, tentatively.
He considered. 'I suppose so, if it was a small one. As indeed Shuthdar's was
said to be. Yes, I'm sure there'd be enough. That must be what she intended it
for!'
Maigraith digested that. 'But Faelamor has Aeolior's birthright!' The thought
of it in her hands was enough to make Maigraith weep.
'No she hasn't! That gold isn't the birthright.'
Maigraith spun around. 'I don't understand. What are you saying, Shand?'
'I don't know where the gold she took from Havissard came from. But Aeolior's
birthright, which Yalkara put into my hands before she went through the gate,
was her own gold that she brought from Aachan.'
'Are you sure?'
'Absolutely.'
'Then why the secrecy?'
'It's yours now. But if Mendark and Yggur learn about it, they'll never stop
pestering you. You must be free to choose what to do with it.'
'Where is the gold now?'
'After Aeolior was taken from me I dug a hole in the ground and put it in, and
never marked the spot, to be sure that no one else would ever find it. That
was a long time ago, though not so very far away. I hid it across the Sea of
Thurkad, near to the Burning Mountain, Booreah Ngurle, where I dwelt before
Aeolior was taken.'
'Can we go there?'
'Of course.'
Maigraith was fuming with excitement. 'Right away?'
'This very minute! Let's get our packs.'
Without a word to anyone they went down to the waterfront and found that
Pender was sailing that afternoon. They took ship across the Sea of Thurkad to
Nilkerrand, a drab coastal town which was the gateway to the dry plains of
Almadin.
Maigraith stood at the rail for most of the voyage, staring at the waves. She
had crossed this sea many times, and other, greater seas too. But those
voyages had been scarred by impossible burdens of duty and obligation. This
trip was a holiday and she was going to enjoy it.
In Nilkerrand they boarded a fast river boat and sailed north-east up the
broad River Alm, which had featured in Llian's tragic love story about Jenulka
and Hengist, and their torments by the tyrant Feddil the Cruel. He had told
the tale to Karan near Name last winter.

'This is quite a roundabout way to get to our destination,'
said Shand, 'but also the quickest, because we go most of the way by boat.'
Maigraith did not care how long it took. She was enjoying every minute.
When they could go no further up the Aim, they marched overland for two days
to the cliffed shores of an immense lake. 'The Long Lake,' said Shand, as they
stood at the top of the cliff, looking over the sullen water. 'Its true name
is Warde Yallock, and it's the largest of many lakes that fill the rifted
earth here to a depth of a thousand fathoms. It runs south-east for the best
part of a hundred leagues, almost to our destination, and so by boat we can do
in a few days what would take us weeks of hard marching.'
A well-maintained path wound down to a prosperous town on the shore of the
lake. There Shand hired a sailing skiff. They loaded their gear into it and
headed south, sailing under a blustery wind and skies the colour of lead. The
spray stung Maigraith's cheeks and the cold wind burned them. She did not
care. Everything was wonderful.
Shand broke the silence that afternoon. 'Warde Yallock is positively steeped
in the Histories. The first towns on San-thenar were built on its shores. More
than twelve thousand years ago, the chroniclers say.'
'Here?' said Maigraith, gazing at the shore, which was a tangle of erosion
gullies partly clad in grey-leaved scrub. 'It's hard to imagine why.'
'No, right down the southern end of the lake, in a fertile land between three
mighty rivers. But those towns are gone now.'
'What happened to them?'
'They died out at the time of the Little Ice Age.'
'A glacier ground them down?' Maigraith was intrigued at the idea.
'Nothing so exciting. The ice was a good distance away. It just became too
cold and dry to grow crops.'
They sailed on.
'The largest city was known as Tara-Laxus,' Shand said later. 'It was a
powerful place in ancient times. From there Shuthdar fled to his doom. But
even Tara-Laxus is gone now.'
Eventually they berthed at a town surrounded by forest, and made their way
unhurriedly in the direction of the Burning Mountain, whose tumbled black
slopes could already be seen above the trees. Shortly they crossed into barren
country where the soil was bare and stony. Smoke seemed to be issuing out of
cracks in the hills all around. There was a brown haze in the air, and a reek
like a coal fire.
'Funny smell for a volcano,' said Maigraith, as they took lunch in the shade
of a thorny tree.
'Something once ignited a seam of coal here,' he replied. 'Probably the
volcano! The hills have been burning for five thousand years. The fires are
way under the ground now, though there are places where the earth is still too
hot to walk on.'
Two days later, one moonless evening when the scorpion nebula gleamed from a
cold clear sky, they came to the ruins of a stone cottage by a meadow. At its
back was the sweep of a dark forest. It was a place of ancient memories and
great sadness. They sat on the step of the cottage, looking out across the
meadow. In the distance, above the trees, Booreah Ngurle smoked and fumed.
'The Charon had a stronghold at Booreah Ngurle for a thousand years,' said
Shand.
'Which Charon?'
'Kandor and Rulke.'
'Why here?'
'It's another of those powerful places, like Carcharon. Actually, it's where
the Way between the Worlds first opened. Shuthdar arrived here with the flute,
and Rulke followed him. They built a massive fortress which Rulke used as a
base in his hunt for the flute. A thousand Charon blendings lived there at one
stage - '
'What happened?'
'A massacre. Myan and his Aachim came under a flag of truce then took the