Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (4 page)

'Karan!' he screamed.
Her eyes sprang open. The net of light vanished. 'Llian!' she whispered,
anguished and ashamed. 'What are you doing here? Go back!'
'Not without you.' He tried to get to his feet but only managed his knees.
Rulke snapped back to reality with a shock that almost tumbled him off his
.seat. For a moment he looked dazed, as if the switch from one dimension to
the other was like trying to think in a foreign tongue.
'Take what you want and pay the price!' she said. 'I am paying for my
choices.'
'The price is too high,' Llian said, hungering for her. He
was helpless. His shredded legs were too painful to move. 'Come with me.' He
felt ashamed that Karan had bought his freedom with her own.
'It's too late,' she said softly. 'It's gone too far now and can't be undone.
Please go, or all I've done will be in vain.'
'She's right, chronicler,' said Rulke, recovering rapidly. 'I don't know what
fool let you in, but it's no use. If she refuses me I'll take you back.'
'I won't go! Karan, don't do this.'
'I have no choice,' she said in her own agony. 'Go away, Llian!'
Llian was desperate to take her in his arms, and knew that despite her words
she felt the same. She was weakening.
Rulke shook his fist at the watching guards. 'How can I work?' he roared. 'Get
rid of him!'
Two came forward - Idlis, he of the scarred face," who had hunted Karan for so
long, and the woman Yetchah. They had been banished to the lowest duties, in
disgrace at having voted for Llian's tale instead of Rulke's a week ago.
Taking Llian under the arms, they dragged him down the coiled stairway, past
statues every bit as alarming as those outside the gates. Before he reached
the bottom of the stairs, the room was lit up by the Wall of the Forbidding
again.
The front door of Carcharon was flung open. The wind whistled in. Idlis put
his foot in Llian's back and sent him flying through. He skidded halfway
across the landing.
Llian wished he was dead. He wiped the snow out of his eyes, turned over and
looked up into the grim faces of the company. No one said a word. Basitor
gripped him by the collar then marched down the steps, dragging him behind.
The others followed in his wake.
The Way
The previous night, Karan had lain squirming in her sleeping pouch, desperate
for sleep. Tomorrow would be hythe, mid-winter's day - the day she would
betray her people and her world. To save Llian she had agreed to find the Way
between the Worlds for Rulke. But what would the consequences be? Would she
survive it? Would any of them? What was the word of Rulke, the Great Betrayer,
worth anyway?
A week had gone by since the great telling, after which he had used the
construct to cast Llian out of Carcharon. Since then Rulke had worked Karan
impossibly hard, day and night, in exercises her brain could scarcely
comprehend. She practised as though her life depended on mastering his
lessons. She knew it did. The void was a brutal place and hers a deadly job,
and the knowledge that he would torment Llian if she refused was all the goad
she needed.
Karan found it hard to concentrate. She made a lot of mistakes but Rulke never
criticised her. A good teacher, he patiently instructed her over and again,
yet she felt sure he found her stupid and incapable.
She wriggled in her pouch but could not get warm. And being a sensitive, she
could feel the age-old emotions stirring in this place. The stones were
saturated with the death
agonies of the hundreds of workers who had died building Carcharon, with the
mad cunning of her ancestor, Basunez, and with strange, older passions that
she could not disentangle from the rocky matrix.
Karan hated Carcharon. Her beloved father had been killed here too, seventeen

years ago, a senseless crime. After all this time she still missed him. Just
to think of Galliad was to bring back her childhood longings. She could not
sense him here, but how she wanted to.
Exhausted, she kicked off her pouch, drew on socks and crept across to where
Rulke slept beside the construct. Evidently he was impervious to cold for he
lay on the floor wrapped in only a single blanket, and his mighty chest was
bare. His shoulders were each the size of her head. Karan eyed them in
uncomfortable awe.
'There is something I need to know,' she said.
He woke instantly. 'What is it?'
'A question of the most surpassing interest to me.'
'Then ask it,' he said, sitting up. His muscles rippled. She pulled her eyes
away.
'My father was killed here. Do you know why?'
'I don't know anything about your father, except that he was a blending of
human and Aachim. What happened to him?'
'He was the rock of my childhood,' she said in melancholy tones. 'He was
coming back from Shazmak but never arrived. Finally he was found here, beaten
to death for the few coins in his pocket. No one could understand why.'
'Why would he come here, so far off the path to Shazmak?'
'He was fascinated by this place, and by Basunez.'
'Mad Basunez!' said Rulke. 'He can't have been quite as mad as he was made
out.'
'Why do you say that?'
'The bronze statues are too perfect. He found something here, and he had to
have looked into the void for it. That was what first attracted me to this
place.'
'Last summer?'
He smiled at her naivety. 'Little Karan! You still think all this came about
by accident, by some chance of fate.'
'What do you mean?' Suddenly she felt panicky, all shivery afraid and choked
up. 'What wasn't an accident?'
'Even from the Nightland I could sense Basunez working here. His corrupt
experiments had thinned the wall between Santhenar and my prison, and the void
too. Had he succeeded your old human species would probably no longer exist.
Fortunately he failed, but I've been watching this place ever since. For six
hundred years I kept vigil! I even noticed you.'
Karan writhed, imagining that he might have looked down on her most private
moments. 'What do you mean, noticed me?'
'I mean that I sensed you. This place is one of the most potent sites on all
Santhenar for working the Secret Art, which is why Basunez built Carcharon
here. What he did here allowed me to detect him, and you too.'
She turned away abruptly.
'Don't worry, I couldn't actually see anything from the Nightland. I felt that
he was carrying out dangerous experiments which were of great interest to me,
but I couldn't find out what they were. Then, not so long ago, I sensed
something here again, where there had been nothing for centuries. Someone
strange and rare. It turned out to be you!'
Karan trembled. 'Does this mean that other people can tell that I am ...
triune?' Her heritage had caused her enough trouble already.
'I wouldn't think so! Not even I can sense you from Santhenar. The Nightland
is different; a higher plane.'
'When did you sense me?' But she knew all too well.
'Time has funny habits in the Nightland. It might have been ten years ago, or
thirty.'
'I came here with my father when I was eight, not long before he died. And to
think you were spying on us!' Her voice rose in outrage.
'Not spying. I had no idea if you were young or old, man or girl. All I knew
was that there was a unique talent in Carcharon. It made me sweat. This place
might have been full of dangerous secrets, for all I knew.'

'But I have no powers at all,' said Karan. 'Tensor made sure of that when I
was a child. I cannot wield the Secret Art. All I have are a few minor talents
like sensing and sending and linking, abilities that often fail me.'
'The right lever can move the world. Anyway, as soon as you left Carcharon I
lost you, and no matter what I did I could not find you again. Not until you
picked up the Mirror in Fiz Gorgo did I detect you once more, for the Mirror
was tied to Yggur, and he tenuously to me, because I had possessed him long
ago.'
Even as a child, a watch was being kept out for her. It made Karan feel that
her destiny had never been in her control.
'The Mirror started it all,' he went on. 'I still didn't know who you were,
but I could sometimes get into your dreams and give you a nudge. And now I'm
here,' he said with great satisfaction. 'Without you I would still be in the
Nightland with no chance of ever getting out. I owe you a great debt, Karan.'
'You can repay it by letting me go!'
He roared with laughter.
Karan stared into nothingness, trying to concentrate on what he had said.
Without her, none of this would have happened. She had always known that, in a
way, but she'd had no idea that it went back to her distant ancestors. Nothing
comes out of nothing. It better explained Maigraith's interest in her, and
Faelamor's unease, and Tensor's attitude too. How she had been exploited!
'And did you learn anything about Basunez's work?' she asked.
'Not much,' said Rulke. 'I tried to compel his shade, but whatever he found is
lost forever.'
Karan looked out the window, wondering if he spoke the
truth. 'I couldn't care less what Basunez found,' she murmured. 'But I would
dearly love to know who killed my father, and why. It must be connected with
this place.'
Rulke rubbed his jaw. 'Well, there's all day to wait until moonrise. If I can
put your mind at ease it will help later on. Come with me.'
It was still dark as they went out into the yard, but the flagstones were lit
by a ray of light from an upstairs window. Rulke lifted a trapdoor and shone
his lantern down a metal ladder. 'Go down!' He followed her, extinguished his
lamp and by means that were invisible to her in the dark conjured up the shade
of Basunez.
At first it was no more than a black and white outline on the wall. Shortly,
two specks began to gleam at the top, as if she was being watched by someone
who was bitterly angry.
'Come out, shade!' said Rulke sternly. 'Focus your misery on the particles of
air and make them speak.'
The outline took on a more human shape, then the ghost emerged part-way from
the wall, hawk-nose first. Its thin lips moved but the squeaky wail of its
voice seemed to come from the middle air.
'Why do you call me back again?' it piped in querulous tones. 'Let me go to my
rest.'
'You shall have no rest while your sins remain unpunished! Here is your
granddaughter more than twenty generations on, Karan Elienor Melluselde Fyrn.'
Rulke pushedher forward.
Karan resisted. She was afraid.
Coming halfway out of the wall, the shade of Basunez spat at the floor near
her feet. The phosphorescent stuff evaporated to nothing in the air. 'Hideous
little mite,' he fluted.
'She demands to know what happened to her father, Galliad, who died here.'
Basunez flapped his hands in agitation. 'Never heard of him,' he muttered,
vainly trying to pass back through the stone.
'Liar!' she shouted. 'He often came here. He used to tell me stories about the
ghosts of Carcharon, at bedtime.' The tales of Basunez had always frightened
her.
Basunez came right out of the wall, fluttering through the air at them. His
lean bearded face was furious, his nostrils flaring. He had an arching nose

and black eyes, no resemblance to her at all. He shouted in her face and
flapped his cloak at her. Karan jumped, falling backwards against the ladder.
'Stop that!' Rulke roared. By the time she recovered Basunez was back in the
wall, only his eyes and hook-nose showing.
'I wonder . . .' said Rulke.
'What?'
'You say Galliad was beaten to death for a few coins. What robber would lie in
wait here, so far from anywhere? I wonder if he might not have pestered
Basunez's ghost too much.'
'My father was not afraid of ghosts.'
'Out with it, shade,' said Rulke, and did something in the dark that made the
ghost glow like a red-hot poker. 'What did you do to her father?'
'Unpleasant, inadequate man,' wailed Basunez, wrenching himself out of the
wall again. 'Always prying and trying to learn my secrets. Hah! I burned
everything to ashes before I died. No one will get the benefit of my labour,
not even you, Rulke! Anyway, the struggle is the answer! But he took the easy
way - he ripped my bones out of their crypt and dared to raise me from the
dead. And don't think I was the first either!' he sneered at Karan. 'He was
well practised in the unwholesome art of necromancy.' The ghost blurred back
into the wall, fading almost to nothing.
'Don't go,' said Rulke in a velvet voice. 'Why did he die?'
'He was not as cunning as I was!' Basunez's eyes gleamed, rat-like. 'I led him
on a playful dance, a merry climb right to the very tower top. Still he
pestered me, and I grew angry and flew at him. He fell to his death.'
'You killed him!' Karan screamed. 'You murdered my
father.' She tried to strike the shade with her fists but all she got for it
was bloody knuckles.
'A death for a life,' said the ghost of Basunez with grim irony. 'He
reanimated my dead bones, a greater crime by far than easing his miserable
life out of him.'
'Murderer!' she shrieked, thrashing about wildly. Rulke held her arms.
'Life-giver!' Basunez spat. 'I am dead six hundred years and still I cannot
lie in my grave. Send me back!'
'Enough!' said Rulke. His lantern flared brightly and Basunez faded to
nothing, though his cries could still be heard, 'Send me back, send me back!'
as Karan hurried up the ladder and Rulke closed the trapdoor of the cellar.
Back in the upper tower he sat Karan down and put a cup to her lips. She was
trembling. She held the vessel in two hands and sipped from it, staring at the
floor for a long time. Finally she gave a great shudder and looked up at him.
The light made her malachite-green eyes glow. She took a deep breath.
'He wasn't murdered at all, was he? It was just a stupid accident that means
nothing.'
'No more than a malicious accident,' he said. 'Ghosts can't do murder. Do you
feel better for knowing?'
'That my beloved father practised the black art, necromancy? No! But only the
child of eight thought he was perfect. I had to know the truth.'
Nonetheless she paced back and forth, as agitated as she had been down below.
Behind her back, Rulke did something with his fingers and suddenly her head
nodded. 'Oh, I'm so tired.'
'Sleep,' he murmured, drawing his fingers down over her face. 'It's nearly
dawn and there'll be no rest for either of us tonight.' Her eyes fell closed,
she subsided on the floor and he drew the sleeping pouch up around her.
'Well,' Rulke said just before moonrise that evening. 'Are you ready?'
'Almost!' She was still wondering what her father had been up to. 'But before
we begin I must know what has happened to Llian.'
'Another condition! He's out there with the rest of the company.' He gestured
to the embrasure that faced east toward the amphitheatre.
'I must know that he's safe.'
Rulke restrained his impatience. 'Very well. Come up!'
'What?'