Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (45 page)

disturbed. The unreality came and
went in a series of falling and rising echoes. It was the warping associated
with two forces intersecting and reinforcing one another. Someone else was
using a similar power, and she knew exactly who. It had an alarming, prickling
aura. Faelamor!
There came a crash on the door, then shouts outside and more bangs - axe
blows. The door was shivering under the attack. She had only minutes. She
tried again, playing the first half of a scale. The echoes came back, stronger
than before. Maigraith reached out again, using all her strength to cut
through the fog that shrouded the destination.
It was like being struck in the stomach with a stone club. The shock flung her
into the side of a furnace with such force that she felt one of her ribs
crack. Maigraith could not get up for a minute. Don't ever do that again! You
were trying to force it. You must relax, sense it, go with it! Try it again.
But she did not. In her hands the flute felt that it had such power, but
Maigraith realised she was incapable of tapping it. Maybe the very gold had
become corrupted over time. Perhaps Tensor had done something to prevent her
using it. Whatever the reason, it was deadly now. The whole building had taken
on a strange, distorted air.
Maigraith consigned the birthright to the floor and sat up, watching the door
shake under the assault. The blade of an axe appeared through the wood, the
timbers groaning as it was wrenched out again. The other resonance grew
stronger. What was Faelamor up to? Faelamor, who had sent Ellami to murder
her, a betrayal so shocking that Maigraith still could not come to terms with
it. She had to find out before it was too late. No choice but to go to
Elludore.
There was a commotion outside and an enormous thump shook the door. The
onslaught paused, only to return with greater force. The boards warped inward.
The next blow would break it. Seizing a smith's hammer, Maigraith scrambled up
on top of the furnace and attacked the ceiling. Black dust and plaster rained
down on her. She climbed into the hole
and swung the hammer at the roof. Slate went everywhere. It was already
growing light.
The door was smashed open. The besiegers stormed in. Maigraith pulled herself
onto the roof and ran lightly down the ridgepole, but found that the whole
place was surrounded. 'Up there!' someone shouted.
Would a gate work here? Maigraith sensed that she was far enough from the
flute that one might. She took a mental fix on her very first gate, still the
strongest, the ironstone spires in Elludore. As she conjured up the memory,
the image of that place soared into her mind, clear and sharp. She reached
out, silver radiance streamed about her and she tumbled wildly through space.
I'm using this Art too much, she thought. Use changed the Secret Arts,
sometimes in unpredictable ways. My profligacy will have a reckoning. Not this
time, she prayed. Go true!
For an instant her control of the gate faltered, then Maigraith wrenched it
back and materialised with a snap that hurt her ears. It was just short of
dawn here, fifty leagues west of Thurkad, but there was light enough to see.
She stood between the ironstone pillars by the river in Elludore.
Maigraith felt physically ill from the gate - the reckoning would not be long
coming. Her nerves were stretched like catgut. It was some distance from here
to the caves. She crept upriver. The main cave was lighted, a broad shallow
opening like the mouth of a whale. Someone appeared at the entrance, looking
out into the darkness, then disappeared again.
Maigraith went up the slope on her belly. There had been a frost and the
trodden ground was frozen into hard ruts. She got close enough to hear talk,
but not what they were talking about. Higher she crept, squirming up the track
like a snake with her head forward, testing the air. She caught a word -
Shazmak! Then someone loudly said No! She moved closer.
Evidently the debate had met a sticking point. Again she
heard Shazmak, and then Faelamor's voice rang out: 'Mine is the decision, is

it not? Did you not pledge yourselves to follow me? Have I not done everything
required of me?'
'We're afraid. This goes against everything we stand for.'
'What did we come to Santhenar for, all those years ago, but to eliminate the
threat of the Charon?'
'But to ally with the Great Betrayer himself.. .'
'Who said ally? I said offer alliance. All week we've tried to get our
instrument to work, and it does, beautifully. I know it can take us home, but
it can't break through the Forbidding. We know Rulke can open the Way, for he
did so on mid-winter's day. He has what we lack, and I can do what he needs.
When the critical moment comes, so will our opportunity.'
'He will be expecting treachery. It is a risk without hope of gain. He is so
much stronger than we are.'
'Ah, but he does not know about our golden nanollet. He could never think that
we would make such a device! And even if we gain nothing,' Faelamor went on,
'so be it! Once he is among the Three Worlds with his construct we lose
everything. Tallallame cannot stand against that power. This is what we came
for. We must try! And if, against the odds, we do succeed, we will go home in
triumph and seal the Way behind us forever.'
Golden nanollet? So they had used the gold. I've got to find out where it came
from. Maigraith recalled talk of drawings stolen from Llian's college, that
had told Faelamor to look in Havissard. I've seen them, Maigraith realised.
They were in Faelamor's pack when first we came here. Where did I put them?
Maigraith slipped up through the trees to one of the other caves, a storehouse
where Faelamor kept her gear. She emptied out the boxes and bags, rifling
though Faelamor's scanty possessions. At the bottom of one bag was a flattened
roll of paper.
She carried it out into the growing light, unrolled the drawings behind a tree
and her hair stood on end. Maigraith
stared into nowhere. No wonder Faelamor's workings had such a mad, dangerous
feeling. The gold, and therefore the nanollet she'd made with it, was corrupt.
The Faellem, who had little ability to control devices, had made the most
perilous device of all. The only thing to do was to seize the nanollet
herself. But how? She agonised too long in the growing light and suddenly
there were footsteps above her. Maigraith crouched down, knowing that she was
exposed. If anyone looked down she would be seen.
Faelamor appeared, hurrying across to the store cave. Ice cracked under
Maigraith's foot. Faelamor spun around, crying, 'Who goes?'
Maigraith bolted, slipping and skidding down the steep path.
Faelamor's cry had brought the Faellem out. Let them not recognise me,
Maigraith prayed. Then she heard Faelamor's cry of rage: 'Maigraith!'
A host of Faellem swarmed after her. She could feel herself weakening already,
her mind losing focus. Her gate was half an hour downriver; she would never
make it. Maigraith tried for a new gate, weeping with the strain, but
something struck her hard in the shoulder, a terrible pain. 'Shand, help me!'
she screamed. Reaching out she opened a gate and, still running, fell into it.
Maigraith was buffeted about, angry lines of fire screamed all around her and
she was wrenched into nowhere. Her consciousness flashed in and out, then she
crashed through a plaster ceiling and landed in an untidy heap. She lay on the
floor of Yggur's workroom. She looked up at him limply, then lapsed into
unconsciousness. Blood ran out of her shoulder. A long arrow protruded from
it.
When she came to, Yggur was attending her, with a Whelm whose name Maigraith
did not know. They carried her to a chair. Yggur glared at her for a full
minute, finally saying coldly, 'That is a Faellem arrow!'
Her teeth chattered. Aftersickness bent her double. The
arrowhead grated against her shoulder bone, right where Thyllan's knife had
struck last summer.
She clung onto Yggur's hand while the Whelm worked at getting the arrow out.
"There are things you were never able to tell me! I too have secrets, Yggur.'

'Even leaving aside what happened at the workshop, you are abusing the Art.
The Aachim are in uproar.'
'I'm glad. Tensor is my enemy! I have nothing more to say.'
'Very well,' said Yggur, 'but let me remind you of the consequences. Each gate
you make must be prepared for as if it was your first. You must never go and
return again in less than a day, and never without resting between. If you do
not obey these rules, sooner or later you will lose yourself and never be able
to return. Or you will come back but your wits will not.'
'I know the dangers,' she muttered. To be lectured by him was unbearable. 'I
was desperate.'
'There is always a desperate need. If nothing will sway you but duty, think of
all the ways you might be needed in the future. I'm afraid for you.'
That was no comfort. She was silent while the Whelm finished with the wound
and bound it. Maigraith laid her head down and fell into sleep.
Yggur found Shand at breakfast. 'Was it Maigraith who broke into the
workshop?'
'It was,' said Shand. 'I happened to be walking that way before dawn, just as
the guards were recovering.'
'What's she up to?'
'I don't know. We'd better meet today; this morning. The time is almost upon
us.'
'I can feel it too. I'm afraid.'
'Tell me, Shand, was it an accident that you happened along?'
'Of course not. I've got into the old man's habit of rising
early and walking, and I often go that way. But as soon as I woke I sensed
strange forces - things I've never felt before. I ran all the way to the
workshop but she was already gone.'
'I felt it too.'
'Do you know why Maigraith agreed to give up her gold?'
'No,' said Yggur, 'though I've often wondered.'
'For me! She wanted the flute made so she could bring Yalkara and me together
again.'
Yggur almost fell off his chair. 'That would be ... controversial.'
Shand laughed. 'Mendark would wet himself. As for Tensor - ' He stopped
abruptly. 'Tensor must have found out.'
'I'd say so! He'll never give up the flute now. And how about you, old
friend?'
'I wish it could be.' Shand shook with passion. 'How I wish it! But I don't
dare hope. I'll not see Yalkara again.' He changed the subject. 'What are we
going to do about Faelamor?'
'We're so unprepared! I'll call everyone together. I'm afraid for Maigraith,
Shand.'
'As am I. I'll send Karan to keep watch on her. And speak to her myself when
she wakes. How go your plans for war?'
'Disastrously. We had a mutiny in the Third Army last week. I put it down
brutally, but that made morale even worse. You know how rumours spread.' Yggur
appeared anguished, and his old troubles had come back: the halting speech,
the freezing of the muscles on one side of his face. 'Not even my
counter-rumours of our wonderful flute have made any difference.'
'People are saying that it won't work; that it will do more damage to us than
to him. Maybe they're right. We don't know what we're doing, do we?'
Yggur did not respond to that. 'Rulke's just as good at spreading propaganda
as I am. A thousand tellers have told the tale of his magical construct, and
how it flew through the air, defying us. The war is lost and the battle hasn't
even begun.'
'There's a traitor among us,' said Mendark that afternoon. He had taken the
news of the attempt on the flute badly, though the anger looked out of place
on his unlined face.
'How do we know it wasn't you?' said Yggur.
'You accuse me!' Mendark raged.

He snatched at Yggur's cloak. Yggur raised his fist. For a moment it seemed
that violence would be done right there, then the door slammed open and
Maigraith swayed through, looking as though all the blood had been sucked from
her veins. Into the sudden silence she dropped her bombshell.
'I have been to Elludore through a gate,' she said. 'Faelamor is on the way to
Shazmak to make alliance with Rulke. She has made her own device, from the
gold of the golden flute.' The silence was deafening.
Still no one spoke, though their faces bore identical expressions of horror.
'How do you know?' barked Mendark.
Maigraith pulled the drawings from her pocket and threw them on the table.
Llian examined them carefully. 'These are the ones stolen from the college
library. Look! This one shows Yalkara going into the burning tower after the
golden flute was destroyed. She's not wearing her golden jewelry.'
The second sketch showed Yalkara coming out of Huling's Tower again, a small
figure in a large drawing. Smoke hung above the tower like an upraised fist.
Her clothes were smoking, her hands blood-red, and she wore the golden chain
about her throat again, the torc about her forehead, and the bracelet on her
wrist.
Llian looked as if a divine truth had been revealed. 'Yalkara must have used
some magic to forge the molten gold into a perfect replica of the jewelry that
she always wore, and worn it out of the ruins under the noses of all the
watchers. How bold she was!'
'She would never say how her hands came to be so badly
scarred,' said Shand. 'It must have happened in her haste to shape the gold.'
'I felt it!' said Maigraith. 'When Shand and I went to Huling's Tower. It was
horrible!'
'One of them will betray the other and emerge stronger than ever,' said Yggur
in a defeated voice.
'We're notyet beaten,' Mendark's voice rang out. 'Desperate times call for
desperate remedies: the forbidden, the uncontrollable! Let those of us who
know such secrets meet secretly to work out a plan.'
Maigraith told no one what she was going through. She had made her decision
and no one was going to talk her out of it. She felt divorced from the
company, her friends, even Shand.
Her wound was very painful and she felt worse as the day went on. After the
meeting she went back to bed, but had a strange, fitful slumber, punctuated
not by dreams but by a waking state rather like a trance, in which she got up
as soon as Karan went out and packed everything that would be needed for a
long journey. Knowing Karan was keeping an eye on her, she planned to slip
away the first chance she got. Maigraith hid her pack, slipped back into bed
and slept soundly.
After midnight she woke and the aftersickness was gone. Karan was folded up in
the armchair by the fire, dozing, but woke as soon as Maigraith stirred. 'How
are you?' Karan asked.
'Much better, though my shoulder is very painful.'
Karan checked the wound, which was inflamed, and changed the dressings. She
made tea. They drank it in silence.
'I'm afraid, Karan.'
'So am I.'
'No, I'm really afraid. The whole world is turning upside down. All day I've
been hearing voices, people whispering, but they seem to be on another plane.
I don't understand what they're talking about, save that they want our world.
I can feel them plotting - blood and violence.'
'I sometimes hear voices,' Karan admitted grudgingly.
'But you're a sensitive!' Maigraith wailed, sitting up abruptly. 'I feel that
I'm looking into another dimension. And now you have an aura all around you green and black and red, and it's always shifting.'
She spoke wildly, of impossible things, as if her world was different from
Karan's; as if reality had shifted for her.
'It's the fever,' said Karan. Feeling Maigraith's forehead, which was cool,