Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (54 page)

In the afternoon Faelamor was discovered just outside the gates of Shazmak.
She wore a submissive, hangdog air, as if trying to break into Shazmak had
been a last desperate gamble that had failed. Rulke's eyes narrowed as she was
led in, a small woman in white robe and sandals, with a satchel slung over her
shoulder. He signed her to speak first.
'I have come to make you an offer,' she said, her manner that of one who was
despairing, failing. 'Your sensitive has abandoned you, as my creature did me.
I know you can open the Way, but you cannot trace out the shifting paths to
Aachan or to Tallallame.'
'You don't know what I can or can't do.'
'I forced the truth out of Karan, how you used her, and how she failed you out
of the cowardice that is her way of life.'
For an instant Rulke looked perplexed, then he burst out laughing. 'She did
not fail me,' he roared. 'I failed her! There is no braver person on Santhenar
than Karan Elienor Fyrn. Oh, this is rich! She has fooled you utterly.'
'Whatever,' Faelamor said, as cold as a glacier in her mortification. 'Here is
an offer. I can find the paths between the worlds but I need Maigraith to
crack open the Forbidding. Or you! Together we can achieve all our aims. You
know what we Faellem want - Tallallame, nothing more. We will leave this world
and never return. You can have Santhenar and Aachan too, if you wish it. But
we will guard Tallallame with all our strength!'
Rulke considered. Faelamor could never be trusted. Nonetheless the proposition
interested him. His long searching had uncovered no other sensitive with
Karan's particular talent. And Faelamor was right: to find the Way was
probably beyond him. But Faelamor was wily and more treacherous than anyone.
What she said was as much a web of illusion as what she did. The advantage of
her own species was of paramount importance to her too, and anything she did
to any other people to gain that advantage would bother her no more than a
butcher frets about cutting the throats of a flock.
'There may be some small way you can assist me,' he said, feigning
indifference. 'I will think on it. Meanwhile you must remain in Shazmak and
submit to confinement. Take her away!'
Ghashad guards marched Faelamor to an apartment with only one exit, and
guarded her turn and turn about. She submitted willingly, well pleased with
her bargain. Not even Rulke would be able to hold her when her hour of most
desperate need came - after he opened the Way through the Forbidding for her.
That morning Idlis had appeared, inspected Maigraith's wound, bathed it,
dusted it with powder and bandaged it up again. Not long after, the Sentinels
sounded all over Shazmak. Maigraith wondered what had caused the alarm but
there was no one around to ask.
In the night Rulke came to her chamber once more. She
was waiting for him. She had thought of nothing all day but what they had done
in the night, and what they would do again tonight, if she had pleased him as
much as he had her.
'Faelamor is here,' he said, easing his way through the door with a heavily
laden tray. 'What does she really want?'
Maigraith felt a shooting pain in her chest. She lost her breath. How Faelamor
could oppress her, even after all this time. 'What did she say she wanted?'
He told her.
'I'm sure that is the truth. But know she hates and fears you, so - '
'She will betray me at the critical moment!'
'And do her best to erase you from the world. Don't do it!' she cried in
anguish, feeling what his fate must be, feeling her loss.
'Why not?' Rulke asked. 'On whose behalf do you speak?'
She couldn't say it. 'I - I speak on behalf of the Three Worlds, if I speak
for anything, and I have a better right to that than anyone.' But she yearned
for the Charon too - her people!
'Perhaps you do.' Then suddenly: 'Do you know who your father was?'
The question caught her completely off-guard, as he no doubt intended. That
was something Faelamor had refused to speak about. 'He was Faellem. That's all

I know. He is long dead.'
Rulke regarded her impassively.
She felt like screaming out, 'Do you know? Tell me!' But she would not show
that weakness. She fixed him with the same cool gaze as she had before. For
all their passion in the night, this was a game and she had small skill at it.
Far better that she be direct.
'Rulke,' she said, wanting him desperately, and wanting to please him too, but
not at hazard of the only world she knew. 'I cannot aid you. The risk is too
great.'
Rulke tossed his head. The black curls quivered. His shirt
was cut low at the front. The sight of his chest stirred her. I've got to have
you, she thought. Taking his hand, she pressed her lips to it.
He groaned. "This is torment!'
'For me too,' she murmured. 'But this is the only world I know, and I care for
it as much as you do for your own kind. I can't.'
'Then we will talk no more about it.' He stood up, but Maigraith held his hand
and rose with him.
'Do you dally with me?' he asked roughly.
Maigraith was sweating. What did he really feel about her? She must know: at
the price of her dignity, even her humiliation.
'I know nothing of coquetry or feminine wiles,' she replied. 'Let me be
honest. I want you, now and forever. My body aches for you. Say that you feel
the same, or not, and end it.'
They stared into each other's eyes. What was he thinking? What was he going to
do? Great Betrayer! Never trust him. The silence stretched out to infinity,
until Maigraith wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Rulke looked stern,
implacable, utterly dominating. Then she saw that his face was a mask, behind
which he was just as afraid and uncertain as she was. She put out her hands.
Without taking his eyes off her for a moment, Rulke took from his finger a
golden ring. She could have put two of her fingers in it. He closed his fist
about it, squeezing and compressing until beads of sweat appeared on his brow.
He spoke a word, baring his teeth in a grimace as a wisp of smoke trailed out
the end of his fist. She wanted to cry, 'No! Don't hurt yourself!' but was as
much captured by his eyes as he was by hers.
Suddenly Rulke plunged his fist into a pitcher of wine, quenching the ring
with a hiss. He pulled out his hand; opened it. The ring lay on his steaming
palm, much smaller now. Spreading her fingers he slipped it on. It was still
quite hot. It fitted her slender finger perfectly.
Maigraith held her hand out, gazing at the ring in wonderment. What could she
give him in return? Then she realised that she had the perfect gift. Feeling
in her scrip she found the red-gold ring - the single link of Yalkara's chain
left over from the making of the flute. She stroked her ring finger around the
circle, faster and faster, until the gold began to glow and resonate and sing
like a wine glass.
'Hold out your hand,' she said. She rolled the ring, which was now as soft as
putty, onto Rulke's broad finger. The tone sank lower and lower, the glow died
down and the gold hardened to fit him as perfectly as hers did her.
'I want you too, now and forever,' he echoed.
'It is done,' she agreed. 'Forever!'
They reached for each other but just then something strange happened outside,
a subtle working that was familiar, for it had the print Maigraith had learned
when she and Faelamor had made the gate to Havissard together.
'Faelamor!' Rulke cried, and ran for the door. 'Stay here!'
The door crashed shut. Maigraith ran after him but this time found the lock
immoveable. She sat down on the edge of the bed, aching with unfulfilled
passion. What was Faelamor up to?
Rulke did not come back and shortly Maigraith sensed a strange, throbbing
warping, very powerful. He was using the construct. Surely he had not allied
with Faelamor in spite of her warnings? Cold fear almost overwhelmed her. She
had found her mate and now she was going to lose him again.

Already she could feel the mismatch in the reverberations between the two: the
lack of phase that became a noisy chaos. Sometimes it abruptly died down to
nothing, one cancelling the other, while at other times it rose up in a shriek
as one strangeness added itself to the other. Could they not feel it? Or did
they not care? How could Rulke not care, unless all he had told her so
earnestly, and all she had believed, was just a fabric of lies by the Great
Betrayer?
I will not believe that, she thought. He must not fully
realise. All that about the Way and the void - that is delusion. He knows how
it used to be, but that is not how it is any longer. It's different now, and
the Forbidding is decaying. We are in deadly peril and only I can stop it.
Maigraith focussed the entire power of her mind on the lock. Someone else
might have used a little strength and a lot of cunning and worked the lock,
but Maigraith had too much of the one and not enough of the other. The lock
flew to pieces and the door into splinters. She kicked the kindling out of the
way. Yetchah tried to stop her but Maigraith raised her fist. The look on her
face was so terrible that Yetchah froze.
'Hinder me and there will be nothing left of you but a print on that wall,'
Maigraith said.
Yetchah was wise enough to obey. The Ghashad were superlative guards but
Maigraith had grown beyond their power. She ran past, heading down to the vast
hall where the construct was.
On the way she passed a band of Ghashad arguing furiously. She caught only a
snatch of their conversation but it was enough to make her deathly afraid.
'Llian's telling was true,' said Idlis, 'and we must learn from it.'
'We are sworn,' replied a squat fellow who looked different from the others.
He was short and stout, his legs were bowed and his skin was as grey as steel.
His name was Jark-un, the leader of the band that had hunted Karan from Fiz
Gorgo a year and a half ago.
'How can we serve a master who is such a fool?' whispered an elderly woman.
Her eyes were a glassy yellow and one arm shook constantly.
'We are sworn, Tyone,' Jark-un repeated, as if that was the answer to
everything.
'Not to Faelamor!' Idlis said with a shudder. So it was true, and now his most
faithful servants preached sedition. Rulke was surely doomed. Maigraith
hurtled through
the marble halls and across the cobwebby walkways of Shaz-mak, terrified that
she would be too late. She skidded into the Great Hall, searching for Rulke.
Despite her emotions, she could not but marvel at the genius of the Aachim who
had created the vast space, with its walls soaring up to that curving,
shell-like, transparent ceiling, the delicate stairs like wire and glass, the
balconies and platforms that seemed to hang in the air. Then her eye was drawn
down and down, to that black, strangely curved and impossibly dense object
that was the very antithesis of Shazmak - the construct!
The construct was operating, warping the spaces all around. Even the light
curved towards it as it went past. It had the opposite effect on the floor,
which sagged beneath it like a sheet of rubber pulled down by a steel ball.
Rulke stood tall on the top of the construct with his hands on the levers.
Faelamor sat on a mat on the floor, her eyes closed, apparently linked with
him. Maigraith knew what they were attempting to do: Karan had explained it to
her. Rulke was trying to make a perforation through the Forbidding with his
construct, and Faelamor to reach through it and find the forever changing Way
between the Worlds, the Way to Aachan.
As Maigraith hesitated in the doorway, a curving, shimmering surface sprang
into view, like an enormous soap bubble cutting through walls, floor and
distant ceiling. It spanned the whole vast room - the Wall of the Forbidding
made visible. Rulke twisted a knob. A lens of light sprang into being before
the construct. He brought the lens to bear on the Wall, focussing it to a
small circle.
Maigraith crept forward, but before she was close Faelamor roused, staring at

her with those cold eyes that seemed to have no bottom to them. The Wall faded
from view again.
Rulke cried out, 'Leave her be!' but he was in the middle of his working and
dared not stop.
Faelamor did something with her eyes and Maigraith was
unable to stand. She had never encountered such an enchantment before and
could not defend herself against it.
All her senses were cut off, except sight. She could hear nothing, feel
nothing, not even her feet on the floor. The whole room looped the loop. Her
inner ears prickled, then Maigraith felt the most nauseating dizziness she had
ever experienced. Nothing was up, nothing down. Her nerveless legs collapsed
under her.
Maigraith's head spun, far worse than being drunk. She tried to speak but
could not remember any words. Her tongue snaked back down her throat. She
clawed it out, gagging and choking until she could only lie down with her
cheek on the stone, shuddering. Still her brain whirled.
It was a long time before she could get up but as soon as she did she was
hurled down again. Maigraith pretended to rise, fell back with a groan, made
another' show, this time even weaker, and lay prone. She did not have the
strength to face Faelamor. But Faelamor was using such prodigious forces that
surely she must suffer for it.
Maigraith lay motionless on the floor, watching as the Wall of the Forbidding
appeared once more. Faelamor paid her no more attention and Maigraith began to
feel better, though now she was careful not to show it.
She had to husband her strength. Rulke was in deadly danger. He was dependent
on Faelamor, for he needed her to find his Way. His plan was weak. He must
have been desperate to try it. Once the Forbidding was opened, Faelamor could
attack him and he would not be able to defend himself, for fear of the void
emptying itself into Santhenar.
Maigraith gathered her strength, fuelling her hatred of Faelamor for the
chance that must come. All around her things were changing, warping and
twisting in a way that was difficult for her to slide her mind around. It was
a great risk she was taking. If she left it too long . . .
Then Maigraith felt the first faint stirring of another force, again familiar.
Someone was using the flute. She recognised
the dangerous aura first felt in Havissard. Mendark! The company must be near.
She felt an overwhelming sense of relief - someone to share the load with.
Then she realised what it really meant. The perilous flute might dissolve the
decaying Forbidding completely. If that happened, nothing could save
Santhenar.
The Sounding of the Sentinels
Tallia stood staring at the hollow. 'Everything I've worked for these past
eleven years is undone,' she whispered. The Magister she had served so
faithfully had betrayed her.
Jevi was nursing a badly wrenched wrist. Osseion propped himself up against
the wall, panting. The rest of the company straggled slowly in.
'Mendark, I did not like the tone of that flute at all,' said Malien.
'Beware!'
'Who will do the duties of the Magister now?' Tallia asked mournfully.
'You must!' gasped a red-faced Shand. 'You've been his deputy long enough.'
'He kept his secrets to himself,' she said.
'Why don't you look to Jevi's injury,' said Shand, clapping her on the
shoulder.
'Jevi hurt?' Tallia shook herself out of her malaise. She fell on her knees
before him. 'Jevi, I'm sorry. What must you think of me?'
'I think you've suffered a worse blow than a sprained wrist/ he said. 'But
nonetheless I would be glad to have it attended. And then . . .' he looked up
at her and smiled, 'I would help you with your own hurt.'
Tallia threw her arms around him and wept. He held her,
saying nothing at all, but when she'd finished he mopped the tears away, as