by Ian Irvine
“Not enough,” said Yggur. “Why must it be Aachan gold?”
“It has special properties.”
“But what use is it if we cannot obtain any?”
Llian’s forehead had grown increasingly knotted as he tried to remember something, and now he burst out suddenly:
“Maybe there is more! Yalkara had golden jewelry—a heavy chain, a bracelet and a torc. I’ve seen a picture of her wearing it. Now where was that?”
Shand gave a sigh, a long outrushing of breath. Llian looked at him curiously, then continued. “But was it Aachan gold? And did she take it with her or leave it behind, as she did the Mirror? The matter is not recorded.”
“Why would Yalkara leave it behind if she valued it so greatly?” asked Yggur.
“I don’t know,” said Llian. “Why did she abandon the Mirror? Perhaps Yalkara lacked the strength to carry it through the gate, for it is said that she was badly hurt in her struggles with Faelamor. Perhaps the Forbidding made it impossible. Perhaps she no longer needed it.”
“Those questions cannot be answered,” said Malien. “But if you are resolved to attempt the flute, which I caution against, you must go to Havissard, whence she departed. It has never been plundered.”
“Then we have two hopes,” Mendark mused. “But the first is unlikely. Alcifer was sacked after Rulke was taken and has since lain abandoned. If anything precious remains there it is surpassingly well hidden. Besides, Pitlis’s circlet will not be enough. Could it be blended with ordinary gold, I wonder?”
“No,” said Malien.
“This is futile,” Yggur said irritably. “There’s no way to get into Havissard.”
“It is protected,” said Shand. “It cannot be taken by strength save by breaking the foundations, and they are socketed deep into rock. The only hope is from beneath, through the mines.”
“The Histories tell that Yalkara reopened the silver mines of Tar Gaarn after that city fell,” Llian explained, “and they became the foundation of her wealth, as they had been the basis of the wealth of the Aachim before her.”
“But they were abandoned after she departed,” said Shand, “and will never be opened again. The pumps failed and no one could repair them. The lower levels are flooded to the depth of a hundred spans.”
There was a long silence.
“Do what you want!” said Yggur, now quite agitated. “I’m going back to Thurkad. Unruly people! My empire must be falling to pieces without me, especially with Thyllan lurking just across the sea. I left Maigraith there—abandoned her. How she must be suffering without me. And the Ghâshâd must be curbed—at least, I must make it harder for them to prepare the way for Rulke. Though how that can be done now that they have the resources and defenses of Shazmak… From Thurkad I will send people to Alcifer.” And even to Stassor, he thought, and seize this precious statue if no other way can be found. The Aachim are failing and eventually even Stassor must fall into ruin. Better that it come into my hands. “But Tar Gaarn and Havissard,” he went on aloud, “are beyond me.”
“I have long thought that Havissard would be my destination,” said Mendark, “and while I was in Zile I searched out the old maps. There’s nothing for me in Thurkad now.” He directed a ferocious scowl at Yggur, who could not see it. A look that said: not yet. “But if the one who knows Tar Gaarn better than any were to come with me…”
“Why do you ask, Mendark?” said Shand. “I’m going back to Meldorin with Karan and Llian, and from there, home to Tullin. The gellon will be ripening by the time we get there. You and I have nothing to say to one another. I told you that twelve years ago, if you remember…”
Mendark turned away. “I had not thought of you as a coward,” he said contemptuously.
Shand shrugged away Mendark’s words. “As I was going to say, if you had let me finish: I will make a map for you. No, better still, Yggur and I will make a map together. Yggur!” he gestured, and to everyone’s surprise Yggur unfolded his limbs and sat down with Shand. Soon they were chatting as if they had been friends for years. Shand seemed to be able to get on with everyone, save Mendark. He drew on an old scrap of parchment while Yggur corrected him.
Only then did it occur to them to wonder what had happened to Tensor and Karan. Hours had passed since they had gone outside; the brown daylight had long faded from around the edges of the canvas. The wind had died down. All was still. And then a great cry of agony cleaved the silence.
19
* * *
CONFESSION
Karan and Tensor found themselves in a hostile, poisonous world. A world of shrieking wind, choking dust and thick air that seared nose, throat and lungs. Tensor stood shakily outside the canvas door while Karan adjusted his face cloth. She gave him her shoulder and they set out, walking ever so slowly along the canyon and up the side of a shallow ridge.
They labored up to a place of fantastically shaped pillars and caverns, buttresses and gullies carved out of the salt. It was layered brown, red and yellow, and the wind had fretted the softer layers away so that a variety of unlikely objects were formed—here a block with the layers resembling the pages of a book; there an outjutting point tapered like the snout of a rodent, even to the trace of whiskers on one cheek.
Karan had time to look closely at these sculptures, so painful was Tensor’s progress. Whatever the damage that Rulke’s blow had done to him, and none but the Aachim knew how bad that was, it had twisted his back and hip, and the whole of his left side from knee to shoulder, even his left arm hung limp and useless. Only the remnant of that once great will forced him on, blocking out the pain of his twisted frame and torn sinews. But yet he said nothing.
The last part of that climb, into the teeth of the wind, was the worst. Karan’s eyes flamed before the end of it. They came stumbling onto the flat top of a peak of salt, the tallest around, and the wind caught her cloak so that it billowed like a sail, lifting her off her feet. Tensor’s fingers dug into her shoulder and his weight pressed her back down, and the gust passed.
“Will you sit?” she shouted. Nearby a flange of rock salt stood up to the height of her shoulders, breaking the wind.
His voice came dry and rasping, the sound of one block of salt being rubbed against another. “If I were to sit I might never rise again.”
Yellow clouds rushed across the white plains and once more their world was obscured in dust. Karan looked longingly at the shelter, braced her legs against the wind and closed her eyes. Tensor stared unfocused toward the east until his eyes were raw and crusted.
“Endure!” he said. “Endure.”
She did not respond, there being nothing to say.
“You are the only hope now,” he went on, apparently to himself. “They cannot know where they are led, and will not be told. Only you can see the pattern now. Endure!”
The squall passed; crystals of salt glittered in the air like mica falling through sunlight. Then the sky cleared suddenly and Katazza Mountain stood before them, its pinnacles touched to red by the setting sun, seemingly only a day’s march away: mighty; impregnable; fallen. Taking a pebble out of her pocket Karan put it in her mouth, but her mouth was as dry as her hands. Though she sucked at it, no moisture came. Brushing salt dust from her cheeks, she sneezed.
“What did…?” she began.
He turned toward Karan, directing at her that withering stare that she so remembered from her childhood. “I tell you, Karan, you brought all this on us…” He raised his hand as she began to speak. “No, let me have my say! You did us harm, bringing the Mirror to Shazmak, stirring up Emmant, lying to us, stealing it away again. Doubtless they were bitter choices for you, but you made them. You provided a bridge for Rulke to reach out and wake the Ghâshâd. No matter how well-meaning, no matter how ignorant, you were the keystone. Not the shaper, but the vital link. Without you, would the Ghâshâd ever have got into Shazmak? Would Emmant ever have betrayed us? Without you it would not have happened. Because of you it did.
“I
do not blame you any longer. Who am I to blame anyone? Your crimes pale to nothing beside my own. Yet you are in it, and you must bear the burden.”
Karan was silent. She had not forgotten how bitter her choices had been, nor the consequences of them. You’re right, she thought. I cannot ignore my part in this.
Suddenly it flowed out of Tensor like a flood, coming faster and faster, the words tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. “We are responsible both, you and I. As far back as Aachan, eons ago, I chose to help Rulke and Shuthdar forge the flute; I labored with them even knowing that what they did was forbidden. I left the flaw in the Night-land so that I might exploit it later. I chose to take you into Shazmak, to shape you. I set Emmant to spy on you, knowing what a broken instrument he was. I sent Faelamor to Shazmak, ignoring her warnings and her threats. I used power against the hapless Nelissa, violating the Conclave.” He gasped a breath, then rushed on. “I used the Twisted Mirror to find the flaw again, even knowing that the Mirror might not show true. And it did not; it betrayed me. I made the gate and failed to protect it, and opened it too soon, ignoring your warnings and pleas, and the warnings of the Syndics. In all the Histories none has been more distinguished, more wholehearted and more consistent in his folly than I. Perhaps the hubris of Pitlis was the greater at the end, but mine has been the creation of a lifetime.
“Were it not…” Tensor sagged, the will that held his twisted frame erect failing under the weight of his despair. Karan could not hold him. They fell together onto the salt.
She struggled out from underneath. Tensor had struck the side of his head against a knob of rock salt. A thick strand of blood oozed from his cheek, though it soon stopped in the heat. His dark skin had gone a bilious yellow-green. Breathing shallowly, he looked near death. The wind sang out once more; another squall was on them. There was just time enough to tie the cloth over Tensor’s nose and mouth before the blast lifted her off her feet and tried to blow her down into the canyon.
Karan scuttled the few paces to the shelter that she had seen previously. Why had Tensor brought her out here? To drive home her guilt or wallow in his own? She had no illusions about what she had done during that awful time when she carried the Mirror. She had chosen her path, knowing that it must injure the Aachim. She would not wallow in guilt. So many people had used her. Even so, she felt her responsibilities.
The squall eased. Karan ran back to Tensor and shook the dust off his bandage. He opened raw eyes, staring right through her. With a corner of the cloth she picked crusted salt from his eyelashes.
“You said you wanted to confess something to me. Was that it? You told me nothing that I did not already know.”
Tensor forced until he was sitting upright.
“No,” he said, hacking the dust out of his throat. “Not at all. I have done a great wickedness to you.” He tried to stand but could get no higher than his knees. Still he could look into her eyes.
“I remember how you came to me in Shazmak,” Tensor rasped. “I will always remember how you stood on the doorstep and said, I have come home. What an urchin you were; what a tiny bedraggled little thing. And yet, what strength! What dignity! You touched my heart. You were all I would have expected of your father’s daughter, rebellious and troublesome as he had been. Even so, I would have sent you away to die.”
Karan shivered.
“I would have turned you away, for all that you were a daughter such as I had always dreamed about. You had no right to Shazmak—your father had broken his oath. And broken it again just by telling you of our city. I saw a great danger in you. There is a threat in all blendings, but especially in you. I saw that you would come, but not remain; that you would go back into the world and bring it down upon us. Would that I had turned you away.
“But the Aachim would not permit it. Seldom did they ignore my advice, but this time they were unmoved. From the moment they saw you they were captivated. They thought they knew you. Hah! They knew nothing!
“You touched my heart,” he rasped, “and I loved you. Not even Rael loved you more. I was afraid of what you would bring—triune, a thousand times worse than any blending!”
Karan felt a spear of ice enter her chest. “Triune? What do you mean?”
“You are a double blending, Karan, a triune, for you carry the blood of the Three Worlds in you. Three different human species—old human, Aachim, and Faellem!”
“Faellem!” said Karan, bemused.
“You did not know that you had a Faellem ancestor? I never told a soul; no one could be trusted with that knowledge. Our Histories speak about the triune, how she would come out of nowhere and move time and space itself. How I wish I had put you out that door.” He came to his feet; his big arm went around her slim shoulders. Tensor hugged her to him, very gently.
She looked up at him, unable to take it all in. This changed everything. She wasn’t who she thought she was at all.
“But they let you in. All I could do was shape you myself. I took charge of your schooling, trying to prevent the flowering of those talents that I judged to threaten us most. Did I succeed or did I fail? Did I damage you? Certainly you are less than you might have been, and you are now too old, too formed to recover it. Sometimes the shaping succeeds, but at other times the force of destiny, the momentum of fate as your mother’s people would say, cannot be altered. You did not develop in some ways where you showed great promise. Yet you burst out in other, unexpected ways; talents flowered that may in the end threaten us more. I even tried to suppress all knowledge of the house of Elienor, so that you would never learn of your great heritage. But Malien would not allow that. She undermined me at every step.”
Karan was shocked. Shocked to learn of her ancestry. Triune was a curse, a terrible stigma of madness and unpredictability. Shocked at what he had done to her. So that was why she had been pursued for so long. Why everyone wanted something from her, once they recognized something strange and rare in her. How dared he meddle with her so; and without her ever knowing? She could not forgive him for that.
“That is all,” said Tensor. “Go back now. Yours is the future, if you can salvage anything from the ruin my folly has wrought.”
Karan turned away, hating and despising him. Curse him! Why should he not end it here if he so willed it? Salt sand abraded her cheeks as she went down the path. At the bottom she looked back. Tensor stood tall as a pillar of salt. Snatches of verse came on the wind, a soliloquy of despair and failure. “I am nothing. All I ever stood for is nothing!”
A choking cloud of salt struck her. Karan crouched down with her cloak over her face until it had passed. Another squall wailed toward her, and after that another. Hours had gone by since they had come outside. The day was done, a few bright stars out already and the ruddy scorpion nebula brooding above. She peered through the gloom. The pillar was gone; Tensor was not there. Her anger evaporated. Despite his sins Tensor had been as a father to her: she could not let him die alone.
She ran back up, tripping and skidding in the gloom. Tensor lay still, just a rag among the crags. He looked dead, but when she unwrapped the salt-covered cloth and smoothed his cheek his eyes fluttered open. She lifted his head, brushing the salt away.
“Leave me,” he begged. “This is a fitting place and a fitting end.”
He was giving up, slipping away feeling only self-pity and despair. Something about the gesture pricked at her. It was his pride talking, as it had always done. Karan’s compassion disappeared, so diminished was Tensor from what he once had been. How dared he meddle with her so? Let him do something to make up for his follies.
“I have done wrong, I know,” she said, “but never did I act for myself. You wronged me and all Santhenar with your vast pride, but what have the Aachim to be proud of save the past? Even there it rests more on glorious failures than on great deeds or lasting works. It is a long time since the Aachim were great in anything but hubris. Now get up! There will come a time when even your aid will be needed. Get u
p! Your despair is no more appealing than your pride, and both are rooted in the same source.”
“Leave me,” he rasped. “I have nothing more to give. It is fitting that I die in this barren and worthless place. So we all pass.”
His eyes lost their shine, slowly closing as he let loose the hold of his will on his crippled body.
“Do not dare to die, you craven!” she shouted in his face. His eyes flickered open, though so dull that not even the brightest star reflected in them. “It was your wicked folly that brought terror and destruction upon us all. And now that the damage is done you wallow in self-pity, as cursed Pitlis did, then abandon your people without hope. But not this time—I do not allow it.”
Tensor’s eyes began to glaze over. The coward! In a fury she sprang to her feet and kicked him as hard as she could, right in his injured hip, and was instantly horrified and disgusted with herself.
Tensor convulsed. His eyes flicked open and he let out a great cry of agony. His arms gripped the abused limb while beads of sweat broke out all over his face, which the starlight touched with points of light. He made no further sound, even though the pain went on and on, ringing back and forth through his body like a bell. He directed her a look of pure rage.
“Why have you called me back, hateful child? My time is finished.”
There were tears on her salty cheeks. “As you schooled me, so I school you,” she said in an icy voice. “What contempt you must have felt for me, to shape me like an animal, to rob me of my destiny. Well, that is what I feel for you now: contempt! You have created nothing. You warped, you twisted, you destroyed, and when all the good you started with lay in ruins you fled because you had not the courage to try and mend what you broke.”
Her voice rose above the wind. “It is your pride that tells you to die out here in the desolation. I would have thought more of you if you had gone out alone, rather than bringing me here to lecture me and be a witness to your so-called nobility. This is not nobility; this is not honor, this is hubris! Tensor is a craven’s name, and yours are a proud, vain coward’s deeds, the ruin of all. Get up from your coward’s bed, Tensor, or I curse you all the way into the grave, and beyond it. Get up. Get up!”
