by Ian Irvine
“You’ll blow it out,” she said irritably. It generally took Llian half an hour to get a fire going.
The fire caught in a blaze that raced up through the kindling. He hurled logs on top.
“Careful!” she said. “You’ll put it out again.”
In a minute the fire was roaring as high as her shoulders. “But now,” said Llian, “to have an honored place at the college—you can’t know how much that security means to me. I’ve not had any since I left home.”
Karan knew that she should be feeling glad for him, but her own unease had been growing ever since the discovery in the library. “Then I don’t suppose you’ll need me anymore,” she snapped. “I dare say Gothryme will prove too rustic for you, with all the delights of Chanthed beckoning. Perhaps you want to be the next master of the college.”
Llian started. “You’re being silly,” he said, but just for a minute Karan saw that longing in his eyes.
He’ll leave me for Chanthed! He’s getting bored with me. Karan kept on. “I saw her great cow eyes on you this morning.”
“You didn’t see mine on her, though!” He changed the subject. “What are your plans now?”
“I have no plans,” she said in a faraway voice. She had her chin cupped in the palms of her hands. It was a clear night and rather cooler than they were used to. Llian edged a little closer to the fire. “No plans. Just dreams and hopes of home. But… Bannador was one of the first places to be invaded, and Gothryme lies between Thurkad and Shazmak. Maybe home isn’t there any longer. We are an impatient and rebellious people, Llian, and it gets us into trouble. I’m afraid for my country.”
“We’ll soon be there.”
“I can’t bear it,” Karan said mournfully. “I hope Shand is in Tullin. I miss him.”
This was a different Karan again, one who shrank from difficulties. The return to Meldorin had brought back problems over which she had no control; could have no control. And as well, though she said nothing to Llian, last night she had felt again the touch of those dreams that had so troubled her before the death of Selial. What did Rulke want with her now? Yet she was not really surprised. Ever since the Night-land she had been expecting him to appear. A part of her seemed to be looking on, half in awe, half in horror, at what must come. The beggar’s curse was just another brick added to the load.
At first it had just been a touch, a fleeting presence, as though Rulke was checking on her. Reminding himself that she existed, and that he had a power over her.
And perhaps that was another reason for her reluctance. With every step of their journey she felt that they were coming closer to him, returning to his domain. And every night after that her dreams were stronger, more immediate, more real.
25
* * *
DREAMSCAPES
Four days later they were laboring up the track to Tullin through unseasonably heavy snows. “I wonder what we’ll find there,” said Llian, warming his hands in his armpits. “How has it survived the war?”
Karan was too immersed in her own worries to reply. They turned around the angle of the ridge and there stood Tullin, embedded in its dimple near the top of the hill, looking exactly as it had done the year before, save that the snow was deeper. The chimneys of the inn were smoking merrily.
“I like Tullin,” said Llian. “I’ve looked forward to coming back for ages. Better pray for good weather though—we can afford one night only.”
“I hope Shand is here,” said Karan.
They squelched up the path. She thrust open the heavy door of the inn and put her head into the great bar room, where the fire blazed. There were several people at the bar, locals with leathery skin and slow voices. Behind the counter was a shy, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl that she recognized as a daughter of the house.
Karan went across to the fire, nodding to the customers. Though she had been here a number of times and knew the innkeeper and his family, recent events had shaken her confidence and she could barely find the strength to talk to people. She stood at the fire for a long minute, warming her fingers at the flames, then took a deep breath and turned around. To her discomfort Llian had not followed her in, but she took her courage in her hands, went up to the bar and said hello.
Llian had gone straight on, through the kitchen and down the stony path to the woodheap. Someone was chopping wood. He half-expected it to be Shand, but coming around the pile he found that it was the innkeeper. Torgen looked up, frowned momentarily then smiled.
“Llian of Chanthed!” he said, rubbing a flattened nose. “Llian the exile! Though perhaps I am presumptuous, since Chanthed is where you’ve come from. You were here a year ago, before the war. We saw you coming up the road.” Putting down the axe, he shook Llian’s hand.
Llian was pleased to be remembered, though doubtless he had been spoken about more than once, and it was an innkeeper’s duty to remember his customers.
“You went in rather a hurry the last time,” Torgen reflected.
“Oh!” said Llian, suddenly worrying about things long forgotten. “I trust the coin I left was enough.”
The innkeeper laughed. “Judged to a nicety, if I recall. But I was not alluding to that. I trust your affairs are in better order than they were then?”
Innkeepers also tended to want to know the business of their customers. “They are well enough,” Llian said. “I see that the war has passed Tullin by.”
Torgen had picked up his axe but now he laid it down again. “Not completely. The fighting didn’t get this far, but Yggur’s soldiers did, and your friends the Whelm came back last spring. I gather they have a different name now. The soldiers terrorized us for a day or two. The Whelm found nothing either—what is there to find in Tullin? We’ve been losing people for years, but since the war we’ve regained them, and more, fleeing from Bannador and the east. There are more travelers on the roads than I have ever seen. Last summer we even had people sleeping in the stables. A good year for business; though I’d rather we had an ordinary year and no war. Still, that’s the way of it in Tullin. People come and people go, but we’re always here.”
“I’d hoped to find Shand back.”
“He went in mid-winter, at the beginning of the war. There was word of him in Thurkad, and he wrote to us from the north; some outlandish place I can’t remember. He said he might not be back for a year. But that’s Shand. We know him and we don’t worry. We miss him though.” Heaving a huge log onto his shoulder, Torgen headed up the path.
Llian stood reflecting for a moment, then stacked his arm with as much wood as he could carry and followed slowly. He dumped the wood in the box near the kitchen stove and hurried down for another load, catching the innkeeper just before the woodheap.
“I have more recent news of Shand, if you would like to hear it. He left us in Flude at the end of summer.”
“Flude? That must be a foreign place, I dare say.”
To the folk of Tullin even Chanthed was a foreign place, so Llian took no account of that.
“Very foreign! Flude is nigh on three hundred leagues away as the wind blows, on the great island of Faranda.”
Torgen blanched as if Llian was talking about the dark face of the moon. “Well, you’re alive to tell about it, so maybe it isn’t quite as deadly as the tales say. Still, you’d know all about that. You can tell your story after dinner. Everyone will want to know what old Shand is up to. And if it’s good enough, maybe I won’t charge you for your bed. Now, that reminds me of something. Oh yes! The last time you were here you were looking for a woman lost in the snow…”
He paused so long that Llian could almost hear the gears creaking in his brain. “I found her,” Llian said, “but that tale would take a fortnight. Still, I have plenty of others.”
Thus far he had told his tale to no one (excepting at Chanthed, but that was his chronicler’s duty), respecting Mendark’s demand that the matter be kept secret. But he missed telling very much and was delighted to be asked. There were plenty of sto
ries about Shand that would cause no damage. He would give them the best tale that had ever been heard in Tullin. He needed to, else they would depart penniless.
As they carried their loads, another thought occurred to Llian. “How long has Shand been here?”
“As long as I can remember. He was here when I was a boy, when my grandfather kept the inn. He’s always been here.”
“But where did he come from before that?”
The innkeeper gave him an enigmatic smile. “Don’t know as how Shand would want me to talk about his affairs,” he said, and picked up his axe in a dismissing way.
Llian gathered another load of wood and went back inside. Winter was already setting in up here, a month earlier than last year. Even in Chanthed there had been a few flurries of snow, but here it was thick and deep, and the road that wound its way west down the mountain to Hetchet was already closed by deep drifts. No one had come that way for weeks.
“Shand isn’t here,” he said to Karan, after dumping his load of wood beside the fire.
“I know.” She was sitting at a table by herself, staring at the flames. The other customers, after a brief hello, had realized that she was not in the mood for chatter and had gone back to their drinks and their gossip.
“Are you upset?”
“I knew he wouldn’t be,” she said without expression. After a stiff silence, Llian took their packs upstairs then wandered over to the counter.
Karan was not thinking about Shand at all, though she had been disappointed to learn that he was not here. Since meeting the beggar she had been feeling jumpy and the further up the mountain they went the more uneasy she had become. The mystery in the library was another part of it. She had many memories tied up in this place, or at least its neighborhood: her first meeting with Llian; but one of her worst nightmares too, the climax of the weeks she had been hunted by the Whelm.
But that was then, history. Now was different, not only because they were close to Shazmak and the Ghâshâd, but for another reason that she could not articulate, a foreboding that grew ever stronger. The terror she had succumbed to in the Nightland was coming back; a dread that she could not fight against, that induced blind panic in her, that had made her abandon Llian there. Karan was afraid that she would do the same again. She felt as if she was losing control of herself once more.
What had happened to the indomitable will that had driven her halfway across Meldorin? It was not there anymore. Since Chanthed she had come to dread the nights, and Llian was no help at all. After his success at the college he was quite caught up in his Histories again. She had never seen him look so contented.
Karan watched him go, hurt that he had not sensed what she was going through. How could he have escaped from the Nightland unscathed while she was put to such torment? He went up to the group at the counter—a deliciously plump and pretty woman of middle age called Maya (the wife of the innkeeper), her even prettier daughter and two customers with their backs to her.
Soon Llian was the center of attention. He was telling a yarn, smiling and waving his arms in the air. Everyone at the bar burst out laughing. The young woman ladled hot wine into bowls and sprinkled green and yellow herbs on top, as was the custom here in the autumn. Llian carried his bowl in one hand, inclined his head to his companions, took a long and noisy sip and said something that made the others roar with laughter. Maya, who had started to the other end of the counter to serve another customer, looked back then moved away reluctantly. Others drifted across and soon most of the inn surrounded Llian, laughing gaily as if they had known each other for years. The shy daughter was staring at him, but each time he caught her eye she looked away and blushed. The poor girl was smitten.
Karan felt lonely, quite left out, one part of her wanting to join in, the other contemptuous of their levity when the world was in such a state. Drinkers! she thought with disgust, looking down at her own bowl. She loved proper wine, the rich purple vintage from the lowlands of Iagador, but this stuff was thin and sour. Moreover the herbs gave it a floral taste which clashed violently with the other flavors.
She took another small sip, gagged, surreptitiously spat it back into the bowl and pushed it to one side. Looking up she saw that Llian’s eyes, and the eyes of everyone else at the counter, were on her. One of the men nudged his companions and laughed, and the others echoed him. As Llian turned away she saw that even he was smiling. Karan knew that it might have been anything that amused them, yet she felt her cheeks grow hot, sure that they were laughing at her. Abruptly she got up and, storming upstairs, threw all of Llian’s things out into the corridor. Bolting the door she crept into bed, pulled the covers around her neck and lay there, brooding.
So reluctantly had she entered into this relationship with Llian. His every approach she had rebuffed, not because she hadn’t cared for him, but rather that she’d cared for him too much, and the wrong way. She had idolized Llian the great teller, but Llian the man, when she finally met him, had been another thing entirely—clumsy, foolish and quite ill-at-ease with life outside his college. She had derided and maligned him at every opportunity, but it had done no good. Even his stupidities in Shazmak, almost a year ago, had not been able to turn her off him. Her reaction then had been all the more violent because of what she felt for him.
She lay staring up at the smoky ceiling boards, smoldering. A long-legged brown spider was repairing a web that ran from the ceiling across to the fireplace. She watched it moodily.
But what did Llian feel for her? He had gone beyond himself for her on that terrible journey to Sith, and in Thurkad too. When first she heard his voice through the wall at Katazza, and touched his hand with her own, she could have died of bliss. But the past few days had renewed the barrier between them that had been built by her failure in the Night-land, and his dealings there, whatever they were. She felt miserable, lonely and afraid.
Pinching the lamp out, Karan lay in the darkness watching the firelight flicker on the wall. Occasionally there was a roar from downstairs, doubtless the vulgar guffawing at one of Llian’s more uncouth stories. She dozed, woke, put more wood on the fire, dozed again.
Karan was woken suddenly from a restless sleep by the door rattling. It was Llian, heaving at the latch. The fire had burned low again—it must be well after the middle of the night. He didn’t seem to understand that he was locked out. Seemed to think that the door was stuck; seemed to find it funny. He gave the door a thump and fell down with another roar of laughter. This would probably go on all night if she didn’t do something.
Jumping out of bed, she stormed to the door and pulled it open. Gathering all her misery and frustration, Karan flung it at him.
“Go away, you disgusting drunken pig!” She slammed the door in his face and crept back into bed.
The anger was gone. She felt terribly sad. She should go out straight away and set it right before a little problem turned into a big one. She must, before it was too late. But she could not; did not.
Karan’s words had little impact on Llian, but the cold ferocity with which they were offered did. She’d always had an ability to strike him dumb with her anger, and this time she had tried harder than usual. He scrambled to his hands and knees, his good humor evaporating. In truth he was hardly drunk at all, just euphoric with the success of his tale. Gathering his scattered goods he went quietly into the next room, which he found to be empty. It was so cold that he got into bed fully dressed.
He was used to Karan’s moods and her need for solitude; more used than she was to his need of people and boisterous company. Even so, she could hurt him. He knew part of the reason for her anger, but he was innocent; they had not been laughing at her at all. Still, her temper was violent but soon over.
There was no fire and no quilt on the bed, just two threadbare blankets. He clutched them about him, lying fully awake in the cold night, suddenly realizing that he was waiting for something to happen. The wind had come up. The shutter near his head rattled once or twice. The wheel t
urns, he thought, remembering the night in Tullin a year ago when Karan had cried for help in a sending. It could have been this very room. Yes, it was: the fourth on the right, at the top of the stair. The wind had rattled the shutters that night too, though then there had been rain followed by snow. Tonight, just snow.
Llian felt the presentiment strongly now, and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Something was building up. Was it Rulke, or just Llian’s own pattern-obsessed mind making recurrence out of no more than chance?
The shutters rattled again and for a moment he imagined himself back a year, dozing in his room. He could almost hear the slow crackle of the fire, the rain on the roof, the slow dripping on the hearth. How naive he had been then. He looked back to that time, that Llian, remaking the night from his perfect memory of it as if rehearsing the events for a telling. Recreating his own frame of mind, that callow young man he had been a year ago, so full of himself and his heroic fancies. Reality was colder, dirtier, more brutal and totally unforgiving. What a crass, vain dreamer he had been. He dozed.
Suddenly the fire was crackling, slowly dying on the hearth. There was a downpour on the roof. It was as real as a year ago; it was! And what was that rhythmical, rising and falling tone in his head? Was Karan trying to send to him, again?
In the next room Karan slept uneasily. She was dreaming, and perhaps something of Llian’s year-ago dream passed back to her, touching that link she had made between them long ago in Shazmak. The night’s duress had woken it again. She dreamed herself into his mind-meanderings and was shocked to find herself alone on that cold mountainside of a year past, in the wind and the rain.
Her camp was a knife-edged ridge, falling sheer to the right, steeply to the left, and rising up just as steeply before her to the plateau and the ruins she was making for. While the moon was out she’d felt that she hung on a spire that touched the vault of the sky, a dizzying, awesome feeling, but the thick clouds quickly covered it again and she clung to the topmast of a ship in a storm, tossed one way then the other in the darkness.
