by Ian Irvine
For a long time after their arrival, reality shivered like ripples on a pond. Faelamor was as blanched as the white of an egg, here in the stronghold of her ancient enemy, but Maigraith was exhilarated.
“Havissard must have been locked on Yalkara’s departure,” said Faelamor. “Even as the Mirror was, protected against all. Maybe the protection has decayed enough to let the gate open here.”
Another burst of unreality shook the walls—for a moment they were in no-time, no-place. There was no Havissard at all, or else they were in a time where it had long fallen into ruin. Waves of transparency passed through the structure, showing them other ages of Havissard: a time when the workers swarmed out of the silver mines; a time when Tar Gaarn was being built. Once, eons ago, when there was nothing here but hillsides clothed in forest, and rock faces over which waterfalls roared, and panthers stalking goats across the slopes of the mountain. Then all around broke a wild, uncontrolled reality that frightened them both, shook them in their ordered, orderly minds. Time and space quivered, they saw what mad ones saw, it quivered again and Havissard was restored.
The place was old, dusty, plain: stone floors, black or steel-blue; bare save for small carpets. Stone walls, gray or the blue of ice. Here an exquisite small tapestry, there an engraving on the stone. Lower, an artwork done in metal threads, a galloping horse, just gray and blue and white.
Maigraith reached up to a lightstrip on the wall. To her surprise it lit up all the way along the corridor. Down this corridor they went, then descended a long flight of stairs. Neither spoke. Maigraith felt disoriented, as if the gate had twisted her brain around in its case. The long bones of her legs and arms ached.
Halfway down, reality shivered again, but this time differently. An urgent, alarming wrench passed through the four dimensions. Maigraith felt violated. She lost her balance and fell the last three steps onto the floor, holding her middle. All the lights went out. Faelamor abruptly sat down on the step to avoid falling. She lifted the globe high and stared at Maigraith. The golden motes swam in her eyes.
“What was that?” she whispered, wide-eyed.
Back in Elludore, the platform was flung upwards and sideways by the violence and imbalance of Maigraith’s departure, warped by her straining to maintain the gate against the strangeness of Havissard. Then it settled back into its former place, but the piece of stone that Faelamor had carried all the way from Katazza, the anchor for the gate, was gone, falling slowly through the humid air into the current.
32
* * *
AEOLIOR
It felt like someone trying to get in,” Maigraith said. She did not know how she knew that, or why she said it, but she did.
Faelamor reached up to the lightstrip again but it was dead. She shivered.
Maigraith knew what was the matter. Here in the citadel of her enemy, Faelamor was afraid. Though Yalkara was hundreds of years gone, Faelamor still feared her! Maigraith took a secret pleasure from that. She was not afraid, not in the least. She had no idea why, but she felt very comfortable with this place.
“I’m worn out,” said Faelamor. “The passage has drained me dry.” The gate had wracked her, forbidden device that it was.
They could not get the lights to work again. Maigraith brought out another of her lightglasses, one made of marble which emitted a pale green light. It suited her complexion, but Faelamor looked ghastly. They ate fruit and bread from Maigraith’s pack.
“I can’t suffer this now,” Faelamor said. Gritting her teeth, she struck herself with one clenched fist. Her eyes rolled sideways in her head. A thread of saliva dribbled out her open mouth, down her chin.
She spent a minute in that state, while Maigraith stared in consternation, then Faelamor’s eyes rolled back and she gasped a breath. She wiped her chin, looking better.
“You have overcome aftersickness?” Maigraith wondered, intrigued.
“I forced it back down like vomit. But like vomit, when it comes up again it will be twice as bad. Come on. We have to find something hidden here. I don’t know where. We’ll start with her workrooms, her library and her…” she struggled to think of the word “… personal chamber.”
“You mean her bedroom?”
“Accursed tongue—yes, her bedroom,” she said furiously.
Maigraith decided to pressure Faelamor a little more. “How did it go, your last battle with Yalkara?”
“I have no wish to relive it,” said Faelamor in a sulky voice, though she had thought about little else since they arrived. She meant that she could not bear to have her failure so exposed. Especially not here. But after a long pause she spoke.
“I don’t know how it began, only that it was a long time ago, not long after Yalkara came to Santhenar. So long!” She rubbed a dusty hand across her brow. “As soon as we met, it was as if we each saw in the other a lifelong enemy. I was afraid, something I never felt from the other Charon, not even Rulke. They were but opportunistic enemies, opposing me as I opposed their ends. But Yalkara had come here with a purpose, and a great part of that purpose was me. She came to oppose me; to hinder and delay me; to frustrate my ambitions and hopes. Why? Why was she appointed my nemesis?” Faelamor shuddered and broke off abruptly. “Let’s get on!”
They continued down the passage, Maigraith leading, walking wherever her intuition led her, enjoying the reversal of roles for as long as it would last. For the moment Faelamor was content to follow, although occasionally she suggested another way.
“What have we come for?” Maigraith wondered that afternoon, beginning to understand how Karan must have felt when they broke into Fiz Gorgo last autumn, after being kept in the dark for so long.
“I learned something in my travels, a dangerous secret. My guess it that it is hidden here somewhere.”
“Learned what?”
Faelamor’s green eyes flashed red in the light. “I don’t know what! I just know that Yalkara hid something here—a precious, deadly thing. She must have left it for some future need, otherwise why would the place require such strong protections? I hope that I’ll recognize it when I find it”
So be it, Maigraith thought. I’ll play your game. The longer we spend here the happier I’ll be. She wandered off by herself, curious to see what Yalkara’s domain had been like, fascinated by everything she saw.
“And that bears on another matter,” Faelamor said when they were together again. “This is a lesson for you, and a test; perhaps your greatest before the final one. The one that will free you.”
She said this with no particular emphasis, only a fleeting glance at Maigraith, but Maigraith felt a sudden chill, a clawing of pain and terror, a feeling that she stood alone at the entrance of a funnel-shaped well of light, guarding it against a horde that flooded up, snapping and slashing at her. She was very alone and there was no hope. But that feeling passed as quickly as it came, then Faelamor led the way down another corridor.
It was the following morning before they found the first of the places Faelamor was looking for. This was a broad, high room with simple ornamentation on frieze and cornice and architrave, once Yalkara’s bedchamber. There was a bed of black steel and brass, very broad and long, with a high head and foot. On either side of the bedhead stood an ebony cupboard; small silken tapestries decorated the mostly bare walls, alien worldscapes in muted colors. A dusty carpet covered the central part of the floor. A door at one end led to a dressing room, and beyond was a bathing room with a square tub as big as the bed. Everything was beautifully made but austere.
Havissard must have been sealed at the moment of Yalkara’s departure, for precious things sat everywhere, untouched. And abandoned without haste, for all was orderly, left in readiness for the next owner.
Faelamor’s face was forbidding. She gave the room one hostile glance and went into the dressing room. What personal things would the great Yalkara have kept beside her? Maigraith wondered. She opened the door of the cupboard on the righthand side of the bed. There was a drawer b
elow, compartments of varying sizes above, but all were empty. The other cupboard was the same. She found a writing tablet in the drawer, a stylus lying neatly on top and a loosely rolled scroll.
She took out the scroll. It was a small one, and on it were several columns of writing in indigo ink, but she knew neither the language nor the script. She put it back. The tablet was thick paper, the kind for drawing on, and neither brittle nor yellowed, even after all these years. The stylus was made of ebony with gold bands. It had a silver tip, soft silver that was sometimes used for writing in ancient times. At the back of the drawer she found all that remained of a piece of fruit—a scatter of small round seeds, withered like peppercorns, a woody piece of stalk, scraps of desiccated rind.
The stylus was a simple, beautiful thing. She weighed it in her hand. It was very heavy. If Yalkara wrote with it, Maigraith reasoned, she would have had to press hard, to mark the paper with silver metal. What was the last thing she wrote? Something of importance, or utterly trivial? It seemed important that she know something about Yalkara, most enigmatic of all the Charon. Maigraith held the tablet at a shallow angle to the light and saw slight depressions there. Faelamor was still out of sight.
Sprinkling dust over the page, she tapped the excess away. Falling dust twinkled in the light. Dust on the paper revealed what seemed to be a single word. What was it? Something lior. Aeolior! Just the word, written near the top of the tablet, as if it had been on Yalkara’s mind. Perhaps written absently, for it was surrounded with patterns. As though she had sat for a moment, dreaming.
Aeolior! The very sound of it set up a reverberation in Maigraith’s mind. But the name—it was a name, surely—meant nothing. A place or a person? Aeolior. It cried out to her. And it was something that Faelamor did not know about. Maigraith did not want her to find out.
A footfall sounded in the bathing room. Maigraith tore the sheet from the tablet, folded it below the name and put it carefully in her pack.
“Here is something,” she said, going over to the door to meet Faelamor, showing her the scroll and the tablet.
Faelamor glanced at them absently, unrolled the scroll, frowning, somewhere else, then handed them back.
“There’s nothing here,” she said, and led the way out and down.
They found the library soon after, a large room that was L-shaped and shelved with books from floor to ceiling. “It’s not here either!” said Faelamor from the door. Frustration and fear made her more irritable than usual.
On impulse Maigraith went inside, and Faelamor did not restrain her. Most of the books looked the same, large journals all of a size and bound alike. The symbols on the spines might have been numerals, but Maigraith did not recognize them. The books appeared to be in a sequence, as year journals might have been, and the ones furthest to the right and highest were worn and battered.
“Of course Yalkara would have kept the Histories,” said Faelamor, following her in. She took a volume down at random from a middle shelf and opened it at the front, turning the pages idly. “The Charon script, as you would expect. No one can read it.” She walked along the rows. All the others were the same, except for the very last and, presumably, latest volume. It was smaller, not half the size of the others, and slimmer too. She opened it.
The script was unusual—a curved, glyphic hand, quickly written, that scratched at Faelamor’s memory. No, the thought was lost.
“Not the Charon script,” she said. “Why not? Why would she write in a less secure hand?”
“Perhaps she did not want the Charon to be able to read it,” Maigraith replied. “But she must have wanted someone to. Why does anyone write the Histories, other than for posterity?” Maigraith took another book down, this from among the earliest. It had been rebound at some time, for the pages were smaller and the writing came up to the binding. “See, this one is in the Charon script too.”
There was nothing else in the room save, in the center, a small leopard-wood desk and stool. Carrying her volume over to the desk, Maigraith wiped it clean with the hem of her coat. She sat down on the high stool, turning the pages with one hand while she held the globe up with the other. There were no diagrams, drawings or even doodles. Just page after page of writing and some marks along the top. Dates perhaps. She took it back and got another.
A sixth sense, which came and went in waves in this awful place, told Faelamor that what she sought was nearby. Perhaps related to this sense, the aftersickness was returning. If she didn’t find what she was looking for soon, she never would.
While Maigraith browsed, Faelamor went to check the rooms further up the corridor. Her intuition was working strongly now—she found that she could envision what was beyond the other side of each door before she opened it. She did not go far. Outside one door, the fifth, she stopped abruptly.
Something was hidden here, in this nest of storerooms and pantries! She set out methodically to find it. In the back of a larder she came upon a number of secret compartments, but did not bother with them. She knew that what she wanted was not there.
She spent frustrating, teasing hours among spice jars and cutlery drawers, and rooms full of cloths and linen carefully folded, but found nothing. Then, as she went through the further door she jumped and cried out. It felt that something soft but spiny had clamped itself to her back. She backed out—there it was again! There was something in the door, or the wall! She traced the surfaces with fingertips as sensitive as a safecracker’s. It was in the wall; and it had been concealed in haste, for the plasterwork was ever so slightly less perfect than elsewhere. She could just feel the edge of the new work.
Faelamor found tools, broke the plaster away, cut out the mortar between the stones and levered one out. In the cavity that was revealed she found a small lead box sealed with a charm. To break that hurt her cruelly. But she got the box open. The lid creaked up.
Inside were three pieces of golden jewelry: a heavy chain, a bracelet and a torc, all of red gold. She’d gone into the library at Chanthed looking for information about Yalkara, and the ancient drawings had shown her Yalkara’s jewelry, made of Aachan gold. She knew the value of it all too well.
Faelamor picked up the chain and received a shock that flung her through the doorway. She could not get up for quite some time afterwards. The skin of her fingers, where she had touched the metal, was swollen, bright red and crumpled up. A hideous prickling raced up and down her nerve pathways. No matter; she would find a way to handle this gold. She closed the lid of the box, put it in her bag and headed back to the library, very content. She had what she wanted.
As she reached the door, cramps doubled her over, just the merest forerunner of what was to come. Maigraith was still sitting at the desk going through the journals. Faelamor took up the slim volume again, peering at the strange script. She let out a muffled exclamation and Maigraith stuck her head around the corner. The gold must have heightened Faelamor’s sensitivities—the curiosity she’d felt about this script before was now a shout of alarm.
“It rings! It rings in my head like a klaxon.” Faelamor was talking to herself, walking back along the shelves of books, checking volumes at random. “These are all in the Charon script, but the last is no script that I’ve ever seen before, save on the Mirror! Yet now I feel that I ought to be able to read it. And I must; what I want will surely be in it.”
“Perhaps the chronicler can read it,” said Maigraith.
“Llian of Chanthed? Tensor’s pander?” she sneered. “I don’t think so!”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this is the one.” Faelamor held up the smaller volume. “I learned a lot from her in our last battle, for she was strangely weak, curiously sluggish then. Not at all like the other times.”
She continued browsing, idly picking out a book here and there and putting them back.
That preoccupation nearly proved her downfall, for suddenly the whole of existence shuddered again, only this time much more strongly. Be
ing a master illusionist, Faelamor understood the nature of reality better than any, but she found herself hard put to retain the image of the library in her mind. Everything shivered and shimmered; even solid things seemed not to know their state. The very act of looking at a thing appeared to change it. All the realities connected to that place appeared one after another: the slow drying of the land over eons; the soil rushing off the bare hills in storms, leaving them barren and rocky; the building and delving, from tiny huts of stone chinked with mud to tall towers and the superstructure of the mines; the randomness of human events, of events in that very room.
Even herself she saw there, in a distant age; and Yalkara, tall figure on her stool, writing in her journal. Head down so that her face could not be seen; a fall of dark hair. All the Charon were alike, in that manner. Then she was gone, the room empty again, dusty, still. So like, Faelamor thought, shaking with hot and cold chills.
At first Maigraith felt dizzy and had to close her eyes, though that had not stopped her head from spinning. But toward the end her whole body became tense with expectation, like the first part of a sneeze, and she opened her eyes and saw the woman. “Was that your enemy?” Maigraith cried.
“That was Yalkara.” Then, in a panicky rush: “Maigraith, someone’s inside. They’re coming this way!”
“How can that be? Havissard is protected.”
“It was, but we entered. Events are moving to a climacteric; Havissard is known to be a place of great secrets. Now that Tensor has let loose the secret of gates, others may also be using them. Perhaps someone entered the same way we did.”
“Or perhaps what we did let them in.”
“There’s no time to debate the matter!” Faelamor snapped. “Go back to the gate and prepare the way.”
“What about this intruder?”
“I’ll deal with it, once I know who it is.” She could not resist the impulse to lecture. “Observe! Learn your enemy’s capabilities! Then strike swiftly!”
