by Ian Irvine
“Karan,” Llian said. “I’m so sorry. I’m…”
She had pawned her beautiful chain for nothing. Karan struck his arm to one side and turned her back on him, rigid as a poker. Llian dropped his hand, his face went blank and the guards led him away.
No meeting was held that day, but the hours went quickly, for many old faces were there. Old friends, and old adversaries.
Tallia appeared, tall and elegant, looking as though she had just risen from her bath. She showed not a sign of the journey to the east, spanning half a year, save that her face and arms were a little darker and she walked with a slight limp. Tensor was carried in on his litter, escorted by Basitor and laughing Asper, whose spiky hair was now cut short. Tensor looked even more wasted than he had when they’d parted in Thripsi at the end of summer.
Tallia saw Karan through the crowd and hurried across, but she had barely said a cheerful hello when Karan’s eye was caught by a couple entering the Council room, a tall old man—an ancient man—and at his side a small slender girl with a long face and shining silvery hair. To Karan’s amazement, for Tallia’s manners were normally impeccable, she broke off in mid-word and literally ran across the crowded room.
Tallia picked up the girl, whirled her around, then crushed her in her arms. She took the withered hand of the old man in her own hands and brought it to her lips.
“What…?” said Karan to Shand, but he was already barging along in Tallia’s wake.
“Karan, Shand,” said Tallia, beaming. “Meet my most special friend Lilis; and here is Nadiril of the Great Library. Of course you know Nadiril, Shand. Lilis, this is Shand and Karan. They are my friends too.”
“I am very pleased to meet you,” Lilis said in a high voice. She had quite lost the urchin squeak of a year ago. Now she was self-assured, on the verge of womanhood. “Tallia often spoke about you on the way to Zile. And Mister Shand, I know you’re my teacher’s friend so I’m sure you will be my friend too.”
Shand laughed. Her joy was infectious. “I’m sure I will, Lilis.” He shook her hand.
Lilis turned to Karan who was hanging back, feeling shy, especially at meeting the great Nadiril.
“Hello,” said Lilis. “I’ve seen you before, after the Conclave. I was jealous of you, for you were Llian’s friend.”
Karan was disarmed. You wouldn’t be jealous of me now, she thought, then put her bitterness down deep where it could do no harm. She laughed and embraced the child. “Well, we have something in common,” she said.
“It’s all right! I never had a proper friend before. Now I have lots. But I am rude. Karan, please meet my teacher, Nadiril. He has been very kind to me.”
Nadiril smiled his wispy smile and held out a fleshless claw. His hand felt like Selial’s had, just before she died, but Nadiril did not look at all defeated.
“Karan Elienor Melluselde Fyrn, of Gothryme in Bannador.” His voice was a whisper, and he creaked when he bent down to her. “There are so many tales about you. And I knew your father. We shall sit down together later on and you will tell me everything.”
“Yes,” said Karan, inhibited by his height, venerability and reputation.
“Now, I must know, is Llian here?”
Karan and Shand exchanged glances. “He is,” said Shand.
“Yes, yes!” cried Lilis. “Where is my friend Llian?”
“Shall I lift you onto my shoulders so you can look for him?” wheezed Nadiril. “No, perhaps you are getting a bit old for that.”
Shand lowered his voice. “I must tell you, and you too, Tallia, that Llian is in grave trouble. I am sure that he had dealings with Rulke in the Nightland and is now his creature, body and soul.”
“What? What?” cried Lilis, who had not caught what was said.
Nadiril put his hand on Lilis’s arm and she stopped at once. “A very grave accusation,” he whispered. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Shand looked taken aback. “Well, we can talk it through later on. You may see Llian yourself and ask him what you will.”
“I shall,” said Nadiril, “and now I’m afraid I must pay my respects to the great, and take my seat at the Council table. Lilis, I must leave you for the time, but I know you are among friends. Tallia,” he said with more than a little pride, “ask her what you will, and you will be astounded. What a student!”
Karan was immensely relieved at Nadiril’s words. Believing Shand had always aroused a conflict in her. She resolved to re-establish that strange dream-link she’d made to Llian before her trial in Shazmak, just to keep watch over him without his knowing.
Nadiril creaked his way forward to the main table where the dignitaries were already assembling, though only for a ceremonial meeting. The real business would not begin until tomorrow.
Shand led the others to a lower table, and had just begun to pour drinks when Osseion and Pender came through the door together. Osseion was unchanged, though Pender looked to have lost weight.
Lilis clapped her hands in sheer happiness. “Oh, this is perfect,” she said. “I have all my friends together at…” Then she broke off, staring through the doorway.
Karan felt goosepimples break out all down her back and arms, though she could not see what Lilis was looking at.
Lilis took a little step forward. Her drinking bowl fell to the floor and smashed.
“Oh!” she said, her long face tight as a drum.
A small man appeared in the doorway. Platinum hair cascaded over his shoulders. His face was long and narrow, the skin stretched tight across cheeks that were pink, freshly scrubbed. The way he stared at Lilis, there might have been no one else in the room.
“Lilis? Is it you?” he said softly.
“Jevi,” she whispered. “Jevi!” she shrieked, raced across the room and flung herself into his arms like a little silver-haired bullet.
He staggered back under the impact. “Lilis,” he whispered. “Just look at you. There has not been a day in the last eight years that I have not thought of you. But I never thought…”
“My Jevi, you came back for me. I knew you would! Every night I said a prayer for you, and every morning I tried to think of a way to find you again.”
“I did not think to find you so grown up. Why, you are almost a woman.”
“I am,” she said proudly. “And one day I will be a librarian. How did you find me here?”
“Your friends found me, Osseion and Tallia and Pender, and got me free. You are the luckiest girl in the world. And now that I have my Lilis back I could die of happiness.”
For once Lilis had nothing to say at all, but the sun shining out of her face told the whole story.
38
* * *
THE BOOK
Maigraith rose, ate a frugal breakfast then walked up-stream through a dawn drenched with mist. She was thinking about the art and science of gates. As Tensor’s original gate had been made from metal and stone, materials that the Aachim were supremely comfortable with, so Faelamor’s was rooted in the natural environment so beloved of the Faellem, the fount of their strength and their soul.
But the Faellem were not makers of machines, and were forbidden to use magical devices at all, so Faelamor was constrained both by inexperience and by the prohibition. She had used a chip of stone from Tensor’s original gate in Katazza to spark her own to life. Like calls to like, she had said.
A woven ladder hung down from the tree on this side of the river. Maigraith climbed up. The platform swayed beneath her but the chip of stone was not there. Looking down into the rushing river, she knew why the return had gone so wrong. The stone, the focus, must have fallen into the river on their departure, and Faelamor was so inexpert that she had brought them back to the focus rather than to the gate. Maigraith tested the ropes, bouncing on the platform until waves ran across it. This is Faelamor’s creature, she thought. I don’t like it.
She set to work on the gate, pulling it apart and remaking it, but finally realized that there was still too muc
h of Faelamor in it. She cut it down and it fell into the river, where the current hung it over the rapids further down. Shortly it tore free, tumbling out of sight. Just at that moment Faelamor appeared.
“You couldn’t make it work!” she said, critical as always, but her shoulders were slumped.
“It’s not mine! I have to make my own,” Maigraith shouted.
“There’s no time!” Faelamor screamed.
Turning her back, Maigraith set off upriver.
All morning she wandered, not knowing what she sought, only that it must be the right place and she would recognize it when she found it. Upstream the gorge narrowed progressively until there was just a narrow strip of forest between dark cliffs of limestone, stained red and black by seeping iron. As she squeezed between two ironstone boulders shaped like spires, the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Looking left, Maigraith saw a vertical slit in the cliff, a cave where a fault had wrenched the rock apart. To her right the river raced through a channel cut in rock. Leaf-filtered sunlight made lozenge patterns on the ground. This was a good place for her.
Maigraith put her ear to one of the ironstones, trying to tune herself to the structure as she would to a pebble from which she planned to make a lightglass from. She would not shape this rock, or the other—no time for that—but she sensed out its mineral essence and set to work.
Carefully selecting a pebble from the river, she took a chip from the top of one ironstone and the base of another, and a piece from the rock of the cave mouth. Squatting between the stones, Maigraith chipped away at her four pieces of rock until they were roughly shaped, four quarters of an egg. She smoothed the pieces until the quarters fitted together perfectly, singing the essence of the stones as she did so. The task took all day and part of the next, but she worked patiently, humming to herself, shaping and testing, smoothing and retesting.
Faelamor came and went, chafing at the delay and increasingly wasp-tongued. Maigraith ignored her. Finally she laid the egg aside in its pieces, pulled the basket of silver wire off one of her lightglasses and wove it into a thread which she passed through the four stones, drew tight and fastened them together as one. She warmed the stone egg in her hands and envisaged the four components of her gate—the river bed cut into rock, the pudenda-like cave mouth, the twin spires of ironstone.
Momentarily the egg wobbled in her fingers then lit up like a lightglass. Maigraith moved it between the spires and felt her hair drawn out toward the stones on either side. I can do it! she thought.
She did not tell Faelamor that it was ready. Nor did she feel the need to test her gate in any way. She stood between the stones, staring into the middle distance, at the rushing water not far away, feeling the opening behind her as if it lived and breathed. It felt very peaceful here. She clenched her hands around the egg, then swung them back and forth like a pendulum between the two ironstones. Maigraith had always had a feeling for stone and was sure that she could call what she needed from these. It felt like home here.
The short day faded; mist began to rise up from the river. Her hands glowed red and black. She conjured the most vital image of Havissard into her mind—the bedchamber where she had found the silver stylus and the piece of paper with the mysterious name—Aeolior! She worked through the procedures that Faelamor had shown her so reluctantly: the making of the gate, the way to control the gate. They were as clear as if they had been carved into the stones.
I can make this gate work! She focused on Havissard and tried to bring the gate to life. Nothing happened. It was no more than its individual components, half-seen through the mist.
What’s wrong? Maigraith began again. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. She went through the process once more, but again it was lifeless; not even the hint of a gate. Maybe I’m trying too hard.
Maigraith went back to her rhythmic swaying as the mist rose and the light faded.
Faelamor appeared, glaring at her. “You’ve failed again!” Her face was blanched. She disappeared.
Maigraith let herself drift right into the dream.
I’ve been doing it the wrong way—Faelamor’s way—but of course that won’t work with my gate. I need something to draw a line between Havissard and here. Her small treasures, the silver stylus and the name, were still in the pocket of her coat, carefully wrapped. Taking out the stylus she held it tip upwards between her fingers, touching the stone. She recalled to mind the room that Faelamor had used as a landing place last time. No, that image was too crowded; she kept seeing Faelamor’s tormented face as she leapt back into the gate.
Maigraith focused on another place—Yalkara’s sleeping chamber. The stylus had lain there for centuries. That room was not tainted with Faelamor—all the fears and emotions associated with her would not rise up to choke off her abilities, as they had so many times before. Faelamor had saturated her with fear of failing.
Maigraith recalled to mind the way to control the gate. She squeezed the egg, rehearsing the procedures step by step. Ready! She closed her eyes. Yalkara’s bedchamber floated before her. Forcing down a momentary lack of confidence, she tried to open a gate. There was no dizziness, no shifting planes of reality, no feeling of movement at all. The image faded slowly from her mind. I’ve failed, Maigraith thought. That’s all I know about gates. It isn’t easy at all. How I sneered at Faelamor.
Then she noticed how warm it was. The air was warm and dusty. She sneezed. Opening her eyes she found that she was in pitch darkness. Havissard! I’ve done it! The transfer had been so clean that she had not even felt a bump as she arrived.
Maigraith put away the egg and the stylus, feeling in her pocket for a lightglass. The one she fished out, she was pleased to discover, was her favorite. It was formed from a single red-brown garnet the size of a small egg, perfect save for one tiny flaw. She had used that flaw to pass a silver thread into the heart of the crystal. The light was a redbrown glow that suited her mood.
The light showed Yalkara’s bedchamber, just as she had left it. Havissard was hers to explore for as long as she cared to. At least, Maigraith recalled, as long as she could go without food, for she had brought none with her. She could do what she wanted now; she need never go back at all. Faelamor could not reach her here!
The bedchamber was a dark room—walls, carpet and furniture. The red-brown light from the globe seemed to sink into the walls and disappear. She touched it to more light, but still her eyes strained. Memory told her that it had been brighter in here before. She found a globe above the door and fetched from it a brighter light, white and yellow. She was surprised that it worked. The floor was quite dusty and their footmarks could clearly be seen: Faelamor’s little prints passing through, her slightly larger ones going back and forth, the mark of one knee beside the bed.
For the rest of the day (was it day or night here?—she had no idea of the time) she wandered through the halls and rooms of Havissard. She found many things to interest her, for the place was exactly as it had been abandoned. Every cup and spoon remained, every bed and bedcover, every tapestry, every kitchen implement. Even the food survived in the storerooms, though that was long past use, save perhaps for dried-up stuff that she was not hungry enough to try. But somehow she was disappointed. Something was lacking. I expected too much of Havissard. For all the way it calls to me, it’s still just an empty place full of old things. Something is lacking, but in me!
Shaking herself, Maigraith headed to the library for the book. She found trackmarks in the dust, a chip from a light-glass, a man’s bootprints going right up to Faelamor’s bench. There was no other sign of Mendark. Half the day she spent in the library, just looking through the unreadable journals, dreaming. Some were illustrated with sketches, mostly of buildings, ruins and landscapes. They all looked strange. Aachan was a forbidding, inhospitable place, with its black flowers and organic buildings, its mountains like broken glass stuck on top of a wall. But somehow appealing.
Maigraith enjoyed the time in the library most of all, until s
he recalled to mind the way Faelamor had looked as she examined the smaller book. She could still see her horrified face. Whatever had upset her, she had found it in the book. There was an empty space on the shelves but the small book was nowhere to be found, and she lost Mendark’s tracks in a part of Havissard where there was no dust at all.
Maigraith was famished, and she had given her word to Faelamor. If she was to abandon her it would be to her face. She headed back.
To her exhilaration the return was almost as effortless as the coming. Maigraith was now pleased that Faelamor had forced her, as glad as she had been to be pushed by Vanhe. She had learned a completely new skill, all the more precious because Faelamor could never master it. Another step on the road to her new life.
She emerged from the gate between the ironstones, hipheight above the ground. The air popped and she fell the short distance, landing on her knees. It was dark, past midnight. She had been away for more than a day. Suddenly exhausted, she trudged downstream to the camp, threw off all but her shirt then crawled into her shelter. Weariness battled with hunger and won; Maigraith slept.
Faelamor appeared soon after. She squatted in the mouth of the tent, watching Maigraith sleep. Putting out a hand, Faelamor stroked Maigraith’s brow, then drew back her hand. Maigraith, Maigraith, I care for you more than you can ever know. I’m a monster, it’s true, and I’ve treated you worst of all. But duty must come first. She bowed her head and withdrew.
Faelamor shook her awake at dawn. “Where is the book?” she hissed right in Maigraith’s ear.
Maigraith, jerked awake, rubbed her ear. “It wasn’t there.”
