by Ian Irvine
“Perhaps you underestimate my powers, or my need. I forced you before!”
That showed a misunderstanding of what had happened that night above Narne, but she felt no need to correct him.
Silence. For a long time she thought of nothing, all of her feelings and fears turned inward. Rulke watched her without speaking. Briefly they heard shouting and a bright light drifted in the sky—another flare. Rulke was standing with his back to an embrasure and the light made a halo around his curling hair, so black that the glare caught the sides with the blue of oiled steel. His face lost all definition but his eyes glowed brighter than ever. Then the light faded.
For a moment she saw him clearly, every pore and lash, every scar and wrinkle, and was amazed to realize that, after all the slurs on him, he was noble. Such strength there was in his face; such power in his eyes; such clarity of vision. His eyes caught hers and she felt the power of his animal magnetism. Then he smiled, just a bare twitch of his lips, so that she caught a glimpse of white sharpness and was afraid that there was a predator within.
Rulke was watching Karan just as carefully. She looked little and young. On the human side she was of no great lineage, he was thinking, for he’d had the Ghâshâd find out about her. Just an old family, barely civilized by his standards, and prone to madness, as the one who’d built this pile had been. But her father went all the way back to Elienor herself. Yet there was a conundrum too. Where had her sensitive talents come from, especially her astounding ability to link? That was not an Aachim talent. It was scarcely credible that she should have such a talent at all, with that lineage.
Still, whatever the source, he knew of no other with the talent he had sensed in her in the Nightland. There might be others but it would be a long task seeking them out. He did not have that time. He had to find out more about her.
Karan was still staring at him. Her eyes had a liquid vacancy and she swayed, looked puzzled and bit her upper lip with her bottom teeth, rueful and uncertain. She shivered. The cold was piercing here, for the room was open to the elements. She wrapped her arms across her breast and sat down, confused and on the edge of panic. She might have been a baby confronted by a jackal, so totally was she at his mercy.
“I see what you want,” he said. “You want to go back to Tumbledown Manor, with chickens roosting all over the house, and breed up brats with your chronicler mate.”
Karan colored. “Why do you sneer and rubbish my life? You’ve talked enough about perpetuating your own kind. But now that I’m here I will do what needs to be done. Tyrants must be opposed else we will all be slaves.”
“Slogans! Here is another! Freedom is anarchy and does none any good. Only I can offer the peace and security you crave.”
“You offer slavery and death,” she snapped.
“You’ve been taken in by stories told to frighten children. Why would I destroy what I wish to rule? Under me there will be no war, no little nations fighting among each other and wasting their strength in conflict.”
“You will destroy all our works.”
“The beauty of Santhenar is in its culture and diversity. I would foster that, not destroy it. If you knew us, you would know how much we care for art and history. I offer peace. Once I have mastered the construct I plan to order Santhenar. You may have a part of it, if you aid me.”
“Your reputation does not incline me to believe your promises. I want no part of your world.”
“Not even Gothryme?”
“Save what is already mine.”
“Then you may keep Gothryme, little as you want, if you aid me. If you do not…”
“Then we are back to threats. I prefer you in your true colors.”
“When Santhenar is mine there will be the peace that you crave, that it has not had in five thousand years. Who else can do it? Not Faelamor—she cares nothing for this world. What she will do, if she achieves her goal before I do mine, will destroy your planet.
“And your other friends? Yggur is empty; a bitter, twisted fool. He has no vision for Santhenar. His wars and schemes are but a tool to get at me, and if he ever achieved his goal he would collapse like a pricked bladder. Tensor? Utterly wretched and hopeless. What little the Aachim had, following him has stripped it from them. Name someone better.”
“Mendark?” she said, though the name was bile in her mouth.
“The man is corrupt to the core! Look at Thurkad under his rule and you know what Santhenar would be brought to.”
Karan had no answers.
“There is only me,” he said gently.
“What do you want?”
“Didn’t you listen to my tale? I want a future for my species, nothing more.”
“History tells different!”
“Because the chroniclers blacked our name to satisfy their corrupt masters.”
“How can you say such things? Only hours ago you boasted of the plunder of Aachan.”
“We were violent once, in the youth of our civilization, but we had to be to survive the void. No more. We came to Santhenar to make good a mistake—my own, I admit it—but what followed was not of our making.”
“The Ghâshâd terrorized my country in your name,” she said. “Bannador is ruined. Thousands are homeless.”
“The Ghâshâd exceeded their authority and have been punished.”
“And you will make good the damage?”
He was silent. “Insofar as it can be made good, I will do it,” he said at last. “If I should win!”
Peace, thought Karan. If only it could be so. But she said, “Once you are master you will become a despot. The Histories tell us that is the way of power.”
“Damn your Histories!” he cried. “What you most desire is almost within my grasp. Will you help me to attain it?”
He saw that she was tempted and was hard put to conceal the desire in his eyes. “To think that all my plans rest on you, little pallid creature that you are. Life burns so feebly in you old humans. Fifty or sixty years, a hundred at most, and you are done. Even those mancers among you who have taken the gift of greater life grow tired and cannot hold to their purpose. Look at Shand, look at Mendark, and compare what they might have been to what they are. Little wonder that your scope is so limited, your achievements so puny. I have been burned in intense fires, quenched and forged anew. Not even a thousand years can separate me from my vision.”
Karan turned away and rested her arms on the cold sill of the embrasure. A few stars still shone in the east, against the dawn, but even as she watched a wedge of cloud moving down from the mountains blotted them out. The light from inside picked out the spiraling motion of small hard flakes of snow.
She turned and looked up at him. “But you are the Great Betrayer. I am not persuaded.” She walked unsteadily back to her seat.
“Then I will force you.” His eyes gleamed.
“You are so arrogant! You understand nothing of my nature.”
Karan was astounded by her boldness. To think that she had been troubled by Emmant once; now she defied Rulke himself. But her resistance was hopeless, as she knew. Given enough time he could overcome anyone.
“I’ve wondered about that. Who are you, Karan? There’s something in your heritage that I haven’t found out.”
She started. Triune! She could never escape from it.
Rulke shouted down the stairs. “Jark-un! Find where the chronicler has got to and bring him back!” He looked back at Karan. “You won’t be so defiant with my boot on your lover’s throat,” he said softly.
49
* * *
OUT OF THE
FRYING PAN
The guards hauled Llian back to the construct chamber. Once more he felt the unbearable temptation to do whatever Rulke wanted, and have his reward. With what the Charon could tell him, there was no doubt that he would be the greatest chronicler of all time. Of all things that might have happened, he was least prepared for what did occur.
“So you’re ready to do my will now?”
Rulke said, leaning negligently on the side of the construct. “It’s too late! I have no further use for you, liar and cheat that you are. How could I ever have thought to let you tell our Histories? You’re rubbish, and like rubbish I throw you away. Get on the plate.” He pointed to a hexagon of dark metal set in the floor. It had not been there earlier.
All Llian could think was: but I don’t want to go. He opened his mouth; shut it again. “No,” he said, with just a trace of the insolence that had so helped him before. “I have not been paid.”
“What did you expect from the ‘Great Betrayer’,” sneered Rulke. “Cheats don’t get paid.”
Jark-un dealt Llian another blow to the side of the head, then Yetchah dragged him onto the plate and flung him down. Rulke leapt into the high seat of the construct, a mighty bound twice the height of his head, and took hold of the levers.
Llian rolled over and pushed himself to his knees. He felt dizzy and sick. Rulke was shouting down at him, his face alive with fury. He rolled the palm of his hand across a rod tipped with a silver knob and the construct sprang to life. There came a rumble so low that it was more a feeling than a sound. Every object in the room, even the walls, was distorted, the very light twisted in its path from one place to another. The plate beneath Llian began to grow warm.
“Here is your payment,” Rulke shouted. “You’re the very first! Make a lie of this to dismay your friends in Thurkad.”
He swept his hand down on the silver bulb. Llian’s guts twisted horribly and he was flung through a vortex of nothingness out of Carcharon.
This time he did not lose consciousness, only emerged from a state like amnesia to find himself embedded in a bank of snow. His nose was bleeding. This doesn’t smell like Thurkad, he thought. It was still dark but there was enough light to make out benched rock and, in the distance, the unmistakeable outline of Carcharon against the snowfields. He lay on the crest of the amphitheater, right above the ridge path where Karan and he had waited yesterday.
I don’t think that journey will dismay my friends, Llian thought Red lights glared through the windows of Carcharon. So near! He had to get back to Karan.
Llian crawled forward, found nothing underneath him and toppled onto the highest bench of the amphitheater. He felt dreadfully tired and weak. He could have slept in the snow. He did.
He jerked awake. You can’t sleep here, you fool! Standing up, he saw a tiny light zig-zagging up the ridge. He watched it listlessly, wondering if it was the Ghâshâd come to take him back, unable to care if it was. No, they wouldn’t come that way.
“Further up, I think.” It was Tallia’s voice.
Tallia! She was taking a risk, carrying a light up here. He hardly had the energy to call out; his whimper was torn away on the wind.
An answering shout. Llian lurched to his feet and fell down again. Then Tallia was lifting his head, shining a light into his eyes, wiping half-frozen blood from his face.
“It’s Llian,” she called over her shoulder.
Another shape labored up through soft snow. “He seems to be all right,” she said. “Are you all right, Llian?”
“I just want to sleep,” Llian groaned. Every part of him ached.
“Where’s Karan?” said a rough voice—Mendark’s.
Llian did not dare open his eyes. Just the sound sent shivers up his spine.
“Where?” cried Mendark, shaking him.
“Carcharon,” Llian croaked. “Rulke wanted her all along.”
“What happened?” Tallia asked urgently. “Why did you come up here?”
“Karan knew a secret way inside,” Llian replied, utterly exhausted. He tried to explain, but even to him the story sounded as if he was making it up. He sagged against Tallia and gave up.
Tallia examined his face, using a narrow beam of light from her lantern. The abject Llian of the past months was gone. Though weary and battered, he looked more assured now. She wondered why.
“I don’t like this,” said Mendark. “Hold him while I bind him.”
“On the top of a mountain?” Tallia said sharply. A rectangle of light appeared at the gate of Carcharon, illuminating the winding path, then disappeared. “What’s that? There’s someone coming.”
Mendark flung himself at Llian and shook him so violently that his teeth rattled together. “Once a Zain always a Zain,” he cried. “You’ve betrayed us again.”
Tallia hauled him off. “Leave this to me, Mendark!” Her tone did not admit of argument. “Keep watch, they must have seen my light.” She pulled Llian up by the front of his coat. “Get up. Can you walk?”
He mumbled incoherently, able to think of nothing but sleep.
She took his arm. They staggered along the back of the amphitheater. “Your explanation will need to be a good one,” she said in his ear. Her voice was chilly but he sensed that she was willing to listen.
“I would never do anything to harm her,” said Llian. “You know that.”
“I’m not sure what I know any longer.”
He started on the story, but he was only up to the point where the two of them left Gothryme when Mendark caught them up.
“Quick! They’re coming,” he said.
Llian spun around and fell face-down in the snow.
“Trying to get back to Rulke, eh!” said Mendark, lifting him up. “I’m tempted to push you over the side.”
“Rulke treated me more honestly than you ever did,” Llian said bitterly.
Tallia ran around the rim to see how close the pursuit was. Mendark held Llian by the arm, but he had no intention of going anywhere. She came racing back.
“They’re after us! Five, maybe six of them.”
Llian wondered why Rulke would throw him out and then come after him straight away. But perhaps Rulke did not know where he had ended up. Perhaps he was just chasing the others away. There were too many perhapses.
Tallia sang out. “Mendark, hold them off. I’ll take Llian down. Meet me by the Black Lake.”
“This place is undefendable!”
They hurried across the high back of the amphitheater, onto a buttress cut by icy steps that led onto the ridge below. At a point where the buttress pinched in on the slope on either side to allow no way past, Mendark stood firm.
“Go down,” he said. “No, wait!”
“What is it?” cried Tallia, trying to make out his expression in the dim light.
“I’ve just had a horrible thought. Shand once said that Rulke didn’t have the talent to use the flute.”
“I remember.”
“Then maybe he needs a sensitive for the construct too. And this wretch has just delivered Karan into his hands.” He cursed. “Why did you interfere the other night? I’d almost broken him.”
Tallia was silent, shaken.
“How could you do this to me?” he raged.
“To you?” she cried in equal fury. “Don’t you ever think about anyone else?”
They had not gone much further before Llian was stricken by the terrible pangs that had so wracked him in Gothryme. He fell down among the rocks and snow, clawing at his face.
“Light!” Mendark snapped.
It had begun to get light but now the overcast swept back in, dark and dense, like night falling again. Mendark spread the wings of his cloak around Llian. Tallia let a little chink of light from her globe fall on his face, then put it away again quickly. The wind had come up and dark clouds were racing down from the north-west, obscuring the stars and the moon. A flurry of hard snow, pellets on the wind, stung their faces.
“How far back are they now?”
“Top of the amphitheater. Too close!”
“If only it would snow properly,” said Tallia.
Mendark looked up at the sky. “It won’t,” he replied. “Not enough to aid us, anyway. There’s too much wind.”
“Help us to the bottom of this steep bit,” said Tallia, “then hold them off.”
Llian sat up. “I’m better now,” he said shakily.
/> “What was that about?” Mendark asked, taking his arm roughly. “Are you having trouble with your new master?”
This was too much. Llian raised his hands and clubbed Mendark on the side of the head, a feeble blow but one that caught the old man off-balance and nearly sent him tumbling down the steps.
“You deserved that,” Tallia said coldly. “We don’t need any more trouble. Do something to keep them back.”
“This close to Rulke? The risk—”
“Well, take the risk, dammit. The way you go on about your place in the Histories…”
“All right!” he snarled, and disappeared back up the ridge. Shortly there came a blinding flash of light and rocks crashed down into the gorge. Almost immediately someone appeared above them.
“That was quick,” said Tallia. “What did—?” She flung herself flat on the ground. Something whirred over her head.
Llian could tell from the lanky shape against the dark sky that it was a Ghâshâd. The man sprang over a boulder straight for Llian and heaved him effortlessly over his shoulder. Llian let out a squeak. Tallia dived but the man swung his leg like a scythe, sweeping her feet from under her. She fell heavily and began to slide across the steps, frantically trying to gain a purchase on the ice.
She gave a pained cry then skidded head first into a rock.
Llian’s captor began to run back up the path. Llian heard Tallia gasp, “Mendark!” but no more.
The Ghâshâd’s boots slapped the snow like paddles; his breath was a piston-beat in Llian’s ear. Soon the path became so steep that he could not carry Llian up it. He flung him down on a patch of ice, breath hissing from nostrils crusted with icicles. Llian stirred and a boot slammed across his wrist. The man picked him up and continued on.
50
* * *
THE SEDUCTION
OF KARAN
You won’t help me then?” said Rulke.
“I can’t!” Karan replied.
“Not even for Llian?”
All along she had known it would come to this. “Some friend, after the way he spoke about me.” She began to sweat.
