by Ian Irvine
“What’s the matter, Daddy? You look so sad.” Sulien came up and took his hand. “Is there anything I can do?”
He rubbed his wet eyes. It wasn’t right that she should be worrying about him. “Just thinking.”
“What about?”
“Stuff. We’d better get these pears picked.”
He plucked the last red pear on the tree, inspected it for grubs and put it in the orchard basket, then stood there, worrying about his reaction to the drumming. He’d felt a terrifying, almost uncontrollable urge to smash things, and what if it was worse next time? What if Karan was right about him? What might he do under its irresistible influence?
He had to be strong. He had to be prepared to fight the drumming when it next occurred.
How could Karan hope to beat the magiz, a powerful alien sorcerer, anyway? She was out of her depth, yet she would never give in. She would protect Sulien with her life – and lose it. Then the magiz would kill Sulien to protect the Merdrun’s fatal weakness. But even if, by some miracle, Karan and Sulien survived the next eight weeks, the Merdrun would invade and the world would end.
Who were they, anyway, and why had they fought the Charon, whom they closely resembled, so relentlessly? What was the summon stone that would allow them to open the Crimson Gate and invade Santhenar on the night of the triple moons? Could he find it?
Karan had assumed that he could sort through his knowledge of the Histories like a librarian through a catalogue, but Llian knew he could not find the answers here. He needed access to the best libraries, though under Wistan’s ban they were barred to him. The ban must be lifted urgently, but how?
“The old bastard should have died years ago,” he muttered.
“You’re not supposed to swear in front of children.” Sulien gave him a stern look, though her furtive grin undermined it. She loved it when he broke the rules.
“Sorry. Though bast— that word, isn’t really swearing. It’s a true description of Wistan, the repulsive little swine.”
She rolled her eyes, skipped off and climbed the next pear tree. Her big-eyed puppy trotted from one pile of cow dung to another, sniffing cheerfully.
“Hang on!” Llian lugged the basket across. “You know the rules. I climb the tree, you catch the pears.”
“Piffle,” said Sulien. It was her favourite word. “Mummy said—” She broke off, flushing charmingly.
Llian set the basket down and frowned at her, hands on hips. “Go on, what did Karan say?”
“She told me not to tell.”
“Mummies and daddies shouldn’t keep secrets from each other, should they?” Hypocrite! Llian could have written an encyclopedia on secrets.
Sulien brushed her red tangles back over her shoulder and took a deep breath. “If they love each other, they should tell each other everything.”
“What else did Karan say, exactly?”
“She said… um, there were some rude words.”
“About me?” He hid a smile. “You have my permission to repeat them.”
“Really?” She beamed. “Mummy said, ‘Don’t on any account let that clumsy oaf climb the fruit trees… or next time he’s liable to break his bloody bollocking neck.’”
“I’ve only fallen out of a tree once,” he lied.
“Fibber! It’s three times this year already. I’ve been counting.”
“What a frightening little creature you are,” he said fondly. “Do you spend your whole day spying on me?”
“I don’t spy,” Sulien cried. “I just… notice things.”
“You’d make a great chronicler. What do you want to do when you’re grown up?”
“Live here, of course. I love Gothryme. Though I wish it’d rain.”
For years that had been their main preoccupation, yet now the drought was the least of their worries. “Me too.”
She scrambled up and out onto a slender branch, which creaked alarmingly, then dropped pears to him. Llian caught them and put them in the basket.
“What happened to Cook?” said Sulien, reaching across to the next branch. “And why is poor Benie locked in the old cellar?”
Llian stumbled against the basket. Pears rolled across the dusty ground. “How did you know about that?”
“Daddy, please. Did Benie go mad, like Mummy’s mother did when she was little?”
Llian leaned back against the fork of the tree, looking across the orchard to the dry riverbed.
“No,” he said heavily. Sulien had to be told; she would find out soon enough. “Benie killed Cook. We don’t know why. Did you hear anything strange yesterday morning?”
“No.”
Not for the first time he wondered what other gifts Sulien had. “Do you see things in your mind’s eye, the way Karan does?”
Sulien shrugged. “I don’t know how Mummy sees things.”
It was an impossible question. If she did have an unusual talent, it probably seemed normal to her.
“Why are you still banned from working, Daddy?”
“Because Wistan is a foul, malicious old warthog, and he hates me.”
“Is that because you’re a Zain?”
“Partly. Lots of people hate us.” A treacherous alliance in ancient times had led to the Zain being despised outcasts for two thousand years.
Her bottom lip trembled. “Am I a Zain? Do people hate me?” She swayed on her branch.
He lifted her down and held her close, cursing his big mouth. “No one could possibly hate you.” Except that callous brute Gergrig and his evil, life-drinking magiz.
“But am I Zain?”
“Not exactly. It comes through the mother’s line, not the father’s.”
“Who are the Zain, anyway? Didn’t they build the Great Library at Zile?”
“They did. They used to live in western Meldorin, and they loved books and writing. But long ago, during a terrible war, their leaders betrayed humanity to the Charon, and the Zain were exiled. They ended up in a hot desert land in the south. That’s where I come from, a little town called Jepperand, next to the Dry Sea.”
“Oh!” She scurried up the other trunk. “You didn’t finish talking about the ban.”
“Wistan was expected to die years ago, but he clings to life like a grub to a twig, and clings to the mastership too. And while he lives, he controls the vote, the ban and my life.”
She dropped the pears, he caught them and they continued until the basket was full.
“What was Mummy doing in the library yesterday?” said Sulien.
“Writing to Tallia and Shand, I expect.”
“No, she sneaked in and locked the door.”
“How do you know?”
“I like to hide under the old desk in the corner and read. Mummy looked really pale. I thought she was going to faint.”
It felt wrong not to be talking about the nightmares Karan had lifted from Sulien, but they had agreed to keep them from her for now. “What happened to Cook was a big shock,” he said lamely.
“Mummy was reading papers in the secret passage.”
He gaped at her. “What secret passage?”
Again that infuriating roll of the eyes, that pitying look: poor, silly Daddy. “It’s… um… where she keeps the stuff she doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“What stuff?”
“Books and papers, hundreds of years old, I expect.”
“Karan said Gothryme’s old records were lost in the Great Flood eighty years ago,” Llian muttered.
“She probably didn’t want to worry you,” Sulien said wisely. “I suppose that’s why she burned them in the fireplace.”
“Burned what?”
“I couldn’t see,” said Sulien, not meeting his eyes. “She had her back to me.”
Llian knew she was lying but did not know how to get it out of her. She was as stubborn as her mother and better at keeping secrets than he was. He picked the heavy basket up and they headed back.
“What other secrets do you know?” he said idly.
Llian walked into a low branch, setting his head ringing. His mouth had gone dry. How did Sulien know that? He put the basket down and rubbed his forehead. “That’s my private business, and you’re not to tell Karan.”
“Why not?”
“Because if she finds out, I’ll be in big trouble.”
“Of course she’ll find out. Mummy always does.”
And when she did, Karan would crucify him.
“Are you going to leave us and live with your girlfriend?” Sulien said anxiously.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Anyway, Thandiwe’s not my girlfriend. That was ages ago, before I met Karan.” He crouched down and took her hands. “Sulien, you’ve got to promise you won’t say anything.”
“If she’s not your girlfriend, why are you writing to her?”
Her disapproval hurt, deserve it though he did. “Do you promise? This is really important.”
“All right, I promise. But you’ve got to tell me why.”
“Because Thandiwe was supposed to become Master of the College when Wistan died.”
“But he never did.”
“He will,” Llian said savagely, “if I have to throttle him with my bare hands.”
Sulien let out a squeak of alarm.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said hastily. “But Wistan’s a very sick man; he can’t even get out of his chair. When he dies, soon, there’s a good chance Thandiwe will be elected Master. Then, if I’m nice to her, she’ll overturn the ban and all our troubles will be over.”
Llian wasn’t sure that prospect was even relevant any more, but he had to keep up the pretence of normality for Sulien’s sake.
She looked up at him with those deep green eyes that saw too much, and too deeply. “What does Thandiwe mean by being nice to her?”
11
I’LL DO IT – WHATEVER IT TAKES
Llian knew what Karan had been about to ask of him before Cook’s murder. He had been dreading it, but it had to be done. They needed coin urgently and lots of it, though to get it he would have to sell the most beautiful thing he had ever created.
He sat at the battered library table, turning the illuminated pages of his Tale of the Mirror and remembering. His mother, Zophy, whom he had not seen since leaving home at the age of twelve to study at the college, had been a book illuminator. His late father, Llayis, had been a scribe. They had given him their love of stories and storytelling, and taught him their own crafts, ones he practised to this day.
His critical eye saw flaws on almost every page of the Tale of the Mirror, yet it was the most beautiful work he had ever done, and the most important. The story ranked highly among the twenty-three Great Tales created in the four thousand years of the Histories. It was certainly the longest.
It told the tale of the deadly mystery Llian had uncovered twelve years ago, just before graduating from the college. After Shuthdar destroyed the stolen Golden Flute, three thousand years ago, a crippled girl with him had been murdered to conceal another crime.
While Llian had been trying to unravel that mystery he had been thrown together with Karan, who had been forced by Maigraith to steal a corrupt ancient artefact, the Mirror of Aachan, from Yggur. Karan was being hunted relentlessly by Yggur’s servants, the terrifying Whelm, and she and Llian had gone on the run together.
Soon all the great powers on Santhenar – the Aachim led by Tensor, the Faellem under Faelamor, Mendark the age-old Magister, and Yggur – had been drawn into a titanic two-year struggle to get the mirror and crack the coded secret hidden within it – the way to make gates. Tensor had seized the mirror and recklessly freed his mortal enemy, Rulke, from the prison of the Nightland, planning to kill him.
But Rulke had escaped and then, in secret, had built his astounding construct – a flying machine powered by the Secret Art – which could also make gates. He had used it to bring the last of the Charon from Aachan in a desperate attempt to save them from extinction, but had been thwarted by his other enemy, Faelamor.
Llian had finally broken the code of the mirror and solved the mystery. Yalkara, another great Charon, had killed the crippled girl to conceal her theft of the enchanted gold from the destroyed flute, and soon everyone was hunting for it as well.
In the climactic battle, Rulke, Mendark and Tensor had been killed. Faelamor had died soon after and Yalkara had taken the last of the Charon back to the void to die. The Three Worlds had been changed for ever, and Karan and Llian had been at the heart of it.
Every word of the story raised memories of the desperate years he had spent pursuing the tale with Karan, until he finally stood on the stage of the College of the Histories and Master Wistan had grudgingly announced the result of the vote. The sixty-four masters had been unanimous; even Wistan had voted for Llian’s tale.
“The Tale of the Mirror is a Great Tale, the twenty-third.”
It had been the most overwhelming moment of his life, and it was followed by the most devastating – Wistan had banned Llian from practising his art, for corruption.
He turned another page, reading his book for the last time. He had seen the need coming a long time ago and had done everything possible to avoid it; he had even pleaded with Thandiwe for help after promising Karan he would have nothing to do with her. But there was no choice now. He had to sell his Tale of the Mirror.
It was difficult to price a manuscript that was utterly unique, though far lesser ones had sold for a hundred gold tells. His Great Tale had to be worth at least five hundred tells, enough for them to go on the run for a year or two.
Llian knew of three wealthy people who might be interested, but one was half a continent away in Crandor and another in the far east. However Cumulus Snoat lived in Iagador, and his library of rare books was unrivalled in the west, though Llian did not know anything else about him. He wrote to Snoat, describing the manuscript and asking what price he would pay, then gave the letter to Rachis, who was taking a horse and cart to Tolryme.
The manuscript, which no longer felt as though it belonged to him, lay open at the point of Rulke’s death. Thinking about the tragedy and the unexpected discovery that Rulke had been a good man after all, Llian suddenly saw a clue to one of his questions – who the Merdrun were, where they came from and why they looked so like Charon.
As he lay dying, instead of cursing Llian for the fool he was, Rulke had given him a small silver key. My spies told me that you lost a tale, chronicler, he had said. Here is a better! But you’ll have to earn it.
Llian, sick with guilt, had sworn to write the full story of the Charon one day, so their name would live on after they were gone. But researching that story and finding answers to his questions would take him to places only an unstained chronicler could enter. It always came back to the ban.
Taking a fresh sheet of paper, he wrote the date on top, then stopped, thinking about how disappointed Sulien had been in him, and how much it had mattered. Only nine, yet already she knew what a flawed man her father was.
But it had to be done.
Dear Thandiwe
You asked if I could help you gain the mastership. Yes I will, gladly, and in return you will overturn my ban, urgently. Just say what you want, and I’ll do it – whatever it takes.
Llian
As he blotted the page, Sulien burst into the library. “Daddy, Daddy, they’re taking Benie away.”
He ran out. The bailiff from Tolryme was leading Benie down the track. His wrists were enclosed by heavy black manacles and he was escorted by guards twice his size. He did not call for help, nor look back at his lifelong home. Even from the rear he looked broken, uncomprehending and resigned to his doom.
Llian ran after him, then stopped. Benie was the property of the law now and there was nothing he could do. He watched until they disappeared over the rise, then turned back. Tears were running down Sulien’s cheeks. He tried to pick her
up and hug her but she threw herself down.
“Where’s Karan?” said Llian, sitting beside her.
“I don’t know.” Sulien stroked Piffle’s head. He licked her nose. “Benie was always nice to me,” she said, her voice aching. “Why is this happening, Daddy?”
Because of the Merdrun and their damned summon stone! Sulien had to be told, soon. But not now, not today. “I don’t know,” he dissembled. “Sometimes bad things… just happen.”
Remembering the letter he had left on the library table, he ran back, but it was gone. Fear closed like a thorny fist around his innards. Karan was bound to take his words the wrong way.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” said Sulien, who had followed him.
He shook his head. He was a dead man.
12
TAKE THE MONSTROSITY ALIVE
Hingis had been waiting for the moment for ages. Dreading it. And finally it came. His twin sat her horse in the middle of the road, watching him. He swallowed. Esea thrived on conflict, and he hated it. Was that why she had waited so long?
“What did Tallia give you?” she said in a deceptively mild voice. Deceptive because she was not one to hold back her emotions. Unlike him.
They were halfway up a stony hill, one of many on the rugged Coast Way south. The winding road, here gouged into brown and white layered rock, was as rutted as Hingis’s face. It was a windy day, with scudding clouds and frequent chilly showers whistling in from the unseen sea to their left. He could smell salt and seaweed rotting on the shore. He glanced behind them. No sign of pursuit, yet.
“I can’t tell you,” said Hingis. Every jolting step his horse took hurt, and his ribs ached from the effort to breathe.
Wind whipped her blonde hair across her face. She raked it out of her eyes furiously. “We’ve always shared everything.”
“It’s a Magister’s secret.”
