by Ian Irvine
Awestruck, Dajaes reached out and touched a fingertip to the words written by the great teller. “He’s been my hero ever since my uncle started reading me the tale. I was only nine, and I didn’t know what a lot of the words meant, but it carried me away into another world.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. A man like Llian would never do such a thing.”
“Then we’ve got to help,” Wilm said impulsively. “We may be the only people in Chanthed who believe he’s innocent.”
Her brown eyes glowed for a few seconds, then she shook her head. “I’ve got to go home,” she said dully.
“So your father can marry you to a drunken old brute?”
“It… it’s my fate.”
“No, we can change our lives.” The blood was pounding through Wilm’s veins; he felt inspired. “I’ve got no father and my mother is the poorest woman in Casyme, but she saved up her grints to give me this chance.”
“But we failed, and now we have to go home.”
“No, we don’t. I’m going to make something of my life. When the opportunity comes I’m going to grab it with both hands and never look back. You can too.”
“I only have eleven grints,” said Dajaes. “Just enough to pay for my food on the river ferry home to Ridsett.”
“How far is that?”
“Forty leagues. The ferry takes a week.”
“I’ve got four silver tars,” said Wilm impulsively. “You can stay with me and we can clear Llian’s name. And then… something will come up.” He knew it would; he felt transformed. He had a mission in life – he had to save his friend. The key to success is never giving up.
A flush appeared on her pale cheeks. Belatedly Wilm realised that she had taken his proposal in a different way. He expected her to smack him across the face and walk out, but she just sat there, staring at him.
“I… I didn’t mean…” he said stiffly.
“I would be disgraced,” said Dajaes.
“My mother brought me up to be a gentleman,” said Wilm primly.
He had never been closer to a young woman than he was now, save for that friendly kiss from Aviel when he was leaving Casyme. In truth, Wilm was a late developer, and physical intimacy was too embarrassing to think about.
“My father would not see it that way.”
“Would he come after you?”
She laughed hollowly. “He wouldn’t waste the money. He would cast me out. I would never be able to go home.”
Wilm did not think that would be much of a loss but was wise enough not to say it. “I’d hate it if I couldn’t go home.”
After a long pause, Dajaes said, “I’d miss my uncle.”
Wilm stared at his hands. What could he, who was famous for getting things wrong, do to help Llian? He could not imagine where to begin.
“But Llian has been unjustly accused of murder,” said Dajaes as if she were thinking things through as she spoke. “He’s been framed by the real killer and we’re the only people who believe in him. We have to try and save him.” She stood up suddenly, and there was such solemn resolve on her young face that his own spirits lifted. “I will endure the disgrace. We’re going to save Llian, together.”
He extended his hand, but she moved in and gave him a quick hug, then stepped back as if to make clear that it was an entirely businesslike arrangement.
“How do we start?” she said.
Wilm was dazed. He had not imagined that she would agree. Now she had, the surge of energy that had carried him along faded, and the plum pie was a distant memory. “I’m so hungry I can’t think straight. Have you had dinner?”
She shook her head. “Everything is so expensive – test entrance fee, library fee, robes fee…”
“I’d be broke if it wasn’t for Llian,” said Wilm, “and the woman on the door. She remitted the entrance fee because I knew him. It’s a tar I never expected to have; let’s spend it on the best dinner we can get.”
“Let’s not,” she said sensibly. “It may take a long time to clear Llian’s name and we only have your four tars and my eleven grints. Let’s have the cheapest dinner that will fill us up, and get to work.”
They had big bowls of vegetable soup and chunks of coarse freshly baked bread spread with rich brown dripping. It was delicious, though Wilm hardly tasted it; he had to keep grinding his knuckles into his thigh to remind himself that this was real. That he was sitting opposite a very nice girl who loved the tales even more than he did, and they were about to go on a rescue mission into the unknown with not the faintest idea where it would lead them.
“First we have to find out the facts,” said Dajaes. “I’ve heard rumours but I’m sure most of them aren’t true.”
She had very good manners, always setting her knife and spoon down perpendicular to the table edge and never putting her elbows on the table. Wilm made sure he did not slurp his soup and worried about dribbling it down his front.
“I’d better go and see the sergeant,” said Wilm. “He’ll want to talk to me, since I came here with Llian.”
“I’ll come with you. He might not be so hard on you then. I’ll… I’ll pretend to be your girlfriend.”
That warmed him. They finished their dinner and headed down to the watch house. Wilm felt self-conscious walking beside her, almost as self-conscious as he had going up onto the stage at the scholarship test.
But this time it was a good feeling.
36
I’LL HAVE TO BURN ANOTHER LIBRARY
In his exquisite manse of Pem-Y-Rum, ten miles downriver from Chanthed, Cumulus Snoat frowned at Ifoli’s news. He did not like to frown; it marred the perfection of his noble forehead, but in times of the greatest vexation he could not help himself.
“Are you saying Basible Norp has failed me?” said Snoat. Then, “Why do you cringe from me? It’s not your lovely neck under threat.”
Ifoli forced calmness upon herself, and the tension in her jaw muscles eased. “Apparently Wistan secured the college’s treasures before he was killed, but neither the details of the protection spells nor the devices and talismans that maintain them can be located.”
“Do you mean…?”
“Basible can’t break the protections.”
“And therefore can’t deliver me the manuscripts of the first twenty-two Great Tales.”
Snoat touched the edge of Llian’s manuscript with a fingertip. He was so enchanted by it that he had to have it with him wherever he went, and lived in terror that it would be stolen.
“Almost any spell can be broken if enough talent and effort is devoted to it.”
“I can’t bear to wait,” said Snoat. “Nothing satisfies me any more; even my most priceless wines now seem tasteless. I’ll have to burn another library – how else can I cope?” He felt another frown forming. “What about Wistan’s dirt book?”
“Basible found the ashes of a small book, burned some hours before Wistan was killed. Nothing can be resurrected from it.”
“Now I’m vexed!” cried Snoat. “Have you no good news?”
“Your army has swept all before it in the north. You now hold everything between Thurkad and Elludore Forest.”
“Better than nothing,” he said grudgingly, “but far greater prizes lie to the south.”
“You’ll need a bigger army for that.”
“I’m raising one. What news of the despicable Zain?”
“He hasn’t been found.”
“I am most displeased. Go!”
Ifoli did not move. “Cumulus, you gave firm orders that you would see no one this week, but…”
This was almost an insurrection. And yet… “I value you for your ability to think and your appreciation that there may be times when you know my business better than I do. You may speak.”
“The bankrupt chronicler, Thandiwe Moorn, wishes to put a proposition to you.”
“She is utterly destitute?”
“And at the end of her rope. The bail
iff will come for her within days, unless—”
“Send her in.”
Shortly Thandiwe entered. Destitute she might be, but she put on a good show. Curvaceous bordering on voluptuous, a waterfall of black hair, a simple but elegant blue gown. She was nowhere near Ifoli’s level of beauty, but for a woman who must have been thirty-six Thandiwe was rather fine. Nervous, though. Her left knee had a tremor. She bowed, a trifle too low.
“Speak,” said Snoat.
“You have a passion for the Great Tales,” said Thandiwe. “I think I can bring you a new one.”
“You think you can bring me a new one.”
“The only certainty in life is death.”
“Especially when I deal it,” he said pointedly. “Go on.”
She squirmed. “A decade ago, in the months before Magister Mendark’s death, he gave Llian almost unfettered access to his personal papers. Mendark wanted Llian to write the tale of his life – his often renewed lives, in fact.”
“Mendark was a great man,” said Snoat, “but fatally flawed.”
“He was at the centre of the greatest events of the past thousand years, and shaped many of them. Yet the tale of his life has never been told.”
“Why not?”
“Llian chose not to because of what he saw as Mendark’s corruption. Llian put his notes into the college library and, as far as I know, I’m the only person who has had full access to them.”
“What does this have to do with me?” said Snoat.
“I want to write the tale but…”
“Debtors’ prison looms.”
“If Basible Norp would give me access to Llian’s notes, and you were to provide modest assistance…”
“You owe Anjo five hundred and fifty tells. Hardly modest.”
“With your support I could make a Great Tale of Mendark’s life and gift the manuscript to you.”
To give away something so valuable she must be desperate. Yet to have the mastership in her grasp twice and lose it both times, lose everything, would make anyone desperate.
“I could not accept it as a gift,” said Snoat.
Thandiwe’s face fell.
“For such a treasure, if it should be voted a Great Tale, I would pay full price,” he added. “After subtracting your debts. I will consider the matter. Ifoli will escort you out.”
Thandiwe forced a smile. Clearly, she had hoped for a clearer indication. Or perhaps she feared he would give Llian’s notes to someone else to write the tale. Perhaps he would.
When she was gone and Ifoli stood beside him again, Snoat said quietly, “Contact Basible. He will send Llian’s notes for this tale with the utmost dispatch.”
“With an armed escort?” said Ifoli. “To make sure they can’t go astray.”
“Quite.”
“What do you think?” Snoat said to Ifoli the following evening.
He had read the key parts of Llian’s notes. Ifoli, now desperately fighting off a beauty-marring weariness, had spent all night and half the day reading eight hundred pages in Llian’s calligraphic hand.
“If certain questions about Mendark’s work were answered, and it was supplemented by an account of his last days and his death, it could make a Great Tale.”
“The twenty-fourth Great Tale. My tale.” He sighed.
“But is she the right person to tell it?”
“Thandiwe is more than competent but less than great. Yet she’s ambitious, passionate… and desperate. No one would work harder to make it a glorious tale. I will commission her. But before I do, I’ve identified an intriguing possibility.” Snoat was testing Ifoli. “I wonder if you saw it too?”
She did not answer for a good while and his congenital mistrust stirred. Was she merely gathering her thoughts, or was she choosing how much to tell him?
“I saw a number of possibilities,” Ifoli said carefully. “To which do you refer?”
“One that might be connected to a certain incomplete device of Mendark’s.” Snoat wasn’t going to give her any more than that. He wanted her unbiased thoughts.
“The one we saw the day we used the secret code to get into the council’s spell vault?”
“Precisely.”
“There could be a new kind of mancery. One that Llian, not having any talent for the Secret Art, did not recognise,” said Ifoli.
“Put it into words for me.”
“Mancery has always been limited because power can only be drawn from two places: within oneself, or from a painstakingly enchanted object…”
“But there’s a hypothesis, the secret of mancery…” he prompted.
“That power – vast amounts of it – could be stored in certain natural objects, right under our noses.”
“Until there’s evidence of it, the secret of mancery remains mere speculation.”
“Judging by Llian’s notes, Mendark may have gained that evidence,” said Ifoli. “He may have been close to mastering the secret, or at least the theory behind it.”
“A theory can’t give me my heart’s desire. Besides, Mendark burned his library before he died and all his work was lost.” Snoat looked at her expectantly. He did not think she was holding anything back, but he had to be sure.
After another long pause, Ifoli said, “Llian read all Mendark’s papers, including his work on mancery. And whatever Llian reads twice, he can remember. What if his memory – what he doesn’t know that he knows – could allow Mendark’s work to be reconstructed?”
Snoat felt all choked up. “If I were capable of love, Ifoli,” he sighed, “you would be the one.”
“Thank you, Cumulus.” He was not sure if she was being ironic.
“The device we saw in the spell vault may have been Mendark’s failed attempt to tap this new source of power,” said Snoat. “If the theory could be turned into a practical magical device, or devices I’d have the power to crack the protection on the twenty-two Great Tales.”
“That could take years,” said Ifoli.
“Unless a genius looked at the problem in an entirely new way.”
“Will that be all, Cumulus?”
“When I was a young man,” Snoat mused, “that doddering old fool, Nadiril the so-called Sage, chased me out of the Great Library with a broomstick. That very day I resolved to build a collection greater than his, then take his from him. With the secret of mancery I could do just that.” Snoat realised that his megalomania was showing. “But I’m daydreaming. Can Llian be compelled to reveal what he knows?”
“With a murder charge hanging over his head he must be even more desperate than Thandiwe.”
“Have her lure him here with a tempting offer. She will oversee his work and make sure he stays honest.”
“And then?” said Ifoli.
“Llian will do a private telling of his Tale of the Mirror, just for me.”
“And then?”
“Where is the pleasure if he can do a telling for anyone else? Where is the joy in owning the original manuscript of his tale if he can make a copy? Besides, if he can assist me to reconstruct the secret of mancery, he can assist someone else.”
“So Llian has to die?” said Ifoli.
“I would apologise to him in advance,” said Snoat. “He’s a great man, even though he is a cursed Zain. I’d explain that I sincerely regretted having to put him down.”
“You might have trouble getting him to appreciate your point of view,” Ifoli said drily.
“One more thing. The chain made by Shuthdar?”
“Ragred has gone to get it from Karan.”
37
IT’S BACK, MUMMY. IT’S BACK!
Karan’s desperation grew with every hour of that interminable trip across the mountains. She felt sure they were being followed. Had her reckless use of hrux on Maigraith turned her into a deadly enemy? And if Karan did not get to Chanthed soon, Llian would surely be caught, tried for a murder he had not committed, then executed. She kept seeing the image from Sulien’s nightmare – his body lying on
that expanse of polished stone.
If she lost Sulien and Llian she would surely go mad, as her poor mother had. More than once Karan had felt the madness wrapping its tendrils around her, trying to drag her down into the pit she had visited once before. If it took her again, she would never escape.
Sulien sensed it too. She was normally an independent child, but Karan had never known her to be so solicitous, or so clingy.
That evening, after an hour-long search for a secure campsite, she chose a steep bare hill from which she would be able to see and hear anyone coming. The light was fading by the time they panted their way to the top, yet Karan was tempted to go straight down again. The crest was a grassy oval with a broken diamond of standing stones and, at its centre, a partly collapsed tunnel tomb. Many of the stones of the diamond had fallen, but at the far end a single trilithon remained – like the gate from Sulien’s dream, only smaller. The stones were grey, not red; nonetheless, it was an unfortunate coincidence.
Karan reminded herself that tunnel tombs and stone arrays were common in Meldorin – she had seen them in dozens of places. Besides, they could go no further; she was exhausted and Sulien was asleep on her feet.
After a scrappy dinner, the same as all their previous ones, Sulien crawled into her sleeping pouch and went to sleep. Karan sat up, knife in hand, watching and listening. If Maigraith was following, what could be done to stop her?
Restless now, she walked around the rim of the hill, which fell away steeply on all sides save the east, the way they had come up. A light mist heightened the similarity between this place and the flat peak with the Crimson Gate, the gate that on the night of the triple moons would bring the Merdrun to Santhenar.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck; she should not have come here. She was running back to Sulien when she let out a shriek: “Mummy! Mummeeeee!”
Karan fell to her knees beside her daughter. Sulien was sitting up, eyes tightly closed. Her hands were clutched to her head again and she was shaking it from side to side as if trying to dislodge something clinging there.
