by Ian Irvine
The Whelm lived to serve a master. First Rulke; then, after he was imprisoned in the Nightland, they had served Yggur instead, though they had never respected him. They had spent a thousand years aching for the time when Rulke would finally free himself. Oh, perfect master! they had called him when the great day came. His death not long afterwards had left them masterless and bereft, and masterless and bereft they remained to this day.
“They frighten me,” said Sulien.
“Me too, yet Idlis and Yetchah have been good to me,” said Karan.
“I know,” Sulien muttered. She had heard it too many times. “Idlis hunted you halfway across Meldorin once. But you spared his life, three times, and that means he owes you for ever.”
Karan started. Could they be the answer to her prayers? Maigraith certainly feared the Whelm, who had tortured her many years ago. If anyone could protect Sulien from Maigraith, they could. And perhaps they could hide her from the magiz too.
No! She could not even think about doing that to Sulien.
As they went down, the reek grew stronger until it tore at the passages of her nose and stung her eyes. Sulien’s eyes were watering so badly she could barely see. They turned the last hairpin bend and found the six Whelm arrayed across the track in front of them, enveloped in robes and hoods to protect their sensitive grey skin from the autumn sun, weak though it was. Their black eyes blinked behind slitted-bone eye covers.
“Karan,” said the bone-and-skin man second from the left, Idlis. “To have come all this way, you must be desperate for hrux.”
His face was terribly scarred, the skin like thick paper torn to pieces then crudely glued together in overlapping layers. His voice was as gloopy as boiling porridge. He attempted a smile but it failed and died – any form of levity was anathema to the Whelm. Nonetheless, Karan could tell he was pleased to see her. A bond had grown between them over the years, the strangest imaginable.
“I am,” said Karan. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
“You’re hunted,” said the woman to his left, whose name was Yetchah.
She had approached prettiness when she was young, in a gaunt black-eyed way, though she had lost weight and looks since Karan had seen her a year ago. All the Whelm seemed more meagre than she remembered them. How they must be suffering in their masterless exile.
“How do you know?”
“Echoes from a sending,” said Yetchah, which meant nothing to Karan. She looked down at Sulien with a strange, almost yearning expression. “The little one has grown.”
“Sulien,” she said. “My name is Sulien!”
“We will camp,” said Idlis.
They rode into the trees and down a gentle slope until they were out of sight of the track, and dismounted. Two Whelm began to clear the ground in two places – one circle for themselves and another, forty yards away, for Karan and Sulien. Another two gathered firewood. Idlis and Yetchah stood by while Karan removed Jergoe’s saddle, rubbed him down and carried her gear across to the smaller campsite. Yetchah headed down to a rivulet for water, stopped, then turned and cast a longing look at Sulien.
“Sulien, could you help Yetchah fetch the water?” said Karan.
Sulien’s eyes widened. She began to say no.
“No one would take better care of you,” said Karan. “Except me.”
“And Daddy!” Sulien snapped.
Yetchah had been there for Karan’s dreadful labour, which had nearly been fatal to mother and baby. In the end, under Idlis’s direction, Yetchah had drawn Sulien safely out.
Sulien raised her chin, untied the water pot and went with Yetchah, though she maintained a good distance between them. Karan watched her out of sight then turned to Idlis.
“Our business first,” he said, throwing back his hood and taking off the eye covers. Neither were needed in the cool shade under the trees in the hour before sunset.
Karan took the little box out of her pocket. He opened it and pressed in a lump of hrux with thick-knuckled spatulate fingers. It only half filled the box.
“The harvest was bad this year,” he said. “I fear you must endure more pain than usual.”
“Whatever you bring, I accept with gratitude.”
He bowed. “It is poor recompense for a life thrice owed.” The black eyes searched hers. “You are in trouble.”
“So much trouble that I can scarcely bear to talk about it.”
“Yet a trouble shared is a trouble cut in half.”
In some respects she found it easier to unburden herself to Idlis than she had to Rachis or even Tallia. Karan had no idea what Idlis was thinking, though, since he felt contempt for everyone she knew save her and Sulien, he was bound to be on her side. But where to start?
“Llian is on the run,” she said, “accused of murdering Wistan, the Master of the College of the Histories.”
“Llian is a fool,” said Idlis. “No one could understand what you see in him.”
She wasn’t going to try and explain. “It’s love.”
“Ah!” Idlis seemed to be trying to comprehend the notion. Yetchah had once appeared to love him, though Karan was not sure to what degree Idlis had been capable of returning her affection. “Llian would kill, if forced to it.” He worked his grey eyelids up and down with his fingers. “But he is not a murderer,” he added.
“Will you stand up in court and testify to that effect?”
Idlis’s grey lips stretched halfway across his flat face and he made a peculiar squawking noise that she could only assume, never having heard it before, was laughter. She laughed too. The notion of a Whelm testifying on behalf of a Zain was absurd enough, but the idea that any old human court would admit a character reference given by a Whelm was beyond preposterous.
“I have to get to Chanthed and save him,” said Karan.
“I understand the need. But you have another problem.”
“Maigraith. You know her.”
“A desperate woman.”
Karan told him the whole story.
“This Julken should have been strangled at birth,” said Idlis.
“No!” she cried.
“Some pairings are wrong. Rulke, our perfect master, believed he had found his match and his soulmate in Maigraith. We all believed it at the time, and we were wrong. There is a flaw in her, as is often the case with triunes.”
“Like me.”
“Yetchah and I drew forth the girl-child Sulien from your body, alert for any such flaw.”
“And?” cried Karan.
“In choosing to mate with that buffoon Llian, somehow your womanly instinct led you to select the complement that was right for you. Sulien is not flawed.”
Karan wasn’t sure whether she had been complimented or insulted.
“But Maigraith’s choice was a disastrous one. By mating with Rulke, the flaw was magnified. No child of hers by our perfect master could ever be anything but a monster.”
“Then her quest is doomed,” said Karan.
“Yes, though she will pursue it, with increasing bitterness, until the very stars wink out. But there is a third problem.”
“We’re being hunted,” said Karan. She was about to tell Idlis about the Merdrun and the magiz when an instinct warned her to keep silent. She could not have said why.
“And they’re close,” said Idlis.
“Maigraith!”
“No.”
“How can you tell?”
“We are far from home, and the people of Meldorin do not love us. We search our surroundings for danger using a kind of… sending. It creates echoes, and one is coming down the way you came.”
It had to be someone sent by or under the control of the magiz. “I’ll be careful,” said Karan, “but what am I to do about Maigraith?”
“There’s only way to put an end to it. Kill her.”
“I’m not a murderer!”
“If she tried to kill Sulien, would you not defend her to the death?”
“That’s different.”
“I
t’s only a matter of degree,” said Idlis. “The sooner it’s done, the less trouble you’ll be put to.”
“Maigraith is Shand’s granddaughter, and he’s my friend.”
“You would put friendship before the life of your own flesh and blood?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is very simple. If you kill Maigraith, you solve the problem and save your daughter, and all it costs you is one friend. Allow Maigraith to live and you will eventually lose your daughter, she will suffer a terrible fate at the hands of a monster, and you’ll blame your friend and lose him too.”
He had a point, though it was like being struck in the midriff with a battering ram.
“Then help me,” she said, reaching out to him, the words tumbling out spontaneously. “I’ve got to get to Llian and I can’t risk having Sulien with me. Take her! Take her with you to the frozen south. Hide her and look after her until…”
Idlis’s ruined face heaved. He liked the idea even less than she did.
“If you ask it,” he said, “I will do it because of the lifelong obligation I owe you. But such an exile does not please your daughter.”
There came a clang and a cry of “Mummy, no!”
Sulien had dropped the pot of water she had carried all the way from the rivulet. Her trousers were wet up to the knees and she was staring at Karan in betrayed desperation. Then she turned and bolted up the slope into the trees.
Karan ran after her, but her bones must have shifted in the week-long ride from Gothryme. Every step sent shivers of pain up to her hips and Sulien was leaving her behind. The forest was scrubby at the top of the hill, then Karan descended into a series of parallel grooves, miniature ridges and valleys no more than thirty feet from crest to trough, with bands of dark shale angling out of their sides.
Sulien passed over the crest of the third ridge and out of sight. Karan stumbled after her, topped the ridge and stopped. Sulien had only been thirty yards ahead but there was no sign of her.
“Sulien?”
No answer.
A band of olive-green bushes meandered along the base of the valley, not tall enough to conceal a standing adult, though enough to hide Sulien. The ground showed no tracks. At the bottom Karan saw a small boot print in the moist earth, then a strand of red hair caught on a twig. Sulien had gone up the little valley, under cover.
She had a rebellious streak that Karan, recognising much of herself in the child, had not tried hard to curb. She followed the intermittent tracks up. If Sulien broke out of the bushes to either side, she was bound to see her.
The tracks led up the base of the little valley to a dripping hump where the bushes were sparse and the finely banded shale outcropped like the pages of a book. Karan lost Sulien there. She climbed the wet hump, stood on top and looked around. Ahead, a dip in the rock had created a shallow pool ten feet long and three wide at its widest point, though only six inches deep. The water was clear, the dead leaves lying on the bottom undisturbed. Sulien had not gone through it and there were no tracks to either side.
Hairs lifted on the back of Karan’s neck. Something was wrong. She looked to either side and back, trying to gauge how far she had come. A quarter of a mile at most, but too far to call Idlis; he would never hear her through the trees.
“Sulien? Come out at once!”
It would soon be dark. A line of pregnant clouds was moving up from the south and the air had a heavy, moist odour she had not smelled at Gothryme in ages. It was going to rain.
She trudged up the valley. The bushes were sparser here, the ground rockier, and a hundred yards ahead it rose steeply to a fist-shaped knob that thrust outwards, providing an outlook over the surrounding woodland.
Karan headed to the left around the knob, the front face being too steep. Low-growing ferns brushed her calves. The rock here was a yellow, gritty sandstone that rasped at her fingertips as she climbed. The top of the outcrop was oval-shaped and almost flat, like a beret. She was scrambling up when a warty hand slapped across her mouth and nose, and she was dragged backwards then shoved to the ground.
She looked up into the face of the ugliest man she had ever seen, a huge lumpy fellow with scarred and mottled skin covered in warts and wens and grotesque pustules.
“Where is it?” he said in a thick grunting voice, as if his insides were as nodular as his exterior.
Idlis had been right. Maigraith wasn’t her closest pursuer.
“Who are you?” said Karan.
“Name is Ragred.”
39
YOUR ADMIRER WANTS YOUR HELP
No matter how much Llian scratched, he could not stop the itching. He was filthy and covered in red lines of bedbug bites. The innkeeper had snorted into his ale when Llian asked about a bath; the place did not have one.
He was lurking in the darkest corner of the barroom of the seediest tavern in Chanthed, waiting for the hue and cry to die down so he could sneak across town and break into the college archives. He had spent long days here while the invasion clock ticked ever more loudly. More than three weeks had passed since Sulien’s nightmare and he had made no progress. Less than five until their world ended. The thought was paralysing.
As was the knowledge that the magiz could be attacking Karan and Sulien right now. He was desperate for news but had no way of getting any.
“You have come down in the world,” said Thandiwe, slipping into the seat opposite him. She was also dressed cheaply but, being Thandiwe, her clothes enhanced her figure. She would look magnificent wrapped in a tent fly.
“How did you find me?”
“You’re predictable.”
“What do you want?” he hissed.
“I may be able to do something for you,” said Thandiwe.
“What happened to I’m going to utterly destroy you?”
“I happened on a secret admirer of your work.”
“Bully for you.”
“I’m trying to help you, Llian.”
“For the next thousand years, whenever anyone hears your name, it’ll be Llian the Liar, the Cheat, the Perverter of the Great Tales. Remember?”
“There’s gold in it for me,” she said grudgingly. “For arranging things.”
And she needed it desperately. “Go on.”
“Your admirer can get you out of Chanthed and give you a hiding place…”
Llian’s eyes narrowed. It seemed too good to be true and probably was. “What would I have to do in exchange?”
Thandiwe’s mouth turned down. “Write a brief tale and dedicate it to him.”
She envied Llian. She wanted a Great Tale desperately, and private commissions were the icing on a very rich cake. For the privilege of dining with such a teller and having a tale dedicated to himself, a wealthy connoisseur would pay more than a master at the college would earn in a decade.
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t say.”
“Sorry,” said Llian. “Not interested.”
She had not expected that. “Why the hell not?”
Llian hesitated. The fewer people who knew about his quest the better, but if he thwarted Thandiwe she would have the constables here in minutes.
“You know about the Merdrun?” said Llian.
“Of course; all the chroniclers are talking about them.”
“I’ve got to get into the secret archives.” He sketched out his plan.
Thandiwe sat back, weighing it up. Since she always had an ulterior motive, she was bound to think he had one as well. “Your admirer can easily get you in.”
“You’re sure?” said Llian.
“Absolutely. But he’ll want to meet you first.”
What choice did he have? If he refused she could – no, would – betray him. “All right.”
She stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Right now?”
“He doesn’t live far away. Have you got any reason to delay?”
Thandiwe led him out the back door. A large coach was waiting aroun
d the corner. He climbed inside, she joined him, and they were rolling down the street when it occurred to him that this was a little too convenient.
“I’ve got to know who—”
She pulled the window blinds down. “You’ll soon be safely out of Chanthed, in a place where no one would think of looking for you.”
“Assuming we can pass the city gates.” Llian had not been game to try.
“We’ll pass.”
The knot in his belly tightened. How could she be so sure? Where were they going? Who was the patron? He was tempted to kick the door open and leap out into the night, but then he would be hunted again, and public feeling against Wistan’s cowardly killer was running high. If they caught him they might hang him without a trial.
“There’s another thing,” said Thandiwe after they had been waved through the town gates and the coach was rolling along the north-eastern road not far from the meandering River Gannel. “Your admirer wants your help.”
“What for?”
“A secret project.”
He sat up, his interest piqued. “Oh?”
“Something Mendark worked on for ages, before his death.”
“What about?”
“Mancery.”
“I hardly think I can help anyone with mancery. What about it?”
“I wasn’t told.”
An hour passed. They might have gone as much as ten miles. The coach stopped and Llian heard the coachman’s deep voice, then another man’s laughter. A gate was opened and the coach passed through onto a driveway. Gravel crunched under the iron-shod wheels. Llian reached for the nearest window blind.
Thandiwe caught his hand. “Leave it.”
Rich men could be obsessive about their privacy. The coach took a sharp turn to the left, throwing her against Llian, and she clung to him far longer than was necessary. Considering her previous threats, it was disturbing. What was she up to?
The coach stopped and the door was opened. The coachman was holding up a lantern; they were in a coach house that smelled of fresh paint. The floor, which was pale pink marble, was almost impossibly clean. Llian climbed out. A liveried servant was waiting, and also a tired young woman with black hair, wearing a green kimono of watered silk. She was extraordinarily beautiful. She studied Llian and he caught the faintest hint of disgust.
