Ibryen

by Roger Taylor

  ‘No!’ Isgyrn’s firm voice cut through Ibryen’s distress. ‘They were neither unseen, nor unheard, if you recall. In fact they made a fearful din. And I saw their faces more clearly than you. However they came there, they were shocked to see you. And afraid, for all they seized you.’ Ibryen looked at him, his eyes doubting. ‘Think, Ibryen. If they knew the secret of these other worlds so well that they could move where they wanted, when they wanted, why haven’t they discovered your secret village and sent their army against it? Or, for that matter, why haven’t they come to your room and killed you while you slept? It’s not only you who’s been changed by this journey. You touched them. Their enemy came upon them unexpectedly and touched them. Whateverthey were, they’re different now. Whatever they thought, they’re thinking differently now. Change has been set in motion. Incalculable change. And where there’s change, there’s opportunity.’

  Ibryen clenched his teeth. ‘You’re right, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. It was just a momentary…’

  Rachyl slapped him on the back. ‘Come on,’ she said heartily. ‘Enough talk. Let’s get down the hill and make ourselves a decent camp. I’m starving.’

  * * * *

  Jeyan hesitantly moved to the door of her room. It had been left slightly open. Cautiously she pulled it wide and peered out into the dimly lit corridor beyond. There was no one about. Almost to her own surprise she stepped backwards away from the door, then sat on a nearby chair and stared at this unexpected invitation to freedom.

  What had happened? She had been asking the question continuously since, with a rush of piercing cold that had chilled her to the core, and which still lingered, she found herself staggering uncontrollably across her room. Two servants caught her and she held on to them as though they might offer her protection when she turned round.

  As the Gevethen had screamed abuse at one another when Ibryen had escaped from them, so now, transformed into an arm-waving multitude, they were screaming abuse at the mirror-bearers. She could not see those who were supporting the two great mirrors that became one, but she could see the mirrors shaking. With each tremor, the Gevethen’s screaming became worse. The moon-faced multitude milled about wildly. Yet something was wrong. The endless dancing movements of the mirror-bearers were stilted and jerky, and some of the images of the Gevethen flickered unevenly, appearing and disappearing.

  Jeyan could feel the two servants beside her trembling. Gradually the two mirrors became still. Then they parted. As a black shadow cut between them, Jeyan briefly felt again as though she were being torn in half. She gasped and shuddered. Is part of me still in there? she thought, without knowing what she meant.

  As she recovered, she noticed the state of the room.

  Chairs and tables had been knocked over, ornaments and crockery broken, rugs and carpets scattered. It was almost as though the servants and the mirror-bearers had been brawling and rampaging while their masters were away. She had barely taken in the scene however, when the mirror-bearers washed to one side of the room like an incoming wave up a beach. She stepped back involuntarily, then there was a sudden whirl of activity and the still-screaming Gevethen rushed from the room, escorted by a furious mob of their own kind. Jeyan stood still for a moment, as shocked by the sudden silence and stillness as she had been by the frenzied movement and noise. What she took to be another piece of upturned furniture caught her eye in the half-light. She looked at it curiously then took a lantern and moved to examine it further.

  She stopped as the light from the lantern fell on two bodies. Their simple dress identified them as mirror-bearers, and what she had taken to be the ornamental legs of a small table jutting into the air proved to be their arms reaching up, fingers bent into claws.

  She turned up the lantern and stepped forward uncertainly. The floor became alive with glittering lights and there was a noisy unsteadiness beneath her feet. She paused and crouched down carefully. The floor about the two mirror-bearers was covered with countless fragments of glass. She picked up one of them. Her face, tiny, drawn and fearful in the light of the lantern, looked up at her. About her feet, other images of her stirred as she moved. For a moment she thought she was going to sink into them. The fragments were the remains of their mirrors, she realized as she shook off the impression. But what could have broken them so totally? And what had killed the mirror-bearers? For she needed to check no pulse to know that they were dead. Even if their rigid postures had not told her, their gaping eyes and mouths would have.

  She shivered. What had happened in the Gevethen’s ‘crude and ill-formed ante-chamber’ to bring this about? What had been the consequences in this room of the buffeting and vibrating that had shaken the mirrors’ inner world? And which was cause, which effect?

  She remembered that as Ibryen had disappeared and the Gevethen had staggered back, the scene had fragmented into a storm of jagged and frightening lights. Lights which passed clear through her. As she looked down at the dead figures she felt an unexpected twinge of pity. What terrible burdens did these wretched people carry in addition to their mirrors? What hideous bargain had they stuck to bring them to this?

  She became aware of the servants gathering around her, hands raised to protect their eyes from the brightened lantern. She dimmed it.

  ‘What’s happened here?’ she demanded, though more from want of something to say than from any hope of receiving an answer. There was no reply. Briefly she considered pressing the question but she knew that it would be to no effect.

  ‘Get help,’ she said quietly, standing up. ‘Get… your friends… taken away and tended to properly, and… get this mess cleaned up.’

  She had scarcely finished speaking when she was surrounded by hectic but disturbingly silent activity as the servants began to do what she had asked, though whether this was because of her order or in response to some other command she had no idea. As the bodies were carried out she noticed that they were as rigid as their arm positions suggested. It was as if they had been dead for some time. Then the fragments of the mirrors were removed. As Jeyan watched, this began to assume the quality of nightmare, so obsessively meticulous was the behaviour of the servants as they crawled about picking up first the large pieces and then bending closer and closer to the floor in search of ever smaller pieces.

  At one point, she was sorely tempted to scream at them as the Gevethen had done, but again a sense of the futility of the action deterred her.

  Now they were gone. And they had left the door ajar. A strange final flaw in the chaotic and frightening events of the day. No wiser for her further review of what had happened, she stood up and moved purposefully out into the corridor.

  Chapter 29

  Jeyan was far from clear about what it was she intended to do. She was also fearful about the consequences that this impromptu exploring might bring down upon her.

  ‘I was anxious to follow your Excellencies but I’m unfamiliar with the Citadel and I became lost.’

  Like a child she had prepared this excuse when barely a dozen paces from her room in the event of her encountering the Gevethen or being challenged. After all, the door had been left not only unlocked, but open, hadn’t it? Initially she included an account of the time spent removing the two bodies and the remains of the shattered mirrors, but some more reflective instinct told her to make no reference to these unless they were mentioned first.

  Her heart was thumping painfully as she moved cautiously through the corridors of the Citadel. Not only was she afraid of meeting anyone who might call her to account but she had little or no idea where she was and still less about where she was going. During her trips to and from the Judgement Hall she had been surrounded by Guards and mirror-bearers and, more significantly, she had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to her whereabouts. Soon however, meeting no one, she grew calmer, and old Ennerhald habits returned, slipping her silently into darker shadows at the least sound or sign of movement. Several times she caught herself glancing rapidly from side to
side to assure herself that Assh and Frey were keeping station. The involuntary action made her grimace, reminding her as it did, brutally, of the deaths of the two dogs and of the wound that their absence left in her life – a wound she was struggling to ignore. It gave her little consolation that in some way they were still alive. They were a hunting trio – she needed the touch, the sight, the smell and the sound of them, the look in the eye, the soft, scarcely audible whine. And she needed them in this world, now, not in some strange other world to which access could be made only through the mirrors and, as far as she knew, at the behest of the Gevethen.

  Finally she made a determined effort to force the anger and distress from her mind. They weren’t here and that was an end to it!

  ‘Lord Counsellor?’

  Jeyan spun round, hand reaching for a knife that was no longer there. In front of her stood one of the Citadel officials – an ordinary clerk of some kind, she registered, from his livery. His eyes were lowered and he was just dropping awkwardly to his knees. Jeyan recalled how those watching her as she was paraded to the Judgement Hall had knelt when she looked at them.

  Relief followed the initial shock of the encounter and lingering remains of her old life prompted her to tell the man to rise. She should confide in him, ask him where she was, how she might escape from the Citadel. The thoughts caught her unawares and mingled confusingly with a frisson of elation at the power that the man’s obeisance invested in her. Then came anger again that she should even think such foolishness after all she had learned in the Ennerhald.

  Without knowing why, she laid a hand on the man’s head. He flinched and she felt him trembling as he struggled to remain still. This time the confusion of emotions effectively paralysed her.

  It was the Ennerhald that released her. Be silent, she thought. Within the Citadel at least, it could be that the Lord Counsellor’s uniform was as effective as any shield wall, but the place was still unbelievably dangerous. She must say nothing – to anyone. She must watch and listen and learn.

  Besides, she realized, she was far from certain that she wanted to escape from the Citadel. Where would she go? To the Ennerhald again? A bleak and unlovely prospect after even these few days of luxury, and how empty it would be without Assh and Frey. She could always try to reach the Count in the mountains but, the practicalities of the journey aside, what purpose would that serve? No more now than it had ever done. In the Ennerhald she had been near the source of all her distress – now she was within dagger’s reach.

  The last thought brought a sudden purpose into her meandering. She must use this freedom, whatever its cause, to obtain a weapon for use against either herself or her enemy, as circumstances dictated.

  She abandoned the kneeling figure and also her stealthy progress through the shadows, and continued along the corridor. When she reached the corner she slipped behind a shrouded statue and looked back. After a moment, the clerk glanced about nervously, then clambered to his feet and scurried off one hand stroking his hair repeatedly as if trying to dispel her touch.

  Not minutes before, Jeyan had considered seeking his help, now she watched him leaving with scorn. It was these cravens and their ilk that sustained the Gevethen in power; they deserved no pity.

  Turning from the retreating clerk she made to set off again. Closed doors lined the short gloomy corridor that she had turned into and a panelled wall sealed it. She hesitated. Guilt and painful memory filled her as, for a moment, she was back in the blind alley where she had been captured and the dogs slain. She was about to turn around and return the way she had come when a dark vertical line split the centre of the panelled wall and it began to move. The image made her catch her breath and threatened to disorient her until she realized that the end of the corridor was not in fact a wall, but a pair of doors, and that one of them was being opened. She edged back into the shadows again. Then someone was walking towards her. It was another clerk and he was engrossed in a sheaf of papers, holding them close to his face in an attempt to read them in the poor light. She let him pass unhindered and waited until he had gone from view before walking quickly to the double doors.

  Pushing one of them open, she found herself in a broad hallway, and the silent stillness of the corridors she had been walking along vanished instantly. Servants, messengers, clerks, officials of all kinds were bustling around in great agitation.

  Briefly she considered closing the door and fleeing back to her room, then the anger that had begun with the kneeling clerk, boiled up to fill her. Dancing attendance on your masters, are you? she thought bitterly as she looked out over the scene. Scurrying about like ants, keeping them secure in their power. Fearful for your little lives. I’ll teach you fear. I’ll grind your nest into dust.

  She straightened up and entered the hallway.

  The weaving streams and tides shifted and changed sharply as she entered, and the rumbling hubbub became sibilant with the whispered hiss of her name.

  ‘The Lord Counsellor!’

  Those farthest away quickened their pace while those nearby stopped and fell to their knees. None met her gaze, which was as well, for they would have seen their worst fears reflected in it. Jeyan drew in the effect she was causing as though it were air to a drowning man. It fed her condemnation of these people and she relished it.

  As her initial exultation faded however, she began to feel concerned by all the activity. It was not normal, she was sure. Even allowing for her presence, there was an unusual alarm and urgency in almost every face she looked at. And, excitement, she decided, puzzled. It must have something to do with the Gevethen’s encounter with Ibryen and their precipitate departure from her room – but what? She cast about for some semblance of a pattern in the movement, but nothing was immediately apparent, though she noted that a table at the far side of the hallway seemed to be some kind of a focal point. Slowly, and with wilful casualness, she moved towards it. It was manned by four obviously senior officials and, as she drew nearer, she noticed with pleasure the signs of distress and confusion amongst them. They were all abandoning their work and about to start pushing back their chairs prior to kneeling when a door behind them opened and a Guards’ officer emerged. It was Helsarn.

  Jeyan recognized him immediately. The murderous killing fever that had been in full flow when she was captured rose undiminished, like hot bile, to mingle with the anger already swirling within her. Though she managed to keep her features motionless, her eyes betrayed her feelings and the officials dropped to their knees in an undignified scramble. Helsarn’s insides tightened into a freezing knot as Jeyan’s gaze struck him, but training and long-established habit carried him through the moment. He saluted smartly, then dropped down on to one knee and lowered his head in the formal obeisance adopted by the Guards.

  It was some time before Jeyan could trust herself to speak. The upsurge of violent emotion had taken her completely unawares and she knew she must control it. Nothing was to be gained by going for the throat of this man in a blind fury.

  ‘Stand up, Commander,’ she said.

  Helsarn rose up before her, stiff and unyielding. Being considerably taller it was an easy matter for him to keep his gaze from hers. He was glad of it for he was genuinely afraid. He had seen Jeyan at the heart of a terrible death struggle when he first encountered her and the subsequent knowledge that she had been a woman had frozen the memory in his mind. In common with anyone appointed to maintain civil order he knew that women, pushed beyond a certain point, were far more dangerous than men.

  ‘My knife, Commander,’ she said. ‘Return it.’ She spoke softly because her throat was so dry she was afraid her voice would crack. The effect however, was to make her presence even more menacing.

  A memory of the gaping wound she had inflicted on the soldier who had captured her returned vividly to Helsarn. Others, ill-formed and vague, featuring the soldier’s lost companions hovered about it but he refused to pursue them. He clung to the simplest. What did she want her knife for? Hagen had neve
r carried one, nor any personal weapon for that matter. The one answered the other. Hagen had died at her hands in front of hundreds of witnesses and she had been rewarded with his office; she obviously had no intention of suffering the same fate herself. But there were other problems. She had access to the Gevethen and she was patently unhinged. What if she turned the knife against them and it became known that he had given it to her? Yet he could not disobey a direct order. He prevaricated.

  ‘As you command, Lord Counsellor,’ he said. ‘But the mobilization? I can’t leave my post here. Their Excellencies have ordered that nothing is to impede the full levying of the army and the Guards – not even our sleep.’ He risked a rapid but significant movement of his eyes towards the officials cringing behind the table.

  Full levying of the army and the Guards! The news struck her like a plunge into cold water, and the fiery rage that had carried her this far vanished to become a renewed concern for the Count. This surely boded no good for him. She had to force herself not to respond. Change was afoot. Rapid change, full of opportunity. She must find out what was happening, and as quickly as possible before the leash she was stretching pulled her back.

  She deliberately ignored Helsarn’s mute appeal on behalf of the officials but silently motioned him back to the door through which he had just come. He held it open for her. It revealed a scene not very different from the one in the hallway, though the room was smaller and here the scurrying figures were all army and Guards officers except for a few who were obviously messengers. She hesitated, her faith in the new-found power of her office faltering before the experience of years of avoiding soldiers and Guards on the streets of Dirynhald when she was scavenging for food. The room had become suddenly still, as everyone present stopped their work and saluted.