by Ian Irvine
Having said it, Karan felt even worse. She went over to her saddlebags and came back with the skin of wine purchased in Sith but not yet touched. She hoped mat Maigraith had not bought rubbish.
It only took the tiniest sip to discover that she had not. It was a glorious wine, almost purple-black in color. Karan squeezed herself a mug full, since the skin was too heavy to hold up. She leaned back against a tree, sipping slowly.
“I make you unhappy?” Maigraith was amazed.
“This journey has been one of the most miserable times of my life. All you do is criticize and order me about, and treat me like an idiot.”
“I’m sorry,” said Maigraith. “That’s what I’m used to.”
Maigraith filled her own mug to the brim, hung the wineskin in the fork of the tree, and sat down beside Karan. She had realized that she must ease Karan out of this dangerous depression.
They sat together, not talking, just drinking, though shortly Karan felt tipsy and put her mug down. The wine, however, seemed to have no effect on Maigraith’s rigid self-control.
Suddenly Karan’s good nature reasserted itself. “Tell me about your life,” she said. She knew virtually nothing about her companion, even after all this time.
“What is there to tell? I have no mother and no father. I don’t know who I am or where I came from.”
“I am an orphan too,” said Karan. “My father was killed when I was eight. I ask myself why all the time. And soon after, my mother went mad and took her own life.”
“At least you had eight years,” Maigraith said bitterly. “At least you remember them! I might have been spawned in a pond for all I know.” She refilled her mug, drank it down in one huge swallow and took another.
Karan went very still and Maigraith understood that she had been rudely dismissive of her tragedy. “Who were they, Karan?” she asked, as kindly as she was capable of.
“My mother was a Fyrn, who have lived at Gothryme for a thousand years. I got my name and my inheritance from her. My father was Aachim!”
Maigraith started. “Aachim!” She said it as though the name meant trouble.
“Well, half-Aachim actually. His mother was Aachim but his father was old human.”
“You are a blending?”
“Don’t shrink from me like that, I’m not a monster.”
“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” said Maigraith.
“Where did you think my talent came from?”
“Talents come from all sorts of places.”
Maigraith reached up for another mug. So that is what Faichand is afraid of, she said to herself. The unpredictable talents of the blending. Does Karan even know what she can do?
“Aachan has fascinated me since I first heard my father’s tales,” said Karan dreamily. She imitated his mournful mode of telling.
“Our world was Aachan, a dark, cold, barren place, but it was all we had, and we loved it. No people ever worked harder or wrought more cunningly, and in time we made it blossom. Every city, every structure, every garden, every device we made was a thing of beauty. Our art and our craft were our life. Then the Charon took our world; still we wrought but no more for ourselves.
“We never broke that slavery. Only those of us that came to Santhenar ever regained our freedom. Here came our renascence—we built our beautiful cities across the world, and our art was never more perfect.
“But we are destined to suffer. Again we were betrayed by the Charon and our cities and works destroyed. Now we live in the past, and for the past, and take no part in the affairs of Santhenar evermore.
“Such a sad life they had, on their own world and here,” Karan added. “They see their destiny as beyond their control.”
“So do I,” said Maigraith, filling her mug again. She changed the subject. “About your broadcasting,” she said gently. “I want you to think about what you were doing. Learn to control it. It is a great gift if you can use it well.”
“I’m afraid,” said Karan. “Who else knows that I am sensitive?” At least one other person did—Llian the chronicler. How many people had he told about her?
“Maybe no one. It just happens that I can tell people with your talents.”
Karan sat up suddenly and took Maigraith’s hand. “How so? Are you a sensitive too?” Karan knew no one who was like her. The prospect of a soul-mate was exhilarating, even if it was Maigraith.
Maigraith laughed. “More correct to say that I am an insensitive,” she said, then looked momentarily surprised that she had made a joke. She drained her mug and got up to refill it. A trickle of blood-dark wine made its way down her chin unnoticed.
“You were telling me about your own life,” Karan reminded her.
“Both my parents died when I was born, and I don’t even know their names. All I know is that I was a terrible disgrace.”
Her voice broke. Maigraith swayed, dropping the wineskin. Red wine spurted, forming a glowing arch in the firelight before hissing down on a hot stone. She giggled and fell off the log. Karan helped her up. The wine had suddenly hit Maigraith; she was quite drunk. She threw her arms around Karan. Tears flooded down her cheeks.
“Oh, Karan, you can’t imagine how much I long to know who I am and where I came from. All I know is that, after my parents died, Faelamor took me in when no one else would have me.”
Karan’s hair stood on end.
Maigraith went on, oblivious to what she had said. “And I am not even her species. No one in the world cared for me, save for her. Despite my shame she raised me and gave me the best education that anyone ever had. I can never love her, for she is too harsh; too unyielding; too closed-off. Faelamor is an impossibly hard mistress. Nothing ever satisfies her. But how can I not try? I owe her more than I can ever repay.”
Karan was so shaken by Maigraith’s drunken revelation that she did not even hear the rest of the story. So Faichand was Faelamor, the mythical leader of the Faellem people! She was mentioned in all the tales, but there had been no word of her in hundreds of years.
Shortly after that Maigraith subsided gracefully onto the ground, closed her eyes and fell asleep. Karan threw a blanket over her and went to her own sleeping pouch, though sleep was a long time coming. She was caught up in the affairs of the mighty, Faelamor and Yggur, to whom ordinary people mattered no more than counters on a board. How could she protect herself? It got worse every time she thought about it.
Maigraith woke with the bright sun in her eyes. She jerked upright and such a pain speared through her temples that she cried out.
“What’s the matter?” Karan said sleepily. “I’m sick,” Maigraith croaked. “Oh, my head.” “You got tremendously drunk last night,” Karan said, amused.
“Are you all right?”
“I only drank a little and had lots of water after.”
“Ohhh!” Maigraith groaned, coming to hands and knees.
“I feel as though there’s something I should remember.”
Karan sat up, but she did not say anything.
“I remember! You are part-Aachim.” Maigraith shook her head, then winced. The Aachim were inseparably bound up with the relic that she was planning to steal out of Fiz Gorgo. She had not told Karan what it was, but now realized that there would be trouble when she did. It was too late to do anything about it.
The mission had been doomed before it began. For all Karan’s talents, her cleverness and capability, she was the wrong choice for the job; she was too much a sensitive. Better to cast her off and go alone. If only I could, Maigraith thought, but duty goes both ways.
“What’s the matter?” Karan asked, breaking into her thoughts. “You seem worried.”
“Worried!” Maigraith barked. “My life, my work, my impossible mission, who I am, what I am here for—it’s all a disaster.”
“I would help you if I could,” said Karan tentatively, afraid of a rebuff. “We could—even be friends, if you did not keep pushing me away.”
“I have never had a friend,” sa
id Maigraith. “Faichand never allowed it, lest it hinder me from serving her.”
“How can she stop you?”
“Duty stops me. I owe her everything. My debt is so great that it can never be paid. She tells me so, constantly.”
This gave Karan a new insight into her companion’s obsessive nature. No longer did she feel so dominated by Maigraith. She pitied her, and longed to do something to help her.
“You must be so very lonely. I would be happy to be your friend.”
Maigraith went quite still. She looked down at the ground then up at Karan. The offer made her afraid. “Thank you,” she said. “You are kind and generous and warm-hearted; everything that I could wish for in a friend. Everything that I am not. But it is futile to long for what I cannot have, and dangerous for us both.” She got up and headed toward the forest.
“Maigraith!” Karan called.
Maigraith turned rather abruptly. “Yes?”
“I’ve got to tell you something.” “What is it?”
Karan’s jaw was clenched. “Maigraith, last night when you were drunk—you gave your liege a different name.”
Maigraith’s honey-colored skin went as white as plaster. “What name?” she whispered.
“You called her Faelamor! Is she the same—?”
Maigraith swayed, looking as though she was going to faint. She screwed up her face, squeezing her temples between the heels of her hands, then forced back self-control.
“Never say that name again,” she said in a voice that could have frozen molten lead. “My liege is Faichand. Faelamor died long ago.”
Karan stared at her mutely.
“Faichand!” Maigraith cried, gripping Karan’s head between her hands and screaming right into her face. “Faichand! Do you have it? There is no Faelamor!”
Karan nodded and with a wrench Maigraith released her and staggered off into the forest. She walked for an hour, feeling sicker with every step. Her self-disgust at having betrayed Faelamor’s secret was much worse than the hangover. She stumbled into a forked tree, hung over the fork and was sick. She clung to the tree as though it was the mother she had never known, the hard bark cutting into her breasts, and heaved and heaved and heaved. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not bring up the clot of horror inside her. She had betrayed Faelamor, to a sensitive of all people, and great woe would come of it.
* * *
Maigraith was unusually distant after that, even for her. The business of Faelamor was not mentioned again, and Karan’s tentative overtures were so coldly rebuffed that she withdrew as well. So while they rode across endless plains covered in tussock grass, Karan had plenty of time to fret about Maigraith’s slip and what it could mean. If Faelamor’s existence was so secret, she, Karan, was in danger just by knowing about it. She could see only two solutions: beg Maigraith not to tell Faelamor, or make sure that the whole world knew. Neither was appealing.
At other times on that interminable journey, she brooded about Gothryme, or dreamed about the Festival of Chanthed, or, as she did every day, wondered about the relic that Maigraith had come so far to recover. What could it be? Maigraith had not given her the least clue. Now the dark face of the moon, brooding ominously down at her, suggested that she probably did not want to find out.
They came to a huge river, the Hindirin, which was too wide and strong to swim, but downstream it was spanned by a stone bridge almost as long as the bridge across the Garr at Sith. Beyond that were other rivers, but the bridges were sound and they continued to make good time. After that they crossed plains and woodlands, following an old road that was sometimes there, more often not.
By the time the third week had passed, with the scorpion nebula glaring down at them each night from empty skies, and Karan’s forebodings growing stronger every day, they had changed horses three times and ridden more than one hundred and fifty leagues. Now they were riding through tall trees, beyond which were the pathless bogs and swamp forests of Orist, that ran all the way to the walls of Fiz Gorgo and beyond.
At a small town without a name they left their horses, and Maigraith hired a guide to take them through the swamp forest. He was a ragged, toothless, leering fellow, a smuggler and out-and-out scoundrel whose eyes followed Karan everywhere she went. But he knew every pool and mire of the swamp and they ate fresh fish every night, a welcome change from the tasteless and unvarying fare that Maigraith prepared. And he provided some relief from Maigraith’s dour company.
There was only one highlight of the trip as far as Karan was concerned. It happened on the day they arrived at Lake Neid, a cold clear lake about a league long. They camped on the northern shore among the half-submerged ruins of an old city. After nearly a week in the swamp, Karan was revelling in the clean water when she felt a stabbing pain on the ball of her right foot.
She sprang back and something black dropped into the water. Karan hopped to shore and sat down on a slab of marble to inspect the wound.
The guide, who called himself Waif, ambled over. “Something bit you?” he asked, revealing a toothless hole of a mouth. He took her small foot in a hand as gnarled as a mangrove root.
There was a triangular puncture in the ball of her foot, ebbing blood but blue around the edges. “This hurt?” He poked the wound with a hard finger.
“No, I can’t feel a thing.”
“You will,” said Waif, holding her foot for rather longer than was necessary. Karan jerked it out of his grasp.
Maigraith came over to see what the trouble was. “Turret shell,” said the guide. “Won’t be able to walk on it today.”
“Careless,” said Maigraith, looking irritated. “What about tomorrow?”
“Should be better by then, as long as it don’t get infected.” Waif turned away to the fire.
“Well, we can’t waste the day. You can show me the way to Fiz Gorgo. It’s only a couple of days, isn’t it?”
“Less.”
“Good! We’ll go as far as we can today and come back in the night. Karan, stay here and look after your foot. Expect us around midnight.”
So Karan had the whole day to herself, an unexpected luxury. Her foot soon became too painful to put any weight on, but it was fine while she rested. She sat in the sun among the ruins, watching the birds wheeling and diving out over the water, and the little fish swimming around in clear pools among blocks of marble and broken columns. Neid must have been a beautiful place in its time.
For lunch she had half of a wonderful yellow-fleshed fish with wild onions and a sour lime, and as much sickly-sweet tea as she could drink. She had a great fondness for sweet things. She dreamed away the afternoon, thinking of tales and tellers. Her dinner was just as tasty, and the night was peaceful, no moon and the nebula veiled by thin cloud, all the menace taken away. Karan would have liked a fire but she wouldn’t risk one so close to Fiz Gorgo. And she didn’t think about that at all; all thoughts of what lay ahead she kept firmly out of the way, for one day at least.
They left Waif at Lake Neid, to wait for them and guide them back out of the swamp. Out of his sight they left their heavy packs too, for the last dash to Fiz Gorgo. Only now did Maigraith break her silence.
“I did not want to speak about this before, but now I must. There is a chance that I will be taken. If I am, and you are able to escape, go back to Neid. The guide will lead you out of the swamp. From Neid you must make your way back to Sith and give the relic to Faichand, at the place I showed you.”
That did not bear thinking about. “I don”t have enough money,” Karan said tonelessly.
Maigraith handed over a small purse heavy with silver. “This is for your expenses. If you spend more; it will be reimbursed in Sith; and your fee, of course.”
The weight was reassuring. Karan put it away safely. Finally they reached a creek that smelled of the sea. Maigraith tasted the water. She made a face and spat it out again.
“Salt! Fiz Gorgo is on an estuary. We must go carefully now—Yggur’s guards may sweep this
far out into the swamp.”
They crept to the edge of the swamp and saw before them an expanse of cleared land, a road on the other side of it and, beyond, a fortress or possibly a fortified city. Fiz Gorgo! And only a day behind schedule. Even from where they crouched they could see guards patrolling the road, and others on top of the wall.
Fiz Gorgo was a huge fortified city partly recovered from swampy ruin by Yggur, the warlord and magus who had come out of nowhere to conquer the southern half of the great island of Meldorin. The city was ancient, built three thousand years ago, possibly by the Aachim. Later the south of Meldorin had fallen into barbarism and Fiz Gorgo into disrepair. The River Neid changed its course, creating a swamp of what was once fertile land. Swamp forest grew up around Fiz Gorgo and the city was forgotten.
Then Yggur came, fifty years ago or perhaps a hundred. He rebuilt the walls, drained the flooded lands nearby, restored some of the towers. But even Yggur had not made new all of that vast fortress, and the tunnels and labyrinths below remained untouched.
The night passed and the following day. There were guards everywhere and they were ever vigilant. The day was uneventful yet Karan felt uneasy, and the unease grew until it was a knot of dread in the bottom of her stomach. That was the problem with being a sensitive—she felt things much more keenly than other people. She knew that something was going to go wrong.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked Maigraith more than once. Nothing could be told from Maigraith’s behavior save that her posture was even more rigid than usual.
“No, shush! Ah, here he comes.”
A gate in the wall had opened and out rode a very tall man attended by six guards. They turned away and headed down the road in the direction of the estuary.
“That’s Yggur! He often goes down to Carstain, I’m told. It’s quite a distance. He surely won’t be back until the morning.”
They watched the company until they disappeared around a bend in the road, then sat in silence while the night fell. Lanterns sprang up all along the wall. Karan shivered. It was only the beginning of autumn but the nights were chilly this far south.
