by Ian Irvine
Karan inspected the globe. It was a polished egg of milky quartz, the base enclosed by five fronds of silver. Cool, but her touch left darker marks on the surface that took a minute or two to fade. “The Aachim have things like this. Where did you get it?”
“I made it.”
“Made it!” That was beyond Karan’s comprehension. “How?”
“There isn’t time to explain,” Maigraith said, wiping her face.
Karan coiled the rope and stowed it in her pack. “I hope he doesn’t come back before we’ve gone,” she said, rubbing vigorously at a smudge on her ankle with a wet sock.
“So do I,” Maigraith began, though the sentiment was self-evident. Then, she asked suspiciously “Why?” Having no humor of her own, Karan’s cheeky jokes were quite opaque to her.
“We’re not dressed to go calling on one so exalted as the warlord of Fiz Gorgo,” she replied with an almost straight face, giving Maigraith a sly sideways glance. “How could we face him? I would be mortified.”
“Dry yourself! Get ready,” said Maigraith crossly, rising, turning away. “How can you jest?” She leaned against the wall, pulling off first one boot, then the other, emptying them with a splash onto the floor, trying to steel herself.
Karan’s eyes showed her secret delight, though that soon faded. “I joke because I’m so afraid,” she said under her breath. “I know that Yggur will come.” She thought of another jest, sillier than the first, but stifled it.
Maigraith separated her hair into thick strands, pulling each through her fingers until the water was gone. This seemed to calm her and she looked down at her companion. Karan’s features had fallen back into their usual sunny expression; a smile quirked upwards the corners of her mouth as she wrung the water from her socks. Maigraith’s severe, sad face relaxed momentarily; she almost smiled too. Then her burdens came on her again.
“Ready? Time is very short.”
For Karan every passing minute rang like a gong but she said nothing. If it’s this hard to get in, she thought, what’s it going to be like getting out?
They walked a labyrinth of stone. Several times Maigraith referred to directions in her pocket, then finally they passed through a concealed door into a corridor so tall, dusty and narrow that it could only have lain within a wall.
As they walked Karan’s apprehension swelled into alarm once more. She could think of nothing but the certainty that they would be discovered. She could not prevent herself from elaborating on what would happen to them, in this forbidden place.
Maigraith stopped suddenly and spun around, unable to conceal her anger. Karan was not broadcasting this time, but her panic flowed across the link, arousing Maigraith’s own misgivings, weakening her. “Why ever did I bring you?” she hissed. “You will rouse the sentries. Control yourself.”
Karan was stricken. She took a deep shivering breath. “You forced me,” she replied in a small voice. “I didn’t…”
“I did not realize that you were so soft, so weak,” Maigraith said cruelly. Her head was splitting from the link, and she was beginning to feel that they were walking into a trap.
“Don’t you understand what being a sensitive means?” Karan said, irritated. “Whatever you feel, I feel more!”
“Stop screeching and make yourself useful. Where is Yggur now? Do you know what he’s thinking?”
“I’m not a mind-reader, Maigraith.”
“What use are you? I wish I’d never brought you.”
Karan was outraged. She grabbed Maigraith by the shirt and shook her. “Listen, I know my failings. Don’t blame me for your own. You wouldn’t have even got over the wall without me.”
Maigraith had never learned how to deal with anger. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the wall.
“I’m sorry; I’m so afraid of failing. My mistress is unforgiving,” she said, squeezing her temples between the heels of her hands. “My head!”
At Maigraith’s distress, Karan’s anger vanished. “Why on earth did she send you?”
“Since childhood she has schooled me for a great task, as she never fails to remind me. This is one of her tests.” Maigraith looked irritable again. “Now, if we are caught leave everything to me. Don’t try to defend me. You must get away.”
“How could I get out alone?”
“You’d have to find a way. If the worst happens, wait three nights only, outside the ruins on Lake Neid. If I do not come, you must find your own path to Sith.”
Karan nodded unhappily. She knew Maigraith’s instructions by heart; she had heard them often enough. And there was her other worry.
“Maigraith…”
“Yes,” she said tersely.
“Must you tell Faichand what you told me when you were drunk?”
Maigraith’s hand gripped her globe until the knuckles went white. “I must,” she whispered. “Don’t mention it again.”
On they went, up steps steep and narrow, down another corridor, then up a spiraling staircase of stone with no rail, to emerge on a landing facing a blank wall. Maigraith turned to the wall, holding her globe high. Placing one hand on the gray sandstone, and with her eyes closed, she seemed to sense what the stone concealed. Shortly she sighed and pressed gently. A door appeared; it was black and studded with brass nails.
Maigraith laughed in relief. “At last, Karan, this is the place! I can tell you now.” She took her hand off the door. “We have to find the Mirror of Aachan, an ancient device that Yggur has.”
“The Mirror of Aachan!” whispered Karan. Her face was bleached as white as paper. “But… you know my father was half-Aachim.”
“When we set out, I didn’t. Besides, you swore a binding oath to me.”
“I would not have, had I known! The Aachim brought me up after my parents died; they never give up such things. Is this why you wouldn’t tell me before?”
Maigraith was defensive. “The Mirror was lost centuries ago. It belongs to whoever finds it.”
“The Aachim will never agree,” said Karan. “The Mirror is part of their heritage, brought secretly from Aachan; a reminder of their world when they had nothing else. Did Faichand not tell you how they lost it?”
“It was stolen by Yalkara, the Mistress of Deceits!”
“Another of the Charon, their nemesis. The Aachim are an unforgiving people. Once they know that the Mirror is found they will move the heavens to get it back. And since I am part Aachim, that is where my duty lies. Please, release me from my oath.”
Maigraith squeezed her temples again. She looked dreadful. “You swore!”
“You stretch the obligation to breaking point,” Karan snapped. “The Aachim’s ancient works are as precious to them as their art, their literature, their Histories.”
“Do you now break your sacred oath to me? Here, where I have no other recourse? This is a deadly place for a debate,” said Maigraith.
Karan banged her head on the wall. Either choice she was damned. How could she break her oath? That would be a betrayal of everything that her father had stood for. But if she took the Mirror and failed to give it to the Aachim, she would be betraying her father’s people. Still, now that she knew about it, she could not leave it here either.
“I will keep my word, but ask nothing of me ever more. The debt is paid! Take no chances, then at least I can say I never touched it. I pray that I never have to.”
Even as she spoke she could see Maigraith’s liege in her mind’s eye. Faichand was a small woman with deep feline eyes and smooth translucent skin, more like a living sculpture than a person. Then she fixed you with those ageless eyes and froze you from the inside out.
“Come on!” said Maigraith.
She put both palms on the door and pushed. It swung open. They stepped into the room—a library, dimly lit by a glowing flask to the right of the door. Two walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, more than Karan had ever seen in one room before. Against a third wall was a massive desk scattered with papers and, above, a case
divided into pigeonholes, most filled with rolled-up papers, charts and scrolls. A long workbench filled the center of the room. Next to their door was another, just the same, but it was closed. There were no tapestries, no pictures or decorations of any sort and the floor was bare stone. The remainder of the fourth wall was covered by two large charts, one showing the lands surrounding Fiz Gorgo, the other the central and southern parts of Meldorin—lands recently overrun by Yggur’s armies.
Maigraith barely glanced at the maps. They were not what she had come so far for. She looked up at the high window, through which the stars shone faintly. “Quickly now. It’s very late.”
Karan needed no urging. They set to work. The pigeonholes contained many scrolls, some in metal cases. Maigraith examined each carefully. Most were paper or parchment, though several were made from a silky brown material that looked like bark.
Karan lifted down the books, one by one. There were many languages, many scripts, but she could not read them. The books were heavy, the work tedious. One had pages of copper into which the writing had been pressed. She ran her fingers over the back of a page, feeling the shapes of the glyphs, wondering about the one who had made this book so long ago. Nothing came to her and now Maigraith was glaring. Karan slipped the book back in its place and took out the next, looking in the space behind as she did so.
Finally the bookshelves were done. Karan put back the last volume, wiping dusty fingers on her trousers. Maigraith was going through the drawers of the desk. Her face was haggard.
“Perhaps he has it with him,” Karan muttered, relieved that it had not been found.
“I do not think so,” said Maigraith, looking up at the stars again. “He would hardly take it out of the citadel. Check the bench. If it is not there we have failed. There is no more time.”
Karan sorted through the papers and charts on the bench. Nothing. There was also a heavy scroll wrapped in cloth and three scroll cases. Unwrapping the scroll she found that it was made of verdigris-crusted copper. The coils were corroded together, so that when she tried to prise up a corner it broke off, a green flake with just a thread of copper at the core. Putting the flake hastily back in place Karan wrapped the scroll again and turned to the cases. They were made of lead; two were empty and the third contained a parchment scroll. She turned to Maigraith.
“Wait! There’s a wrongness here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Karan, examining one of the cases closely, “this one looks as though it’s made of lead, but it’s not heavy at all. And though the outside appears smooth, I can feel a pattern on it. Look!”
Maigraith snatched it from her hand and turned away. Karan suppressed her irritation, peering on tiptoe over Maigraith’s shoulder. Maigraith weighed the case in her hand, stroked it with her fingertips.
“I see what he has done—a simple concealment. Unworthy of him.”
Under the force of her gaze it changed slowly, dull lead becoming shiny black metal, chased with an intricate design. Maigraith shook out the contents and slowly it uncoiled to form a single brilliant leaf of black metal.
Turning it over she saw that on the other side the edge was raised, like a frame. Set inside the frame was something as clear as glass, though not brittle, that enclosed a shiny reflective stuff like gelatinous mercury. It shimmered and shivered, ghosting phosphorescent as though caressed by ripples and eddies of light. The border of the frame was scribed with the finest silver tracery, glyphs of an unknown language. The Mirror was otherwise featureless save for a symbol in silver and scarlet, impressed in the top right-hand corner. It was like three golden bubbles grown together, enclosed by touching crescent moons in scarlet that were set within a platinum circle, which was infilled with fine silver lines twining and intertwining.
Maigraith put a tentative fingertip to the symbol. Goose-bumps broke out all over her arm. She bowed her head until her forehead touched the metal. Her hand trembled. She put the Mirror down on the bench, mouthing words to herself. The face of the Mirror went dark, then a fine of silver letters appeared, as fine as wire, glowing bright against the black. Karan tried to see but again Maigraith put herself between, her lips moving. The script flowed.
Ice formed in Karan’s belly. “He comes!” she said.
Maigraith did not attend: her whole quivering attention was on the Mirror. A minute passed. “Maigraith!” Karan called again, shaking her by the arm. Maigraith knocked her hand away without thinking. Another minute went by, and another, and another.
“Maigraith!” Karen cried frantically. “Are you be-spelled? Is it a trap?”
Maigraith took an eternity to focus on Karan’s frightened face. She spoke lethargically. “No. Not for me anyway. It’s just—it calls to me, as though it were mine. It’s—it’s as though there’s a lost world inside.” Her eyes forgot Karan and snapped back to the Mirror.
Karan felt a momentary dizziness, Maigraith drawing on her strength through the link. What on earth was she doing? This was so unlike her. Karan’s face was bloodless. “Maigraith. We must fly. I can feel him coming.”
Maigraith tore herself away. “Let us go then,” she said in a strained voice, but it was too late. There were footsteps outside the door, as loud as thunderclaps to Karan’s heightened senses.
Maigraith pushed the Mirror into Karan’s hands and thrust her below the level of the desk. Karan wanted to hurl the Mirror out the window. The metal was warm in her hands. Her gaze was pulled down; her life changed forever.
The writing scrolled across, then stopped.… If you come to read this, I have for you a message, a warning and a task, Karan read. Then the letters faded and the face of a woman appeared, looking down as if trying to work a device with her hands. Karan stared. The likeness to Maigraith was astonishing, though the face was older, the dark hair woven with silver and the eyes were of deepest indigo. The woman looked up and her lips moved.
“Take it,” she seemed to say.
The door swung open. Karan touched the image with a fingertip. The Mirror went blank. She peered around the edge of the desk. A man stood in the doorway. They were in no doubt who he was, for he looked just like the magus of all the tales. Karan wondered if he used that illusion to bolster a more meager form. Remarkably tall he was, bleak of eye and the hair curving across bis brow was black as the wing of a crow. He did not look old, but like all mancers he had extended his life many times over.
It was Yggur—the warlord who had overrun the southwest of the island of Meldorin. Yggur, whose strength and cunning were legend.
He tossed the hair from his eyes and the light caught the brittles planes of his face, the jutting black brows, the dark ovals around faded eyes—frost on slate. Into the room he stepped, all-powerful, all-knowing, confident in his terrible strength. His chest was broader than Maigraith’s shoulders. She knew at once that there was no escape.
“Thieves!” he said, his voice as mellow as butter. “In my library!”
Maigraith exerted all her strength to oppose him. The illusion, if illusion it was, faded. He looked the same but now she saw that his right leg moved stiffly and he winced as if it hurt him, just a twitch of the cheek. Another surprise. He might be a mancer, as she was, but still he was just a man—very strong, but not more than human. Maigraith put herself between him and Karan’s hiding place.
“Who are you?” He spoke haltingly now, packets of few words; even to form them seemed an effort. “Which of my ancient enemies has sent you?” His forehead corrugated, a muscle jumped in his lip. “Have you come from Thurkad, from Mendark?” Rage, but disquiet too.
“My name is Maigraith,” she said boldly, though she was deathly afraid, “and my business is my own. I will tell you nothing.”
Yggur took another step toward her and Maigraith quailed. His presence was overwhelming. The painful movements, the halting speech, the sense of overcoming great obstacles, only added to the potency. She felt confused, hesitant, for it seemed that he knew her weaknesses as wel
l as she did. Faelamor had neglected, perhaps deliberately, that part of her training where will is matched against will, and the sheer force of him shocked her. Maigraith was trained to submit, she shrank from confrontation. Karan was right, she was not up to this job.
Yggur trembled, mastering himself with difficulty. Then, as if a window had opened, she saw directly into his mind, saw that he suffered too. It was extraordinary, for she seldom empathized with anyone, but she no longer wanted to defeat him. Her heart was battering at her ribs. She clutched at her breast.
He raised up his hand. His eyes might have been needles of ice, so did they probe her, prick her. Her mouth was dry as sand. She fell back a pace, cowering, as though expecting him to strike her. At that he looked contemptuous, which struck her worse than any blow. She stepped back again. He had done nothing and already she was defeated.
“Speak,” he whispered. Her lips began to make the words.
Karan, still crouched behind the desk, was outraged. She kicked Maigraith in the ankle, trying to rouse her.
Maigraith gasped. But I am strong, she thought, through the confusions. I have a duty here. She dashed the mist from her eyes. “No!” she cried, and drew herself up.
Their eyes locked and Yggur was shocked into stillness. Suddenly she showed her strength; the strength perhaps of an equal, if she had the will for it. And something in her eyes disconcerted him momentarily. He stooped and stared at her, both surprised and intrigued. For a long time his eyes searched her, then he turned away thoughtfully.
“Perhaps the weaker will serve,” he said, looking toward Karan’s hiding place. “Come forth. Look at me.”
The pressure of his will was shocking. Karan looked as though the weight of a tree had fallen onto her shoulders, and she had no defense but her innate stubbornness. She staggered away from the desk. Her face was stark against the red confusion of her hair; her hand trembled so much that the Mirror fell to the carpet. Yggur looked from the Mirror to her to Maigraith.
“Ah,” he said. “I begin to understand. Bring it to me.”
Karan picked it up, backing away. “I will not,” she said, her voice breaking.
