by Ian Irvine
“I’m not sure I understand you,” said Llian.
“Can you not feel it? The past sweeps toward us, renews itself in the present. At night my bones ache with the imminence of it. The cycle of death, the cycle of ruin.” He shivered. His eyes seemed to be watering more than before and he dashed the wet away with his sleeve.
The old soldier gave Llian a thoughtful glance. He wore thick woolen trousers and a heavy brown cloak, caught at the neck with a copper pin. He rubbed his pouched eyes.
“Your creed and mine are very different, priest,” he said in a slow, low voice, the r’s rolled into a prrr. “I’m a pr-rractical man, but there are signs enough for me too. Something is building such as San thenar has not seen in an age. Where is the will to combat it? I don’t have it.”
Their sentiments made Llian shiver. What did they see that he did not? At that point the front door banged, and, twisting around in his chair, Llian saw three people enter in a flurry of snow. The better to observe them he stood up and leaned on the mantelpiece with his back to the fire. He sipped the wine, which had gone cold and developed an oily taste.
The three were dressed alike, in robes of dark-green wool gathered at the waist with cord. Two were tall, with sharp gray faces—the man with scarred cheeks; a woman, lanky though large-breasted. Each bore a short wooden staff but they were otherwise unarmed. The third was shorter and heavily built, almost stout, with thick graying hair. A wallet hung at his hip from a narrow belt. His legs were bowed so that he walked with a rolling gait, and his skin was as gray as steel.
He spoke briefly to the landlord, whose darting eyes betrayed his nervousness, then glanced around the room. His gaze rested for a moment on Llian, who did his best to look rustic, then he gestured to his companions and they walked off toward the stairs.
Llian was struck by something familiar about them, some image from a tale of long ago, but when he tried to pursue it, it was not there. He sat down again but the priest had moved to a table by himself and the soldier was gone. Llian signaled for food and another flask of spiced wine. Suddenly the benefits of this mission seemed outweighed by the risks.
Shand brought Llian his dinner, a large bowl of soup and some dark bread. The soup was thick, full of vegetables and beans and black, smoked meat. Llian sipped it from the bowl, as was the custom. It was very hot. He put it to one side and tore a strip from the loaf, dipping it in the soup while he resumed his deliberations.
Had Karan slipped by her pursuers, or had she hidden and let them overtake her? Or was she lying injured or dead somewhere off the path?
Just then Shand came back bearing a steaming bowl and mug. Llian gestured him over. Shand sat down, pulled a knife out of one pocket and a hunk of bread from the other and cut the bread into cubes which he dropped into the soup, pushing them under with his spoon.
“Who are they?” asked Llian.
Shand lowered his voice. “Yggur’s trusted servants. Whelm, they are named. The squat one is in charge, called Jark-un, and the woman’s name is Gaisch. They arrived yesterday evening. Took their meal in their room. They called me up there a few times—more blankets, more wood for the fire, that sort of thing. Shouldn’t have thought they’d feel the cold, coming from Orist. The last time I went up, the fellow with the scarred face, name of Idlis, called me in and asked when the red-haired woman had left. Not secretively, he asked me straight out, but he made me uneasy.
“ ‘Been no one traveling alone these last weeks, and don’t expect none, what with winter closing in,’ I told him. ‘Unusual even the few that we have. Generally it’s a big party or none.’ The other two looked surprised. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ he asked. As though he thought I was hiding her, but that was my story and it was true.
“Anyway, enough of them. What are you doing here? I’ve heard you’re something of a master now. I should have thought you’d be doing a telling at the festival.”
“I was going to,” Llian said, looking down at the remains of his soup, unsure how much to reveal. “To tell you the truth, I’m in a bit of trouble back in Chanthed. I’ve been satirizing old Wistan in the taverns these past months. The patrons thought it most amusing, and it was profitable for the innkeepers too, I dare say, but Wistan has banished me.”
“Hmn,” said Shand. “Seems to me there’s more than you’re letting on.”
He was disturbingly well-informed. Llian changed the subject, ordered a new flask of spiced wine and began spinning ever more outrageous yarns with each bowl. Shand listened in silence, though once or twice he laughed, and each time the flow dried up he asked Llian something that set him going again.
Llian couldn’t work out whether Shand was enjoying his tale-spinning, tolerating it or secretly laughing at him. Then, when Shand came back from the bar with yet another flask, suddenly he didn’t care. He held out his bowl in an unsteady hand, and as he watched the red liquid rise his quest floated to the top of his mind. He felt a vague unease; there must be some good reason for not talking about it, but he couldn’t remember what it was. How would he ever learn if he was too afraid to ask?
“Shand—did you hear about my Great Tale?” The words slurred together and Llian realized that he was drunk.
“What tale? The one from your telling of four years ago? The Loneliness of Faelamor?”
“No, the Tale of the Forbidding I made for the Graduation Telling last summer.”
“Oh yes—strange tale, that. I heard it on the road a while ago.”
“Well…” Llian hesitated. “There’s something bothers me about the ending.”
“Oh?”
“An insignificant thing. You probably wouldn’t recall it”
“If there is something you want to ask me,” Shand said rather testily, “then ask it I remember the tale well enough.”
“Well, recall that the crippled girl did not seem to have been harmed by the Forbidding, but she was found dead That’s what’s wrong.”
“Didn’t she kill herself?”
“She stabbed herself from behind?”
“What are you trying to say, Llian?”
“I think a great secret was discovered there and the crippled girl was killed to silence her.”
“What does it matter after all this time?”
“Is my tale right or wrong? Is there a greater tale to be found? If the record is false, I am ruined.”
Shand screwed up his lips, as though he had just found something unpleasant in the bottom of his bowl. “Look, Llian, why ask me? I chop wood for a living. But if something was discovered there, and has been bidden ever since, don’t you think mat raving about it when you’ve had a few drinks might be rather dangerous?”
“I just needed to talk to someone.”
“Well, I can’t help you. I suggest you leave it lie. Where are you off to, anyway?”
“Thurkad. I think perhaps I might see Mendark there.”
“The Magister! This is worse than the other! You overreach yourself, Llian. What does a lowly chronicler want with the Magister?”
“He was my…” He broke off. “I know him,” he stammered. “We spent weeks together once, on the road to Zile.”
Shand looked sceptical. “No one who wasn’t in a desperate hurry would take this way to Thurkad, not at the beginning of winter. Unless there was another reason to come to Tullin. To meet someone, for example. Take care with your alliances, Llian. Haven’t you Zain learned that lesson yet? Mendark is a dangerous friend.”
He rose heavily and left Llian there with his thoughts.
Llian woke suddenly to find his room cold and dark. He had dozed off in the chair in front of the fire, the lamp had gone out and the room was lit only by the coals in the fireplace. He stumbled across to the window, sluggish from the wine, pushed the sash up and thrust the shutters out. Outside it was black as a tomb, and large flakes of snow began to settle on his forearms as he leaned on the sill. What was he to do with his life?
Llian considered his options. The sensible thing wou
ld be to forget all about the crippled girl. No matter how he searched, after all this time he would probably never find the answer, or his new Great Tale. But on the other hand, it was unlikely that anyone would ever prove his Tale of the Forbidding wrong. Yes, the sensible thing was to put it all behind him and get on with rebuilding his life and his career.
Then there was Karan and the Mirror. That was a knottier problem, because her life was at stake, and his own word. Even so, to go out searching for her with the Whelm here was a deadly and immediate peril. Just the way they looked at him downstairs had sent an icicle melting down his back.
And Mendark—a dangerous friend maybe, but a magnificent patron. No better opportunity could ever be offered Llian. But Mendark was an exacting taskmaster. To win his favor Llian must get Karan and the Mirror safely to Thurkad. Anything less was failure. How could he find her in this weather? How could he get her there against such potent foes?
A gust sent the snow flurrying into his face and Llian came to himself abruptly. His hands were aching from the cold. He pulled the shutters to and closed the window. He warmed his fingers over the embers, built the fire up again, locked the door and, removing only his boots, crawled into the cold bed.
For what seemed an eternity he lay drifting in and out of sleep, fretting about Karan’s plight and wondering about the Mirror, but there were too many questions and no answers. A wind sprang up; somewhere it found a loose shutter, which every so often would crash open against the wall of the inn, then slowly creak shut on its hinges. Llian ran through one wild scheme after another, but none seemed to offer any hope. Who could blame him if he did not find her, in this!
In the end he had virtually decided to give it away; to give up his dreams and become a pathetic jongleur or, worse yet, a drudging scribe.
In the night the snow turned to rain, heavy drops pattering on the slates and splashing in the gutters. The downpour found a gap in the roof and Llian was awakened by water dripping on the hearth. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Suddenly he was wide awake, sensing some other presence nearby. What was it? It was so faint, this stirring inside, that he could not tell if it was malevolent or benign. Was it Karan, laid up in a cave or retreat nearby? Or some potency of the Whelm, stirring when the world was at its weakest?
As he lay in the dark, listening to the slow drip on the hearth, he became aware of a complex rhythmical beating in his head. The pattern rose and fell, rose and fell, then died away. Shortly it began again. Llian suddenly realized that it had been running through his subconscious while he was asleep. He closed his eyes and lay back, trying to make sense of it, for there seemed a meaning. But as he concentrated on the pattern it blurred and retreated, becoming a distant, meaningless burr, and eventually fading to nothing.
The fire had gone out again. Feeling around in the wood box in the dark he found some kindling, which he used to excavate hot coals from the mound of ash. He sat on the warm hob and fed the coals with little pieces of kindling until the fire drove him out onto the hearth. Sitting on the hearth, staring into the flames, his mind drifted back to Chanthed and the festival. Tonight was the final night, and it was he who should be telling the final tale, the greatest of all the Histories, the Tale of the Forbidding. If only he could!
The tale unrolled in his mind, an insoluble puzzle, as always. Immersed in his reverie, in the highest achievement of his art, it was a while before he realized that the message, if message it was, had started to come through again. It was as if someone had been listening in to the tale.
Suddenly a recognition, or a yearning, pulled it into focus. It became urgent, panicky. The emotions grew in him. Was it a cry for help? In his mind’s eye he could see her, for Karan it must be, huddled in the snow, so terribly cold and her wrist throbbing unbearably. Now there was nothing but the pain, the cold and the burden she could not relinquish.
The image was so real and clear that Llian felt he knew her better than anyone. It was strangely familiar too, as though he had met her before. He cried aloud, “Where are you?” but she could not hears him.
Help me, came the cry in his head.
“Where, where?” he cried silently in reply. Everything stopped, as though she had not expected to be answered. His mind went blank, something sighed inside his head, then urgently, Oh, hurry. I am…
A shattering discord erupted in Llian’s head and images flashed through his mind more quickly than thought: a steep, snow-covered hill, with a bony crown of rocks and someone huddling over a tiny fire; a dim tunnel, a small figure wading through knee-deep water; a tall man in robes, one hand outraised. Then the face of Idlis the Whelm, twisted in rage. The after-image of that face hung long in his mind.
But another image canceled it, forming slowly this time—a Nightland, a void with drifting banners of mist, a shadowy keep rising above, a somber hall flanked by obsidian pillars. A figure dwarfing its carved stone chair, but bound about with adamantine chains. Slowly the figure drew itself up to its enormous height, raising its arms, shattering the chains effortlessly. It took a step forward, then another, reaching out its mighty hand. A ribbon of mist swirled, obscuring it, only the eyes showing, carmine whirlpools, drawing him… Llian’s mind revolved with sickening slowness, and darkness enfolded him all around.
Someone shouted down the hall, shocking him back to his senses. It was answered, a cry that pierced the night like a beacon flaring from a stony hilltop. Doors crashed open and shut, there was more yelling, then Llian’s door burst open and Gaisch and Idlis hurtled in. Idlis picked Llian up and held him high, shaking him as a dog might shake a rat, then just as suddenly he was flung down again. Gaisch’s face almost touched his. Her voice was iron squealing on glass.
“Where is she, chronicler?”
This was like a horror out of one of his tales. Llian was still groggy, but there was no doubt that these were deadly enemies to Karan. His Karan! That fleeting touch had brought him closer to her than to anyone he had ever known. He babbled some nonsense, a fragment of a tale that popped into his head, anything to distract them while he gathered his thoughts. Gaisch shook him and a knife as long as her forearm touched Llian’s throat. She pressed the knife against his larynx until he gagged and tears sprang to his eyes.
“A teller who cannot speak is no teller at all,” she said. Her breath had the smell of metal.
“Glmpf,” said Llian, paddling his hands weakly against the air. The knife eased back a trifle. “I don’t know,” he gasped.
“You dreamed her, chronicler. Tell your dream.”
“Nothing. Just… Aaaahhhhhhh!”
Gaisch slammed the back of the knife hard against Llian’s throat. Llian thought his throat was cut; his eyes nearly started from their sockets.
“Make up your mind, chronicler,” she said, holding the knife out and reversing it slowly. The blade moved toward his throat again.
Llian had had enough. “I just—”
At that moment the light grew brighter and Shand spoke from the doorway.
“Leave him,” he said softly.
The Whelm stood up slowly. Idlis’s voice made Llian’s skin creep.
“Go away, old man, lest you be next.”
“Leave him, I said!” Shand’s voice was a whip-crack. The lantern flared and thunder roared in Llian’s ears. It felt as if the inn had rocked on its foundations.
Gaisch let go of Llian, the two Whelm backed away and disappeared through the door. Flat feet flapped down the stairs. Shortly hooves clattered on the stone outside. Shand offered Llian his hand. Llian sat down on the bed, feeling his throat, while the old man flung the shutters apart and watched the Whelm ride through a puddle of light and off into the darkness.
“Come and see me at dawn,” said Shand. “Outside!”
He went out, closing the door behind hism. Clearly he was more than he seemed, but Llian was too shocked and sore to think about it. Twice in three days he had nearly had his throat cut. Whatever Mendark had to offer, it was not worth it.
/> 13
* * *
THE ROAD TO
THE RUINS
Sometime later Llian picked himself up, crawled to the window, pushed it open and vomited on the snow below. The sun was rising. He wiped his face on his sleeve, staggered back to the bed and fell onto it. There he lay, alternately hot and cold, a piercing pain in his temple. He was more afraid than ever, but he could no longer think of giving up, not after touching minds—that strangely familiar feeling—with Karan.
Come at dawn! Shand had said. Already the sun was flooding into the room. The inn was empty in this early hour, but he found Shand sitting on a cushion on the stone steps leading from the kitchen to the woodheap. The old man had a gellon in his hand and a steaming bowl of chard beside hism on the step. He was staring across the valley at the shadowy bulk of the mountains and the low sun beyond. Llian poured a bowl from the pot on the stove, helped himself to a chunk of black bread and sat down beside Shand. His head still throbbed.
“Any news of the Whelm?” Llian asked.
“No, but the rest of the inn are astir,” Shand replied.
“The two messengers went at first light Though they were most unusual messengers, and until now traveling without haste. Even the priest is out of bed, the lovers too. Jared went out a while ago, but he walks every morning.” Shand took a bite of the gellon. The straw-colored juice ran down his wrist unnoticed. “They’re very good this year,” he said appreciatively. “Though we lost most of the crop to hail. Still, it’s usually that way.”
