A Shadow on the Glass

by Ian Irvine

  “You have picked a hard road,” she said, “and if you could see what is to come, you might choose differently. You will find that, as a companion on the road, I can be as foul as any.”

  It was his turn to smile slyly. “I knew that as soon as I met you,” he said, and, getting up, discovered that the pot of water was completely boiled away. He threw wood on the fire and went outside for more.

  She looks so pale and tired, Llian thought, as he came back with the pot full of snow and hail, and put it in a corner of the fire. Karan sat with her arms folded across her knees and her head on her arms. Her eyes followed him as he moved about but he could tell that her thoughts were elsewhere. What strength she must have, what iron will. What a tale it was going to be!

  He sorted through the wrapped packages of food-vegetables, still relatively fresh, onions, slightly moldy on the outside, a small piece of meat wrapped in oiled cloth, and spices in twists of paper, somewhat damp. Taking the pan he chopped the onions into it, whistling as he carried out the mundane tasks, poured in a little packet of spice and fried the lot gently with a little oil and the meat. He went back to the tunnel entrance and gathered hailstones and snow in the front of his coat, poured the lot into the pan and set it back on the fire. When the hailstones were reduced to the size of peas he threw in the chopped vegetables and a handful of dried grain and put it to one side to cook.

  The pot was boiling merrily. He stirred tea herbs into it. “It’s ready,” he said. There was no answer. He turned to Karan. She was sitting exactly as before, smiling still, but she was fast asleep.

  Between the fire and the far wall the floor was relatively flat. Llian made a bed with their sleeping pouches. He called her name, shook her gently by the shoulder, but she did not stir. Llian picked her up in his arms, his ribs hurting more than a little, carried her across and laid her down carefully on her side with her injured wrist supported on his pack. He arranged the cloak beneath her head, eased off her boots and stood them near the fire to dry, and tucked the covers around her chin. She was at peace for the first time since he had met her.

  The night dragged. Outside the storm had passed but the snow continued to fall. Llian poured himself another cup of tea and carried it over to the mouth of the tunnel. The wind had swung around to the south-west and built a drift across the entrance, so that from inside it was no longer possible to see out. He climbed up on top of the boulders and peered over the drift. There was nothing to be seen but snowflakes appearing out of the darkness above, in the dim light from the fire, and fluttering down to settle at his feet.

  Llian shivered and drew his cloak more tightly about him, sipping the last of the tea and longing for sleep. He threw the dregs onto the snow and turned back to the fire, which had burned low. The last of the wood thudded onto the coals, sending out a shower of sparks that drifted slowly up the tunnel. Karan stirred and began to whimper softly in her sleep, then turned onto her side and was still.

  Llian went out for more wood. The hail and snow had filled the broken ground, but every so often, as he struggled back with his haul, his foot plunged through an icy crust into a crack or crevice and once he skinned his ankle on a sharp face of stone. When he clambered down Karan was sleeping soundly. He threw a branch onto the fire. The twigs were thick with dead leaves and blazed up with a crackle and a roar.

  The sudden noise seemed to amplify some aspect of Karan’s dream for she cried out “No!” in a tortured way. “No!” she cried again, jerking herself upright, her arms crooked in front of her face to ward something off. “I can not. I will not.” The whole side of her face was twisted as though gripped by huge fingers, and her eyes were glazed.

  He called her name, softly. “Karan,” he said more loudly. “It’s me, Llian. You’re safe now.”

  “Away! No! Away!” she moaned. Her eyes flicked from place to place, as if seeking a certain face in a crowd. “Away! Oh, help me. Don’t…”

  Her voice faded out and she went completely rigid. Her face was the color of sleet. Llian knelt beside her for a minute, holding her in distressed indecision, then without warning she went slack and he barely caught her before her head struck the stone. With the contact an image flashed briefly into his mind, the face of a woman seen side-on in a mirror. He adjusted the cloak beneath her head and pulled the covers up. Karan was still breathing heavily but now she slept. He picked up another stick and put it carefully on the fire.

  That was more than just a bad dream. As though she had relived something terrible from the past. Or, as though something had tried to reach her in her dream. And who was the woman? No ordinary face that. Staring obliquely from the mirror that way, it reminded him of a bas-relief he had once seen on a wall in the Great Library. Was that the Mirror?

  From the instant Wistan had mentioned that the Mirror contained memories of ancient times, Llian had burned to see it. Now he was almost consumed with desire for it. But not to possess it—even to see or touch it was just the minor part of his need. His lust, now growing unbearable, was to see the Histories through the Mirror, as they had happened. To actually see the past, as it had occurred, was more than any chronicler’s dream. Who had held the Mirror over the centuries? What records did it contain? There could be no end to them.

  And Karan was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion—he could look at it and she need never know. He bent down over her. She opened her eyes, smiled dreamily up at him, sighed and snuggled the covers up under her chin, fast asleep.

  No! Llian was moved by her faith in him, her trust. He put the pot on for more tea and took out his journal, which he had not touched since before Tullin. Forcing all thoughts of the Mirror away, he immersed himself in his writing, setting down every detail.

  The long night wore away. At last, when he was beginning to think that dawn would never come, a pale light began to spread across the sky outside the cave. As he went toward the entrance to look at the dawn he felt a feather-soft presence behind him. Karan was lying as he had left her, on her side with the blanket up beneath her chin and her red hair fallen across her cheek. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him with a serene expression that made her seem ageless and at the same time very young.

  Llian was unsure of himself in the morning light. “Would you like some tea?” he asked blandly.

  “Please,” she smiled, raising herself up on her elbow. Her eyes followed him as he climbed up to the entrance and packed snow into the pot “I was so tired. You looked after me.” A fleeting shadow on her face. “Thank you.”

  “I made dinner for us last night,” Llian said as they waited for the pot to boil. “But I’m afraid it will be rather a stew by now.”

  “Put it back on the fire. After what I’m used to, I won’t complain.”

  Llian, remembering the evil substance they had eaten that first night, could only agree.

  18

  * * *

  MOUNTAIN

  SICKNESS

  The sun had only just risen when they prepared to set off. Llian climbed up, looked out, then stopped. “There’s someone out there,” he hissed to Karan, who was waiting below with the packs. “It’s them—Idlis, I think, and the fat one.”

  “What are they doing?” she asked, jumping up beside him.

  “They’re standing over by that tree: the one the lightning struck.”

  “Right next to the one you chopped down-a little signpost.” Llian flinched, but she wasn’t angry. “Get down. They may not realize there’s a tunnel here.”

  Faint hope, thought Llian, if they’ve tracked us this far. “I don’t understand how they found us, in all this snow.”

  “How have they ever found me? There have been times when I’ve gone for a week without seeing them, then they appear as though out of the air. Last night was the first time I’ve dreamed for days and, suddenly, here they are. It is as though they reach out and touch me in my dreams.”

  It was their fortune that the wind had drawn the smoke up the tunnel to seep out unseen through
a myriad of little fissures and be dispersed across the mountainside. That would not protect them against a determined search though. Karan tramped snow onto the coals to be sure.

  They huddled inside, away from the entrance, scarcely moving all day. Without the fire it was miserable and Llian got into his sleeping pouch and tried to sleep while Karan stood guard, but the thought of their pursuers so near would not permit any rest; he gave up the struggle and got up again. The Whelm appeared and disappeared, quartering the mountainside, then around midday, unaccountably, they turned in haste, as though they had seen something, and went diagonally away from them up the slope of the mountain.

  “That’s strange,” said Llian. “They’re going away.”

  Karan was beside him in a flash, standing on tiptoe to see. “Where can they be going?”

  “It looks like they’re following someone.”

  They learned no more about this strange circumstance. Late in the afternoon they caught a last glimpse of the Whelm, a smudge on the snow far to the west, and then they were gone.

  When it was dark Karan and Llian crept out into the cold. An icy wind still blew from the south and the snow swirled about them. They were thankful for it at first, but it soon became a nightmare night of wading through drifts, struggling over rocky ridges and suddenly plunging to the neck in soft, damp snow. Within half an hour they were soaked and bitterly cold. As the night went on the snow became thicker and by midnight they could go no further, even had they known where they were going. They found shelter of a sort under an overhanging rock, though it was on the steep side of a south-facing ridge and exposed to the full force of the wind. But this was not one of the fleeting snowstorms of autumn. The wind was hard from the south, the wind that turned ice to iron, the wind of a long and bitter winter. And they were lost in the mountains.

  Llian felt the cold terribly, much more so than Karan. He thought that they were going to die that night. They could not generate enough warmth to dry their clothes. Their wet fingers and toes kept freezing, so that they had to rub them constantly to keep the blood flowing. Finally they made a cocoon of their sleeping pouches and cloaks and crept inside, clinging together like lovers, and made enough warmth between them for survival. At last the morning came.

  “Never again,” said Karan, as she cracked the ice from their covers. “I will face the Whelm first. I will hunt them as they have hunted me.”

  Her round cheeks were sunken so that the knotted muscles of her jaw were clearly visible. Her green eyes were bloodshot and contracted to mere slits, and such fury in them he had never experienced. He put his hand on her shoulder but she slapped it away, and the enforced intimacy of the night with it. Llian was suddenly alone, and afraid of her, and for her—there were depths to her that were beyond his comprehension.

  During the night they had climbed across a steep spur and now found themselves looking into a long, straight, broad valley that ran due south for several leagues. A frozen stream meandered across the bottom of the valley, which was covered in thick forest. There was no sign of habitation, or even of life, save for the hunting birds that hung in the middle air over the stream. Tall mountains lay all around. The wind was keen in their faces. They hurried down the slope into the shelter of the forest.

  * * *

  Night again, the fifth since they left the ruins. They sat, nestling together for warmth, in a shallow cave, no more than an embayment at the base of a low cliff. There had been no more sign of the Whelm, though they were haunted by the fear that they would suddenly appear. It had taken them all day and most of the evening to force their way through the snow and forest to the southern end of the valley. The sky was clear behind them but the south promised more snow.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” asked Llian, not for the first time. “We’ve eaten nearly half the food already.”

  Karan gave him a bleak look. She was beginning to think that even Bannador was beyond them.

  “Why did we have to come this way?” he continued irritably.

  “I chose to come this way,” Karan said icily, “because there was no other way. I didn’t ask you to come. I brought you only out of pity.”

  She got up and stalked away into the night. Llian sat there in the darkness, cold and miserable. The camaraderie of two days past seemed gone forever.

  Hours later she returned silently from another direction. Llian had dozed off and the fire was no more than a bed of coals. “Wake up,” she said, cheerful now, brushing his face with something soft and wet. Llian woke sluggishly from a fitful sleep. It was the tail of a small plump fish, and four others dangled from a string.

  “Where did…?”

  “I was sitting above a pool and the scorpion shone so brightly that I saw a shadow move under the ice, so I broke it and there they were, all fat for the winter, so tame that I caught them with my hands.”

  She roused the fire to a fierce blaze and began to clean the fish. “I’m sorry I was so rude. I was worried, but I think I know where we are now. When we went around the wrong side of the mountain we ended up much too far West Now we must follow the ridge and cross over at that saddle we saw earlier.”

  “Will this give us enough food to get to Bannador?”

  “Almost. If the weather holds.”

  On the morning of the sixth day they set out as soon as it was light The path now left the valley and skirted the edge of the eastern mountains. The lower slopes were rounded and they crunched through prickly heath and dry grasses that stuck up through the snow. They went this way for two days, traveling slowly in thick snow, before the track began to climb.

  For three days they climbed. The track wound its way into the high mountains, but always to the south; yet even as it climbed the peaks rose ever higher, so that their task seemed to grow more difficult the further they went. And the mountains were highest and most steep to the south and the west and it seemed that in their shadow the steep northern slopes were left rocky and barren. No longer did they wade through soft snow, and that was a blessing, yet the higher they climbed the harder it became, till every step was an effort that made them gasp, and the burden of their packs, even half-empty as they were, was almost too much to lift onto their backs each morning.

  Finding water was another chore, for every trickle was frozen, and now there was seldom any wood for a fire. They had to pack their water bottles with snow, or sometimes chips of ice, and carry them under their clothes so that their warmth would make a little water, but never quite enough. They were always thirsty now; always cold, even when they huddled together at night. But there was one consolation—Karan dreamed no more, and there had been no more sight of the Whelm. If Llian’s presence had anything to do with that she was grateful for it.

  Llian was particularly slow now, so that Karan found herself constantly waiting for him, and fretting about their lack of progress. At this rate their food would run out long before Bannador, and that left only one alternative, one that Karan did not want to think about…

  On the eleventh day, Llian woke exhausted from a night of tossing and turning, with a headache that became worse as the day dragged on. Twice during their trek he was sick without warning, and even during rest breaks he panted like a dog in the desert sun.

  The path dwindled to a track that was indistinguishable from all the other animal trails. Karan had difficulty finding her way, and many times they plodded to the top of a ragged bill only to look down into a pathless wilderness of rocky ravines, and knew that they must go all the way back down again. The ground was bare and stony, littered with flat sheets of slate that cracked and slipped underfoot, and off which the low sun reflected silver. The path zig-zagged up a steep ridge and the way forward was hidden.

  Suddenly Llian flung himself down on a boulder. His face was red and blotchy. “I’m so thirsty,” he panted. “How much longer is it going to be?”

  Karan passed him her water bottle and pointed up the hill without saying anything.

  “What d
oes that mean?” he asked frettishly.

  She glared at him. She was worn out as well, but she didn’t make a constant fuss about it “Once we cross this ridge we’ll be able to see the top of the pass. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

  Llian did not answer. Shortly they reached the top of the ridge. Before them the mountains ran, steep and snow-tipped, in an unbroken line from east to west. The distance was obscured by haze.

  “Look! There’s the pass!” said Karan, pointing toward the middle of the line of mountains.

  Llian could see nothing that looked remotely like a crossing place, and said so in a morose tone.

  Karan pointed again. “There, a little to the east of south. It’s as plain as day.” Llian still could not see it. “Don’t trouble yourself,” she said in vexation. “Just follow.”

  They woke early the next morning, eating a frugal breakfast of preserved fruit and moldy cheese while the sun rose. Hunger and headache had left Llian sullen and Karan was still angry and worried.

  It was late in the afternoon when they finally reached the top of the pass. There had been no sign of a path since they had crossed the ridge and Llian, now staggering like a drunkard in Karan’s footsteps as they passed back and forth across the steep northern flank of the mountain, had long since abandoned hope of finding a way across. They crested the ridge and looked across a sea of white-tipped peaks and bottomless, shadowy defiles. Llian was dismayed. He dropped his pack and flopped across it as though he was dead, and might have been, save for the rasping breathing that Karan could hear from ten paces away.

  “What is this place?” he asked listlessly. “I thought we’d see Bannador from here.”

  “If only!:” Karan said, with a mirthless laugh. “This is the land of Chollaz,” indicating the mountains ahead with a sweep of her arm. “All you see within the ring of mountains. Bannador is still more than a week away. We’ll camp now. Look, there’s a way station!”