A Shadow on the Glass

by Ian Irvine

  Llian looked around him. The mountains to right and left towered above the pass. They continued in a chain of peaks making a ragged semicircle that enclosed Chollaz on the northern side. The mountains within the semicircle were only marginally smaller. The southern extent of the land was lost in a mist that rose even as they watched. Within minutes the shafts of sunlight that spilled through the gaps in the western range were gone, the blue seeped out of the sky and in the thin mountain air they were chilled to the bone.

  The way station was just below the crest of the pass, a tiny spherical building of stone with a curving roof and a small entrance-way. There had once been a sliding door, a slab of stone, but it lay on the ground in pieces. The shelter kept out the wind but inside it Karan felt claustrophobic so they sat outside for their meal. The only fuel was a few windswept bushes. Karan chopped them and made a meager and temporary blaze just outside the door.

  Llian was so miserable and depressing that she could not bear to be with him and after they ate she pulled her coat around her and walked down the path. She did not go far, only away from sight of the fire, where she sat down on a cold boulder and stared into the mist. The night was very dark, just the brightest stars visible, swimming in white haloes. She clutched the thick coat more tightly around her. Somehow she seemed to have lost her direction, her purpose, since she had taken on the burden of Llian. How would she get out of it now? She could hear him coughing from here. It just went on and on.

  After a while the cold became disheartening and she walked back to the dying fire, warmed her hands and sat down beside Llian, who was bent down with his head in his hands. He broke out in another coughing fit, sat up suddenly and Karan was horrified to see that there was blood all over his mouth.

  “How long has this been going on?” she cried, tilting back his head so that she could see his eyes. They were red as well.

  “Just this afternoon. I feel like I’m going to die. What’s the matter with me?”

  Karan had seen it before. “Mountain sickness,” she said, a chill going down her back.

  “How bad is that?”

  “It’s a common thing, this high up. You could drop dead of it, although most people don’t. But the only remedy is to go back down the mountain again.”

  Llian almost wept. “I can’t!”

  She thought he was talking about the descent, but he went on, “I can’t. There is a tale here and I have to write it. I will not die.”

  His face was so twisted with passion, his eyes so red, so liquid that it looked as though he was weeping blood.

  “I won’t let you die,” she said, holding his head in her arms. “But we are in desperate trouble, even were you well. There isn’t the food to go back, nor to get to Gothryme anymore; we’ve been so slow these last few days. I miss my home terribly.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “If it wasn’t for me you’d be nearly there.” He broke into another fit of coughing that left him so weak he just lay on the ground.

  Karan heaved him up again and wiped pink foam from his lip with a handful of snow. “There’s only one thing we can do—keep going.”

  “Tonight?”

  “As soon as it’s light. This is the highest point on the path. Tomorrow we go down a bit. You should get better then.” Karan hoped so, though she knew that mountain sickness did not always go away so easily.

  “Where can we go? What’s the point, if we’re going to starve anyway?”

  She hesitated. It was prohibited to speak of Shazmak, but he had to know now. “There is a city. A forbidden place, but it is our only hope.” She paused for a moment, listening, still looking down. A solitary howl came on the still air. Llian looked uneasy. “It was far away,” she said, then continued. “A city of the Aachim. A city in size though no longer in numbers, I should say. But a stronghold still. Few know of this place, for the Aachim require little of the outside world. They seldom go abroad, and in disguise, and secretly.”

  “I know something of the Aachim,” said Llian, “from the Histories; but not of such a place.”

  “It is called Shazmak.”

  “Shazmak! Then I do know it, of course I do! But Shazmak was abandoned long ago.”

  “Not abandoned. Hidden; withdrawn from the memory of the world. I lived there for six years, after my parents died. My Aachim friends will help me.”

  “And me?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Aachim. The Mirror of Aachan,” said Llian, puzzling over the possibilities inherent in the names. “I have a tale of the Aachim, though the Mirror is not mentioned. Oh, how I wish I could see it!”

  “You can’t” Karan got up before he could harass her further and walked away from the fire again, out of sight down the slope. She came to a withered old tree and rested her cheek against the corrugated bark, looking down into the mist. The matter was not finished and she knew it. Just above her head a dead branch still had a cluster of cones on the end. She snapped it off and walked back up to the fire, plucking off the cones as she went. She sat down beside Llian and threw a cone onto the coals. Eventually it blazed up with red and blue fire.

  “Did the Mirror belong to the Aachim?”

  “Once,” she said. “Long ago.”

  “You are returning it to them?”

  A perceptible pause before she answered. “I did not say that.” Karan hesitated again. “I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Surely the Aachim will want it back.”

  Karan did not answer. She could hardly stop thinking about Shazmak, now that they were going there. It was the most beautiful place she had ever been, though its was a harsh, uncompromising beauty. Most of the happy memories of her life were there.

  Llian was staring at her. “Give me your confidence,” he cried in passion. “If you demand trust you must also give it.”

  Yes, she thought, gazing at his red, ardent face. I must. But why is it so difficult to trust you? Can I be guilty of prejudice against the Zain?

  Or is it because of the look in your eyes when you are thinking about the Mirror? The more you learn the more you will want.

  “I will tell you what little I may, and in return you will protect me,” said Karan. “Say nothing about the Mirror in Shazmak, even if they ask you. You know nothing about it.”

  Her thoughts went back to Shazmak. Perhaps Rael would be there. Rael, so different from the other Aachim, and once her closest friend. So gentle, so patient, so sad. She could see his face as clearly as on the day he had been sent away to the east—the curling red hair, the sad green eyes. She could hear, even now, the music that he had played so often for her, melancholy despite his attempts to cheer her.

  Karan realized mat her heart was beating wildly, just at the thought of seeing him again. She trusted Rael utterly. She could give up the Mirror to him and know that she had done the right thing. For a long time now Karan had deliberately not thought of the Mirror, as though by ignoring the problem it would disappear. But she could ignore it no longer. Suddenly the decision she had agonized over for so long was made. She would give back the Mirror to the Aachim, to Rael.

  Llian hunched over the coals, coughing and spitting blood. The Histories flowed in his mind, the faces of the great whirling and spiraling like the flames in the wind, calling to him, whispering their secrets in voices that he could not quite hear, laughing at him, jeering and insulting him. A bas-relief high on a stone wall became a face on the Mirror, dissolved into other faces. Llian crawled to the doorway and put his face in the snow to cut through the hallucinations, desperately trying to think straight.

  The Aachim came into the most ancient tales, even the first, the tale of Shuthdar and the flute that he had made for Rulke the Charon. Then after the Forbidding the Aachim grew strong in their own right, and fought the endless wars, now called the Clysm, against the Charon.

  “But the Aachim were destroyed in the Clysm,” said Llian, speaking his thoughts aloud. “The Histories no longer tell of
them.”

  “Some survived,” said Karan, who had come back without his hearing, “but they retreated from the world. The high mountains were most like Aachan, and there they went, building their iron cities. To Tirthrax they went, in the Great Mountains; to Stassor, eight hundred leagues east of us; and to other cold remote places. And here. Shazmak was once their stronghold in Meldorin, but with the waning of the years they have allowed it to dwindle to an outpost. Yet they guard it still, and ward away any who wander near.” She dragged him back inside and brushed the snow off his face.

  Llian was silent, shaken by the realization that the Aachim existed still, though the Histories no longer spoke of them. Why had these things not been mentioned? Were the Histories corrupt? He lay down on the floor. The cold seared his cheek but he was too sick to move.

  “How can you go there, then?” he rasped.

  “My family has had a long alliance with the Aachim, and my grandmother was one of them.”

  “What about me? The Zain conspired with Rulke, remember. The Aachim were enemies.”

  Karan said nothing. She knew that too, and worried about it just as much as Llian did.

  Llian drifted away into a delirium of names and faces, all jumbled together, and then into a troubled sleep where the delirium became a dream that was no different.

  19

  * * *

  CONFESSIONS

  Maigraith struggled furiously but without avail. Vartila was incredibly strong and tenacious—nothing would make her let go. She dragged Maigraith toward a small door in the far corner of the room, a place to question in secret. Maigraith grew frantic. She opened her mouth to shout and a cold hand instantly clamped shut her mouth and nose. She felt nauseated. She was choking. She slid her foot down Vartila’s shin, then stamped her heel down on the instep with all the strength she could manage. Had she been wearing boots Vartila might have been crippled, her instep crushed.

  Vartila stifled her scream into a shrill yelp. She hopped on one foot for a moment, then snatched up a heavy ruler from the table and cracked Maigraith over the side of the head with it. The blow was unexpected and incredibly painful. Maigraith fell to her knees in a daze. The metal edge had cut her; red blood glistened in her hair.

  Vartila raised the ruler again. “Get up,” she panted. “Go into the room. Do not make another sound.”

  Maigraith felt utterly cowed. She put her hand up to the side of her head, then brought it slowly round in front of her face, looking at the bright blood. She bowed her head in submission, then reached up and, gripping the table edge, laboriously pulled herself to her feet. She swayed, took a step toward the door, and bumped seemingly by accident against a pedestal on which stood a tall porcelain urn. Though Vartila leapt forward she was too late to stop it smashing on the floor. Maigraith swung her arms, and other vessels flew through the air and broke with satisfying crashes. Then Vartila knocked her down, put her hands about her throat, and her questions were spat with cold fury.

  “You have one minute, and then I choke you,” she gritted. “Who are you? Where did you come from. What is—”

  The door smashed open. Yggur’s deep-set gray eyes took in the scene at once. He turned to Vartila, his voice dangerously soft, no trace of impediment now.

  “What do you do with my prisoner? I gave no orders for you to touch her.”

  Vartila was unmoved—it was clear that the conflict was to her liking, that she had been expecting it. Her voice was cold and arrogant. “You lost the Mirror, master. Our duty is to get it back. We warned you about this one, yet you play games with her, games that affect your judgment.”

  Yggur was incredulous. “What is this?” he cried in a great voice. “The contemptible Whelm rebel? The worthless Whelm accuse me of failure? Where is the Mirror, Whelm? One small human, barely a woman—untrained, unskilled, with no talent worthy of the name—has humiliated the mighty Whelm. Give back your warrant; you are not fit to serve mash to swine.”

  Vartila faced him unmoving, but her eyes showed her outrage and humiliation. “We are Whelm—we serve! But the master also has a duty to the servant, and you have failed this duty. You make faces with the slukk. You should have broken her at once. We would have done it, if you could not You kept the Mirror from us and you lost it. Information vital to the hunt you keep from us. You are the unworthy one.”

  For a moment Maigraith thought Yggur had lost control; he did not seem to know what to do. She looked from one to the other and was dreadfully afraid.

  “Yours is to serve, never to question. You… will… serve,” said Yggur again, forcing the words through his teeth. They faced each other for a long minute, then Vartila bowed, but a little too low, and when she smiled, her teeth were pointed like the teeth of a dog.

  Yggur appeared to relax. “She is mine. Return her to my chamber,” he said and withdrew.

  Vartila hurried her along the corridors, the grip cruelly tight on her arm.

  “Your master is not pleased with you,” croaked Maigraith, as they mounted the stairs.

  “He knows not how to be master,” she said with contempt

  “Yet you serve him.”

  “Only until we find a better.”

  After Maigraith’s escape Yggur made a special cell for her, by walling off a corner of his workroom with bars stretching from floor to high ceiling. Why he did not throw her into a cell far below Fiz Gorgo to rot she did not know. Perhaps it was the enigma of her, that which still seemed to startle him when he looked at her. But there she was and there she stayed, watching him all day through the bars. And in his turn he watched her. A tiny space against the stone of the main wall was curtained for her toilet, otherwise the cell was open to his gaze.

  The days flowed into weeks. His routine was almost unvarying. Each morning he appeared before it was light, went straight to a small table set in an angle between two shelves of books and sat down to read for an hour. At dawn a servant came with two baskets—Yggur’s breakfast and Maigraith’s. The servant, an old retainer, was fearful and would not look at her, but placed the basket outside her cell until Yggur should notice and bring it in. At first Yggur simply opened the door, handed Maigraith the basket and closed it again, but as the days and weeks passed it seemed that he sought her company; or perhaps this was another facet of his plan. He would bring the basket carefully into the cell, keeping one eye on her while he relocked it, then sit down on the bed and watch her as she ate. At first this angered her but in the end she grew used to it, even, in spite of her mistrust, came to look forward to it. The breakfast over, he would spend another hour, sometimes more, consulting the maps and papers on the large table, and writing in a journal.

  After this there was a continual stream of people. Messengers came, or spies, from all the lands around. Yggur sat impassively while they spoke or read from documents. Next, the Whelm appeared but such was the tension between them and Maigraith that after only a few days they came no more, and Yggur would leave the chamber to speak to them, his guards waiting silently in his place. But several times the Whelm arrived unexpectedly and Yggur always put himself between her and them, even though she was locked in her cell. The Whelm would stare at her with a disturbing intensity, and at these times Yggur struggled to maintain control of himself.

  His troubles could not be disguised from Maigraith’s cool gaze. She saw the strangeness that Yggur hid from others, and his pain; and surprisingly she found that she felt for him. Normally the feelings of other people were a blank page to her.

  She often thought about the Whelm after that. What was it about her that disturbed them so? In their first questioning they were concerned for the Mirror and how to recover it, but after her attempt to escape it was she that they wanted to know about. Who was she? Where had she come from? She told them nothing and they watched her constantly.

  By the time Yggur returned from his daily meeting with the Whelm the morning was gone. At noon they ate a frugal lunch together: unleavened bread; a salad made from the green le
aves of plants that she did not know; pastes of the flesh of nuts, pounded, soaked in thickened milk, and spiced; lasee. Yggur rarely ate meat. Lunch was a brief affair, and no sooner were the remnants taken away than his generals came. For hours they would discuss the reports of messengers and spies, the disposition of armies, the state of the weather, the disrepair of roads and bridges, or the quality of the crops and livestock of all the surrounding lands. Great charts were brought out, old maps of leather and canvas so large and heavy that it took two to carry them. They were spread over the floor of the chamber while Yggur crawled over them like a schoolboy, examining them in the minutest detail, his generals following like ducklings after their mother. And often the master map-maker was called to fill in a new detail or to amend an old one.

  Maigraith listened in wonder and turmoil. Yggur knew more about the countries around him than their own rulers, and she saw why they feared him so. It was not the dread power that rumor attributed him, though perhaps he had that too. It was the cool intellect, the genius for strategy and the attention to every detail. And doubtless, the Mirror too, his tireless spy.

  After that it was time for the management of his own land. Yggur spoke with his seneschal and his bailiffs, and sometimes two parties with a grievance were brought before him. He listened to their claims and resolved them. But this was rare. It was clear that his realm was well-ordered, that his lieutenants knew his wishes and carried them out exactly to his will.

  The evening meal came late, long after dark. Again it was frugal, though occasionally he seemed to feel the need of richer fare, and then would come a basket of pastries stuffed with meats or ground nuts or meal, flavored with diverse spices aromatic, pungent or bitingly hot; dark meats that were dried, smoked, steeped in herbal solutions or done in subtle, unusual sauces; vegetables pickled in brine or oil; salt fish; lastly, more pastries, scented with citrus-blossom water or rose oil and filled with fruit. Then Yggur would talk to her, or sit by himself, reading or writing in his journals again. Often he questioned her about Faelamor, and Karan, and the Mirror, though after a while he realized that she would tell no more, and his examination turned to herself.