by Ian Irvine
All that remained of the food was a small quantity of damp oatmeal. Llian made a slurry of the stuff in lukewarm water from his bottle and they sat in their makeshift shelter shoulder to shoulder eating the unsatisfying mess. It had a moldy taste. The roof was made from their oiled cloaks, stretched across a cluster of boulders and weighted down with stones. The edges flapped in the wind and Karan had to constantly adjust the structure to ensure that it did not blow away. Inside it was dark, but not as dark as the gorge below, up from which the misty air spiraled and the river roared.
After dinner Llian was a little better. He still breathed heavily but the cough was gone. “Please tell me about the Mirror,” he begged, speaking what had been on his mind for days. “I think about it all day and at night I dream of it. Where did it come from? May I not see it?”
A faint glow appeared in the east, outlining the tips of the mountains from behind. The moon was rising. Karan stared at the spot until it came up, almost full and mostly the yellow side showing.
“I can’t show it,” she said. “But I will tell you what I know—that is no secret. Though doubtless it will only whet your curiosity and cause me trouble later. All I know is from a story told by my father. This is how I remember it.” She felt self-conscious, telling the Histories to Llian, and she began stiffly.
“The Mirror of Aachan is old—very old. It was made in Aachan in ages long past, as a thing to look from one place to another. Such devices were common there. It was smuggled into Santhenar when our ancestors were brought here as slaves to Rulke. But here on Santhenar it was difficult to use and did not always show true. Perhaps its essence rebelled against the fabric of the world. And it changed with time and with use, as such things are wont to do, taking on a shadow of the life and color of their owners. The Mirror became capricious, showing things that never were; things that might never be. Sometimes, if the user was unskilled, or careless, it concealed or deceived. Eventually it grew so strange and entangled that it was perilous to use and it was laid aside by the Aachim. It was lost in the Clysm, some say, along with much else.”
A gust of wind swirled into the shelter, sending one corner flapping loose in a shower of little stones. She paused while Llian adjusted it, then said, “My father used words that I didn’t understand, but I can recite every one of his tales from memory. Others say that Yalkara, the Mistress of Deceits, the third of the Charon to come here, stole the Mirror at the fall of Tar Gaarn and took it on her long march to the Wahn Barre, the Crow Mountains. For she knew how to control it, and had learned its other secret. On Santh it had acquired (or had been given) a memory. It retained the imprints of the scenes that it had reflected, and though the remembrances were confused and cloudy they could be read by one who was skilled. Yalkara forced the Mirror to her will; she used it to see across the world, to pry into the secrets of the past, and she grew powerful, and cruel. But at last she found what she had sought for so long, a warp in the Forbidding, and escaped back to Aachan.”
“How did she escape? How did she get through the Forbidding?”
“I don’t know. That wasn’t part of the tale. Let me finish my father’s story. After that the Mirror was lost, or hidden. That is what the Recorder told him.”
“The Recorder?” The name had aroused Llian’s professional interest.
“Someone my father mentioned a few times. He knew a lot of the old tales.”
Llian suddenly looked much better; alive again.
“Tell me about the Recorder,” he said eagerly.
“I don’t know anything more about him.”
“So, the Mirror is a seeing device too—maybe that explains Yggur’s successes!” said Llian.
“And everyone thinks that they will be the one to master it, and read its secrets…” Her voice trailed away. She stared at the moon unblinking, her face pinched in the cold gray light. The wind buffeted the shelter, ruffling her hair. The oilskin quivered. “I’m dreadfully afraid.” She shivered and retreated into the shadows.
“That’s all over now,” said Llian, thinking of the Whelm. “We’ve lost them.”
“No! It’ll never be over until I can be rid of it. I don’t know what to do, who to trust.” Karan’s voice came melancholy from behind. “I had thought to give the Mirror back to the Aachim, but how can I, after your tale?”
A sudden thought came to Llian. “The other night, in the tunnel,” he said, “I caught a fragment of your nightmare. It was as though I looked down at a surface of polished metal, on which there appeared fleetingly the face of a woman. Dark were her eyes, and her hair was dark too, save where it had turned to silver. Who is she?”
“I often think of her. Perhaps that’s why she came to you. I saw her on the Mirror just as Yggur appeared. She is the very image of Maigraith, but much older. Perhaps it is Maigraith in some distant time and place, perhaps someone else. Perhaps just a deceit of the Mirror.”
“Have you seen anything else?” he asked breathlessly.
“No. I tried it once or twice, but nothing came. And why should it? I’ve no training in the use of such things.”
He sat there, hugging his knees, staring out across the gorge. The bridge hung like a web in the night, swaying gently and touched with moonlit silver. The wind wailed in the wires, moaned around the boulders, flapped the roof of the shelter, roared in the ravine below. Ice gripped his heart. Karan, too, was a pawn. What drew the powerful together around her? Was it only chance? Or was it a tide that swept through the vast sea of the Histories, casting them all together on this cold shore?
The names washed across his subconscious: Shuthdar the smith; Rulke the Great Betrayer; Yalkara, or the Mistress of Deceits; Mendark; Yggur; Maigraith; the Recorder… So many names, so many people. And one of them he knew.
Llian thought back on the time. It was when he was still a student; to prove his skill he had been set the solving of the riddle in the Lay of the Wanderers, a saga from the time of the Zurean Empire. Traveling west to Zile to consult the librarian, he had fallen in with a shabby man of middle age, and they found a common interest in the sagas, or so it had seemed at the time. Llian had enjoyed the companionship, and it was not until much later that he realized that the man was Mendark, watching him in disguise.
A desperate fear crept through him, driven by the cold seeping into his bones. These were not mere happenings. Something brooded in the abysses of the world; something moved with slow patience toward a long-awaited consummation. The malevolence was almost palpable in the frigid night. Who was shifting the pieces? Llian shuddered involuntarily. He crept closer to Karan and they huddled together for warmth and comfort all the long night.
21
* * *
OLD FRIENDS
FALL OUT
As Karan and Llian dozed in their frigid shelter a crucial meeting was about to take place in distant Thurkad, almost fifty leagues to the north-east, as the skeet flies. Mendark, longtime Magister of the High Council, sat by his fire in the citadel, scowling, afraid. Even the servants knew of the intrigues building against him—and their eyes no longer met his as they passed. Llian would scarcely have recognized the man he had traveled to Zile with five years ago. At that time Mendark had had dark hair, bright blue eyes and laughter wrinkles about his mouth, and he had drunk great quantities of wine and laughed at everything.
Now his long hair was lank and flecked with gray, his eyes were dull, his fingers had worried his beard into ratty coils, and the wrinkles were almost obliterated by scowl marks that curved down from mouth to chin. And still Tallia sent no message. She was his only comfort now, the one that he could rely on. It seemed an age since she had left for the east. Word had come that she went to Tullin, then nothing.
The door was thrust open without knocking and an orderly sauntered in. “A man below says he must see you, Magis,” he said, using the familiar mode. “He would not give his name, only said to show you this.” The servant passed Mendark a bracelet made of interwoven strands of black silver. It w
as remarkably heavy for such a fine thing.
“This man, is he big and dark, with black hair?”
The orderly nodded. “Then send him up. And when next you come, knock first, and wait until I bid you enter.”
The orderly withdrew, crashing the door behind.
“Tensor, my old friend,” said Mendark, when the huge frame filled the doorway. “It is overlong since we last saw you in Thurkad.”
They clasped hands and Mendark drew the Aachim over to the fire, calling the servant back. They took chairs facing each other, close to the warmth. Tensor sat in his heavy coat, oblivious to the heat. There was ice on his bushy black beard and his eyebrows, and snow in his thick black hair.
The characteristics that identified him as Aachim, a different human species, were carefully concealed: the small ears that were as round as a circle; the unusual way that his hair grew to a peak on his forehead; the ridge that crested his head; the extra sensory glands in his nose; the vestigial tail. There was only one characteristic that he could not conceal—his fingers were remarkably long, almost twice the length of his hand. But he used his hands in ways that minimized that. Not that the Aachim were persecuted—in these times they were almost forgotten, but it was better not to stand out.
Beside him, Mendark looked pale and ineffectual, and his tangled beard scanty. Eventually the servant came with tepid drinks and congealed food.
“I had not expected to see you in Thurkad this winter,” said Mendark, smiling, delighted to meet his old friend again. “Were you not away in the east?”
Tensor did not smile. “I was on my way to Stassor and did not plan to return until the year after the coming one.” His voice was deep, so deep that it might have been a purr or a growl, but there was no mistaking his mood this time. “But events have brought me hurrying back. Events of some importance to the Aachim.”
He fell silent then, waiting for Mendark to respond, obviously hoping the rumors were not true, but Mendark did not reply. The fire crackled. A log fell apart, exposing the white coals inside. The flames leapt up briefly, the coals turning red, then black with a tracework of orange. Tensor stared at the fire, his big hands clasped together.
“What do you know of these things?” he asked at last “You have your spies in the east.”
Mendark seemed to find the term indelicate. “I have people there, but it is very difficult,” he hedged. “Orist’s boundaries are closed; Yggur has occupied the surrounding lands. It is hard to get people there, harder to get them out again.”
“That may be so,” said Tensor, “but you will have found a way.”
“My people have brought me some information, but it is obscure and contradictory.”
As are you, my friend, thought Tensor. You are failing and this chance is too much to pass up, as it is for me. But it sunders us. He approached the subject from a different angle.
“I have also heard that Yggur is marching, mat already his armies are camped in Quilsin and Galardil, that he is preparing to move on Iagador from the south. What has made him act so suddenly?”
At the mention of Yggur Mendark started, as though reminded of something he preferred not to think about. When he spoke his voice was curiously flat. “The roads are good in Galardil, he can move there in the winter.”
There was another long pause. Tensor stared at Mendark, but Mendark would not meet his eye. He got up and prodded the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney; filled their glasses; sat down again. Tensor changed the subject.
“How is it with you? I hear that there is trouble in the Council.”
Mendark was suddenly eager to talk. “Your information is good. My hold over them grows ever more tenuous. It is said openly that I have been Magister too long, that I am declining. Few care anymore for our great project, the final banishment of Rulke, or even the watch; but what other purpose have we ever had? Thyllan would be Magister. He is greedy for power, but he would turn the Council to a new design. How did you learn of this?”
“By chance I met Hennia across the sea, at Larnat. We spoke briefly. She told me of the doings of the Council since our last meeting, and of your troubles.”
“They will soon be our troubles. I have tried to call a meeting, but time and distance are against us. Nadiril refuses to come—I fear he will never leave Zile or his Great Library again.”
“He is very old now, for a human,” said Tensor softly.
“Yes, so there is only you, myself, Nelissa (though we have never agreed on anything), Thyllan of course, he won’t miss the opportunity to take me down,” Mendark said bitterly, “and Hennia the Zain. And she will stand aloof, as always. I doubt if Wistan can get here, over the mountains. Orstand is over the sea, and the others so far off that they are no use to us. We have fallen back into our old folly, of warring cities and petty states, and once more comes a tyrant to crush us.”
“Yggur is more than just another warlord. Do not underestimate him, for your own sake. That was one reason for going east. I needed the counsel of my brother Aachim, even their aid, though they had little to give, so far away as they are. But I dallied when I should have hastened and the opportunity is gone. Even across the sea a messenger found me, bearing the news that you, old friend, are so reluctant to tell. You would first learn what I knew, so you could decide what to tell me.”
Mendark looked uncomfortable, and at such times was inclined to take refuge in pomposity. “In this matter our interests may not fully coincide,” he said at last, “but at such an hour we should look to strengthening the bonds of our friendship, not fall upon each other like dogs over some trifle.”
“Do not speak to me in the language of embassies, Mendark! The Mirror of Aachan is no trifle. It is ours, stolen from us long ages ago. Well you know how hard we searched for it, and how long. We have never given up our right to it. The Mirror will free us. The thought of the Great Betrayer is what saps us of will. Only when Rulke is utterly extinguished can we flourish, as we did before the Clysm.”
Oh, Tensor, what a fool you are, Mendark thought. I may be waning, but at least I know it. Your pride leads the Aachim to the abyss, and you draw all Santhenar with you. Give up your hopeless dreams. The Twisted Mirror it was called, a deceitful, perilous thing. But he said nothing, and Tensor took his silence for assent.
“We Aachim will not compromise. If you thwart me in this you are my enemy.” Then he paused, deep in thought. When he resumed his tone was more personal. “Why do you want it anyway? How can you hope to use it?”
“Yalkara did. And did what none thought possible-found a way through the Forbidding.”
“Surely you don’t compare yourself to her? That evil is gone forever.”
“Yggur marches,” said Mendark, “and who does he march against? He is a tyrant, a warlord, but he has a greater purpose. It is me he wants, and revenge for the Council’s ancient blunder that crippled him for so long. He is strong, but my tide is running out I’m afraid, Tensor. Does that not shock you? Do you not wonder that I seize upon any weapon? I, Mendark, am afraid. A great upheaval approaches, and Santhenar will be reshaped. But who will do the shaping?”
Tensor smiled, a dreaming look in his eyes. “Yes, a conjuncture, a climacteric, and it will be ours.”
Then he came to himself. “What do you know of the thieves?”
“What have you heard?”
“That someone broke into Fiz Gorgo and stole something of great value to Yggur. That it is thought to be the Mirror of Aachan. That the one who took it was pursued across half of Meldorin, but had come into the care of one of your people.”
“That is mostly correct There were two of them. One was taken. The other escaped after they were discovered by Yggur.”
“Incredible. What more?”
“I have a name for the one who escaped. Perhaps you may know of her, for she comes from Bannador—Karan is her name. A small young woman with red hair.”
Tensor was shocked. “Are you absolutely sure? It cannot be!”
>
“Tallia said it, therefore it is so. You know her?”
“If it is indeed her, I know her well. Her grandmother—beloved, tragic Mantille—was Aachim. It is exceedingly rare for us to marry outside our own, as you know. The blending usually has unhappy consequences, as it has had in her family, though it has given her a talent Her family has bonds with us that go back a thousand years, and for a time she lived in Shazmak. No! It is impossible! In any case, the task is beyond her. Karan is not one to match power with Yggur, within his stronghold or out of it. Her strength is not of that kind.”
“So,” breathed Mendark. “She is a blending! That explains much. She could be useful to me here. You are sure that she is the lesser of the two thieves?”
“As though she were my own.” Tensor’s stern face softened and a wistful tone crept into his voice. “She is clever, and if you set her a task she will find a way to do it. She has a talent of seeing, sending, perhaps even linking. It is very strong, though she is poorly educated in its use. Deliberately so, for she can never be one of us. No one can predict how the talents of a blending will develop. Dangerous for us, but more so for her, should the world learn what she is. But why would she do this? Why would she act against us?”
“Perhaps she was just a helper, taken along for her talent. She may not know that it is the Mirror. They who seek it would want the secret kept.”
“Possibly, though I do not believe it. Even so, it is a dark day for the Aachim, for we love her dearly; she is so like Mantille. Where is she now? Do you truly have her?”
“Alas not, and we do not know where she is. More than two months have passed since she fled Fiz Gorgo. Yggur’s Whelm hunted her north, at least as far as Hetchet, but were unable to take her. Learning that she was near Hetchet and fleeing east into the mountains, I sent a skeet to Wistan at Chanthed. I asked him to send someone to Tullin, find her and bring her here.”
