by Ian Irvine
“This was done?”
“Unfortunately Wistan chose to settle an old score with me; the one he sent has neither skill-at-arms nor knowledge of the mountains. Wistan would be rid of him, I believe, for he is Zain. His name is Llian, a young chronicler.”
“I have heard of him,” said Tensor slowly. “He is your protégé, is he not?”
“I sponsored him at the college.”
“Why so? You’re not usually altruistic.”
“Am I not? He’s not the first. I’ve always thought it important to encourage talent that would not develop by itself. But now that he has fulfilled his promise, I will certainly use it. Chroniclers hear everything and understand what they hear. They make excellent spies. Being a Zain though, Llian would never have got into the college without me, so he is greatly in my debt.”
“Did he not do a great telling at the Festival of Chanthed four years ago?”
“Yes, and an even greater one last summer, I hear, though I haven’t seen it written. Wistan promised, but I haven’t got it. Anyway, I was in despair to hear that Wistan had sent Llian, but he did better than anyone expected. He found her near Tullin and they fled into the mountains, pursued by the Whelm. That was a couple of weeks ago. One of my people brought the news yesterday.”
“Karan knows the mountains. There was an old path that led to Shazmak once, though we’ve not used it for many years.”
“I believe I have a map showing it,” said Mendark.
“Perhaps she has taken the Mirror to Shazmak, to us.”
“Perhaps,” conceded Mendark, though he did not think it likely. “If she is still alive; if the Whelm don’t find her first.”
‘I will send people out for her,” said Tensor, talking half to himself. “But who would watch her carefully enough, if she is brought to Shazmak?” His handsome face twisted, as though he had thought of something loathsome. “Yes, there is one, though it dishonors me to use him. But the Mirror! I never thought that such a chance would come. What is my honor beside this chance.” Then to Mendark, “You have a skeet?”
Mendark shook his head, not meeting Tensor’s eye. “There are but three remaining, and none here. The past weeks have taken a toll of them. I expect one from Tallia at any time. It is a strong beast, but still it would need to rest a day; and then be schooled to the new destination. You may have it when it comes. Will you stay?”
“I cannot. It is a hard road to Shazmak at this time of year. Even for me it will take seven days and nights, perhaps longer, and time is precious. I will write a note and you must send it when you can.”
Mendark got paper, pen and ink and Tensor wrote a careful note. He sealed it with wax from a candle, and wrote one word on the outside: Emmant. Then he wrote another note, sealed die first inside it and reached out to hand the package to Mendark—but hesitated, drawing back his hand. “No, there are other skeets in Thurkad,” and he put it in his pocket.
“Now, the Mirror! If it comes to Shazmak, it is ours. If it comes to you, pledge that you will not use it or give it to another, but hold it until I come. Then we will discuss terms.”
“That I can promise,” said Mendark, and they shook hands.
“We come to your own problem—Thyllan! I have spoken with Hennia, as you know, and will meet Nelissa before I leave. And Thyllan, too, if he will see me. I think you are secure until Yggur marches on Iagador. I doubt that he will come until the spring.”
“I’m not sure Thyllan will wait. As soon as he learns that the Mirror is for the taking, he will act. This business has come at the worst of times for me.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I have prepared myself. My villa here in Thurkad is made safe for the present. But eventually I must leave the city, for a more secure refuge. You know where it is?”
Tensor nodded. “Then be watchful, and keep my warnings to heart. All of them.”
I do, thought Mendark, as he watched him go. You have aroused fears worse than I ever imagined. I will never let you have the Mirror, whatever the cost to myself. You were wise not to give me the letter.
He went along the corridor to his map room, searching through the old charts of the mountains. Then he sat down and wrote a hasty note to Tallia, and sent it by skeet to Tullin that very night.
The Citadel,
Thurkad
Sord 8
Tallia,
I write in urgency and despair! Thyllan moves openly against me and I am friendless. But there is worse. Tensor came today, and he also knows about the Mirror. Long have I kept his secret, but now you must know. He is Aachim, the leader of the few that remain in Meldorin, and dwells in their secret mountain city of Shazmak.
The Mirror belonged to the Aachim an age ago—Tensor himself held it for a time. He would use it to raise them up again, for his pride is overweening, but his folly matches his pride and the result will be our ruin.
Tensor knows Karan: indeed there is a bond between them, as she dwelt in Shazmak once. He thinks that she follows an abandoned path to the city. I enclose a fragment of map that may help you to find it. Use it as a guide but do not rely on it. Find Karan at all costs and turn her back. Do whatever is needful. I will try to strengthen my position here. If you need aid, Shand can probably be trusted.
Mendark
22
* * *
SHAZMAK
The next day dawned cold but sunny. Llian was much better, the mountain sickness almost gone. They left as soon as there was light to see, for walking was preferable to huddling in the cold and there was no breakfast to delay them. The ledge was well kept and broad and now they went along at a great pace, Karan leading, Llian following steadily, experiencing none of the horrors of the previous day. Neither spoke, nor wanted to, so immersed were they in their own concerns. It was almost noon when they came around a last bend in the gorge and Karan stopped.
“Look!” she said, gesturing ahead with one arm. “There is Shazmak.”
Llian looked. Before and below them the brown walls of the gorge plunged almost sheer for more than three hundred spans to the white foam of the Garr. The cliffs rose equally sheer above. Half a league away the river parted around a pinnacle of rock. Out of the pinnacle grew the city. Llian stared at it in wonder.
Shazmak was a profusion of towers, breathtakingly slender, of aerial walkways and looping, helical stairways, all intertwined and connected to each other with an organic irregularity and complexity by threads of metal the color of old iron. It looked as though it had grown there. The city was joined to the cliffs on either side of the river by two bridges of gossamer, similar to the one they had camped by the previous night, though larger and more intricate, more web-like.
It was like a song. Even from where they stood they could see the mindless violence with which the Garr flung itself at the base of the pinnacle. They saw, too, the way the gorge-funnelled gales tormented the towers and made them quiver; and the shriek of the wind in the wires and around the spires even from this far away plucked at Llian’s nerves. Shazmak! Ethereal above, but with the solidity of stone below: such a coalescence of delicacy and strength was almost too much to be imagined. The two materials so different, yet the fusion so perfect that none could have told where stone failed and metal took over.
“Shazmak was built by the Aachim after the Clysm,” said Karan. “It has never been taken, and in these times has faded from the memory of the world. I love it more than even my first home in Bannador. It is very beautiful, is it not?”
Llian did not answer her. How was it that there were no tales of such a place? It was beautiful, incomparable, and it filled him with dread. How would the Aachim treat him?
They made their way toward the city. Llian’s stomach throbbed as if his entrails were knotted together, not solely from hunger, and his legs were unaccountably tired. What would their reception be? Shazmak was in decline and the Aachim looked forever inward. He sought in his mind for other stories of them but only fragments, mostly of betrayal
or despair, came. He shuddered. The Aachim had passed oui of the Histories aeons ago. All that he knew of them was from the Great Tales. Doubtless there was more, but not in the library at Chanthed.
The path went into a tunnel. Karan walked beside him but he could not see her in the dark. Since they crossed the pass into Chollaz she had grown increasingly edgy; now within sight of the city, her anxiety was intense.
“Why are there no guards or fortifications?” Llian wondered. “Are the Aachim grown so tired and so few that they no longer watch?”
“Their defense is not based on guards, except at the last They would have known we were coming hours ago. If they wished to keep us away they would have done so.”
The lighted oval of the tunnel mouth grew in front ol them and shortly they emerged on a wide platform, off which other tunnels issued. Ahead of them the bridge was a single, unbroken span no more than two paces wide, without wall or railing. The abutments were of black metal decorated in silver tracework.
Llian stared at the bridge in horror.
Karan gave him a look of amused tolerance. “After what you have been through? Come.” She stepped out onto the span.
Llian wished she were holding his hand, but she was already moving away. He followed, slowly at first, then more quickly. The surface yielded slightly beneath his feet, anc though in the middle it swayed alarmingly in the wind he did not feel insecure, and that was strange. At the city end a great gate opened onto a roofed passageway. They passed along it and into a wide courtyard paved with black anc amber flagstones and surrounded with slender polygonal helically coiled towers decorated with silver tracery, surmounted by jade-topped domes. A small black fountain played, slightly off the center; in the opposite corner there was a stone table and bench. The courtyard was empty and the air still, though the wind shrieked above them.
“Here we must wait,” said Karan in a low voice, gesturing to the seat. “It may be some time before they come. And remember your bargain.” She put her lips to his ear. “You know nothing about the Mirror.”
“I remember,” said Llian. He felt awful, terrified. They sat down. “Where are all the Aachim?”
“They are a people governed by ritual, order and habit,” she replied. “When the tasks of the hour are completed, they will come. You will need much patience in Shazmak.”
It was not long, however, before they appeared. There were three of them, a young woman followed by two men: one with hair the color of brown earth, the other’s closer to the color of a carrot, orange-brown, and his skin pale rather than brown. Llian examined these Aachim with interest bordering on fever, recording them in his memory so that he could bring the Aachim to life in his Tale of the Mirror.
At first it wasn’t easy to distinguish them from the people of his own world. The older man was huge, but the others were not remarkably big. They wore their hair to the shoulder in ringlets and their eyes were yellow, with oval pupils, or green with flecks of yellow.
“Rael!” Karan whispered. She stared at the man with the orange hair with such intensity that she shook.
Rael stared back, then recovered himself with a shiver and a shake of his head that sent his ringlets dancing. He bowed low then embraced her formally and stepped back. The others did the same. They held out their hands to Karan. She grasped each of their hands in turn, then bowed till her forehead touched the ground. Llian stood to one side, feeling foolish. The Aachim had not so much as glanced at him. He was almost afraid to stare at them, evidently having no status whatsoever.
The woman spoke, using the common speech of Meldorin in a lilting melodic way, as though she was used to speaking in verse. Here was the source of Karan’s unusual accent that had so puzzled Llian.
“We bid you welcome, cousin Karan. Six years have passed since that bitter day when you left us.”
“Sunias,” Karan replied, “I dreaded to come back. Only when I was far across the sea did I realize how much I wanted to return, but I went home to Gothryme and found that I’d neglected my obligations.”
The greeting continued in a formal and obscure manner for so long that Llian ceased to follow it, and his thoughts wandered along paths of their own. Suddenly he realized that they were talking about him.
“But Karan,” Rael went on, “what is this—” (here he made an unpronounceable noise in his throat, but the meaning was clear) “that you have brought? It is not even of your family. It cannot be permitted. No one could trust such a thing.” Large oval eyes, emerald and honey, pierced Llian.
The vague unease that had lain in Llian’s stomach ever since he had seen the city sharpened suddenly into a pang of fear. The Zain had conspired with Rulke against the Aachim long ago. What would they do to him? His eyes pleaded with Karan, but she was smiling at Rael.
“Come, Rael. For a thousand years my family has kept the secrets of the Aachim. I would not have brought him here if he could not be trusted.”
She turned and held out her hand to Llian, drawing him to her. “This is Llian, the famous chronicler from Chanthed. He is my road companion and dear friend. Long he has served and guided me.” Llian stared at her. “He will swear to serve the Aachim and keep the secrets.”
The discussion went back into prolonged formalities. Normally Llian would have noted every detail, but he was too tired, too hungry, too afraid. The negotiations seemed not to require his participation so he sat down on the bench again and leaned back with his eyes closed. The sun was shining and in the shelter of the courtyard he was warm for the first time in days. The privations of the journey retreated a little. His thoughts touched on Chanthed, his adopted home that he would see no more; on the honey-colored stone houses and halls, the narrow twisting streets on the hillside, the crags and boulder-strewn fields above, the ruins in the valleys below. The winter months when it seemed the rain would never stop, the mountain meadows bright with flowers in the spring. How he wished that he was there now.
A furious gust struck the nearby towers, sending a tremor through the stone beneath his feet. The wail rose to a shriek and Chanthed was gone. He opened his eyes and looked up at the spiraling towers of iron, the lacework of pathways and platforms, the curves and angles that were somehow wrong. They have made a little piece of Aachan here on Santh, he thought. They have twisted the fabric of the land and made it their own. But it could not be home for me.
The others had moved across the courtyard, nearer the fountain, still talking in low voices. Just then they turned as one and advanced toward him. Rael held out both hands to him, smiling. Llian gripped Rael’s hands as he had seen Karan do, smiling uncertainly, unsure of the protocol. The grip felt strange, because of the Aachim’s remarkably long fingers.
“We have discussed your problem,” Rael said in a deep resonant voice. “We do not permit strangers to enter our land, as Karan Elienor has told you. Nor do we permit those who have entered illegally—” here he frowned “—to live.”
Llian directed a furious entreaty to Karan, but she looked away blandly.
“On the other hand, Karan has spoken for you. She says that you are neither practical nor resourceful, but your heart is pure.”
Did she smile? Did Karan mock him?
“What to do?” Rael paused, looked to the woman, who nodded, and then to the older man, and continued. “In order to resolve this difficulty to our satisfaction, as well as your own, we have taken the unusual step of confirming you as Aachimning, that is to say, a friend of the Aachim. You are permitted to enter Shazmak, and to leave again, provided that you are accompanied while you are in the city. Karan and I have agreed to perform this office. Will you assent to the condition?”
Llian agreed, the Aachim each gripped his hands once more and, to his surprise, the ritual was over.
“I thought that we would be there another hour,” he said to Karan as they picked up their packs.
“It is only the unimportant things that they surround with ritual,” she replied. “What is urgent or vital, they do without fuss.�
�
Rael led their way from the courtyard into the city. They parted from the other Aachim and followed him through a labyrinth of passages, up and down stairways numberless and once across a gossamer bridge between two slender towers. In a paradox of dimensions each part of the city seemed to be connected to every other part Passages twisted endlessly and often turned back on themselves. Every ceiling, wall, architrave and panel was decorated with intricate, alien designs and scenes.
The floors of the halls were pale marble and slate, much worn. Every chamber and hall was decorated with murals showing different scenes of a gloomy, stormy land. A world of huge mountains, crusted with sulphur-colored snow and trickling lava. A land of icy rifts and furiously rushing rivers; of still, oily bogs and blue-black luminous flowers. Between the mountains were plateaus covered in gray grass, and the kidney-shaped mounds and ruins of ancient cities. The hilltops were crowned with fibrous iron towers, leaning at improbable angles. The halo of a small red sun was sometimes seen through the storm clouds. More often the sky was dominated by a huge orange moon, hanging sullenly a little above the horizon and bathing all in its dreary light. When the Aachim were shown in these murals, which was seldom, they appeared as groups of small, toiling figures.
They passed many empty chambers, their doors standing open, but met few other Aachim on the way. Eventually Rael stopped outside one door and showed them in.
“Your old chambers,” he said to Karan. “They have not been used since last you were here. They are sufficient?”
Karan nodded and thanked him. All the fear had gone from her, and she was happier than Llian had ever seen her.
“We will speak later of your plans. The city is yours.”
Llian thanked him too. “I dreaded to come here,” he said.
Rael”s eyes softened, as though he knew how Llian felt, and he spoke kindly to him. “When I said that none could trust such a one, I meant it, for that is the way we look on all outsiders. But Karan has spoken for you and that is enough. We knew that you were Zain, but our grievance against the Zain is long ended, that alliance paid for many times over. Remain in Shazmak without fear.” He bowed and withdrew.
