by Ian Irvine
Llian, as before, was treated with reserved courtesy by the Aachim. He was now allowed to go to the library, and though he realized that the permission might be a trap, he could not keep away. He went back more than once, against Karan’s wishes. At first he wandered the shelves, pulling out books, manuscripts and scrolls at random, looking over his shoulder in case the librarian should come creeping up behind him, but Emmant was not in evidence.
Llian soon tired of this occupation for, as Rael had said, the books were all in the Aachan script, which he did not know. He returned time and again to Tales of the Aachim, staring at the unfamiliar words, or just thinking about the Mirror, and dreaming. He had come to a fatalistic acceptance that he might never leave Shazmak, that he might even die here. The matter was out of his hands, and nothing he could do would make any difference, so he might as well go on with his work.
It was the afternoon of the seventh day since their coming to Shazmak. Llian sat alone at the table, nursing bowl after bowl of tea in his hands, enjoying the seeping warmth in the cold room. His thoughts kept coming back to the book. It would take months to translate. But I can read the script, he thought excitedly. I’ll read it, and commit it to memory, and later on, I will write it all down again and translate it. What an addition to the Histories that will be! He suppressed the thought that there would probably be no later on.
He got up at once and hurried back to the library. Though Llian was accustomed to reading and remembering perfectly—that was one of the chief skills of the chroniclers—he did not underestimate this task. To read and remember so much, and in a language he barely knew, would require a very great effort. Perhaps more than any test he had ever done.
At first he struggled; then as his eyes grew accustomed to the crabbed script and the cadences of the language, he read more quickly. Though he could understand few of the words, the sense came across. He became caught up in the remote, musical language and the images that it conjured. A story began to unfold, of the Aachim, their coming to Santhenar and their trials and triumphs. The story was different from the Histories that Llian knew, and contradictions were many. A picture of the Aachim emerged: a people proud and strong but never secure; noble and steadfast allies but too often betrayed; the makers of great but ill-judged alliances; artists and builders of the greatest skill yet looking always to the past; finally retreating into isolation. And always, always plotting revenge on Rulke, he who had brought them to Santhenar, the architect of all their misfortune.
Time passed swiftly; outside it grew dark and still he read. The nebula swung across the sky and the light came in through the tall window, bright enough to cast faint shadows on the floor, shadows with red-tinged edges. The wind shrieked and moaned. Llian sat at his table, the book lit by the tiny flask on the wall beside him. Higher rose the nebula. Its radiance washed back toward the eastern window and seeped out again, leaving the room in darkness. The moon in its last quarter rose, its pale light filtering in through the window as he finished the book and realized where he was, who he was. He was cold, hungry and shaking with tiredness.
Dawn had broken by the time he got back. Karan’s door was open and though her bed had been slept in she was already gone. Llian paused only long enough to throw off his clothes before falling into his bed.
Sometime later he wakened to the sound of an argument in the main room. It was Karan and Rael; Karan shouting angrily, Rael replying in his soft, reasonable voice. Doors slammed, there was silence again and he went back to sleep. Karan came into his room and sat down heavily on the pallet beside him. He looked up at her drowsily and put his arm around her back, quickly drifting back into his dreams. She sat there for a while then disengaged his arm and went out.
Llian woke in the mid-afternoon. He ate hurriedly and went straight back to the library, again finding the room empty. Tales of the Aachim was not where he had left it, and for a moment he feared that Emmant had taken it, but he soon found it on another shelf of the cabinet. Now the book took on a new light. The sense came off the pages, seemingly independent of the words he was reading, though if he stopped to think it blurred back into a mass of empty syllables.
As he turned the first page, the spaces of the library receded and Llian felt himself drawn into the world of the Aachim. He was there when they followed Rulke through the portal. He stepped naked onto the grass and smelled the warm rich spicy air of Santhenar for the first time. He looked out on the steep green hills and the blue forested mountains in the distance. He felt the joy and freedom of the Aachim in their new world, their vigor and youthful strength as they shook off the shackles of Aachan and made another life. The centuries fleeted by and he saw their delight as they built and grew strong.
He saw too the response of the Charon, their resentment turning eventually to fear, and how they worked unceasingly to frustrate the Aachim, to thwart their alliances and destroy their works. The Aachim fought back and the horror of the Clysm spread like a plague across all the lands. Then a tale he knew: the Aachim betrayed by Rulke. In despair, their hopes shattered, they withdrew into the mountains and the past.
Llian came back to the present, the tears coursing down his cheeks, suddenly aware of a presence in the darkness nearby. He stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over and, peering fearfully around him, saw Emmant standing in the shadows. The librarian stepped forward and Llian shrank back.
“What has she done with it?” Emmant rasped. “I must have it.” The eyes flamed, the voice throbbed with passion.
“Why?” cried Llian wildly. “You are not Aachim. What can it mean to you?”
The next second Emmant had him by the throat, squeezing him till the room faded in a blur of red, shaking him till his teeth rattled like bones in a coffin. Yet even through the blur he could see those eyes.
“I am Aachim!” Emmant shouted. “I am more Aachim than they are! No one has ever cared for their books as I do. No one knows their Histories as I do. Their revenge is just a pretense. They weep and wail about lost Aachan, but do nothing to get it back, just hide in the past and dwindle away to nothing. Once I give them the Mirror there will be no ‘half-Aachim this, half-Aachim that.’ They will beg me to lead them, and I will, I will. They will have their revenge, too, and I minel! What has she done with it, the darsh?” he screamed. He shook Llian again, thrusting his face into Llian’s until all he could see were those ghasyly eyes.
He made a horrible gurgling sound and Emmant’s grip moved suddenly from his throat to his shoulders. Llian sucked a deep, shuddering breath, his windpipe throbbing from the crushing fingers. His will to resist was weeping away. Then an image came into his mind, Karan helping him in his mountain sickness, and he clung to it, but it soon fell into tatters and was stripped away. The eyes impaled him.
“Tell me!” screamed Emmant through foam-flecked lips, shaking Llian by the shoulders.
“I… will…” Llian croaked.
The grip relaxed a little but the eyes still burned.
Something clicked at the far end of the room. Emmant turned his head, but Llian could not. Emmant began to speak, then the fire died in his eyes, his hands left Llian’s shoulders and he turned away to face the intruder. Llian turned too. It was Karan. She was advancing slowly down the room, bearing a look so murderous that Emmant took a step backwards.
Karan came up to Llian, took him by the hand and jerked him toward her. “I was right to treat you as I did,” she said to Emmant with glacial ferocity. Though she was only half his bulk, and a head shorter, Emmant cringed away from her fury. “You are hundiss, without honor. Never will there be a place for you among the Aachim. You are nothing.”
It was clear that her words meant everything to Emmant. His face went white, then red, and he tried to step toward her, even raised his great fist as though he would strike her, a blow that would have smashed her to the floor; but his courage failed him. Karan spat at his feet, turned her back on him quite deliberately and stalked away, dragging Llian behind. Emmant’s deranged, hat
e-filled glare followed them to the door.
Back at their chamber she thrust Llian inside and kicked the door shut. He continued across the room in a daze. She caught him as he was about to walk into the wall, whirling him around. “What did you tell him this time?”
To Llian it was as though he had escaped one tyrant only to fall into the hands of another, and he saw not Karan’s face but another set of mesmerizing eyes.
“I-will-not-speak. I-will-not-speak,” came his pitiful croak.
She raised her cast at him then thought better of it and struck him across the face with her good hand. He sank to his knees, looking dazed. The book was still clutched in his hand. He broke out into a long speech in an unfamiliar tongue, punctuated with wailing and weeping, while Karan stared at him in amazement. Suddenly she seemed to understand, for she slipped out of the room, locking it carefully behind her.
She returned with Rael, who came up to Llian and examined him carefully, and then the book. Rael took the book from Llian’s fingers and spoke two syllables in the tongue of the Aachim; then he took Llian by the hand and repeated them. Llian jerked, closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again, and looked blankly at Karan.
“What happened?” he said dazedly. “I was in the library reading. It’s dark.” He looked around the room. “Where’s the book?”
Rael brought out Tales of the Aachim, which he had been holding behind his back. “There was a charm on it for you, though only a shabby little thing.”
With difficulty Llian forced his mind back. “I started reading it in the library,” he said in a painful whisper. “At first I could barely make it out, the language is so strange. But today it called to me, and though I didn’t know the words somehow I knew the story it was telling. I was there! I became as one of the Aachim; I knew their hopes and their fears, and their secret plans of long ago. Then Emmant came. I tried to resist him, but I could not. All my will was gone.” He stared at Karan, coming back to himself. “It’s fading now. Ah! My head! How it aches. And my throat. I thought he was going to choke me to death.”
Karan sat down in front of him, stroking his bruised throat with her fingertips. “Oh, Llian, forgive me!” she exclaimed.
Llian closed his eyes, and saw again the look on Emmant’s face—such hate as he had never seen. “You have a deadly enemy there,” he said, clutching her small hand. “Promise you won’t go out alone.”
Karan almost laughed aloud at the thought of him protecting her, but she saw how afraid he was for her, how much he cared, and was touched. She dismissed Emmant with a wave of her hand, concealing her disquiet.
“He is nothing,” she said, “a craven. But I will be careful.” Then she turned to Rael. “This is a very great dishonor. To use a charm on Llian, who knows nothing of this matter, and has no talent, was cowardly and unworthy.”
“The charm was such a little thing. No Aachim would have succumbed to it. Yet it was ill done and not of our doing. We have cautioned Emmant before, as you know. For his error we beg your leave.”
“It was not his error alone. He had instructions from Tensor.” Karan was so angry she could barely speak.
Rael looked ashamed. “The letter to Emmant was sealed. We did not know what it said, at the time. But Karan, we know that you had the Mirror once. Please tell us where it is. You know what the penalty is, for you and Llian both, if you keep it from us.”
“I cannot tell you what happened to it. More than that I will not say, save that I do not act against the Aachim. Your own honor is at stake. Will you at least support me?”
“That I do already, though it may cost me dear. No more can I do. Tensor is expected in the morning.” Rael turned and left the chamber.
Karan paced the room. She sat down, chewing her fingertips, then got up abruptly and paced again. “What can I do? I can’t face Tensor.”
“Give it to him then. Maybe nothing will ever come of it. Maybe the Mirror will be impossible to use. The Aachim did not misuse it before, remember.”
“But it was not so valuable then. Each time the Mirror is used it grows greater, for the print of what it is employed for remains within it. They know that Yalkara used it to escape from Santhenar. That is a very powerful secret. And remember this: the Aachim made the Mirror. If anyone can extract the secret from it, they can.”
“Why don’t you throw it into the Garr and let the rocks grind it to powder?”
Karan walked away from him and put her face on the wall. She did not speak for a very long time.
“Llian,” she said, “have you not wondered that, among my few possessions, you never actually saw the Mirror?”
“No,” said Llian. “I knew it was a small thing, easily hid.”
“Maigraith planned that if we were pursued she would take the Mirror and I would decoy the Whelm by pretending to have it.” She looked away. She could not look at him, just sat down again with her head in her hands, looking as though she wanted to cry. “I… I do not…” One little ear, peeping out of the tangles, was almost as red as her hair.
What was she trying to say? That she did not have it after all? The faintest germ of a doubt crept into his mind, a mind that was trained to weigh the smallest nuances for their truth and to set down the truth whatever the consequences. But he had come to a turning point in his life: the chronicler was in conflict with the man. Karan had shown him such loyalty, such kindness, such trust. He could be just as loyal, just as trusting. Llian put the scales up over his eyes. Whatever she did, he would not question it, would not even entertain the thought of disbelief. Would not put her in the position of having to he to him.
He knelt down before her and put his finger across her lips. “Tell me nothing,” said Llian. “I ask you nothing.”
“Oh Llian,” she cried, putting her arms around his neck and wetting his shoulder with her tears. “I do not deserve…”
“Shhhh!” he replied, squeezing her face into his neck.
After a while she raised her head and gave him a sad little smile. She brushed the untidy hair off his forehead. “I have got you into desperate trouble. They will kill us both, you know.”
Llian had been trying not to think about that. “Well, we’ll have to think of a way to trick them.”
He got up and went into the kitchen, returning shortly with a steaming flask and two bowls. He poured the tea. Karan lifted her bowl with both hands and sipped it, eyes closed. Llian stared at his own bowl, and the patterns of the steam rising from it, but did not drink. His words had been hollow; he was completely out of his depth here. After a while he lay on the pallet in his room, in the darkness, rejecting scheme after scheme until at last he drifted into a restless sleep.
25
* * *
INHUMAN BONDAGE
I will not cry out this time, Maigraith told herself, as the old one came back with his instruments. I will not let them hear me scream this time. She watched him from the corner of her eye. He approached. The instruments clinked in his hand. She gripped the metal frame, clinging to it so tightly that specks of blood welled out from beneath her nails. Not this time. The tools were applied. She screamed.
It was a long time later that she realized that the screaming had stopped. Why, I’ve stopped screaming, she thought in a detached way, momentarily divorced from her body. Maigraith opened her puffy eyes. The pain hit her again, but it was old pain, the pain of a hundred little wounds. The old man was moving away, crossing out of the field of her vision, gone. She slumped against the frame, hanging limply by her wrists. Someone flung water over her from a bucket, cold water that stung her wounds. A trickle ran down her forehead, her nose. She licked it from her lips, grateful for its coolness, though it was briny and did not ease her thirst. Someone, perhaps the same person, retightened the thongs at her wrists and ankles. The hands were bony, with sparse clumps of yellow hair between the thickened knuckles. Then Vartila returned.
Maigraith recalled her words as the Whelm had borne her here, bound and her mouth stoppe
d. “Allow her no respite. The body, then the mind, then die body again. She is very strong, and the pain will magnify her strength, focus her will. Allow her to use it at your peril; always keep the bonds tight; check her constantly.”
Vartila had underestimated Maigraith. Already two of the Whelm lay unmoving, but it did not aid her. Every resistance was matched by an increase in their cold ferocity.
Vartila had questioned her about herself. “Who are you, that have so weakened our master? Who are you, that bring as to defiance? We are Whelm, and do our master’s will.” Her voice rose then, shaking with a passion that Maigraith had not heard before. “Who are you, that have so corrupted us?”
The torment began again, but redoubled. And they questioned her about Karan, over and over again. “Who is she?” heir voices rasped. “Who is she, that even the Whelm cannot take her? How can she, a petty human, make a link? We have tested you, and you are barren of that talent.”
What harm can it do to tell them, Maigraith thought, through a delirium of pain. “That is no secret. She is human, hut her grandmother was Mantille, an Aachim.”
The reaction of the Whelm was unexpected, and shocking. “A blending!” Vartila cried. “Now I know what to use against her.” She called the others in a loud voice and they came running. A flurry of orders, then two Whelm ran out the door.
Vartila came back smiling, showing her teeth. “You have given us power over your friend. No more will she run. She will wait for us to come, unable to resist, her limbs numb and her mind paralyzed, able to feel nothing but terror. But do not stop with that; there is much more you can tell us, now you have begun.”
