by Ian Irvine
Maigraith had no time to wonder at their reaction, or what she had done to Karan. Soon all thoughts were overwhelmed in her own nightmare.
Vartila laid her hand on Maigraith’s bare shoulder. The crawling of mind and body began again, a sensation so hideous and shameful that only death could wash away the memory of it. But death did not come. She clung to the memory of the pain, using it to anchor her whimpering mind in her failing body. Bring back the pain, she wept, let me only have the pain, but not this. Oh, Yggur, how could you do this to me? And in between that she agonized about what she had done to Karan.
“I will tell you. I will tell you,” she screamed, no longer knowing who she was, or what she was.
Again and again she cried out, until she was reduced to a whimper, to a whisper. But only when she could no longer even whisper did the torment stop. There was absolute silence then, in that damp cavern of a room. Maigraith opened her mouth but no sound emerged. She tensed, remembering the old man. This time he did not appear. Then, a choking sound from the entrance. She twisted on the frame, turning her head, opening her eyes. Closing and opening them again, but the hallucination was still there.
Maigraith saw a woman with a restless cloud of pale luminous hair. She was as small as Karan but slight, and moving so lightly that she seemed to float. A bleached radiance streamed out from between her clenched fingers; the flesh glowed pinkly translucent, and the slender shadows of the bones. She turned her hand this way and that; the light bathing first one of the Whelm, then another. They struggled toward her, dismayed, and as the light caught each in turn they flung out their arms as though trying to grip the air, and fell to the floor. She saw Vartila fold over in the middle, sliding forward like someone diving into shallow water and striking the floor with her face.
The light fell briefly on Maigraith and she was surrounded by red whirling darkness. A wave caught her, flung her away, then the black folded in on itself and she could see again. The hallucination drifted toward her, behind her, her bonds fell away and she was caught about the waist as she fell, and lowered to the floor. Maigraith closed her eyes. A hand touched her shoulder. She tensed, then a voice, cool but not at all like the Whelm, said, “Drink this,” and helped her to a sitting position.
She held out her hands to take the cup, but they were numb. The cup was held to her lips. She sipped the thick aromatic fluid, and it warmed her. After a few sips she pushed the cup away, opening her eyes a fraction. “Faelamor!” she whispered, smiling weakly. “How came you here so quickly?”
Faelamor did not smile back. “I came from Sith to meet you, and heard that you were prisoner here.” The corners of her mouth were tight with strain. She had a small hoarse voice, the only aspect of her that was not, at this time, utterly controlled. She must indeed have been exhausted, to allow the illusion to slip, even in front of Maigraith. “But we will talk of that in a moment. We must go at once. Can you walk?”
“I do not think so, not yet.”
Faelamor rubbed her feet and legs until the circulation began to come back, while Maigraith lay staring up at her. Faelamor’s eyes were deep-sunk, with a golden, almost feline liquidity. Her skin was smooth as waxed rosewood, and translucent; the pink tint of flesh showed through and the blue webs of veins. That was just the most visible difference between Faellem and human, though they usually covered their skin, or dyed it. Her features were as delicate and precisely formed as a sculpture, but it was the smoothness and delicacy of a mask, and Maigraith had no idea what she might be thinking. Only once did her face betray anything, when she examined Maigraith’s scourgings.
“Why did they do this to you? Had I seen this first, what I used on them would have been no illusion.”
“I don’t know.” Maigraith was weeping softly with the pain. “They seemed to hate me as soon as they saw me.”
Faelamor examined the still forms of the Whelm. She bent down and began stripping the clothing off the smallest. She came back with her arm laden with boots, robes and undergarments. Maigraith looked at them with distaste.
“I will not wear the underclothes,” she said, but allowed Faelamor to help her with the robes, noticing for the first time that Faelamor’s hands were old, and they shook a little. The boots were too long and narrow, hurting her feet as soon as she put them on. The coarse fabric rubbed against her injured back and thighs.
“How did you do that?” she asked, looking at the still forms of the Whelm scattered so casually about the room. “What was that in your hand?”
“Each has their weakness, as I taught you. For the Whelm our mind-twisting illusions are enough, though to quell this many was a great trial. The device? Nothing at all, just an image to strengthen my illusion. Drink the rest of the cup now, it will ease the pain. I can do nothing for your wounds until we are safely away.” She offered Maigraith her arm.
Maigraith felt confused and uneasy. Faelamor in the role of protector was strange to her, though it was good to have someone to lean on, to follow rather than to lead, to not have to decide. But it did not last.
“Did you get as far as the library? Was the Mirror there?”
Maigraith stopped dead. “You do not know! The Mirror is gone. Karan escaped weeks ago, to bring it to you in Sith. How is it that you have not heard?”
“Karan the sensitive! You utter fool! I warned you to go alone. Far better that you had not come at all.”
The coldness, the feeling that she was of little value, this was what she was used to. How thankless to be Faelamor’s protégée; how impossible to prove her worth. But there was worse to come, for as she spoke the light from a lamp beside the door fell on Maigraith’s face. “Your eyes!” Faelamor said, in a whisper. “Your eyes have changed. You have not taken the kalash, as I bade you. Why do you not take the drug?”
“They took everything from me,” said Maigraith. “What has happened? I have not seen my face since I was taken.”
“The color is changing. Your eyes are deepest indigo now. Oh, this is unimaginable. And to let him see it.” Faelamor turned and walked back to the center of the room, staring at the frame, holding the bars, her head hanging down.
Maigraith’s eyes followed her. The tenseness, the strain, now the genuine anguish—this was not the Faelamor she had known so long. All her emotions were normally so controlled, so useful to her.
“There is another thing I must tell you,” said Maigraith trembling. “Perhaps the worst of all. When Yggur caught us—caught us,” she repeated hesitantly, “he questioned us about you.”
Faelamor went deathly still, her lips a thin white line. “You could not tell him. You could not betray my secret.”
Maigraith was so mortified and afraid that she could barely speak, but the awful words must be spoken. “I did not,” she whispered, “even when he put a command on us. Karan resisted too, as long as she was able. But he was too strong for her. She spoke your name.”
Faelamor was icy calm. “How did she know my name?”
Maigraith choked. “One night on the way here—she was so unhappy—she began to broadcast. I—we drank together, to comfort her, and I had too much and said your name. I am so sorry.”
She cringed away, expecting Faelamor’s awful rage to strike her dead, but nothing happened. She did nothing at all, just stood there, staring absently, until Maigraith wondered if Faelamor had even heard. At last she spoke, very quietly.
“Nearly three hundred years have I concealed my name, my life. All the world thinks me dead, and I am forgotten, since that terrible struggle with Yalkara when I drove her from Santhenar. All this time I have protected my secret, telling only one soul, the one I made, chose, protected, schooled. And you betray me like a tavern slattern, as though my name were valueless.”
She turned to Maigraith, and there was grief in her eyes, not anger. “We are weak. All my plans, for all those years, have depended on none knowing that I lived. None knew but my people, and you. Nothing could make the Faellem tell. Nothing could keep you to your
pledge.”
“I trusted her. I needed her. He was too strong!” cried Maigraith. Had a chasm opened up before her she would have gladly thrown herself within, anything to escape this.
“What need for friendship? You had your duty. The doing of it would have been a greater comfort than any friend. I warned you not to bring her into my affairs. If I find Karan, she is dead.” A sudden thought struck her. “The Whelm, do they know as well?”
“They do not, I swear it,” Maigraith said frantically. “Twice they tortured me, but I said nothing about you. Yggur tells them nothing—my coming seems to have opened a rift between them. They have an implacable hatred of me, or an instinctive fear. I see it in their faces.”
The calmness of Faelamor’s rage was terrifying. “Your value is diminished, but there is no time to start again. Tallallame cries out for us—our own world begs us to come home. I must break the Forbidding. I will find a way. But first I must have the Mirror. This duty is my torment, my nightmare—my betrayer. No,” she said softly. “I have chosen. I will take the Faellem home. Whatever the cost I will pay it. I am the Faellem.”
She came back, walking quickly to where Maigraith supported herself against the doorway. Faelamor’s voice changed, becoming businesslike, as though all that had been said was done with.
“What is done cannot be changed, though now all my plans mast be recast, and there is so little time. We must leave at once. I would be well into the swamps before dawn. When we reach the boat I’ll give you more of the kalash. Until then, look down. Let no one see your eyes; though I fear it’s too late for that. Take my arm. Hurry. Even I cannot conceal you in the full daylight.”
Maigraith never knew what miracles Faelamor wrought to bring them safely and undetected out of Fiz Gorgo that night, consumed as she was with her guilt and shame, her weakness and failure, and the torment of her injuries. Before they had gone a hundred paces she was staggering, her whole body a mass of pain. At last they reached the forest. A half league into the trees they came to the edge of the marshes. Faelamor waded in and returned pulling a small flat-bottomed boat. She heaved the comatose Maigraith over the side, stepped in herself and poled off into the swamps.
* * *
Dawn came, and Yggur went later than usual to his chamber. His eyes were hollow from lack of sleep and his face was haunted. Whatever the cost to his ambitions, he could not do it to her. Not the Whelm. What a fool he was. In a month and a half she had turned the plans of decades on their heads.
At the door he froze. Where were the guards? Inside he saw two bodies; no, they were sleeping! No, drugged; he could smell it from here. He lurched across to Maigraith’s cell, saw the half-opened door, the table and chair knocked over. Her clothes still hung neatly on the other chair, where she had left them. Her boots were beside the bed. His heart turned over.
They had come for her. Why had he not checked her this night? Yggur ran down the stairs, faster than he had run in fifty years, to the quarters of the Whelm. She was not there. He began the long search of the caverns beneath, finding the room at last.
He took in the scene from the doorway: the frame in the middle of the room, the thongs hanging down, the floor red beneath. The old one lay beneath the frame, surrounded by his scattered instruments. The other Whelm were strewn about the floor. He squatted down beside the nearest. The man was conscious but incapable of movement.
A small clump of hair was caught on the frame, the long strands a deep chestnut color. Yggur untangled them, absently putting them in his pouch. He caught sight of the cup on the floor, sniffed it and tasted the residue with a finger. An age-old memory stirred.
She is gone, he thought. Faelamor has come for her! He closed the door and walked slowly back up the stairs to his chamber. It seemed empty now. Strange that he had not noticed it before.
He sat for a long minute at his workbench. How he missed her. He had never felt this way for anyone before. What should he do? The Whelm had failed against Karan; failed against Faelamor as well. There was no one here who could hope to follow her through the swamps of Orist, save himself. And even he might not be her match out there.
No, Maigraith is gone. Forget her. How had she so bewitched him that he had lost sight of his own purpose? Besides, he knew that Karan was headed to Sith, however tortuous the route she took. They must go there as well. He leapt up, pulled the bell. By the time the servant came he was already deep in the maps and papers on his bench.
“Call my generals together,” he cried, writing orders furiously. “We march on the east. And call the Whelm; they can yet redeem themselves.”
But still Maigraith would not go from his mind.
26
* * *
THE TRIAL
Karan stirred. A plan had come to her, so risky that her knees went soft at the thought of it. She crept to the door and peeped into Llian’s chamber. He was lying on his side. The light from the open door shone on his face and she saw that he slept. She touched his forehead with her fingers but he did not stir. She looked around the room. What could she use? The book, Tales of the Aachim? No, that was the worst thing she could possibly choose, like trying to get a true reading from the Twisted Mirror. It had to be something that he kept with him always.
Around his neck, beneath his shirt, Llian wore a silver chain from which hung a small jade amulet. Karan opened his shirt carefully. His skin was very smooth under her hands. She wanted to stroke it. She unclasped the catch and drew the amulet out. Llian turned over, drowsily, but did not wake. She held the chain up to the light, then let it fall into her cupped palm, where it made a little silvery pool. Then she glided out of the room and pulled the door to behind her.
In her own chamber she barred the door, took off her boots and sat on the floor with her legs crossed, an elbow resting on each knee, the amulet in her cupped hands. She clenched her hands around the amulet, became lethargic, lowering her head slowly onto the triangle of her arms, resting there, the amulet warm in her fingers, the chain cool on her forehead. A stray image floated into her mind: a storm over the ruins; Llian bursting through the door with bloody face, to fall down the steps at her feet. She brushed the image away. Others followed: Llian tortured by his fear of falling as they followed the path along the gorge; there looking foolish as they were received in the courtyard by Rael; here dazed and mumbling from Emmant’s charm. All these memories she suppressed.
Then nothing, save the droning of the wind outside her window. Nothing at all, and she grew anxious. She forced her mind to calmness. Finally it came, the faintest tickle at the very fringe of her senses. The amulet became hot in her hands; she gripped it more tightly. The tickle swelled into a pinpoint of light, drifting this way and that, growing into an image of now. It was Llian, and he lay dreaming in his chamber, dreaming the Histories of the Aachim.
Karan left him to his dream. She thought on the morrow. Truly did she fear Tensor. He would break her if he believed she knew anything about the Mirror. Then he would take it and use it. The terrible dream, the destruction of Shazmak, touched her. But long before that she would be dead, and Llian, her Llian, too. Karan allowed the terror to seep through her until she was clawed by echoing, silent screams.
She turned back to Llian. Now his dreams had drifted and he too was at judgment with Tensor, and afraid, though his was a strong, healthy fear, not the nameless terror that she had made. She wafted this image of herself toward him until their senses overlapped and Llian dreamed of her. Then she wove into her terror a story, and the story was true save for one tiny lie.
Maigraith took me to Fiz Gorgo, she wove, for she needed a sensitive, a link. I went with her without knowing what she was seeking, only that it was a relic from the past, and even when I saw it I knew not what it was and she did not say. I escaped, she was taken. At Lake Neid I gave the Mirror to another and fled north as a decoy. It was only weeks later that I learned that it was the Mirror of Aachan.
As she wove the dream Llian dreamed it. He was with her
on that icy swim through the cistern into Fiz Gorgo. He saw, with wonder, Maigraith’s defiance of Yggur. He was beside Karan as she fled in terror through the swamps of Orist Then the lie: he saw her give the Mirror to another, beneath the crumbling jetty on Lake Neid. He saw the betrayal; the relentless pursuit of the Whelm; he felt again her night-sending at Tullin. All this Llian dreamed, and his own failures and follies too.
On the story went, pace by pace. They stood before the bridge into Shazmak. They were made welcome. Llian dreamed it all, and at the end knew that Karan had been led and did not know why; had given up the Mirror to another without knowing what it was, and now was afraid and shamed.
The tale was ended; she could do no more. Llian drifted into other dreams and Karan allowed her sense of him to contract to a point that she put away in an obscure compartment of her subconscious. Slowly she raised her head, her face still wet with tears. Her hands and feet were cold and numb; she could barely stand up. She hobbled over to the window and as she did so the chain and its little amulet slipped from her fingers and fell down beside the table. Karan leaned on the sill. The outside of the pane was crusted with ice. The after sickness was rising in her throat and there were needles of pain behind her eyes. Then the stars began to dance; she fell unconscious beside her pallet.
Llian woke early the next morning from an unusually deep sleep, to face the problem that he had been unable to solve the previous night. He made breakfast, coffee and sweet-cake, and knocked on Karan’s door. There was no answer and the door was locked. That had never happened before. He took the tray back to the table and was going through their options on a blank page of his journal, for he always thought better with a pen in his hand, when there came an imperious knocking at the outer door. Llian laid the bowl aside and opened the door. Outside was a tall, strongly built man with black wavy hair, a full dark beard and the self-contained presence of an Aachim. He was clad all in gray, with a gray cloak and high boots.
