A Shadow on the Glass

by Ian Irvine

  “As I said, perhaps excessively romantic,” replied Llian, smiling at her in the darkness.

  Neither spoke then, for their cares had retreated far away and each was content just to lie there, unified by the warmth of their contact and the rhythm of their breathing.

  Then Karan gasped, a tiny, disturbing sound, as though she was in pain.

  “What is it?” holding her tightly.

  Her voice came slowly, as if she brought it from a long way away. “I’m all right now. I had a terrible pain, like a hot wire behind my eyes, but it’s gone already.” She clung to him a moment longer, then gave his hand a hard squeeze and rolled away. “Llian, promise me something?”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise that whatever happens tonight you will do exactly what I tell you to, however I tell you.”

  “What a strange thing to ask.”

  “Just promise; no, swear.”

  He took her hand in his and held it to his lips. “I promise. I swear. Whatever you ask, however you ask, I will do it.”

  “Even if it seems utterly wrong to you.”

  A shiver went all the way down his back, a foreboding. He could not speak. He could sense her whole body rigid beside him. “What is going to happen tonight?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe another night. Maybe never! Llian! You must swear. You must. Trust me!”

  “I swear,” he said.

  “I’ll never forget you, Llian.”

  “You speak as though you were going away,” he said softly, suddenly afraid, but Karan did not answer. She was already asleep. He lay awake for a long time, uneasy now, but at last his weariness overcame his fears and he, too, drifted into sleep.

  That morning, as Karan and Llian found their way onto the path, Tensor, on the other side of the river, had stopped abruptly. The Aachim had lost much time in the caverns, clearing a fall of rock, and since that time had not dared to sleep. He divided his party: half he sent hurrying to Name along the track that followed the eastern side of the Garr; the rest he called to him.

  “They’re not far away across the river,” he said, “for I can sense them now; within three leagues, I think. They’ll be off their guard. They will never believe that we could cross here.”

  “Nor can we,” said one. “It is deep and too fast for swimming. And we have no boat.”

  “Then let us find one. There are folk living along the river.”

  “It would have to be a most superior boat to carry us all across that flood.”

  They separated and searched all day along the high bank. There were several dwellings along the rind of fertile land on this side of the river, but the local people were farmers, not fisherfolk. At last, long after dark, they found boats, two of them. The first was large but ruinous, the planking rotted and holed and the rudder broken. Tensor considered it carefully, finally shaking his head. “It is not worth the chance,” he said. “I might be able to hold it together, but it would be a great trial. If the river were less wide… No! Show me the other.”

  The second boat was in better condition but tiny, just a dinghy. They found the owner and hired it from him, though at a price that was more than its value.

  “If we can get five in we need only make two trips,” said Tensor, and they piled in, but even with four the water was at the gunwale. He shook his head in frustration. “Not even I can keep the water out with five,” he said. “It must be three journeys. Hurry now or they will be gone.”

  They were wild, alarming night rides, even for the Aachim, and those who had seen the boat destroyed three days past could not rid themselves of the memory of it smashing against the rocks. Eventually the last were across, but it was already morning and they were far downstream, for the strength of the current was such that it was easier for them to walk down to the boat on each return journey than to row it upstream to their starting point.

  Tensor had lost the grim euphoria of the previous day; now he was puzzled and uncertain. “Yesterday I sensed her that way,” pointing to the west. “But last night her image disappeared from my mind, as though she was no longer there. Let’s begin. There is much forest to search.”

  Llian slept for a time and drifted into strange dreams, neither waking nor sleeping, so it seemed. On the other side of the shelter Karan stirred and flung out an arm, then lay still. The night was dark and very quiet. A thrill of fear breathed against the back of his neck and he shuddered in his sleep. At the same time Karan began to make a low, keening sound that filled him with dread. He reached out blindly in the darkness and caught her cold hand in his. As he did so a shock leapt up his arm and the image of a man, dark bearded, massive, piercing eyes gleaming, seared into his brain. It was the face he’d seen before, that night in Tullin, in the dream woven into Karan’s sending. A demon rising and flinging off its chains!

  The man was speaking softly and with terrible menace, but Llian could not make out the words. Then the face turned toward Llian, its gaze resting lightly on him, and Llian felt that the beam of a great lighthouse shone on him. His heart thudded wildly in his chest and he cried out with terror and anguish for he saw death in those eyes.

  Get away, away, anywhere! The dream had become agonizingly real. Did he dream or was he awake? It was so black that he could not tell.

  Go now, said a soft voice in his head, while she is asleep. You’ve always been a burden to her. She no longer needs you; she will be in Name tomorrow.

  The voice stopped and the face flashed back, then the voice and face alternated. Something inside him rebelled. He would not be dominated. Get out of my mind, he screamed silently, willing up the face to scream his defiance.

  Oh, you fool! came the voice in his head, as the face turned to him once more. The eyes struck him, etching him away layer by layer, his defiance less than nothing.

  “Go now! Just go, you fool!” He wanted to go, but he could not leave her. Then it struck him with the force of a hammer blow. It was Karan’s voice, Karan was telling him to go, screaming at him to go. “Go! Get away now! You promised. Don’t break this one.” Her fists were pounding his shoulder, his chest, his face.

  All at once the dam burst, Llian leapt to his feet, flung on his clothes, caught up his boots in one hand and his pack in the other.

  “Karan,” he cried, putting his arms around her. “I won’t go without you.”

  “Go!” she screamed, so loudly in his face that his hair stood on end. “You’ll kill us both!”

  “Where shall I go?”

  “Away, anywhere. Go to Name.” Llian backed slowly out of the tent, looking down at her shadow in the starlight; then, at her final screamed “Go!” he turned and fled down the rivulet toward the forest path.

  Karan sat up in her covers, looking after him, holding her head. When he was gone from sight, she fell back on her blankets and wailed in grief and despair.

  The night was cloudless and lit only by the ribbon of bright stars known as the Chain of the Tychid, and the bright nebula, for it was the time of the new moon. It took only a few minutes to reach the path and rum left toward Name. A light mist hugged the ground, making all the land a dreamscape. Infected by Karan’s panic Llian ran and ran, squelching through bogs, crashing into thickets in the darkness, falling over, getting up again, heedless of the mud on his face, the scratching, catching branches and the clinging grasses.

  He was walking now through open forest, and ahead was a glade surrounded by shadowy spreading trees. Llian stopped at the edge of the clearing and leaned against the rugose bark of an ancient trunk while he put on his boots. He still felt as if he was in a dream, intoxicated or driven, lacking all will to wonder or to question. The night held its breath for a moment, then a soft “peep-peep” sounded beside him, a clicking noise began away on his left, and out in the open space there came a sharp metallic tapping from several places at once.

  Without warning there was a scrabbling sound beside his foot and a small rodent streaked away into the dry grass. A silent glide, a sudden cr
ack of wings, a shrill squeal cut short; the night bird rose from the grass with the limp thing in its beak and flapped heavily into the trees. The night noises resumed. Llian shivered, the menace from behind reawakening. He eased the pack on his shoulders and swiftly crossed the patch of cleared land, the dry grass rustling about his ankles. The ribbon of stars blazed out strongly; he fancied that his shadow followed him for a moment, then he was within the trees on the other side and the gloom descended.

  He walked for another hour, or perhaps two, following the faint trail through the trees, the rich moist misty air all about, splashing through little streams and struggling up slippery gullies, and as he went the fear and horror dwindled to a memory, and he was overcome by a sweet melancholy, a sense of something lost and gone beyond recovery.

  Finally he saw that he stood on the top of a steep, treeless ridge. Below to the right was the shadow of the river and, beyond, the yellow lights of Name. Downstream the hills were lower and rounder, and the forest was cleared back to the mountains. Here and there was a point of light, a farmhouse perhaps, and that cluster of lights in the distance must be a village.

  As he stood there, staring down, the veil still before his eyes, a chill wind struck him in the face and roused him enough to realize that there was no way to get to Name before the morning. To his left the crest of the hill broadened until it was twenty or thirty paces across, dotted with small windswept trees. He crept between two boulders into the shelter of a patch of trees, made a bed on the flattest piece of ground he could find and the dream that he had never fully woken from dragged him back under. Llian fell instantly asleep.

  * * *

  Llian was gone at last. Karan fell back on the ground. The pain behind her eyes began once more, swelling like a carbuncle, her whole head throbbing. And then the visions, the dreams, the nightmares came back. The eyes. Where had she seen those flaming eyes, those black and carmine eyes before? Now they were gone and there was nothing; and she was paralyzed. Never before had she known such terror; never had her own resources of self been so stripped from her. Directly above the trees the scorpion nebula glowed, bigger and brighter than she had ever seen it.

  The dog again. The dead thing from long ago, its rotting tongue cold and slimy between her shoulder blades. Uggh! Never had she felt so befouled, but it broke the bewitchment that paralyzed her and Karan bethought herself of her nakedness. She leapt up, thrust legs into trousers, fastened her shirt, threw wood on the fire until it blazed up. She took out her little knife and waited. She would flee, only there was no place to go, no place where they would not find her. No way to escape those who crept upon her, who knew her.

  The eyes. The face. Vast, unbearably handsome; treacherous and cruel. Many times now she had dreamed that face, and each time it was stronger, more potent, more demanding. Yet it was prisoned, tormented too. It wanted, but it could not have. Then the dog. The eyes. The pressure. The pain. The eyes. The paralysis. The dog.

  She gasped for breath. She panted; her eyes flicked back and forth like mad things. The world grew dark, flamed red and black, dark again. A wind sprang up from nowhere and the limbs of the trees rasped together like scaly hands. Then all was still again.

  Now a shiver began on her scalp, running down her neck to the small of her back. Sweat prickled in her armpits, the paralysis again and suddenly she knew that they were all around. Dark shadows crept through the trees. Their sandals rustled in the grass. The Whelm had come! And she could not move for they knew her, knew all of her; knew what to use against her.

  A hand appeared at the opening of the tent. Her heart turned over. She could do nothing!

  But in a tiny corner of her being, hope prevailed. There was a remote part of her that they did not know, that no one knew. A fierce determination dwelt there, and it reached out and spoke to her. No one was invincible, not even the Whelm, and she knew it more than any. Had she not seen Idlis in torment? The paralysis lifted, a fury took her, and as the Whelm reached its thick-knuckled hands toward her she slashed at it. It fell back with a howl.

  But these were not Idlis’s band—there was a colder intelligence at work here. And the pain was back, swelling, glowing, her head bursting with pain. Though she was wide awake, the handsome, cruel face of her dreams was back. Would she do it? Could he force her? The tent torn apart, the Whelm reaching for her, her head pulsing with fire and pain and burning eyes, her knife parting flesh, the Whelm falling but another behind, the knife struck from her hand, then a nightmare, a maelstrom, a fury, her tormented mind seeking out for solace, sending; unbelievably, finding it nearby. But what a price for that solace!

  Maigraith! she cried, a golden light in her eyes, and drew a link between them.

  It was as though the very depths of the abyss sighed, a vast exhalation, relief beyond hope. But the stars wept crystalline tears; tears that were shattered as they fell into glittering shards that scored her eyes with fire. The link was snatched from her, twisted back on itself and into dimensions beyond. Then, an explosion of fire and pain, the touch of the Whelm, the dead dog at her throat, then all pain gone, all pressure gone, consciousness fading, sliding down into a dark well of oblivion, the last thing she knew a sense of in expressible relief in the eyes, a catharsis of exhilaration in the Whelm.

  “Oh, perfect master,” the Whelm cried. “At last! At last!”

  “Oh faithful servants,” it boomed. Vast, forbidding, foreboding. “The crisis approaches, and so much to do. Listen, and obey. Already the link fades. Do you remember yourselves?”

  “Now we remember. We are Ghâshâd, master.”

  “I have an enemy, Ghâshâd!”

  “We know him, now.”

  “Torment him. Goad him. Drive him to folly. But do not harm him. Call together the Ghâshâd, and when the opportunity comes, seize it!”

  Llian woke the next morning more tired than when he’d lain down to rest: the whole night, it seemed, he had been a fugitive in a shadow land. Always he fled, always he was pursued. His colossal enemy grew more powerful and more baleful as he came closer, and he could do nothing to save himself, for there was another presence in his mind that tormented him and frustrated his every way of escape.

  Now a light shone on his face and a stake was in his back. He prised open his puffy lids. It was morning, and the sun shone in his eyes. He leapt up, rubbing his back. At first he struggled to remember the chain of folly that had led him to this spot, alone in the bright morning on a bare hilltop. Memory of the previous night came stealthily, then flooded back.

  Karan! What madness of the night had led him to this place? Call it by its true name: what cowardice? How could he have abandoned her, been held to such a ridiculous promise?

  He flung the pack over his shoulder, glanced at the sun. It was after seven o’clock. He had to find her. She might be at the ferry already. He ran down to the path and looked over toward the river. There was Name, a clutter of buildings and jetties on the far side. And there was the ferry now, inching its way directly across. His gaze followed its path. On his side of the river was a smaller wharf of wooden piles, partly hidden by a grove of trees, and an open shed housing the huge cable wheel. It was half a league away. If he ran he could be there in twenty minutes. Surely it would not be gone.

  He set off with bounding strides, but the path was little more than a stony gully; with each bound the pack crashed into his back, unbalancing him. After falling twice and nearly breaking an ankle he dropped back to a fast walk until he reached the bottom of the ridge. Then he ran again but it was almost half an hour later that, weak-kneed and dripping sweat, he staggered onto the wharf, past a straggle of rustics who looked at him without curiosity.

  The ferry was a hundred spans out into the stream on its return journey and, despite his wild caperings and beseeching cries, it continued steadily on, grinding on its cable, the upstream gunwale pushed down to water level by the force of the river. Ten people were visible on the deck, though none resembled Karan with her bright hair a
nd pale face.

  Llian ran back to the group of laborers, who by now were making their way up the hill, and called out to the nearest, a tall uncouth-looking fellow in baggy green shirt and brown pantaloons, carrying a hoe over one shoulder. The group kept walking as he ran beside them.

  “Hey!” he cried. The fellow turned and looked at him but did not stop. He was unshaven, with several days of stubble on his cheeks and a bulbous nose.

  “Did you see a woman, red hair, green eyes, about this tall, get on the ferry?” he asked, holding his palm out level with his nose and running backwards to keep up.

  “Eh?” said bulbous nose thickly.

  Llian repeated the question, slowly, loudly.

  The man’s rubbery lips parted in a leer, revealing a crater full of black stumps. “Woman, red hair, beautiful!” He sounded as though he was talking with a mouthful of molasses. He grinned broadly. The vision of decay was so horrible that Llian was forced to look away.

  “Beautiful? No, I didn’t say that,” he began, then realized that the man was talking to himself.

  “Did you see her?” Llian asked urgently, still running backwards. He caught his foot in a pothole and fell sprawling.

  “No, no girl, no red hair, no girl,” the man said, his voice trailing off, then looked away and lengthened his stride.

  Llian sat on the ground where he had fallen, looking after the little group of laborers. “No girl! No girl!” came drifting back to him, then they disappeared over a rise, heading downstream.

  Llian calculated. Last night he’d walked for at least two hours. She’d have to have left well before dawn to have caught the ferry. He ran back down to the wharf and stood there, unable to decide what to do. He took his pack off and sat down beneath a tree, alternately looking across the river to Name and back up the path. No one came. Time passed; he grew uneasy. He paced the wharf.

  Where was she? She should have come long since. Suddenly he came to a decision. He’d leave the pack here and go back up the path a little, just to the top of the ridge, to see if he could see her coming. Llian thrust it into a tangle of berry bushes down below the end of the jetty and set off back up the path.