by Ian Irvine
That’s all accounted for, Llian thought, turning back, save the one they had carried onto the boat. By the time he returned Karan was standing up. He retrieved the bag of clothing from beneath the hedge, gave her his arm and they walked slowly back through the narrow streets of Name to the waterfront. They were out of sight of the house when they heard a crash, and flame leapt briefly above the rooftops. The roof had fallen in.
“With luck they won’t discover our absence until the morning,” said Llian. “We must be gone from Name by then.”
Karan gave him an enquiring look.
“I found the fellow that she got the boat from. He will take us.”
It was still well short of dawn when they reached Pender’s hovel. Llian pounded on the door. After a minute they saw a light moving about inside, and a woman’s voice called. “Who’s there? What do you want?”
“Wake Pender! Open the door! We need his boat!”
The light disappeared. A minute passed. The light re turned. Pender’s voice, a mixture of fear and defiance, came through the door. “Go away! Come back in the morning!”
“Pender! I am Garntor,” said Llian. “Remember our bar gain. Open the door at once. Hurry! You are in danger too.”
Silence.
“Hurry!” Llian called again. “The Whelm are coming. We must flee at once.”
The bar scraped against the door and it was opened a crack, then fully. Pender stood there, bare-legged, unshaven, his stomach straining at the waist of his nightgown.
Llian pushed through the doorway. Pender fell back in alarm, his hands upraised.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Llian, pulling silver tars from the pouch that Wistan had given him so long ago. “I keep my bargains.”
Pender took the coins, the look of relief on his face almost comical.
“Now I need your help once more. You must take us down the river to Sith right away.”
At the mention of Sith, Karan, who had been standing be hind him, moved out into the light and began to speak. Llian laid his hand on her arm and squeezed; she stopped at once. Pender stared at the pale and filthy pair. Karan, bruised, blistered and barefoot, holding a badly swollen wrist. Llian’s face was covered in soot and dust and on one side his hair was singed back almost to the scalp.
Pender pointed at Karan. “She was dead. I saw her,” he quavered. “What are you? Necroturges? Mancers? You don’t need my help. Go away!”
“You must; already you are in trouble. You must flee at once.”
Pender turned and went heavily into the other room. A woman appeared in the doorway. She was small and thin with glossy black hair to her shoulders, a narrow arching nose and gray eyes. She wore a faded shift with blue flowers embroidered across the shoulders. Her feet were bare on the earth floor of the hut. Llian strode over to her. She looked anxiously up at him but did not draw back.
“What do you want of us?” she asked, in a sibilant accent.
“We are all in danger from these Whelm—the ones who hired your boat three nights past. They are hunting us, and neither are you safe, now.”
The woman looked around the hut. “We have nothing here anyway!” She considered for a moment. “Name is a cold, unfriendly place and I won’t miss it. We will take you. The fee is five silver tars: two for the journey and three for the trouble you have caused us.”
Llian gave her the money. She walked into the other room.
“Get the boat,” they heard her say to Pender. “We leave in half an hour.”
She came back out again, smiled and held out a hand. “My name is Hassien.” Her accent made it sound like Hassssien.
She disappeared back into the other room. Pender came sullenly by and went out the front door.
“We have to talk,” Karan said in his ear. ‘To go to Sith may not be best, now. Besides, there is the matter of the Mirror.”
Llian regarded her complacently. “Then let us talk, but later. We must be away before dawn. First let me bind your wrist again.”
By the time the job was done and Karan had dressed her self, Pender was running the boat down the slips in the dark ness. Karan waited in the shadows by the river bank, shadows that were broken only by the light of a distant street lamp. It was a dark, cloudy night. Llian went back to the house and found Hassien coming down the path with two small children.
“Is there else to fetch?” he asked her.
Hassien shook her head, the light from the window be hind glistering on her hair. “We have little and it is all in the boat.” He turned and walked with her.
“Get in,” said Pender in a sour tone. Hassien laid the children down on a blanket at the bow and sat beside them. Even in the faint light Karan looked wan. She stumbled and fell against Llian as she tried to climb in, clinging to his arm for a moment to steady herself.
Pender untied the rope; Hassien pushed the boat away from the shore with an oar and slowly they drifted into the current. Pender dropped the steering oar into place, spat over the side in the direction of Name and directed the vessel away from the projecting wharves toward the flow. The street lamps along the waterfront drifted backwards, developed haloes, disappeared. The skiff entered the fog lying in midstream and vanished.
Dawn came, a cold gray light creeping across the sky. The fog broke into patches and suddenly it was gone. Karan stirred, pulling the cloak up around her neck. Llian was staring straight down the river, lost in his thoughts. His brown hair was frizzy on one side from the fire, gray with ash and dust; his pale brown eyes were bloodshot; his face, hands and clothes smudged with soot. Karan elbowed him. He turned to her with a smile.
“Ah, yes, you wanted to talk about something.”
She put her lips to his ear. “The Mirror!” she hissed.
Llian pretended not to understand.
“The Mirror!” she repeated.
Llian grinned smugly. He looked at her, then reached into the inner pocket of his coat. The smooth lining was cold to the touch. The Mirror was not there.
He frowned. He searched carefully through his pockets, then frantically, over and over again. Uncertainty, consternation, finally a sick despair washed over him as he scrabbled through his pack, through the bag he had carried, his pockets again, knowing that he had never taken it out of the secure, deep inner pocket, realizing that the Mirror was gone and he had no idea when he had lost it.
“It’s gone,” he said, crushed.
Karan frowned. “What’s gone?
Llian looked at her. “The Mirror!” he groaned. “I went back to the campsite and found it. And now it’s gone!”
Karan stared at him. “You found it, and you’ve lost it al ready?” her voice rising.
Llian sank his head in his hands. “I had it in my cloak and now it’s gone. It must have fallen out under the house.” He felt like leaping over the side.
35
* * *
THE SIEGE OF SITH
Oh, Llian, you’re such a fool,” said Karan, suddenly realizing what had happened.
Llian looked up sharply. Karan could not control herself; her face dissolved in a gale of laughter. “Such an absent-minded fool,” she repeated, kissing him all over his face, laughing until the tears ran down her dirty cheeks. Hassien looked across at the noise.
“What have you done?” he gritted, wanting to shake her.
His furious, uncomprehending face set her off in another peal of laughter. “I haven’t done anything. You gave me your cloak just after the fire, remember. You looked in your coat pocket.” She patted the cloak, located a bulge, put her hand inside and pulled the coil out just far enough to be sure that it was the Mirror.
Llian was so relieved that he felt all dizzy. He put his head in her lap and closed his eyes, and felt no need to say anymore. Karan stroked his cheek and the frizzy stubble on the side of his head.
“I can never thank you enough,” she said. “I’m sorry for teasing you.” She could no longer hide her feelings toward him. Indeed she no longer wanted to. When Ha
ssien looked back a few minutes later they had their arms around each other and were fast asleep. She smiled and looked away again.
“I tried to use it,” he said later, when the high sun woke them. “I still feel a little ashamed about that.”
“So you should be,” Karan replied with a smile. “Did you see anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Nor I.”
“Another time,” he said hesitantly, “I even thought about making a bargain with Tensor.”
“You would dare? What for?”
“The Mirror in exchange for you. And a look at the secrets of the Forbidding.”
She frowned.
“Have I angered you?”
Karan took his hand. “Of course not. I don’t expect you to take on my burdens. I may be making a terrible mistake with this Mirror.”
“You knew I had it,” he said shortly. “I heard you say so to Vartila. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know at all,” she replied. “I was merely shooting out ideas in all directions, like sparks from a firework, hoping that one would catch in her mind and turn her attention elsewhere. But I knew you were in Name. I knew you would try some ridiculous scheme, the kind that only you would think of. Like burning the house down while we were still in it.”
“You mock me.”
“Indeed I do not. You saved me, and doubly. For I was in despair, my quest in ruins, you gone I knew not where. I had plenty of time to think about my failings, in between her torments. The one was scarcely worse than the other.
“At first I thought Maigraith would come. Once I was sure that she was nearby, but she never found me and I couldn’t call her. I’m afraid to use my talent.” Her voice became melancholy. “And they tormented me with what they had done to her.”
“I heard that,” murmured Llian. “For some reason your talent is very precious to them. You must guard yourself.”
“But they didn’t know that I knew Maigraith was free, for at the moment I was taken my will cried out for a friend, and moving of its own volition, found one. I sensed her searching for me, not far away.”
Llian was touched by the story, and saddened as well. He had not been there.
“But in the end I was ready to tell them everything, even knowing that they would kill me afterwards. Then I sensed you, creeping about in your foolish way, and I was hard pressed to contain my joy. You gave me the strength to resist.”
“Then why did you send me away, back there at the campsite? I could have helped you then.”
“Formidable you may be when roused, but you are a long time in the rousing,” she teased.
“Yes, how I have been tormented by my cravenness.”
“What nonsense! You swore that you would do whatever I told you, remember? Even then it took you long enough. There was nothing you could have done. If you’d stayed you would have been dead in the first minute, and I would have attacked them with such fury that they would have killed me too.”
“Then why did you just wait for them?”
Karan closed her eyes, back in that nightmare, trying to make sense of it. “They did something to me. They had some power over me,” she said haltingly. “Something happened. You saw the first of it, and then they reached me- my dream. I had will enough only to send you away. I was paralyzed in a way. It’s not easy to recall.”
And how could she tell him about her subsequent abuse? How she had been the link between the Whelm and their long-lost master. She had cut herself off from her talent now, too afraid to use it for fear of what might come next time. She dug a hole and buried the memories in it.
The river ran straight for several leagues but the banks were high on both sides and little could be seen save a white smear of mountains to the left and the smooth brown water ahead. Presently there came the sound of children’s voices from the bow and the two, almost identical apart from their height and with a striking likeness to their mother, appeared.
The girl was about six years old; she shook both their hands gravely. The boy was younger. He turned his head away and would not look at them.
“I will make my Atonement,” said Hassien, “then we take breakfast.” She conducted an exercise of bowing, murmuring and delicate hand movements. Llian had not seen any thing like it before.
Karan put her lips to his ear. “The people of the land of Ogur, far to the south near the Black Sea, have similar rituals, I am told, though if Hassien is from that country she is far from home indeed.”
Hassien looked up and saw her whispering. She completed her ordinance then rose and came down to where they sat together, perhaps feeling a need to explain.
“Our lives are just a fragment in the great design-we cannot hope to understand or influence it, only to keep the shadows away from our door. The crimes of the past draw them to us. So I make my Atonement.”
She fetched a large wooden bowl. The boat rocked slightly as she moved. “Will you share food with us?” she asked, looking first at Karan then at Llian. She did not even glance at Pender, who was still glowering at the tiller.
Karan smiled. “Your gift of food will lighten our journey, halima nassa ak-tullipu mas,” she said. “Gladly and with thanks.” Hassien’s face lit briefly.
The bowl contained a variety of dried fruits, even the wonderful gellon that Shand was so fond of. Llian had not tasted dried gellon before. There was dark bread, a strong yellow cheese and a pile of red triangular nuts. Karan took a piece of bread and offered it to Hassien, according to her custom, but she merely smiled, showing small white teeth, and shook her head.
They ate. When each had taken what they wanted, and the children had eaten, Hassien picked up the bowl again and offered it to Pender with an ironic bow. He sat there, holding the tiller with his right hand, staring forward while with his left he conveyed the remainder of the food to his mouth. When he had finished Hassien bowed again, even lower than before, and repaired to the bow. Now she looked at the two passengers, wondering. They sat close together, touching at shoulder and hip and knee, and did not move from each other all the day.
“How long is the journey to Sith?” Karan called out to Hasssien, a long time later.
“Once we leave the hills the river is slow and winding. Traveling only in daylight, five or six days would be required.”
“And traveling all day and all night?”
“A little more than two days. Do you wish it?”
“We must.”
‘Tender has no equal on the river,” said Hassien, without pride or affection. “They will not catch us.”
Karan, who knew something of the handling of boats, could see that this was no boast. Pender, for all his surliness, handled the big craft with such grace and subtlety that it seemed as though he was flesh with the boat and the boat one with the river.
“How is it that the best boatman on the river has no work?” asked Llian.
“We are foreigners. The folk of Name are cold, hateful and suspicious. We may do only what no one else will.”
All that day they traveled, and all night, and all the next day and night. The sun rose late and set early, its slanting attenuated rays giving little warmth. Each night a mist rose from the river and hung there until scattered by the morning breeze, but it influenced not their course or their speed in the slightest. At times it appeared that Pender drove the boat by sense alone, or perhaps some subtle variation in the sounds of the river from place to place. As the day wasted away the mountains and the tall forested hills gave way to the gentlest of hillocks, and then, when the river was joined by another of almost equal size arising in the peaks of northern Bannador, it transected the western edge of the Plain of Iagador. The high banks shrank down. Now they could see to their right a grassy plain that stretched treeless to the horizon, save where the meandering course of the river was marked by a ribbon of forest. On their left the mountains had receded, the westering sun reflecting off their snow-covered flanks. Here and there the river passed through patches of woo
dland, though mostly the banks were grassy or covered with the stubble of autumn crops.
On the afternoon of the second day the grasslands were succeeded by a dry land of low ridges, steep and rocky on the northern side, gently sloping and covered in heath on the other, through which the great river had cut its meandering path.
“That is the land of Crayde,” said Hassien, indicating the barren hills on their left
Llian looked at the country without interest—its unfortunate, impoverished peoples featured little in the Histories. There was no trace of habitation to be seen, neither fortification, village nor road, just the drab foothills and the mountains of Fildorion towering behind. They passed on.
Karan did not talk further of her ordeal with the Whelm, and Llian, who could imagine it too well, did not question her. She was weak at first but recovered quickly, and cheerful now that they neared Sith and the end of her mission. But still she would not say who she would give the Mirror to, though it was plain that she hoped Maigraith would already be there. She often spoke of her, with longing.
It was near to noon on the third day when the river turned sharply east and ahead, running off the river in a gentle curve, was a steep-sided canal about a hundred spans across.
What a monumental labor that must have been, thought Llian as the current swept them past. Then they drifted down a long straight stretch where the cuffed banks towered above to left and right, and around another sweeping bend to the south. The cuffs fell away and ahead was the ancient stone bridge with its mighty central arch of iron over which the High Way passed, and on their left the waterfront of Sith, impossibly crowded with boats of all types. Behind the waterfront the city covered all the slopes of the island.
Karan gave a vast sigh. “Sith at last. If I must be in a city, this is where I would be. It is such a beautiful place. And the people are warm and generous.”
“You don’t like Thurkad?”
