by Ian Irvine
“Perhaps,” said Llian, swallowing the last of the coffee. The mug was solid silver and very heavy. It seemed out of place in this shabby house. A shiver went down his back. Whelm. Ghâshâd. Ghâshâd! Perhaps Karan’s dream was true. Perhaps they had gone to Shazmak. But the present was more urgent. “We’ve got to get away. Faichand will never come now, nor Maigraith. Where can we go? Would Gistel help us?”
The old woman looked around the empty kitchen. “Gistel!” she said to herself. “Perhaps, though I never liked him much. Now I wonder about him too. He was away for a long time. Where did he go?” She looked up from her book, peering at Llian as though weighing him as well. “I think it’s too late. Still, what does it matter whether you go or stay? If you want to go, then go. But there is nowhere to go save Thurkad, and you’ll have to walk.”
As she was speaking Karan came into the kitchen. “I am afraid to go to Thurkad,” Karan muttered.
“I fear to stay here,” said the old woman, “but I’m too old to flee. You should have taken a boat down to the sea, but you’ve waited too long. The enemy holds the whole of Iagador south of the river. No boatman could take you there now.”
“I know one who might,” said Llian thoughtfully.
By eleven that night, the fog was so thick that they could not see from one end of the skiff to the other. They huddled together in the middle, waiting. Karan was apathetic, Llian anxious. Behind them Pender was swearing the same word over and over again, “Farsh, farsh, farsh!” A cold breeze blew momentarily.
“Where’s Gistel?” said Pender, angrily. “He should have been here an hour ago. Already the wind comes up; the fog will disappear. Your guide is a traitor, eh!” He started to get out of the boat.
Llian was struck by the same fear but he could not allow Pender to go. “Wait,” he called out.
“No longer. They’re coming!”
It was so. Behind them, from further up the island, they could hear the sounds of battle, the shouts and screams of people. The breeze came again. The fog began to thin and disappear frighteningly quickly, the shiny roofs of the towers appearing first, then the towers themselves, though mist still lay on the river. The cold moonlight shone on Sith. Llian grabbed Pender’s arm and forced him back roughly into his seat.
“Stay!” he said. “We go—with Gistel or without him.”
“Five minutes then. No more.”
They waited anxiously. The shouting grew louder. A fire broke out among the buildings behind the wharves, spreading quickly across the hill. Another blaze sprang up, this time near the waterfront. People began to stream out of the narrow streets onto the open wharf area. A man appeared, walking quickly along the edge of the wharves, looking down.
“There he is,” said Llian, standing up on the side of the boat and holding on to the edge of the wharf. “Hoy, over here,” he called, waving.
Pender climbed up as well. Gistel was running toward them now. “Farsh!” Pender swore, jumping down and sending the boat rocking. He tore at the rope. Llian looked around, not understanding, then he saw the two cloaked figures behind, also running. Pender pushed the boat away from the wharf with a huge thrust of his oar, unbalancing Llian and sending him flailing backwards against the bow.
Now the wind was breaking up the fog on the river into banks and billows. Pender heaved on the oars, expertly directed the boat toward the nearest fog bank. Three more figures converged on the spot from which they had fled, outlined against the burning warehouses. One of them pointed with a long arm, another kneeled. A bolt buried itself in the side of the boat, not far from Pender’s hand. He swore again, dug the oars; the boat spun and disappeared into the fog.
At almost the same time a tiny, waterlogged dinghy, plastered with mud and twigs, grounded silently against the rocky southern side of the island. A bulky shadow scrambled from it and clung to the wet rock while the dinghy slowly spun off into the darkness. The shadow scaled the cliffs in the blackness and the fog and crept into Sith. There it scurried about, searching, and even in the violence of that terrible night the fleeing people stopped to stare at the tormented, dreadful creature. The black-bearded face showed nothing, but the glow of the flames highlighted the twin curving scars across Emmant’s cheek.
“What do you want me to do, eh?” asked Pender, as they huddled among the reed beds on the northern side of the river, a league or more downstream.
For the past three hours they had dodged the patrols of the enemy, darting from one fog patch to another, then when the fog was gone, creeping along in the myriad channels and backwaters of the lower Garr, hiding under the overhanging trees. Sometimes they had to wade through the fringing marshes, dragging the skiff. In the bright moonlight there was no hiding place on the river.
Llian was wracked by indecision. He did not know the land and had no confidence that he could bring them to Thurkad, especially as the armies would be keeping a lookout for them. He had expected that Gistel would take them there. Karan knew the country well, but the proud, confident Karan was gone; in her place a stranger, withdrawn and miserable. When Llian spoke to her she only repeated, “I dread to go to Thurkad.”
“We couldn’t stay in Sith.”
“I know that. I feared even more to stay.”
“What about Bannador?”
“I should have gone there at once, from Shazmak, even leaving you behind. I once considered it. Now it is too late; they will already be there, waiting for me.”
“Across the sea?” he asked doubtfully.
“They’ve followed all this way. I can’t hide on the plains of Almadin.”
“What can we do?” Llian pleaded, looking to Pender.
Pender found the experience a novel one but for the moment he said nothing. He was transformed-as capable and commanding on his boat as he had been surly and ill-at-ease off it.
“I wonder about the whole mission now,” said Karan. “What right has she to this Mirror anyway? Her name rings in my mind, a jarring sound. I begin to think that to give it to her would be as bad as giving it to Tensor. I can’t say what is right anymore; my judgment fails me, and my confidence, and all seems futile.”
“I know something of running and hiding,” said Pender in his nasal voice. “I would hide in Thurkad. A most wicked place, eh! Places there even your enemies wouldn’t go. And much stronger than Sith.”
“There is nowhere else to go, Karan. We must go to Thurkad.”
Karan turned away, staring across the water. She shivered, and though she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, two small tears escaped.
Pender saw the tears and the entreaty. You are kind, he thought. I would do it for you, if you asked it.
“I don’t know the country between here and Thurkad,” he said, with the reluctance of the sailor for any form of travel requiring the use of his legs. “And not even I can take you downriver in daylight, now. But there are many channels in the marshes; beyond, the river has many mouths, eh! I can take you to the sea on a dark night. Then you go your own way to Thurkad.”
But that night was clear and bright, with no fog and the moon nearly full, and so was die next, so they spent the two days among the reeds; dreary cold days. The third night was cloudy, foggy and dark and they set out as soon as the sun set
Karan hardly spoke during that journey—she was overcome by feelings of helplessness and resignation. She had nothing more to give. If only Maigraith had come; but she would never find her now. Karan could feel the strength of Yggur all around her, and the Whelm. Beyond Yggur, dreams of those eyes grew: greater, more malevolent, and closer to her. He wanted her—she was part of his purpose. Day and night blurred together into one hideous dream. Beyond even that, a nameless, personal dread pursued her. She began to fear that she was losing her mind, though she took some comfort from Llian’s presence. Even the mercenary solidity of Pender provided a kind of bulwark against her fears.
Pender took them down into the shifting channels through the marshes and by the morning, when the wind blew fr
om the east, they could smell the salt of the sea. At Pender’s insistence they hid in the bogs during the day, and it was well that they did so, for in the morning the enemy was about in small boats, combing all the channels, and later they heard the creak of timbers and the rattle of oars as a fleet rowed past upstream.
A wistful look came across Pender’s fat, pocked face when first they smelled the salt sea on the wind. “How I long for the sea,” he said forlornly.
This struck a spark of interest in Karan, for the first time in days. “What happened to you?”
“Had my own little ship, taking cargo along the sea; and be yond, sometimes. Too many enemies—always enemies,” he said with resentment. “They did not want me. Took away their profit, eh! They joined against me, hounded me, fired my boat. Everything burned. I could not pay, had to run. I was the best sailor on the Sea of Thurkad. Now I paddle this stinking river, and can’t even get enough for food and drink.”
In the evening they evaded the patrols without difficulty and by midnight had reached the sea through the northernmost channel of the delta. The wind was blowing strongly from the north and a big swell was breaking over the sandbar off shore. Each swell struck the little boat side on, making it wallow and sending a shower of spray over the side that the wind caught and flung in their faces. Within minutes they were drenched. Pender clawed the boat around to the north and the spray eased, though now the bow rose up sharply with each wave and crashed down into the following trough.
“You’re safe now, safe as anywhere,” he shouted over the wind. “I’ll put you on the beach; not a long walk to the village, eh! You can buy a boat, or steal one. Thurkad is two or three days north. I must get back to my children.”
He pulled the boat through the surf to the beach and sat there. Karan stepped carefully from the bow onto the sand. She stood patiently, holding the rope, staring across the water. The stern rose and fell with each wave and the bow crunched against the beach.
Llian sat there, hopelessly afraid. He knew that even if he could steal a boat he could never sail it to Thurkad in that sea. He would sooner have walked that perilous path into Shazmak again.
“I can’t do it,” he said in a pale voice. “I’ve never sailed a boat before.”
Pender looked at him in disgust. “What a pathetic thing you are,” he said after a while. “To think I feared you once. Why should I help you? Not even for money would I do it.” Then his gaze lit on Karan, vacantly staring, and their eyes crossed.
“Would you do it for me?” she asked, and for once Pender’s mercenary heart was stirred. He considered, then his hand, perhaps by accident, brushed his purse and it chimed faintly. Llian put several thick pieces of silver into the leathery hand. Pender weighed them, left his hand outstretched a moment longer, until Llian grudgingly dropped another there. The money disappeared.
“Get in,” said Pender.
“What about your children?” said Llian.
Pender sighed heavily. “I suppose they are as safe in Sith as anywhere,” he said.
Mechanically, as though she had done it a hundred times before, Karan pushed the boat away from the shore and leapt nimbly onto the bow, without even wetting her boots. She climbed in and sat down, staring out to sea again.
I don’t think she even realizes we were here, Llian thought. Pender unlashed the mast, stepped it, and put up the little sail. The wind still blew from the north. They headed out to sea on the first tack.
That night Karan cried out again in her sleep. Llian took her hand and for a while she was calm, but later she began to scream and thrash about, crying out in a dialect of Bannador, which he scarcely knew. He held her tightly, stroking her tangled hair and her salty cheeks, and they both slept.
Suddenly the link she had forged between them in Shazmak was alive again and a deluge poured across. A night mare of faces: the face of Vartila; the face of Idlis; the face of Yggur; another face. Llian half-woke, remembering the dream he had had in Tullin, long ago. It was the same face that he’d dreamed about at the campsite. That figure, dwarfing its stone chair, flinging off its chains, reaching out.
Rulke! How had he not realized? Rulke! But why did she dream of him? Abruptly, Llian sprang from his half-sleep back into her dream.
Yggur he saw then, and Tensor. Llian even saw himself—the faces spinning, twisting, now blending into one another, now stark, alone. He saw again the Nightland, that intangible prison made to contain Rulke. He saw Rulke in it too, only this time he was not chained in that stone seat—he was working in a vast chamber, putting what appeared to be the final touches to a construct, an engine of unhuman proportions but unmistakable potential. This time Rulke did not look up, though he knew they had seen him, for he had drawn their gaze to him. Somehow this was more frightening than before.
Karan whimpered. The dream changed and Llian was looking up at the face of Emmant. He experienced once more the terror that he had felt before in Shazmak, until he realized, with the slow separation of his memory and Karan’s dream, that she was the one Emmant gloated over, and that it was him she feared the most. He reached out, and Llian saw again the brutal, murderous lust of the outcast whom she had spurned and humiliated.
Karan screamed, the nightmarish yellowed sound of one driven to the brink of madness. Then with an awful laugh she wrenched herself free of Llian’s arms and flung herself into the sea.
For a moment she was visible in the trough of the wave behind them, the moonlight shining on her pale face. Llian stood up at once, unbalancing the boat so that the next wave nearly swamped them. He scrabbled around for a line but couldn’t find one, just stood looking despairingly after her as the distance grew swiftly.
Pender had reacted at once, heaving on the steering oar, spilling the wind from the sail, hauling the sail down, but still they drifted away. Llian was hopping up and down, screaming at Karan, the boat rocking dangerously. Pender grew suddenly angry, swung his hooked arm at Llian’s midriff and with surprising ease knocked him over the side.
“A more worthless fool I’ve never met,” he muttered, then shouted, “That way!” as Llian’s head emerged from the water, his eyes like saucers.
Llian struck out strongly in the direction that Pender pointed, the waves lifting him and letting him fall again, though only occasionally did he catch a glimpse of her, lying unmoving in the water. When he reached the place where he had seen her last she was not there and he had to stand as high as he could in the sea, treading water furiously, before he found her nearby. She was pale and cold as death, though when he put his hand on her throat a faint pulse still ticked there.
Llian turned her on her back, holding her shoulders until she was upright in the water. She sank down to her chin, kept sinking, and he wrapped his arms around her back and squeezed her against his chest. Water rushed out of her mouth and nose, warm water ran down his back. Tucking her chin over his shoulder he squeezed again and again. More water rushed out, then he felt her take a shuddering, gurgling breath and she vomited over his shoulder into the water.
He scooped water and washed her face with it. Her head lolled in his hands, her eyes opened and closed again. Llian pushed her head back on his shoulder, holding her tightly, then looked around for the boat. It was nowhere to be seen.
He kicked himself higher in the water but there was no sign of the boat in the darkness. It was too tiring, holding them both so high, and he sank back down. A wave broke in his face; he wiped the water awkwardly from his eyes. What a fool I am, he thought miserably. Even Pender has more presence of mind. If it wasn’t for him…
But where is he? In the darkness Pender might never find them. He might just abandon them. Llian searched for the shoreline, but he was no longer certain which direction to look. Even if he had known the direction, he was too low to have seen it, this far away, in the dark. The water was so cold that the feeling was already going from his feet. It would not take long to die.
37
* * *
THE OLD CITY
Llian kept himself and Karan afloat for what seemed like hours, though it was not really long at all. There was just a little spark of warmth between them where they touched, and cold water everywhere else. Then the oars rattled and the skiff appeared suddenly from upwind, gliding toward them under Pender’s expert hand so close that Llian had only to reach up and grasp the side. Pender shipped the oars, heaved Karan into the boat, then Llian. He wrapped them both in a piece of canvas, though the wind still chilled them.
“She needs fire and a hot drink,” said Pender. “We go ashore.”
Llian huddled in the wrapping and looked at Pender’s fat, ugly face with a great deal of respect.
A little way down the coast they found a tiny beach between two rocky headlands. Thick forest covered the land behind the beach; there was heath on the headlands. The north end of the beach was sheltered from the waves and there, just at the end of the rock platform, Pender drove the skiff onto the sand. They lit two large fires and put Karan between them, feeding her with thin soup and sweet tea. After that she slept, but the nightmares came again. Twice she ran away into the night. The second time they found her poised at the edge of a low cliff, and this time they took her back and bound her.
In the morning she seemed better, though she was weak. The wind had swung around to the south, offering hope of a faster passage. They set sail straight as an arrow for Thurkad.
Dawn came, the eighth since they had fled Sith, and the whole of the western sky was covered in a pall of smoke as the skiff rounded the cliffed headland and passed into the deep protected waters of Port Cardasson, the finest harbor in all Meldorin, the harbor of the most ancient city of Thurkad. The port was thick with vessels: from the huge ships, festooned with yellow sail, that came all the way from Crandor, laden with spices and silken cloth, jewelry and precious woods, to the tiny kules, with their single triangular rig, that fished the estuaries for jellyfish. Tree-covered ridges ran down to enclose a myriad of narrow, deep inlets. The harbor was dotted with tiny islands, some bearing slender light-towers to mark the channel.
