A Shadow on the Glass (10 page)

“Do you think I want to take you, in this condition?” said Maigraith. “I have no choice. She handed Karan a powder in a rice-paper packet. “Swallow this. It’ll help with the aftersickness. Don’t break the packet.”

Karan took it. The rice paper instantly stuck to the roof of
her mouth and when she tried to dislodge it with her tongue the packet burst, flooding her mouth with a bitter and nauseating taste. She shuddered and gagged. Maigraith held the water bottle to her lips but nothing would wash the bitterness away.

“We’ll never get out again,” said Karan, knowing that it was useless. She could sense that something terrible was going to happen—a disaster, and there was nothing she could do about it.

K
aran shrank down against the outer wall of Fiz Gorgo. She felt quite alone, though Maigraith was only a few steps away. Quite afraid. The paired tread of the sentries above echoed her own heart’s beat. There were guards everywhere. The melancholy sounds of the night heightened her despair.

Why did I let her pressure me into this folly? Why did I come?

An elbow struck her in the ribs. Karan jumped. Maigraith’s strange eyes shone in the faint light. She squeezed Karan’s arm until it hurt. Maigraith’s voice was colder than the night.

“Damn you, Karan—you’re broadcasting your feelings to the whole fortress.” She continued audibly, “You can
never
rely on a sensitive. Why on earth did I bring her?”

The anger scalded Karan. The insult mortified her, though she realized that Maigraith was right—she was
doing it again, sending her own terrors out in all directions, putting them both at risk. She took a deep breath, shuddered, touched the ancient, damp, yet somehow reassuring wall, and looked up.

A cloud drifted across the sky, concealing then emphasizing the nebula shaped like a scorpion, flaring white and crimson. Ominous, alarming. How it had grown since they set out a month ago. They watched it in their separate silences, waiting for the guard to change. Finally a bell clanked inside, gravel crunched at the top of the wall and the silence resumed.

Suddenly Karan felt a prickling between her shoulder blades.
Someone was watching!
She looked up, expecting to see a sentry glaring down at them, but no shadow broke the smooth line of the wall against the sky. How could anyone see her here, in the dark, veiled by Maigraith’s illusions? Karan cursed her imagination and put it out of mind.

“Now!” said Maigraith.

Climbing was one of Karan’s many skills. Even in the dark this venerable wall, with stone fretted and mortar crumbling, gave no more trouble than a ladder. She went up the first part quickly. Halfway up, her boot jammed in a crack. She jerked but it was stuck. Karan reached down with one hand to free it.

Then she heard a rhythmic tramping. She froze. Surely the perimeter guard couldn’t be due yet? Lights appeared around a corner of the wall. The track went right past—impossible that Maigraith’s illusions could conceal them at such short distance. She could see the guards now, two big men each carrying a storm lantern, directing their beams from side to side across the track. One ray swept the wall from top to bottom. The other passed over the cleared land between the track and the swamp forest. How thorough they
were! Karan tried to merge with the wall, hiding her pale skin from the light.

The tramping grew louder, now accompanied by a patter-pat. What was
that
guarding the guards? A third figure, back a few paces. It was angular, almost stick-like, with a clumsy, jerking gait. Her skin crawled. The light moved along the wall, stopping just short of her. The beams flashed out to impale her. She felt an overwhelming urge to cry out, to jump out into the light. Through the link she could sense Maigraith’s fears: that she was forced to rely on someone whose every emotion was sprayed to the wind’s quarters; that her
illusion
would not hold.

“Haaiii!”

The stick-man whirled, leapt in the air and flung out an elongated arm. Karan started, her foot slipped free and she almost fell. The guards turned as one, spearing their lantern beams at a spot on the edge of the forest. Momentarily she sensed alarm, she heard splashing, frogs grumbled, then the feeling of being watched faded away. Guards crashed through the undergrowth, swinging their staves, the stick-man directing them with cries not unlike the call of the frog.

Karan went up as fast as she dared and peered over. The top of the wall was broad as a road, with a gravel base and hip-high parapets on either side. On her left, perhaps thirty paces away, a brazier glowed in an open watch-house. The sentries were beyond, leaning out and calling to their fellows in the forest. To her right the wall was empty. She went over. The forest was black against the night, save for two points of light among the trees, now well away to her left Who could that spy have been, to penetrate Maigraith’s webs of illusion so easily?

Now she sensed Maigraith’s impatience. The rope tumbled down and her companion came up gingerly, anxious
about the climb. They crept away and round a corner out of sight.

“What was that…
thing
with the guards?” asked Karan.

“Not now!”

Maigraith sought some objective among the chaos of walls, buildings and courtyards that was Fiz Gorgo. The inner fortress, squat, powerful and ugly, was surrounded by another wall. Unclimbable this one, too well guarded even for her; but there was a second way. She gestured. They passed down stone steps into shadow.

“Yggur has a personal guard—they call themselves Whelm. A strange, brutal, dogged folk. That was one of them. Being sensitive, you must be specially careful of the Whelm. I wonder why he came with the sentries? He must have sensed you.”

“We were seen. I felt someone watching us from the forest,” Karan said. “As likely he sensed the watcher.”

Maigraith peered into the blackness, shook her head, then glared at the blur that was Karan’s face. “Nonsense,” she said. “My illusion is unbroken. It was just some forest animal. Come on!”

Karan coiled her rope with furious jerks. Maigraith wouldn’t listen—but then, she never did.

Inside the wall were signs of hasty work: timber scaffolding and piles of stone and other materials forming a crude maze; at every turn another hindrance, another delay. And even here there were occasional guards, almost as vigilant as those outside.

Eventually, much later than their plan, in the corner of a neglected yard Maigraith found three large circular stone cisterns that collected water from the roofs and the yard. They were covered with rotting planks. She eased the planks of the first cistern apart.

“How do you know this is the one?” Karan whispered.

Maigraith looked at the stars. “The northernmost, according to my map, is connected underground to the cisterns of the inner fortress. That is how we will get in. How long can you hold your breath?”

Karan did not answer. They both knew she was the better swimmer. The wall of the inner fortress loomed over them, and the horned towers eclipsed the stars beyond. I don’t want this, she thought.

“Where’s the rope?”

Karan passed it to her. Maigraith checked Karan’s knots, seated the hook over the coping and climbed down hand over hand. The water was a long way below. Her head went silently beneath. Karan waited, counting slowly under her breath.

At twenty the water swirled and Maigraith gasped, “Wrong one. Pull me up.”

Karan heaved until her hands were blistered and her shoulder muscles burned. Maigraith was rather bigger than her. At last she reached the top. Karan flopped down on the rim, pressing her palms to the stone. The cold helped with the pain.

“I found a pipe but it just went to the next cistern. Ahhh! It’s so cold.” Maigraith shivered convulsively.

“Why don’t you let me go?”

“I’ll go. Quick!”

She ran to the second cistern while Karan put the planks in order. By the time she got there Maigraith was at the bottom of the rope and splashing into the water.

She seemed to be underwater for an age. Karan could see nothing, not even the reflection of the stars, then suddenly Maigraith surfaced, smashing the water with her fist and swearing horribly, something that Karan had never heard her do.

“Up! Up, damn it. Hurry.”

Karan hauled. The coarse rope tore open her blisters; she almost wept with the pain. Maigraith perched on the coping for a moment. “Wrong again. Wrong, wrong, wrong! What fool made the map anyway?”

Just then a dog barked, not far away, and another answered it with a growl. Maigraith almost fell back down the cistern. Karan caught her and they stared at each other. “I can’t beguile a
dog,”
Maigraith said.

They ran to the third cistern. Maigraith heaved die planks aside with a great thrust of her arm and clapped the hook over the rim. One timber broke and fell with a splash. More dogs joined the chorus. She moaned, let go of the rope and jumped. Karan climbed inside the cistern and clung to the rope, peering out. The barking grew louder. There was not a sound from below. What was Maigraith doing?

A pack of dogs rounded the corner of the wall, howling furiously, and made for the first cistern. Suddenly they stopped and slowly separated into two packs. Karan’s hackles rose. Between the packs came a larger, leaner dog, a gaunt thing the size of a calf, pacing jerkily like the Whelm guard. It stopped to sniff the air, ratcheting its emaciated muzzle from side to side, then pointed straight at Karan.
Hurry, Maigraith!

The dog tensed, jumped one deliberate bound, then crouched. Karan stared into its eyes. The water gurgled. “Found it,” Maigraith called through clattering teeth. “It’s a long way down: count eleven blocks. The duct twists around and then goes up. Remember the rope.” She sucked in three deep breaths and dived.

Karan looked down and the dog bounded forward. The starlight reduced it to eyes and teeth. She half-slid, half-fell down the rope. Her hands shrieked, then she struck the
water. Black water closed over her head. It was frigid and it stank.

She surfaced and flicked the rope upwards. It hissed into the water beside her and the hook cracked her on the knuckles. She looked up to see the stars eclipsed by a soaring whippet shape that smashed into the water in front of her. Karan could not see it but she could tell where it was from the continuous back-of-the-throat growl. The dog snapped at her, clumsy in the water. She thrashed backwards. This was worse than any nightmare she could have imagined.

Something wrapped itself around her legs. Karan almost screamed, then realized it was the dangling rope. The dog snapped again, its breath rank in her face. She hauled up the hook and thumped it on the muzzle. It howled, Karan gasped a breath and dived. Even underwater she could hear the dog.

So cold was the water that it hurt her ears, so dark that she could not keep away a dread of nameless things, even worse than what was above. The blocks were slippery, the joins almost imperceptible to her numb fingers. Four, five, six, her toes aching; ten, eleven, twelve, already yearning for air. There came a sharp pain in one ear. Karan swallowed and the pain eased. Where was the opening? It should be right here.

She swam on, following the joins, and found it at last. The rope caught at her boot again. She kicked free, there wasn’t time to coil it, and eased herself into the conduit. It was so narrow that even her slim shoulders touched the sides: confining; claustrophobic. Her calf began to cramp but she could not reach it; her lungs spasmed. A slimy curtain brushed her face and she struck it away, panicking. Karan thrashed, skinning her knuckles on the rock, clawed up a tight bend into open water, kicked with her good leg and heaved head and shoulders up into air.

Air! She gasped it down as though it was about to be snatched away again. A few strokes and her hand caught an edge, a low stone wall. She seemed to be in another underground cistern, much larger than the first. She pulled herself out and dropped an arm’s length onto a floor, shivering and gasping and sucking her bloody hand. Her calf was a rigid, excruciating lump.

The dark was absolute; no sound but her own panting breath. “Maigraith!” she whispered hoarsely as she massaged the cramp away. No reply. Karan felt around her. The floor was stone, slabs of regular size and neatly fitted. The walls were of cut stone too. The air was cold and still. She called again, more loudly, “Maigraith!” The echoes taunted her.

Behind her, leather scraped on stone. She turned, her eyes straining against the black. “Maigraith?”

A glimmer of light appeared, revealing a curving wall and pipes running along the floor. Karan’s eyes followed the pipes, more holes than metal, back to a dark device, evidently a pump, on the other side of the cistern. Beyond it a shadowy figure appeared, moving slowly. Karan edged back in against the wall.

“Do not be afraid, Karan. I wanted to be sure where we were. There are many tunnels. Rest a while, you must be worn out.” The light came from a small globe in Maigraith’s outstretched hand, reflected from her bleached blue eyes. Water still dripped from her hair.

Maigraith put her arm around Karan and hugged her for a second. The uncharacteristic kindness lifted Karan’s spirits. She felt as though they were working as a team at last.

Maigraith sat down beside her and put the globe carefully on the floor. Everything she did was formal, restrained. She smoothed down her hair with deliberate strokes. Even the water of the cistern seemed not to have dulled its luster.