A Shadow on the Glass (26 page)

“How can you know that?”

“I too had a strange dream.”

“But they’ll be halfway there by now—I couldn’t possibly catch them on foot. I’m sure I’ll get lost, anyway.”

Shand sighed, and his look said: why on earth did they send
you
? “Come upstairs.”

Llian followed up to Shand’s room. It was like Llian’s, but with a smaller bed, and the walls were completely covered in maps of all kinds. “So many maps,” Llian sighed.

“My hobby,” said Shand. “I’ve been collecting maps, and making them, all my life. Look here.” He pointed to a small chart to one side of the window. “This is Tullin. The old bridge to the fortress has been broken these last fifteen years. They’ll have to climb down the ravine and up the further side. They won’t get to the ruins before dark. If you take the hidden path on this side of the ridge, and after an hour follow the right fork of the ridge—they will have taken the left—you’ll come to a place where you can cross easily.
Well, perhaps not easily, but it is possible—not afraid of heights are you?—and approach the ruins from the other side. You’ll be there in the mid-afternoon. They won’t go that way because from the east it looks unclimbable. Go now, there’s a storm coming.”

He ushered Llian out and they went back to the steps. But Llian had lost confidence, and he was terrified of heights. The reality was very different from his tales. “Will you come with me, Shand?” he asked suddenly.

The old man was taken aback. “Me? I’m a worn-out old hack!”

“The Whelm didn’t seem to think so a few hours ago.”

“Bluff, Llian. It was all bluff. What powers I had are long gone.”

“But you know the mountains. You know them. What can I do alone?”

Shand was silent for a long time. Almost, Llian thought, he was ready to agree, then a cloud, or a memory, crossed his face and he spoke as though giving an overused speech. “No, I won’t go with you. The world has passed to another generation and what is going to be will be. Once I wandered Santh meddling, thinking I was doing right, though in truth I just wallowed in the power and self-importance. More than once have I raged against fortune. I raved, I swore, I vowed to stop time itself, even to fling it backwards. It broke me anyway and took away everything I cared for. Oh Aeolior!”

He turned toward Llian, but his eyes were unfocussed, his thoughts far away, or lost in some unimaginable sadness.

“If all is chance then what use striving?” said Llian. “I was taught that there is always a way; we have but to find it Our fortunes are not fixed. We cannot stop fate, nor turn it back, but by our great labors we can sometimes move it from its path, even direct its course, though we know not
where it will run to. Why did you come to my aid earlier if you do not think the same?”

“I used to think like that,” Shand said as though to himself. “The fruits of my labors were rich indeed, but they are all gone now. Fortune did not take them, only time and my own folly. I will not go with you. Seldom have I touched a thing and made it better. Go, and remember your honor.”

“Who was Aeolior?” asked Llian.

Shand got up hastily. There were tears on his cheeks. “Someone I lost long ago.” He gripped Llian’s shoulder tightly and then went heavily back into the inn, forgetting his cushion and his bowl.

Llian’s head buzzed with unanswered questions. He rose as well, left a note and a coin behind the counter, shouldered his pack and set out up the road.

Halfway up the hill he trudged past two hidden Whelm, the ones that had questioned Turlew days before. They had reached Tullin just before dawn, barely missing their fellow Whelm, and concealed themselves in a patch of scrub beside the road, watching the inn, watching for Llian. Only after he had turned into the forest near the top of the ridge did they move after him, and then very slowly and silently.

On the evening of the following day Shand, once more at the woodheap, saw another traveler coming slowly up the road from Hetchet. It was a tall, black-haired woman, leading a horse that favored the off hind-leg. By the time she reached the inn it was almost dark. She saw her horse attended to, went inside, laved her face and hands at the trough and sat down near the fire. The big room was almost empty now. Shand went across to her.

“Shand is my name,” he said. “What will you have?”

She stood up. She was much taller than he. She held out a slim hand. Her skin was as rich and fine as chocolate. “I
am Tallia,” she said. “I will be direct. Mendark has sent me. I am looking for Karan of Bannador. Do you know of her?”

Shand regarded her with a smile, liking her instantly. Here is one worthy of trust, he thought. More so than the one who sent her. Should he tell her what he knew? Why not? Better that Mendark have Karan’s secret, whatever it was, than the Whelm. Mendark, for all his failings, at least had the interests of Meldorin at heart.

“I know Mendark,” he said.

“Yes. I’ve heard him speak of you.”

“Doubtless. The fool who turned aside from duty. Still, that is not what you came for. Yes, I know of her, but it’s a tale made up of several fragments, and will take time. First, let me bring you meat and drink.”

Tallia ate in silence, then Shand came back with tea and green wine. She drank the wine with considerable relish, and poured another glass. ‘Tell,” she said.

“I rather think that Llian will have got a rude surprise when he met her,” said Shand at the end of his tale, smiling.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I knew her father well,” said Shand. “He died when she was a child, and her mother soon after. I last saw Karan at the burying. A small, quiet, clever girl, very strong-willed; utterly determined.”

“So she has shown. But you don’t feel the need to help her?”

Shand looked uncomfortable. “I have already. But if you mean, why don’t I go up there and defend her from the Whelm, and get mixed up in whatever business it is between her and Yggur—no, I don’t!”

She probed a bit deeper. “Despite your friendship with her father?”

“You are thinking that I am a faithless friend. But she’s a
grown, capable woman, and I am an old old man. There is no more that I can do.” They sat with their drinks and their thoughts for a long time. Finally Shand broke the silence. “What will she make of him, I wonder?”

“He is a great teller, I am told.”

“Indeed. A marvelous teller, and a master chronicler as well—a rare amalgam. Charming he is, and generous, and good-natured. But too obsessed with the Histories. Too curious. A dangerous preoccupation, and a danger. There is something about him that bothers me. Though perhaps it is just that he is Zain.”

Tallia’s eyes reflected some surprise at the prejudice, but she said nothing.

He shook his head, came back to himself. “Yet, he is charming. Also proud, vain, boastful and indolent. And as awkward outside his little world as he is clever within it.” He laughed again. “I wish I could have seen their meeting.”

“I’ll go after them at first light,” said Tallia. “You will show me the way?”

He nodded. “But I don’t think you’ll find them, in all this snow. Karan knows the mountains very well; she will know where to hide.”

Most of the snow had melted in the early-morning rain, but the air held no warmth and the low sun gave little heat. At the top of the hill Llian cast around in the undergrowth before coming on a faint path running along the western side of the ridge. At one time the path must have been wide enough to take a cart, but it had long since fallen into disrepair and was so overgrown that it was hard to follow.

As he progressed the country became more rugged, the way broken by a succession of rocky gullies. Once these had been spanned by stone culverts, of beautiful workmanship,
but now mostly undermined and falling into ruin. Here and there was a fragment of wall or an overturned stone idol beside the path, artifacts that brought forgotten fragments of the Histories from his subconscious.

As he walked along with the sun on his back his earlier doubts fell away. Once again he gave way to romantic fancies and one compartment of his mind began composing his own tale, the tale of Llian and the Mirror, that would be told at future festivals, while another part looked on mockingly at the indulgence.

After he had been walking for about an hour the path forked, one way turning abruptly west, the other seeming to go straight on. This contingency was not covered by Shand’s instructions. Llian scrambled up to the top of the ridge but all he could see through the trees were other ridges, and no clue as to which way to take. He pressed on the straight way. Soon the path plunged steeply down into a narrow valley cleared of trees. The valley bottom was smooth under its cloak of snow, but the further end was concealed by a huge buttress of slick gray rock. Surely this could not be the right way.

He slipped and skidded to the bottom and was plodding along through slush and mud, longing for a good night’s sleep, when a violent cry echoed across the valley. Llian jumped, staring all around, but could see nothing. The cry came again and a stone whizzed past his ear. Outside a cave in the buttress a wild-maned figure capered, brandishing fists as big as pumpkins. He was clad in a loincloth and was gaunt to the point of emaciation.

The lunatic, or hermit, bent for another stone. Llian turned to flee and the stone struck him painfully on the backside, knocking him to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and fled back the way he had come, pursued by crashing rocks and wild hoots. Up the steep path he raced, heart
threatening to push his ribs apart, and did not stop until he was back at the fork.

Here, as he caught his breath, he had an uneasy feeling that he had been followed. Llian stood for a long time, staring back in the direction of Tullin. He saw nothing, for the Whelm, alerted by his crashing return, had plenty of time to slip away into the forest.

Llian followed the other track and took the right fork of the ridge as Shand had advised. Eventually he found himself on the rocky crest of a steep-sided spur, barely wide enough for three people to walk abreast. The ground fell away steeply on his left and almost sheer to the right. For a painful moment he hesitated there, staring numbly up, but it was too late to stop now. The crest was broken with sharp outcrops of slate which he was forced to clamber over or around, sometimes with barely room to put his feet side by side, clinging fearfully to the rock.

West ran the ridge, then south in a great curve. To the west he looked down on a tangle of steep hills and deep rocky gullies. Ahead the path climbed sharply to a cliff-bound plateau, the upper cliffs being a dark red rock. On a promontory he saw the ruins he was making for. This side of them a stream plunged over the cliff and, far below, flowed away to the east.

His gaze followed the waterfall down. He was looking into a steep-sided bowl some leagues across. The second ridge, the way the Whelm must have taken, completed the rim of the bowl by joining the plateau on the other side of the ruins. From where he stood the slot cut by the stream in the rim of the bowl, and the remains of the bridge over it, were clearly visible. It was so far down that it made his head spin. Llian started, feeling as though he was going to fall, and stepped back abruptly.

A cold wind had sprung up, bringing dark snow clouds
with it. It was past noon and already the warmth had gone out of the day. The trip was taking a lot longer than Shand had said. Icy snow patches lay behind every boulder; wiry grass cut his fingers and stabbed his calves through his trousers.

He stopped for a respite: a swig from his water bottle and a hard piece of bread. Squatting out of the wind behind a tall plate of rock he stared down. From this angle he could see the slot plainly as a thin dark line in the ridge, but there was no sign of the Whelm.

Or was there? Those faint specks on the snow at the base of the cliff—were they people? He stared until the tears ran from his eyes. He was sure they were, at least two of them. The sky was black behind him now, the storm coming on so quickly that he grew afraid. He shouldered his pack and hurried on.

As he neared the edge of the plateau Llian saw why the road had not followed this ridge. The crest narrowed—in places he might have straddled it like a horse—and rose up so steeply that he could only climb the last five hundred paces on hands and knees. He would have gone back, only he was so afraid of falling that he dared not turn around. The rock here was sharp and brittle and glazed with ice, the western side of the ridge a smooth gray ramp of slate completely bare of soil or bush. The eastern side fell to the bottom of the bowl in a series of steps like the teeth of a saw.

A flurry of tiny hailstones stung his cheeks as he neared the plateau, and then a wild gust of wind almost flung him off. His fingers clung to the rock as he squinted down into the bowl, but the air was full of swirling rain and the bottom no longer visible. The ruins could not be far away though he could not pick them out Mid-afternoon should see him there.

He struggled up the last few paces and stood on the edge
of the plateau. There was a brief respite from the wind, then it resumed in fury, flinging icy stinging drops at his face. Llian staggered and fell to his knees, crawling blindly away from the cliff. He got out cloak and hood and squatted down with his back to the storm. Shortly the wind squall passed and the rain teemed down. Llian set out, squelching through the saturated grass in what he thought was the direction of the ruins.