A Shadow on the Glass (28 page)

Maigraith did not respond. She felt that if she once began to speak to them she would not be able to stop.

“How did you get into Fiz Gorgo?” asked another. No answer.

“Who sent you?” It was the woman again. “Why does your master want the Glass?” “Glass?” Maigraith asked.

“The Mirror of Aachan,” cried the woman. “Why does your master want it?”

Maigraith sat mute while their questions beat against her. Already she feared them more than Yggur. She sensed a little humanity in him, but here there was none.

“Who are you? What is your business with me?” Maigraith gasped. She felt she was choking.

“We are Whelm. I am Vartila. Yggur is our master. We do his will in all things.”

The stifling blanket of their will, which had given slightly, returned stronger than before, and with it came a feeling that they were probing her mind, that their questions were only part of the interrogation. An icy pulse came and went in her temples.

The questioning continued for a long time, and though she did not yield, to Maigraith it seemed that the Whelm were growing, while she was shrinking into the hard floor. They were tireless. She was so thirsty that she could barely speak. She could scarcely think, for the menace of the Whelm filled her whole mind: images of torment, and their delight in it. No, not delight, satisfaction! That was what struck her so oddly. As though they knew not right or wrong, only how best to do their master’s will. As though they took no pleasure in torment, save where it advanced their master’s
purpose. Their faces might have been cut from agate, so little did they show.

As the hours passed the probing pressure intensified until her whole head was a network of pain, leaving no room for thought. And yet, no one had so much as touched her.

Sometime after noon of the second day since her capture, another Whelm came into the room. For a moment they all drew away. She did not hear the message but it was evident that the news was bad, for once the messenger had gone she heard them speaking among themselves.

“It is a dangerously weak master that we have,” said Japhit, looking gaunter and older than before.

“Yes, but what can we do? Without a master we are nothing,” replied another.

“We must be strong,” said Vartila. “We can delay no longer with this one,” and they came back to her and resumed their positions on the benches.

Japhit reached across and put the flat of his hand on her throat. He drew his fingers slowly downwards. The touch left trails of fire and ice that spread in all directions and faded but slowly. The pressure, the probing, swelled again, and now there began inside her an awful, diseased chuckling. The Whelm did not so much as glance at each other. Her skin shivered, as though some parasite was feeding on her, its pulpy body bloating within her. She retched, so powerful was the sense of loathsomeness that came upon her, but her stomach was empty.

In a submerged corner of herself smoldered an anger at the abuse; it began to grow, slowly in the beginning, then with a rush, swelling until she could no longer contain it.

Without warning—without even thought—it burst forth: Maigraith thrust her hand at Japhit, her fingers spreading like the petals of a flower, and abandoning the warnings and
checks that had been part of her long training, she directed the full force of her pain-sharpened mind at him.

The Whelm stopped in the middle of a word, went still as a statue, then red blotches sprang out all over his face and he toppled backwards onto the floor. His face was wracked by his agony, and his arms wrapped and unwrapped themselves around his body, over and over again.

Too much strength, too late, thought Maigraith. Another of my failings.

The other two did not move. The man was pale, his knuckles white where he gripped the bench. Vartila had risen in a half-crouch, smiling a phantom smile. Maigraith found it profoundly disturbing.

“Jark-un must know of this,” said Vartila to the man. “Ask him to come here, if he will.”

“He is not back yet.”

“Then call him as soon as he returns. This one bothers me—she is too strong. We must know who sent her. It may be easier to break the other.”

Just then the door slammed. Yggur stood there, dominating the room, impossibly tall. He wore a heavy cloak, a tall gray hat, to the edge of which still clung a few drops of moisture, and high boots thick with black mud.

“I will… take her now,” he said softly, in his halting way. “Bring her to my workroom.”

“But master…” Vartila began, then stopped and turned away.

Maigraith stumbled into the room, exhausted from the long climb, the aftersickness full on her again. Yggur spoke to her but she could barely hear him, could not even see him until he came close. She huddled on the floor, swaying, looking up at the towering blur, aware only of her thirst and the terrible pain in her head.

“Water,” she croaked. “Please give me some water.”

Yggur squatted painfully, examining her face. He flushed and she flinched away, afraid that he was going to strike her. He heaved himself up with a groan and limped over to the doorway, pulling the cord that hung there.

A servant appeared almost immediately. Yggur said something to him that Maigraith did not hear and pulled the cord again. A second servant appeared as quickly as the first and the two bore her away to a set of chambers nearby. There they bathed her in glorious hot water, took her filthy clothes and brought clean ones.

Afterwards, they led her back to the main room and served her food and drink at a small table with black carved legs, beside a fire. The food was the simplest of fare: pickled fish, steamed vegetables and coarse bread, with lasee, the weak yellow brewed drink that was served with every meal in Orist. Maigraith was so thirsty that she drank two bowls. The two servants stood by the door as she ate, watching her all the while. When she was finished they took her back to Yggur’s chambers and sat her down on a couch drawn up to one side of a freshly lit fire, another bowl at her elbow. Yggur was not there. Beside the fire she felt clean and warm for the first time since they had entered the swamps of Orist, and she was more afraid than ever. The lasee, weak though it was, had made her drowsy, but she sat bolt upright on the couch.

Shortly Yggur returned, now wearing a long woolen shirt and thick trousers over gray boots. The servants withdrew. He pulled up a chair on the other side of the fire. The fury was gone now, or hidden, and Yggur’s long, strong face was calm, almost amiable. Maigraith did not know how to deal with this. For all her strength, she had little skill in reading people or understanding them, and could not see how to unravel this new complexity.

“You are a little better now?”

“Thank you,” she responded, unsettled by the appearance of kindness.

“The Whelm are overzealous. I was occupied with the hunt.”

Maigraith could scarcely believe what she was hearing. He was apologizing to her?

“What have you done with Karan?” she asked.

Yggur drew his chair closer to hers, looking into her eyes. He seemed to be looking for something, and once again seemed puzzled by what he saw there. She shivered and drew back.

Yggur spoke quickly now, his impediment barely evident. “I have no more time. Who is Karan, and where has she taken the Mirror?”

Could Karan have escaped? It was barely credible. Maigraith averted her gaze. The cunning of Yggur was legendary, but rumor had never made him considerate or kind. He was capable of any sort of trickery, and her best defense was to say nothing at all.

“I will tell you nothing,” she said.

He asked his questions again and again, patiently, even tried his will on her, as he had done before, but not a word would she say. Once only did a rage take him, and he raised his fist and dashed her cup off its little table. Yellow liquid ran down the wall. “Speak,” he shouted, raising his fist again, but yet her eyes defied him. And somehow she knew that the rage was a calculated rage, an assumed rage, even a good-humored one, so different from the blind fury of before. What had changed him so?

Finally Maigraith was too weary even to sit up. Yggur called the servants, who carried her back to a small room with a bed. They took off her clothes while she stood
silently, her eyes already closed, then Maigraith crept between the cold sheets.

The door opened without a sound and Yggur came in, carrying a hooded lantern. She was right to mistrust him. It was rage that impelled him down the corridor to Maigraith’s room, though he did not show it. Fury at the loss of the Mirror, so central to his long-term plans, and the thought that in her utter weariness he might find a way to break her. He had long used the Mirror to spy out his enemies’ defenses. But, hidden within it, Yggur was sure, was a much more crucial secret, a way to overcome the limitations of distance that bound the overlords of Santhenar within their petty kingdoms. A way to right the great wrong that had been done to him. Yggur was motivated not only by lust for revenge, a lesser and a greater, but also by a vision—to unite all Meldorin, even all Santhenar, in the knowledge that he was fittest to do so. The lesser revenge was the first stepping stone. Uniting Santhenar would permit the greater revenge—for that he might need all that the world could provide.

But Yggur was impelled by more than just rage—curiosity too, and puzzlement. Something had passed between them during the long hours that they had striven against each other, before she had been beaten down. Perhaps something of Maigraith’s loneliness and pain found an echo in his own. Or perhaps it was a half-recognition of what she was, or might become, that made him want to know more.

He set the lantern down on the floor beside the bed and perched himself on a chair, just looking at her. In repose Maigraith was relaxed as she never was when awake, and he felt a compelling urge to reach out and stroke her cheek, though he did not

Maigraith stirred, forcing her unwilling eyes open against the glare of the lantern. So tired was she that it was almost a minute before she realized where she was, then instantly the tension pulled her face into its familiar desolate expression.

What has Faelamor done to you? he wondered. Why has she so tormented you? Maigraith aroused strange feelings in him—feelings that he had not felt before in all his long life. Who was she? Why did she have this sudden hold over him? What guile did she use?

Maigraith sat up. Pulling a blanket around her shoulders against the cold, she retreated to the far side of the narrow bed. She forced herself to meet his gaze, her thoughts viscous from sleep. The yellow lantern light flickered, giving his face a look of added menace. His eyes were pools of darkness from which only a stray gleam escaped.

When he spoke his voice seemed overloud in the silent night, echoing off the hard walls. “Why does Faelamor want the Mirror?”

“Read the Histories,” she snapped.

“I do,” said Yggur mildly. “But Faelamor is thought dead these hundreds of years, and the Faellem vanished. Where has she come from? Why now? And where do you spring from with such great strength and unknown purpose?”

“I merely serve her. I have no purpose, only duty.”

Yggur gave her an odd look. “I can scarcely believe you. Your way is not her way—you are not Faellem.”

His words made Maigraith uncomfortable; he had touched on a taboo. “I will not speak about her.”

“Then what of your friend? Karan, was it?”

So you
haven’t
found her. Maigraith permitted herself the ghost of a smile. “She is of the house of Fyrn, in Bannador.”

“Ah,” said Yggur. “Fyrn? A most unstable family; cursed
with madness. And she is so young. This could break her mind. Do you not fear for your friend?”

Maigraith looked away, afraid to speak. How did he know so much? “You do not know her,” she said wistfully. “She looks young, and she makes a joke of what she cares about, but there is steel in her. She knows the wrinkles of the world. You will never catch her.” Even to herself the boast sounded thin. Why was she talking like this to him, her enemy? How had he so disarmed her?

In spite of himself Yggur was touched by her distress, her defense of Karan. He reached across the bed and took her face between his hands. His touch was surprisingly gentle, but she could not forget his earlier rage.

Neither saw the door move fractionally, or the watcher. It was Vartila. Her agate face flowed, showed a furious anger, recrystalized to agate and she was gone.

Yggur looked into Maigraith’s eyes. “Which way did she go? To the sea? East, toward Lake Neid? Ah, I see it in your eyes. She has gone to Neid. She is meeting someone there, perhaps?”

Again Maigraith’s eyes betrayed her—could she conceal nothing from him? She was too tired. She sank her head on her arms, trying to shut him out, dreading the next question.

“One last question. Where is Karan to meet Faelamor?” Maigraith did not answer. She willed herself not to answer, not to even think of Sith. But Yggur was suddenly behind her, at the head of the bed, his long fingers covering her face, her eyes.

“Where?” he whispered again; again his will scorched her. She thought that she would faint. His fingers were gentle but his strength was as a rod of iron, smashing her down. “Let me guess.” His voice was barely audible, though his thin lips were at her ear. “Always the Faellem dwelt in the far south-east. But it would be too risky to carry it all that
way. She will be in Meldorin, but near to the sea. Thurkad perhaps?