A Shadow on the Glass (31 page)

L
lian began to toss in his sleep, crying out in a strange voice. Karan laid her cool hand on his hot forehead until he grew still. The wind died away to a whisper. Only a faint glow now came from the fire. For a time there was absolute silence.

Then from outside there came a faint but unmistakable crunch, as of a piece of slate breaking underfoot. A pause. Then a scrape. He was at the door. He tested it. It yielded a little. Karan tensed.

A rush, a thud. The door smashed open. Idlis hurtled into the dimly lit room and crashed down the steps, struggling to keep his balance.

Llian leapt up with a cry of terror, became tangled with his sleeping pouch, and fell. Idlis threw himself on top of him in a frenzy and the two rolled over and over, striking blindly at each other. Llian cried out in pain.

Karan crept out from her recess and struck Idlis behind
the ear with the back of the hatchet. He fell on top of Llian without a sound. Karan threw wood on the fire and in its light bound the Whelm’s hands and feet behind his back with cord. She stuffed bark in his mouth and awkwardly dragged him off the half-suffocated Llian to a corner. Her fingers cringed from the texture of the Whelm’s skin.

Llian sat up, stunned by the violence of his awakening. Karan was standing over him, breathing heavily, with a wild look in her eyes. He tried to heave himself to his feet but his legs failed him. She held out her hand. He pulled himself up, walked unsteadily back to the bench and fell down again.

“You saved my life! I must have been asleep. Where did he come from?” He still had no idea what had happened.

“Up the cliff. He thought you were me.”

Llian stared at her. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I didn’t think you could help. Now we’ve got to go. If he can scale the cliff in darkness and ice, the others might be close behind. You’ll have to come with me.”

Llian subsided.

“We can’t talk here,” she went on. “They might be able to get our speech from him.” As she spoke she was repacking her bag. “How are you feeling?” she asked, looking over at him. “Better, I hope.”

Llian tried a tentative smile. He felt awful. And yet, he wanted to go with her. “I’m much better now,” he said as steadily as he could. “Something hot to eat and I’ll be ready to walk all night.”

Karan gave him a searching stare. She retrieved the pot from the fireplace, unwrapped something from her pack, cut off a lump and threw it in the pot. Water sizzled on the fire.

Llian dressed. The clothes were warm but still damp. His side was hurting terribly and there was a large bruise on his cheek. Karan had gone down on one knee beside Idlis and was feeling his head. Even in repose the Whelm’s mouth
had a brutal curve to it. He stared at the scarred face. The back of the head was bruised and bloody, and there was a large lump, rudely bound, on the side of his head above his eye. “How did he get that?” Llian wondered aloud.

“I dropped a rock on him while he was climbing the cliff,” said Karan, with a curious expression. “He was lucky. Though perhaps he’ll wish he hadn’t been when the others get here. Here, drink this.” She handed him a full mug.

Llian did not know what to think. All this had happened while he was asleep?

There was enough soup left over for another mug each. Llian picked bits of charcoal out of his mug, slurped the residue, wiped his mouth. Karan had her hand on the door.

“Are you just going to leave him there, to follow us again?”

“Would you kill a helpless man, even a Whelm? I cannot. What I did to him on the cliff was shameful enough.” Three times now I’ve spared this one, she mused. In Bannador we would consider that an omen; and even for an enemy, a debt. Having had Idlis’s life in her keeping, she felt a certain bond, a certain responsibility. As indeed she felt for Llian. Her life had suddenly become complicated and confining.

The wind had died. The rising moon in its last crescent shed barely any light. But it was still hours short of dawn. She turned to the west.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the waterfall stream. Sometimes these mountain creeks fall as quickly as they rise.”

But long before they got to it they could hear it roaring and grinding the stones of its bed. They found a sheltered place among the rocks for the short wait till sunrise, just to be sure. When it came, dawn was a steely-gray affair, for thick clouds racing in from the west had covered the whole sky. The river was still a black torrent.

“It’s much higher than when I crossed,” Llian said.

“Wait a bit; it must fall during the day.”

Karan was trying to doze, cocooned in cloak and hat, while Llian kept watch. The light grew slowly, then suddenly came that indefinable moment when the world was more light than dark. He looked absently back toward the stream and was shocked to see two figures on the other side, not far upstream.

“Karan!” He shook her awake.

“Mmmm.”

“There’s two people on the other side, and they look like Whelm.”

She was awake in a flash, rolling over and peering through the gap in the rocks. Her scalp crawled. They
were
Whelm, though not the ones hunting her lately. A man and a woman, both young. There had been five before Hetchet and now there were five again.

“They must have tracked me here,” Llian fretted. “Several times I felt as though I was followed.”

“It doesn’t matter how they got here—they’ve found me plenty of times without you.”

“It looks like he’s going to cross.”

The two Whelm clasped arms and then the man leapt high and landed on an outcrop that stuck up out of the water. Two more huge, awkward, scissoring leaps followed and he was halfway across. The river was twice as wide as when Llian had crossed. The woman called to him; he raised a hand, then sprang out. He churned the water to foam with clumsy but powerful wheeling strokes, both arms striking the water together, then was snatched under. Llian watched with mouth agape, reliving his own experience. An arm briefly cut the surface then was gone again. The woman stared at the water; a long way downstream the Whelm reappeared, still thrashing, and ran aground on rock. Soon he
was out of the water. He lay on the shore for a moment, got up on shaky legs, waved to the woman once more and set off in the direction of the ruins.

She raised her arm to him and went unhurriedly back in the direction of the ridge.

“What a feat!” said Llian in admiration. “What a sight for a teller! Already I am putting it into a tale.”

“Don’t forget that he is our deadly enemy,” said Karan coldly. “And she’s gone to guard the way down.”

“We wouldn’t have got across today anyway.”

“Not here,” she agreed, “but we might have further upstream. Now our only hope is to try and get past the other Whelm and go down the eastern way. And I don’t have much hope there either.”

“They will surely guard it too.”

“Doubtless, though there is a second way down. At least there once was. It won’t be easy to get to, though.”

Light snow began to fall as they turned back, Karan aiming to pass the ruins well to the south, for fear that the Whelm were searching there already. So it proved to be, for they heard a hollow rumbling cry, like the cries that Karan had heard at Fiz Gorgo and in the swamps, as they went past in the concealing snowfall. Shortly it was answered by a more high-pitched, squealing call that put Llian’s nerves on edge, for it reminded him of Gaisch and the knife at his throat.

“They must be looking for Idlis,” he said with a shiver.

“Or else they’ve found him, and now they’re after us.”

They wallowed on through thickening snow, veering over to the very edge of the escarpment.

“What are we trying to do?” Llian muttered. “Whatever it is I don’t like it.”

Karan gave him a quick verbal sketch. “The ridge runs down off the plateau not far ahead, and along it a little way
there is a gorge, just a slot really, where the waterfall stream cuts through. That’s where the bridge used to be.”

“I saw the gap on the way here.”

“A path goes all the way down to the stream. You can cross there, when the river is not in flood. But there’s also a very old track, made long before the bridge was built, I suppose, that runs up the other side of the ridge. I saw it yesterday but it was too late to start down. The Whelm may not know it’s there. Here we are now.”

Karan led Llian out onto the ridge, which ran steeply down in the general direction of Tullin. It was much wider than the one Llian had come up yesterday, for the top had been leveled to make the road to the bridge, in the time when the climate had been warmer and the lands around the ruins populous. The road was overgrown but blown almost free of snow and they made good progress. Like the escarpment below the ruins, the ridge was bounded by a cliff of red rock. Light snow drifted down. Out of the gloom two black stone piers loomed, squatting at the end of the ridge like ominous sentinels. They were all that remained of the stone bridge that had once spanned the gorge.

“The path goes down there, just beside the pillar,” she said, pointing to the right one, “then winds its way down. We’re in luck; they’ve left it unguarded.”

Even as she spoke a tall Whelm stepped out from behind the pillar. It was Idlis, his head swathed in bloody bandages.

“Back,” she cried. She whirled and ran back the other way, and Llian stumbled after, clutching his side. Looking back, Llian saw that Idlis had not moved. He remained, guarding the way down, evidently having strict orders not to leave his post. The snow whirled, blotting him out, then a great cry boomed out, echoing across the slopes and cliff faces of the valley. Karan snapped a leafy branch off a bush and brushed out their tracks.

“That won’t gain us much,” said Llian irritably, for the pain in his ribs was intense.

“He’s calling them back,” she replied, continuing on, and when they were well away from Idlis she turned into the windswept scrub and headed down the ridge toward the red cliff.

The old path was hard to find under its blanket of snow. Eventually Karan picked up what seemed to be the trail, a treacherous ledge cut into the red rock, covered in snow, ice and fallen stones. They crept carefully along the slippery track, Llian’s fear of heights overwhelming the pain of his injuries. Now a long straight stretch of ledge lay ahead of them. It was narrow and sloped outwards. Idlis’s call echoed around them once again. If he were to come to the edge and look down he would see them, for the snow had almost stopped.

“Come on,” she cried, pulling Llian by the arm. “They can’t be far away.”

Llian started and tried to go a bit faster. He was increasingly afraid of falling. Ahead the ledge was glazed by an icy gel.

“Hurry,” she called.

He stepped gingerly on the ice, his foot slipped, he put the other down hastily and his feet went from under him. Llian landed flat on his back, put his left arm out to brace himself and it flapped uselessly over the edge. He cried out, almost a scream of terror.

The fall pulled Karan to her knees, nearly wrenching Llian’s wrist out of her hand. She slipped toward him. Afraid that she was going to knock him over, Llian cried out Then she got the toe of her boot in a crack and it held. Karan reached back to the crack with her free hand, the weak one, and slowly pulled them to safety.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” cried Llian.

He flung his arms around her. After a moment she pushed him away, squeezing her bad wrist with her other hand, grimacing.

“Not your fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have tried to hurry you. This path is more treacherous than I thought.”

She checked the way ahead once more. The icy patch went for three or four paces and covered the whole of the ledge. Dangerous for her, but deadly for Llian.

“What if I go ahead and run the rope from here to there?”

Llian still didn’t like it, but neither did he want to be a hindrance. “I suppose so,” he said very tentatively.

“Good. Stay here.” She tied the rope to a sturdy tree root, knotted the other end around her waist, then went forward slowly, making little cuts in the ice with her hatchet to improve her footholds. She reached the opposite side and tied the rope there too. “Can you manage it now?”

“I think so.”

He gripped the rope like a lifeline and took a first shuffling step. Just then Idlis shouted again, loud and urgent, right above. Llian looked up and saw the Whelm staring down at them. Idlis looked back along the track, then down again. Karan’s eyes followed the direction of his stare. The call was not answered, though that did not mean that no one was coming. Suddenly Idlis came to a decision—he put his shoulder to a boulder, one of a number near the edge. It wobbled.

“Llian,” Karan called frantically, afraid to hurry him but knowing that he had only seconds to get across.

Llian took another couple of uncertain steps, then stopped with his foot outstretched. His eyes were locked on the boulder. Idlis strained, grunted and the boulder slowly revolved. Llian was frozen, sure that the rock was aimed directly at him. Had he run he would have got through but he just shuffled forward. The boulder began to topple.

“Go back,” Karan screamed at the last moment and he flung himself backward just in time.