A Shadow on the Glass (33 page)

Already the storm was overhead and it was almost dark. Llian was still outside and there was no wood. Karan climbed up out of the entrance, looking across to the patch
of dead trees where he had been working. Lightning flashed and she saw him. He had chopped down a small tree with her hatchet and was struggling to drag it across the rubble and broken ground to their refuge. He looked over his shoulder at the sky. Karan followed his gaze.

“Leave it,” she shouted, suddenly afraid for him, but her voice was drowned by the thunder.

There was a sudden, tearing gust of wind and the storm struck with a fusillade of hail and a single flash of lightning, so close that her hair glowed and crackled. A whip-crack of thunder and the storm was all around them, all over them, the lightning striking everywhere and hailstones falling as though they had been flung from a bucket, bouncing, shattering on the rocks until the air smoked with chips of ice.

Llian dropped his burden and fell to one knee, holding his head. He stayed that way for half a minute then got up and ran toward her, weaving, protecting his head with his arms. Lightning struck the patch of dead trees, shattering the tallest and sending splinters as tall as Karan in all directions. One fell on the roof of the tunnel behind her. He gained the entrance and leapt through in a scatter of hail.

“That was stupid,” said Karan coldly. “We could have collected more wood after the storm had passed. Now we have none. And why a tree? There are plenty of dead branches. If the lightning had been a little nearer…Truly, you are a fool, Llian.”

She turned away and sat by the fire, her straight back communicating her anger more clearly than any words.

Llian remained where he was, head sunk in his arms. He had set out with such high expectations, but nothing had turned out the way he thought it would. It had not been like this in Chanthed. He felt keenly that he was stupid, even contemptible, and it was more than he could bear.

E
ventually Llian noticed that the storm was passing and the hail had stopped. Climbing the rubble pile he looked out on a white world that glittered with each lightning flash. The hail was piled calf-deep as far as he could see. As he watched, the first soft flakes of snow came ghosting down through the still air, falling more and more heavily until even the nearest trees were lost. The fire had gone out for lack of fuel. He crunched through the hailstones, fetched as much wood as he could drag, set the fire blazing again, put the pot on to boil for tea and sat down beside Karan.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

Karan turned her face to his, empathizing with his misery (though the back of her mind told her that he might be playing on her soft heart), and weakened a little more. Her feelings had come around in a circle. She had begun to realize that she liked him after all, ridiculous though he was.

She put her arm across his shoulder, saying, “I’m sorry too; I also got into this affair unwillingly. But I swore a binding oath; an unbreakable oath.”

“I would be happy to tell you a tale—any tale at all.”

“I don’t think I could stay awake long enough to hear it. Tell me about yourself. How is it that
you
came after me?”

“Wistan dragged me out of bed and told me I was banished. I’ll tell you why another time. Then he offered me money and references to seek you out and escort you to Thurkad. He always wanted to be rid of me, and this was a good excuse.”

Karan sat up, thinking furiously. That must have been about the time she had pleaded with Wistan in her dream, and dreamed about Llian. Had she put the idea into their heads? At least that was better than thinking that she had dragged him here all by herself. “You might have refused.”

“No chronicler can make a life without references.” He hesitated, took a deep breath: “I am also Zain.”

“I know. Why should I care? But why did you stay at the college?”

“A chronicler is what I really am, even more than a teller of tales. I love the Histories, and where better to study them?”

“Why did they send
you
, of all people.”

Llian was not insulted. “Wistan believed that I intrigued against him, that I would be Master of Chanthed in his place.”

“And would you?”

“If I wanted that,
then I would have it
,” he said with a sudden flash of fire, and for the first time Karan saw the iron beneath. Then it was gone and he was smiling at her. “Though not in such a way. There’s no intrigue in me. I never wanted to be master, yet I did make fun of him in the taverns. It pleased me to mock him in heroic songs and
sagas, for he is a scheming, miserable, sour wretch who loves no one, not even himself, and thinks everyone else the same. The folk of Chanthed flocked to the taverns to laugh, and so he feared for himself.”

“Not without cause,” said Karan.

“I almost gave you up in Tullin, you know. I would have, had it not been for your sending. After that I felt that I knew you, so to speak. You seemed so desperate. I couldn’t abandon you then.”

Once more he surprised her. He had felt that way after their minds had touched for just a few seconds? What would he have thought of her if she
had
abandoned him back at the ledge?

“I still think that I’ve met you somewhere before.”

He turned her face to his with his fingertips.

“Yes!” he said, suddenly realizing. “You were the redhaired woman in the audience when I first told the
Tale of the Forbidding
. Back there at the ruins you said we hadn’t met.”

Karan felt embarrassed. “Well, you were very irritating. Anyway, we didn’t
meet
. You had no idea who I was.”

“But you touched me with your mind! No one ever did that before. And then—you asked the question that turned my life upside down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
Who killed her?
The crippled girl. I have been searching for the answer ever since. That was the other reason why I was thrown out. Wistan was afraid of what I would uncover.”

“So, what have you found?”

“I thought that there was a great mystery to be uncovered, a Great Tale to be written. You have no idea how I yearn for that—to be the chronicler who discovers a new
Great Tale.” He looked into the distance and his eyes grew misty. “But I found nothing.

“And what if the truth I uncover shows that my telling was false? Once broken, a chronicler’s reputation cannot be remade. Even if it is a new Great Tale, the credit will go to someone else. Even more perilous—whatever secret was uncovered back there where Shuthdar fell, there are people even now that would kill for it. All my alternatives are bad.”

“Save one,” said Karan, putting her arm across his shoulders again.

“What’s that?” he asked, without hope or interest.

“Find out the truth, make the tale yourself and broadcast it far and wide, so that, whatever secrets you uncover, hundreds of people will know as much as you do. Then you will be in no danger.”

“But I don’t even know where to start,” Llian said morosely.

“Then put it aside until something comes up. I’m sure you can make some sort of tale out of our troubles.”

“I’ve thought about that already. I will tell you honestly, there was something else that brought me here-the Mirror! Few in these times know more about the Histories than I do, though perhaps you think me boastful.”

“I do,” she murmured slyly, “but then, you are a teller. Tell on.”

“But there is nothing in the Histories about the Mirror, not by that name, or other names that I can think of. Why not, if it is such an ancient thing? Why is it not recorded? I must know. I cannot get it out of my mind.”

“Perhaps those who wrote the Histories had reason not to speak of it.”

“Perhaps, though many other curious, remarkable, even perilous things are recorded.”

Karan changed the subject. “How came you to Chanthed? The Zain no longer dwell in Meldorin, I had heard.”

“That is so, though our heart remains here. We mostly live in Jepperand, a poor land far to the east. You would not know of it.”

“I do know it,” she said quietly.

He continued as though he had not heard. “It is north of the
Wahn Barre
, the Crow Mountains, and west of the land of Crandor. We still do not think of Jepperand as our home, though we have dwelt there for near a thousand years. It is a barren, thorny place, and the withering salt winds blow unceasing up from the Dry Sea. But we have no other home, any more.”

Karan sat back and closed her eyes, fascinated. What a beautiful rich warm voice he had. She could have listened to him all night. Just then he looked across at her with a smile, saw that her eyes were closed, and went silent. “Don’t stop,” she said. “Tell me the story of the Zain.”

“The Zain!” said Llian. “A month would not be long enough. You need to sleep. I’ll give you just the barest bones of our history.

“In centuries long past we dwelt in the imperial lands of Zile, at a time when that kingdom was not a declining city in a barren land, as it is now. The whole of Meldorin was Zile! The Zain were a minor people, a scholarly, clever, inward-looking folk, as indeed we still are. That has always been our weakness, as it is my own.”

“Inward-looking, you? You strike me as a lecherous dog! I imagine no maiden in Chanthed was safe from you, if the way you use the
voice
on me is anything to go by.” Karan laughed, though not unkindly.

Llian looked slightly abashed. “Scholars have a great tradition of lechery, according to some tales, though generally it is not we who tell them.” His thoughts touched on
Thandiwe, the doe-eyed friend that he had left behind in Chanthed. What would she be doing now? Studying in the library, he supposed. He could scarcely picture her face anymore, though their friendship had been a long one. “But I meant inward-looking in the political sense. Anyhow, it was the Zain who established the Great Library at Zile, which still remains, though the empire be dust. They grew too fond of learning and were corrupted by Rulke in the wars of the Clysm. They paid dearly for that alliance, for when Rulke was imprisoned in the Nightland the Zain were exiled, those few that escaped the slaughter. We are from that remnant, and still we are but few. We wandered for many years, and everywhere we were hated and reviled. Those days are long gone now, but still the memories linger.”

“What was the pact?” asked Karan sleepily.

“I cannot tell you that, save that the Charon were warring with the Aachim. The Aachim had made a defense against the Charon, a mind-breaking potency. The Charon could not, within themselves, contrive a defense against it, but they found that we Zain, of all the peoples of Santhenar, had a degree of immunity. So they made a pact with my people and helped them to develop their talent. The Zain cared nothing for the immunity but they craved the knowledge that only the Charon had. The Gift of Rulke, the talent was called then, but later the Curse of Rulke, for it left the stigmata that identified us as Zain. Such have always been the gifts of the Charon. But even that is of no importance now, for over the centuries the talent has decayed and the stigmata with it, and few even know that they have it anymore.”

“How do the Zain tell?” she asked, looking at him wonderingly, curiously. “Perhaps you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, laughing. “There is a test, and those who pass it are not sent into the world, as a rule. They are too much at risk, even in these times.

“Eventually we came to Jepperand, an arid place of thorny plants and venomous animals where no one dwelt. There we took refuge, for we were tired of wandering, and by our wits and great efforts made a new home there. But the lesson was learned—no longer did we make allegiances. We Zain have no ambitions anymore, outside ourselves. But some of us live secretly in other lands and keep watch, that we never be taken by surprise again. So we have gained a reputation for spying and for deviousness.”

“And you are one such?” asked Karan, with the hint of a smile.

Llian laughed again. “There are others among the Zain who are clever but have no talent for spying, and they are sent abroad to study, for we have a great reverence for the arts and for learning. That’s how I ended up at the college. Mendark selected me, and sponsored me too. I suffered there for a long time.”

Her eyes narrowed at the mention of Mendark. “Then why did you stay,” she said after a long pause, “when you could have left with honor these past years?”

“Often I wondered myself. Perhaps I was afraid to leave: more than half my life was spent there.”

“Then you have never been away from Chanthed?”

“Oh yes; several times. I have been across the mountains, though not as far as Thurkad. And to the north and west. Twice to the Great Library. For a student of the Histories Zile is a magnet irresistible. But I have never been home, though I long to. My stipend would not cover that.”

“I knew who
you
were,” she said, thinking back to his arrival at the ruins. “As soon as you opened your mouth I knew you, even before you fell down the steps so foolishly. Even when I touched you with my sending in Tullin I was thinking about you, though I never really imagined that you could be there. I had seen you twice before. Once at the Festival
of Chanthed four years ago, and again at the Graduation Telling, when you had your triumph.”