A Shadow on the Glass (36 page)

“But the Aachim were destroyed in the Clysm,” said Llian, speaking his thoughts aloud. “The Histories no longer tell of them.”

“Some survived,” said Karan, who had come back without his hearing, “but they retreated from the world. The high mountains were most like Aachan, and there they went, building their iron cities. To Tirthrax they went, in the Great Mountains; to Stassor, eight hundred leagues east of us; and to other cold remote places. And here. Shazmak was once their stronghold in Meldorin, but with the waning of the years they have allowed it to dwindle to an outpost. Yet they
guard it still, and ward away any who wander near.” She dragged him back inside and brushed the snow off his face.

Llian was silent, shaken by the realization that the Aachim existed still, though the Histories no longer spoke of them. Why had these things not been mentioned? Were the Histories corrupt? He lay down on the floor. The cold seared his cheek but he was too sick to move.

“How can
you
go there, then?” he rasped.

“My family has had a long alliance with the Aachim, and my grandmother was one of them.”

“What about me? The Zain conspired with Rulke, remember. The Aachim were enemies.”

Karan said nothing. She knew that too, and worried about it just as much as Llian did.

Llian drifted away into a delirium of names and faces, all jumbled together, and then into a troubled sleep where the delirium became a dream that was no different.

M
aigraith struggled furiously but without avail. Vartila was incredibly strong and tenacious—nothing would make her let go. She dragged Maigraith toward a small door in the far corner of the room, a place to question in secret. Maigraith grew frantic. She opened her mouth to shout and a cold hand instantly clamped shut her mouth and nose. She felt nauseated. She was choking. She slid her foot down Vartila’s shin, then stamped her heel down on the instep with all the strength she could manage. Had she been wearing boots Vartila might have been crippled, her instep crushed.

Vartila stifled her scream into a shrill yelp. She hopped on one foot for a moment, then snatched up a heavy ruler from the table and cracked Maigraith over the side of the head with it. The blow was unexpected and incredibly painful. Maigraith fell to her knees in a daze. The metal edge had cut her; red blood glistened in her hair.

Vartila raised the ruler again. “Get up,” she panted. “Go into the room. Do not make another sound.”

Maigraith felt utterly cowed. She put her hand up to the side of her head, then brought it slowly round in front of her face, looking at the bright blood. She bowed her head in submission, then reached up and, gripping the table edge, laboriously pulled herself to her feet. She swayed, took a step toward the door, and bumped seemingly by accident against a pedestal on which stood a tall porcelain urn. Though Vartila leapt forward she was too late to stop it smashing on the floor. Maigraith swung her arms, and other vessels flew through the air and broke with satisfying crashes. Then Vartila knocked her down, put her hands about her throat, and her questions were spat with cold fury.

“You have one minute, and then I choke you,” she gritted. “Who are you? Where did you come from. What is—”

The door smashed open. Yggur’s deep-set gray eyes took in the scene at once. He turned to Vartila, his voice dangerously soft, no trace of impediment now.

“What do you do with my prisoner? I gave no orders for you to touch her.”

Vartila was unmoved—it was clear that the conflict was to her liking, that she had been expecting it. Her voice was cold and arrogant. “
You
lost the Mirror,
master
. Our duty is to get it back. We warned you about this one, yet you play games with her, games that affect your judgment.”

Yggur was incredulous. “What is this?” he cried in a great voice. “The contemptible Whelm rebel? The worthless Whelm accuse
me
of failure? Where is the Mirror, Whelm? One small human, barely a woman—untrained, unskilled, with no talent worthy of the name—has humiliated the mighty Whelm. Give back your warrant; you are not fit to serve mash to swine.”

Vartila faced him unmoving, but her eyes showed her
outrage and humiliation. “We are Whelm—we serve! But the master also has a duty to the servant,
and you have failed this duty
. You make faces with the slukk. You should have broken her at once. We would have done it, if you could not You kept the Mirror from us and you lost it. Information vital to the hunt you keep from us. You are the unworthy one.”

For a moment Maigraith thought Yggur had lost control; he did not seem to know what to do. She looked from one to the other and was dreadfully afraid.

“Yours is to serve, never to question. You… will… serve,” said Yggur again, forcing the words through his teeth. They faced each other for a long minute, then Vartila bowed, but a little too low, and when she smiled, her teeth were pointed like the teeth of a dog.

Yggur appeared to relax. “She is mine. Return her to my chamber,” he said and withdrew.

Vartila hurried her along the corridors, the grip cruelly tight on her arm.

“Your master is not pleased with you,” croaked Maigraith, as they mounted the stairs.

“He knows not how to be master,” she said with contempt

“Yet you serve him.”

“Only until we find a better.”

After Maigraith’s escape Yggur made a special cell for her, by walling off a corner of his workroom with bars stretching from floor to high ceiling. Why he did not throw her into a cell far below Fiz Gorgo to rot she did not know. Perhaps it was the enigma of her, that which still seemed to startle him when he looked at her. But there she was and there she stayed, watching him all day through the bars. And in his turn he watched her. A tiny space against the stone of the
main wall was curtained for her toilet, otherwise the cell was open to his gaze.

The days flowed into weeks. His routine was almost unvarying. Each morning he appeared before it was light, went straight to a small table set in an angle between two shelves of books and sat down to read for an hour. At dawn a servant came with two baskets—Yggur’s breakfast and Maigraith’s. The servant, an old retainer, was fearful and would not look at her, but placed the basket outside her cell until Yggur should notice and bring it in. At first Yggur simply opened the door, handed Maigraith the basket and closed it again, but as the days and weeks passed it seemed that he sought her company; or perhaps this was another facet of his plan. He would bring the basket carefully into the cell, keeping one eye on her while he relocked it, then sit down on the bed and watch her as she ate. At first this angered her but in the end she grew used to it, even, in spite of her mistrust, came to look forward to it. The breakfast over, he would spend another hour, sometimes more, consulting the maps and papers on the large table, and writing in a journal.

After this there was a continual stream of people. Messengers came, or spies, from all the lands around. Yggur sat impassively while they spoke or read from documents. Next, the Whelm appeared but such was the tension between them and Maigraith that after only a few days they came no more, and Yggur would leave the chamber to speak to them, his guards waiting silently in his place. But several times the Whelm arrived unexpectedly and Yggur always put himself between her and them, even though she was locked in her cell. The Whelm would stare at her with a disturbing intensity, and at these times Yggur struggled to maintain control of himself.

His troubles could not be disguised from Maigraith’s cool gaze. She saw the strangeness that Yggur hid from others,
and his pain; and surprisingly she found that she felt for him. Normally the feelings of other people were a blank page to her.

She often thought about the Whelm after that. What was it about her that disturbed them so? In their first questioning they were concerned for the Mirror and how to recover it, but after her attempt to escape it was she that they wanted to know about. Who was she? Where had she come from? She told them nothing and they watched her constantly.

By the time Yggur returned from his daily meeting with the Whelm the morning was gone. At noon they ate a frugal lunch together: unleavened bread; a salad made from the green leaves of plants that she did not know; pastes of the flesh of nuts, pounded, soaked in thickened milk, and spiced; lasee. Yggur rarely ate meat. Lunch was a brief affair, and no sooner were the remnants taken away than his generals came. For hours they would discuss the reports of messengers and spies, the disposition of armies, the state of the weather, the disrepair of roads and bridges, or the quality of the crops and livestock of all the surrounding lands. Great charts were brought out, old maps of leather and canvas so large and heavy that it took two to carry them. They were spread over the floor of the chamber while Yggur crawled over them like a schoolboy, examining them in the minutest detail, his generals following like ducklings after their mother. And often the master map-maker was called to fill in a new detail or to amend an old one.

Maigraith listened in wonder and turmoil. Yggur knew more about the countries around him than their own rulers, and she saw why they feared him so. It was not the dread power that rumor attributed him, though perhaps he had that too. It was the cool intellect, the genius for strategy and the
attention to every detail. And doubtless, the Mirror too, his tireless spy.

After that it was time for the management of his own land. Yggur spoke with his seneschal and his bailiffs, and sometimes two parties with a grievance were brought before him. He listened to their claims and resolved them. But this was rare. It was clear that his realm was well-ordered, that his lieutenants knew his wishes and carried them out exactly to his will.

The evening meal came late, long after dark. Again it was frugal, though occasionally he seemed to feel the need of richer fare, and then would come a basket of pastries stuffed with meats or ground nuts or meal, flavored with diverse spices aromatic, pungent or bitingly hot; dark meats that were dried, smoked, steeped in herbal solutions or done in subtle, unusual sauces; vegetables pickled in brine or oil; salt fish; lastly, more pastries, scented with citrus-blossom water or rose oil and filled with fruit. Then Yggur would talk to her, or sit by himself, reading or writing in his journals again. Often he questioned her about Faelamor, and Karan, and the Mirror, though after a while he realized that she would tell no more, and his examination turned to herself.

After that first night she found the strength to resist him, though still each time they spoke she was afraid that she would give something more away, and watched him warily. To distract him she would ask him about himself-his past, his people, his fears and his desires, and though he smiled, knowing what she was about, he always answered her.

“How did you come to this, Yggur?” she asked him one day.

“Surely you’ve heard?”

“I know the stories that others tell,” she said.

“What stories?” His smoky eyes grew dark.

“That you were the youngest and most brilliant mancer
ever to be invited to the Council. That you set to work on the great project—the banishing of the Charon from Santhenar. That in your wickedness and youthful folly you tried the sorcery of the Proscribed Experiments and were snared by Rulke, leader of the Charon. That even then you would not call for aid, but strove alone until Rulke almost escaped. That it drove you beyond madness.”

“The lies of the Council no longer even anger me, just weary me,” said Yggur, though his eyes showed wrath. “Lies put about to cover their own misdeeds, their own follies, and not youthful ones, but the follies of those who are grown greedy and wicked through power unfettered. Long the Council sought to banish the Charon—a noble aim—and they tried the Proscribed Experiments not once, but many times; they failed each time. So they
begged
me, and my folly lay in agreeing.

“I succeeded too, but when Rulke attacked their courage failed them and they abandoned me. No man or woman of Santhenar could have held him alone, and I could not. He took my mind, was near to freeing himself, yet still I struggled to contain him. At last the Council feared for their own safety, and rightly, for had he gone free his first act would have been against them. They joined together and drove him into the shadow world in which they hold him still, the Nightland, and sealed the gate once more.

“Then did they protect and heal me?” Yggur’s voice became venomous. “They left me to die, made me to be the fool responsible for all the woe that they had caused, and that was much; made themselves once more the saviors of Santhenar. But I would not die. I lived, regained my strength, and eventually my wits returned. For years I endured the taunts of humankind, both as fool and madman. Do you wonder that I threaten them, now that I am strong and they are weak?”

He had been sitting on the bed, across the little table from her. Now he rose so abruptly that the bed skidded backwards across the floor, its legs scraping against the stone. “Should I tell you? Why not? That was long ago, and all that Council is dead now,
save Mendark!
But he will pay, and the new Council, for the crimes of the old. That is only my lesser revenge. The greater—surely that is clear to you. I will finish what I began so long ago. I will finish Rulke forever.”

He turned to go, but Maigraith put out her hand and caught his wrist. “There is more. Tell me. I have seen how you struggle with yourself.”