A Shadow on the Glass (45 page)

“Come with me,” he said.

Llian resisted, still under the spell of the book.

“
Now!
” cracked Rael in a low voice that could not be resisted. “And don’t ever mention the Mirror again.”

Llian closed the book and followed Rael back to his room in silence. It was late in the evening. Karan was still not there, and after a sketchy meal he went to bed and was soon asleep.

Sometime later he was awakened from a dream, a wonderful, tantalizing dream for a chronicler, by the sound of voices in a heated argument. One of the voices belonged to Karan; the other he did not recognize. The argument had evidently been going on for some while.

“Do you tell me that I cannot leave Shazmak until Tensor returns?”

“Karan, Karan. We do not hold you against your will,” came the unknown voice. “Never would we so disgrace you. But great changes are afoot in the world and we must protect ourselves. Tensor has sent word that you know something of the Mirror. He wishes to speak with you ere you leave us. The request is reasonable, surely? We have long been friends, your house and the Aachim, and you owe us this. We ask you to wait.”

“I acknowledge the friendship and the debt,” replied Karan, “but wait I cannot. Already I’m long overdue. I would be happy to meet Tensor on my way, perhaps in Name, for I am hurrying to Sith. I know nothing of any Mirror.”

“Karan, Rael was in the library today and heard the Aachimning tell Emmant that it is found. Do you tell me you know nothing about this?”

“Emmant!” he heard Karan cry in a rage. “What has he done to Llian? I should never had left him alone.”

“The Zain is unharmed,” the voice said, then there was a sound as though a chair had been knocked over. “Karan, you must not…” The outside door banged.

Llian sat up in bed, his face hot with embarrassment and self-disgust. In spite of her troubles, despite that he had broken his promise at the worst possible time for her, her first thought had been for his safety. What a fool he was.

He wished that he had never heard of the wretched Mirror. Just then his dream came flooding back. He wished that Karan would come back, and at the same time dreaded the meeting with her. The Mirror—always the Mirror. Even in his sleep he dreamed of it; just then he had been dreaming about it. In his mind’s eye he could see it now, just like that image he had caught from Karan’s dream a couple of weeks ago, the mirror with the woman’s face glimpsed fleetingly.

But in
his
dream there had been more. Something had
dissolved into it,
or out of it
. What was it? The more he tried to reach it the further it receded. Then it flashed whole into his mind and was gone again just as quickly. But it had been there long enough for recognition. It was a stone tablet showing four distinct scripts in its four quarters. Two he knew from the shapes of the letters, even in that fleeting glimpse. Ancient scripts of Santhenar that he had studied years ago. The third was a syllabary from eastern lands. He did not know it.

But the fourth he recognized instantly, as any student of the Histories would have. It was the complex, convoluted, beautiful formal script of the Charon, whose secret they had guarded for millennia. Not even the Aachim, long their toilers, knew it, and it had never been deciphered. A shiver went up his spine. He had dreamed about the Renderer’s Tablet—the mythical key to the script of the Charon. In modern times scholars scoffed at its existence. Most of the ancient chroniclers (and Llian had read them all) had been sceptical. But to others it had seemed necessary that such a thing exist, like the supposed Great Northern Land that was needful for the balance of the world. The script of the Charon had never been broken, so somewhere must be a key to it-the Tablet must exist.

With such a key, archives full of undeciphered Charon manuscripts would lie open to him. Alcifer alone had filled libraries, after Rulke was put in the Nightland. And the killer of the crippled girl could have been a Charon.

As though in a dream, an enchanted euphoria, he rose and went out into the main chamber. It was empty. Karan’s room was dark; only a handful of stars glittered in the black night His dreamlike logic sought an answer. Where, but on the Mirror itself? He reached up and touched the flask above the door to a dim light.

The chamber was simply furnished, with just a small
table and three chairs beneath the window. They were made of metal, blue almost to the color of black, and intricately wrought. Against the left wall were two chests bound with iron and a cupboard with many small drawers. Karan’s pack sat between the cupboard and the further chest. Halfway down the right side of the room was her broad pallet, also framed in metal, with a powdery blue coverlet. A book lay on the coverlet, a slim volume bound in leather, light but with many pages.

Llian picked up the book. The first part contained handwriting in a spidery, intricate hand. The latter part was blank. He had not known that she kept a journal. He replaced the book as he had found it.

The cupboard was empty. He opened the first of the chests. It held only folded bed coverings. The second, a small pile of clothing and Karan’s traveling gear-the oiled cloak and hood in drab green, travel-stained and worn; rolled-up blankets; cooking and eating utensils; hatchet; her boots and other small items. Llian bent down and felt under the pile of clothing. His hand, moist and shaking, touched something hard.

Just then there was a noise at the door. He spun around, guiltily. Karan stood in the doorway, her eyes desolate.

W
hat a fool I am,” Karan said bitterly, biting off each word. “You have shown the worth of your promises. Get out of my room.”

“But you don’t understand,” said Llian desperately. “All I wanted was to
see
it. I…” Even as he spoke he knew how feeble he sounded.

Karan’s Up curled, on her face a fury beyond his imagining. She took a step toward him. There were two red spots on her cheekbones. “Get out,” she said, in a voice barely audible. “I trusted you. I could admire an enemy if he was cunning and clever, even though I hated him. But you promised, and you broke your promise, and now you make pathetic excuses. You are beneath contempt.”

Llian laid his hand on her arm. “It’s not as you think. Emmant had a power over me…”

The next moment he received a stunning blow to the face and Llian found himself lying on the floor. He scrambled to
his hands and knees, looking up at her in amazement A brilliant pain extended the whole length of his jaw. “You
hit
me.”

Karan was holding her wrist with her other hand. As he watched all the color drained from her face and she sat down abruptly where she stood. The fingers of her left hand clung to her other wrist. “It’s broken again,” she said.

She lay down on her side, cradling her wrist. Llian soon saw that he was in no further danger. She was pale, near to fainting, and her eyes were closed, though a tear or two escaped. He bent down and gently touched her wrist. Already it was swollen and through the swelling he could feel the break, a very bad one. A tiny moan escaped her. He looked around for something to splint it. Her voice was a feeble whisper. “Go into the kitchen. The basket with the fruit. Take the stand to pieces.”

Llian ran out. The stand was intricately made, in the manner of the Aachim, but based on a tripod of long metal tubes connected by shorter ones. There was a smash and a thump, as though Llian had jumped on it. He came back looking foolishly at the wreckage in his hand.

“It unscrews, you idiot” said Karan, and shortly he managed to obtain two short slender pieces of tubing, much engraved, that would serve. With these and a length of cord he fashioned a clumsy splint. She opened her eyes and sat up, gripping his shoulder tightly as he straightened the bones and bound her wrist but made no further sound.

When he was finished he carried her to the pallet. She lay down on the cover, closing her eyes, while he looked down anxiously. Her eyes opened. “Get Rael,” she said, and closed her eyes again. He went at once, shutting the door gently behind.

* * *

After a long search he found Rael, who came directly with an assistant, and plaster. He made to dismantle Llian’s contraption of tubes and strings but Karan was fractious and shouted at him. Rael compressed his lips in a thin line as he worked, but made a cast with the plaster over the splint and went out again. Karan slept, woke and slept again, while Llian sat on the floor at the end of her bed, guilty and confused. Eventually she stirred, looked around, saw Llian sitting there and sat up. She was still angry.

“Why did you tell him about the Mirror?” she asked. “Why
Emmant
, of all people in Shazmak? You could not have chosen more ill if you had been my enemy.”

“I don’t know!” he whispered. “The whole incident is muddy in my mind. I can remember Emmant pulling out books and showing them to me. There was one special book, a history of the Aachim, and I could read the script, though I didn’t know what the words meant. The book was so beautiful it was like the sun coming up when I opened it. No!” He paused, looking confused. “It was before I saw the book. It was almost as if he knew about you.”

“He did,” she replied, and suddenly her anger was gone. ‘Tensor sent word to Emmant to keep me here. He already knew about the Mirror, luckily for you.”

Llian rambled a little, straining to remember what had happened. “I suppose I was already thinking about it-I do all the time. Once it came into my mind it seemed that he knew it. Can the Aachim read minds?”

“No, but Emmant sometimes seems to sense what people are thinking,” she said, “as I well knew. Oh, this is all my fault. I should have warned you, though I never imagined that Tensor would betray me to
him
.”

“He touched me and then I couldn’t stop myself. It was as if he bewitched me; as if some dark thing crouched on my
back, prodding me. But I didn’t tell him you knew anything about it,” he added defensively.

“If you had, you’d be swimming in the Garr now,” she said fiercely. But then she put her splinted arm across his shoulder to show that it was all in the past.

“Oh, Karan, I wasn’t trying to steal it,
just to see it
. Can’t you understand how much it means to me, to be a chronicler in the midst of such a tale, without ever seeing the Mirror?” He said nothing about the Tablet. With hindsight, that was altogether too much a dream.

For a moment Karan was tempted. If only she could, she would gladly offer him that triumph. But would he be satisfied, or would he want more? And then, why should he get that favor so easily? Let him earn it.

“How can you ask such a thing? The Mirror would not give up its secrets so casually anyway. And even if you could use it, you know its nature—the
Twisted Mirror
. Besides, I swore. It takes a lot before I break
my
promises.”

Llian squirmed. In truth he had expected nothing else.

“What was there between you and him?” he asked sometime later, as Karan was preparing for bed.

She looked down at her blanket, smoothing the wrinkles mechanically with the side of her good hand. “It’s a bitter story for us both. When I lived here I was just a girl. Emmant loved me, or claimed he did, though his actions told otherwise. I endured him for too long, out of kindness, for I knew not how to tell him otherwise, and I was good-natured then. And I pitied him, for he is a blending, half-Aachim and half-human. But he cannot come to terms with it. He is an outcast, though it is only he himself that makes it so. Finally his attentions grew unbearable and I spurned him. Then he became hateful and vindictive, and spread deceits about me, and crept about, hoping to catch me unawares.

“Finally he did.” She shivered at the memory. “I struggled with him and he gave me this,” she said, touching the scar above her eye. “I cut him with my knife, humiliated him, for he is mean and sneaking, and at best a coward. Thereafter the Aachim kept him away from me. But the violence I did to him only made him worse. It scarred him inside as well as out, and corrupted me as well, so now I’m torn between sympathy and loathing—perhaps he senses it. How I hate myself for the violence. Shazmak was intolerable after that, and I was shamed. What would my father have thought? Galliad was a big, powerful man, but very gentle.” Tears welled in her eyes. “He would have stopped Emmant without raising a finger.”

“Big men don’t have to,” said Llian. “But you are entitled to defend yourself.”

“Doubtless. It did not save my father, anyway. He was set upon in the mountains and killed for a few miserable coins.” She wiped the tears away abruptly.

“The violence has become easier; it hardly shames me at all, now.” She put her fingers to the great bruise on his cheek, a mute apology. He took her hand in his and squeezed it tight.

There was a long silence, finally broken by Llian. “They won’t let us go, will they?”

“They can’t, though it offends against their honor to hold me. They take the shame of Emmant’s abuse upon themselves; so they are slow to judge me. But all along I knew it was a mistake to come here. I thought that Tensor was across the sea; I would not have come otherwise.”

“Then I didn’t…?” His voice was unwontedly timid.

“No,” she said softly. “But you might have. What am I going to do with you?”

“What will they do to us?”