A Shadow on the Glass (46 page)

“Nothing, until
he
comes,” she replied. “They won’t dishonor
themselves, or me. But if I am proven traitor,” she added, “no dishonor could be greater than my own. The penalty is death.”

“You are no traitor,” said Llian. “I will not believe it.”

“You know nothing of the Aachim.”

“That is because you have told me nothing.”

“Think back to your own tale. They can never forget their ruin, though that be an aeon ago. Treachery has a special stench to them, and revenge a special spice. For even a blending such as I to block that revenge is treason.”

“Then why don’t you give it back?”

“Your tale told me the answer to that, too. I dreamed that Shazmak lay in ruins, and all because of me.”

Karan lay back on her pallet, staring at the ceiling. Llian’s hands writhed in his lap.

“What will they do to me?”

“The same, though it does no good to dwell on it,” she replied absently.

“They will search you, and then-torture and death!”

“You’re being melodramatic now; this is not one of your tales. They will not dishonor themselves by searching me;
they
do not suspect me, only Tensor does.”

“You know this place. Let’s steal away tonight. There must be many ways out of Shazmak.”

“There aren’t. We’re on an island. There are only two bridges, and both are guarded. Besides, there are Sentinels inside as well as out, and they have already been alerted to watch for us. Go one step past where you are permitted and they will sound. I’m sorry, Llian. It seems that I have brought you to your death.”

“What can we do?” cried Llian.

“I’m afraid to even talk to him,” said Karan, speaking half to herself. “How can I conceal my mind from him?”

“Who is he anyway?”

“He is the greatest of them now, and leader of Shazmak. He sees his destiny as to rouse the Aachim from their long languor. He is like a stern father, unforgiving of failures or other viewpoints, and he will look into my heart and see what I try to conceal.”

Llian groaned. “Then we’re doomed. This isn’t how the tale is supposed to end.”

His doleful tones seemed to put the courage back into her. She reached out and hugged him about the neck, and when she spoke it was with the fond sarcasm that she reserved for his most exasperating moments. “The tale goes on, no matter what. When I thought you had betrayed me I felt I had a chance, alone. Now that I find you merely confirmed as an idiot, and must still protect you, I fear that there is no hope.”

“Don’t mock me. I’m terribly afraid.”

“That all can see. But do not the Zain say that there is always a way?”

“You’re right, there always is.”

“I have thought long on it,” said Karan, “but I cannot find one.”

Several days passed. As the time neared for Tensor to return Karan became impossibly moody. She was tormented by guilt, sure that she had brought Llian here to his death, but there was nothing she could do about it. There was no way to get out of Shazmak, not even if she gave up the Mirror, It was too late for that now. When she was in their chamber she kept to her room, either staring out the window at the river far below or writing in her book.

Llian, as before, was treated with reserved courtesy by the Aachim. He was now allowed to go to the library, and though he realized that the permission might be a trap, he could not keep away. He went back more than once, against
Karan’s wishes. At first he wandered the shelves, pulling out books, manuscripts and scrolls at random, looking over his shoulder in case the librarian should come creeping up behind him, but Emmant was not in evidence.

Llian soon tired of this occupation for, as Rael had said, the books were all in the Aachan script, which he did not know. He returned time and again to
Tales of the Aachim
, staring at the unfamiliar words, or just thinking about the Mirror, and dreaming. He had come to a fatalistic acceptance that he might never leave Shazmak, that he might even die here. The matter was out of his hands, and nothing he could do would make any difference, so he might as well go on with his work.

It was the afternoon of the seventh day since their coming to Shazmak. Llian sat alone at the table, nursing bowl after bowl of tea in his hands, enjoying the seeping warmth in the cold room. His thoughts kept coming back to the book. It would take months to translate. But I
can
read the script, he thought excitedly. I’ll read it, and commit it to memory, and later on, I will write it all down again and translate it. What an addition to the Histories that will be! He suppressed the thought that there would probably be no later on.

He got up at once and hurried back to the library. Though Llian was accustomed to reading and remembering perfectly—that was one of the chief skills of the chroniclers—he did not underestimate this task. To read and remember so much, and in a language he barely knew, would require a very great effort. Perhaps more than any test he had ever done.

At first he struggled; then as his eyes grew accustomed to the crabbed script and the cadences of the language, he read more quickly. Though he could understand few of the words, the sense came across. He became caught up in the
remote, musical language and the images that it conjured. A story began to unfold, of the Aachim, their coming to Santhenar and their trials and triumphs. The story was different from the Histories that Llian knew, and contradictions were many. A picture of the Aachim emerged: a people proud and strong but never secure; noble and steadfast allies but too often betrayed; the makers of great but ill-judged alliances; artists and builders of the greatest skill yet looking always to the past; finally retreating into isolation. And always, always plotting revenge on Rulke, he who had brought them to Santhenar, the architect of all their misfortune.

Time passed swiftly; outside it grew dark and still he read. The nebula swung across the sky and the light came in through the tall window, bright enough to cast faint shadows on the floor, shadows with red-tinged edges. The wind shrieked and moaned. Llian sat at his table, the book lit by the tiny flask on the wall beside him. Higher rose the nebula. Its radiance washed back toward the eastern window and seeped out again, leaving the room in darkness. The moon in its last quarter rose, its pale light filtering in through the window as he finished the book and realized where he was, who he was. He was cold, hungry and shaking with tiredness.

Dawn had broken by the time he got back. Karan’s door was open and though her bed had been slept in she was already gone. Llian paused only long enough to throw off his clothes before falling into his bed.

Sometime later he wakened to the sound of an argument in the main room. It was Karan and Rael; Karan shouting angrily, Rael replying in his soft, reasonable voice. Doors slammed, there was silence again and he went back to sleep. Karan came into his room and sat down heavily on the pallet beside him. He looked up at her drowsily and put his arm
around her back, quickly drifting back into his dreams. She sat there for a while then disengaged his arm and went out.

Llian woke in the mid-afternoon. He ate hurriedly and went straight back to the library, again finding the room empty.
Tales of the Aachim
was not where he had left it, and for a moment he feared that Emmant had taken it, but he soon found it on another shelf of the cabinet. Now the book took on a new light. The sense came off the pages, seemingly independent of the words he was reading, though if he stopped to think it blurred back into a mass of empty syllables.

As he turned the first page, the spaces of the library receded and Llian felt himself drawn into the world of the Aachim. He was there when they followed Rulke through the portal. He stepped naked onto the grass and smelled the warm rich spicy air of Santhenar for the first time. He looked out on the steep green hills and the blue forested mountains in the distance. He felt the joy and freedom of the Aachim in their new world, their vigor and youthful strength as they shook off the shackles of Aachan and made another life. The centuries fleeted by and he saw their delight as they built and grew strong.

He saw too the response of the Charon, their resentment turning eventually to fear, and how they worked unceasingly to frustrate the Aachim, to thwart their alliances and destroy their works. The Aachim fought back and the horror of the Clysm spread like a plague across all the lands. Then a tale he knew: the Aachim betrayed by Rulke. In despair, their hopes shattered, they withdrew into the mountains and the past.

Llian came back to the present, the tears coursing down his cheeks, suddenly aware of a presence in the darkness nearby. He stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over and, peering fearfully around him, saw Emmant standing in the
shadows. The librarian stepped forward and Llian shrank back.

“What has she done with it?”
Emmant rasped. “I must have it.” The eyes flamed, the voice throbbed with passion.

“Why?” cried Llian wildly. “You are not Aachim. What can it mean to you?”

The next second Emmant had him by the throat, squeezing him till the room faded in a blur of red, shaking him till his teeth rattled like bones in a coffin. Yet even through the blur he could see those eyes.

“I am Aachim!”
Emmant shouted.
“I am more Aachim than they are!
No one has ever cared for their books as I do. No one knows their Histories as I do. Their revenge is just a pretense. They weep and wail about lost Aachan, but do nothing to get it back, just hide in the past and dwindle away to nothing. Once I give them the Mirror there will be no ‘half-Aachim this, half-Aachim that.’ They will beg me to lead them, and I will, I will. They will have their revenge, too,
and I minel
!
What has she done with it, the darsh?”
he screamed. He shook Llian again, thrusting his face into Llian’s until all he could see were those ghasyly eyes.

He made a horrible gurgling sound and Emmant’s grip moved suddenly from his throat to his shoulders. Llian sucked a deep, shuddering breath, his windpipe throbbing from the crushing fingers. His will to resist was weeping away. Then an image came into his mind, Karan helping him in his mountain sickness, and he clung to it, but it soon fell into tatters and was stripped away. The eyes impaled him.

“Tell me!” screamed Emmant through foam-flecked lips, shaking Llian by the shoulders.

“I…will…”Llian croaked.

The grip relaxed a little but the eyes still burned.

Something clicked at the far end of the room. Emmant turned his head, but Llian could not. Emmant began to
speak, then the fire died in his eyes, his hands left Llian’s shoulders and he turned away to face the intruder. Llian turned too. It was Karan. She was advancing slowly down the room, bearing a look so murderous that Emmant took a step backwards.

Karan came up to Llian, took him by the hand and jerked him toward her. “I was right to treat you as I did,” she said to Emmant with glacial ferocity. Though she was only half his bulk, and a head shorter, Emmant cringed away from her fury. “You are
hundiss
, without honor. Never will there be a place for you among the Aachim. You are nothing.”

It was clear that her words meant everything to Emmant. His face went white, then red, and he tried to step toward her, even raised his great fist as though he would strike her, a blow that would have smashed her to the floor; but his courage failed him. Karan spat at his feet, turned her back on him quite deliberately and stalked away, dragging Llian behind. Emmant’s deranged, hate-filled glare followed them to the door.

Back at their chamber she thrust Llian inside and kicked the door shut. He continued across the room in a daze. She caught him as he was about to walk into the wall, whirling him around. “What did you tell him
this time?”

To Llian it was as though he had escaped one tyrant only to fall into the hands of another, and he saw not Karan’s face but another set of mesmerizing eyes.

“I-will-not-speak. I-will-not-speak,” came his pitiful croak.

She raised her cast at him then thought better of it and struck him across the face with her good hand. He sank to his knees, looking dazed. The book was still clutched in his hand. He broke out into a long speech in an unfamiliar tongue, punctuated with wailing and weeping, while Karan stared at him in amazement. Suddenly she seemed to understand,
for she slipped out of the room, locking it carefully behind her.

She returned with Rael, who came up to Llian and examined him carefully, and then the book. Rael took the book from Llian’s fingers and spoke two syllables in the tongue of the Aachim; then he took Llian by the hand and repeated them. Llian jerked, closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again, and looked blankly at Karan.

“What happened?” he said dazedly. “I was in the library reading. It’s dark.” He looked around the room. “Where’s the book?”

Rael brought out
Tales of the Aachim
, which he had been holding behind his back. “There was a charm on it for you, though only a shabby little thing.”

With difficulty Llian forced his mind back. “I started reading it in the library,” he said in a painful whisper. “At first I could barely make it out, the language is so strange. But today it called to me, and though I didn’t know the words somehow I knew the story it was telling. I was there! I became as one of the Aachim; I knew their hopes and their fears, and their secret plans of long ago. Then Emmant came. I tried to resist him, but I could not. All my will was gone.” He stared at Karan, coming back to himself. “It’s fading now. Ah! My head! How it aches. And my throat. I thought he was going to choke me to death.”