A Shadow on the Glass (47 page)

Karan sat down in front of him, stroking his bruised throat with her fingertips. “Oh, Llian, forgive me!” she exclaimed.

Llian closed his eyes, and saw again the look on Emmant’s face—such hate as he had never seen. “You have a deadly enemy there,” he said, clutching her small hand. “Promise you won’t go out alone.”

Karan almost laughed aloud at the thought of him protecting her, but she saw how afraid he was for her, how
much he cared, and was touched. She dismissed Emmant with a wave of her hand, concealing her disquiet.

“He is nothing,” she said, “a craven. But I will be careful.” Then she turned to Rael. “This is a very great dishonor. To use a charm on Llian, who knows nothing of this matter, and has no talent, was cowardly and unworthy.”

“The charm was such a little thing. No Aachim would have succumbed to it. Yet it was ill done and not of our doing. We have cautioned Emmant before, as you know. For his error we beg your leave.”

“It was not his error alone. He had instructions from Tensor.” Karan was so angry she could barely speak.

Rael looked ashamed. “The letter to Emmant was sealed. We did not know what it said, at the time. But Karan, we know that you had the Mirror once. Please tell us where it is. You know what the penalty is, for you and Llian both, if you keep it from us.”

“I cannot tell you what happened to it. More than that I will not say, save that I do not act against the Aachim. Your own honor is at stake. Will you at least support me?”

“That I do already, though it may cost me dear. No more can I do. Tensor is expected in the morning.” Rael turned and left the chamber.

Karan paced the room. She sat down, chewing her fingertips, then got up abruptly and paced again. “What can I do? I can’t face Tensor.”

“Give it to him then. Maybe nothing will ever come of it. Maybe the Mirror will be impossible to use. The Aachim did not misuse it before, remember.”

“But it was not so valuable then. Each time the Mirror is used it grows greater, for the print of what it is employed for remains within it. They know that Yalkara used it to escape from Santhenar. That is a very powerful secret. And remember
this: the Aachim made the Mirror. If anyone can extract the secret from it, they can.”

“Why don’t you throw it into the Garr and let the rocks grind it to powder?”

Karan walked away from him and put her face on the wall. She did not speak for a very long time.

“Llian,” she said, “have you not wondered that, among my few possessions, you never actually saw the Mirror?”

“No,” said Llian. “I knew it was a small thing, easily hid.”

“Maigraith planned that if we were pursued she would take the Mirror and I would decoy the Whelm by pretending to have it.” She looked away. She could not look at him, just sat down again with her head in her hands, looking as though she wanted to cry. “I … I do not…” One little ear, peeping out of the tangles, was almost as red as her hair.

What was she trying to say? That she did not have it after all? The faintest germ of a doubt crept into his mind, a mind that was trained to weigh the smallest nuances for their truth and to set down the truth whatever the consequences. But he had come to a turning point in his life: the chronicler was in conflict with the man. Karan had shown him such loyalty, such kindness, such trust. He could be just as loyal, just as trusting. Llian put the scales up over his eyes. Whatever she did, he would not question it, would not even entertain the thought of disbelief. Would not put her in the position of having to he to him.

He knelt down before her and put his finger across her lips. “Tell me nothing,” said Llian. “I ask you nothing.”

“Oh Llian,” she cried, putting her arms around his neck and wetting his shoulder with her tears. “I do not deserve…”

“Shhhh!” he replied, squeezing her face into his neck.

After a while she raised her head and gave him a sad little
smile. She brushed the untidy hair off his forehead. “I have got you into desperate trouble. They
will
kill us both, you know.”

Llian had been trying not to think about that. “Well, we’ll have to think of a way to trick them.”

He got up and went into the kitchen, returning shortly with a steaming flask and two bowls. He poured the tea. Karan lifted her bowl with both hands and sipped it, eyes closed. Llian stared at his own bowl, and the patterns of the steam rising from it, but did not drink. His words had been hollow; he was completely out of his depth here. After a while he lay on the pallet in his room, in the darkness, rejecting scheme after scheme until at last he drifted into a restless sleep.

I
will not cry out this time, Maigraith told herself, as the old one came back with his instruments. I will not let them hear me scream this time. She watched him from the corner of her eye. He approached. The instruments clinked in his hand. She gripped the metal frame, clinging to it so tightly that specks of blood welled out from beneath her nails. Not this time. The tools were applied. She screamed.

It was a long time later that she realized that the screaming had stopped. Why, I’ve stopped screaming, she thought in a detached way, momentarily divorced from her body. Maigraith opened her puffy eyes. The pain hit her again, but it was old pain, the pain of a hundred little wounds. The old man was moving away, crossing out of the field of her vision, gone. She slumped against the frame, hanging limply by her wrists. Someone flung water over her from a bucket, cold water that stung her wounds. A trickle ran down her forehead, her nose. She licked it from her lips, grateful for
its coolness, though it was briny and did not ease her thirst. Someone, perhaps the same person, retightened the thongs at her wrists and ankles. The hands were bony, with sparse clumps of yellow hair between the thickened knuckles. Then Vartila returned.

Maigraith recalled her words as the Whelm had borne her here, bound and her mouth stopped. “Allow her no respite. The body, then the mind, then die body again. She is very strong, and the pain will magnify her strength, focus her will. Allow her to use it at your peril; always keep the bonds tight; check her constantly.”

Vartila had underestimated Maigraith. Already two of the Whelm lay unmoving, but it did not aid her. Every resistance was matched by an increase in their cold ferocity.

Vartila had questioned her about herself. “Who are you, that have so weakened our master? Who are you, that bring as to defiance? We are Whelm, and do our master’s will.” Her voice rose then, shaking with a passion that Maigraith had not heard before.
“Who are you, that have so corrupted us?”

The torment began again, but redoubled. And they questioned her about Karan, over and over again. “Who is she?” heir voices rasped. “Who is she, that even the Whelm cannot take her? How can she, a petty human, make a link? We have tested you, and you are barren of that talent.”

What harm can it do to tell them, Maigraith thought, through a delirium of pain. “That is no secret. She is human, hut her grandmother was Mantille, an Aachim.”

The reaction of the Whelm was unexpected, and shocking. “A
blending
!” Vartila cried. “Now I know what to use against her.” She called the others in a loud voice and they came running. A flurry of orders, then two Whelm ran out the door.

Vartila came back smiling, showing her teeth. “You have
given us power over your friend. No more will she run. She will wait for us to come, unable to resist, her limbs numb and her mind paralyzed, able to feel nothing but terror. But do not stop with that; there is much more you can tell us, now you have begun.”

Maigraith had no time to wonder at their reaction, or what she had done to Karan. Soon all thoughts were overwhelmed in her own nightmare.

Vartila laid her hand on Maigraith’s bare shoulder. The crawling of mind and body began again, a sensation so hideous and shameful that only death could wash away the memory of it. But death did not come. She clung to the memory of the pain, using it to anchor her whimpering mind in her failing body. Bring back the pain, she wept, let me only have the pain, but not this. Oh, Yggur, how could you do this to me? And in between that she agonized about what she had done to Karan.

“I will tell you. I will tell you
,” she screamed, no longer knowing who she was, or what she was.

Again and again she cried out, until she was reduced to a whimper, to a whisper. But only when she could no longer even whisper did the torment stop. There was absolute silence then, in that damp cavern of a room. Maigraith opened her mouth but no sound emerged. She tensed, remembering the old man. This time he did not appear. Then, a choking sound from the entrance. She twisted on the frame, turning her head, opening her eyes. Closing and opening them again, but the hallucination was still there.

Maigraith saw a woman with a restless cloud of pale luminous hair. She was as small as Karan but slight, and moving so lightly that she seemed to float. A bleached radiance streamed out from between her clenched fingers; the flesh glowed pinkly translucent, and the slender shadows of the bones. She turned her hand this way and that; the light
bathing first one of the Whelm, then another. They struggled toward her, dismayed, and as the light caught each in turn they flung out their arms as though trying to grip the air, and fell to the floor. She saw Vartila fold over in the middle, sliding forward like someone diving into shallow water and striking the floor with her face.

The light fell briefly on Maigraith and she was surrounded by red whirling darkness. A wave caught her, flung her away, then the black folded in on itself and she could see again. The hallucination drifted toward her, behind her, her bonds fell away and she was caught about the waist as she fell, and lowered to the floor. Maigraith closed her eyes. A hand touched her shoulder. She tensed, then a voice, cool but not at all like the Whelm, said, “Drink this,” and helped her to a sitting position.

She held out her hands to take the cup, but they were numb. The cup was held to her lips. She sipped the thick aromatic fluid, and it warmed her. After a few sips she pushed the cup away, opening her eyes a fraction.
“Faelamor!”
she whispered, smiling weakly. “How came you here so quickly?”

Faelamor did not smile back. “I came from Sith to meet you, and heard that you were prisoner here.” The corners of her mouth were tight with strain. She had a small hoarse voice, the only aspect of her that was not, at this time, utterly controlled. She must indeed have been exhausted, to allow the illusion to slip, even in front of Maigraith. “But we will talk of that in a moment. We must go at once. Can you walk?”

“I do not think so, not yet.”

Faelamor rubbed her feet and legs until the circulation began to come back, while Maigraith lay staring up at her. Faelamor’s eyes were deep-sunk, with a golden, almost feline liquidity. Her skin was smooth as waxed rosewood, and
translucent; the pink tint of flesh showed through and the blue webs of veins. That was just the most visible difference between Faellem and human, though they usually covered their skin, or dyed it. Her features were as delicate and precisely formed as a sculpture, but it was the smoothness and delicacy of a mask, and Maigraith had no idea what she might be thinking. Only once did her face betray anything, when she examined Maigraith’s scourgings.

“Why did they do this to you? Had I seen this first, what I used on them would have been no illusion.”

“I don’t know.” Maigraith was weeping softly with the pain. “They seemed to hate me as soon as they saw me.”

Faelamor examined the still forms of the Whelm. She bent down and began stripping the clothing off the smallest. She came back with her arm laden with boots, robes and undergarments. Maigraith looked at them with distaste.

“I will not wear the underclothes,” she said, but allowed Faelamor to help her with the robes, noticing for the first time that Faelamor’s hands were old, and they shook a little. The boots were too long and narrow, hurting her feet as soon as she put them on. The coarse fabric rubbed against her injured back and thighs.

“How did you do that?” she asked, looking at the still forms of the Whelm scattered so casually about the room. “What was that in your hand?”

“Each has their weakness, as I taught you. For the Whelm our mind-twisting illusions are enough, though to quell this many was a great trial. The device? Nothing at all, just an image to strengthen my illusion. Drink the rest of the cup now, it will ease the pain. I can do nothing for your wounds until we are safely away.” She offered Maigraith her arm.

Maigraith felt confused and uneasy. Faelamor in the role of protector was strange to her, though it was good to have
someone to lean on, to follow rather than to lead, to not have to decide. But it did not last.

“Did you get as far as the library? Was the Mirror there?”

Maigraith stopped dead. “You do not
know!
The Mirror is gone. Karan escaped weeks ago, to bring it to you in Sith. How is it that you have not heard?”

“Karan the sensitive!
You utter fool! I warned you to go alone. Far better that you had not come at all.”

The coldness, the feeling that she was of little value, this was what she was used to. How thankless to be Faelamor’s protégée; how impossible to prove her worth. But there was worse to come, for as she spoke the light from a lamp beside the door fell on Maigraith’s face. “Your eyes!” Faelamor said, in a whisper. “Your eyes have changed. You have not taken the
kalash
, as I bade you. Why do you not take the drug?”