A Shadow on the Glass (5 page)

He made no comment.

“Are your family all still living?”

“Yes,” Llian said. “They write, though a letter takes half
a year to get here, if it gets here at all, and my reply just as long to return. I would give anything to go home.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I could not save enough from my stipend in fifty years, and they cannot afford to come all this way either. I want to go home as much as ever I wanted to be a chronicler and a teller. And now that I am one, if Mendark does not call me I may try to get passage on a ship, and work my way from port to port telling the Histories. But I’m afraid too. My parents are old now; even little Alyz is a grown woman. What if we have nothing to say to each other?”

Just then a bell rang far away. Thandiwe scrambled to her feet. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Llian sat there after she had left, thinking over his options. Eventually roused by the rumbling in his stomach he turned his steps to the nearest stall, but on putting his hand in his pocket found it was empty. He headed down to the purser’s office to draw his monthly stipend. It would go up substantially now that he was master. As he entered, Turlew came out smirking.

“Llian of Chanthed,
master chronicler
,” Llian said breezily to Old Sal, the tiny clerk behind the counter, who had been there even longer than Wistan had been master. No one knew what her real name was. Everything about Old Sal was bird-like—she had a small round head feathered with white hair, a long slender neck and stilt-like legs, and her arching nose had the look of a beak.

Old Sal knew every one of the students and none better than Llian, who had been a favorite of hers ever since he had entered the college a shy and terrified little boy of twelve.

“Master Llian,” she said, but for the first time ever she did not smile.

“I’ve come for my stipend. It must have gone up now that I am master.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, consulting a register almost as tall as she was, although she knew every entry in it by heart. She angled her head to one side like an inquisitive bird. “I have nothing for you. Your allowance has finished.”

“But it goes on for three months after graduation, and at the higher rate. How can it be cut off?”

“Turlew came down with the authority not long ago. You’ll have to plead with Wistan. I’m sorry.”

“But I just came…” He broke off and turned away.

As he put his hand on the door Old Sal called out. Her wrinkled old face looked genuinely concerned. “I have a little to spare, if you …”

Llian was touched, knowing how little a purser’s clerk earned. “Thank you,” he said bowing. “But I am not desperate yet.”

“Then you will plead with Wistan?”

He laughed hollowly. “I won’t give him the satisfaction. I shall sing for my supper.”

That night he spread the story of his ill-treatment, though not the reason for it, and told a bawdy tale or two in a student’s inn down by the river. Llian’s treatment was unprecedented, arousing the sympathy of all but the most ardent Zain-haters. He passed his cap around at the end and it sagged most cheerfully when it came back, so Llian spent the better part of it buying drinks for all his new friends and mentally damning Wistan. The Histories were more than a profession to him—they were an obsession, and there was little that he would not do to feed that obsession; to track down the last fragment of a tale. When the festival came round in the autumn he would take his rightful place on stage on the final night and tell the
Tale of the Forbidding
just as he had done last night. Then he would leave Chan-thed forever.

Llian arrived back at his room at midnight in a very jovial frame of mind, to find a stony-faced Thandiwe standing by the door. He stood there for a moment, admiring her lithe figure, her golden skin and black hair, her heaving bosom.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, swaying just a little.

“I—I left something here last night,” she said, avoiding his eye.

“Something’s happened! Tell me!”

“Oh, Llian, I’ve been warned to keep away from you.”

“What?”

“I’ve just spent the most unpleasant hour of my life with Wistan and that disgusting little worm of his, Turlew. If I’m seen with you again, I lose my place in the college.”

“Well, damn them!”

“Damn
you
! Llian, I don’t know what you’ve done, but you can please yourself now. I can’t. I have a chance for the Graduation Telling next year. You know how much that means to me. If I’m thrown out, my life will be ruined and everything my family has sacrificed for me will have been wasted.”

“I’m sorry,” said Llian, though still he felt hurt. “Of course you must go.”

“Llian, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care for you. I just can’t see you for a while.”

Her dark eyes pleaded with him to understand, and he did. But he also felt let down. “Goodbye,” he said more coolly than he felt.

Tears streaming down her face, Thandiwe crashed down the steps and out the front door. Llian flopped onto his bed. His whole world was collapsing around him and there was nothing he could do about it.

He took out his book of tales and idly turned the leaves. The book had been his first major work, completed for his initial graduation four years ago, and its hundreds of pages
contained short versions of all the Great Tales. There were enough blank pages at the end for another tale, a youthful fancy that amused him now. The book was indeed a beautiful object, gorgeously illuminated in lapis blue and scarlet, and here and there decorated with pilfered gold and silver leaf. The book was very precious to him, for all that he knew its every imperfection.

Llian put the book down and lay there for hours, staring at the dark ceiling, until the scorpion nebula rose and shone in through his window, red and black. What would the next disaster be?

He found out a few days later, when he signed himself into the library and went down to the archives to have another look at the documents from the time of the Forbidding. They were like old friends to him, these shelves full of tattered scrolls and parchments and codices falling apart from sheer age. He had spent four years of slavery here, teasing out the threads of his tale from the labyrinth of the Histories. Now the death of the crippled girl was preying on his mind and he wanted to see if there was anything he had overlooked.

Along the interminable shelves he went, to the furthest corner of the basement, and signed himself in again to the room where the oldest and most precious documents were kept. Llian turned the corner, luxuriating in the smell of books and the warm spicy odor of the rosewood bookcases. He stopped abruptly. The whole row of shelves was empty—every single document about the time of the Forbidding was gone.

It was like having a skewer thrust through his heart. Llian ran back out to the attendant on duty.

“I don’t know anything about it,” the attendant said, combing a magnificent black beard with his fingers. Crumbs
rained down onto his polished boots. “You’ll have to ask the librarian.”

There was no point running but Llian did so anyway, all the way up to the top floor where the librarian sat in her solitary eyrie, a room packed with catalogs but lacking a single book. She folded her arms and listened to his plea. She was an overly pretty woman, save that she had a tiny prim hole of a mouth. She dressed like a princess, in a purple silk blouse with gold tassels on the shoulders and a full skirt of green silk-satin interwoven with golden threads.

“We can’t have such precious old things lying around where anyone can misuse, or even steal them,” she replied, arranging the pencils on her desk in military rows. “They were getting damaged, so they have been locked away.”

“Libraries are for people,” he said sarcastically.

“No—libraries are for books, and the fewer people in them the better for the books.”

“Anyway, I’d like to see them,” said Llian. “May I have the key, please?”

She consulted a catalog, pursing her lips. Purple lip paint extended beyond the edges of her mouth in a vain attempt to make it seem fuller. “For these documents you must have a permit.”

“And how do I get such a permit?” But he already knew the answer to that.

“Only Wistan can give it!”

After a while Llian’s life settled down into a new routine. He would get up late, somewhat the worse for wear, and after the best breakfast he could afford would go to the library to work at his quest This was a frustrating and mostly fruitless exercise, since he was forbidden the documents he really needed, but he kept on until his eyes hurt from reading. Then he went to one inn or another, telling scurrilous yarns, often
concerning Wistan, for the customers’ entertainment and his profit. After he had gleaned enough coin for the morrow—or not, on one or two occasions—he wavered his way home to bed. Sometimes he saw Thandiwe in passing, but if anyone was looking she turned away, and after a while it became easier to avoid her.

One morning Llian was woken by thumping on his door. It was still dark when he opened it. Outside was a grim-faced bailiff.

“What’s the matter?” asked Llian.

“Wistan, in his office, right now!” The bailiff seized him by the arm.

Wistan’s office was cold and in the light of a single candle he looked positively malevolent. He looked up at Llian sharply, saggy jowls quivering with animosity. “Chanthed exists for the college,” he began, his voice like bristles on canvas. “
My
college! Let me but say the word and you have no room, no library privileges, and not even the meanest water carrier will let you push his cart.”

Llian blinked. “Turlew has told me of your performance in the taverns last night, and other nights,” Wistan went on. “The office of the master will not be mocked.”

Turlew sneered in the background.

“Last night he laughed as loudly as any,” said Llian smiling. “Though he wouldn’t have if he’d stayed for the second act.”

“Be silent! Do not use the
voice
on
me!
What is your intention? No, tell me no more lies—I know it already. You seek to have my office, to so ridicule me that the college will cast me down and declare you master by acclamation.”

Llian gave a bitter laugh. “A Zain, master of the College of the Histories? Not in my time.” Llian cursed his ancestors for their folly, as he had often done. Though the Zain were no longer persecuted, they were still disliked and mistrusted
And, arising out of their persecution, they had a great disdain for authority, though they were generally wise enough not to show it.

“Indeed not! Offend again and I throw you naked out of Chanthed.
Now get out!
”

I will not bow to your threats, thought Llian. I am not friendless. But he had no money, no references and nowhere to go. He set off down the street to a bar that opened at dawn, for it was almost dawn now. Halfway there he stopped.

I can’t go on like this, he thought. I’ve been drinking every day this week.

He sat down on the curb with his feet in the gutter. He was broke, lucky if he had two copper grints. No one would pay for a yarn at this time of day. If he went in he’d have to buy his own, and though drink was cheap, two coppers would melt like camphor on a hotplate.

He went back up the hill to the library, but of course the doors were closed. He could wake up the porter, but the fellow would likely refuse. Llian’s influence had evaporated of late.

He swore. Nowhere to go but back to bed. Then, down the street he caught sight of a pair of students weaving along, doubtless going home from an all-night session. He knew the girl but the fellow was a stranger. What the heck! If they could afford to drink all night they could buy him a few.

Pasting on a harlot’s smile, Llian headed down to drown his miseries.

T
he magical telling was over. Karan, the red-haired woman who had so discomforted Llian, was swept out of the hall with the departing audience. She loved the Great Tales with a passion, and to hear them told at the College of the Histories was one of the high points of her life. The tale still seethed in her brain—being a sensitive, it was as though she had actually been there in the tower with Shuthdar and the crippled girl.

Slowly the flames from the burning tower faded to a memory, and Karan found herself standing alone in the middle of a lawn surrounded by hedges of rosemary and lavender. For a moment she could not work out what she was doing there.

She looked around. Llian and his party had gone and the last of the crowd were disappearing down the path. She should go too, before the guards realized that she had no right to be here. The Graduation Telling was closed to the
public; she might end up in the watchhouse if she were caught. Now her head began to ache, the inevitable result of what she had done. She had been incredibly foolish, but she shied away from thinking about that. Karan pulled the hood down over her face and headed off toward her inn, the cheapest that Chanthed offered.

Karan was small with a pale, round face, a warm open friendly face, framed by a tangled froth of hair as rich and red as sunset in a smoky sky. Her eyes were as green as malachite. She was twenty-three but looked much younger. In times of plenty her form was inclined to roundness, but after the long walk to Chanthed on short rations she was slender.