A Shadow on the Glass (52 page)

Karan and Llian stared at one another, shocked at the suddenness of the tragedy, then the current whipped them around a bend in the gorge and Shazmak was lost to sight

Ahead of them the gorge opened out and the current slackened a little, although it was still desperately fast. The straight stretched before them for perhaps a league. Llian, who was sitting in the bow of the boat, looked back at Karan. She made a small, pale, upright figure at the stern, holding the steering arm with her left hand.

“He always loved me,” she cried, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “From childhood he was my dearest friend. They were all my friends, once. How I have repaid them. Tensor is right—I have become a monster, incapable of trust. I should have let them take me.”

Llian rose and began to waver down to her. The boat rocked dangerously.

“Sit down,” she snapped.

The boat sped on down the swift-flowing river. The channel was wide but here and there choked with broken rock around which the water swirled crazily or rushed over in staircase rapids. The cliffs fell sheer to the river on either side and the low winter sun did not reach the water. Karan remained at the stern, refusing all offers of food, though several times she took small sips of water. Once Llian offered to spell her, but she only said, “There is rough water ahead, beyond your skill. The Aachim taught me to sail the Garr. How they must rue it!”

* * *

All that day they sailed the river, Karan’s face a white mask and her hand a claw on the steering arm. At last the sun passed beyond the mountains, though the light lingered.

“Are you going to keep on in the darkness?” Llian asked as the sun went down. Karan had been like a statue for hours.

“No!”

Shortly they passed out of the gorge into hilly country. They had to find a place to land and abandon the boat, for already they could hear the roar of the great falls, where the river plunged over the cliffs into the land of Bannador.

There was but a little light remaining when Karan turned the boat out of the stream toward a rocky bay on the right. They glided across the still, dark water and the keel grated on stone. Llian jumped out and pulled the bow onto the shore. He carried his pack up the beach and found a place to camp, a patch of coarse gray sand among the boulders. Then he went back for the remaining gear, but Karan shouted, “Leave it. Go away!”

He walked downstream over the boulders and rock ledges, the coarse sand and flood-wedged nests of debris that formed the shoreline. From ahead came a continuous roar. He clambered onto a spire of rock to see if he could see the falls, but the light was too dim to make out the farther course of the river. He looked back at the boat. Karan was taking things, unidentifiable in the failing light, out of Rael’s pack, one by one, looking at them and placing them carefully to one side. Finally she put a few things back, fastened the pack and, wading out until the water was up to her waist, pushed it out into the current. She stood there for a moment, staring at the place where it had disappeared, then splashed her way back to shore and walked up to the campsite.

“Will they follow us?” Llian wondered a little later.

“Not tonight. Their other boats are hours from that place.
They dare not sail the river in darkness; there is no landing place between the city and here. The Aachim are few, and life is precious. The loss of the five in the other boat, and Rael, will be a bitter blow to Tensor. As to me; they were my friends.” She got up abruptly.

“Then they cannot reach here until this time tomorrow.”

“Earlier—after midday.”

“In that case let’s make our camp and dry ourselves. May we risk a fire?”

“If you can find any wood. Now leave me alone.” She walked away.

Llian set up a camp among the rocks a short distance from the river, and after some clumsy work with the hatchet in the darkness he had obtained enough splinters from the boat to start a fire, as well as some larger pieces. Returning to the fire with another armload he found Karan sitting on a stone in her wet clothes, staring into the flames and shivering fitfully.

He spoke to her but she gave no sign of having heard him. He went back to the boat, bringing back what remained of Rael’s gear: the bag of food, a small tent, a sleeping pouch. Karan had not moved. He took his cloak and placed it around her shoulders to break the wind, which, out of the shelter of the gorge, blew strongly. He took off her boots and stockings and dried her feet What beautiful feet you have, he thought oddly, holding them in his hands, but so cold. He toweled her feet until the pink warmth came back, then removed her outer garments, dried her, replaced them one by one with dry clothing, finally putting her feet in the sleeping pouch and pulling it up around her. Apart from lifting her arms or her feet when necessary she gave no sign that she noticed what he was doing.

Karan sat unmoving while Llian put the tent up in the darkness. He gave her hot, sweet tea; she sipped it absently.
He cooked food; she ate it without a word. He built up the fire and retired to his own pouch, lying there in the darkness surrounded by the rushing of the river, the crackling of the fire, the sighing of the wind. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but the past days were so full in his head that sleep would not come. The night grew cold under the clear sky and the stars wheeled. Only now did it occur to him to wonder about the Mirror, and what she had done at the trial. Did she really have it? How had she smuggled it out of Shazmak?

A long, shuddering ululation smashed him awake. Llian leapt out of the tent. Karan was flinging her head from side to side, crying and tearing at her clothes. Now she went still and pressed her palms to her temples as though trying to squeeze something out of her head. Her staring eyes passed over him without recognition. Had her grief driven her mad?

He touched her hand and the nightmare rushed out of her like air out of a bladder. Karan flopped onto the sand, sound asleep. He picked her up in his arms, the pouch still around her, and placed her carefully in the shelter. The bitter frost seared his bare feet. She did not stir. Hours more he lay awake, watching the stars swinging across the sky, going over and over their escape, wondering if there was any way that Rael might have been saved. And dreading that he might wake in the morning to find Karan gone mad. And if she had he could not save them, for he had no idea where to go from here.

L
lian woke, still weary, to the crackling of the fire. Where was he? Then he saw the ruined boat on the sand and the memories came back. The winter sun, rising, told how little sleep he’d had.

Karan was already up, making tea, the pot balanced on a small nest of kindling. Her eyes were red, and when he spoke she did not answer. She walked across to the boat and attacked it furiously with the hatchet. Llian groaned and closed his eyes. Shortly he was woken again, this time by Karan shaking his shoulder insistently.

“Get up, you’ve slept too long already. Here!”

A mug of ginger tea was thrust under his nose. The pungent aroma went up his nostrils, he jerked and bumped her hand, and a few drops spilled on his bare chest. He swore. Karan banged the mug down on the sand, stalked across to the tent and began to pull it down. Considering her arm she was surprisingly adept.

When she had finished, and all was packed save Llian’s few things, she called out crossly, “Are you ready yet?”

Llian gulped down the remains of the tea, which was still too hot, quickly dressed and threw his gear into the pack. They ate well, onions and eggs, a little piece of meat and a mound of vegetables and pounded grains all cooked together in a pan and piled onto a slab of dark bread, with the remains of the tea. It was very strong; the ginger seared his throat and cleared away the slightly dizzy lack-of-sleep feeling. He felt better.

She picked up a sliver of wood and smoothed the sand in front of her, and began to answer the question that he had not asked. Her voice was dreary.

The stick etched a wavy line that extended in a southeasterly direction. “The River Garr. We are here. The mountains here; here the falls. Then the river runs through the hills of Bannador and Sable.” Each time she said “here” she made a dot in the sand with her stick.

“North of Sable, here, the river marks the boundary between Crayde and Plendur. There is a loop in the river here, then it turns south and splits into two channels around the island of Sith—the free city. That is my destination. Until we reach Sith we’re in danger, maybe even then. We will go down the cuffs here and follow the river. There are towns along the eastern side—perhaps we can hire a boat to take us to Sith. That journey would take four or five days. On foot, it would be weeks.”

“I thought you were going to Bannador?”

“My final destination was always Sith, and from here it’s closer than home, by river.”

“You didn’t tell me about this way before,” said Llian.

“Nor would I now, if there was any other choice. It’s an escape route for the Aachim, but it could be used to enter Shazmak secretly, and so they keep it hidden.”

“You are … all right today?”

“Of course I’m all right,” she said sharply. “What did you expect, that I had gone mad?”

He looked away.

“Six Aachim drowned yesterday because of me.” She walked off and stood staring at the river. By the time she came back Llian was ready to go.

“What about the Whelm?”

“The Sentinels around Shazmak reported no sign of them.”

“Then we are safe from them?”

Karan was silent. Three times before she’d shaken them, and suddenly they came from nowhere, each time after a dream. They touched her in her sleep and drew a thread back to them. Last night’s nightmares were the strongest she’d ever had. She shuddered. They will come again. They want me, as much as the Mirror, but you are nothing to mem. They would smash you down without a thought. Oh Llian, I can’t lose you as well!

“They’ll find me again. Let us go, quickly.” Some of the color had come back into her voice, the urgency of today’s problems distracting her from the disaster of yesterday. She smoothed out the sand with her stick and they departed. There was no path, but the way was easier along the river bank and they took that route.

“Shouldn’t we try to hide our tracks?” asked Llian, as they crossed from a boulder field to a broad expanse of coarse gray sand, leaving deep marks.

“Why?” Karan responded. ‘Tensor knows the way we take. There is no other. When we obtain the river again, below the cliffs, will be soon enough.”

Now they turned away from the river, which was on their left, and made their way through a meadow of hummocks and boulders, bogs and little rocky pools, still rimed with
ice. They paused at the top of a round hillock. Ahead a few hundred paces the land disappeared on a gentle curve as though it had slid downwards, leaving a line of cliffs sweeping away out of sight both to right and left. Immediately to their left the river rushed over the precipice and thundered down, obscuring all before them in spray and mist which the uprushing wind whirled about, before running away through the steep hills to the southeast, where its course was eventually lost in the haze. Behind them the mountains of Chollaz loomed up, an impenetrable snow-clad wall with the great gorge of the Garr a black slot cutting through it.

“I don’t see a way down,” Llian murmured.

Karan glanced at him. She had a preoccupied air. Eventually she spoke. “There! In front of you. That crack.”

Immediately to the north-east the meadow was cut by a fissure which ran parallel to the cliff line and joined up with it several hundred paces away. They walked across to it and Llian peered down into the dimness. The walls were almost sheer, of crumbling limestone, and the bottom beyond sight. His stomach turned over.

“I can’t climb down there,” he said wanly, turning a shade of gray. “Does it go all the way to the bottom?”

“Of course not. The cliff is more than three hundred spans high. That little crevice is scarcely fifty. The base of the fissure leads into the caves. Perhaps I should send you first. If you’re going to fall anyway, there’s no point in you knocking me down as well.”

“That’s not funny,” he said. “You know how I hate heights.”

“I’m sorry, I hate the world today. I’ll lead the way. It won’t be so bad now, the ginger will steady your stomach. Just put your hands and feet exactly where I put mine. This path is very old and the rock could be rotten.”

Karan adjusted her pack, eased the cast on her wrist and
climbed awkwardly down into the fissure. The first few paces were steeply sloping broken rock. At the bottom of this incline she paused, groping with first one foot and then the other. She looked doubtfully up at Llian.

“Just here where it falls sheer there should be metal rungs let into the rock,” she said.

“Perhaps they’ve rusted and fallen away; perhaps you’re in the wrong place.”

“They would not use
iron
for such a purpose,” Karan said, still feeling about with her foot She looked carefully about her. “No, this is the place, I’m quite sure of it.”

“How long is it since you came this way? Perhaps part of the cliff has fallen.”

“I’ve never been this way. As I told you, the path is secret. Since the Aachim sealed themselves away from the world it has been used only in great need, lest the way be discovered. But it is known to all the Aachim and to those they trust. And even to me.” The last was said bitterly.