A Shadow on the Glass (55 page)

He sat there, enjoying the stillness as the light slowly faded. Karan crossed back and forth in front of him with her quick, graceful step, now cutting out a circle of turf and the soil beneath, now lining the hollow with stones from the river, building a little nest of shredded bark and twigs. Ex pertly she set it smoldering with a single spark, blowing the spark into red fire and feeding it with larger sticks until it blazed up. She looked up and caught his eyes on her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I was just thinking how little your wrist hinders you. There seems to be nothing you can’t do for yourself.”

“The first time I broke it I was fleeing for my life. I had to do everything, and so I learned to. It healed quickly, but it troubled me even after I met you, for I’d set it badly. You and Rael did a better job—already the bones are knitting. There’s no pain anymore unless I jar it. But there’s no strength in it either. Go and bathe if you want to-I’ll cook tonight. Here,” she threw something at him. “Use my soap.”

Llian caught it and went downstream a little way, where he took off his clothes and stepped into the water. The stream was only a couple of paces wide and no deeper than his ankles. He squatted among the coarse pebbles and scrubbed himself with soap and handfuls of sand. The water was cold on his toes, but nothing like the Garr had been. It was invigoratingly cold, and his scoured skin tingled.

She glanced down at him once or twice as she cooked.

He’d lost weight on their trek and his shoulders seemed disproportionately broad, his ribs bony; yet he still had a care less, boyish charm. And he seemed to have gained something—he was more confident, less awkward.

Just then Llian looked up from drying himself with his shirt. He caught her gaze on him and, suddenly self-conscious, dropped the shirt into the water. He let out a yelp and darted after it, and Karan turned away with a smile.

“Only you would stand in the river to dry yourself,” she said as he came up.

“And where would you stand?” he asked with mock surliness.

“By the fire of course. Where else?”

She served the food with a flourish, with some of the dark granular Aachim bread and small sprigs of a minty herb that grew beside the stream. They ate silently, their only accompaniment the snapping and popping of the fire and the placid gurgle of the stream. Llian rinsed the plates in the river and stood them against a cobble to dry. Karan took a generous pinch of tiny pods from a bag, crushed them between two stones and brewed a special kind of coffee from them. While it was simmering she went down to the river and rejoiced in the cold water too. There had been so few opportunities before Shazmak. How she hated to be dirty.

“The coffee’s ready,” Llian called, and she wrung the water from her hair and came quickly up to the fire. She revolved slowly, bathing in the warmth, the firelight turning the drops on her pale skin into rubies, and her tangled hair to polished copper. Llian was watching her without expression, though she noticed that his hand shook as he poured the coffee, spilling it on his foot. She dried herself quickly on a clean shirt and wrapped her coat around her. She combed her tangles as best she could, dabbed lime perfume on the back of her neck and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I can’t remember when I last had such a cup,” she sighed, making a bowl around the mug with her hands and breathing the rich aroma. “I wonder where Rael… came by it. It doesn’t grow in Bannador anymore-the frosts are too hard. What a pity we have no wine.”

“No, but I’ve something that will serve,” said Llian, remembering the little silver flask that had lain in the bottom of his pack all the weeks since he left Chanthed. “It’s a liquor that we make in Chanthed in the winter. We drink it to celebrate an unexpected good fortune, or the return of a loved one.”

He unscrewed the cap on its silver chain and passed the flask to Karan. She sniffed cautiously then took a small sip. The liquor was thick and sweet, with a pungent aftertaste of wild herbs, and it burned her lips and throat. She took another small sip then passed the flask, with a smile, back to Llian.

There they sat in silence, on opposite sides of the fire, with their coffee and their thoughts. Karan looked serene in the flickering light, but Llian’s thoughts went back to the trial and the Mirror, and the entrancing possibility that the information he sought might lie within it. Dare he ask her again to see it? He hesitated to.

“We’re in my country now,” she said. “How I love it.”

“I didn’t know that Name was in Bannador.”

“Name isn’t. Horrible, ugly place, full of unpleasant people. The river marks the border here. Bannador is a long narrow land, right against the mountains.” She breathed a great sigh.

“You’re in good spirits tonight. Are you no longer afraid of Tensor?”

“I am. He will never give up. By morning they may even have crossed the river.”

“And after you’ve given the Mirror away?”

“He will pursue it rather than me. If he gets it, perhaps there will be an amnesty. Perhaps not. Who knows?”

“Could they have taken the ferry tonight?” Llian asked, suddenly afraid that the Aachim might even now be creeping toward them. He looked around him. The light from the fire flickered, throwing long shadows on the grass, turning the enveloping forest into a hard dark wall.

“I don’t think so. I’ve thought about it all day. How could they have reached Name in time? They might hire a ferry during the night, but how would they find us up here, in all the forest? No, they’ll wait.”

“So, what are you going to do with the Mirror now?”

She looked into his brown eyes. “I’ve made so many plans, and broken them all. At least, every option has been closed off, save the first. I will keep my oath to Maigraith after all, and take it to her liege in Sith. And pray that no evil comes of it. If we get up early, and get the first ferry across to Name, we can hire a boat and be in Sith in four days.”

“What then?”

“I get rid of the Mirror and go straight home to Gothryme. I’ve been gone much longer than I said I would.”

“How far is that from here?”

“It’s at the other end of Bannador. A week or two. So what will you do? Continue on to Thurkad?”

Karan held her breath, and Llian did too. They had only been together for a month, but it could have been years, so shocking was the realization that they might soon part and never see each other again.

“Well, that was my destination. I don’t know. I suppose I will head in that direction.”

Karan’s knuckles were white, so tightly were her fists clenched.

“And then, I’ve never spent time in Bannador.” He gave her a sly glance from under his lashes. “What is it like at
Gothryme this time of year? Would I be bored, do you imagine, if I went there for a day or two?”

“It is the most wonderful place on Santhenar, at any time of the year,” she said, laughing. “At least, if that is what you think. Here is an idea—what say you walk that far with me, and I will show you some of the special places that I know, and then, when the rains have eased and the snow is hard, and you have read all the Histories in our library, and told me all your tales, and we are heartily sick of one another, you can go on to wherever you want to.”

“Then it is settled. Who knows what I might find in your library. I
will
walk to Gothryme with you.”

She settled back with her eyes closed. Llian drifted away in his own thoughts. What could he make of the clue that Tensor had given him? Even if Tensor’s guess was right, it could have been any of the three Charon who had come to Santhenar after the flute. Three cities to search. What did he know of them?

Alcifer, Rulke’s great city and the closest of the three, was still inhabited. It lay on the coast less than a hundred leagues south of Sith. But doubtless Rulke’s records were long gone. Mendark would know, but would he tell?

Havissard, Yalkara’s fortress, lay far to the east, in the mountains of Crandor, not that far from Llian’s homeland, Jepperand. He knew nothing about Havissard.

Katazza, the island city of Kandor’s empire, was in the middle of the once beautiful Sea of Perion. But the sea had dried up long ago, and Katazza was abandoned after Kandor’s death. That was also a long way off, and no longer shown on current maps, which depicted the Dry Sea as a vast desolation. And if Tensor was wrong, Llian’s quest was no further advanced than when he’d left Chanthed.

* * *

“What did you do to the Syndics, Karan?” asked Llian a while later.

“It’s not easy to explain,” she said, thinking back on it. “I’m not sure that I understand it myself. I don’t even know where it comes from, that talent of mine: perhaps from my grandmother, Mantille, though it’s not a gift that is common among the Aachim. Perhaps from my own family. My talent allows me, sometimes, to sense the feelings or moods of certain people, even when they are far away. If the need is dire and the temper takes me, sometimes I can make a sending, even a link, though at cost of much pain and aftersickness.”

“That night, when I was in Tullin?”

“That was one such time,” she replied, “though I was not sending to you, specifically. There was no one for me to focus on, just a vague sense that help might be near.”

“I think you woke everyone in Tullin that night,” Llian murmured.

“Such sendings are difficult, and very dangerous. Often they go astray. But I did not do anything to the Syndics,” she said with a twisted smile. “I did it to you—that’s why you can scarcely remember.” She paused. “No one can lie to the Syndics. That was my salvation, a formal trial, and why I made such a fuss about my honor. More than was necessary for someone who stands revealed in high hypocrisy, you might think,” she said, looking away. “But if Tensor had been able to question me directly, you and I would both be dead now.

“Think back to the night before. When you were asleep I made another sending to you. It was easier that time: you were still weak from Emmant’s charm. I took the little amulet you wore around your neck, to bind you to me. Doubtless you’ve missed it; I lost it afterwards. I put my tale into your mind: the taking of the Mirror and how I eventually came to Shazmak. Most of the story you knew, and
everything was true except for what happened after Fiz Gorgo. I put one lie into your dream, that I had given away the Mirror at Lake Neid; that ever since I had been just a decoy. I could not risk a greater deceit; they knew too much. But a small lie might pass.

“In the trial I rewoke your dream memory and, as you relived my story, I took it back and told it to the Syndics. That was a hazardous thing,” she said, making a profound understatement. “I don’t think anyone has ever done that before. But the Syndics believed it. Better, they
knew
it to be true because for you it
was
true and I told it as you knew it. Only Tensor did not believe; I was acting strangely and he was sure of his own information. Besides, he did not want to believe. He could not go against the Syndics in open court, but as the bringer of the charges he had the right to persuade them in secret council. Then it became only a matter of time before all the oddnesses were piled together and sent my story crashing down. I’m sorry for using you, but there was no other way.”

“I’m not. You should have been a teller—no tale was ever told more convincingly.”

Karan had been smiling as she told her story, a soft slow sad smile, but all of a sudden she seemed struck by a pain, or perhaps a premonition, and as she finished speaking she put her hands over her face.

“Oh!” she cried once, her voice muffled. “Oh!” she said again. “Such pain. No, I cannot. Oh!”

“Karan, what is it?” he whispered.

Then she looked up at Llian, slowly taking her hands away, and so great was the change in her that he could scarcely comprehend it. The warmth was gone from her voice, and the quirky way that her mouth curled up at the corners when she smiled was no more. Her cheeks were sunken, her voice cold and distant and full of bitterness, so
that it frightened him, and it came haltingly, as though even to speak took more strength than she had.

“Be warned! I am a great danger to my friends. Some I betray, some I lead to their deaths, some I twist their minds. Why do you linger, Llian? Get away while you can.”

Llian sat there, confused and shocked, staring into the fire, hardly daring to look up lest she caught his eye. What had happened just then? Just when he thought he knew her, she had turned everything upside down again.

A long time went by. Karan sat utterly still. The fit, or whatever had possessed her, had passed, leaving her bereft. She had opened up a gulf between them and Llian knew not how to bridge it.

“What did you really do with the Mirror?” he began at last, haltingly. “You told Rael that you had it. Was that another lie?”

She winced as though he’d struck her, and all at once she looked terribly sad. “No, I have it,” she said. “But I will not speak of it, tonight of all nights,” and she gathered her coat around her and disappeared into the tent.

L
lian remained by the fire for a long while, alone with his doubts, angry and miserable. Then suddenly all his confusion and anger evaporated, as he realized how clever she’d been, how she’d found the only way out, how hard she’d worked to save him, and how much it had cost her. What was this new attack? Was it Tensor, trying some new weapon of the mind against her, or was it her other enemies trying to find her again?