A Shadow on the Glass (58 page)

“Oh, perfect master,” the Whelm cried. “At last! At last!”

“Oh faithful servants
,” it boomed. Vast, forbidding, foreboding.
“The crisis approaches, and so much to do. Listen, and obey. Already the link fades. Do you remember yourselves?”

“Now we remember. We are Ghâshâd, master.”

“I have an enemy, Ghâshâd!”

“We know him, now.”

“Torment him. Goad him. Drive him to folly. But do not harm him. Call together the Ghâshâd, and when the opportunity comes, seize it!”

Llian woke the next morning more tired than when he’d lain down to rest: the whole night, it seemed, he had been a fugitive in a shadow land. Always he fled, always he was pursued. His colossal enemy grew more powerful and more baleful as he came closer, and he could do nothing to save himself, for there was another presence in his mind that tormented him and frustrated his every way of escape.

Now a light shone on his face and a stake was in his back. He prised open his puffy lids. It was morning, and the sun shone in his eyes. He leapt up, rubbing his back. At first he struggled to remember the chain of folly that had led him to this spot, alone in the bright morning on a bare hilltop. Memory of the previous night came stealthily, then flooded back.

Karan!
What madness of the night had led him to this place? Call it by its true name: what cowardice? How could he have abandoned her, been held to such a ridiculous promise?

He flung the pack over his shoulder, glanced at the sun. It
was after seven o’clock. He had to find her. She might be at the ferry already. He ran down to the path and looked over toward the river. There was Name, a clutter of buildings and jetties on the far side. And there was the ferry now, inching its way directly across. His gaze followed its path. On his side of the river was a smaller wharf of wooden piles, partly hidden by a grove of trees, and an open shed housing the huge cable wheel. It was half a league away. If he ran he could be there in twenty minutes. Surely it would not be gone.

He set off with bounding strides, but the path was little more than a stony gully; with each bound the pack crashed into his back, unbalancing him. After falling twice and nearly breaking an ankle he dropped back to a fast walk until he reached the bottom of the ridge. Then he ran again but it was almost half an hour later that, weak-kneed and dripping sweat, he staggered onto the wharf, past a straggle of rustics who looked at him without curiosity.

The ferry was a hundred spans out into the stream on its return journey and, despite his wild caperings and beseeching cries, it continued steadily on, grinding on its cable, the upstream gunwale pushed down to water level by the force of the river. Ten people were visible on the deck, though none resembled Karan with her bright hair and pale face.

Llian ran back to the group of laborers, who by now were making their way up the hill, and called out to the nearest, a tall uncouth-looking fellow in baggy green shirt and brown pantaloons, carrying a hoe over one shoulder. The group kept walking as he ran beside them.

“Hey!” he cried. The fellow turned and looked at him but did not stop. He was unshaven, with several days of stubble on his cheeks and a bulbous nose.

“Did you see a woman, red hair, green eyes, about this
tall, get on the ferry?” he asked, holding his palm out level with his nose and running backwards to keep up.

“Eh?” said bulbous nose thickly.

Llian repeated the question, slowly, loudly.

The man’s rubbery lips parted in a leer, revealing a crater full of black stumps. “Woman, red hair, beautiful!” He sounded as though he was talking with a mouthful of molasses. He grinned broadly. The vision of decay was so horrible that Llian was forced to look away.

“Beautiful? No, I didn’t say that,” he began, then realized that the man was talking to himself.

“Did you see her?” Llian asked urgently, still running backwards. He caught his foot in a pothole and fell sprawling.

“No, no girl, no red hair, no girl,” the man said, his voice trailing off, then looked away and lengthened his stride.

Llian sat on the ground where he had fallen, looking after the little group of laborers. “No girl! No girl!” came drifting back to him, then they disappeared over a rise, heading downstream.

Llian calculated. Last night he’d walked for at least two hours. She’d have to have left well before dawn to have caught the ferry. He ran back down to the wharf and stood there, unable to decide what to do. He took his pack off and sat down beneath a tree, alternately looking across the river to Name and back up the path. No one came. Time passed; he grew uneasy. He paced the wharf.

Where
was
she? She should have come long since. Suddenly he came to a decision. He’d leave the pack here and go back up the path a little, just to the top of the ridge, to see if he could see her coming. Llian thrust it into a tangle of berry bushes down below the end of the jetty and set off back up the path.

From the crest of the hill he looked back. The ferry was
almost across to Name. The stony soil showed no footprints, not even his own. Forward the path disappeared in the thick forest that began part-way down the ridge.

A feeling of woe grew in him. Something had happened to her—Tensor must have found a way across and used another of his potencies on her. That was why she had sent him away. He, Llian, should have been there to help her. What a fool, a cowardly wretch he was.

Without any conscious decision he found himself jogging back to the camp. The further he went the more his disquiet grew; the jog turned to a run, the run to a sprint, he must not stop, not for the agony in his side or the throb of his head, down valley, across stream, up hill, across clearing he ran, on and on, gasping down each breath. At last, here was the brook cutting across the path. He dashed up, into the clearing, and stopped.

There was no sound but his hacking breath. The grassy mound was shady, cold, damp, and the tall trees seemed to hang back from it. The tent was still there. The unease drained from him in a wave of relief. She must have decided to stay another day.

“Karan,” he called. There was no answer.

A shiver began to make its way up the back of bis neck. He walked across and saw that the tent was torn open. Karan’s pack lay half inside. It had been ripped apart, the frame smashed beyond repair. The contents were strewn about and broken. Inside the tent the blankets were in disarray. Llian picked one up. It was slashed and covered in blood. The others were the same. He dragged them out of the shelter. The ground beneath was also wet with blood, a great deal of it. More than one person could lose and still be alive. He threw himself on the ground and wept.

W
hen Faelamor finally poled the boat out of the channel into the reed thicket, it was near to sunset Ten hours had gone by since she had stolen Maigraith out of Fiz Gorgo. Maigraith was slumped against the side, feverish and only semiconscious, her blistered feet in a black, foul-smelling slurry of mud and swamp water that washed back and forth with every lurch of the boat They grounded suddenly on an island of mud. Maigraith gave a low moan and opened her eyes. They were sunken, the whites yellowed.

Faelamor stepped out into the brown water and pulled the boat up onto the bank, though with the tall reeds all around there was no chance that it would drift away. Then she backtracked, teasing the bent reeds back to their former positions until there was no sign that anything had passed that way. She climbed onto the shelf of mud, exploring the island. The mud was soft on the surface but firm beneath and clung to her boots in sticky layers, so that it took an effort just to
heave each foot forward. She forced her way through the reeds to the other side, then back again and across the other way. There was no dry land anywhere, just cold gray mud and the reeds and a single spindly tree, long dead. With sunset the mist began to rise.

When she returned to the boat Maigraith was sitting up, retching over the side. She looked up as the boat rocked, then another spasm caught her and she clung to the side again. Faelamor watched her impassively.

“We’ll make camp in the boat,” she said, when Maigraith was better again. “There’s nothing but mud here. Let me at tend you now, while there remains some light.”

Faelamor eased the stiff fabric from her back and examined the wounds carefully. “You’ve taken in some poison here, and here,” she said, frowning. “I would guess that they had it on one of the instruments. I’ve a liniment that will help.”

She took three steps to the other end of the boat to rummage in her pack. The wind cut into Maigraith’s back. Her coarse garments were already dank from the mist. The night was bleak. Faelamor returned and smeared her wounds with the ointment. The touch of her fingers was painful but the salve brought a relieving numbness.

“I’ve nothing to dress your injuries with; they are too many, though they’ll heal quickly now. Put this on.” Faelamor took a long loose shirt out of her sack; it sighed over Maigraith’s shoulders and down her back like silk. Maigraith held it back up while Faelamor treated her remaining wounds.

Maigraith woke late the next morning to find the boat sliding through an endless swamp forest. The water was dark, the color of tea, and speckled on the surface with yellowing leaves of the sard tree. The trees were tall, at least twenty
spans, with enormous boles and multiple trunks; soft bark the color and texture of parchment hung down in banners or floated on the water in rafts. The boat was heading almost due north; the low sun struck at them through a gap in the trees.

“Good morning,” she called out to Faelamor, who was poling the boat from the stern.

Faelamor, who had evidently spent the night brooding about Maigraith’s failures, stared at her briefly, scowled and turned away without answering. All the morning they continued in the same direction; after every temporary detour Faelamor turned the boat due north. At midday Maigraith tried again.

“Where are we going? Why north?”

“Be silent!” she shouted at her. “I no longer trust you with my business. Ask no questions. You failed me, after all I taught you.”

Faelamor turned away and resumed her poling, heaving the boat along with furious thrusts.

Maigraith closed her eyes, laid her head on the side and tried to sleep. And sleep she did; that day and the next she spent more time asleep than awake, the boat rocking gently under her. And surprisingly, her dreams were gentle too, most of the time. Once only she dreamed of the Whelm and woke screaming. Faelamor was beside her at once, stroking her damp brow and murmuring to her in the language of the Faellem. As she drifted back to sleep she thought she saw a tinge of pity in Faelamor’s eyes, that she had never seen before. Pity—or sorrow. Something that Faelamor had never allowed herself to show.

Whenever she woke the picture was the same: Faelamor standing at the stern, pole in hand, staring straight ahead with a face of stone. Twice a day she stopped briefly while
they ate a silent meal of bread, smoked fish and dried fruits, washed down with the cold brown water from the swamp.

On the fourth day Maigraith stirred well after midnight. The crescent of the rising moon slanted through the thin leaves, the white trunks stretching away in all directions like the columns of a temple. The boat was still, Faelamor taking a brief rest at the stern. Maigraith came softly up to her, laying a hand on her shoulder.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I failed you badly. But everything is not lost. Karan still has the Mirror. She will bring it to you. She swore a binding oath.”

Faelamor woke up suddenly, dashing Maigraith’s hand away. Her ageless face suddenly cracked. “You wretched fool,” she said. “Don’t beg. I can never forgive you. I told you to go alone.”

Maigraith took an involuntary step backwards, caught her heel on a rib of the boat and fell heavily against the side. Faelamor stared down at her with a bitterness rooted in the age-long frustration of the Faellem.

“I had to have her help; I could not do it alone.”

“Pah! This upstart Yggur is no match for you, for what I made of you.”

“That may be so. Sometimes even / feel that I am strong. But there is one thing you neglected in my training, one vital thing. The will, the urge to dominate. I did my duty by you, sent away with Karan that thing which you want so badly; even overmastered Yggur for a time. I took no pleasure from that, and soon my will failed me. Later, when I knew him and what troubles him, I came to pity him. I learned that in Fiz Gorgo.”