A Shadow on the Glass (62 page)

Llian gazed at the Mirror in astonishment. It had not occurred to him that it would be coiled up—why would it?
Rael and he had both known those rods were there, but did not even think of them, once the cast was made. And the Whelm had searched hastily, in darkness. Karan must have put it inside when he went to fetch Rael for the plaster.

How desperate he had been to see it. He didn’t want it now—it didn’t belong to him. Then he came suddenly to his senses. What was he doing, sitting here in the open with it in his hands? Anyone could be out there, watching and waiting.

Suppressing the urge to look over his shoulder he slid the Mirror into a deep inside pocket of his cloak and buttoned the flap down, reminding himself to sew it in later, so that it couldn’t possibly be lost. It coiled tightly in the darkness. He tossed the plaster cast casually back on the ground.

If I were a passing vagabond or a treacherous friend I would take all this, he thought, checking Karan’s remaining possessions. At least I look the part. He cut off the unstained portion of a blanket and made a bundle of the items, slinging the swag over his shoulder on a piece of rope.

It was late morning now. Which way had they gone? Searching downstream he found the imprint of a long boot. Further downhill, on the other side of the path, there were more footprints, heavy nailed boots, broad and long. Llian examined them closely. One set was particularly deep. The others were fainter: just the impress of a nail-studded heel here, the crescent edge of a sole there. Was that a splash of blood on the moss? He touched one of the rusty spots with a fingertip, sniffed it. Blood, but whose? Hope welled. They must keep her alive, since they hadn’t found the Mirror.

Llian followed the stream down toward the Garr. Twice he saw other prints, smaller and lighter, that he wondered at, but no more blood. They were the marks left by Maigraith and Faelamor but a few hours earlier, though of course he did not know it. The drizzle turned to misty rain. Suddenly
a horse whinnied right in front of him. Two horses, tethered on long ropes, and the ropes already tangled. Without even thinking, Llian cut them free and kept on.

The gentle valley grew steeper and more rocky, the rivulet deeper and faster and more overgrown. Vines scram bled through the tall trees; ferns grew profusely underfoot and hung from every branch. The air was thick with moisture. Around midday he stopped to gnaw a piece of dark bread, for once having thought of food he realized that he was famished. The rain began to fall heavily.

All day he searched. Before the sun set the forest was covered in a gray mist and there was no further trace of them. Down nearer the river the going was so tangled that he made less than a thousand paces in an hour, and knew that there was almost no hope of finding her. Should he wait for dawn? Their tracks would be lost anyway, with the rain. But they must be making for the river and a secret boat, else they would have taken the path.

He went on, picking his way along the edge of the stream until it grew dangerously steep. There he was forced to turn away into the forest. It was more open along the ridge line. He made good progress and soon emerged on a rind of steeply sloping cleared land. Beyond lay the river, below a rocky bank three or four spans high. Llian followed the clearing upstream. Five minutes’ walk and he found the rivulet again as it cascaded into the Garr over a stepped waterfall, thrice his own height. The rain had cleared but in the dim starlight no tracks were visible. He sat down on a rock to think.

Why come this way unless there was a boat waiting? Were they gone already, or did they wait for the night? He curled up on the damp soil beneath a bush to wait.

* * *

Llian woke suddenly from a troubled sleep. The pale radiance of the Chain of the Tychid filtered through the foliage. He rolled out of his cloak and peered through the vines that screened his camp from the river bank. The starlight gleamed from every leaf and blade, almost bright enough to read by.

Llian stood up and made as if to step out of the forest when he was arrested by a hollow thump: the noise, he realized, that had wakened him. It was followed by a metallic tapping, as against stone; distant, as though it came from the river. Without thinking he slipped out of the forest and crept on his belly to the river bank. There he concealed himself in the bushes that grew along the edge and looked down.

A boat was tied up fore and aft, some fifty paces away. It was long and narrow, with a projection at the front. A shadowy figure, tall and bulky, stood there looking up. Another figure had just begun to scale the rocky upper bank. It reached the top and crouched on the edge, looking this way and that, then, apparently satisfied, slipped across the verge and into the forest. Had Llian not turned aside he would have walked right into them. He worked his way back to the forest and crept closer.

When he was only a few paces from where the figure had disappeared, he wormed his way inside a straggly bush with long, drooping leaves and a faint odor of camphor. There was not long to wait. A sudden crunch of twigs and five tall figures emerged, clad alike in hoods and cloaks of dark cloth, belted at the waist. One came, then two carrying a stretcher between them, then another two with a similar burden.

The first paused at the edge of the forest, looked around, then beckoned to the others. As they passed, starlight fell upon them through a gap in the trees. A wisp of long gray hair escaped from beneath the hood of the leader: Llian saw
a woman of middle age with a strong sharp face and a long chin. The faces of the others were not clearly visible. Llian’s eyes turned to the first stretcher. It bore a man, Whelm, of middle age, tall and heavily built. Long dark hair fell over the stained bandage around his forehead. His chest was bandaged as well, the bandage dark with blood. His eyes were closed and he was tied to the stretcher.

On the second stretcher, wrapped in her tattered cloak, feet bare, her hair tangled, eyes wide open, staring unblinkingly at the place where he stood, was Karan. She, too, was bound to the stretcher. Llian stood, shocked into immobility. Before his sluggish mind could formulate a plan to rescue her the first stretcher had disappeared over the edge of the river bank and the woman was shepherding the second down the steep slope close behind.

Llian wrenched out his knife and for a mad instant contemplated throwing himself after them, but the opportunity had passed before he was really aware of it and he crouched in his bushes in impotent fury as the last bearer disappeared from view.

Crouching low, Llian dashed across the open space to his previous vantage point. The two stretchers were laid side by side, the first gently, the second less so, in the front of the boat. Each of the five took up an oar while the woman untied the bow rope, then the stern, and sat down at the rudder. The vessel began to drift, eased away from the bank with an oar. Directly below Llian it passed, the starlight picking out the projection at the bow, a figurehead in the shape of a chacalot, a voracious water reptile, all teeth and serrated tail. He saw one last time Karan’s staring eyes, then the oarsmen took to their oars, the boat shot out into the full strength of the current and soon was a speck disappearing into the night.

Later, much later, he roused himself. The Chain of the Tychid had sunk behind the forest and the sky was lit only
by a bright planet climbing over the eastern horizon beyond Name. The sky in that direction was streaked with veil-like banners and the rising orb alternately dimmed and shone out brightly as it crept from one gauzy strip to another. Now it was above and in the open, touching patches of foam on the river to an opaline translucency, now skipping little reflections off the ripples caught up by the breeze that had begun to blow from the south. He watched dreamily, the self-reproach that had plagued him washed away in the wind. A curious lassitude took Llian, an acceptance of what had happened. What else could he have done? If things were re versed, would she have done more? But there was no comfort in that thought.

They were Whelm, no doubt of it, though not the ones that had followed them from Tullin. How had they found Karan so quickly? Not by any potency of the Mirror, else they would have found it too.

The questions were unanswerable. Several things were certain though, he mused, ticking them off on his fingers. One: the Aachim were near. Two: the Whelm must hope to keep her capture a secret, at least until they could find where the Mirror was hidden. Three: he had left sign of himself back at the campsite. Soon the attention of both must turn to him. He shivered, trying to avoid the inescapable, but it was forced upon him—it was up to him now. He, alone, unarmed, unskilled, must free Karan and get her away. But how? He had no strength to resist them, and where was there to hide? Nowhere nearer than Thurkad, many days, perhaps weeks away, through lands he hardly knew.

Where had they taken her? Fiz Gorgo was also a journey of weeks. Surely for Yggur, revenge on the thief would come a poor second to getting the Mirror back, as quickly as possible. That meant an answer now. They would go no further than Name.

Llian made his way back along the river bank in the darkness. At first it was easy going in the undulating, cleared land along the shoreline. Then he came on a series of steep gullies, bare and rocky at the top, covered with almost impenetrable wet forest at the bottom. After struggling down into two of these and back up again, and being confronted by a third, Llian realized that it was useless. The night was wearing away; he was tired beyond belief. The way was too dark, too steep and too slippery, and he recalled that this gullied country extended downstream almost to the ferry, for he had looked down on it the previous morning from the high ridge.

While he was walking a thick overcast had blown down from the south and now light rain began falling again. He suddenly lost the will to go further. He huddled in his cloak against the steep edge of the gully, cold, wet and miserable, dozing fitfully until the dawn.

On waking, Llian found himself in a thicket halfway up a ridge. Earlier it had been raining heavily but the rain ceased with the dawn, replaced by a cold mist that crept imperceptibly out of the river. He ate a miserable breakfast standing up, then set out up the ridge. The crest was steep and slippery but the going was easier than in the thick forest, and he realized that he had but to continue along the ridge and he must come on the path to the ferry.

The sun rose at last but the fog only thickened. Llian trudged on up the slope, the mist condensing in small beads on his hair and eyebrows and trickling down his face. The damp had seeped into his bones: however vigorously he stamped his feet and waved his arms it did not warm him. Hours later he came to a narrow path and stood there, hesitating, unable to tell if it was the way to Name or not.

He walked slowly on. In the fog the path was hard to follow
and he strayed continually, one time walking for half an hour on a track that petered out against a moss-covered out crop. Back he trudged. Now his imagination began to trouble him. Each group of bushes that loomed out of the fog became a squad of the enemy. Llian turned and a dark figure stood silently beside him. He sprang out of reach, but it was only a small tree with one branch thrust out over the path.

The fog grew thicker, so that he could see only one or two paces, and now he realized that he had wandered off the path and had no idea where it was. A fragment of the
Lay of Lame
came into his mind, the ballad that told of treachery, the slaughter of the innocents, and the princess heir carried into exile across the sea. It was on a day such as this, with fog in the forest, that the massacre had occurred. The back of his neck crawled.

Llian began to hear noises: rustling and tapping sounds like the wind in the branches—only there was no wind. A sound like footsteps came from behind. He whirled, eyes straining to pierce the fog. There was nothing to be seen, but still the noise continued for a few seconds before dying away. Then a groan, a deep, creaking groan such as an ancient tree might make when twisted by a high wind. Was it only his imagination, or were they trying to make him reveal himself?

He forced himself to calmness, seeking around for a place to hide, to think. It began to rain again and the leaf mold gave off a rich earthy smell. Before him was a large old tree, long dead and broken off halfway up. At the base it was cracked and hollow, the opening screened by a straggling bush. He crawled inside gratefully, onto a mound of decaying wood. The space was cramped and home to many crawling things, but it was dry.

He ate some bread and tried to work out a plan. Impossible to find his way in this fog. Anyway, they would be hunting
him by now. How hard it all was without Karan; she al ways seemed to know what to do. He was too tired to decide, even to think, and in the end, after dozing, waking, dozing again, and the fog as thick as ever, the daylight began to fade.

Only then did he think of the Mirror. So long had he dreamed about it, puzzled over it, longed to look at it and touch it. Now all day it had lain neglected in his pocket. He took it out, staring at it in the gloom, tracing the silvery glyphs around the border with his fingers. The symbol in the top right corner was like three spheres grown together, surrounded by red crescent moons. Was there some meaning in that? Such a fine thing, so perfectly made. Did it hold the answer to his questions? If only he could make it speak.

He touched the symbol in various ways, but nothing happened. Many ways of unlocking were recorded in the Histories, and he spoke all that he could remember, but the Mirror showed only his face.

That night the fog disappeared with a shift in the wind, and is soon as it began to grow light, the fifth day since their escape from the tunnels, Llian made his way to the ferry landing. There he collected his pack, concealed himself in the trees and waited.