A Shadow on the Glass (71 page)

One of the guardsmen standing behind smirked and said something to his fellow, whereupon they both brayed with laughter. Their leader frowned and cautioned them in a low voice. They fell silent, but the broad smiles remained on their faces. He turned back to Llian.

“You will, of course, bear a token from Lord Wistan in earnest of your trust?”

Llian raised his hands, palm upwards. “Alas, I was beset by robbers; the token was taken,” he lied.

The man’s expression changed. “I know of no Magister bearing the name of Mendark,” he said with a sly grin, rubbing his jaw. There came another burst of laughter, muffled this time, from behind. “Are you sure you have the right name, or even the right city? The bog dwellers of Chanthed are slow of wit, I am told.”

Llian flushed. “It is you who are fools,” he said angrily. “My errand is urgent. I will not be kept waiting by idiots. Admit me at once.”

The smiles disappeared and the pikes swung upwards. “If you are who you say, which I doubt,” sneered the captain, prodding him in the chest with the tip of his pike, “I warn you to step carefully. The name of Mendark is no longer a passport into the citadel. The traitor has been cast out and banished from old Thurkad.”

Llian fell back a pace. “But… When? How? I’ve h-heard nothing of this,” he stammered.

“The news is old. The whole of the civilized world knows of it. Soon it may even reach Chanthed.” There was another burst of raucous laughter.

“Where can he be found? Mendark is still alive?”

“It is said that he dwells in Masande, by the water. That place has always had an uncanny stench to it. It is time we put it to the torch, and its vermin. Take care that you aren’t there when we come for him.”

Masande! Llian had no idea where that was, or even if it was a part of Thurkad. He walked down the hill a little way, until he was out of sight of the guards, and sat down on a stone wall beside the road. Each time someone came past he stood
up and in his politest tones asked the way to Masande, to the dwelling of Mendark. No one answered him. The mere mention of Mendark’s name was enough to turn them away. He walked slowly back down the hill, wondering what to do. Suddenly the child was beside him again, though he had not seen her coming. He supposed such skills were necessary for survival on the streets of Thurkad.

“Where does you want to go?” she asked in a squeaky voice as thin as her grubby legs. Her accent made “where” sound like “wir” and “want” as “warnt”. “I can guide you.”

“Masande.”

“You want to go Masarnde?” She said something unintelligible, then, “Why does you want to go there?”

“That is my business. Do you know where it is? I will pay well.” As soon as he said that he realized his mistake. Now he would pay ten times the price. Well, he still had coin, and it wasn’t important enough to argue about.

“I know it. I will take you.” She looked over her shoulder. “But not from here. Go down the hill. I will find you.” She disappeared again.

Llian presumed that by “down the hill” she meant the wharf-front promenade where they had met before. For want of any other alternative he did as she said, and the moment he stepped onto the paving she appeared out of an alley crowded with stalls selling the meanest, weediest, moldiest and most diseased vegetables possible. He looked at her more carefully this time; such children were often in the employ of rogues.

She was one of the shabbiest little urchins that he had ever seen. She wore a dun coat, a scruffy, ragged thing with the pockets torn off, all moth-eaten and rotten as though it had spent the summer drifting in the harbor. Through the holes in the coat could be seen a ragged shirt, so large that it must have been cast off by an adult, and loose trousers of the
same color torn off above the knee. None of the garments looked as if they had ever been washed. Her pale hair was relatively clean, though it had been hacked off at shoulder height with a knife. She had a long narrow face for a child, a long sharp nose and a pointed chin. The hazel eyes were large and a little too guileless for someone who lived on the street. Her legs and bare feet were spattered with mud but her hands were clean enough. Such was the somewhat contradictory picture before him.

He had to think. It would be dark in a few hours. He sat down at a caf6 table on the promenade and shouted for tea. The girl stood watching. “What is your name, child?”

“Lilis.”

“Lilis. What would you like to drink, Lilis. Are you hungry?”

She looked very wary. Why would anyone buy
her
lunch? She checked him over in much the same way as he had examined her. He seemed worried, and tired, and there were deep shadows under his eyes. His clothes were worn, travel-stained and crusted with salt. But he did not look like someone she need be afraid of, and his voice was so warm and kind she could not but like him. She was also very hungry. She’d not eaten today, though the three coppers would each buy scraps enough for a week, if she could keep them secret.

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “I’m hungry.”

She sat down as far from him as possible.

What did children like? Llian had no idea, but it was cold and windy, so he ordered bowls of thick soup and when that was gone, and she had wiped the bowl clean with the bread, and he was sipping his buttery herb tea, he bought her a mug of sickeningly sweet hot chocolate. That was a delight that she had never experienced. She sipped the chocolate, lingering
over every tiny mouthful, alternately looking down at the cup and up at him.

“Now, we go to Masande.”

She jumped up at once, bowed her thanks and led him quickly, though by a roundabout route, and with much looking behind them, to a southern suburb on a rocky promontory running down to the sea.

She asked him, “What does you do?” and on the way he told her about being a teller, and the library at Chanthed, and even a minor tale fit for a child, and so the journey went quickly and pleasantly enough. Lilis listened in silence the whole way, looking up at him and down at the street, and be fore them and behind, that being the responsibility of the guide. Once, in a dark place, when his story was at its most tense, and the heroine in the most grave peril, her cold hand clutched his and held it until they came out of the alley under a bright street lamp.

It was fully dark and light rain was falling by then. Masande turned out to be an old quarter of the city, though grown up outside the original walls, and made of two parts—the old stone town on the ridge, and the new town built against the edge of the great wharf.

Mendark’s refuge was a villa set on a rocky knob that fell steeply to the harbor. The villa was surrounded by a high wall of gray basalt that was broken in places. There were piles of cut stone on the ground and signs of hasty repairs. A tall iron gate stood ajar. Llian pushed and it gave with a rusty squeal. The guard post was empty, though a fire burned there. A large, squat house stood in the middle of an untidy lawn starred with small white and blue flowers. In an angle of the wall, seven slender stone towers overlooked the harbor, some little taller than the house, others soaring more than twenty spans into the air, and each surmounted by a
dome of metal leaves from which the lights of the city further up the hill glinted.

Llian pulled his hood down against the rain, walked quickly toward the door of the house and pounded on it. An answering shout came from inside, and shortly the door was opened by a tall woman who regarded him coolly.

“I’m Llian of Chanthed. I’ve come seeking aid. Is Mendark within?” The words tumbled out all in a rush, his composure giving way under her impassive gaze.

The woman looked him over carefully, glanced at Lilis waiting in the background, then held out her hand.

“I bid you welcome. Long have we sought you. Come within,” she said. “My name is Tallia.”

Llian gestured Lilis over, suddenly realizing that he should have agreed her fee beforehand. He took a silver tar out of his pocket and held it out with a smile. “Thank you, Lilis.”

The light from the doorway was full on her face. She did not smile. How she lusted for that coin, more than anything she had ever wanted. She shook her head, and her eyes shone.

“You have paid already,” she squeaked, and though he continued to hold out the coin, and she to covet it, she walked away.

Llian watched until she disappeared, then he turned back to Tallia.

Tallia had been observing in some amazement. She was thinking back to her conversation with Shand about Llian, in Tullin months ago. Indeed Llian must have had something special, to so charm a street urchin that she would refuse a tar. You could buy a life for that in Thurkad. And the thought reminded her of something else. Shand too had been coming to Thurkad. He had not yet appeared.

“The price of a guide such as her is a quarter grint by the
day, and you must watch your back. It seems you’ve found the only honest one in Thurkad. You will never be rid of her.”

“I could use an honest friend,” said Llian, shaking Tallia’s warm, strong hand. She led the way down a bare hall and up a flight of stairs, holding the lantern aloft. “Mendark will be glad of your news, if it is good. We have had many setbacks.”

They came at last to an open doorway at the end of another long corridor and passed through into a large rectangular room lit by three oil lamps suspended from the high ceiling. A hearty fire blazed in the far end of the room. The dark paneled walls were empty, save for a threadbare tapes try of a hunting scene in a forest—a hunter about to be gored by a boar. Two leather armchairs were drawn up in front of the fire.

“It is Llian,” announced Tallia from the doorway. There was a rustle of papers from the chair nearest the fire, then Mendark stood up and advanced toward him, arms out stretched and a smile on his face. They embraced, then Mendark stepped back a pace, his hand still on Llian’s shoulder.

“Llian! What a delight it is to see you. It must be five years since we traveled to Zile together. It might have been yesterday, for all the difference there is in you.”

The greeting was rather more fulsome than Llian had expected. Mendark had been spying on him five years ago, he recollected. Don’t rely on what he says, but watch every thing he does.

Llian examined his sponsor. He saw a man seemingly of late middle age, with straight brown hair cut directly across at shoulder length, a thick nose, deep blue eyes and a full mouth with laughter wrinkles at the corners. Mendark’s eye brows and beard were almost black, flecked with gray. His face and hands were weatherbeaten and he wore
heavy cream-colored woolen trousers, over high boots, and a brown wool shirt.

“The years have touched you lightly as well,” said Llian, though he saw that the hair was thin and lank, the laughter wrinkles overlaid by a downcurling of the mouth, and there was a wary, weary look in the eyes, as though Mendark had expended almost all there was of himself.

“Come and warm yourself,” said Tallia, who had gone over to the fire and was leaning on the chimneypiece. “He will question you for hours with no thought for your com fort.

“Oh,” she said then, “there’s no one in the guardhouse. They’ll be in the inn on the corner. Shall I put the fear into them?”

Mendark scowled and nodded and she went out. He took Llian by the arm and led him to a chair by the fire. “Have you eaten?” he enquired, indicating a side table spread with bread, fruits and a platter bearing roast meat and vegetables, now cold.

“Not much,” said Llian, eyeing the repast.

“We’ve already dined,” Mendark said. ‘Take what you wish.”

Llian filled a plate with food and sat down. He felt uncomfortable, conscious of his debt and wondering how Mendark would approach it. They did not speak further until he had finished eating, when Tallia came back in. Mendark poured each of them a bowl of dark wine from the pottery bottle that lay to hand.

“What trouble you’ve given us,” he said, though yet he smiled.

“What do you mean?”

‘Tallia spent weeks in the mountains, searching for you. We thought you were dead. Now, what is your news? What of the Mirror?”

Llian began his long tale.

“And after the Whelm took her?” Mendark asked, when he paused for breath.

Llian continued on to Shazmak, as far as the trial and his interrogation of Tensor. Mendark chuckled.

“You have courage, Llian, or incredible stupidity. What ever possessed you to question him so arrogantly?”

“He treated Karan very badly.”

“Not as he sees it. No matter. There is something else I wanted to ask you. What was it? Oh yes, this new
Tale of the Forbidding
. that you told in Chanthed. I can’t seem to find out anything about it.”

“That’s because Wistan suppressed it; and threw me out of the college when I wouldn’t cooperate.”

“Is that so? Well, it was time for you to go anyway.”

“I was going to ask you about that,” Llian said tentatively. “What do you require from me?”

“Plenty, but we’ll come to that later. For the moment, just answers! What was so different about your tale?”

Llian told of the crippled girl’s murder. “So someone must have entered the tower secretly,” he concluded.

“Interesting! What’s that, Llian? The privy? Down the hall and to your left.”

Llian went out.

“What do you think, Tallia?”