A Shadow on the Glass (9 page)

“Maigraith!” Karan called.

Maigraith turned rather abruptly. “Yes?”

“I’ve got to tell you something.” “What is it?”

Karan’s jaw was clenched. “Maigraith, last night when you were drunk—you gave your liege a different name.”

Maigraith’s honey-colored skin went as white as plaster. “What name?” she whispered.

“You called her Faelamor! Is she the same—?”

Maigraith swayed, looking as though she was going to faint. She screwed up her face, squeezing her temples between the heels of her hands, then forced back self-control.

“Never say that name again,” she said in a voice that could have frozen molten lead. “My liege is Faichand. Faelamor died long ago.”

Karan stared at her mutely.

“Faichand!” Maigraith cried, gripping Karan’s head between her hands and screaming right into her face. “Faichand! Do you have it?
There is no Faelamor!
”

Karan nodded and with a wrench Maigraith released her and staggered off into the forest. She walked for an hour, feeling sicker with every step. Her self-disgust at having betrayed Faelamor’s secret was much worse than the hangover. She stumbled into a forked tree, hung over the fork and was sick. She clung to the tree as though it was the mother she had never known, the hard bark cutting into her breasts, and heaved and heaved and heaved. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not bring up the clot of horror inside her. She had betrayed Faelamor, to a sensitive of all people, and great woe would come of it.

* * *

Maigraith was unusually distant after that, even for her. The business of Faelamor was not mentioned again, and Karan’s tentative overtures were so coldly rebuffed that she withdrew as well. So while they rode across endless plains covered in tussock grass, Karan had plenty of time to fret about Maigraith’s slip and what it could mean. If Faelamor’s existence was so secret, she, Karan, was in danger just by knowing about it. She could see only two solutions: beg Maigraith not to tell Faelamor, or make sure that the whole world knew. Neither was appealing.

At other times on that interminable journey, she brooded about Gothryme, or dreamed about the Festival of Chanthed, or, as she did every day, wondered about the relic that Maigraith had come so far to recover. What could it be? Maigraith had not given her the least clue. Now the dark face of the moon, brooding ominously down at her, suggested that she probably did not want to find out.

They came to a huge river, the Hindirin, which was too wide and strong to swim, but downstream it was spanned by a stone bridge almost as long as the bridge across the Garr at Sith. Beyond that were other rivers, but the bridges were sound and they continued to make good time. After that they crossed plains and woodlands, following an old road that was sometimes there, more often not.

By the time the third week had passed, with the scorpion nebula glaring down at them each night from empty skies, and Karan’s forebodings growing stronger every day, they had changed horses three times and ridden more than one hundred and fifty leagues. Now they were riding through tall trees, beyond which were the pathless bogs and swamp forests of Orist, that ran all the way to the walls of Fiz Gorgo and beyond.

At a small town without a name they left their horses, and Maigraith hired a guide to take them through the swamp forest.
He was a ragged, toothless, leering fellow, a smuggler and out-and-out scoundrel whose eyes followed Karan everywhere she went. But he knew every pool and mire of the swamp and they ate fresh fish every night, a welcome change from the tasteless and unvarying fare that Maigraith prepared. And he provided some relief from Maigraith’s dour company.

There was only one highlight of the trip as far as Karan was concerned. It happened on the day they arrived at Lake Neid, a cold clear lake about a league long. They camped on the northern shore among the half-submerged ruins of an old city. After nearly a week in the swamp, Karan was revelling in the clean water when she felt a stabbing pain on the ball of her right foot.

She sprang back and something black dropped into the water. Karan hopped to shore and sat down on a slab of marble to inspect the wound.

The guide, who called himself Waif, ambled over. “Something bit you?” he asked, revealing a toothless hole of a mouth. He took her small foot in a hand as gnarled as a mangrove root.

There was a triangular puncture in the ball of her foot, ebbing blood but blue around the edges. “This hurt?” He poked the wound with a hard finger.

“No, I can’t feel a thing.”

“You will,” said Waif, holding her foot for rather longer than was necessary. Karan jerked it out of his grasp.

Maigraith came over to see what the trouble was. “Turret shell,” said the guide. “Won’t be able to walk on it today.”

“Careless,” said Maigraith, looking irritated. “What about tomorrow?”

“Should be better by then, as long as it don’t get infected.” Waif turned away to the fire.

“Well, we can’t waste the day. You can show me the way to Fiz Gorgo. It’s only a couple of days, isn’t it?”

“Less.”

“Good! We’ll go as far as we can today and come back in the night. Karan, stay here and look after your foot. Expect us around midnight.”

So Karan had the whole day to herself, an unexpected luxury. Her foot soon became too painful to put any weight on, but it was fine while she rested. She sat in the sun among the ruins, watching the birds wheeling and diving out over the water, and the little fish swimming around in clear pools among blocks of marble and broken columns. Neid must have been a beautiful place in its time.

For lunch she had half of a wonderful yellow-fleshed fish with wild onions and a sour lime, and as much sickly-sweet tea as she could drink. She had a great fondness for sweet things. She dreamed away the afternoon, thinking of tales and tellers. Her dinner was just as tasty, and the night was peaceful, no moon and the nebula veiled by thin cloud, all the menace taken away. Karan would have liked a fire but she wouldn’t risk one so close to Fiz Gorgo. And she didn’t think about
that
at all; all thoughts of what lay ahead she kept firmly out of the way, for one day at least.

They left Waif at Lake Neid, to wait for them and guide them back out of the swamp. Out of his sight they left their heavy packs too, for the last dash to Fiz Gorgo. Only now did Maigraith break her silence.

“I did not want to speak about this before, but now I must. There is a chance that I will be taken. If I am, and you are able to escape, go back to Neid. The guide will lead you out of the swamp. From Neid you must make your way back to Sith and give the relic to Faichand, at the place I showed you.”

That did not bear thinking about. “I don”t have enough money,” Karan said tonelessly.

Maigraith handed over a small purse heavy with silver. “This is for your expenses. If you spend more; it will be reimbursed in Sith; and your fee, of course.”

The weight was reassuring. Karan put it away safely. Finally they reached a creek that smelled of the sea. Maigraith tasted the water. She made a face and spat it out again.

“Salt! Fiz Gorgo is on an estuary. We must go carefully now—Yggur’s guards may sweep this far out into the swamp.”

They crept to the edge of the swamp and saw before them an expanse of cleared land, a road on the other side of it and, beyond, a fortress or possibly a fortified city. Fiz Gorgo! And only a day behind schedule. Even from where they crouched they could see guards patrolling the road, and others on top of the wall.

Fiz Gorgo was a huge fortified city partly recovered from swampy ruin by Yggur, the warlord and magus who had come out of nowhere to conquer the southern half of the great island of Meldorin. The city was ancient, built three thousand years ago, possibly by the Aachim. Later the south of Meldorin had fallen into barbarism and Fiz Gorgo into disrepair. The River Neid changed its course, creating a swamp of what was once fertile land. Swamp forest grew up around Fiz Gorgo and the city was forgotten.

Then Yggur came, fifty years ago or perhaps a hundred. He rebuilt the walls, drained the flooded lands nearby, restored some of the towers. But even Yggur had not made new all of that vast fortress, and the tunnels and labyrinths below remained untouched.

The night passed and the following day. There were guards everywhere and they were ever vigilant. The day was
uneventful yet Karan felt uneasy, and the unease grew until it was a knot of dread in the bottom of her stomach. That was the problem with being a sensitive—she felt things much more keenly than other people. She
knew
that something was going to go wrong.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked Maigraith more than once. Nothing could be told from Maigraith’s behavior save that her posture was even more rigid than usual.

“No, shush! Ah, here he comes.”

A gate in the wall had opened and out rode a very tall man attended by six guards. They turned away and headed down the road in the direction of the estuary.

“That’s Yggur! He often goes down to Carstain, I’m told. It’s quite a distance. He surely won’t be back until the morning.”

They watched the company until they disappeared around a bend in the road, then sat in silence while the night fell. Lanterns sprang up all along the wall. Karan shivered. It was only the beginning of autumn but the nights were chilly this far south.

“The
link
!” said Maigraith. “Quickly!”

Karan was never sure how she made a link—it was just something that she could do. It didn’t work with many people but she knew that it would with Maigraith. She thought about Maigraith, thought about speaking to her with her mind, and suddenly there it was, like a conduit from one to the other. She couldn’t read Maigraith’s mind, of course-she could only know what Maigraith gave her and what she sensed through the link.

Maigraith was so strong, so capable; and yet, Karan sensed, so vulnerable, for as a child she had been terribly hurt. And she was tormented by self-doubt, by the knowledge that nothing she did was ever good enough for her mistress. Maigraith had mastered every discipline she set
herself, but she could not stem the pain inside her, so she closed everything off that made her human. She refused to feel. All the more surprising that she had felt pity for Karan two years ago, that she had actually got down from her horse and saved her. Or, Karan thought with unaccustomed cynicism, maybe it was because Maigraith had recognized her as a sensitive.

No, that was unworthy. Maigraith was so desperate to find out her own identity that it had colored her whole life. The rawness of the feelings that Karan sensed brought her closer to her companion than she had been since the night they drank together. Karan’s gentle heart was touched. She wanted to help Maigraith and protect her. It quite took away her own worries.

Maigraith was speaking to her now, across the link.
Ah! That is good. I have never felt such a strong link
.

“What do you want me to do?” Karan said aloud. She did not like the feeling of Maigraith speaking into her mind, a very private place.

“Just maintain the link. Whatever you do, don’t lose it while I am inside or I may never get out again. But if things go wrong I may need to draw on your strength a little. It won’t hurt but you may feel a little… weak! Ready?”

“Yes,” said Karan. She wasn’t, but the sooner it was done the better.

Maintain the link
, Maigraith repeated, then she just vanished. The leaves crackled under her feet as though she was walking away but after a few seconds silence fell. Karan looked up at the scorpion nebula and shuddered.

Just then Karan felt a shocking wrench in her head, as if the link had been torn out by the roots. For a minute she was blind and deaf, all her senses cut off. The feeling was intensely claustrophobic. She almost panicked, then her hearing came back, leaves crunched and Maigraith stood there.

“What happened?” she asked coldly, staring down at Karan lying on the ground.

“I’ve no idea,” said Karan, holding her head. Her vision cleared. “The link was just ripped away. I couldn’t even see for a minute.”

“Then what’s the matter
now
?

“It’s the aftersickness. I always get it after I use my talent. I’ll be better in a while; it’s not too bad this time.”

“I get it too, when I use the Secret Art,” said Maigraith tersely. “Though not after such a little thing as this!”

When Karan felt better they tried again. This time the link was a fluttery, unstable thing that accentuated the pounding in Karan’s head.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m doing my best. I told you my talent was unreliable. It doesn’t like to be forced.”

“It will have to do,” said Maigraith, “Now
hold
it.”

She disappeared like a candle snuffed out but this time Karan recognized that it was mere illusion. Within a minute the link was literally torn apart, although this time it was lost from Maigraith’s end. Maigraith reappeared.

She looked alarmed. “Yggur must have some defense that interferes when we are too far away from each other. You will have to come with me. I can’t possibly get in without the link.”

“No!” Karan said. “
No, no, no!”
A searing pain tried to cleave the hemispheres of her brain apart. This was what she had been dreading ever since she had seen Maigraith riding up the track to Gothryme a month ago. The aftersickness blossomed in sympathy, forcing her to her knees.