Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (14 page)

was only a few days' walk from here, if the weather was kind, but it could
withstand all Yggur's armies. Tallia stared up at the frozen mountains.
The day drew to a close; the wind rushed straight down the mountain at her.
Time to go in. Time to eat. Shand did not appear to have moved. The fire had
died down but the stew was still simmering. The stew had gummed together at
the bottom of the pot. She scraped a generous helping into Shand's metal mug
and waved it under his nose. He sat up.
Shand spooned down the soup as if he had not eaten in a week. "That's better!'
Tallia ate her own more delicately but with just as much appreciation. They
divided what remained in the pot between them and when it was finished she
broke ice off the embrasure' ledge to melt for tea.
'What now?' she wondered. 'Shazmak?'
'No! Much as I love Karan, Shazmak and Rulke are beyond us. They would see us
coming for leagues. There's nothing we can do for her. Let's go. Carcharon
isn't a place that I care to spend the night in.'
'It's already dark!'
'Why so it is,' Shand said in amazement. 'I must have dozed.'
It began to snow. The wind screamed in through the roof and the walls. They
dragged wood down to a lower room that was intact and remade the fire in a
proper fireplace, though even with it roaring the room never became warm.
Tallia lay awake until late, turning everything over and over in her mind.
After midnight she was awakened by a reed-thin, distant cry. Her heart leapt.
Could it be Karan?
Looking out, she saw something moving in the shadows of the amphitheatre.
Something touched with silver like moonbeams, though the moon was hidden by
cloud. 'Shand,' she said urgently.
He woke instantly and peered out beside her. Whatever it was, it swooped and
dived like a huge bird.
'What can it be? Surely not the thranx come back?'
'Surely not,' he chuckled. 'Let's go and see.'
He strode out without a care in the world. Tallia tried to mimic his
confidence but did not succeed. When they reached the lower edge of the
amphitheatre, he eased his head over. 'Look!'
Down where the stage had once been was the ghost of a tall, rangy man in a
long cloak. He was waving his arms and shouting, his movements making the
cloak billow in the air, sometimes lifting him up to float across the
amphitheatre.
'Is it Basunez?'
'It is. I met him once, long ago. He's exhorting his masons to work harder and
faster, and better, I should say. See them.'
Tallia realised that there were hundreds of little pale ghosts in the arena,
men and women. They were talking, playing at dice or wrestling one another, or
even making ghostly love in the shadows, surely the most ethereal of all their
pleasures. Occasionally Basunez's shrieks broke through, the wailing cry that
Tallia had first noticed. But not a one took any notice of him.
Tallia tried to count them but it was impossible. 'Hundreds must have died
building this place!'
'Hundreds,' he agreed. 'This must be why Karan's father came up here so often,
to try and learn Basunez's secrets.'
'Do you think he ever did?' Tallia wondered.
'No!' Shand said quickly, with a bit of a shiver. 'Ghosts don't give up their
secrets, for they can never get anything in return. Come on!'
They went back to their blankets but Tallia still could not sleep. The wind
howled and the ghosts of Basunez and his masons did spectral displays of their
crafts until the walls crawled with them. Tallia's skin crawled too, all
night. These shades were foreign to her. Back in her homeland of Crandor, the
family ghosts were like invited guests. Everyone was glad to see them, for
they meant good fortune.
As dawn arrived they departed, and by lunchtime were
back at Black Lake. This time they made a more cheerful blaze, but neither was

in a cheerful mood.
'I feel that I've let Karan down, somehow,' said Tallia. It was becoming a
preoccupation with her. They sat together over a cup of chard, as much to warm
their fingers as their bellies.
Shand nodded. He felt the same way. 'I let myself be drawn into this, bit by
little bit, each time thinking that it would finish there. Now here I am,
right in the middle of it. Well, no point in useless regrets.'
'You're feeling better then?'
'Not really, but I'm alive, so I might as well get back to where I can be
useful.'
'Thurkad is the last place I want to be right now.'
'I've deliberately avoided asking you before - ' said Shand.
'And I appreciate it, but ask away, my friend.'
'You and Mendark were once ... close.'
'We were lovers briefly, when I was a timid apprentice and he was one of the
most powerful men on Santhenar. It didn't last. Mendark is too used to getting
his own way. No bad thing in a Magister, I suppose, but not between us. Though
he gave me the best of training, I don't think he really wanted me to become a
master. He resented my successes much more than he did those of any of his
other lieutenants. Since Havissard . . .'
'It was not a successful renewal,' said Shand thoughtfully.
'It's changed him completely. He's become mean and calculating. He's as much
obsessed with finishing Rulke as Tensor ever was. And lately he uses his power
rather carelessly. He was not like that once.'
Shand frowned at memories long forgotten. 'He was always like that, when
pressed, but until last year it had been a long time since he was pressed. The
troubles have merely highlighted his true character, as yours. And mine! But
that's the way of power.'
'Well, perhaps I'm not up to wielding it.'
'You're in good company. Though I've begun to think that avoiding it, as I
have, might be just as big an evil. Mendark has done great things for the
world, after all. Let's not forget that.'
'I once had almost everything I wanted,' she mused, 'being his trusted
lieutenant and his friend. But since Havissard. ..'
'Perhaps you'll laugh to hear this, Tallia, since Mendark and I are constantly
feuding, but he's basically good at heart. Mean, obsessed, conniving, but not
evil. Now he sees everything he's ever worked for falling apart. His body is
failing and there's no one to step into his shoes.'
'They're too big for me,' she said. She noticed Shand looking at her rather
large feet and laughed. 'But if I do go my own way, where am I to go? I want
to go home to Cran-dor, though that would be running away. And now I have
another complication.'
'Jevi!'
'Yes. He's a wonderful man, and I love Lilis dearly. I care for Jevi more than
for any man I've ever met. But. . .'
'What, Tallia? I never thought I'd see you at such a loss.'
'He's a lovely, brave, kind, thoughtful man. But that's all he shows to me the perfect friend.'
'And that's not enough?'
'I want him, Shand. The instant he went over the cliff after Lilis, I knew it.
But I'm afraid. What if he doesn't want me?'
'I'm sure he does.'
'Then why doesn't he say so?' she cried in a passion.
'Do you really need me to answer that?'
'I don't know much about men, only what I learned from Mendark.'
'Hardly any use in this situation!' he snorted. 'I'll tell you what the
problem is, shall I?'
'Please do,' she murmured.
'You're rich and beautiful, powerful and well-connected. He's none of those
things, Tallia. And remember his years

of slavery and degradation under bel Gorst. That does terrible things to a
man. How can he aspire to you?'
'I don't care about any of that.'
'Easy to say, since you have it all. But he cares.'
'What am I to do?' she cried, pacing back and forth.
'You'll have to work that out yourself. But take it slowly.'
'I will. I think I'll stay up here for a while. I've a lot to sort out.'
Shand looked up at her, startled. 'Perhaps I should stay too.'
'No! You don't want to, and I don't want you to stay just to keep me company,
not that you wouldn't be welcome. I'll scout around here and along the path
towards Shazmak. After all, when Rulke comes out again it will probably be
this way, and someone must keep the watch. And for that matter the thranx
could be up here, as likely as anywhere. Don't try and dissuade me. I've great
need of solitude.'
'I won't. That's a need I well understand. Only, be careful.'
The Stinging Tree
After Faelamor left for Carcharon, Maigraith sat where she was for a long
time, musing over what her liege had said.
Tallallame, Tallallame, your fate rests on the one which is three.
Did the 'one which is three' mean the triune - Karan? Maigraith could not see
how. She resumed her work with gates. Though it was easy to make portals now,
she could not master using them, for there was a flaw in her that she found
impossible to overcome. Most places that she thought about going to, she
simply could not see, in her mind's eye, the destination.
Maigraith turned to her other work, preparing for the coming of the Faellem.
She had thought herself secure in her hidden valley, but several days later,
having just stepped into the river for a brief, bracing bath, she saw a
bootprint in the damp soil beside the water.
Scrambling out again, she dressed without drying herself. She was in a
clearing where soft grass carpeted the ground. The trees around were giants
that had known neither axe nor saw. She saw no one, but knew an army could be
hiding behind such trees. Not far away, red limestone cliffs hemmed the river
in on either side.

The print was very long and narrow. Moreover, the pattern of the nails in sole
and heel was one she recognised as from another life. Ghashad! She allowed
herself a moment's panic, an echo of that past life under the domination of
others. Maigraith hurled the panic away, furiously stamping it into the
ground, then stood still, letting calm drift over her. She was in control of
her life now. What must she do?
The footmark was only hours old, and there were others nearby. Someone had
walked along the water's edge heading upstream. They must have tracked
Faelamor into the valley. Had the spy discovered the camp? Maigraith moved
camp every week or two, and the current one was right back against the cliff.
She threw water into her stamp marks, making a concealing puddle there.
Brushing out her own prints, she backtracked into the forest, obscuring her
trail as she went. She saw no sign of intruders around her camp, but a
thorough search must surely find it.
Swiftly she unlashed the poles and the woven sides of her shelter and took
down the hammock. Climbing a little way up the cliff, she thrust them into a
crack filled with fern and moss. As she hung there an alien cry echoed between
the cliffs. Had they seen her? She crammed the rest of her goods in her pack
and crept away from the camp, but before she had gone far there came a
whistling from a little way ahead. Maigraith scrambled up a tree and waited.
There was no further sign of them. Hours went by. The hard bark made an
uncomfortable perch, being heavily ridged and corrugated. It cut into her
whether she sat or leaned against it. Maigraith carved some of the bark away
with her knife to make a more agreeable seat, but all along the wound yellow
sap began to ebb out. Moving further along the branch, her hand brushed
against a leaf and the skin began to tingle, then burn. She had climbed a

giant stinging tree, whose dinner-plate-sized leaves stung worse than nettles.
Maigraith was about to climb down when something flitted from tree to tree
between her and the river. It was a bluebell bird, one wing dragging as if
broken. After months in the forest, she was familiar with the ruse, intended
to draw something away from its nest. What had disturbed it?
She eased herself along the branch to another position just as uncomfortable.
It took a long, patient search, but she found it. Someone else was watching
the forest from a hideout on the cliff.
There could be others as well. The Ghashad often worked in groups of six or
more. At the battle of Casyme, the square had contained nine of them.
Maigraith had just thought to climb down the other side of the trunk when she
saw another watcher, near the river. She was neatly trapped. Faelamor's scheme
would be undone.
The sun set. The watchers remained where they were. A pair of Ghashad
appeared. Behind them in a staggered line was another pair. They were sweeping
the whole valley. Impossible that they would not find her. If she fled they
would follow her, and Maigraith knew how doggedly they would do that.
Besides, she had promised to remain here until the coming of the Faellem. The
Ghashad must be gone before then. Nor could she permit them to find her
storehouse caves, where she had laid up a stock of preserved food for the
winter, or evidence of the gate.
A fire appeared by the river near her bathing spot. Maigraith ate food from
her pack and prepared to wait them out. It was a dark, cloudy night. The
flames flickered eerily. Did they know she was here? Surely they must have
sensed something, to have made camp at this spot? She stretched out a foot to
climb down, but as she did a patrol passed right underneath, the guard
illuminated by stray beams from the fire. The woman stopped, looked up but did
not see her, then leaned against the trunk.
Cursing her, Maigraith resumed her perch. Finally the
guard moved away. Feeling in her pack, Maigraith found a bobble nut and began
to peel away the leathery case with her knife. She had baked the nuts in the
coals only that morning, and the smell was mouth-watering.
Inside it was like four yellow globes grown together. She popped the segments
apart and leaned back to enjoy them. Her hand slipped in the oozing sap. Off
balance, she dropped the knife, which struck a rock on the forest floor,
making a metallic clunk.
Someone shouted from the fire. Maigraith wiped her hand down her shirtfront,
cursing her clumsiness, and retreated around the other side of the tree.
Suddenly there were lights everywhere in the forest, Ghashad holding up
blazing brands.
Watching the flares converging on her tree, she felt a peculiar sensation in
her hand. The skin was all hot and tight. Her fingers were swelling up already they were like wrinkled sponges. Her chest and stomach began to tingle
too. The damned stinging-tree sap!
One minute her hand felt numb, the next it was so hot that it took all her
self-control not to cry out. She felt faint. Maigraith wrapped her legs around
the branch and tore the shirt off. Buttons went flying. She wiped her chest
and stomach with the back of the shirt. She pulled out another shirt, thrust
her arms through the sleeves, but before she could do up the buttons her
fingers lost all feeling.
The pain was like brilliant little flashes of lightning through a nightscape
of spreading numbness. In a minute, Maigraith could do nothing but cling
grimly to her branch while the lights clustered around her tree and two
Ghashad climbed up for her.
They soon pulled her down and carried her to the fire near the river. There
were six of them, all much alike. They were tall and extremely lean, though
one had colourless hair and skin, and as he bent over her the firelight
reflected in pink eyes.
'What is the matter?' asked an old woman whose cheeks
were criss-crossed all over with wrinkles. Amazingly, she looked as if she