Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds (63 page)

her vitals. Suddenly she did understand. Time passes differently in the Three
Worlds, and Tallallame was only a pale shadow of the paradise she remembered.
In the peaceful beauty of its forests, violent, desperate creatures now
stalked.
The vent she had directed with the Mirror had emptied
the void not into Aachan, as she intended, but into Tallallame. The Twisted
Mirror had betrayed her yet again.
All morning she sat on the grass, alone, as she had been alone for so many
years. What was to be done? This was a greater trial than any she'd faced on
Santhenar. How could she save her world? She felt so old, so tired. I must
rally the Faellem, she thought. We are millions, and no doubt there are
gatherings nearby, directing the fighting of the fires and the defence against
the void-creatures. She made a broadcast link, to find out where they were and
what they were up to, but where once she would have picked up a whole world of
minds, now she sensed nothing but mindless terror. What had gone wrong? That
terror echoed in her own head.
She limped down the hill to find the gathering. In the valley below was a
Faellem town - a beautiful place they had inhabited for ten thousand years.
That's where they would be.
But in the valley she found nothing but ruins, so old that the stone was
overgrown and crumbling. It looked as if no one had dwelt here for ten
centuries. She sat on a column, staring up into the trees. Hours she remained
there, not knowing what to do. Finally, in her exhaustion, Faelamor leaned
back against the stone wall and dozed.
A banshee shriek woke her. Faelamor leapt up as a winged shape plummeted
through the treetops, snapping and snarling. It was one of the winged
creatures she'd seen earlier. It settled on a high limb, darting a beaked head
forward on its long neck, trying to get at something hiding in the uppermost
branches. Something that looked very human as it weaved and ducked among the
foliage.
Suddenly the creature's head flashed forward, incredibly fast for such a large
beast, and caught the human by the arm. It let out such a scream of terror
that Faelamor wanted to run away. There was a melee in the treetops; then they
fell together, bounced off the end of a branch and kept falling, wheeling in
the air.
The great wings flashed just above the ground. The creature landed awkwardly
and its prey - a young Faellem woman - tore free. Scrabbling across the leaf
litter, she came face to face with Faelamor.
They stared at each other. The young woman could have been a daughter, for she
had the same colourless hair, translucent skin and golden eyes. She was a
beautiful creature. Or would have been, had she not been dressed like a beast,
in tatters of mouldy fur. She was dirty, and she stank. Faelamor was
profoundly disgusted.
The woman threw out her arms to Faelamor, making a series of grunts that could
only be interpreted as a cry for help.
The winged creature arched its wings, staring at them. It's afraid of me,
Faelamor thought. It recognises my power.
The woman again made that grunted plea. Faelamor wanted to help her but was
paralysed by the realisation that her people here on Tallallame, who had been
the noblest of all the human species, had been reduced to this. She had
destroyed a whole species, and corrupted herself, for this animal?
The young woman gave up, ducked past Faelamor and tried to hide in the ruins.
The winged creature sprang, the beaked head darted forward and caught her by
one slender ankle. The woman struggled desperately. Faelamor did nothing.
The ankle was transferred from beak to claw. The creature gave Faelamor a
knowing look, leapt into the air, flapped up through the treetops and
disappeared. Faelamor had to sit down. The woman's cries kept echoing through
her mind.
She understood it all now. The Faellem who had remained on Tallallame, who had
once been so plentiful, now dwelt in caves and the tops of trees, little more

than beasts, and were dreadfully afraid. Over the millennia they had
stagnated. After expelling the Mariem into the void, their mind-powers
had given them so much control over their lives that they no longer had to
strive, and the genocide of their rivals meant that they were unchallenged
masters of their own world. They had forgotten that, outside Tallallame, the
struggle for existence continued as relentlessly as ever.
The forest was already reclaiming their great arts, and the fires would take
the rest. The Faellem had lost their humanity and were now sinking down the
one-way slide to beasthood. They would survive, but only to paw and grunt at
the priceless treasures of their civilisation, until time turned the last of
them to dust.
There's nothing left of us, thought Faelamor as she crawled hack up the hill
to her followers. The Faellem are finished.
'Our whole life and purpose has been a lie,' she said to Gethren. 'If only I
had listened. But I was too proud. I refused to believe that any device could
get the better of me. What a fool I am! I said it a long time ago and never
realised: I looked on the Mirror in Katazza and saw what I wanted to see.'
'We deserve this fate,' said Gethren. 'We lost our nobility when we betrayed
the Mariem. We chose the wrong way and we have followed it ever since.'
'I led you the wrong way. I am the Faellem, and I am Tallallame!' said
Faelamor, weeping as she looked upon the ruin of her world. 'This evil has
come from my own. It must be immolated.'
She went down into the forest to a place where three grand trees had fallen
together and were blazing fiercely. The Faellem cried out to her. 'We can
defeat this enemy too,' said Hallal. 'We can reclaim our world.'
Faelamor would not hear them. 'Our enemy is ourselves,' she said. She marched
forward, never flinching as her colourless hair seared off to expose the
death's head of her skull. She reached out to embrace the pyre, to burn all
the evil away.
And just as they had followed her every decision for so long, one by one the
Faellem followed her into the flames.
A Genuine Hero
In Shazmak there remained only Maigraith, Karan and the staring Ghashad. When
Faelamor disappeared, that fiery explosion had sealed the tattered remnant of
the Forbidding over again.
Maigraith took Karan's hand. There were tears in her eyes as she looked down
at the broken body of her friend. Karan opened her green eyes, liquid with
pain, and smiled a wan
smile.
'We have done it, you and I,' she whispered. 'Who would have thought it?' Her
eyes drifted closed and she seemed to shrink in on herself. Her pale face went
as smooth and still as wax.
Maigraith was in an agony of shock and grief so deep that she felt no pain
from her own wounds, and they were many. The arm that had gone beneath the
construct was covered in weeping blisters. Her thigh was torn open to the
knee. She was scratched, battered and bruised all over. But her work was not
over yet. She steeled herself to complete the job - to restore the balance
between the worlds. If only she had not given away her birthright. But how was
she to find the way to Aachan? Her least gates on Santhenar were apt to go
wrong because she could not see the destination clearly enough.
'Don't go!' said Maigraith, stroking Karan's red curls. She
laid her hand across Karan's brow, wiping the beads of dampness away. 'Stay
with me - we have one final task.'
Karan's eyes fluttered open, though it took a supreme effort. They were
cloudy, but Maigraith took Karan's limp hand; it tightened and her malachite
eyes grew clear again.
'What is it?' Karan whispered.
'The Forbidding is only hanging together by a thread, but the balance has not
been restored. At every seam of the globe the creatures that dwell in the void
gain entrance. I must make things the way they were before the flute. That is

my destiny.'
'How can I help you?' Karan's voice was barely audible.
'I cannot do it alone. The balance was broken, in Aachan. It can only be
restored there.'
'Once before you pressured me so very hard. Look what you got me into that
time. Now Rulke is dead,' whispered Karan, 'and Tensor too, and Mendark, and
every one of the Charon, and half the Ghashad. Shazmak is a sea of blood, and
all because of you and me.'
'Rulke is dead!' Maigraith echoed, staring into eternity.
'Where's Llian? I must speak to him before I die.'
'I don't know where Llian is. Karan, listen! I must reach across to Aachan and
work with the Charon, if any survive. But I do not know the Way. Only you can
find it now. Will you help me?'
'The pain is killing me.' Karan writhed, slipping into delirium. 'I want
Llian. This is my dying wish, which you must honour.'
'Then the fate of the Three Worlds is sealed, and we will fail under the
weight of the void. We cannot survive.'
'I can't help you,' said Karan. 'How can I sense the Way? The pain takes away
everything from my mind.' She looked up suddenly and her eyes were
fever-bright. 'Llian, where are you, Llian?'
Taking Karan in her arms, Maigraith carried her to a couch. There she arranged
her broken limbs with cushions
so that they troubled her as little as possible, but still the pain was
terrible.
Maigraith sat beside her, holding her hand. Of course she must honour Karan's
dying wish, if she possibly could. The Forbidding would surely hold for a bit
yet.
Where could the company have got to? Most likely Shand's strange gate had
carried them back to Carcharon. She tried to sense the Way there, but since
Faelamor's departure everything had changed. She could not visualise Carcharon
at all.
Karan stirred. 'Llian!' she moaned.
'I can't find him.'
Karan began to pant in little short breaths. Maigraith gave her some water,
after which she seemed a little stronger. Karan closed her eyes.
After some time Maigraith realised that the remaining Ghashad were gathered
round, staring at them both. All they had striven for was undone, and they had
failed their master in his time of greatest need. Rulke's death had freed them
but diminished them. They no longer had a purpose in life.
Vartila the Whelm was the lowest of them all. Vartila, who had not recognised
her master until it was too late, who had only become Ghashad at the moment of
their greatest failure - Vartila was completely undone.
'What was my life for?' she wept. 'Nothing at all!'
'People,' said Maigraith. 'Rulke is dead and the Ghashad are no more. There is
nothing for you here. Go back to what you were before Rulke first made you
his, if you would live. Swear that you will take no master any more.'
Vartila and the other Ghashad took that vow, then turned away, cowed, fearful
and alone in the world, and went back to hide in their southern forests. All
except one.
'Are you coming, Idlis?' asked Yetchah, looking back longingly at him. They
had been together constantly these last few days.
'I'll follow, wherever you go,' he said. 'But first, I have unfinished
business here.'
Idlis looked down at Karan, and on his face there was an expression as close
to tenderness as his blocky features would allow.
'If only Rulke had listened,' he said to himself. 'I warned him - Llian's
telling was not a fable but a prediction. Rulke would not hear me. Llian made
the tale better than he knew. From nothing we came - to nothing do we return.'
He turned to Maigraith. 'I am a healer,' he reminded her. His thick voice was
gentle now. 'For more than a year I have owed Karan the debt of my life.'

Crouching down, he took Karan's hand with his skeletal fingers. 'Once before
you refused my aid,' he said, referring to the dreadful injuries she had taken
when she choked his dog to death. 'Will you let me help you this time?'
'I would be most grateful,' Karan whispered. She did not fear him any longer.
'She is cold,' he said to Maigraith. 'Bring two braziers, some blankets and a
hot drink.'
While Maigraith did that, Idlis cut off Karan's garments and laid her out on
the couch. He exclaimed at her many scars, and particularly at her hand and
wrist. 'Poor Whelp!' he said wistfully, thinking of his dog.
After covering her with blankets, he went away, shortly to return with a
purple phial. He put a few drops of the secret fluid on Karan's tongue.
'Is that better?'
'A little,' she whispered, 'but now my head spins so.'
He probed her flesh, but his touch was infinitely gentle. Taking her hips in
his hands, he eased them this way and that, trying to tease the broken bones
back together. Karan screamed.
Idlis looked grave. 'She should feel nothing at all,' he said to Maigraith. 'I
don't dare give a stronger dose. I have only one remedy left, but I am afraid
to use it on her.'
'Anything,' gasped Karan, squirming, which only made the pain of her shattered
bones worse.
'It is the drug hrux,' he said to Karan. 'You have tasted it before, have you
not?'
'Twice,' said Karan with a shudder, remembering the dried Ghashad fruit that
she had accidentally taken from Carcharon. It had given her such schizophrenic
dreams. Just the mention of it sent her body arching in yearning.
Idlis frowned. 'It could kill you, in your state, or possess you ever after.'
He explained to Maigraith. 'Hrux is a deadly drug. We used it when we all
wanted to work together with one mind, to sense and to control. It was
employed by the square against you when you fought the Second Army in Bannador
last summer.'
Maigraith remembered that day very well, the feeling that she was opposed by a
community of minds and wills.
'But to her, and to you too, Maigraith, it is the most addictive drug there
is. She has tasted it twice already. A third time and she may never be free of
the yearning for it. And it has other effects too, as varied as the people who
take it. Who knows what it might do to a triune?'
Maigraith wept. 'If it doesn't kill her, you say?'
Idlis nodded. 'It may. But nothing else can lift the pain from her.'
'Karan,' Maigraith said, spotting Karan's hand with her tears. 'I am a cold,
unfeeling woman, as you know. How can I demand from you what I cannot do
myself? But - '
'Say what you want,' snapped Karan.
'Will you take this hrux and offer me the chance to restore the balance? I
swear - '
'I - ' said Karan.
'Don't be hasty,' Maigraith interrupted. 'It may kill you.'
'Or if you become addicted and cannot get it, you will wish it had,' said
Idlis.
'What's the difference?' Karan screamed. 'I'm dying! If I can put that off and
do this thing as well, then give me the hrux.'
'Very well,' said Idlis. 'I will begin with a small dose. It's just possible
that you may get away without ill effects.' He
cut off a piece of hrux about the size of a pea and put it in her mouth.
It was chewy in a leathery sort of a way, like an overly dried apricot. 'My
mouth burns,' she said.
After an interval Idlis took her hips in his hands again and tried once more
to ease the bones back in place. Karan screamed.
Idlis looked up at Maigraith. 'It's done nothing! I'll have to give a bigger
dose.'