by Ian Irvine
Karan spent her days and nights in introspection, with increasing irritation at Llian’s frivolity and his loud enjoyment of life. Haunted by what Tensor had told her about herself, she delved deep into her childhood, trying to find out what her potential might have been. Other curious incidents in her early life came to mind. Her father had been a great shaper, she realized. Even Tensor had not been able to completely undo what Galliad had begun in her. And then the dreams started again.
One night she dreamed of Rulke; the next, about the Ghâshâd, who were leading her across the soaring aerial walkways of Shazmak to their master. Rulke stood spread-legged on his construct, waiting for her. He had always been waiting for her, it seemed. She was the key to his whole purpose.
Did he want her because she was a despised triune? Was that why Tensor had done his best to prevent the flowering of her talents? And had he? Had he broken her or made her? There were no answers.
So the days passed, and then suddenly Mendark was anxious to go. On the fifth morning he appeared on the promenade where Karan and Llian were breakfasting.
“We’re off! Don’t expect us in Thurkad before the winter to go all that way and return to Thurkad can surely take no less than four months.”
“Little need for us to hurry then,” said Llian, stretching his legs out luxuriously under the table.
“And remember, keep our adventures secret. Don’t go blabbing them in every inn you come to.” He fixed Llian with a particularly gimlet-eyed stare. “Especially you, chronicler. I know what you’re like. Swear that you will keep silent, or by the powers, when I return I’ll make you suffer for it.”
“I swear it,” Llian whispered.
They waved Mendark, Tallia, Osseion and Pender off at the pier. The Aachim remained, waiting for a boat, for those that had been there on the first night had melted away just when they wanted one.
“Soon a ship will come—tomorrow, or the next day.”
So the Harbor Master kept saying. But the days went by and still no vessel had come into port. Karan began to grow impatient. At first she had enjoyed the peace, and being able to have a bath or a swim whenever she felt like it, but once her friends Tallia and Pender went, the delay began to chafe at her. She missed Tallia particularly, missed the long walks they used to take together in the early morning or the cool of night, and the shared confidences about their other worlds. Tallia’s life had been so different from hers.
“You’re very withdrawn lately,” Shand observed the following morning, as they strolled along the beach.
“I’ve a lot to think about.”
“What Tensor told you out on the salt?”
Karan had forgotten how perceptive Shand was. She’d not told him anything about that night. “That, and other things. Home, mostly.”
He did not question her and she volunteered no more.
The pangs of heartache for Gothryme grew ever stronger. A year had passed since she’d set out for Fiz Gorgo with Maigraith. It felt like half her life. When she left Gothryme, her estate had been in trouble after four years of drought. How much worse now, after war as well? How had her people fared in the war? How was poor old Rachis coping? Perhaps he was in his grave and she never knew it. Tears sprang to her eyes and Karan wept bitterly for all that she had left behind. The threat of Rulke meant far less to her than the fate of her own people and her home at Gothryme. Home might not be hers much longer, if she could not pay her debts.
And another need had begun to grow pressing—the little germ of a longing that had sprouted not long after she left Gothryme. The need to provide it with an heir and, just as important, someone to whom she would pass down the family Histories. How was she going to accomplish that amid all these troubles? She wanted to talk to Llian about it but a barrier had grown between them lately and she did not know how to overcome it. She was afraid, without any good reason, that he would laugh at her domestic dreams, or refuse her entirely. So she said nothing, put the dream away and busied herself in another. She must get home.
Several times she went walking with Shand, but they were only short walks now. Shand had come to some personal crisis, but whatever it was he would not talk about it.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked on what was to be the last of their morning strolls. “You seem so sad.”
“I—I’ve a lot of things to think about,” he said slowly.
“What things?”
“It’s… something that happened a long time ago. It was the turning point of my life. I can’t get over it.”
“Where did it happen?”
“Oh, far from here—near Booreah Ngurle, the Burning Mountain. I sometimes go there on the anniversary. I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said sharply.
“All right,” she said, knowing his moods. The sand squeaked underfoot. “Shand?”
“Yes?” he said absently.
“I’m frightened. I keep having dreams about Rulke. Dreams that I’m helping him.”
He answered vacantly, unusual for him. His mind was far away. “Dreams don’t mean anything, Karan. They just reflect what you’re worried about.”
She walked beside him, silenced by his indifference. My dreams have always meant something. He wants me; I’m triune! she wanted to say, but Shand had been so remote lately that she could not bring herself to tell him that shameful secret. It was so awful that she had not even told Llian. She hoped that Tensor would take it to the grave.
The next morning she found Shand’s note under her door, and all it said was, “Fare well! I will see you in Gothryme in the winter.”
Karan felt abandoned. For the first time in ages she ran to Llian, seeking comfort from him. “Llian, Llian, Shand’s gone!”
That roused even Llian from his stupor of writing and he went with Karan while she questioned the Harbor Master, the fishermen, the ostlers and anyone else who might know where Shand had gone. By the end of the day they learned that he had boarded a fishing boat in the night, but there was no way to find out his destination. Karan was desolate.
“Why did he go alone?” she cried to the empty sea. “We shared so much together. Why would he not share this with me?"
The swell surged and a wave broke over the end of the stone jetty, drenching her with spray. She leapt back; Llian opened his cloak and swept it around them both. He rested his chin on her shoulder and spoke into her ear.
“Shand has a very curious past. Who knows what he’s worried about?”
“He did so much for me. Why won’t he let me help him?
“He’s a strange man,” Llian replied. “I keep thinking about what he said to me in Tullin, before I met you. More than once have I raged against fortune. I raved, I swore, I vowed to stop time itself, even to fling it backwards. It broke me anyway, and took away everything I cared for.
“Have you seen how angry Mendark gets with him? He asked Shand for help several times in Katazza, but Shand would not. Who was he, that even Mendark would look to him for aid? Who is he, that he would refuse?”
Karan did not answer, though she had often pondered the same questions. A leaden overcast clogged the pores of the sky. The wind was rising, and the swell; the spray now swept head-high across the end of the jetty, smashing into their faces. She scrunched herself more tightly in Llian’s arms, staring out to sea.
“Come inside,” he said in her ear, but she made no move, only brushing the wet hair out of her eyes.
They remained there, not speaking, as the wind built up. Darkness came down suddenly, like a bucket of pitch poured over the sea. A lonely lantern illuminated the boards of the jetty. Then distantly, almost as in a dream, Llian heard a cry. He craned his neck, staring toward the horizon.
“Did you hear that?” he shouted over the crashing of the waves.
“It’s the landlord calling us in,” she said carelessly.
The fellow was running toward them, waving his arms. Llian drew her away from the rapture of the sea, which was becoming dangerous.
When they stepped onto the shore the landlord pointed urgently to the north. The clouds were building into a black wall rent by purple lightning. Momentarily the wind died away to just a feathery ripple across the water.
The whole foreshore was deserted now but for people fastening heavy shutters over the windows and doors. “There’s a great storm coming, a typhoon,” said the landlord, a big, cheerful, freckled man with two fingers missing on his right hand. “Get inside.”
“Typhoon!” Llian repeated, as if the elements conspired against him.
“I like storms, as a rule,” said Karan.
“Well, you’ll be a happy woman by breakfast time, if the roof stays on. This is the season of storms.”
They hurried up the steps. The door banged behind them and was bolted swiftly: top, middle and bottom. “We had three in a month last year. The third nearly washed us away, though we are constructed so strong and so high.”
The storm built up slowly over the evening and the night. They seemed very far from the center of the world and, as waves of wind and driven rain beat at the shutters, very alone. The night grew cool, for all that it was summer. The landlord promised hot soup and spiced ale.
“I do hope Shand is all right,” she said as they took a table by the empty fireplace.
“I wouldn’t want to be out in any kind of boat in this,” said Llian, “much less those cockleshell craft that came in yesterday.”
The ale came first, seething from a hot poker, and in Llian’s bowl the little muslin bag of spices had burst. He fished it out with a fork. Small pieces of rind and spice husks floated on the surface of the ale. A wave burst over the promenade with a roar that flung spray against the shutters.
Karan skimmed the husks off with her knife. Llian sipped the ale, his eyes meeting hers across the top of the bowl. She saw the old Llian there, her best friend in the world, for the first time in ages.
“Let’s go home,” she whispered, and suddenly felt terrified that he would reject her.
“Yes, let’s,” he said. “On the very next boat!”
“I’ve got to go to the Foshorn on the way, to look at the Rainbow Bridge that once was, and say farewell to Selial. We’ll go home after that. Where do you want to go?”
“Not Thurkad!” Llian said vehemently.
She shuddered. “No, Yggur will be there by now. We are between Shazmak and Thurkad,” she said, meaning Gothryme. “Surely that is where it will happen. I must go home, to Gothryme. Will you come with me? You once promised that you would.” She looked anxious.
“How long ago that seems,” said Llian, thinking of that winter night when they’d camped in the hills near Name, before the world fell to pieces. “I was another person entirely. I told you a tale.”
“The tale of Jenulka and Hengist. How I loved that story—and I loved you for the way you told it.” She took his strong hand, enclosing it in her fingers. “You were so gentle, so tender. That was the night I first knew.”
The soup came. It was thin, spicy and liberal with chunks of fish, octopus and mussels, flavored by a pungent yellow herb.
“Of course I’ll come to Gothryme,” said Llian. “I’m looking forward to it very much.”
“It won’t be what you expect,” she said, suddenly fretting. “It is a poor place and maybe the war has… There will be hard work and little else.”
“Do you think I’m a rich man?” said Llian, laughing. He tipped the contents of his wallet on the table in between the plates of soup. “This is all I own in the world.” He counted the silver coins with his finger. “Twenty-seven tars and a few coppers. Scarcely enough to get us to Gothryme, I’m afraid. How it has gone.”
Karan was sobered. “I’ve nothing; not a grint. What I owe Shand already I can scarcely bear to think about. I will arrive home a bankrupt.”
“There are some things I can sell,” Llian admitted. “A few bits I picked up in Katazza.”
“I wish I’d done the same. The only weight in my pockets is debt.”
When the soup was gone they mopped the bowls with yellow bread, lingered over their ale bowls then went upstairs. The wind was still rising and the rain teemed down.
Outside her room she paused, gave him a sudden brief hug, said, “I have to pack,” and banged her door in his face.
Llian scratched his head. Karan was moody, doubtless fretting about Shand out in the storm. What was the point in packing until they had a ship? But he was used to her humors by now and went slowly down the hall to his own room. He packed his bag, the work of a minute only, since he simply stuffed in everything lying on the floor, threw off his clothes, blew the lamp out and slipped into bed. The wind was singing in the eaves. The inn was silent save for the wind and the rain.
Used to going to bed after midnight, Llian could not sleep. He lay in the dark, listening to the storm sounds. The roof creaked under the wind. The rain was furious; beyond his experience. It came pouring down the chimney, pooled in the empty fireplace and flooded a filthy slurry of ash and soot out onto the floorboards.
The wind grew to a shattering scream. Something crashed against the shutters outside his window. A louder crash followed it. Llian carried his lantern across. One pane was cracked where something—a wind-hurled branch, he supposed—had broken through the shutter. He went back to bed.
His thoughts kept coming back to Rulke and Karan. Why did Rulke want her? Then he drifted into a kind of waking dream, one where he was back in the Nightland and Rulke was speaking to him, controlling him and he was bowing and smiling and saying, “Yes, perfect master.”
This dream—somehow blissful, somehow menacing—was shattered by a violent noise and a thump in the chest. He woke in a daze to find himself lying on the floor in a puddle of water. The wind was louder yet, and his first thought was that the roof had blown off, then the lamp glowed beside the bed and he saw Karan’s bare form outlined against the lamp. The lamp flared bright.
“What happened?” he asked with a shaky smile. His head was aching.
“You were dreaming!” she shouted, “and I didn’t much like your dream.”
He had no idea what she was talking about, even wondered if she had gone mad in the middle of the night. His mind did not seem to be working properly. Why was she staring at him in that way: furiously intense, suspicious, trembling? She had caught the last part of his dream, but Llian had forgotten it already and could not understand the cold horror that she felt. He did not know that his words were the very ones that the Ghâshâd had used after Rulke had wakened them through Karan’s link. Was Rulke trying to reach them through Llian? But there was no answer, certainly not in his bewildered eyes.
“Stay here, stay awake,” she said abruptly. Throwing a blanket about her shoulders, she ran out. Llian crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up, staring vacantly at the ceiling. It was not cold, but he felt cold and his head throbbed.
Soon Karan came back with her pack over one shoulder and her boots in the other hand. She put them down inside the door, securing it carefully. Llian was now shivering and sweating.
“I need a drink,” he said hoarsely. Pouring water into a cracked mug she held it to his lips. He gulped down half the glass and fell back with a groan. Karan dipped the corner of the blanket in the water and wiped his brow.
“That’s better,” he said, staring at her bare shoulder. It was pale and soft and beautifully rounded. “Thank you for coming,” he said softly, reaching up and touching her throat “Please stay.”
His touch sent a delicious shiver down her back. Karan shook the blanket from her other shoulder. “Of course I’ll stay,” she replied. “I should have known better than to take my eyes off you. Move over.”
As she slid between the sheets the whole world went wild. A wind like a solid wall shook the inn to its foundations. The broken pane fell inwards, followed by a pressurized squirt of rain through the shutters.
&nbs
p; Karan swore. “I don’t like the sound—”
“I thought you liked storms!” he snapped, rolling off the bed and frantically gathering up his soaked papers. Water was dripping off the ceiling. The timbers screamed above their heads. Again water fountained through the window.
“Llian!” she shouted.
He continued his work. Knowing how precious the documents were, she ran to help him. The wailing in the roof grew louder.
“Llian!” she roared in his ear. “I think the roof’s going to go. Quick, under the bed.”
It was a huge, solid affair, well off the floor. They scrambled underneath. Karan reached back up, dragged the quilt off and wrapped it around them, for neither had anything on. She fastened her pack to the leg of the bed. Llian packed his journal and papers away in his capacious wallet, folded the top over and tied the strings tight, then looped it round his waist.
It was as well that he had, for a wild gust burst the window in, spraying glass and splinters across the room and saturating everything that it did not blow away. A shard of glass stabbed Llian in the foot. The lantern flickered wildly, chasing deformed shadows around the room.
He pulled out the splinter, then took Karan into his arms. They clung to each other as the wind roared higher and louder, then with an ear-piercing shriek part of the roof tore off. The lath and plaster ceiling exploded and disappeared upwards. They both screamed. The bedcovers and mattress were sucked off the bed to disappear through the hole in the ceiling, followed by every other light thing in the room. Llian could feel his hair being drawn up, and the quilt too. Suddenly he and Karan lifted together, cracking their heads on the slats of the bed. The bed moved, then the lamp was blown over, smashed and went out.
They huddled under the bare bed while a deluge poured down on them, rain such as neither had experienced in their lives. It was miserably uncomfortable sitting in the water, for the rain was coming down faster than it could escape under the door. Every so often a few roof slates would slide in to smash on the bed frame.