by Ian Irvine
Maigraith fell asleep, to dream about Havissard. Reliving the making of the gate, she found that it came easily to her. So easily that she found herself drifting out of Elludore in her dreams. That frightened her awake, then she put it out of her mind and slept.
PART THREE
34
* * *
PRIDE AND
PREJUDICE
Shand came wearily up the stairs of the inn and opened the door of the room that was his when he was at home. He put his candle on the dresser, stretched weary muscles, turned toward the bed and stopped.
They looked like two lost children. Llian’s head was cradled against Karan’s bosom and both were sleeping peacefully. He’d missed them on his lonely journey. He watched them for a while then took up his candle in one weather-beaten hand and went back up the corridor to the open doorway. The light revealed fragments of chamber pot all over the floor. Shand picked up the most dangerous shards and fell into bed. He had done a double march to get here today and was so weary that he did not even wonder what had happened, just went straight to sleep.
Karan stirred. The burden of the night had been lifted slightly—she did not feel quite so alone. It was mid-morning. Downstairs, breakfast must be long over.
Easing herself out of bed, Karan pulled the blankets up to Llian’s chin. She dressed quickly in her woolens—green baggy trousers, gray stained shirt, green socks of fine wool, brown boots, jerkin and coat. She was utterly sick of her traveling clothes. Her tattered felt hat she stuffed in a pocket. There was no mirror in the room but that did not bother her, since she seldom saw her own face. Anyway, she’d had enough of mirrors. She brushed her thick hair until it shone, though as soon as she finished it sprang out as untameable as ever.
Passing the next door Karan heard a familiar gurgling snore. Her heart leapt and she peeped in the open doorway. Shand was back! She could have leapt straight onto the bed and kissed him.
Dear Shand, she thought, looking down at her old friend. His hair was grayer and thinner than she remembered, and there were a few more age lines on his face, but his beard was long and luxuriant. It had been summer when he left them in Flude.
“How I missed you,” she murmured, and sat down on the chair beside the bed, watching him sleep as he had watched over her in Thurkad. He drifted slowly into wakefulness, turned over and opened one eye. His eyes were green, but a lesser green than hers and deep sunken, which made them look smaller.
“A fine thing to come home to, you two in my bed,” he said with a smile.
“Where have you been all this time, and why did you go without saying goodbye?”
“Have you breakfasted yet?”
“No.”
“Then run down and rouse out the kitchen, and let me dress in peace. I know you are shameless but an old man has his modesty. We’ll break our fast together in the sun, if there is any.”
“So little to be modest about,” said Karan with sparkling eye. “Vanity, more likely.” She danced out of the way of Shand’s casual hand and out the door.
Shand dressed quickly and ducked into the other room. The huge welt on the side of Llian’s head was bruised black. Karan’s handiwork, but why? Already he had an inkling. He could sense the trouble.
The inn had a veranda on the northern side, closed at either end by a wall, and even in winter it was a pleasant place to sit when the sun was shining. Thick old vines climbed the posts, leafless now. He found Karan sitting on a plank bench. On a trestle before her was a pot of chard, two bowls, a larger bowl with fruit and a platter on which sat a loaf of dark bread. She was cutting slices off the loaf as he arrived. She poured chard the way he liked it, not too strong, squeezed in a few drops of lime and passed it across.
“Llian is not breakfasting today?”
“Llian… He’s sleeping still. Oh, Shand, I hit him over the head with your chamber pot. It was awful.”
“Not my chamber pot,” he said mildly. “But that’s not what I saw when I arrived.”
“I’m soft-headed in the early hours.”
“And cranky before breakfast,” he said, remembering. He pushed the fruit basket toward her. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about it at all,” she muttered. She selected a small gellon, cut the skin away, shaved off a sliver of orange flesh and put it in her mouth. She made a face.
“That’s the worst gellon I’ve tasted in years!” It looked magnificent: large, round and plump, the thin skin bright orange with a red star of seven rays at the base. It should have had a rich, musky odor but this one had no smell at all. “Surely it’s not even ripe? Though it’s soft enough.”
“This was a blighted year,” said Shand sadly.
“Still,” said Karan, “even blighted gellon is better than none.” She took another slice and a sip of sweet chard with it. “So where did you go? Did you come back here to find us?”
Shand unfocused his gaze, deliberately it seemed, but said nothing for a long time. From where they sat they could see the roofs of the other houses in the village, and the track winding down in the direction of Hetchet. The path was empty. Chimney smoke rose straight up into still air like signal banners. Karan ate the rest of the gellon and was nibbling on a dark crust before he spoke.
“Not particularly. After Flude I sailed down the Sea of Thurkad, then east up the River Alm, and eventually back to Thurkad.”
“Can I ask why?”
“My own business. A pilgrimage of sorts. Nothing to do with ancient relics, if that’s what you’re thinking. Why did I come back here? Because I live here, of course. But also because I was looking for you two. You seem to have taken rather a long time to come such a little way.”
“We took Selial to the Hornrace. She died there and the Aachim buried her at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge.”
“That was kindly done.”
“She was good to me and I cared for her. And then Llian wanted to go to Chanthed, so we returned that way.”
“Hmn,” said Shand so coolly that Karan hurried on.
“Did you go anywhere near Gothryme?” Her voice trembled, thinking of her neglected home.
Shand shot her a glance from under bristling brows. “I did!” he said sternly.
“Is there… anything left?”
Again that glance. “I wonder that you dare ask, Karan, having abandoned them for so long.”
“It was you took me across the sea when all I wanted was to go home.”
“Nine months ago! You could have sailed from Flude to Thurkad in a few weeks. You could have been home months ago.”
Karan was silent. Every delay had a good reason but she felt that defending herself would be like making excuses.
“Rachis is old, Karan. Faithful, diligent, but very old. All he wants now is to sit in his chair in the sun and dream away his few remaining years. I think he deserves that, don’t you? But he’s been working from dawn to midnight, trying to recover from the war before the winter strikes, hoping that you will come home and take the job off his shoulders. He does not criticize you yet he wonders why he serves so faithfully.”
Karan was in tears. She had neglected Gothryme shamefully. “How is my land? How are my people?” she asked.
“They have not fared so badly, as it happens,” he said, brushing the tears away with callused fingers. “Lower Bannador suffered grievously, but the Hills were spared the worst of it. Too far to go for too little, I suppose. That’s not to say that Gothryme hasn’t suffered. The Ghâshâd came through more than once on their errands from Shazmak. There is ruin enough and many have died. Much you can put right, but some can never be.”
“And there my duty lies,” she said. “I wonder that it has taken so long for me to see it.” She rose abruptly to her feet.
“Sit down! This is no time for impetuousness, no matter how well-meaning. The whole of Iagador is in turmoil. And know that Yggur holds most of it, including Bannador, and he is not inclined to give it up no matter wh
at temporary alliances may have been forged in Katazza.”
Karan knew that, too. She was no stranger to the realities of power.
“Besides, there is Llian. He won’t be able to travel today; perhaps not even tomorrow.”
She screwed up her face. “Let us not talk of that now.”
“It must be faced—as Gothryme must be.”
“I know, and I do not shirk this responsibility either. But later; I’m too confused. Let’s talk about other things, please.”
“All right, whatever you want.”
“I’d like to know where you’ve been.” She spoke very humbly.
“There was a place I had to visit. A very ancient place.”
“So you were questing after Aachan gold!”
“No I was not! More like an homage to the past. My past. Perhaps an indulgence in these times but I had to go.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’d rather not. Like you. I am reluctant to face up to my failings.”
“Well, what else have you been doing?”
“I visited Thurkad on the way here, secretly of course. Yggur has been back for months. The tales say that he returned like a fury, crushing the rebellious with a fist of iron, casting out the Ghâshâd and quelling Thurkad in an instant. But that’s his tellers, rewriting history as usual. The true story is much more interesting, and centers on your friend Maigraith.”
“Oh?” It was more than a year since she and Maigraith had been together on the road to Fiz Gorgo. “Tell me about her.”
“The story is very strange. She and Yggur were lovers…”
“I knew that,” said Karan. “I’ve heard tales about her too, though all different.”
He told Maigraith’s story, concluding: “She led an army into Bannador against the Ghâshâd and the rebels, claiming that Karan of Bannador was her special friend and she would not abandon her people. You might have been a nobody once, but you are quite famous now in your little country, and even beyond its borders. I heard tales about you everywhere.”
“I don’t want to be famous,” said Karan mournfully. “I just want to go home.”
“Well, I suppose it’ll all die down over time. Anyway, she liberated Bannador and drove the Ghâshâd yelping back to Shazmak. So, indirectly, you’ve done your folk good after all.”
“Her special friend!” said Karan in amazement. “Well, perhaps I am, since I never knew her to have a friend. What a strange person she is. And she has suffered so. Did you see her?”
Shand shrugged. “I’ve never met her. Just before Yggur came back she disappeared. And that’s all I have to tell.”
“Well, I’ve news for you.” She told him what they had learned in the library at Chanthed. “Faelamor was there months ago.”
“Grim tidings,” said Shand. “And for Mendark too, since it may bear on what he went east to find. Yggur must be told at once. I’d hoped for a nice long rest in Tullin. And that’s not all, is it? Out with it.”
Karan poured herself another bowl of chard. Her eyes met Shand’s. “If we must.”
“Let’s go for a stroll. Some things are easier to talk about, walking.”
She offered Shand her arm. They went around the back of the inn, crossed below the woodheap and struck out across a herbland covered in snow. Soon they came to the Hetchet road, as it was called, though it was no more than a slushy track. The steep slope directly below the inn had once been graveled with fist-sized pieces of rock that jutted up through the mud and made walking difficult. Further down, the track was covered in unmarked snow.
Karan took comfort from the pressure of Shand’s broad fingers on her arm. She was afraid to talk about Llian. It hurt.
“I trusted him. I loved him,” she said.
“You still do, and all the things that made you feel that way are still there. And all the things that you ignored when you made that choice.”
“I hate him! The things that make me hate him I didn’t know about before.”
“Nonsense. You’re acting like a hurt child.”
“You never trusted Llian. You often said so.”
“I admit it, but I’m prejudiced against the Zain. I make no secret of it. Mendark trusted Hennia, and she betrayed the Council. They’re all the same!”
“I don’t know what to do!” she cried. “I’m so confused.”
They were scrambling down the steep part of the slope. In some places the mud was frozen, old bootprints deep and hard to walk on. Then they would step down without warning into greasy clay that was treacherous. They skidded their way to the bottom, where the forest waited: dark trunks, dark branches, hard dark leaves even in winter, like a threat.
Karan was sorting through her memories, trying to understand what had happened last night.
“He was curious from the moment we met,” she said, speaking to herself as much as to Shand. “Impertinently, arrogantly so, it seemed to me. He asked questions that no stranger would ask of another. It shocked me then, though since I’ve come to learn that it’s just his way.”
“He is according to his nature—and the character of the Zain. That’s what makes him a master chronicler, just as it is what led to their downfall.”
“Did you know that one day in Shazmak he actually searched my room for the Mirror? I was furious, though later I realized that Emmant’s enchantment had made his curiosity insatiable. I suppose it was the same with Tensor—they both worked on Llian’s weakness.”
“What was Llian looking for?”
“Something he came across in a book Emmant showed him.” They passed under the leaves of the forest, out of the wind, out of the sun. Karan shivered. “He’s never mentioned it since and I haven’t asked. I’d forgotten about it. He was almost frantic with the lure of it—the key to one of the great mysteries. To the chroniclers, that is—nothing of real importance.”
“Did he name this thing?” Shand asked, though with no particular interest.
Karan furrowed her brow. She’d been so angry at the time. “He said it was the image of a tablet.”
“The Tablet!”
“I suppose so. The key to the script of the Charon, I seem to remember.”
Shand gave a great sigh. “I can imagine the passions that such things arouse in a master chronicler. If the libraries of the Charon could be translated it would open whole new worlds.”
“I’ve thought no more about it since. But after Katazza and his dealings with Tensor…”
“Remember that Tensor forced Llian to aid him,” said Shand.
“At first! I believe Llian did it willingly in the end, in return for what he could learn from Tensor.” Karan had thought herself into an agitated state—she couldn’t think straight; didn’t know what to think. “Whatever the reason,” she said furiously, “he did it! And that story about how he escaped from the Nightland, how can that be true? How could he get away from Rulke?”
“He was telling the truth as far as he knew it,” said Shand. “Look, why would Rulke want to keep him in the Nightland anyway? Maybe he escaped, or maybe Rulke let him escape. What does it matter?”
“Because it’s my fault! I left him there. The shame will live with me until I die. And after last night it’s tearing me apart!”
She sat down on a log but the rotten wood crumbled, dropping her into a hollow full of icy slush. The trees crowded down, their black branches reaching out for her. She got up again hastily, wiping ice off her bottom, and they continued.
“After what Rulke did to the Zain I cannot believe that Llian would make such a pact,” Karan went on, now veering to the opposite opinion. “Coerced or forced, yes! But not willingly. But on the other hand, he is easily dominated. It would be easy for Rulke to impress his will on him. Even Emmant did so.”
“I can’t follow your train of thought,” said Shand. “What happened last night?”
Here the path turned around the end of a ridge, momentarily coming out of thick forest into a clearing. Before them was a steep slope,
partially bare of trees, and a wilderness of deep valleys all clad in snow. Shand leaned on a rock and looked away down the slope.
“I’m all confused. He’d been so contented since Chanthed,” Karan said, “whereas I’ve been cranky. I’ve been having nightmares about Rulke again. We had a misunderstanding—all my fault—and I locked him out of our room. Maybe last night was my fault too! Then we both dreamed the present and the past, when I made that sending to him here last winter. It seemed that the past unlocked the way for the present. Our dreams were linked, and I couldn’t break the link, and then Rulke came.”
“What?” cried Shand, springing forward to grip her by the shoulders. He stared into her eyes, shaking her in his agitation. “Rulke in the flesh? Through a gate?”
Karan pulled free, suddenly afraid for Llian. “No, it was just an image, but by the end I thought he was going to condense himself in the room.” As she told the story Shand’s face grew bleak.
“This almost sinks your previous bad news,” he said, settling onto a log with his head in his hands. “If only I’d come back sooner.”
“It was horrible. I felt split in two, the me of a year ago and me now, and Llian the same. Rulke tried to compel me over the link, through Llian. He went within a breath of doing it, too.”
“Why would he want to compel Llian?” said Shand. He looked as if he had just had a very unpleasant thought. Rising from the log, they walked on. “Why use Llian to get at you, for that matter? I suppose it’s easier to use connections that are already there than to make fresh ones.”
“He would have had me, if I hadn’t almost knocked Llian’s brains out. Poor Llian! No one could resist that power.” Karan wasn’t confused anymore. “I’ve got to get back—I’ve left him lying up there all alone. He might die.” As she spun around Shand grabbed her flying coat-tails.
“Wait, I see it now. You’re quite wrong. Rulke has possessed him, as he did to Yggur long ago! Whatever Llian says or does, no matter how convincing his explanations, you must never trust him. He isn’t your friend anymore—he’s a puppet of a dangerous enemy. Protect yourself against him.”