The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  The company waited on the gargoyle-haunted steps of Carcharon. Above them the winged statues seemed to flex their wings as if preparing to ride the gale. For a long time nothing happened, except that it grew ever colder, an empty cold that drew every speck of warmth out of them. For a minute it was completely calm, then the night fell apart.

  A wind came thundering down the mountain, before which all previous winds were nothing. They saw it coming, a formless shadow sweeping toward them, touched with billows and eddies like the luminous air of the Nightland. It blasted round the corners of the tower, so strong that they had to cling to each other lest they be blown right off the stairs. Driven ice crystals eroded the snow off the rail. Ice shards tore at their cheeks. The gale ripped away a section of the ruined roof, hurling it over their heads to crash on the path below the stairs right in Llian’s face. He flattened himself, expecting it to sweep him off like a jagged metal broom. It rocked there for a moment, then was flung over the precipice. The blast whirled everyone around and was gone, racing down the slopes and pulling up trees at the edge of the forest.

  The moon sprang out of the stillness like a highwayman. It was soon blotted from the sky by a harsh red light that leapt up from Carcharon; a light so intense that the stronghold seemed transparent except for its bones—black shadows against the red. A bright light that did not waver, and all in silence.

  A blast of hot air gushed out of the tower. The sky filmed over and rain fell, a downpour lasting for a few minutes. Rain in the mountains in winter? But it made no pools or cascades, for the water turned instantly to ice on the ground, and the stair rails and the gate were hung with a curtain of icicles, and the rocks were glazed with it.

  Now the music began. An arrhythmic whistling and clicking and rattling like a plague of cicadas all trying to sing in harmony was mixed in with a subterranean boom as of a metal drum the size of a house, and a graveyard keening that took only three notes and repeated them over and over. Now the noise was so loud that the eardrums hurt, now so soft and terrible that the hairs stood up all over Llian’s body. The light began to pulse in sequence with the wailing sound, and when that broke off, the light throbbed in sympathy with those unearthly booms, which was even more horrible. Then the glow faded and the sound was muted, though both kept on.

  The moon was almost overhead now. It began to snow, huge flakes falling out of a clear sky, heavier and heavier until all that could be seen was a dim red light and a dim dark moon, and the shadow of the tower against the snow.

  A bright flare lit the tower from inside. Thuds shook the walls, dislodging the last few slates to smash on the landing above them. They heard cries and the sound of falling masonry. With a vicious shriek, something came through the wall of Carcharon like a thunderbolt, in an avalanche of broken stone. It landed on the narrow ledge that encircled the tower, sending up a great spray of snow and ice. The creature hurtled toward them. They could hardly see what it was, only that against the light it was larger than human. Was that a flash of wings?

  “Thranx!” screamed Shand. “He’s opened the way into the void. Run for your lives!”

  The Aachim were furthest up the stairs. Two of them took up Tensor’s litter and ran. They went only a few steps before the thranx flapped over the rail and landed among them. The litter revolved in the air and Tensor fell face-down underneath it. That saved him, but the nearest Aachim was broken in a moment. Llian was exposed on the path. He clawed his way toward the stairs, icy hobbles tearing the fresh scabs off his legs. In his terror he scarcely felt it. What had happened to Karan? If this monster had fled, what was it like inside? Gaining a shaded drift, he rolled into it. The company rushed down the stairs without noticing him, and along the path toward the amphitheater.

  The thranx stood up, a vast winged outline, gave one last retching gobble and bounded into the air. It soared over Llian’s head and down onto the path, tearing apart one of Yggur’s guards, smashing down another. It was a monstrous, uncertain thing in the gloom; rapacious and desperate. Someone screamed: it was a woman’s cry, horrible in her pain.

  “Light!” roared Tallia, then a blue light flared blindingly from Yggur’s upraised staff. The creature propped, and in its still menace Llian saw the statue outside the gate. There was a momentary silence, through which the snow fell softly. Behind Llian someone wailed. It sounded like Lilis.

  Llian didn’t know what to do. His hands were still bound. He could not see Lilis; he could not get to Karan. He forced his face down into the snow. The thranx raced down the path, half-bounding, half-flying. One of Tensor’s guard put a spear in it, though it might as well have been a bee sting. He found no protection from the semi-dark, as his dismal cry testified.

  In the flare from Yggur’s staff, Llian saw that the company were almost to the amphitheater, fleeing for their lives. The thranx hurtled after them, arching wings lifting it into the air at every bound.

  A red light flashed some distance from Yggur’s blue. The creature soared into the air on pinions impossibly large. It glided down, taloned feet extended like a hunting eagle, then the red light turned night into day. For an instant the creature was a black shadow in the air, a claw-perfect cutout. It gave a hideous screech, beat the air, climbed above Mendark’s head and disappeared over the precipice in the darkness.

  “Fall back!” Llian heard Yggur cry as another shape leapt through the broken wall. This was smaller, more human-looking, but still menacing. The company took up their wounded and scuttled into the uncertain safety of the arena.

  Llian pressed down into the snow. The creature took the steps in a series of bounds, not seeing him. When he finally dared raise his head, he was alone. In Carcharon the light was almost gone, the ghostly sounds faded to nothing, but through the snow he could just make out the jagged outline where the thranx had come through the wall. The other creature had disappeared too. There was a lumpy shape on the steps not far above him, the remains of one of the thranx’s victims.

  He crawled past it, his heart pounding. “Karan!” he cried weakly. “Karan!” His movements became slower and slower. He cracked his forehead on the next step and lay down in the snow. Rulke had opened the way into the void.

  The void! Even the chroniclers knew little about it, except that it was a dark, desperate place that fostered only two urges: to survive; to escape. The thranx! Equally unknown, but stronger, more cunning, more deadly than any other creature that dwelt there.

  How his legs hurt. Llian climbed painfully to his feet and promptly collapsed again. Karan was within a stone’s throw but he was too weak to crawl up the steps to her. Whatever had happened to her, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  For the first time he thought of his own safety, of being rent apart by some unspeakable horror. There were Tales of the Void, his fevered mind reminded him, though he had read few of them. His interests had lain in other directions, and they were not tales at all as far as he was concerned, for they seemed to have little basis in truth. So, for Llian and most of the chroniclers and tellers they formed part of the Apocrypha, the pre-Histories; the unproven or unprovable, not worthy of study.

  He struggled to recall. By the time he became a master chronicler he could remember perfectly anything that he had read twice. That was his training. But the Tales of the Void had been learned much earlier, when he was a mere journeyman, long before his training was perfected.

  Shand had recognized the thranx. He could still hear the panic in his voice, see the way he had flung up his hands, the red light from Carcharon on his face. How would Shand know such a thing?

  The snow began to fall heavily—a blizzard that blotted everything out. Blood was freezing to slush in his boots. Llian’s shivers turned to a convulsive shuddering. Even the pain in his ankles was gone now. He could feel nothing from the shins down. He forced himself to his knees but as soon as he tried to move fell over again. Llian had just wit enough to realize that he no longer had to worry about the thranx. He would be dead with
in the hour.

  6

  The Lorrsk

  Lilis was standing halfway up the steps of Carcharon with Nadiril and Jevi when the thranx came through the wall. Jevi, a small wiry man with long platinum hair like Lilis’s, knocked Nadiril down on the step and flung himself on top of Lilis.

  “Stay still,” he hissed in her ear. “Don’t move; don’t scream.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” she muttered, her mouth full of snow. Though she loved Jevi as much as anyone could, she had been looking after herself for so long that she sometimes found his care smothering.

  They lay motionless while the thranx gobbled its prey, bounded into the air and attacked further down the track. Light flared from an upraised staff, then it disappeared in the night.

  “Quickly now,” said Jevi. “Be careful on the path, Lilis.” Nadiril did not move. Lilis bent over him, crying, “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live, child. I banged my head. Help me up!” But when they lifted him to his feet the old man tottered. “Leave me,” he said. “Get down to the forest. There might be more of them.”

  “We’re not leaving you. Jevi, please do something,” begged Lilis, in great distress.

  Jevi heaved Nadiril over his shoulder like a lanky bag of bones and set off, Lilis close at his heels. In the dark they went past Llian without seeing him.

  “Such indignity,” said Nadiril in a chuckling wheeze.

  At the dip in the path Jevi had to stop for a breather. It was slightly wider here.

  “Put me down,” said Nadiril. “I feel better now.”

  Jevi looked toward the steps that led over a lip into the amphitheater, gauging the distance. “I think I can carry you that far.”

  “What’s that?” Lilis hissed.

  A flare from inside the tower outlined something racing down the stairs of Carcharon, a man-sized creature like a wingless thranx. “It’s a lorrsk out of the void, child,” said Nadiril, staggering against Jevi’s shoulder. “More than our equal, even were we armed.”

  Jevi whipped out a short knife. “Get behind me, up the steps,” he said urgently.

  Neither Lilis nor Nadiril was armed. “Where are our friends?” the girl cried in dismay. “Tallia! Help! Help!” Her little voice was whipped away by the wind.

  Tallia was not far off, helping the injured up the high back of the amphitheater, when she caught the whisper of Lilis’s cry. “I’m going back!” she shouted to Shand.

  Shand did not look up. He and Malien were attempting emergency work on Xarah, who had been clawed down one side from shoulder to hip. Several sausage coils of intestine pressed out of the wound. They bound her up again. Any meaningful surgery was impossible here.

  “Tallia, quick,” screamed Lilis, as Tallia appeared at the top of the steps.

  Jevi was defending the narrowest part of the path, wielding the knife expertly, but the short weapon was no match for the lorrsk’s reach and its clawed fingers. With one furious slash it sent the knife flying. Jevi retreated, step by step, ducking and dancing, but Tallia knew he must fall.

  Tallia felt an unaccustomed pang in her heart. She hurled herself down the icy steps, a barely controlled fall that landed her between Nadiril and Lilis. Bounding to her feet she stabbed at the creature with her short sword. The lorrsk tried to bat the blade away, cutting the heel of its hand. It ducked back. Tallia pressed forward beside Jevi on the narrow track.

  Lilis, squatting in shadows on the lowest step, began to pack snowballs and hurl them at the lorrsk, to no effect.

  “Try this one,” Nadiril said.

  She threw it and it struck the lorrsk right in the eye. “Take that!” she yelled fiercely. “I hope it hurt.”

  It must have, for the lorrsk held its eye with one hand while slashing feebly with the other. “Was that a magic snowball?” Lilis asked breathlessly. “Make me another!”

  “It had a not-so-magic rock in the middle of it,” said Nadiril with a grim chuckle. “Here you are.”

  The lorrsk gave forth a wild shriek, leapt right over Jevi’s head and lunged at Lilis. She tried to hurl her weapon and fell off the edge of the steps, to disappear without a sound.

  The lorrsk reached out to gut Nadiril. He said calmly, “Thuggah ghoe maddarha! Vunc!”

  The creature stopped dead, squinting into the darkness. “Maddarhan?” it said, then Tallia stuck it in the ribs. It leapt high in the air and went over the side.

  “I didn’t know you knew words of power,” she said. “What did you say?”

  “Words are power. I said, in one of the languages of the void, Stop! I am your father! An excusable deceit under the circumstances. I can’t even remember where I read it.”

  “Where’s Lilis?” cried Jevi, running around frantically.

  Nadiril looked around. “She was standing just there.”

  They peered down, but this slope was in the moon shadow and nothing could be seen. “I’m going down,” said Jevi.

  “Could she possibly be alive?” asked Tallia.

  “She could,” said Nadiril. “It’s a fair way down to the cliff just here. It wouldn’t take much to stop her.”

  “We need light,” Tallia muttered. “Jevi, run up and get a brand from the fire.” He raced off.

  “Why did you send him away?” asked Nadiril.

  She whipped out her lightglass. Its glow revealed a steep slope blotched with round outcrops and veneered with snow. “He saved me from a chacalot. And afterwards he was so gentle and kind, and expected nothing of me in return. I can’t let him go down there. Lilis adores him—”

  “And so do you,” observed Nadiril.

  “She might be alive,” she said hurriedly. “And there’s a hungry lorrsk down there. I think I can see a way.”

  She eased herself over the edge, feeling with her boot, knowing that what she was doing was foolish in the extreme. She would never have attempted it in daylight. Tallia found a foothold, another, tested it then moved down. Stones slid underfoot and she skidded half a span before catching herself. She went even more gently the next time, but the same thing happened and she slid another span or two before coming to rest against an ice-glazed outcrop. Her heart was pounding like a piston. “Lilis!” she shouted.

  A flare soared high in the air over Carcharon. “What’s happening?” she shouted.

  “I can’t see,” Nadiril yelled back. “The snow is too thick. But Carcharon is all lit up now. Something’s going on! Are you all right?”

  “No!” She had done a crazy, stupid thing. “I’ll have to come back up.” She pressed gently against her foothold, her boot skidded and she shot down again. The lightglass was jolted out of her hands to disappear down the slope, still shining until the whirling snow obscured it.

  “Tallia?”

  Now she couldn’t see Nadiril either. “I can’t get back up.” Why had she done this foolish thing? “Lilis!” she roared. There was no response. “Lilis!” Nothing could be heard above the howling of the wind. Tallia clung to the slippery slope, not daring to move. Exposed to the full blast, it was perishingly cold. She kept calling but Lilis did not answer. She must have gone over the cliff.

  Some time later a light appeared above her, a blazing brand. “Tallia, where are you?” Jevi’s voice had never been so welcome.

  “Straight below you. Don’t come down, it’s too slippery.”

  “Have you found her?” She could hear the agony in his voice.

  “No!”

  “Are you stuck?”

  “Yes,” she shouted.

  “Don’t move!”

  Tallia felt a sudden spasm of fear. She did not want him risking his life for her. She braced one foot and the slope slipped under her, hurtling her down half a dozen spans before she thumped back and head into a clot of ice, a frozen seep. She lay utterly still, hurting all over. The sheer plunge could not be far below her. She prepared herself for death.

  “Tallia, Lilis! Tallia, Lilis!”

  Jevi’s torch moved back and forth, a l
ong way above. It must be snowing less now. “Go back,” she said weakly. The cold attacked her bruises and lacerations. She couldn’t get out of the accursed wind. Her clothes were shredded. The snow stopped for a minute and through rags of cloud she saw stars shining brightly. It would have been peaceful, save for the wind. Pebbles rattled past once or twice. She called Lilis until she was hoarse, but there was no answer. A pain at the base of her skull grew sharper. The stars began to wobble across the sky, making her dizzy. She closed her eyes, which made it worse.

  All at once the torch was spluttering in her face and Jevi had his hand under her chin. “Tallia! Are you hurt?”

  “Nothing broken,” she said softly.

  “Have you heard Lilis?”

  “No. How did you get down?”

  “I’m a sailor, remember?” Taking off his gloves, he felt her head. She flinched as his callused fingers roved over the bruise. “I’ve climbed many an icy mast on a stormy night, and I don’t go anywhere without a length of rope.”

  “Oh!” she said in a daze. “Where is it?”

  “It didn’t reach this far. Hold my hand.”

  She clung to his fingers, her lifeline. His courage made her heart ache. Jevi held up his torch, pointing out where to put her hands and feet. Going up was easier, for she could test her footholds before putting weight on them. After much slipping and sliding they found the dangling end of the rope.

  “Can you climb it?”

  Her head was spinning. “No!”

  He tied the rope through their belts and went up behind her, heaving her up with his hand on her backside. Eventually they saw Nadiril’s face looking over the edge. He extended his hand to her.

  “Look after her,” Jevi said, “she’s banged her head.” He moved the rope over to the bottom of the steps and went down again.

  Tallia watched in a daze where every second seemed to take an hour. The light drifted back and forth across the slope like a firefly. She sweated blood for Jevi, knowing that he was far beyond his rope. He was a small, wiry, unhandsome man that she could have held up in one hand. Her bottom remembered the imprint of his fingers. I care for him, she realized, in a way that I care for no one else. I have ever since I met him. That reminded her of her tropical homeland, beloved Crandor, of helping Jevi to escape from the corsair’s island, and how he had saved her from the jaws of a chacalot.