The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

Malien leapt down the steps. As she did so a third bubble slipped out of her hand to explode in the middle of the timber pile. Flames licked up the stone wall. Soon the wood was a blazing barrier across the hall.

  “Get out of the way!” Malien screeched. She looked back over her shoulder. “Come on!”

  The thranx sprang in the air, its wings scraped the sides of the hall and it soared above the flames. There was a mad scramble down the winding stairs. Someone dropped the lantern, which went out.

  Llian heard Malien cry, “Out of the keep! Barricade the door!” The thranx came down on the lower side of the fire, reared up on its mighty wings and blocked out the light.

  Llian fell the last three steps, rolled and cracked his injured shin on something. Pain flared, so excruciating that he was quite helpless. When it became bearable he crawled forward blindly, not realizing that he was going the wrong way. His head hit a wall. Llian was so dazed that his arms and legs tried to keep going.

  “Bolt the door!” Malien screamed. “Wait—where’s Llian?”

  The thranx flew across the keep, a winged shadow, and slammed the door in their faces. In seconds it had reinforced the doorway with chests and beams. The boulder was piled on top.

  Llian propped himself against the wall and waited. Blood poured down his shins. He couldn’t move to save his life.

  The thranx stood back with its head cocked. Evidently satisfied, it turned toward Llian, took one step and stopped. It clutched its belly while a spasm passed across it, then moved forward tentatively, never taking its eyes off him.

  Llian did not move. In the past year and a half he had survived so many dangers, overcome so many insurmountable obstacles, that now that his doom was finally here he felt quite calm about it.

  The thranx barricaded the front door and closed the shutters over the slit windows. Taking Llian by the shirtfront, it lifted him high in the air. The light of the burning timber was fading now. The creature drew the gray baton that it had used against Yggur on the cliff top and passed its dark light over Llian from head to foot. His bloody shins glowed luminously under the eerie flare. Again the thranx was wracked by a spasm. It dropped Llian but caught him in midair. Then, to his amazement, it simply tossed him down on the mattress.

  Evidently it was no longer hungry. Obviously it did not see him as any kind of a threat. That was true enough; Llian couldn’t have throttled an earthworm. But why didn’t it kill him anyway?

  Outside there were thuds on the back door, followed by the front, and cries that barely penetrated the thick timbers. Presumably they were trying to find out if he’d been eaten yet. He lacked the strength to answer.

  The thranx folded its wings and leaned back against the wall, holding its belly. It seemed to be in pain. Llian recalled that Yggur had wounded it. It flexed its legs, squatted down but stood up straight again. One hand rubbed the small of its back. It let out a muffled groan. Instantly its head snapped toward Llian. In the void pain was weakness, and weakness death. But Llian had not moved.

  He sat there for some time, watching the creature. Out of habit he noted its every characteristic to use in his tale—the grimaces, the leg flexes, the groaning that grew ever louder. Then, after a particularly tormented cry, it squatted down and began to pant, little outrushes of air through lips formed into a trumpet.

  Only now did Llian realize what was going on. The thranx must be about to give birth. All this time it had just been looking for a safe hiding place, thinking that Santhenar was as savage as the void. In that case, why had it kept him alive? The answer was obvious. Because it would need to eat again after the event, or worse, to feed him to its babies.

  Llian had once seen a cat teaching its kittens how to hunt and kill. It had played with a mouse, stalking it, then letting it go while the poor creature ran back and forth in terror. By the end of the lesson the kittens, cute balls of fur, were cruel killing machines with blood-covered mouths, and the mouse a red rag on the floor. Was that what the thranx had in mind for him?

  It gave a tremendous groan, cut short by a gasp, and a deluge of pink water poured from between its legs. Llian stared, fascinated yet repelled as the belly of the creature roiled. He had never witnessed a birth, not even a farm animal. The thranx let out a dreadful scream. Blood ran down one leg. Its wings beat the air. Snatching up the baton, it turned the black light on the damaged area. The spot fluoresced; the blood flow stopped. The thranx bore down again. With a grunt and a moan a head appeared in the birth canal.

  And there, despite efforts that grew until the thranx was bellowing to shake the walls, it stayed. Pink foam flecked the creature’s rubbery lips. Pale green drops of sweat covered its face and chest. Its nostrils expanded and contracted like beating hearts, but the baby was stuck.

  The efforts went on for an hour or more. The thranx weakened visibly in that time. Llian wondered what those outside must be thinking. Surely that it had torn him apart and was devouring him gobbet by gobbet.

  A faint light appeared through a crack in one shutter. It must be dawn. Llian felt light-headed from lack of sleep. Despite his peril though, and the knowledge that it surely would eat him in the end, despite knowing the fate of those up on the mountain, Llian was moved by the creature’s agony.

  He pulled himself to his feet but its head whipped round, baring those shiny brown teeth at him. He went still, then took another step. One arm moved sluggishly. The baton pointed directly at his heart. Llian sat down again.

  Something thumped the outside of the front door. Just a testing thump, followed by silence into which came the muffled sound of many voices. It seemed that Mendark and Yggur, and the whole force that had gone down to Tolryme, were back.

  The thranx gave a convulsive groan, a mighty push and suddenly the obstruction moved. The baby slid free and hit the floor with a wet slap. The mother screwed up her face in agony. Again blood gushed from her. In the growing light Llian saw it was dark purple. Once more she used the black light to cauterise the injury. Cutting the baby’s cord, she took it in her arms.

  The baby had a huge head, crested like the mother, though on it the crest was as soft as rubber. The arms and legs hung limp. The mother gave the child a thump in the chest, whereupon the limbs moved feebly. The child gave forth a little mewling whimper.

  The mother brought her bent arms up to her chest then snapped them apart, throwing back her shoulders at the same time. The armored skin separated along seams to reveal a pair of breasts the color of pink milk. Immediately the baby squirmed in her arms and began to sniff the air. The thranx put the baby to the breast.

  The crisis seemed to be over. The baby suckled noisily. The mother cradled it in her arms. Llian stared at the pair. Her eyes seemed to be closed, but if he so much as twitched he caught her smoldering glare on him.

  The baby began on the second breast. Already it looked much stronger. The muscular legs kicked and one arm moved lazily. It lifted its head, sniffed the air again and looked right at Llian. The mother gave a hiss of approval.

  Llian imagined her using him as a plaything, an anatomy lesson. Imagined her carefully tearing his belly open, showing the child the best bits—liver and kidneys, still-beating heart. He dwelt on the agony of being eaten alive. How long would it take to die?

  Practically a cripple, the best he could manage was the most painful hobble. Probably not enough to get away from this newborn, already looking so alert and deadly. Infants have to be, to survive in the void. And there was nowhere in the keep that he could hide from the mother.

  Suddenly she leapt up, tearing the child from her breast. It wailed and scratched at her. With an oscillation of her shoulders, the breasts disappeared beneath armored skin-plates. Swiftly she lashed the baby into a sling, which she threw over her shoulders. The great wings flexed, and settled back over the infant.

  Llian shrank back against the wall but the thranx went past him to the door, checking the barricade. She moved painfully, as if torn by the birth, and Llian noticed that she was bleedin
g again.

  As she reached the door something crashed against it. The lock broke, the bolt tearing right off, but the bar held. The thranx pressed her shoulder against the door. The ram struck again, splintering the timbers. She was tossed onto her side. She got up slowly, looking ill. Abandoning the door she turned toward Llian.

  He reeled backward, tripped over the mattress and fell flat on his back. Rolling over, Llian found that he could not stand up. He tried to scuttle away on hands and knees. Suddenly the flail lashed out, one of the thongs coiled around his leg and the spiked ball caught in the seam of his trousers. The thranx hauled him in like a fish.

  As he was dragged across the floor, the baby let out a series of little squeaks and thrust its head over its mother’s shoulder. The thranx picked Llian up, holding him out in the air. Mother and child bared their teeth. Llian closed his eyes.

  At that moment the ram struck again, bursting the door in. The crew of the ram were carried halfway across the keep before managing to stop. The thranx let Llian go and reared up before them like an avenging devil. Dropping the ram they scattered for their lives.

  The thranx whirled, grabbed Llian, sprang in the air and the wings drove it upward. It beat its way up the stairs, laboring under the load. Llian, hanging upside down, saw Mendark and Yggur appear in the doorway.

  One of Yggur’s soldiers hurled a spear, which whistled between Llian’s legs. Shocked, he curled himself up into a ball. Mendark or Yggur, Llian could not tell who, sent a blast of red fire up the stairs that singed the end of one leathery wingtip. The thranx was unaffected, though Llian could feel it struggling to carry him now. The birth injury must have weakened it.

  It flapped harder, hung motionless for a moment then began to spiral up into the broken turret of the roof. The moon shone down through a jagged tangle of beams. Below, Llian saw Malien, Yggur and Mendark race up around the curve of the stair. Mendark set off another blast, which the thranx avoided; it made one of the rafters smolder.

  Knocking Mendark’s arm aside, Malien released another of those shining bubbles through her fingertips. It followed the spiraling path of the thranx, swelling as it rose. On touching Llian’s foot, it enveloped his body and swelled again to become a globe a couple of spans across.

  With one whispered word from Malien, frost needles expanded across the globe and it set hard. Llian felt the sphere come up against the broken roof opening and jam there.

  The thranx, now out through the roof, screamed in frustration. Llian felt its mighty wings beating the air. It sent blast after blast from its baton. The baby screamed too but the bubble was impervious.

  Finally the thranx simply let go, rose sluggishly into the sky, crossed before the dark moon and was gone. The shiny bubble drifted down, bursting into fragments that turned to smoke in the air. Llian lay on the floor, his legs bleeding again.

  “I didn’t know you could use the Secret Art,” he said huskily.

  “I was a master once, but Tensor cured me of it.” Malien bent down over his wounds. “I don’t like the look of this. Are you up to another operation, chronicler?”

  “No!” he said weakly.

  She lifted him to his feet and, to his surprise, embraced him. “You’ve had a bit of a night, Llian.”

  The pressure caused a sharp pain in his shoulder. Only then did he remember the intruder in the night and understand who it had been. The hand had given her away. “Faelamor!” he gasped.

  “What?” Malien said sharply, letting him go. She caught him as he fell.

  “There was a spy in here, not long before the thranx came.” He bared his shoulder, revealing nail gouges in the pale skin that were bruised black and blue. “She wanted to know where Karan was. I think it was Faelamor.”

  Malien inspected the marks. “Could be! It’s the size of her hand. A complication we could do without.”

  “She’s after the construct!” said Mendark. “We’ve got to get it first.’

  10

  Pale Ghosts

  It was a glorious winter’s morning when Tallia and Shand set out from Gothryme. The air was still and the sun shining; as fine a day as the previous ones had been ill. Nonetheless the traveling was slow in new snow, and the cliff path very icy.

  “Careful, there may be guards,” said Shand.

  At the top there was sign of Ghâshâd, trampled snow and burnt wood, but they saw no one. It was almost dark by the time he and Tallia arrived at the little stone pavilion beside Black Lake. The moon had not yet risen.

  They reconnoitred all around, as well as they could, but found no more sign of the enemy. By the time they regained their campsite, the moon was rising past its full, the angry face already turning away. It was the fourth day after hythe. Endre, mid-winter week, was finally over. Not daring to light a fire, they dined on cold meat, bread and fruit, took a swig each from Shand’s flask to warm them and turned quickly into their sleeping pouches.

  Before dawn Tallia was wakened by Shand’s hand on her shoulder. He handed her a hunk of dark bread and a mug of ice water. The bread was so cold that she had to gnaw at it as they walked along.

  It was near midday by the time they reached the steep climb below the amphitheater. There were no tracks, for everything was covered by the night’s heavy quilt. The day was still; again the sun shone brightly. Tallia eased her head over the crest. Carcharon crouched directly in front of her. In the bright sunlight she saw that part of the tower had collapsed.

  Carcharon looked different, wrong, as if it had become plastic and deformed under its own weight. All the faces and angles of it were changed. “Better be careful,” she said. “The whole tower could come down.”

  “It looks empty,” said Shand. There were no guards on the walls, where previously the Ghâshâd had been everywhere. Nonetheless they crossed the arena warily. Finally, looking down on the winding track that led to the gate, they took their courage in their hands and ran.

  “What a terrible, desolate place,” said Tallia as they climbed the steps. “No wonder Basunez went mad.”

  “He must have been mad to build here in the first place!” They continued up to the top.

  Tallia eyed the bronze statues outside the door with new understanding. “These are thranx! How did Basunez know how to make them so accurately?”

  “I’d say his studies were more successful than anyone thought,” Shand panted.

  They found the gate locked, though rubble where the wall had been breached made a ramp up to the base of the gap, offering easy entrance. A breeze sighed through the broken wall. Climbing the pile, they looked into the tower at the level of the first floor. There was nothing to be seen but more rubble and drifts of snow. Tallia clambered in.

  Inside, the atmosphere was even stranger. The stairs appeared different each time Tallia looked at them. Sometimes they seemed to lead down instead of up, and sometimes both down and up at the same time, impossible as that seemed. And once or twice, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a mirage Wall curving through the building.

  The spiral staircase was largely intact, though a number of steps had collapsed. Here and there on the walls were abstract carvings with an ordered, crystalline geometry. They were beautifully executed but quite incomprehensible. The Ghâshâd must have done them, for they were fresh. They paused halfway up. Tallia looked out an embrasure, seeing nothing but steep rock faces and ice all the way to the bottom of the gorge, and the other side rising up as steep and bare, though not as high.

  “I don’t like this place,” she said. “I can feel the very stones groaning.”

  “Well they might, the sights they have seen. But it was a strange place before Carcharon was built, and will still be when every last stone is gone. It is one of the most potent sites in all Santhenar, where the currents in the very core of the world sweep to a focus. Karan’s father was fascinated by the place.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Galliad? A strange man, in some ways. Brilliant but an outcast. He was half-Aachim, y
ou see, and at odds with the world both here and in Shazmak. Wherever he went he was an exile.”

  In the topmost chamber they found a scene of devastation. A good third of the eastern wall had fallen outward, leaving the shattered roof frame sagging down to the floor. A low wall had scorch marks on it and some of the stone had melted, running down to congeal in a slaggy pile at the base. Nearby they found a huge depression in the floor as if something heavy had molded the stone like jelly. It was as smooth as glass and shaped with odd curves and corrugations reminiscent of the construct. Except for some food scraps and a broken plate, the room was empty. Carcharon had been abandoned.

  The very air in the room moved sluggishly, glittering with little drifting specks of fire even when the sun was covered by cloud. Their voices changed all the time, sometimes echoing as if they spoke inside a bell, at other times sinking into the plastic walls so that they had to shout to be heard at all.

  Shand sat down on the roof wreckage, drumming his heels against a rafter. He looked quite defeated.

  “What’s the matter, Shand? All the life seems to have gone out of you.”

  “I’m too old. I’ve nothing left to live for.”

  “What about finding Karan?”

  “He’s taken her with him. There’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.”

  Tallia left him there. Going downstairs, she searched the whole place; every storeroom, every cupboard, the yard and all the sheds and lean-tos, mostly unroofed, that clustered against the walls. She looked in the cellars and even the water cistern. There was thick ice on the top of it. Tallia paced around the walls, peering down to see if anything had been thrown there, or anybody, but found nothing except a neat pile of waste—bones, scraps and a few broken items—in one stone bin.

  Climbing up again she found Shand still staring at the molded floor. “There’s nothing left,” she said. “Whatever they brought with them they took away. No sign of Karan either.”

  He sighed. “Let’s try to unravel what happened. We know that the construct worked well enough to find a way into the void, for the thranx can’t have come from anywhere else.”