The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  She would land well behind Faelamor and probably injure herself. Grasping the opportunity, Tallia pushed herself off and up like a pole vaulter. The pole snapped back, she arched through the air and as Faelamor turned at the noise she struck her in the chest with her knees and all her weight behind them.

  Faelamor went down as if she’d been charged by a bull and lay still with her face in the snow. The impact shook Tallia too. She wrenched Faelamor’s hands behind her and bound them.

  “Karan! Are you all right? Quickly, she might come round any second.”

  Karan sat up, looking dazed. She felt dizzy but the nausea was gone. The trees no longer appeared to be close together. The illusion had disappeared. They could walk out any way they chose.

  “What are we going to do with her?”

  “I know what we should do,” Karan said.

  Tallia silently handed her a knife.

  “Should do, I said. Not will do. I can’t kill a helpless person, not even her.”

  They turned her over. Faelamor was unconscious but breathing. “Leave her, then,” Tallia said, “Stop her mouth and blindfold her. That will curb her powers.”

  They did that, quickly, and by the time they’d finished she was beginning to stir. “Come on!” Tallia screamed. They ran across the clearing, gathered Karan’s pack and dived into the forest. There they stopped and looked back. Faelamor was moving her legs and arms, seemingly testing her bonds.

  They collected Tallia’s pack. “Oh, your poor feet,” said Karan. They were bruised blue and bloody; every step left blood on the snow.

  “They hurt like blazes.”

  Tallia dragged her socks and boots on. The leather was stiff from the cold. They fled. Before they had gone very far there was a cry from behind. It shivered Karan’s insides. Faelamor was in helpless agony, dying all alone. Karan felt all confused and twisted up inside. She stopped and would have run back.

  “No!” cried Tallia, catching her wrist in an iron-hard grip.

  “But she’s hurt. She’s in terrible pain. I can’t leave her to die all alone.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Tallia spat, dragging her the other way. “She’s calling you back. Her voice conjures illusions as powerful as any other. Once we’re beyond hearing she can’t harm you.”

  Karan looked distressed, feeling that she ignored a desperate entreaty, but they ran on and heard nothing more. Even after they were long out of hearing Karan felt the piteous pleas tearing at her sensitive self, then suddenly the strangeness about the landscape died away. They were safe.

  They ploughed through the snow-clad heath to the edge of the cliff, a landmark nothing could disguise. They followed the winding, gully-cut edge all day, and the next. When they reached the cliff path just on dark, Karan kept going. Fretting for Llian, she went down the dangerous path at a trot.

  “Wait,” Tallia shouted. “This is madness. You’ll kill yourself.”

  “Llian needs me.”

  “Not like this, you fool. All right, go! But I’m not going with you.”

  Karan stopped and waited, her breast heaving, until Tallia caught up to her. From then on they went down at a safer pace. Once at the bottom Karan was off again, running, and Tallia jogged beside her without complaint though her feet were killing her. They reached Gothryme after the middle of the night.

  There was a single light on in Gothryme Manor, coming out through the shutters of the study where old Rachis kept the books. The doors were barred, so Karan rapped twice on the timbers, once, then thrice more, the knock she always used.

  The shutter creaked open. “Karan!” wheezed the old man. “Is it really you?”

  “It is me,” she said, “whole and safe.” She sprang up onto the sill and dropped lightly to the floor. “And here is Tallia back again too.”

  Rachis tottered and flopped back into his chair. “This is a dream surely. After hythe, and the news from Carcharon—”

  “The news was wrong. It’s so good to be home.” She helped Tallia through the window, whereupon Tallia fell down on the floor, groaning.

  “Oh, Tallia,” said Karan guiltily. “I forgot all about your poor feet.” She bent down and began to unfasten the laces. “Is there hot water, Rachis?”

  “The cauldron is on the kitchen fire.” He went out.

  Tallia’s socks were stuck to her lacerated feet with blood and had to be bathed off. The injuries were not serious, though rather painful. Karan chuckled to herself as she dabbed the wounds with ointment and bound up Tallia’s feet.

  “I don’t see what there is to laugh about,” Tallia said morosely.

  “I was lying in the snow back there in the glade. I looked up and saw the tree falling, and you clinging there in abject terror.”

  “A hallucination,” Tallia said sourly, “coming out of Faelamor’s illusion.”

  “The whole top of the tree arched down,” grinned Karan, “and your mouth was so wide open in your terror that I could see your tonsils.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Tallia. “It was just the wind blowing my lips apart.”

  “Abject terror,” Karan repeated, then giggled. Rachis smiled too. “The most marvelous thing I’ve ever seen. I could see that you were trying to distract Faelamor by flying head first into the snow, leaving me to rescue us both, but at the last minute she walked right under you. How I admired you. Had you flapped your wings I’m sure you could have flown.”

  “Someone has to get you out of the messes that you persist in getting yourself into,” said Tallia. “So you shouldn’t quibble about the means.”

  Karan roared with laughter. “I can’t wait to tell Llian. Where is he?” She could think about nothing but falling into his arms.

  “Llian was taken to Thurkad,” Rachis answered.

  “Taken? What do you mean?”

  “For betraying you to Rulke.”

  PART TWO

  16

  An Unusual Form of Treatment

  The ride to Thurkad was painful, not least because Llian knew he had failed Karan and would probably never see her again. But he never gave up hope. Every morning he woke thinking that today Tallia and Shand would appear with her, or at least with the news that she was still alive. Every night he went to his miserable blankets in despair that they had not.

  The horse-drawn cart was unsprung and every bump on the road, every pothole, sent jagged pain up his legs. Lilis was driving the cart while Jevi sat beside her issuing unnecessary cautions. Malien escorted them on horseback. Yggur, Mendark, Nadiril and their entourage had left for Thurkad the previous day. The other Aachim had remained at Gothryme with Xarah, who was too ill to travel.

  “Where do you stand in this business, Malien?” Llian had been wondering that for some time, for it had been months since she had taken any active part in the struggle against Rulke. She had been almost invisible since the failed attempt to seal the Nightland last summer.

  She moved her horse over beside the cart. “After Tensor’s folly, and our disaster down at the rift, I could not see the way. I thought it better to do nothing until it became clearer just what we were facing.”

  “It’s pretty clear now,” said Llian.

  “But I can’t combat Rulke’s construct.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Last autumn I sent messages east, by skeet, bidding my people come to a conference. After we get back to Thurkad I’m going across the sea to meet them. And what about you, chronicler? Where do you stand?”

  “By Karan’s side, of course!”

  As she jogged along Malien reached over and turned his face to hers, peering into his eyes. After a long moment Malien let him go again. “I do believe you’re telling the truth.”

  “Of course he is!” Lilis piped up. “Llian would not tell a lie about her!”

  “Hush, Lilis,” said Jevi. “This is not our business.”

  “Anything that happens to my friends is my business,” she said furiously.

  Malien moved
her horse away from the cart and they continued in silence.

  “Look out for that rock!” Jevi cried suddenly.

  Pursing her lips, Lilis calmly steered around the obstacle. “I’m not five any more, Jevi,” she said with just a hint of irritation.

  “Are we in Mendark’s domain already?” Llian called to Malien.

  “I wouldn’t think so, chronicler. Why do you ask?”

  “No other realm spends so much on its leader and so little on the roads.” He let out a tremendous groan.

  “Pull over, please,” Malien said to Lilis.

  Lilis turned off the road, the cart wheels gouging deep tracks in the mud, and parked the cart under a leafless tree. Llian had slumped sideways in his seat.

  “What’s the matter?” Malien asked him.

  “Every bump is like grinding broken glass into my legs.”

  Malien lifted his feet onto the front seat, drew up his trouser legs and began to unwrap the bandages. The left leg showed signs of healing but the right was terribly swollen and red.

  “What do you think of this, Jevi? I dare say you’ve seen a wound or two in your time.”

  “Hundreds! I don’t like the way the infection’s got in there. Lilis, would you light a fire and get some water boiling. And be careful—”

  Lilis’s eyes flashed, but obediently she began to gather wood. They bathed the wound and smeared it with a paste of honey, crushed garlic and the lees from a flask of red wine.

  “We’re out of wine,” said Malien. “Better buy some more at the next town. Do you think you could help us drink it, chronicler? Just so we can use the lees on your sores, you understand.” She laughed. Llian’s appetite for drink of any kind was well known.

  “It’s my only pleasure in life!” he said irritably.

  While they were working, a throng of passers-by and fellow travelers had gathered around, staring at Llian and making jocular remarks about his probable fate.

  “My cousin Marlie got the red-leg like that,” said a vast, jowly woman of indefinable age. She rested her considerable bosom on the side of the cart. “A red line went up his leg to his groin, and the next we knew, it had dropped off.”

  “What, the leg?” asked her companion, a tiny bird-like lady with a hideous wen on one eyelid. It looked like a third eye.

  “Not his leg—it!” she cackled.

  The small woman joined in. “What I heard, Marlie never had much use for it, even when he were a young man.”

  “Now Fasseli, on the other hand, he got it real bad from a wound like that,” the big woman ruminated. “They cut his toes off, one by one, but do ye think that stopped it?”

  “Don’t know. Did it?”

  “Not a bit,” chuckled the big woman. “They took his foot next but the gangrene kept coming back. Treated it just like that ugly little bloke is doing here—garlic, red wine and all that. Didn’t make a bit of difference. Before you knew it, the rot was up to his knee. And didn’t it stink! Something putrid, it was; you couldn’t even stay in the house!”

  “Disgusting,” said wen-eye. “You’ve got to chop quick and high, with the gangrene.”

  “Quick and high,” agreed the big woman. “They took the leg off at the knee, and the next day at the hip, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.”

  “It never does!” The small woman reached into the cart, prodding Llian’s legs with her walking stick. “Take my advice, and whip them both off now, at the top. He’ll be all the better for it.”

  Llian had been suffering their gossip in silence, but now he sat up abruptly. “Go away, you disgusting old hyenas!” he screamed.

  “We were trying to help!” said the small woman. “Come on, my dear.”

  They continued up the road, though the big woman could not resist one last word over her shoulder. “You’ll wish you’d listened to us, tomorrow.”

  Shortly the wagon headed off again and the torment resumed. So the day passed, and the next, with stops every few hours to bathe the wounds. The stops seemed to become more frequent, and the conferences between Malien and Jevi longer and with more head-shaking. Llian tried to read his journals but it was impossible to concentrate.

  At lunchtime on the second day, Malien and Lilis were unwrapping the bandages yet again, when Lilis gave a choking cry. Malien went quite still, staring down.

  “What is it?” Llian demanded, trying to sit up. Then the breeze carried a horrible smell to him, and he knew. It was rotting flesh—the women had been right. He had gangrene and Malien would have to cut his leg off, though he would probably die anyway.

  Malien and Jevi went into another huddle. Lilis looked faint, but she came up and took his hand. “I’m sure you’ll improve soon, Llian.”

  She knew better than that and so did he, but Llian went along with the pretense. “I expect you’re right, Lilis. You wouldn’t believe how often Malien has fixed me up, before this.”

  Malien came over, but not even she could joke now. “It’s bad, Llian, and I don’t know what to do. There are no medicines to fight gangrene. But don’t give up yet. Sometimes the body does fix itself, so we’ll go on for a few hours and see…”

  “And if it’s no better?” he asked desperately.

  “We can’t leave it any longer than that.”

  “You’re going to chop my leg off.”

  “Not all of it,” she said weakly.

  By the next stop the small patch of bad flesh had grown perceptibly. Malien shook her head. “It’s no use, Llian. I’ll have to take the leg!”

  “How… how are you going to do it?” he croaked.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ll cut through to the bone just here, below the knee, and sew up any blood vessels. Then, saw the bone through.”

  Llian studied his leg. In a few minutes it would be gone forever, thrown onto the fire like rubbish. He could not come to terms with it.

  Malien was talking to Jevi. He nodded, mounted her horse with some difficulty, due to his arm being in a sling, and rode off. “He’s gone to find someone with a saw,” she said.

  Again the passers-by gathered around, gawking and offering gratuitous advice. This time Malien shooed them away. They waited ages for Jevi to come back.

  “There’s still life, even with one leg,” she said to Llian.

  “How many do you have?” he replied bitterly.

  Jevi came pounding up the road, riding the horse one-handed and yawing from side to side as if he was paddling a canoe. A long, two-handled saw was strapped to his back. Malien helped him down.

  “This is all I could find,” Jevi said. Its widely spaced teeth were more suited to sawing down a forest tree than cutting through bone.

  “It will have to do,” Malien said, frowning.

  She and Jevi went into another huddle, during which they kept glancing back at Llian. He supposed they were deciding who would hold him down and who would do the cutting. They came up to the cart.

  “Jevi has another idea,” said Malien. “You might want to consider it, though… I’m not sure that I would.” She shuddered delicately.

  Jevi said nothing, though he glanced at Lilis, and away again.

  “What is it?” screeched Llian. The travelers on the road looked around curiously.

  “It’s… you may find it disgusting,” said Jevi, embarrassed, “but I saw it work once when we were shipwrecked on the Isle of Banthey. It’s… maggots!”

  “What about them?”

  “They eat the dead flesh, cleaner than Malien or I can cut it away.”

  The idea was positively nauseating, but losing the leg was worse. “They actually eat the gangrene?”

  “Love it, apparently,” said Jevi, making a smacking sound with his lips.

  “And it might save my leg?”

  “It’s a chance.”

  “I’d try anything in the world to keep my leg, even maggots,” said Llian. “See if you can find some.”

  “Happens I alread
y have,” said Jevi, untying a leather bag at the saddlehorn. “There was a dead dog up the road…”

  A dead dog! Llian wanted to vomit. “Get on with it!”

  He couldn’t watch as Jevi packed a handful of the white squirming things onto the wound and bound it loosely with a moist cloth. “What now?” Llian asked.

  Malien, who looked decidedly ill, reached into the back of the cart and lifted out a huge flask of red. “Now we wait! Where’s your mug, Llian?”

  “I’ll take mine out of the bottle.” Raising the flask, he poured a hefty slug straight down his throat.

  “What does it feel like, Llian?” Lilis asked.

  “A bit ticklish around the edges!”

  She went over to help Malien with the camp. Jevi sat across from Llian in the cart, evidently thinking that he needed company, though Jevi didn’t actually say anything.

  “How is your arm?” Llian wondered, trying to make conversation.

  “Not so bad,” said Jevi. He had never been heard to complain. In fact he had hardly spoken the whole trip, except to Lilis.

  A long silence ensued. Llian gulped his wine, wishing Jevi would either say something or go away.

  “I wonder how Tallia and Shand are getting on at Carcharon?” Llian said idly.

  There was a flash of terror in Jevi’s eyes, quickly hidden. How interesting, Llian thought. He’s in love with her. I wonder I didn’t realize it sooner.

  “I hope Tallia’s safe,” said Llian. “She’s a wonderful woman.”

  Jevi said something incoherent.

  The wine began to work its magic. Llian, feeling a reckless thrill, pressed Jevi a bit harder. “You know,” he said casually, “I think Tallia might be in love with you.”

  Jevi choked. “Don’t be stupid! How could she love me? She’s so—” he cried out incoherently. “Mind your own business, Llian!” He threw himself off the cart, heedless of his healing bones, and stumbled off into the scrub.

  “Llian, wake up!

  It was Lilis, shaking his shoulder. The sun was well up.