The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  “There’s one job that needs doing desperately, but it must be done perfectly. Can you copy?”

  “That was the first thing Nadiril taught me,” she said stiffly.

  “And was he satisfied with your work?”

  She hesitated. “Not completely.”

  “Can you make a clean copy of this?” He handed her a piece of paper covered in his own fine hand, but full of crossings-out and amendments in various inks. “But remember, there can be no mistakes. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you must ask.”

  She sharpened a fresh quill and bent her head to the task. In less time than he had expected she was at his elbow again.

  “You need to check something?”

  “It’s done!”

  “So quickly?” He took the paper. The page was beautifully scribed in a rather ornate hand in the style of Nadiril’s. Though old-fashioned, it suited the text perfectly. He inspected every letter, loop, whorl and curlicue, and checked it with the original. “Close to perfect,” he said beaming. “Good enough!” whereupon Lilis threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Is that all?” she wondered.

  He laughed. “That’s not even the beginning. I have the biggest job you’ve ever seen. Look here.”

  On the floor beside his desk sat three volumes bound in leather of various colors. Two were quite battered and worn, but the third was relatively new. “This is my Tale of the Mirror, a Great Tale surely.” He crossed his fingers behind his back as he spoke, for that prerogative the master chroniclers protected jealously.

  “You want me to copy out your tale?”

  He misunderstood her. “It’s a very big task, I know. Look at the mess it’s in.” He opened the first volume, which was far worse than the sheet she had just copied. It was a sea of colored inks, corrections, numbered emendations, inserts, loose sheets, and many of the pages were written across as well as down.

  “But this is a job for a master scribe. It’s too great an honor for me.”

  “An honor that great scribes charge handsomely for, and I’m penniless. Anyway, how could I work with a scribe’s sour breath whining in my ear all day? I like you much better, Lilis. But if it’s too hard, or you don’t want—”

  Lilis snatched up the volumes and held them to her youthful bosom. “Of course I want to!” she said with high scorn. “I want it more than anything, and no one will work harder to make it perfect. Where do you keep your writing paper?”

  “Paper! I hadn’t thought of that,” said Llian. “I don’t have the money to buy even a small book. I’ll see what I can scrounge or beg from Mendark. Put them back; maybe we can start after lunch. You can’t use the third one anyway. I haven’t finished writing up that tale yet. And the fourth, I don’t even have a book to write it in. Now, where are my crutches?”

  Llian managed to glean a small leather-bound volume of blank pages, too small for any of his tales, but it was all he could get. It was a long time before Lilis reappeared. His legs were aching. In the mid-afternoon he hobbled over to the window, staring out through the bars at the yard and the knobbly tree.

  Lilis staggered in with a large bag over her shoulder.

  “What’s that—your lunch?” he said jovially.

  Lilis opened it up and pulled out four thick packets of paper that were creamy soft to the touch.

  “But… that’s silk paper, the finest there is!” Llian exclaimed. “Where did you get it?”

  “I had money saved up to search for my father, but I never used it, so I bought it myself.”

  For one of the few times in his life Llian was speechless. Silk paper cost an absolute fortune, at least two gold tars a ream, and she had bought four of them. He could live for a couple of years on a single tar.

  “I can’t let you do that,” he said, feeling weak at the knees. “I can never repay you such a sum.”

  “I’m not poor any more, Llian,” said Lilis. “After the war began, I led the Council out of the Great Hall to safety. Some of them were rich, and Tallia got the price of their lives out of each of them for me. And Mendark paid me handsomely for my help on the way to Zile last year. I put all that by to find Jevi, but didn’t use much of it. Nadiril actually pays me to learn, can you believe it?”

  “But such a sum!” said Llian, sinking down on the tatty rug. He’d only had one tar in his entire life.

  “A Great Tale deserves the best,” she said simply.

  This tale would sing even if it were written on blotting paper, he thought immodestly.

  “Besides,” she went on, “it wasn’t as much as you might think. The paper merchant knows me well now. I promised to speak to Nadiril about the contract for the Great Library, and so I will. The fellow gave me a very good price.”

  Llian went back in his chair. To think he had thought of her as a child. Lilis was a young woman and maturing fast. But then, after growing up on the streets and all she had been through since, how could she be anything else? In many ways she was older and wiser than he was.

  He realized that she was still speaking.

  “I said, have you anything else for me to copy? I want to do some practice before I start your tale.”

  “You can copy into this little book; I just got it.”

  “What do you want me to copy?” Lilis asked.

  “I’ll see what I can find.”

  18

  Fortelling and Prophecy

  Osseion opened the door of Llian’s room. “You are called to a council,” he said, “and Mendark requires that you wear these bracelets. ‘The first lesson!’ he said to tell you.” Osseion held up a long loop of chain attached to a pair of wrist manacles.

  Lilis was horrified. “Osseion,” she cried. “What are you doing?”

  “Have no fear, Lilis child,” said the soldier. “Llian is not in danger.”

  “Mendark wishes to remind me of my debt,” said Llian, groping for his crutches. He felt quite calm now. The past months had scorched the youth out of him. What could Mendark do to him that he had not already survived? He would smile and give him what he wanted, but all the while be working quietly at his own goal. Llian held out his hands and Osseion clicked the manacles closed.

  He was taken to the Magister’s sumptuous apartment in the citadel. These rooms were decorated in baroque extravagance with the very best Santhenar had to offer—tapestries woven with gold and silver thread, carpets of the costliest silk, and furniture made of ebony, leopardwood and other rare timbers, inlaid with pearl and jade. At the meeting were Yggur, who had just returned from the hunt, Tensor, Mendark, Shand, recently back from Carcharon, and Malien. Nadiril was not well and had not come.

  “We tracked the thranx by the ruin it left behind it,” Yggur said, looking even more confident and commanding than before. His triumphs had truly ennobled him. “It was hiding in Faidon Forest, west of Muncyte, but Nadiril was right—it could not fly any distance. Eventually we cornered it there and killed it, though it did great damage first.”

  “And the baby?” asked Llian, remembering the birth, the blood, the fierce-eyed infant.

  “It too. It was a wild little beast!”

  Llian could imagine the little creature struggling for its life.

  “I heard the tale at the city gates,” said Shand. “They say that you struck the thranx some mighty blows, Yggur, including the one that ended it.”

  “I was there,” said Yggur. “It took the blows of many to defeat it, and we suffered many casualties. I was lucky not to be one of them.”

  “Modest as always!” said Mendark caustically. He was toying nervously with a tiny chest of drawers, shaped like a whorled shell.

  “Unlike you, I don’t care to be praised for something that I don’t deserve! What news from Carcharon, Shand?”

  “Rulke’s abandoned it, for the moment.”

  “Here’s our chance,” said Mendark. “Let’s get to work on the flute.”

  “We don’t have gold enough,” snapped Yggur.<
br />
  “Faelamor has,” Mendark pointed out.

  “And her plans must be well advanced, for the Faellem have been sighted coming out of the south-east,” said Malien.

  “I believe she is hiding in Elludore Forest,” said Yggur.

  “What if—” Mendark began. “No, it would never work.”

  “If you’ve an idea, spit it out!” Yggur growled.

  “I was going to propose a raid on Elludore, to seize the gold. But that’s no place to take an army…”

  Yggur sprang up, pacing back and forth.

  “I’m afraid what Faelamor will do with the gold,” Mendark went on. “But… she’s the match of the best soldiers I’ve ever seen.”

  “Perhaps the flute is the way, after all,” said Yggur. “But it must be planned surpassingly well.”

  Mendark smiled to himself, though only Llian noted it.

  “We had a foretelling about this business,” said Malien thoughtfully.

  “About Faelamor?”

  “No, an answer to Rulke’s foretelling. Remember what he said as we hurled him out of Katazza:

  “When the dark moon is full on mid-winter’s day, I will be back. I will crack the Forbidding and open the Way between the Worlds. No one has the power to stay me. The Three Worlds will be Charon evermore.”

  “What was your reply, Shand?” asked Yggur.

  “Break down the golden horn,

  Wish the glass unmade,

  Fear the thrice born,

  But beware the thrice betrayed,”

  said Shand.

  “A load of child’s nonsense!” sneered Mendark.

  “It’s not the first time Rulke spoke his foretelling,” said Malien, deep in thought. “I heard it mentioned as a child, and a different reply, but I can’t recall how that went.”

  “The one thing that might save us and you don’t remember it!” Mendark said sarcastically. “So much for the Histories of the Aachim.”

  “We have a thousand foretellings,” croaked Tensor. “In our slavery we baked prophets as a baker bakes buns, a dozen for every conceivable disaster, and the inconceivable too. I don’t recall it either. Come, Malien; the tide won’t wait.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Across the sea,” said Malien. “To a gathering of our people. We’ll be away at least a month.”

  “Do you know anything about such an Aachim prophecy?” Mendark asked Llian after lunch. The Magister kept shifting on his chair as though in pain.

  Llian mentally ran through what he knew. “Um, there was something in Tales of the Aachim,” he said after a minute.

  “What?”

  “It was in a book of Aachim Histories that I read in Shazmak. The Nazhak tel Mardux, which loosely renders as Tales of the Aachim. Something struck me about it even then.”

  “I’ll strike you if you don’t get to the point,” said Mendark, shredding a piece of paper. “What was it?”

  “I don’t recall. I…”

  “What sort of an excuse for a chronicler are you?”

  Llian refused to be provoked. “The book was not in any of my languages. I had to decipher it bit by bit, and.”

  “And you left it in Shazmak.”

  “It would have been a great dishonor to take it.”

  “You have a very selective sense of honor, you who are accused of making a pact with the greatest enemy of all.”

  “Falsely accused!” Llian said sharply, rising to the bait despite his vow. “To you honor is just a boast, another of the currencies you use to buy your ends. Why is it important anyway?”

  “It could be the key to our dilemma,” Mendark replied evasively.

  Llian laughed and rattled his manacles at him. “Will things be different now that you need me?” He allowed the moment to drag out as long as he dared. Mendark looked ready to explode. “You forget that I was a master chronicler. Twice I read that book, every word; I will never forget it. That is my training. Any of us could do the same.”

  “But you said…” Mendark massaged his swollen knuckles. “Tell it, damn you!”

  “In this case it’s not so simple,” said Llian. “I remember it in the language it’s written in, which I know only haltingly. I’ll have to recite it back to myself, in that tongue, and translate it as I go. It’ll take all night.”

  “We have all night,” Mendark replied, “and all tomorrow if need be. If the answer is there, we’ve got to have it.”

  Llian searched in his memories for the beginning of the book. He found it, and it took him back to that room in Shazmak more than a year ago, and the wind wailing outside.

  “Remember that it’s in a language I barely knew. I learned more with Tensor in Katazza, but I wouldn’t say that I’m fluent.”

  “Begin!” said Mendark impatiently. “You chroniclers must qualify everything. You can check with Tensor, if he ever comes back.”

  The tale unreeled in Llian’s mind. The Aachim were a people proud and strong but never secure; noble and steadfast allies but too often betrayed; the makers of great but ill-judged alliances; artists and builders of the greatest skill yet looking always to the past; finally retreating into isolation. And always, always plotting revenge on Rulke, who had brought them to Santhenar in the first place. He was the architect of all their misfortune. Back then, I hardly knew that the Aachim existed, Llian thought. But how very true the book was.

  “Stop daydreaming, chronicler!” Mendark’s cry broke into his thoughts. “Get on with it!”

  Half the night passed before Llian found what he was looking for—a single paragraph that told of Rulke’s foretelling and how it might be averted.

  “There will appear an ‘instrument’—the precise expression is khash-zik-makattzah—and if a way can be found to use it, Santhenar can be… I think the word is redeemed. But at the end the instrument will be lost.” Llian rubbed his forehead. “I think khash-zik-makattzah means the-three-and-the-one, but it could be thirty and one. I’m not sure. It’s a dead language. You’ll have to ask Tensor.”

  “I have it!” Mendark cried. “The three means the flute, for it was the product of three worlds: gold of Aachan for the body of the flute; precious ebony of Tallallame the other parts of it; and the genius of Shuthdar, that conceived and made it. And the one is the sensitive who will use it to unstitch the Forbidding and restore the balance between the Three Worlds. But at the end the instrument will be lost. Does that mean lost, or destroyed? Go through it once more, Llian.”

  Llian repeated the paragraph containing the foretelling.

  “Perhaps there is a way that Rulke’s prophecy can be averted. The Mirror, Shand. Quickly!”

  “I’ll have to get Tensor to check my translation,” said Llian. “I don’t know the language well enough.”

  “Always excuses!” Mendark said. “Do it again. The Aachim have gone across the sea.”

  Llian went through his translation again, explaining it all in excruciating detail.

  “What can it be but the-three-and-the-one?” breathed Mendark when Llian had finished. “This is the sign I’ve been waiting for. The flute was the right way after all. Shand, you can’t refuse us the Mirror now. Let’s see if it shows us more than it did last time.”

  Shand had been dreading this moment. How he wished that he had never left Tullin. Yet he had, and once on the path there was no way to get off it.

  Yet still, when he pulled the tight coil of metal from its case and it slowly unrolled and hardened into the Mirror of Aachan, he did so with the greatest reluctance. It lay open in his hand, a hard black beautiful thing inscribed with those strange silver glyphs around the border, the moon symbol in one corner and the restless quicksilver matrix reflecting his battered old face. The others were all staring at it, each with his own greed or wonderment, and Shand felt resentful. Look at them! They each think that they will get something marvelous from it. Have they forgotten that it is the Twisted Mirror, the breaker of dreams?

  Look at Llian, standing there
with his mouth agape. He thinks that it will tell him all the lost tales of the past. He doesn’t seem like a master chronicler now. He looks more like a lecherous swineherd peeping through the bushes at the village girls at their bath, dreaming that they will offer themselves when he comes barging down to the water. But they won’t—they’ll run away laughing and mock him cruelly from a distance. So too this Mirror.

  Look at Mendark. He imagines that it will restore him to what was once his, and give him the means to make his name ring down the generations. See how the thought has almost erased the bitter downcast of his mouth. But it will betray him. The result will be far worse than he can ever imagine.

  Look at Yggur! If ever a man was made of stone it is he. Impossible to tell what’s in his mind. But the Mirror has something, and he knows it. See how his eyes gleam, and if his face shows nothing, his posture gives him away. Sit back, Yggur! There’s no more in this for you than for me. Nothing for any of us.

  Shand stroked the border of the Mirror, feeling the masterwork of the engraved glyphs around the edge, unmarked by the centuries since Yalkara put them there. That had been one of the last things she’d done on Santhenar, and therefore important. He wished he knew why. What memories the Mirror aroused. How terribly sad he felt. With a swift movement he passed it to Mendark.

  Mendark held it lightly on his spread fingers, his thumb resting on the engraved border. “At last!” he exulted. He touched the symbol in the corner. The scene appeared that he had produced when Karan first handed it to him in Thurkad more than a year ago. The others crowded around to see.

  It was a black, desolate landscape with tall mountains in the background. Nearer was a plain dotted with steely-gray buildings shaped like ox kidneys, curve upon multiple curve. The plain was cut by an icy rift, dark and deep; a fibrous iron tower leaned from a hill to one side; a small red sun peeped fitfully through rushing storm clouds. There was no living thing in sight.

  He spoke a word—Dirgash!—and the image disappeared. He tried another word. Other pictures appeared, views of Aachan like the first, but no more useful. Shand saw a world of huge mountains crusted with sulphur-colored snow and trickling scarlet lava. A land of plummeting canyons and furiously rushing rivers; of still, oily bogs and blue-black luminous flowers. Between the mountains were plateaux covered in gray grass, and the mounds and ruins of ancient cities. The sky was dominated by a huge orange moon hanging sullenly on the horizon and bathing all in its dreary light.