The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  “I’ve always wanted to live by the sea,” Maigraith sighed. “I remember when I was just a little girl, playing with a battered old shell. It would have been bigger than my fist.” She looked at her hand.

  “Someone told me—not Faelamor, you can be sure—that the whisper I heard when I put it to my ear was the sound of the distant sea, captured there long ago. And in my childish fancy I was sure that was true, for there were times when the sound was just a whisper, the gentle waves foaming up the beach and rushing back again. Other times I heard a roaring and a crashing and a thundering that could only be the wild storm flinging gray water and green weed (and perhaps a helpless mermaid or two) against the rocks.” She laughed nervously. “There was much violence, much tearing away from roots in my childhood dreaming.

  “I often dreamed that I lived by that sea, with my mother and my father, and their mothers and fathers, a sister or two, even a brother. We would go for long walks across the rocks together, picking over the wrack and the drift and the strange things that lived in pools.”

  “You must have been lonely,” said Shand, stretching his legs across the weathered boards.

  “I was terribly lonely. I yearned for all the things that other children had—parents, brothers, sisters, cousins—but I was all alone. I was different. That was the first thing I knew about myself. The other children knew it too. Though I was only four or five, I was never allowed to play. I studied all day and long into the evening. At first we lived among the Faellem but when they found out what a terrible crime Faelamor had done, we were exiled.”

  She rested her head on Shand’s shoulder, then quickly moved it again as though afraid that he would object. Shand drew her back. Maigraith gave another sigh.

  “Was Faelamor your teacher?”

  “Not at first. When I was little I was mostly tutored by Hana. I don’t know if that was her true name. She was not Faellem. Hana was tall with brown hair in a single plait that hung right down her back, and when she held me her skin always seemed so soft and warm. I made her into a mother, I suppose, having no other. She was kind to me. I desperately wanted a father too, but that was a forbidden topic. I’ve no idea who he was.”

  “Nor do I.” Shand got up in some agitation and stared out toward the heads. The waves crashed and roared all around Shag’s Rock and the Gap.

  “I wish I knew. Hana understood what it was like for me because Faelamor had abducted her. She was a teacher in her own society.

  “When Faelamor was away, Hana would take me for walks down to the water. I remember one place, a ridge between two lakes, the ground falling steeply to the water on both sides. I seem to recall a broken watch-tower. In winter everything was frozen, but in summer the water was so warm that we would take off our clothes and swim out to an island. It was lovely, floating there with Hana treading water beside me, watching over me.

  “If it had not been for her I would have turned into a machine, which is what Faelamor wanted of me. But Hana was so kind, so loving and warm, and I knew that she, too, was a lonely prisoner. She gave me that shell and listened to my dreams about the sea. She had not seen it either, but she knew all about it. She told me stories of terrible shipwrecks, and oceans that are as warm as blood and glow with light; of towers beside the water that sent strange messages, and astounding creatures that hunted in the depths; of cruel men who sailed on tall ships, and women too, doing unspeakable things.

  “But when I was eight she disappeared. One day Faelamor humiliated me for not understanding my lesson, and that night Hana came to comfort me, wiping away my tears and telling me little jokes until my misery was gone. Faelamor caught us together. I don’t know what she did, but Hana went white and clutched at her head as if it would burst open. The next day she was sick and desperate. Faelamor took me away for the day’s lesson. The following morning I crept into Hana’s hut before dawn, but she was gone and I never saw her again.

  “Faelamor was so furious that she could not speak. I suppose Hana knew too much. Faelamor went after her and I was terribly afraid for my teacher, but Faelamor did not find her. I think the Faellem must have helped Hana to escape. How else could she have gotten away from Faelamor? Not long after that the Faellem exiled us. We went far away, traveling through all the lands of the south, never staying long in one place. We never had a home after that. Never! How I wanted one.

  “I often thought about Hana over the years, but she would be dead long ago now. The night after she disappeared I lay in bed in the darkness, weeping silently for my lost friend and for my misery. Later I woke. A full moon shone in my window and I felt stirred by something. It was cold and quiet outside: the dark shadows of the trees, the snow! I took out my shell but could not hear the sea at all. Had Faelamor cast her miserable spell over it as well?

  “I traced the spirals with my fingers, outside and inside. There was something inside it, a scrap of paper folded into a pellet. It was Hana’s writing. I have it still,” she said, taking what appeared to be a golden bead from a chain about her neck and twisting until it separated into halves. A tiny roll of paper fell out. Unrolling it carefully she passed it to Shand. “The Whelm took it from me in Fiz Gorgo, but Yggur gave it back.”

  COURAGE, it said in the consciously well-formed script of a teacher. It was written in the common speech of the south-east, which Shand knew though he had not spoken it for many years. He felt his eyes grow moist for the gift of this unknown woman.

  “That saved me, many times,” she said. “Many times I lost heart, especially when I was becoming a woman. That was one of the most painful times for me. Faelamor tormented me so. I never knew why. I suppose it was because I reminded her of her enemy.”

  “Yes, you are the very image of Yalkara,” said Shand. “Though a smaller version—she was a big woman.”

  “It must have been torment for Faelamor, seeing me growing up to so resemble her enemy. There’s not much Faellem in me.”

  “There’s enough. It just doesn’t show on the outside.”

  “Do you know anything about my father?” she asked yet again, plaintively.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Faelamor came to realize that her plan had gone wrong. She had made me, the triune that she needed, but I could not be forced into the mold she had put so much effort into constructing. I was flawed, she told me, and I think she despaired that all her work had been for nothing.

  “There were times when I could think of no escape but to kill myself,” said Maigraith. “I often thought of that when I was growing into womanhood. After I grew up it got better. I had achieved some mastery of the skills Faelamor had spent so long teaching me. I was able to help her, and I took satisfaction from what I was able to do, especially when it was something that she could not.”

  “In what way are you flawed?” asked Shand, scratching his chin.

  “I had to be controllable. I could not act independently of her, or seek power for myself. She could not make someone who would break away to become a rival—that would be remaking the enemy.”

  “Rather ironic then, that she has brought out Yalkara in you,” said Shand.

  “Hardly!” Maigraith laughed. “But she must have been afraid of what I could become. She broke my spirit. That is why I failed in Fiz Gorgo, and where she first realized it. I could not impose my will on others. Since then I have developed that skill, to a degree.”

  “Yet you forced Karan to go to Fiz Gorgo with you.”

  “Poor Karan! That was not my will but Faelamor’s. I would have done anything to avoid having to confess that I had failed her. Anyway, Hana’s message brought me back from despair many times. But those days are so far away now.” She rolled up the scrap of paper and put it back where it had come from.

  Maigraith, after her initial explosion of joy in Elludore, had found it impossible to break through the reserve built up over so many years, and the demands of the company had sent her retreating back into herself. Now the sound of the sea brought all the memorie
s and associations flooding out as if a dam had burst. “I loved that old seashell,” she said with a shiver.

  “What happened to it?”

  “One night Faelamor found me sleeping, clutching it to me as children do with the drabbest little thing that they have made into a treasure. She threw it down and crushed it beneath her boot.”

  It was too long ago for Maigraith to care, though the feeling of dumb hurt was one that she was still familiar with. But Shand began to smolder. “I know the terrible isolation and loneliness the Faellem felt, when they found themselves marooned here in Santhenar. But not even Rulke would have done the things that Faelamor has done. She is utterly corrupt. Thoroughly evil!”

  “Is she? I never thought that. No, it’s just that the Faellem are a different human species, as the Aachim and the Charon are different. We each put our own kind first, as a dog puts its interests above those of its neighbor, the cat. She is single-minded about her own species, as you old humans are about your own race. We make so much of the rights of humankind, while denying animals any rights whatsoever.”

  “But animals are not human,” said Shand in a tone that suggested that the issue did not warrant debating. “Well, I’m going to get this place into shape, then I’ll make dinner. Can I get you anything first?”

  “I want to do it with you.”

  And they did, enjoying the simple things like gathering wood and carrying it between them back to a heap behind the house, chopping it into lengths, collecting tinder and kindling. They made beds, cleaned away dust and cobwebs, shook out rag rugs, and when the little place was as comfortable as could be managed, and herbs and branches of aromatic shrubs had been hung up here and there in lieu of flowers, they began to prepare lunch.

  Maigraith’s experience of cooking extended little further than the campfire—it was not an art that Faelamor thought to be of value—and even there her productions had been austere. But Shand loved good food and took equal pleasure in preparing it. As he worked, kneading dough or beating eggs, marinating meat or creaming butter and sugar, he explained carefully what he was doing, and why, and Maigraith caught some of the pleasure from him. She was like a blind person who had just been given the gift of sight. All the world was different to her, now that she had a place in it.

  They spent several days there without Maigraith even glancing at the Mirror. Their time was taken up in clambering over the rock platforms with the sleety wind and the sea spray in their faces, or walking on the gravelly beach collecting shells. Sometimes they sat rugged up on the porch watching the sea, other times by the fire in the evenings, listening to Shand’s tales and the wind in the eaves.

  At first, messages came several times a day from Mendark or Yggur, but Shand tore them up and sent the messengers away. After a while they stopped coming. Then one morning Maigraith woke and knew that she was ready to use the Mirror.

  She was desperate to see her grandmother’s face again, and to realize the new life the Mirror had promised when first she’d taken it up in Fiz Gorgo. Perhaps it could show her Aeolior’s face too. She wanted that more than anything.

  Holding the Mirror in front of her, she tried to see into it. It remained no more than a metal mirror, beautiful but blank except for her reflected face. She sought out its essence as if it was a crystal that she was trying to make into a lightglass. The Mirror was indifferent. She traced the silvery glyphs around the border with a fingertip, thinking that they might be some kind of key. If they were, it was not one she could use. Maigraith shook the Mirror, cursed it, and finally, using all the power of the Secret Art at her command, attempted to force it open, to make it show Yalkara to her. The Mirror refused. It mocked her every attempt.

  24

  Reminiscences

  That evening, when they were sitting on the porch again, well blanketed against the cold, taking tiny sips of yet another of Shand’s liqueurs, and alternate sips of a steaming hot kind of coffee, and looking at the stars and the scorpion nebula, Maigraith asked Shand to tell her about her mother.

  “I’ve been dreading that,” he said softly. “The reopening of old wounds. Poor Aeolior! No one ever loved a child more than I loved my daughter. It would be impossible to love anyone more.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Like other children, I suppose, though I didn’t have much experience of children then. I was much too important for that. Aeolior was a very wilful child; clever and determined. She knew what she wanted and she would not rest until she got it, whether by wheedling me or by her own hard efforts. Yet she had a soft heart, and she was loving and mischievous too. Karan is like her in some ways.

  “She would have grown up to look much like you, I imagine. Her eyes were exactly like yours, and the curves of her face. Her hair was rather darker and wavy, like mine used to be, when I had some! She looked to be about thirteen when I lost her, though in years of Santhenar she was much older. Aeolior developed slowly, as the Charon do.” His voice quavered.

  “As with her, so with me,” said Maigraith, and changed the subject. “Tell it some other time, if you prefer. For now, and since there are people waiting on what I do with the Mirror, even though I try my best to put them out of my mind, I would like to hear about Yalkara. And even about you, grandfather, if it does not strain your modesty too much.” She said this last with a cheeky sort of a grin. It looked a little strange at first, and she gave the impression of being a little surprised at its appearance, so unused was she to joking. The grin broadened into a smile, and Shand laughed with her.

  “I’ll leave those tales for another day! I’ll tell you what I can about Yalkara, though that may not be as much as you might suppose. We were lovers for an age, but there were great areas of her life about which she would not speak. Maybe after you’ve looked on the Mirror you’ll know more about her than I do.

  “About her previous time, before she came to Santhenar from Aachan, I know very little. About why she came here and did the things she did, and what her motives were, again almost nothing. She had an evil reputation, and was more often slandered than anyone I ever heard of. The Demon Queen they used to call her, and the Mistress of Deceits. Many other names too; worse names; foul ones! Great women attract such slander more than great men. To be great is to make decisions that affect other people, and she did not shrink from that. Yet I never knew her to do a cruel act, or even an unkind one knowingly, though she could be hard as metal to her enemies.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I remember the moment I first laid eyes on her as clearly as this morning.” He leaned back against the wall of the porch and closed his eyes.

  The recollection stretched into minutes and the minutes into a long time. Maigraith sat watching the old man. My grandfather, she kept thinking. This man is my mother’s father. There will always be a bond between us. The commonplace relationship felt so strange to her, yet so beckoning; so warming. And it spurred her to find out about the other relations she would never know—her Faellem father and his mother and father. Those grandparents could still be alive, she realized, though her father was long dead, poor abused man. Yet not as abused as her mother. Once again she was struck by the parallels between her life and Karan’s. They were almost the reverse of each other. What did it signify? Or did it mean nothing at all? Was it just the kind of thing that happened to those rare few who had the misfortune to be born triune?

  She realized that Shand still had not answered. He was looking quite vacant. “Shand?” she said gently.

  He came out of himself like a sick fish drifting to the surface of a pond, giving her such a blank look that in spite of herself she shivered. Then he recognized her and smiled.

  “I’m sorry. I find that I’m doing that more and more of late. A bad habit I got into many years ago, when I was wandering in the most abject state of misery, before I went to Tullin and found that I could be useful again. You cannot imagine what is in the mind of someone as old as I am. So many memories are tangled up togethe
r, and often it seems more pleasant, even more real, to take refuge in memory rather than remain in the present. One day I may go off into the past and never find my way back. I may forget that the now and the future exist.”

  Maigraith looked uncertain and afraid. “I would be desolated,” she said.

  Shand squeezed her hand. “That’s a way off yet, never worry. Be sure that when I do go, it will be the best thing for me, because I’m utterly weary of this world. The old must make way for the young. I should not have lived this long.”

  “Why have you?”

  “In Havissard I did not seem to age. Some enchantment of Yalkara’s, no doubt. And before she left, she gave me the gift of part of her life. I often wonder what it took from her, and if she survived it.” Shand came back to the present. “What were we talking about?”

  “How you met Yalkara,” she said.

  “It was during the Clysm. Do you know about that time?”

  “Of course.”

  He went on as if she had given the other response. “The Clysm, the wars between the Charon and the Aachim! Though when I say the Charon you must know that I do not include Yalkara. She took no direct part in that struggle. Indeed she had no army, only a small guard. The Clysm was mainly fought between the forces led by Rulke and the legions of Pitlis. Pitlis was once held to be the greatest Aachim who ever lived. He built their glorious city of Tar Gaarn, and designed Alcifer for Rulke too. But he was seduced by Rulke, and Tar Gaarn fell, and now they call Pitlis the biggest fool that ever drew breath.

  “That was a desperate time for Santhenar, the worst this world has ever seen. I don’t think anyone knows the true reason for the war. The Histories mostly say that Rulke began it, and that might be so. You could ask Llian the evidence for that viewpoint, if you’re minded.