The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  “Anyhow, that was when I was in the greatest flush of my manhood, full of pride and self-importance. So rash and boastful was I that I cringe to think about it. It came about that, after one terrible, bloody battle a long way away, over near Crandor, some of us held a meet on the blood-soaked field to try and find an end to it. Far better if we had gone and given comfort to the dying,” he said with an edge of bitterness. “We could hear their shrieks from where we stood, but we left that to others. Important people must do important work!”

  He paused for a sip of his coffee, which was now quite cold. “Are you cold? Shall we go in to the fire?”

  “After the tale,” she replied. She loved the shivery feeling of listening to his story out in the chilly air, and the stars wheeling and reflecting on the still sea.

  “Our council was held under a great fig on the edge of the battlefield. It was a gigantic tree, with a trunk made of thousands of roots all twisted and woven and intergrown together. On the humped-up roots at the base we stood, one after another, and made our speeches. What rhetoric there was, and more in mine than in anyone’s! And then we went down and built our alliances, and made our petty deals, and betrayed one another.

  “Just as I finished my speech I noticed, on the edge of the field, a woman staring at me. That wasn’t odd—everyone was watching my speech and quite a few were applauding. One or two stood to the side giving me dark looks, or turning to their own allies and their own schemes. She was a most beautiful woman, though hers was a quiet regal kind of beauty, very understated. Just like your own.”

  “What is beauty anyway?” said Maigraith tersely. “It is just something to make use of if you have no useful talent. I never thought of myself as having any.”

  “Where did you get that notion from?”

  “Faelamor often told me how repulsive I was.”

  “Hardly surprising, since you don’t look at all Faellem, and much like her enemy. Have you never heard the tale of the ugly duckling? No? I’ll tell you later on.

  “As I was saying, that dark-haired woman was watching me. At the end of my speech she gave her head a little shake, as if she had not found what she was looking for, and turned away. I knew most of the important people there but I had never seen her before. What was she after? My curiosity was piqued. I had to know who she was, but no one could tell me. By the time I finished my enquiries, she was gone.”

  “Vanished?” asked Maigraith, who had risen right off the bench, staring at him, trying to see Yalkara reflected in his eyes.

  “No, just gone, away from the slaughter fields through the forest. I ran after her, doubtless making quite a fool of myself and causing some of my allies to have second thoughts, but I was indifferent. She must have heard me, for I raced around a bend in the path and she stood there, waiting. She seemed neither frightened nor uneasy at being accosted by this madman, alone in the forest. She looked neither bothered by the intrusion nor particularly interested in it. She just waited politely, to hear what I had to say and send me on my way again.

  “She wore black—a loose blouse of a lustrous material like silk, though not a wrinkle anywhere, and pantaloons of the same material. Her hair was like ebony silk and she wore red gold about her throat and forehead and wrist. Yalkara had the most flawless skin I have ever seen. She was most beautiful, perfect in every way. Then I saw that her wrists and hands were terribly scarred, as if they had been burnt.

  “I ran up to her, looked into her eyes and nothing in my life was ever the same again. I, who had never wanted any woman, knew that she would be the only love of my life. If I could not have her I would have none. I would cease to exist. Every hair on my body stood on end. My stomach sweated boiling acid.

  “She looked down at me, being a head taller. She inclined her head that I should speak, and a cloud passed across her face. For a moment she looked puzzled. Then she laughed, a rich mellow sound. ‘I see,’ she said.

  “‘What is your name?’ I asked politely.

  “She laughed again. ‘I do not give my name to strangers. You may call me Ilen, if you wish. What did you want to speak to me about?’

  “I was quite bemused. I entered thereupon a rambling and almost incoherent recapitulation of my previous address. She listened to it at first politely, but with increasing impatience, looking beyond me at the forest. I grew desperate, stopped abruptly and turned away, shaking my head and feeling an utter fool. I never knew her since to suffer such a fool, and what made her do so then I cannot say. She must have seen something beneath the pomposity and the pride, for she called me back.

  “‘I know what ails you, Gyllias,’ she said, ‘but it is beyond my power to cure. Yet if it is not a passing thing, come and see me at Lorkist’ (an insignificant village in Crandor, on the other side of the mountains) ‘in…’ (she seemed to be working something out in her head) ‘one year and fifteen days from today. Come to the inn on the market square and wait for me, after noon, at one of the tables outside.’

  “She nodded, then turned and strode away. I watched until she disappeared in the golden shade. I had been dismissed, though ever so politely. A year and fifteen days!

  “That was the longest year of my life. Every day I thought of her; every hour. It was an obsession, and it changed everything. I had to resort to the severest mental disciplines to do my work. I, who had never needed to concentrate on anything, found that I daydreamed constantly, that sometimes I literally could not force myself to work at my task no matter how hard I tried. That quite shook me, and many of my followers fell away.

  “Anyway, at length the year passed, and the fifteen days too, and you can be sure that I was there in Lorkist at the right inn and the best table well before the appointed time.”

  Maigraith could see the eagerness in his eyes even now; the passion that had never been quenched.

  “Noon came. She did not. Well, she had said after noon, and that might mean anytime in the afternoon, or perhaps, stretching it, until midnight. I waited and waited in the cold, and just at the point when I had begun to believe that she was not going to appear, a servant approached my table. He was a man in the prime of his middle age, and about his bearing there was something that said he was honest and reliable.

  “ ‘Are you Gyllias?’ he asked me. I said that I was.

  “ ‘Then I regret to advise you that my mistress, Ilen’ (he spoke the word with a slight emphasis), ‘is called away and unable to meet you, as she said she would. She bids you come again four days after endre, if you still care to.”

  “My disappointment must have been writ on my face; my hopes and dreams all snatched away and replaced by this meager crumb, for he went on: ‘She is very sorry to have inconvenienced you.’

  “I thanked him and he turned away. I sat there for another hour or two, watching the moon drift across the sky. Endre, mid-winter week, was 370 days away, almost another entire year.

  “I went about my business, and it was easier now, for some of the gloss had gone from my obsession. I worked harder at my labors than ever, and achieved great things that year, and finally endre came and I was back in Lorkist, waiting as before.

  “Again the afternoon passed without sign of her. It grew cold (for Crandor at least). I was the only one sitting outside. Finally, just on dark, the servant appeared again. This time the man was most apologetic. His mistress, unable to return in time, had sent a skeet from far away, bidding me to a third rendezvous.

  “‘Tell me where she is,’ I said, ‘and I will go to her.’

  ‘That’s not possible. Her whereabouts are guarded with the utmost secrecy. Even I do not know where to find her.’

  “I began to wonder if this were not some kind of test. Perhaps the man before me was Ilen, with some illusion or change of shape on her. I implied as much, and he became distressed, so that I was fairly sure he was genuine. He then gave me another date, not so far off this time, only 150 days away.

  “‘I cannot,’ I said, and he looked a little surprised. ‘I hav
e business in the east, in Thurkad and Zile, and will not be in Crandor for a year or more. Indeed,’ I added with perhaps justifiable annoyance, ‘I have little to bring me back to Crandor again.’ This will test him, I thought. If it is really Ilen in disguise, the fellow will make another appointment right now. But he did not.

  “‘I have no instructions for this eventuality,’ he said after a pause. ‘I will have to send a message to my mistress and wait for her reply.’

  “I pounced. ‘How can you send her a message if you don’t know where she is?’ I said triumphantly.

  “He gave a disdainful sniff at my lack of intelligence. ‘The skeet knows,’ he said coldly, referring to that huge, foultempered carrier bird. ‘Please return here in seven days.’

  “Seven days later he met me in the early afternoon.

  “‘Ilen will also be in the east next year,’ he said. ‘She will find you, in Thurkad or in Zile, unless you are traveling in disguise.’

  “‘I am not,’ I said, ‘though I use a different name there—Cheseut.’

  “I sailed off to Thurkad and immersed myself in my affairs again. The war was at a critical juncture and though I was not taking part in it I was still very busy. The months passed and I thought little of her. Without further feeding, my obsession had starved itself out. Besides, I did not care to be tested so, nor for the kind of woman who would toy with me. My pride had been hurt. That’s the kind of person I was then.”

  He smiled at Maigraith, who had not taken her eyes off him all the while. She squeezed his hand. “Tell on,” she said, and her eyes shone in the starlight.

  “One day I was sitting at a table at a waterfront inn in Thurkad, a place I frequented because I liked to look across the water and think, when someone stood between me and the sun. It was a cool day and I had been enjoying the warmth. I looked up, feeling just a trifle annoyed, and it was her.

  “I did not smile, or welcome her, though my heart turned over. She took a seat opposite. ‘I do not like to be trifled with,’ I said.

  “‘Nor I, but I do not play games, and my word is good. I have had much to do since we met, but now I am here. What is it that you want? Be direct; I cannot abide waffle.’ She looked just a bit anxious. My throat was dry as dust. I hardly dared to say it. It took more courage than anything I had done before.

  “‘You,’ I croaked. ‘I want you!’ Then I sweated blood, expecting a scornful rejection.”

  A tear ran down Maigraith’s cheek. “Quick, tell me!” she cried, clutching Shand’s hands.

  “She smiled, just the hint of a smile. She took my hand and put it to her lips. ‘That is just as well,’ she said, ‘since I have come to the same realization.’

  “She drew me to my feet. She was very strong. We were inseparable from that day. Often apart, but inseparable. So you can understand that I still grieve for her.”

  Maigraith smoothed away a tear at the corner of his eye. “You must miss her very much.”

  “More than life itself. I would do anything to get her back.”

  “And I would do anything to help you.”

  “What am I to do with myself, Shand?” Maigraith asked later. “I’m so confused.” Shand’s story had made her appreciate how shallow had been her relationship with Yggur. She wanted so much more.

  Shand looked up from the map he was drafting, a plan of the secret places of Elludore. He spent many an hour with his maps, often just staring at them as if reliving some ancient journey. “What are you confused about?”

  “Once Yggur was everything to me, but now I cannot imagine why. What did I see in him? Why did I cleave to him and why do I now push him away? I hurt him badly, though I never wanted to. And there is this other thing—”

  “What other thing?”

  “I am afraid to tell you for fear of what you will think of me. I saw Rulke last summer, just after he was hurled out of Katazza. He came to Thurkad in a kind of a sending. He was only half there, but when he looked at me, when he lifted me up, I felt such terrible yearnings. Yggur became a pale ghost by comparison. And I saw Rulke again, in Carcharon just before hythe. I felt the same longings, and the same terror too.”

  “The pull of the Charon is a powerful thing,” said Shand, “as I know better than anyone. And maybe your Charon nature, that was hidden from you for so long, cries out to you.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid.”

  “I can’t hope to advise you. You must do what you have to do, but make sure that you really have to do it. You know Rulke’s reputation. Yet as I have recently learned to my cost, reputations can be wrong.”

  Feeling all hot and cold, Maigraith said no more.

  Maigraith sat by the window with the Mirror on her lap, musing about what Shand had told her about her mother, and her mother’s mother. She gazed out at the harbor, sometimes dreaming with her eyes closed, imagining her grandmother coming to her. Suddenly she felt the pressure of light on her eyelids and knew, without even opening her eyes, that Yalkara was there. The Mirror had opened.

  Behind her Shand choked, but Maigraith did not notice. The symbol shimmered and burst with fire. She looked on her grandmother, the image of herself, and Yalkara looked up at her and smiled. Her lips moved. The Mirror could not give out her voice, but the words were painted in bright letters below her face.

  Aeolior, if you come to read this, I have for you a message; a warning and a task.

  Aeolior—you were the most precious thing in my life and I had to abandon you. That hurt more than anything I have ever done, and doubtless it hurt you too. But if I stayed I would have died. I could take nothing with me, not even you.

  Aeolior! You may wonder why I came to Santhenar, for many lies have been told about me. I begged, and the Council of the Charon allowed me to go, once we learned that the people of another world had gone between the worlds to Santhenar, and that they called themselves Faellem. I was very uneasy about them, for all that they seemed to have no powers compared to ours. You must realize that I know things that the other Charon do not. I, the youngest of the Charon, was tutored by the oldest, Djalkmah, to carry on the knowledge of our terrible first days in the void, and the time before that.

  I have written that down in my last journal in Havissard, since there is no one for me to pass my knowledge to. Not even the Charon can read that script, but the Mirror will teach you when the time comes.

  I was to be the watch on the Faellem. But Faelamor opposed my every work as if she had come for that very purpose, and finally she defeated me, though I made her think that mine was the victory. Beware Faelamor. She is utterly inimical to the Charon and to this world too.

  Aeolior. I made the Forbidding at the death of Shuthdar—a temporary expedient. Later I found that I lacked the means to unmake it. Now it decays. Eventually it must fail, and every use of devices—I mean things powered by the Secret Art: gates, constructs, flutes, your birthright, this Mirror and even such insignificant objects as light-glasses—will hasten that failure. When it fails Santhenar will lie open to the void and cannot survive it. Your task is to dismantle the Forbidding and at the same time restore the balance between the worlds that existed before the flute.

  This is what you must—

  At that point Yalkara’s image slowly broke up into a maze of dancing dots and the fiery writing faded. Maigraith watched, the flickering lights playing on her face, and after a while the face reappeared.

  –look upon the Mirror, and it will show you what you must do.

  Aeolior, fare well. We may meet some day if you succeed.

  Yalkara smiled and faded away. “Oh, I hope so, more than anything,” said Maigraith.

  Something made her look over her shoulder. Shand was staring at the blank Mirror as if trying to see through it all the way to Aachan. He was trembling. What would I give to bring you two together again, she thought. I wonder if that is why Shand is so keen on having the flute remade?

  She put the Mirror down, sorely puzzled, then took it up again
. She made it open as it had before. It told her what it had just told her, and it left out what had been omitted before.

  “But what does she mean? What am I supposed to do with the Mirror?”

  Shand slowly roused himself from his preoccupation. “I have no idea,” he said, little louder than a whisper.

  “Perhaps it’s damaged,” she said, inspecting it carefully. “Or perhaps I am not enough like Aeolior.”

  “Or perhaps the Twisted Mirror is up to its tricks again,” said Shand. “There’s no way to tell.’

  25

  The Three Tasks

  Faelamor was broken. Since finding the gold in Havissard there had been one setback after another. Now she had to deal with the rebellious Faellem as well. Sheep she called them, but that only showed how far she had diverged from them, over the centuries.

  The three Faellem returned laden with nuts found under the snow. Faelamor was sitting at the mouth of the cave, sunk ocean-deep in despair. She looked up quickly as Gethren entered.

  “I have failed,” she said. “I called you out into the evil world for nothing. Maigraith is gone and all I’ve striven for these past three hundred years is ashes; so am I. The burden is too great to carry any longer.”

  If it was a plea for sympathy it did not move them. “Such a dishonorable scheme as Maigraith told us deserved to fail,” said Gethren, “and I cannot but think that we’re yet to hear the worst of it. My every bone aches for Tallallame, but there must be other ways. If there are not, I will remain on Santhenar until I die, and then my bones will ache no more. If that must be the case, let the day be soon.”

  Faelamor did not respond. Fail, fail, fail! she was thinking. You begged for the task but your boast was hollow. You were trusted and you proved unworthy. Now these Faellem, and the rest, and the millions who wait for us in Tallallame, must wait in vain.

  Hallal and Ellami appeared behind Gethren and stood observing for a moment. They put the supplies away carefully, washed their hands and sat down in front of Faelamor. A pair of small brown birds hopped around the rocks outside the cave, picking up seeds and crumbs.