by Ian Irvine
“Remember the caution that you were given before we departed Tallallame to come to this wretched world,” said Hallal. “You are one among the Faellem, and when there is a difficult choice, or the burden is too heavy, you must consult us. Once the choice is made we will support you whatever it is, but not if in your arrogance you do not seek our guidance. That is why we exiled you after the crime of Maigraith became known to us. We did not put our burdens on you—you took them on yourself.”
“We ignored you when you first called us here!” Ellami added fiercely. “We heard you but put off answering. Do you seek our guidance at last? Is that why you called us?”
Faelamor flicked her fingers in denial.
“Or did you call because the evil scheme you hatched by yourself had at last come to fruition and you would now offer us the gift of it? If that were the case we resolved to refuse you and go back to our cold forest, even if what you offered us was the way to Tallallame at last. That is still our resolve, and if so we will call our brethren and send them back at once.”
“Was that your scheme?” asked Ellami roughly.
“It was,” said Faelamor.
Gethren let out a great sigh. “But it has failed!”
“Utterly,” she replied, then the smooth curves of her face were wracked by wrenching spasms. Faelamor let out a wail that sent the little birds fluttering up into the treetops. Clenching her fists, she drove them into her stomach. She doubled over until she was a tiny ball of agony, then slowly went rigid on the floor of the cave.
The Faellem watched her dispassionately as she went through her ritual of grief and self-loathing. Hours passed in this state, then Gethren tapped her on the shoulder.
“Come out!” he said. “We must know what peril your folly, and worse yet, your failure, has put us in.”
Faelamor unlocked her rigid limbs, wiped the dirt off her clothes and sat down on the ground between them. Her golden eyes were blood-red.
They listened in silence to her story.
“When I looked at Yalkara’s book, with its strange but familiar writing, I was struck with terror. I could feel the glyphs writhing, trying to get off the pages to strike me down. It is an evil thing, full of lying tales about us.”
“So,” said Gethren, cold as the glaciers that flowed out of the Great Mountains into Mirrilladell, their adopted homeland. “Having been defeated by our greatest enemy you took her daughter and fashioned from her an even greater foe.” His voice cracked like a whip. “You are a fool, Faelamor! You deserve everything you have got. We owe you nothing. Come Hallal, come Ellami,” he said in disgust. “Let us call the Faellem and send them back. I can’t abide the stink of this place any longer.”
Hallal put her hand up. “Hold,” she said. “She has fashioned a triune. What if Maigraith were to ally with Rulke? Together they could endanger Tallallame itself.”
“Such folly!” said Ellami in contempt. “What are we to do?”
“I don’t—” said Faelamor.
“Do you not see the threat?” Ellami cried. “Maigraith may have all the powers of the Charon, and ours too. She knows us, understands us, and after what you did to her how can she but hate us?”
“I was careful to break her spirit,” said Faelamor.
“It is mending fast then, for we heard how she led an army into Bannador in defense of a friend! She could supplant us. Tallallame is vulnerable; that is why we came here in the first place. We are small and weak. Our illusions, for all their cunning, are no match for the raw power of the Charon, or their mighty machines like this construct. They could displace us from our own world.”
“I can’t see the way out,” Gethren said.
“We have lost the option of doing nothing,” said Hallal. “Give Rulke a construct that works and he will have this world and lust after ours too. As we came here to combat the Charon and their works, so we must do again. They and their devices have been our greatest threat since ever they appeared on Aachan. Nothing has changed. Somewhere in the misery of our exile we forgot what we came to Santhenar to do—bring the Charon down!”
“I accept the rebuke,” Faelamor said, bowing her head. “That was our whole purpose, but we were afraid, and the Forbidding took away the urgency. We stopped trying.”
“The book frightens me,” Gethren said. “It must be sought out and destroyed.”
“How can we do that?” said Ellami.
“Mendark surely still has it,” replied Hallal. “Someone must go to Thurkad, recover the book, and we will see it burned to ashes. That is the first task.”
“What about Rulke?” said Gethren.
“We must oppose him,” said Ellami again. “For all his strength. For all our weakness!”
“Then we must have a device to match his,” said Faelamor.
“Never!” The three voices cried out as one. “That is the greatest sin we can contemplate.”
Faelamor was on her feet, a leader again, as bold as ever. “Listen to me! For more than three thousand years we opposed the Charon here. And if you recall, we tried everything that the Faellem ever knew. Everything! But we were powerless because we obeyed the prohibition and refused to amplify our power with magical devices. How many of us fell before we learned that? How many more fell after? That’s why we had to shrink away and hide, and forget what we came here to do. Maigraith was my way around the prohibition—a human device!”
“But Maigraith is lost to you, and now she is uncontrollable,” Hallal said. “We are worse off than ever.”
“Then here is the second task,” said Gethren. “Maigraith must die!”
Faelamor went rigid, her eyes almost starting out of her head. “No,” she whispered. “She is everything to me, despite that I treated her so ill. It would be like cutting off my own limb.”
“The limb is diseased and must go, else the whole body is threatened. Do you put her before Tallallame?”
“No,” said Faelamor.
“We do not like it either, but it must be done.”
They all looked at Faelamor. She was lost inside herself, the despair and the longing feeding on themselves until she was almost driven mad. She had failed; Maigraith was gone. She would never recover her now. In her head she knew that they were right, but her heart could never sanction it.
“I cannot do it,” said Faelamor, biting her lip until the blood flowed. “Do you vote on it?”
“We do!” they said as one.
“I vote nay,” said Faelamor. “I beg you, do not harm her. We are tied together, she and I.”
“The vote is lost,” snapped Ellami. “Do you submit to our will, or go into exile with your triune?”
Faelamor was in agony. “I cannot bear exile again,” she whispered. “Ah, Maigraith! I cannot see her harmed either. You know what she means to me.”
“You are overruled,” Gethren said coldly.
Faelamor cast her hood over her face and scrunched herself up into a little tight ball on the ground.
The three Faellem stared at one another. “I have always liked Maigraith,” said Ellami. “But I will do it if it is agreed that it must be done.”
“It must be done,” said Hallal, and Gethren echoed her. “But be quick; be merciful.”
“It must be done,” said Ellami in a voice like the stone lid sliding over a crypt. “And the other triune too—the sensitive! Karan must also die. Her death will put a spike in Rulke’s plan. Are we agreed?”
“Yes,” they chorused. “Karan must also die.”
“Our third and most desperate task,” said Ellami before they could catch their breath, “is to combat Rulke and his construct. Do you have an idea about that, Faelamor?”
Faelamor made no response. Gethren picked her up and Hallal stripped Faelamor’s cloak and hood away. Her eyes were dead holes.
“Well, Faelamor?” said Ellami.
“There is only one way left,” she whispered listlessly.
“What is it?”
“I have already left the
path in so many ways, but this crime is of an entirely different order.” She looked absolutely desperate. “We must break the prohibition and make a device of our own. We must use Yalkara’s gold.”
“Never!” they cried as one.
She sat up straight, terror overcoming her agony for the moment. “Listen to me,” she hissed. “Where did the prohibition come from anyway? Can any of you tell me that?”
“No,” said Gethren. “It is lost in the depths of time. It has always been.”
“It has not always been. I wonder if it was not put on us to keep us down. Maybe our enemies shackled us so, in the distant past. How can we, the noblest of all the human species, endure to be so encumbered? Without such a device we have no chance against Rulke, do we?”
“We have no chance,” said Gethren somberly.
“Then I say we overturn this prohibition and make ourselves a weapon that is the equal of Rulke’s. It will not be easy, and we might fail, but at least we will have given our species the chance. What do you say?” Her eyes flashed fire.
“Show us the gold,” said Ellami.
Faelamor brought out the jewelry she had taken from Havissard. She spilled it on the ground in front of them, a heavy chain, a bracelet, a torc, all of red gold. She touched it with her finger. It did not shock her as it had back in Havissard, but it felt most unpleasant. She passed it to Gethren, piece by piece, and he passed each piece on to the other two.
“It feels prickly,” said Ellami. “Oh, I don’t like the sense of it at all.” She threw it back to Faelamor.
“That’s because our enemy Yalkara used it. Ai!” Faelamor wailed. “How she taunted me with the Mirror, twisting our foretellings to her own purposes. How she dared me to look inside. But I did dare, and found what she had kept hidden. It is very special, this Aachan gold.”
“And very dangerous,” said Gethren. “Why do we need it?”
“Devices are not our way,” Faelamor reminded him.
“None of us have skill with them. If we must adopt the arts of our enemies and make a sorcerous device, all the more reason to form it out of the most potent substance there is.”
“Strong weapons need strong shoulders and a steady hand,” said Hallal. “If we must commit this terrible crime, and I do not say that we must, then let it be with a device that is within our skill to use and to control.”
“From what will we make it? Where will we find it? How will we learn to use it?” cried Faelamor. “I can make a surpassingly powerful device with this gold, for every atom resonates with its former use. But if I were to take other materials—metal or precious ebony or tusk, say—and shape them into a flute or any other device that I cared to imagine, it would remain just lifeless material. I cannot put power into it.”
“Then what you cannot make and know, you should not contemplate the use of,” said Gethren. “This is the greatest folly that I have ever heard. I say nay.”
“Do you give up then?” Faelamor shouted in his face. “If you do, you condemn your species, here and in Tallallame too, for my very bones know how our world cries out for aid. There is no other way.”
The three went into the trees and talked among themselves. Then they came back. “We will allow it,” Gethren said, “so long as you make a device that is part of our tradition. No flutes! No constructs!”
“You have consulted us,” Hallal continued, “as is proper, and we have laid down our rule. Now it is your duty to decide what course to take.”
“Thank you,” Faelamor whispered. “I would sooner make that choice here with you.”
She sat for a long time with her head bowed. “Whatever I choose, the Three Worlds will be changed forever. Perhaps Tallallame is already irretrievably altered. Doubtless it has been, in the time we’ve been gone. But all things change, and the prohibition must be abandoned.
“I have made my choice,” she said, and her voice was a knell in all their hearts. “This is our third task. We will use the gold. We will shape our own instrument with it. We will make a nanollet, something that every Faellem child knows how to play. With it we will smash the Forbidding asunder, and Rulke’s construct too, and cast him down so low that he will never rise again. And then,” she said, her eyes shining, “we will go home to Tallallame and know that our duty is done.”
26
Like a Row of Dominoes
Maigraith and Shand stood in Yggur’s dingy workroom, with the rest of the company gathered around them. They were all staring at the writing on the Mirror.
… 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—
“The next part of the message is missing,” Maigraith explained to the company. “It ends: look upon the Mirror, and it will show you what you must do.”
“The two sayings are linked,” cried Mendark. “Recall the answer to the foretelling: There will appear an instrument—“khash-zik-makattzah,” the-three-and-the-one—and if a way can be found to use it, Santhenar can be redeemed. But at the end the instrument will be lost.
“We know what the three means: gold of Aachan, precious ebony from Tallallame, and the wit and skill of the artisans of Santhenar who are to make it into the golden flute. And the one to use it can only mean you, Maigraith.”
“How can that be right?” asked Maigraith. “Yalkara warns that the use of such devices will hasten the failure of the Forbidding. How can she have intended that the golden flute be made anew?”
“That’s obvious to any fool!” snapped Mendark. “If the flute is used in the right way it will unmake the Forbidding rather than cause it to fail.”
Maigraith felt panicked by Mendark’s pressure. “What right way? No one knows how it was used.”
“Then I suggest,” Mendark said coldly, and it was clear that he found her Charon appearance unnerving, “that you spend your time trying to find the missing bits of the message rather than criticizing those who are actually trying to do something. We have precious ebony, and we have skilled goldsmiths able to work to Tensor’s pattern, if we can convince him to make one. Aachan gold is all we lack to make our weapon.”
He spilled the few pieces they had onto the table. They included the ring Yggur had shown them months ago, some links of fine chain and a few fragments of leaf. “It’s not enough,” Mendark said dismissively. “Not near.”
“Yes!” said Yggur. “We’ve got to make a stand. Rulke exerts his strength in the west, testing us. The Ghâshâd have come out of Shazmak again. He grows stronger by the hour. We must oppose him, or fall.”
Maigraith sat silent, intimidated by Mendark’s aggression. She was sure that he was wrong. Then, puzzling over what she knew about Yalkara, something else occurred to her. “Is the Mirror my birthright, or something else?” she said in Shand’s ear.
Shand thought for a moment. “No, not your birthright, but Aeolior’s. I’ve always thought that it was the Mirror. What else could Yalkara have meant?”
He thought for a moment, then got up. “Come outside,” he said to Maigraith.
“As usual, you’re off as soon as there’s work to be done,” Mendark said with heavy sarcasm.
Shand grinned over his shoulder, then he and Maigraith disappeared out the door.
Karan sat listening to the talk of war. She had known it was coming—her dreams of Shazmak and the void had returned a week ago. It would not be long. I’ve got to go home, she thought miserably. I’ve got to be there, this time.
“This is a waste of time,” cried Yggur following hours of fruitless discussion.
“Aye,” said Nadiril. “Faelamor has Yalkara’s gold, that’s the only certainty.”
Yggur stood up abruptly. “I’ve got better things to do.”
“We must take an army to Elludore and wrest it back from her,” said Mendark.
“You don’t have an army,” Yggur said frostily, but he sat down again.
“Ah, but if I did, Yggur, I wouldn’t l
ack the courage to lead it.”
“Enough of your sly manipulation, Mendark. I’ve proven my courage!” Yggur riffled through the papers on his table and held up a rolled map. “But for once you’re right. Maybe we should go to Elludore and seize the gold.”
“She’ll hide,” Karan said. “You’d never find her.”
“I’ve an idea!” cried Yggur. “Guards, clear the room!”
After everyone had gone, Mendark and Yggur kept on as if the best of friends, not bitter rivals.
“She can’t hide from me,” said Yggur, unrolling his map. It was the one Shand had drawn in the seaside cabin, showing Faelamor’s valley in Elludore. “I can assemble a gross of illusionists on a day’s notice. We can pin her there—her perfect refuge will be a perfect trap. Look, there’s only one way out, unless you’re a mountaineer.”
Mendark inspected the map. “Shand certainly has an eye for detail! You can truly field so many illusionists so quickly?” he asked with raised eyebrow.
“Well, perhaps not a gross, but many! As soon as I knew Faelamor had the gold I began gathering them together.”
“I too,” said Mendark, fascinated by the idea. “Tell me, how would you go about it?”
“See how her valley is bounded by cliffs on all sides, even where the river flows out, and that path is easily blockaded. There are one or two ways down the cliffs, but very awkward. I’d take this way in,” he indicated it on the map, “though we’d need protection.”
Mendark broke in. “With enough master illusionists, and the right sensitive to link and bind them together, we can sense any glamor she makes and cast our own to unbind it.”
Yggur rubbed his chin. “I know that you’re a sensitive, Mendark. But would you risk your sanity and perhaps even your life in what must be an untestable and… hazardous enterprise?”
“I’d prefer not to,” said Mendark. “It is, as you say, a risky business, and I have other responsibilities.”