by Ian Irvine
“Karan tried to give the warning,” said Osseion, “but Faelamor was too strong. She must have known we were here from the beginning.”
“She knew everything,” said Yggur in a dull voice.
“Yes,” said Mendark. “She was in control the whole time. She simply showed us what we wanted to see until our illusionists thought that they had beaten her. Then she worked her own seeming to make us see the path turn left where it went right. Simple, beautiful and deadly. Ah, Tallia, how I will miss you.”
Tallia crept through the forest. Maigraith’s directions were imprinted on her brain. The confusions began to ease now. She reached the entrance of the cave undetected and saw outside a clay furnace fired with charcoal. It was still glowing. Arranged about it were molds and wooden trays filled with sand. Crude work! They must have been at their forging just as the alarm went. The gold could not be far away.
She trailed her hand through the trays of sand. One was still hot but there was nothing in it. It must be in the cave. She turned and Faelamor stood directly behind her. Tallia jumped. It was surely over for her, yet Faelamor looked deathly pale in her aftersickness.
Faelamor forced a smile. “You are cleverer than I thought. Cleverer than Mendark, but not enough. Your diversion has failed and I’ve already hidden it.” She edged to one side.
Then why are you trying to draw me away from here? Tallia thought.
“I haven’t forgotten what you did to me in Gothryme Forest,” said Faelamor, edging further sideways so that Tallia had to turn away from the furnace to keep her in sight.
She’s sick and alone, and she knows I am not. Strike, strike now! Tallia feinted at Faelamor with her right hand and when she ducked flung a handful of casting sand from the other hand into her eyes. For an instant Faelamor was helpless and Tallia seized that moment to kick over the casting boxes. Sand flew everywhere and an odd-shaped golden object thudded into the dirt. Tallia snatched it up and ran, and as soon as she reached the trees roared for her soldiers.
“Protect my back,” she gasped as they raced up the track, but though the illusions were now as thick as jelly they lacked their previous power to confuse and entice. They seemed half-hearted.
They did not encounter any Faellem in their upward rush. It was all too quiet. Maybe they were waiting further on. Halfway up they stopped for a moment’s rest. Someone struck a light in their cupped hands so that Tallia could examine the golden object in the dim glow. She knew at once why the escape had been so easy. The casting was not near heavy enough for gold. It was bronze, just a trial with base metal.
She felt the failure keenly, but without support she could have done no more. She slipped it back in her pocket and they continued.
“I sent them to their deaths!” Mendark sat down, put his head in his hands and wept.
Yggur paced back and forth like a stone automaton. He could not weep; he was rigid with grief and despair. “Why did I let you manipulate me?” he raged. “This is your fault, Mendark!”
Catching sight of Karan frozen to her seat, he screamed at her. “You did this to me deliberately!” There was a froth of foam on his upper lip. He ran across and began to beat her about the head with his open hands. Karan looked up at him but made no attempt to defend herself.
“Stop it, you fool,” shouted Mendark. He hobbled across and tried to pull Yggur off Karan. Osseion joined him and they carried Yggur away, still raging.
“You caused this, Karan!” screamed Yggur, pulling free and running back to attack her again. Mendark shielded her with his body. “I’ll never forgive you. Never!”
Mendark struck him across the face. “Be a man, Yggur!” he said with absolute contempt. “You and I made this disaster, and Faelamor, and Karan had nothing to do with it.”
Yggur collapsed on the ground. Two of the watch dragged him into a tent and stood guard over it.
“Is there any way to recover our dead?” asked Osseion. He had lost most of his friends today. “If I’d just given the alarm sooner, they could have been saved.”
Mendark did not answer. A thousand lay dead at the bottom of the cliff—ten for each left alive.
“Gather your tents and your tails,” said Mendark, “and put them between your legs. We’re going back to Thurkad.”
They made stretchers for the comatose, including Karan, struck camp and got ready to depart. Then out of the fog an exhausted band of seven appeared.
“What went wrong?” cried Tallia. “We were so close.”
Mendark wept for a moment of joy in the blackest of nights. “We were sure you were dead.”
“Where is the army?”
“Every one of them is lost.”
“All for nothing,” she said, telling her tale and showing the cast piece of bronze. “All for nothing!”
The sadly depleted caravan wended their way back down the ridge and out of Elludore Forest. Of the eleven hundred that had come in, less than a hundred departed. Yggur looked even worse than ever he had when Rulke had defeated him in Katazza.
Mendark was lower than Llian had ever seen him. His reputation had taken a blow it would never recover from. His body was blotched all over with bruises. His raw eyes leaked red tears that formed crusts on his eyelashes. He coughed constantly into a rag, and when not wiping blood off his lips, he was trying to stop it oozing out of his nose. His skin flaked off in pieces large enough to cover strawberries.
Fifteen illusionists had survived—nine women and six men—but they were badly shaken, in most cases their talents reduced to nothing. Karan was a silent, staring shadow of herself, filled with guilt. Llian walked beside her all the way to Thurkad.
“I saw it coming,” she said over and over. “I saw it coming!”
The days and the nights of their journey home were the same to her, a waking nightmare repeated again and again. One by one the flower of Yggur’s armies turned left where they should have turned right and plunged to their deaths over the cliff. She kept seeing it, and she kept trying to scream out a warning, but something kept her from getting the words out.
Mendark fell in beside Llian on the second day.
“You look awful—” Llian did not finish it, expecting the Magister to snap at him as he would have of old. But Mendark did not.
“I’m dying, Llian, and it terrifies me.”
“I thought—” began Llian. “You’ve lived so long… But then, I suppose the longer you live, the longer you want to.”
“You misunderstand me. I’m not afraid of death, but if I die, who will defend the world against Rulke?”
Llian instinctively glanced in Yggur’s direction. He was limping along, head down, arms dangling.
“I once thought so,” Mendark said in a low voice. “Especially after he defeated the thranx. But Yggur will never recover from this failure.”
“He’s risen from adversity before,” said Llian.
“And each time he falls, he goes further down. Look at his behavior in Thurkad after he failed to catch me. Look what he did in Katazza, and to the Second Army. No one can predict his behavior, and no one can rely on him.”
“You’ve done—”
“Of course I have, terrible things. But always to advance the cause I was fighting for. I never condemned an army to death because my lover had abandoned me!” Mendark spat blood into the grass and fell silent.
27
The Burning Mountain
After Shand and Maigraith left the meeting they slowly climbed up to the top of the fortress, to look out over the city through the yellow fog of a hundred thousand chimneys.
“Yalkara had two gifts for Aeolior,” said Shand, after making sure that there was no one to overhear. “The Mirror, and her golden jewelry. It consisted of a thick gold chain with the links irregularly shaped, an intricate bracelet and a torc. The chain was almost too heavy for the neck. She always wore her gold. It was her only vanity. At least, I thought of it as vanity, but now I’m not so sure. I never saw her without it, except on the day she
left Aeolior with me.”
“Would there have been enough to make a flute?” Maigraith asked, tentatively.
He considered. “I suppose so, if it was a small one. As indeed Shuthdar’s was said to be. Yes, I’m sure there’d be enough. That must be what she intended it for!”
Maigraith digested that. “But Faelamor has Aeolior’s birthright!” The thought of it in her hands was enough to make Maigraith weep.
“No she hasn’t! That gold isn’t the birthright.”
Maigraith spun around. “I don’t understand. What are you saying, Shand?”
“I don’t know where the gold she took from Havissard came from. But Aeolior’s birthright, which Yalkara put into my hands before she went through the gate, was her own gold that she brought from Aachan.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then why the secrecy?”
“It’s yours now. But if Mendark and Yggur learn about it, they’ll never stop pestering you. You must be free to choose what to do with it.”
“Where is the gold now?”
“After Aeolior was taken from me I dug a hole in the ground and put it in, and never marked the spot, to be sure that no one else would ever find it. That was a long time ago, though not so very far away. I hid it across the Sea of Thurkad, near to the Burning Mountain, Booreah Ngurle, where I dwelt before Aeolior was taken.”
“Can we go there?”
“Of course.”
Maigraith was fuming with excitement. “Right away?”
“This very minute! Let’s get our packs.”
Without a word to anyone they went down to the waterfront and found that Pender was sailing that afternoon. They took ship across the Sea of Thurkad to Nilkerrand, a drab coastal town which was the gateway to the dry plains of Almadin.
Maigraith stood at the rail for most of the voyage, staring at the waves. She had crossed this sea many times, and other, greater seas too. But those voyages had been scarred by impossible burdens of duty and obligation. This trip was a holiday and she was going to enjoy it.
In Nilkerrand they boarded a fast river boat and sailed north-east up the broad River Alm, which had featured in Llian’s tragic love story about Jenulka and Hengist, and their torments by the tyrant Feddil the Cruel. He had told the tale to Karan near Narne last winter.
“This is quite a roundabout way to get to our destination,” said Shand, “but also the quickest, because we go most of the way by boat.”
Maigraith did not care how long it took. She was enjoying every minute.
When they could go no further up the Alm, they marched overland for two days to the cliffed shores of an immense lake. “The Long Lake,” said Shand, as they stood at the top of the cliff, looking over the sullen water. “Its true name is Warde Yallock, and it’s the largest of many lakes that fill the rifted earth here to a depth of a thousand fathoms. It runs south-east for the best part of a hundred leagues, almost to our destination, and so by boat we can do in a few days what would take us weeks of hard marching.”
A well-maintained path wound down to a prosperous town on the shore of the lake. There Shand hired a sailing skiff. They loaded their gear into it and headed south, sailing under a blustery wind and skies the color of lead. The spray stung Maigraith’s cheeks and the cold wind burned them. She did not care. Everything was wonderful.
Shand broke the silence that afternoon. “Warde Yallock is positively steeped in the Histories. The first towns on Santhenar were built on its shores. More than twelve thousand years ago, the chroniclers say.”
“Here?” said Maigraith, gazing at the shore, which was a tangle of erosion gullies partly clad in gray-leaved scrub. “It’s hard to imagine why.”
“No, right down the southern end of the lake, in a fertile land between three mighty rivers. But those towns are gone now.”
“What happened to them?”
“They died out at the time of the Little Ice Age.”
“A glacier ground them down?” Maigraith was intrigued at the idea.
“Nothing so exciting. The ice was a good distance away. It just became too cold and dry to grow crops.”
They sailed on.
“The largest city was known as Tara-Laxus,” Shand said later. “It was a powerful place in ancient times. From there Shuthdar fled to his doom. But even Tara-Laxus is gone now.”
Eventually they berthed at a town surrounded by forest, and made their way unhurriedly in the direction of the Burning Mountain, whose tumbled black slopes could already be seen above the trees. Shortly they crossed into barren country where the soil was bare and stony. Smoke seemed to be issuing out of cracks in the hills all around. There was a brown haze in the air, and a reek like a coal fire.
“Funny smell for a volcano,” said Maigraith, as they took lunch in the shade of a thorny tree.
“Something once ignited a seam of coal here,” he replied. “Probably the volcano! The hills have been burning for five thousand years. The fires are way under the ground now, though there are places where the earth is still too hot to walk on.”
Two days later, one moonless evening when the scorpion nebula gleamed from a cold clear sky, they came to the ruins of a stone cottage by a meadow. At its back was the sweep of a dark forest. It was a place of ancient memories and great sadness. They sat on the step of the cottage, looking out across the meadow. In the distance, above the trees, Booreah Ngurle smoked and fumed.
“The Charon had a stronghold at Booreah Ngurle for a thousand years,” said Shand.
“Which Charon?”
“Kandor and Rulke.”
“Why here?”
“It’s another of those powerful places, like Carcharon. Actually, it’s where the Way between the Worlds first opened. Shuthdar arrived here with the flute, and Rulke followed him. They built a massive fortress which Rulke used as a base in his hunt for the flute. A thousand Charon blendings lived there at one stage—”
“What happened?”
“A massacre. Myan and his Aachim came under a flag of truce then took the place by treachery. They slaughtered most of the blendings in their sleep and burned the rest alive. The entire line of Charon blendings was eliminated. No wonder—” Again he stopped.
“What is it, Shand?”
“I begin to understand why Rulke was so obsessed with survival. The Aachim tried to wipe out all his kind. After that he developed the Gift of Rulke, to protect himself against them.”
“It seems to me,” said Maigraith after a long pause, “that the Great Betrayer has been as much betrayed against.”
“That may be so,” said Shand. “I can see both sides. Let’s get the campfire going.”
They were back on the steps, washing down their dinner with bowls of yellow mil that reeked of cloves. “We dwelt together here for years, your mother and I. These lands were uninhabited then as they are now. Aeolior used to play all around this area. See that ancient hulme tree, with the spreading branches? She loved to climb in it, and swing on the swing I made her. Even then it was an old tree.”
Shand got up abruptly, not bothering to wipe his eyes, and led her to a place to one side of a rocky ledge. After measuring the spaces by eye, he took a spade from his pack, cut down a sapling to make a handle and began to dig. The ground was hard but he worked steadily, and though several times he was obliged to rest he would not allow her to take a turn. “It was my task to give it,” he said.
When the hole was nearly waist-deep the spade struck something hard. Shand carved the dirt and corrosion away to reveal a golden streak of metal—a brass box. It was not locked. The hinges were corroded yet it opened easily when he levered with a point of the spade. He pulled out a heavy bag whose oiled cloth was still good. When he opened the mouth of the bag, metal gleamed in the nebula’s light. A thick chain, a bracelet and a torc, all of red gold. Shand presented Aeolior’s birthright to her daughter—sadly, ceremoniously.
“Enough for a flute, I think. If that is how you ch
oose.”
Maigraith’s hands shook as she accepted the birthright. The jewelry matched piece for piece that which Faelamor had taken from Havissard. This gold was worn silky smooth, however, while the other had been rough, as if it had never been worn. She put the gold carefully back in the pouch and returned to the step, wondering, while Shand went down to a creek for water.
Two sets of golden jewelry, almost identical. One Yalkara had brought from Aachan long, long ago. Where had the other come from? How was she to read this situation? For Yalkara to have taken such trouble, that gold must have held a special promise. Or a special threat!
They headed back to Thurkad the way they had come. Only once, when they were sailing back up the lake, did Shand raise the matter of the gold.
“I simply don’t know what to do,” she said. “To remake the flute is such a huge decision. I don’t know if Yalkara would have wanted that or not. I just don’t understand her design.”
“Why don’t you go back to the Mirror then? But when you do, know that she would not have wanted to make your decisions for you. She understood that the past cannot shackle the future.”
“I’ll wait for some more tangible sign,” said Maigraith, and said no more about it. She trailed her hand in the water. “Tell me about this place.”
They were now halfway back to the northern end of Warde Yallock, where they would return the hired boat. “As it happens, we’re quite close to one of the most famous places in all the Histories,” said Shand. “Huling’s Tower!”
“That’s where the golden flute was destroyed and the Forbidding formed.”
“And where that poor crippled girl was murdered, who aroused Llian’s curiosity about the whole business. I wonder where we’d be if that hadn’t happened?”
She turned to face the shore. It was partly shrouded in mist, though not enough to conceal rusty cliffs rising vertically out of the water. It did not look a pleasant spot. “I’d like to go there, if it’s possible.” Maigraith was thinking that if it was her task to unmake the Forbidding and restore the balance between the worlds, she’d better see the place where it all began.