by Ian Irvine
“It’s beautiful,” said Karan, reaching out to touch the wondrous thing.
“Don’t touch it!” Tensor snapped, pushing her back. “You’ll mar its finish.”
Karan darted a glance at Maigraith, whose eyes were moist with desire for it. Mendark was staring at the flute with an equally desperate longing. “It is surely your finest work,” Maigraith said.
Tensor nodded stiffly. “Its tones—”
Maigraith was stabbed by envy and rage. “What? You have played my birthright! How dare you use it!”
He glared at her. “We have not used it. We didn’t want—”
“I doubt that anything would happen except music, without the player willing it,” Mendark interrupted dryly. “That is the very foundation of the Secret Art. The power may reside in the instrument, but it takes will and talent to bring it out, otherwise any fool could pick up the flute and bring all the world to chaos.”
“How do you know it will play in tune, if you have never played it?” Llian asked.
Tensor gave him a frigid stare. “In Aachan we have been making flutes for ten thousand years. Our mathematics described the instrument perfectly before it was made. When it is played every note will be perfect.”
Maigraith put her hand out. “Thank you. I will take my birthright now!”
“Stand back!” he said harshly, and the Aachim put their hands on their weapons.
“But it’s mine! My gold, my flute.”
The Aachim guard moved to flank Tensor, five on each side. Karan could read their desires too. They thought the flute could take them home to Aachan, and all their vows meant nothing before that desperate need. Even Malien, beside her, was quivering with emotion.
We will fight Rulke with whatever weapon comes to hand, Malien had said. So this was what she’d meant.
“Not you too!” Karan whispered. “Malien, I can’t believe that you would betray us for the flute.”
Malien raked her fingers through thick red hair. She looked around wildly, hardly recognizing Karan.
“Malien!” Karan cried out.
Malien shook herself. “You can’t possibly understand what Aachan means to us,” she said softly.
Karan took her hand, wringing it frantically. “Does it mean more than friendship, than the bonds of kinship, to say nothing of all we’ve endured together?”
Malien shook off her hand. “Aachan, Aachan!” she whispered.
“I will not give it up to you!” Tensor screamed at Maigraith.
Karan turned back to the main conflict.
“But that was the agreement!” Maigraith was bewildered, uncomprehending. Tears poured down her face. She looked around at the company for aid, but everyone seemed captivated by the flute.
“And it dishonors me to break it, but I have watched you, Charon!” He spat the word out. “Every day you grow more like them. One day you will betray us to Rulke. I regret giving you that little golden ring, but I will destroy the flute before I let you use it to bring Yalkara back to Santhenar.”
So that was what was behind the betrayal! “What about your promise to me?” Karan said furiously.
“Not even to you!” Tensor replied.
Maigraith spun around and bolted for the door. Shand cried her name but she did not appear to hear.
Mendark stood watching Tensor with narrowed eyes. “You planned this all along,” he said. “If my spies had not told me of your treachery you would be gone with it by now.”
“My kind must come first,” said Tensor. “Surely you realize that, Mendark. I won’t give it up.”
“You few can’t stand against my army,” said Yggur.
“Should you attack, my instructions are to destroy the flute the way Shuthdar did. In which case Thurkad, and everyone in it, will cease to exist,” said Tensor.
“He’d do it too,” Mendark murmured in Yggur’s ear.
“Then it remains here!” said Yggur. “My guards will make sure it does!”
They went out. Outside the door Karan looked for Maigraith but she had vanished.
Malien caught Karan’s arm and led her down the side of the building. “Your time is now, Karan. Are you for us? If you’re not, you are against us. There’s no middle ground here!”
“I’m for people keeping their promises!”
“So am I. You might have thought of that when you were keeping the Mirror from us.”
“And look what Tensor did with it! I did the right thing and you know it.”
“Not when you worked with Rulke to show him the way back to our world, so he could keep Aachan in slavery and do the same to Santhenar!”
“You’re wrong about him!” Karan said weakly.
“Four thousand years of our Histories aren’t wrong! Karan, we’re desperate! You’ve got to help us!”
“I thought the Aachim had great plans under way to deal with Rulke.”
“We do. An army is forming right now but it won’t get to Shazmak in time. The flute is our only chance!”
She looked desperate too. Karan remembered all the good things about the Aachim, and all the kindnesses Malien had done her.
“What can I do?”
“Maigraith is the key. She can make us or unmake us. Keep watch over her. Wherever she goes, follow her, and report back to me.”
The company withdrew back to the citadel, arguing furiously.
“We’ve got to get it back,” said Mendark. “Tensor is bluffing!”
“I don’t think so,” said Yggur.
“Who do we have that can use it anyway, if Maigraith is disbarred?” asked Llian. “And if no one, what use is it?”
“A question that had been better asked before it was made!” said Yggur.
“I… may be able to play it,” said Mendark. “I was once an accomplished flute player, as you know, and I am sensitive too. I will—”
“Ha!” said Yggur, instantly suspicious. “You’ve manipulated us very cleverly, Mendark. All along you wanted this, while raising false obstacles so we wouldn’t realize what you were up to.”
“It was proposed by Shand as long ago as the Dry Sea!” Mendark snapped. “Deciding who to use it has always been our greatest difficulty. I have studied the arts and sciences of the flute ever since. Have you not?”
“Gentlemen!” said Shand. “Suppose that Mendark can use it; let us work out a plan. A better one than the fiasco at Elludore. The flute can open the Way between the Worlds and take its user to any destination they can imagine. Perhaps it can even dissolve the Forbidding, but it is not a weapon! Even were we to use it to enter into the very heart of Shazmak, we would still have to defend ourselves by other means. Whereas Rulke’s construct is a gate-opening device, a weapon and a shield.”
“I propose that we gather our weapons, seize the flute and attack Shazmak before it’s too late,” said Mendark.
“How?” said Shand.
“I’m working on a plan,” Mendark replied.
“It will be a bigger disaster than our last,” said Yggur, “and where will we be then?”
“We won’t be standing here, whining helplessly,” spat Mendark, “while Rulke and Faelamor carve up our world.”
Maigraith went back to the little cottage by the water and sat there, all alone. Why did I give up my birthright? she raged, over and over. Why, why? Everyone wants something from me but no one will help me in my need.
The thought of Tensor using her flute against Rulke was a sickening violation. She could feel the fury building up inside, overcoming her self-control as it often did. Imagining Tensor there, she stormed around the room, letting out random bursts of power that left the kitchen in a shambles. Immediately she was ashamed. She had loved her time here with Shand. She swept up the broken crockery and splintered timbers, put the furniture back in place and sat down on the porch outside, staring at the slate-colored sea.
Now she was overcome by a profound melancholy, another emotion that she was prone to. The wind turned around, blowing directly across the
harbor at her and whirling the spray in her face. Maigraith sat there all day, abandoned and alone. The light faded. She allowed the dark and damp to mold itself around her, drawing all warmth and human fellow-feeling out of her. She plunged back into that state of tristesse that she had spent most of her life in, where nothing really mattered because she lacked any identity, any self. She was just a tool in the hands of others.
It must have been the middle of the night when something aroused her. She was shivering in great spasms, soaked to the skin. What would Shand say if he could see her now? The thought of her grandfather’s kindly scolding made her smile in the darkness, but the humor soon disappeared. She had let Shand down. She would never reunite him and Yalkara now.
The flute is mine, whether I dare to use it or not! Whether I want it or not! How dare Tensor refuse me? After a lifetime of obeying Faelamor’s orders, no one is going to deny me my precious inheritance!
Maigraith stripped off her wet clothes, dried herself and lit the fire. Then, as she was dressing she realized that Tensor might have done her a favor after all. By constantly insulting her Charon ancestry, he had made her think about her heritage. Everything that was Faellem she rejected, and old human was what she had been all her life. It was ordinary to her. Worse than ordinary, since they were allied to the Aachim who had just betrayed her.
Maigraith reached out for that unfulfilled Charon part of her that Havissard had awakened and Yalkara’s message strengthened. If Tensor was her enemy, and Faelamor too, then maybe Charon meant friend! Perhaps it was her destiny to seek out Rulke. She began to work on a plan, to take back her flute and go to Shazmak.
PART THREE
33
The Fifth Way
It was four in the morning and Maigraith was exhausted. She knew Karan was spying on her, and getting away from her had taxed Maigraith’s powers. For three nights now she had watched the workshop, and not once had Yggur’s guards relaxed their vigilance. They paced, swapped over, paced again, to a complex routine. There was no time when the door was not monitored. There were Aachim guards too, inside as well as out, and they were equally vigilant.
She had already experimented with using a gate to get inside, but that had failed. The Aachim had defenses against gates. Short of using power to smash the doors wide open—not what she wanted—there was only one way left. The Aachim guards swapped over, the inside and the outside, roughly every two hours. It was the only time the door was unbarred.
Maigraith brought her mind to the pitch that would allow her to direct her power. It would have to be focused very precisely, to take out all the guards at once. Then, just before the door opened, she happened to glance at a small building across the yard and caught a faint white flicker. That was odd! She recalled seeing it before. She had thought it just a chance reflection, but now realized it was a signal. Watching the door, she caught the answering blink. Another Aachim was watching the changeover. If the signal did not come the alarm would be sounded.
Taking care of that guard was easier than she expected; the woman was not an adept. Maigraith paralyzed her and snatched the signaling globe, but by then the guards had changed and the doors were closed again. Moving closer, she covered most of the globe so that the light would seem further away, and waited for the next change.
The interval was a longer one than usual, and Maigraith worried that dawn would come first. Finally she saw a tiny blink of light. She felt that she was quite slow to respond, but the signal eventually came. The door opened. The inside guards appeared. Maigraith weighed how much power to use against them. She did not want to kill anyone. She cut back the strength of her spell.
Her conjuration whispered in the night. Every guard fell down. Racing across the paving stones she leapt through the door, bolted it, ran to the other end of the workshop and ripped open the catches on the ebony case. The flute was wrapped in fold after fold of black silky-velvet as soft as a baby’s skin. She drew it out. Such a beautiful thing; it seemed almost alive when she touched it. The workmanship was exquisite.
Something thumped the door and slithered down. One of the guards recovering already? Maigraith almost panicked—she must not have used enough strength. No way to get out now without being seen, unless she killed them, an unthinkable act for her. Unless she used the flute!
No time to admire the instrument. Could she make it work? She put it to her lips, searching with her mind for the one place where she knew a gate would open—the rooftop from where they had gone to Saludith. She played a note, and another. Nothing happened.
She tried again. Still nothing! But Maigraith began to feel a faint unease, as if the world she knew had twisted slightly. She paused, unpleasantly disturbed. The unreality came and went in a series of falling and rising echoes. It was the warping associated with two forces intersecting and reinforcing one another. Someone else was using a similar power, and she knew exactly who. It had an alarming, prickling aura. Faelamor!
There came a crash on the door, then shouts outside and more bangs—axe blows. The door was shivering under the attack. She had only minutes. She tried again, playing the first half of a scale. The echoes came back, stronger than before. Maigraith reached out again, using all her strength to cut through the fog that shrouded the destination.
It was like being struck in the stomach with a stone club. The shock flung her into the side of a furnace with such force that she felt one of her ribs crack. Maigraith could not get up for a minute. Don’t ever do that again! You were trying to force it. You must relax, sense it, go with it! Try it again. But she did not. In her hands the flute felt that it had such power, but Maigraith realized she was incapable of tapping it. Maybe the very gold had become corrupted over time. Perhaps Tensor had done something to prevent her using it. Whatever the reason, it was deadly now. The whole building had taken on a strange, distorted air.
Maigraith consigned the birthright to the floor and sat up, watching the door shake under the assault. The blade of an axe appeared through the wood, the timbers groaning as it was wrenched out again. The other resonance grew stronger. What was Faelamor up to? Faelamor, who had sent Ellami to murder her, a betrayal so shocking that Maigraith still could not come to terms with it. She had to find out before it was too late. No choice but to go to Elludore.
There was a commotion outside and an enormous thump shook the door. The onslaught paused, only to return with greater force. The boards warped inward. The next blow would break it. Seizing a smith’s hammer, Maigraith scrambled up on top of the furnace and attacked the ceiling. Black dust and plaster rained down on her. She climbed into the hole and swung the hammer at the roof. Slate went everywhere. It was already growing light.
The door was smashed open. The besiegers stormed in. Maigraith pulled herself onto the roof and ran lightly down the ridgepole, but found that the whole place was surrounded. “Up there!” someone shouted.
Would a gate work here? Maigraith sensed that she was far enough from the flute that one might. She took a mental fix on her very first gate, still the strongest, the ironstone spires in Elludore. As she conjured up the memory, the image of that place soared into her mind, clear and sharp. She reached out, silver radiance streamed about her and she tumbled wildly through space. I’m using this Art too much, she thought. Use changed the Secret Arts, sometimes in unpredictable ways. My profligacy will have a reckoning. Not this time, she prayed. Go true!
For an instant her control of the gate faltered, then Maigraith wrenched it back and materialized with a snap that hurt her ears. It was just short of dawn here, fifty leagues west of Thurkad, but there was light enough to see. She stood between the ironstone pillars by the river in Elludore.
Maigraith felt physically ill from the gate—the reckoning would not be long coming. Her nerves were stretched like catgut. It was some distance from here to the caves. She crept upriver. The main cave was lighted, a broad shallow opening like the mouth of a whale. Someone appeared at the entrance, looking out into the darkness, then
disappeared again.
Maigraith went up the slope on her belly. There had been a frost and the trodden ground was frozen into hard ruts. She got close enough to hear talk, but not what they were talking about. Higher she crept, squirming up the track like a snake with her head forward, testing the air. She caught a word—Shazmak! Then someone loudly said No! She moved closer.
Evidently the debate had met a sticking point. Again she heard Shazmak, and then Faelamor’s voice rang out: “Mine is the decision, is it not? Did you not pledge yourselves to follow me? Have I not done everything required of me?”
“We’re afraid. This goes against everything we stand for.”
“What did we come to Santhenar for, all those years ago, but to eliminate the threat of the Charon?”
“But to ally with the Great Betrayer himself…”
“Who said ally? I said offer alliance. All week we’ve tried to get our instrument to work, and it does, beautifully. I know it can take us home, but it can’t break through the Forbidding. We know Rulke can open the Way, for he did so on mid-winter’s day. He has what we lack, and I can do what he needs. When the critical moment comes, so will our opportunity.”
“He will be expecting treachery. It is a risk without hope of gain. He is so much stronger than we are.”
“Ah, but he does not know about our golden nanollet. He could never think that we would make such a device! And even if we gain nothing,” Faelamor went on, “so be it! Once he is among the Three Worlds with his construct we lose everything. Tallallame cannot stand against that power. This is what we came for. We must try! And if, against the odds, we do succeed, we will go home in triumph and seal the Way behind us forever.”
Golden nanollet? So they had used the gold. I’ve got to find out where it came from. Maigraith recalled talk of drawings stolen from Llian’s college, that had told Faelamor to look in Havissard. I’ve seen them, Maigraith realized. They were in Faelamor’s pack when first we came here. Where did I put them?