The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  Maigraith slipped up through the trees to one of the other caves, a storehouse where Faelamor kept her gear. She emptied out the boxes and bags, rifling though Faelamor’s scanty possessions. At the bottom of one bag was a flattened roll of paper.

  She carried it out into the growing light, unrolled the drawings behind a tree and her hair stood on end. Maigraith stared into nowhere. No wonder Faelamor’s workings had such a mad, dangerous feeling. The gold, and therefore the nanollet she’d made with it, was corrupt. The Faellem, who had little ability to control devices, had made the most perilous device of all. The only thing to do was to seize the nanollet herself. But how? She agonized too long in the growing light and suddenly there were footsteps above her. Maigraith crouched down, knowing that she was exposed. If anyone looked down she would be seen.

  Faelamor appeared, hurrying across to the store cave. Ice cracked under Maigraith’s foot. Faelamor spun around, crying, “Who goes?”

  Maigraith bolted, slipping and skidding down the steep path.

  Faelamor’s cry had brought the Faellem out. Let them not recognize me, Maigraith prayed. Then she heard Faelamor’s cry of rage: “Maigraith!”

  A host of Faellem swarmed after her. She could feel herself weakening already, her mind losing focus. Her gate was half an hour downriver, she would never make it. Maigraith tried for a new gate, weeping with the strain, but something struck her hard in the shoulder, a terrible pain. “Shand, help me!” she screamed. Reaching out she opened a gate and, still running, fell into it.

  Maigraith was buffeted about, angry lines of fire screamed all around her and she was wrenched into nowhere. Her consciousness flashed in and out, then she crashed through a plaster ceiling and landed in an untidy heap. She lay on the floor of Yggur’s workroom. She looked up at him limply, then lapsed into unconsciousness. Blood ran out of her shoulder. A long arrow protruded from it.

  When she came to, Yggur was attending her, with a Whelm whose name Maigraith did not know. They carried her to a chair. Yggur glared at her for a full minute, finally saying coldly, “That is a Faellem arrow!”

  Her teeth chattered. Aftersickness bent her double. The arrowhead grated against her shoulder bone, right where Thyllan’s knife had struck last summer.

  She clung onto Yggur’s hand while the Whelm worked at getting the arrow out. “There are things you were never able to tell me! I too have secrets, Yggur.”

  “Even leaving aside what happened at the workshop, you are abusing the Art. The Aachim are in uproar.”

  “I’m glad. Tensor is my enemy! I have nothing more to say.”

  “Very well,” said Yggur, “but let me remind you of the consequences. Each gate you make must be prepared for as if it was your first. You must never go and return again in less than a day, and never without resting between. If you do not obey these rules, sooner or later you will lose yourself and never be able to return. Or you will come back but your wits will not.”

  “I know the dangers,” she muttered. To be lectured by him was unbearable. “I was desperate.”

  “There is always a desperate need. If nothing will sway you but duty, think of all the ways you might be needed in the future. I’m afraid for you.”

  That was no comfort. She was silent while the Whelm finished with the wound and bound it. Maigraith laid her head down and fell into sleep.

  Yggur found Shand at breakfast. “Was it Maigraith who broke into the workshop?”

  “It was,” said Shand. “I happened to be walking that way before dawn, just as the guards were recovering.”

  “What’s she up to?”

  “I don’t know. We’d better meet today; this morning. The time is almost upon us.”

  “I can feel it too. I’m afraid.”

  “Tell me, Shand, was it an accident that you happened along?”

  “Of course not. I’ve got into the old man’s habit of rising early and walking, and I often go that way. But as soon as I woke I sensed strange forces—things I’ve never felt before. I ran all the way to the workshop but she was already gone.”

  “I felt it too.”

  “Do you know why Maigraith agreed to give up her gold?”

  “No,” said Yggur, “though I’ve often wondered.”

  “For me! She wanted the flute made so she could bring Yalkara and me together again.”

  Yggur almost fell off his chair. “That would be… controversial.”

  Shand laughed. “Mendark would wet himself. As for Tensor—” He stopped abruptly. “Tensor must have found out.”

  “I’d say so! He’ll never give up the flute now. And how about you, old friend?”

  “I wish it could be.” Shand shook with passion. “How I wish it! But I don’t dare hope. I’ll not see Yalkara again.” He changed the subject. “What are we going to do about Faelamor?”

  “We’re so unprepared! I’ll call everyone together. I’m afraid for Maigraith, Shand.”

  “As am I. I’ll send Karan to keep watch on her. And speak to her myself when she wakes. How go your plans for war?”

  “Disastrously. We had a mutiny in the Third Army last week. I put it down brutally, but that made morale even worse. You know how rumors spread.” Yggur appeared anguished, and his old troubles had come back: the halting speech, the freezing of the muscles on one side of his face. “Not even my counter-rumors of our wonderful flute have made any difference.”

  “People are saying that it won’t work; that it will do more damage to us than to him. Maybe they’re right. We don’t know what we’re doing, do we?”

  Yggur did not respond to that. “Rulke’s just as good at spreading propaganda as I am. A thousand tellers have told the tale of his magical construct, and how it flew through the air, defying us. The war is lost and the battle hasn’t even begun.”

  “There’s a traitor among us,” said Mendark that afternoon. He had taken the news of the attempt on the flute badly, though the anger looked out of place on his unlined face.

  “How do we know it wasn’t you?” said Yggur.

  “You accuse me!” Mendark raged.

  He snatched at Yggur’s cloak. Yggur raised his fist. For a moment it seemed that violence would be done right there, then the door slammed open and Maigraith swayed through, looking as though all the blood had been sucked from her veins. Into the sudden silence she dropped her bombshell.

  “I have been to Elludore through a gate,” she said. “Faelamor is on the way to Shazmak to make alliance with Rulke. She has made her own device, from the gold of the golden flute.” The silence was deafening.

  Still no one spoke, though their faces bore identical expressions of horror.

  “How do you know?” barked Mendark.

  Maigraith pulled the drawings from her pocket and threw them on the table.

  Llian examined them carefully. “These are the ones stolen from the college library. Look! This one shows Yalkara going into the burning tower after the golden flute was destroyed. She’s not wearing her golden jewelry.”

  The second sketch showed Yalkara coming out of Huling’s Tower again, a small figure in a large drawing. Smoke hung above the tower like an upraised fist. Her clothes were smoking, her hands blood-red, and she wore the golden chain about her throat again, the torc about her forehead, and the bracelet on her wrist.

  Llian looked as if a divine truth had been revealed. “Yalkara must have used some magic to forge the molten gold into a perfect replica of the jewelry that she always wore, and worn it out of the ruins under the noses of all the watchers. How bold she was!”

  “She would never say how her hands came to be so badly scarred,” said Shand. “It must have happened in her haste to shape the gold.”

  “I felt it!” said Maigraith. “When Shand and I went to Huling’s Tower. It was horrible!”

  “One of them will betray the other and emerge stronger than ever,” said Yggur in a defeated voice.

  “We’re not yet beaten,” Mendark’s voice rang out. “Desperate
times call for desperate remedies: the forbidden, the uncontrollable! Let those of us who know such secrets meet secretly to work out a plan.”

  Maigraith told no one what she was going through. She had made her decision and no one was going to talk her out of it. She felt divorced from the company, her friends, even Shand.

  Her wound was very painful and she felt worse as the day went on. After the meeting she went back to bed, but had a strange, fitful slumber, punctuated not by dreams but by a waking state rather like a trance, in which she got up as soon as Karan went out and packed everything that would be needed for a long journey. Knowing Karan was keeping an eye on her, she planned to slip away the first chance she got. Maigraith hid her pack, slipped back into bed and slept soundly.

  After midnight she woke and the aftersickness was gone. Karan was folded up in the armchair by the fire, dozing, but woke as soon as Maigraith stirred. “How are you?” Karan asked.

  “Much better, though my shoulder is very painful.”

  Karan checked the wound, which was inflamed, and changed the dressings. She made tea. They drank it in silence.

  “I’m afraid, Karan.”

  “So am I.”

  “No, I’m really afraid. The whole world is turning upside down. All day I’ve been hearing voices, people whispering, but they seem to be on another plane. I don’t understand what they’re talking about, save that they want our world. I can feel them plotting—blood and violence.”

  “I sometimes hear voices,” Karan admitted grudgingly.

  “But you’re a sensitive!” Maigraith wailed, sitting up abruptly. “I feel that I’m looking into another dimension. And now you have an aura all around you—green and black and red, and it’s always shifting.”

  She spoke wildly, of impossible things, as if her world was different from Karan’s; as if reality had shifted for her.

  “It’s the fever,” said Karan. Feeling Maigraith’s forehead, which was cool, Karan felt a twinge of alarm. “I’ll get you a drink.”

  “The fever is gone,” said Maigraith. When Karan returned with a beaker of water Maigraith was asleep.

  Shortly she woke again, talking nostalgically about things they had done together in the past. “Remember how we went all the way to Fiz Gorgo together?” she said. “That was an adventure! Remember how we had to climb down into the cistern and swim through that slimy tunnel? And remember—” She laughed shrilly, in a different world.

  She’s gone mad! Karan thought in sudden terror. She’s like a child talking about what she did on her holidays. “It wasn’t an adventure, it was a horrible nightmare for us both,” she said as sharply as a slap.

  Maigraith shuddered and her eyes refocused visibly. She turned to Karan as if seeing her for the first time. “What am I talking about? I’m sorry for bringing you into this, Karan.”

  “So am I. I want to go home while I still have one!”

  Later their talk drifted onto Shazmak, the journey there and what it was like inside. Only after Maigraith had gone back to sleep did Karan realize how subtly she had channelled the conversation, to learn as much as she could about the Aachim city.

  Karan became alarmed, for underlying Maigraith’s casual questioning was a wistful nostalgia for what might have been, and a fatalism that it was all over. And before she slept Maigraith threw her arms about Karan and kissed her, something she had never done before.

  “Take care of yourself,” she whispered, “and look after Shand for me.”

  For the moment Maigraith was sleeping soundly. It would be dawn in a few hours. Karan ran down the hall to report this vital news to Malien, who had been furious with her for not knowing about Maigraith’s breaking into the workshop. Karan felt guilty about the flute too, sure that Tensor’s rebellion had to do with her revelation to Malien. At the same time, the duty to Malien was also real. Both obligations added up to the same thing: if Maigraith went to Shazmak she would have to follow her.

  Malien was not in her room. Karan wandered outside to the bakehouse and saw Tensor on the step, talking to one of his guards. She didn’t know what to do. Was he enemy or ally now? She felt loyalties to both sides. But only Tensor could tell her what she needed to know. Taking him aside, she told him what had happened at the meeting.

  “Well,” he said, “I see that I don’t have a mortgage on folly. What a rabble your friends are!” Presumably he referred to Mendark and Yggur. “They’ve had a dozen meets this winter, but what has come of them?”

  “Faelamor is going to Shazmak,” she reminded him.

  “Shazmak!” he said wistfully. “It’s as if a part of me has been amputated. If only I could see it again.”

  “Do you think she will ally with Rulke?”

  “Ha! Which one will betray the other first?”

  “But if they do put aside their differences, even for a day, think what they could do to us!”

  “No one can stop her,” Tensor said dismally. “Nothing can be done.”

  “Maigraith could.”

  “Don’t mention her name to me!”

  “You’re a stupid, bigoted old fool,” Karan yelled, shaking him by the shirt. “You made a promise and you went back on it.”

  “What?”

  “You refused Maigraith her flute. Can anyone else stop Rulke and Faelamor?”

  He was silent. “Can anyone?” she screeched in his face.

  “No!”

  “Then help me to help her.”

  “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Maigraith’s going to Shazmak, and I’m going with her.”

  “She will betray you and return to her own!” he spat.

  “I’m doing Malien’s work!” Karan said furiously. “Anyway, can Maigraith make things any worse than they are now?”

  “I suppose not,” he said grudgingly.

  “Then honor your promise!”

  “Very well,” Tensor said. “I have not acted honorably to you or to her, and it plagues me. What do you want?”

  “Is there any way to get into Shazmak secretly?”

  “There is a fifth way,” said Tensor, his voice a bare whisper. “Known only to me now. It has not been used in two thousand years. Two thousand years—we were in our prime then. Nothing seemed beyond us.”

  He rambled on, talking about events she knew intimately as if they had happened in the distant past. “Then they finally came in disguise, and it was not until we saw them that we recognized them, for they go by a different name now. They call themselves Whelm!”

  “Tensor!” Karan cried, calling him back abruptly. “It’s urgent. Tell me the way!”

  “The fifth route! Perhaps it has fallen into ruin. It’s fifty years since I last checked it. We never thought to enter that way, only to depart. There are traps you must master on the journey. I can barely remember them now. You cannot go the fifth way by yourself.” He broke off, staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

  “Tell me, quickly!”

  “Listen well,” he said, and described the way to her, explaining all the traps and pitfalls in the path. He took a long, intricate key from a chain around his neck. “I can’t think why I still have it. I’ll draw you a map too.” He made some cryptic scrawls on a soiled scrap of paper. “Study it well and destroy it afterwards. No, what am I thinking? Shazmak is lost forever. If you go that way, take someone you trust with you. Someone tall!”

  Karan hurried back to her own rooms, where Llian was sleeping quietly. Oh, Llian! she thought, how I wish that we could go together one last time. But this is no journey for you. I would just be taking you to your death. Bending over, she kissed him on the lips. He smiled and reached out to her with his eyes closed.

  She almost pulled away then, but the yearning was too strong. Putting her bag on the floor she slipped into his arms. It was so warm there; so protected; so lovely. She longed to stay, but if she did not get up now she would never be able to. Karan kissed him again, on the tip of his nose, and slid out of the bed. “Goodbye, Llian,” she w
hispered.

  Karan hurried back to Maigraith’s room. She’d been longer than she had planned. She pushed the door open quietly. Maigraith’s bed was empty and her clothes were gone.

  Karan ran around in a panic, cursing herself for leaving Maigraith alone. She forced herself to think calmly. Her own pack still contained her traveling gear and winter garb from the trip to Saludith. It would do for the mountains too. She raced up to her room for it, realizing as she did that she had no food. Too bad; she couldn’t spare a second. How long had Maigraith been gone? It could be as much as an hour. In her weakened state it might take her some time to reach the rooftop, her favored place for making gates, and make one ready.

  Karan’s running footsteps echoed down the hall. She rounded the corner and crashed into Shand, who had a sheet of paper in his hand.

  “Maigraith’s gone!” she gasped. “The rooftop, I’d say. She’s going to Shazmak!” She took the steps three at a time.

  Maigraith was surrounded by a network of light, but it was not the steady pale-blue light that had seen them off to Saludith. This was a flickering red-orange and scarlet corona, intensely bright, accompanied by a sizzling sound. Karan did not even hesitate. She sprinted across the roof, shouting, “Stop!” The bright light flared, began to die and Maigraith to fade.

  Shand cried out from the top of the steps, “Maigraith, wait! You must see this—” Karan dived forward into the light. There was a terrific crackle, she was flung up into the air, then the light disappeared and Karan was gone too. Shand pounded up to the spot. Nothing remained but an acrid smell that soon dispersed in the breeze. He looked down at the paper and cursed, long and violently.

  34

  Carcharon

  Maigraith woke soon after Karan went out. She felt much better than before, though her shoulder throbbed. She had been wondering how to get away, and now that opportunity presented itself she seized it at once. She dressed and ran to the larders. There she used a trickle of power to break the lock, stuffed her pack with food and headed for the roof.