The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  Rulke’s eyes narrowed. “I did not begin it,” he said. “A great lie has been told about me. I was betrayed. Yggur attacked me, he and Mendark, the most deceitful, treacherous man who ever was born on Santhenar. I defended myself. So, you plead for Yggur now! Is he still your lover?”

  “No!” she whispered. “Not since he went to Katazza.” She wanted to say Not since I set eyes on you, but did not dare.

  There was a long silence. Maigraith finally broke it. “You know what they call you?”

  “Great Betrayer! There’s nothing I can do to change that opinion. I know what I am—I do not deceive myself. I do not fawn on posterity.”

  She continued to pursue him, feeling a need to hear his explanation for every evil attributed to him.

  “What about the Aachim? You took their world, made slaves of them and harried them mercilessly.”

  “Does the lion starve her cubs because she pities the lamb? Had we not gone to Aachan we would be extinct, our great species gone forever. So we took Aachan. A hundred of us mastered a world. Had they cared for their world the way we did for ours, not even a million of us could have taken it. And did we harm Aachan in any way? We did not. We preserved and protected the ancient and noble culture of the Aachim. We did not enslave them either—that’s an excuse to cover up a failing that they cannot admit to themselves: they were short of courage! They were free enough.

  “Even here on Santh, we did not begin the wars of the Clysm. Much that was great and fine perished in the war. I regret that.”

  “You make out that all the tales about you are lies. I cannot believe that.”

  “Of course they’re not! Most are true. I have been cruel and relentless, and never failed to use any weapon against my enemies. I will do what is necessary for survival. Anyone who valued their own species would do the same.”

  “You refused to honor the bargain when Llian beat you at the telling.”

  “He lied and cheated, but I would expect that from an enemy. My fury was at allowing myself to be cheated in front of my servants. I was made to look a fool, and my authority with the Ghâshâd undermined. The time will come when I will suffer for it.”

  She kept on, bringing out every wrong she knew about. “But your tale of the conquest of Aachan showed you—”

  “I acted foolishly in Aachan, as that tale told. But that was thousands of years ago, when I was young and in my heat. Who does not? Have you no failures that you’re ashamed of? I did not try to conceal it. I am not without honor.”

  Rulke said that very simply, then walked across to the construct. He stood there looking up at it, swaying ever so slightly. He put his hand on the hard flank of the machine but seemed to take no comfort from it. Yetchah appeared but he waved her out. Maigraith watched him, wondering how much of what he told her was the truth, if anything. She could not get his reputation out of her mind, but it did not agree with what she saw, and felt.

  Spinning around, he strode back to her. “What is your decision?”

  “I cannot make one. I am confused.” And that was the truth. “I must think.”

  “Then you will appreciate why I must do this,” he said, moving his hands in the air. Suddenly she could not move. “If you decide to join me, your word is all I need.”

  She did not struggle, and that seemed to surprise him. She just looked at him, measuring him with her remarkable, sad eyes.

  He clapped his hands, a noise like thunder. Yetchah and Idlis appeared at an entrance and Rulke said, “Take her to her chamber. Will you go peacefully, Maigraith, or must I restrain you? Be warned, the number of my Ghâshâd is many hundreds.”

  “I—I give you my parole,” she said.

  His relief was evident. “In that case I will take you there myself. Come with me.” Dismissing the Ghâshâd, he gathered up her coat and cloak. “This way.”

  Maigraith walked beside him silently. She had recovered her self-possession enough to take in something of the strangeness and the magnificence of Shazmak. Rulke led her along labyrinthine passages, up ethereal silver stairs and across a gossamer bridge that linked twin towers. On the way she realized that the alien murals depicted Aachan, the world her Charon ancestors had come from. Then she could not get enough of the gloomy scapes, the towering mountains, the lava fountains and sulphur-crusted snow.

  In a tower some distance away, along a corridor with many doors, Rulke stopped outside one door, opened it and waited for her to enter.

  “Not a cell?”

  “I understand that these rooms were Karan’s, when she lived here. I thought it would be more comfortable for you.”

  Maigraith was touched. “Thank you.”

  She went in and he followed her. Inside the wind could be heard, a distant wailing. She touched the globes to light, inspected the furniture and the kitchen, wondering about Karan’s life here. In the room that must have been Karan’s bedchamber a crystal window had been let through the thick wall, the only window she was to see in Shazmak. It was just becoming light outside. She looked out on the towers, spires and swooping aerial walkways of Shazmak. Beyond, every craggy peak was clad in snow.

  “You will want to bathe, eat and sleep,” he said. “I shall send food and drink. Otherwise, this place has everything you could need. Until the morning!” Bowing, he went out.

  Maigraith checked the door, expecting it to be locked, but it opened silently. She waited until an almost fawning Yetchah appeared with the promised rations, then locked the door, bathed and went to bed. There was much to think about. She could feel the Charon part of her reaching out toward the truth in what Rulke had said, feeling the loss of their world and the terror at being reduced to extinction. Yalkara had not mentioned that, in the message left for Aeolior. How she wished she could look upon the Mirror and see Yalkara as she was now.

  She could not get to sleep. Wandering about, Maigraith found her apartment to be a large, comfortable place. She sat down on something that she interpreted to be a chair, though it was very curiously shaped. The wind shrieked outside the window.

  Pulling a blanket off the bed and wrapping herself in it like a cocoon, she curled up in the chair. Maigraith woke sometime later in the thrall of desire so strong that she almost wept with it. She wanted Rulke desperately—wanted him in her bed right now. The totally foreign passion shocked her. What she’d felt for Yggur had been a pale thing beside this. Going to the window, she laid her inflamed shoulder and rosy cheek against the glass. The cold helped with both, but not with her passion, and though shortly she went back to her couch she could not sleep for the wild thoughts chasing themselves through her mind. And at the back of them all—Rulke!

  36

  In The Mines of Shazmak

  Karan did not rouse when Maigraith slipped away, though normally she was a light sleeper. But later in the night she began to feel cold and afraid. She dreamed that she was trying to wake but could not. The lid of her mind was held closed with an invisible web.

  Morning speared chinks of sunlight in past the edges of the slab door. Karan slept on, and now the inability to wake was a suffocating thing, an admission that she was too weak and insignificant to be of any help. That hurt.

  The sun rose higher. The rays fled back across the floor and disappeared. A diffuse light penetrated the gloom. The sun reached its low zenith and fell quickly toward the north and west. Finally, when it had slipped below the mountains and the last light was fading from the room, Karan wrenched the cobwebs from her brain and woke.

  She felt tired and irritable, the dull feeling that comes from having slept too long. At first she thought it was morning, though it did not feel like morning, and that Maigraith must have gone out for a walk. But Maigraith’s pack was gone and the small pile of food beside her own told Karan everything she needed to know. She was not surprised—it was the sort of thing Maigraith would do. Karan had been half-expecting it. That was why she had told Maigraith nothing about the secret way into Shazmak.

  She must be the best part
of a day ahead by now. There was no hope of catching her. Karan heaved on the door, to see the last light and breathe the open air. She heaved again. It did not budge. It was fixed somehow. She felt humiliated. Not only had she been abandoned, but locked in as well.

  She examined the door. It was made from a single thick slab of the local rock, slate. With her globe she saw that the slab slid in a channel cut in the stone of the floor, and at the top was held from falling out by a metal bar bolted to the roof. It looked home-made, but quite solid. There was nothing visible restraining the door yet it would not move either way.

  Whatever form of the Art Maigraith had used, it was beyond Karan’s understanding, or her breaking. She felt a momentary panic—what if it stayed locked? She would die in a few days, for she had only a little water in her bottle. Surely Maigraith would have left a way out, or perhaps the closure was set to fail in a day or so.

  She examined the door again, recalling how she had solved a similar problem in the sewers of Fiz Gorgo. There was no rotten stone here; the whole thing was as solid as the day it was made. She noticed, though, that over the eons the door had cut its channel deeper in the floor. What had once been a square channel was now a trench with sloping sides. At the top there was enough clearance to put her hand in the space.

  Two approaches suggested themselves—to lever the door out of its channel from the bottom, or to chisel away

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  the slate at the top and let the door fall outward. The first approach looked to be the easier but she had nothing to lever with. She took out her knife.

  Even standing on her pack, Karan had to strain to reach the top of the door. The slate was soft but it would take hours, if not days, to scratch away enough for the slab to fall. The dust fell directly into her eyes all the while. Then, forcing too hard, the blade snapped off halfway down. There had been a flaw in it.

  She threw the pieces on the floor and rested her forehead against the cold stone. It moved slightly. Karan put her feet against the wall, gripped the edges of the door with both hands as firmly as the limited clearance would allow and slowly straightened her legs. The bottom of the door moved a little way up the side of the channel then slid down again. Three times she tried, always with the same result. Finally she wedged it with a flake of stone. The door slipped back, crushing the flake. She lay down on her sleeping pouch and stared up at the ceiling.

  What was Maigraith doing at this moment? She would be nearly to Shazmak by now. She had confided nothing to Karan about her plans. Probably she had none; could not even make any. Besides, for all Maigraith’s vast abilities, Karan did not have a great deal of respect for her capacity to solve that problem. She had strength but no cunning. She lacked imagination.

  She needs me, thought Karan. She’ll soon be in terrible trouble and no one can help her but me. And if I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll be too late. Karan knew that she was being foolish. What could she hope to do against the likes of Rulke and Faelamor? But she had to support her friend. And make up for her crimes—for helping Rulke, for letting the thranx into Santhenar.

  Taking up the broken hilt of her knife, Karan realized that with its stub of blade it made a wedge of sorts. She jerked the door, jammed the wedge in and heaved again, repeating the process several times. The stone door rode up to the edge of the channel and stalled there. The space was big enough to get her head into. Edging gingerly into the space, her shoulder touched the slab and it slipped. Karan wrenched her head out, scraping her ear painfully along the side of the slab just before it slammed back against the wall. Her heart was going so hard that it hurt.

  Karan could not stand up for trembling. She sat with her head in her hands, imagining what it would be like to lie here, trapped by her crushed skull, slowly dying. That must rank as one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done, she told herself. Don’t be in such a hurry.

  But the urgency had not gone away. She gave the door a truly mighty shove and the bottom rode up and over the lip. She jumped out of the way as the slab struck the floor and broke into pieces. Cold air gushed in. From the look of the stars it was nearly midnight. Taking up her pack, Karan departed.

  At one or two places along the track, smaller winding paths led down to the Garr. The way Tensor had taught her about, the secret fifth way out of Shazmak, began near the bottom of the gorge, down one of these paths. She had to be on it before dawn, otherwise she would be unable to move for fear of discovery.

  The night was dark, the crescent moon not yet risen, but at least the track was in good repair. She could move relatively quickly. Even so it was an anxious night. An incautious step on a patch of ice and she would be over the edge.

  Karan was no more than an hour from the river path when dawn began to break. The mist thickened with the day and soon she could laugh at her earlier fear, for fog rose out of the river so dense that she could barely see her feet, and had to edge her way along by feeling the cliff with her fingertips.

  Now the route became hazardous in the extreme, for this path was narrow, steep and in grave disrepair. She hurried on, afraid that she would be too late, taking risks. At a place that was too dangerous to negotiate in the fog, where the whole path had slid down into the river, she stopped for breakfast.

  Once the sun was well into the sky the mist thinned rapidly, yet it was still a long way down, taking her till well after midday. The Garr swelled to a vast white torrent, pounding over endless rapids and gigantic boulders, filling all the air with spray that made pearls of moisture in her hair. The thunder of the water even drowned out her thoughts.

  At the bottom a shelf had been cut into the cliff, a platform above the flood level. When she reached it, Karan saw a shaft running into the side of the mountain and at first thought that part of the cliff had fallen, revealing the entrance of the secret way. Shortly she realized that this shaft was a mine adit, for inside there were lumps of ore and a broken hand cart. The whole area was a network of tunnels, where the Aachim had mined the ore from which they had fashioned Shazmak. The secret way must be further upstream, a scramble of several hundred paces past the end of the platform, over huge blocks of wet stone.

  She headed that way, recalling Tensor’s directions and trying to relate them to what she saw around her. Go upstream… 280 paces from the end of the platform. But did he mean his paces or hers? Besides, it was impossible to pace out the distance over this jumble of boulders. She also remembered Tensor saying that the secret way could not be done alone. Take someone tall, he’d said. Too late!

  Look up at the cliff. You will see that one part of it, twice the height of your head, is quite smooth, but for two small oval bosses of stone.

  There was nothing like that above her, but a good distance further along, the gray rock was smooth. There she looked up. Still nothing that looked like a boss, a round lump of stone, much less two. Even higher up, three head heights, four, five, there was nothing. She sat down on a boulder, staring at the cliff. It was freezing here. The rocks were coated with frozen spray in layers that would not melt until late spring.

  This had to be the spot. Karan looked down and saw a smooth round bulge of stone below her boot, and another not far off. The boulders must have fallen since Tensor was last here.

  Take the key, hold it with the wards pointing vertically and to the right, and touch the flat part to the very tip of the lefthand boss, then the right, then the left again. Do this quickly. Wait for the count of ten and do the same again, but beginning with the right-hand boss and the wards of the key pointing to the left. Then stand well back.

  She did exactly as she had been instructed, and waited. Nothing happened for a minute, but soon a square outline appeared in the smooth rock face and a door fell outward toward her. She leapt sideways with an involuntary yelp, slipping on the ice and bruising her knee. The door crunched against the boulder she had been sitting on. Instinctively she looked around in case
someone was watching, then stepped onto the ramp.

  Inside she touched the key to another, smaller boss. The door rose back into place. It became utterly dark. It was warm though—much warmer than outside. Lighting up her glass, she headed up the tunnel, ordering in her mind the various instructions to take her safely and secretly into Shazmak. This way was intended for escaping, not for entering, and there were a number of traps that had to be disarmed. The first of these was a simple pad that acted as a Sentinel. Unless she disabled it, an alert would be sent to the Sentinels in Shazmak and a block of stone would fall to seal the passage. The pad was just twenty paces in from the door. Twenty of Tensor’s paces; twenty-five or more of hers. It could be disabled with a series of small taps in a bowl-shaped depression in the raw stone. That took her a while to discover, for the depression was small and high up, very inconspicuous. She went forward carefully but nothing happened. Karan judged that the Sentinels had not been alarmed.

  Karan continued for a while, stopped for dinner and realized that it must be growing dark outside now. Suddenly drowsy, she lay down in her sleeping pouch and slept.

  The tunnel ran, sometimes up but mostly down, in a series of looping curves that led without further interruption directly toward Shazmak. As long as she kept to Tensor’s route she was safe, until she reached the foundations of Shazmak. It was quite different from that other underground way, the caverns of Bannador. Here it was quite dry. Only once or twice did she encounter water, though just a trickle along the side of the tunnel.

  After a few hours the tunnel plunged steeply down. The walls were wet here and the floor slippery. Shazmak was built on a pinnacle of rock rising out of the middle of the Garr, and therefore the way must go under the river at some point. At the lower end of the decline, her lightglass showed a long stretch of water. A thrown rock indicated that it was deep. She would have to swim and hope that the tunnel was not full further on. Her small light did not reach that far.