by Ian Irvine
“The Mirror lies, I told you, and when it is prevented from lying it cheats and conceals. Give it here.”
He gripped the Mirror in his strong hands, staring deep into it, matching his will with its own. The image of Yalkara faded to nothing. The Mirror’s surface changed from silver to gold and back again, then a torrent of light poured out of it, so bright that he flinched. “No, you don’t!” he cried. “Not to me!” He held the Mirror high, forcing until his hands shook, then suddenly the face of Yalkara reappeared, and the writing ran across the bottom as it had before. But now the missing passage was complete.
This is what you must do. Aeolior, the Mirror will try to deceive you, but your birthright is proof against it. Wear the gold and the Mirror will be forced to show true. The gold will protect you too, if you wear it. Never let it out of your hands. Never, never allow it to be used in any other way, for if you do the protection will be lost and the gold will become as dangerous as the gold that came from the golden flute. Do not be hasty. Spend a lifetime preparing yourself, and when you are ready, remember, take hold of your birthright and look upon the Mirror, and it will show you what you must do.
Aeolior, fare well. We may meet some day if you succeed.
The bright letters faded away. Maigraith sat staring at the Mirror, devastated by her blunder. After all her careful thought, all her agonizing, she could hardly have made a worse decision if she had set out to.
“So!” said Rulke. “You could not have known, but now you do! You handed your birthright to our enemies, the protection is lost, and now Tensor has made the most deadly device that could ever be made from it.”
Maigraith found herself shaking uncontrollably. “I didn’t know!” she wept. “It lied to me. I can never trust the Mirror to show me what to do. Can you recover the secret from it, Rulke?”
“Not without the gold. Maybe not with it either, after Tensor’s work.”
“What am I to do?”
“You’ll have to find another way. I may be able to help you when the time comes, if you will agree not to oppose me now.”
“I—I will think about it.”
He sprang to his feet and without saying another word disappeared out the door.
Maigraith drifted out of sleep, thinking about Rulke, yearning for him. That snapped her wide awake. I do yearn for him, she realized. I want him body and soul. I know it absolutely, no room for doubt.
She played back the scene of their first meeting here, revelling in the ecstasy of his remembered touch. Surges of heat coursed their way down her body at the remembrance. Even her toes felt hot. Every nerve was a heated filament inside her. Her skin was so sensitive that she flung off the covers and bathed in the freezing air.
There came a single tap on the door. Rulke! She flung on a gown hanging on the wall. It must have been one Karan had worn as a girl, for it was far too small. No matter. Maigraith went to the door, holding the robe together with one hand. The soles of her feet felt so exquisite that she could hardly bear to put them on the floor. She opened the door.
Rulke stood there, carrying a basket in one hand. She ached for him; she felt that she was melting inside. “Come in,” Maigraith said, in such turmoil that she could no longer think to hold closed her gown. Rulke’s eye touched on the swell of one breast. He dropped the basket just inside the door with a crash of crockery.
Giving him her hand, she led him to the bedchamber. She shook her shoulders so that the robe sighed into a heap on the floor.
“What happened to your shoulder?” he asked, touching the red wound with his fingertips.
“A Faellem arrow. It’s nothing.”
“I’ll call my healer. Idlis will soon have you better.”
“In the morning!” Sitting on the side of the pallet she attended to his trouser buckle and shirt buttons. His skin was smooth and dark, not hairy as Yggur had been. She found the difference marvelously sensual.
Maigraith drew him down to her. His fingers carved a fiery path down her throat.
“There is more than one way to do battle,” she said, hooking her arm around his neck and pulling him closer to her.
That was how Faelamor found them. To break into Shazmak undetected had taken every atom of skill and experience in her long life as the greatest illusionist of all, for she was the first enemy Rulke had protected himself against. But Faelamor knew Shazmak, knew the Sentinels and the secret ways too. Even so, had not Rulke been so distracted she would never have achieved it.
She had entered not long after Maigraith, and in her nocturnal prowlings had been shocked witless to learn from the chatter of the Ghâshâd that Maigraith was here.
It had taken another day and night to find her, and Faelamor was worn out. Maintaining her disguise against the collective will of the ever-vigilant Ghâshâd was harder than ever. But she did it. She found the chamber that had once been Karan’s, turned the handle without a sound and slid within. There was no noise, no movement. The apartment was dimly lit by the dawn light. Faelamor crept to the open bedroom door, easing her head inside. The first thing she saw was a dark foot dangling over the side of the pallet. Two feet; dark long legs, massive thighs half-covering slender legs that were pale by comparison—more the color of honey.
They lay asleep in each other’s arms, still in the tangle of their lovemaking. Maigraith’s hair was fanned across the gray silk of the pillow. Faelamor shuddered. Her hand shook. She almost cried out in her grief and loss. Had she a dagger she would have plunged it through them both.
Too late! Rulke stirred. She must not be seen. Faelamor pulled the tattered shrouds of her illusion around her and withdrew silently, creeping away to a distant part of Shazmak, there to lick her wounds and plot her next moves.
What game do they play? She risks much, to dally like that with Rulke, and so does he. Could he be smitten by
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Maigraith, his judgment perhaps failing? I see an opportunity.
Why is she here? Surely to seize the construct for herself. But she’s not strong enough. I broke her will myself, lest she come to overpower me. Rulke will sway her to his side, as he has already seduced her. They will try to open the Way, and might succeed too. I must prevent that, whatever it costs. I will make him a better offer.
Once the gate is made I will batter it wide open and shatter the Forbidding. I will break his toy to bits. Whatever is at the heart of it I will take with me so that it can never be remade. While they struggle to hold back the void we will be away to Tallallame at last. But I cannot do it at a distance. I must be close to him. I must see the gate!
In the afternoon Faelamor was discovered just outside the gates of Shazmak. She wore a submissive, hangdog air, as if trying to break into Shazmak had been a last desperate gamble that had failed. Rulke’s eyes narrowed as she was led in, a small woman in white robe and sandals, with a satchel slung over her shoulder. He signed her to speak first.
“I have come to make you an offer,” she said, her manner that of one who was despairing, failing. “Your sensitive has abandoned you, as my creature did me. I know you can open the Way, but you cannot trace out the shifting paths to Aachan or to Tallallame.”
“You don’t know what I can or can’t do.”
“I forced the truth out of Karan, how you used her, and how she failed you out of the cowardice that is her way of life.”
For an instant Rulke looked perplexed, then he burst out laughing. “She did not fail me,” he roared. “I failed her! There is no braver person on Santhenar than Karan Elienor Fyrn. Oh, this is rich! She has fooled you utterly.”
“Whatever,” Faelamor said, as cold as a glacier in her mortification. “Here is an offer. I can find the paths between the worlds but I need Maigraith to crack open the Forbidding. Or you! Together we can achieve all our aims. You know what we Faellem want—Tallallame, nothing more. We will leave this world and never return. You can have Santhena
r and Aachan too, if you wish it. But we will guard Tallallame with all our strength!”
Rulke considered. Faelamor could never be trusted. Nonetheless the proposition interested him. His long searching had uncovered no other sensitive with Karan’s particular talent. And Faelamor was right: to find the Way was probably beyond him. But Faelamor was wily and more treacherous than anyone. What she said was as much a web of illusion as what she did. The advantage of her own species was of paramount importance to her too, and anything she did to any other people to gain that advantage would bother her no more than a butcher frets about cutting the throats of a flock.
“There may be some small way you can assist me,” he said, feigning indifference. “I will think on it. Meanwhile you must remain in Shazmak and submit to confinement. Take her away!”
Ghâshâd guards marched Faelamor to an apartment with only one exit, and guarded her turn and turn about. She submitted willingly, well pleased with her bargain. Not even Rulke would be able to hold her when her hour of most desperate need came—after he opened the Way through the Forbidding for her.
That morning Idlis had appeared, inspected Maigraith’s wound, bathed it, dusted it with powder and bandaged it up again. Not long after, the Sentinels sounded all over Shazmak. Maigraith wondered what had caused the alarm but there was no one around to ask.
In the night Rulke came to her chamber once more. She was waiting for him. She had thought of nothing all day but what they had done in the night, and what they would do again tonight, if she had pleased him as much as he had her. “Faelamor is here,” he said, easing his way through the door with a heavily laden tray. “What does she really want?”
Maigraith felt a shooting pain in her chest. She lost her breath. How Faelamor could oppress her, even after all this time. “What did she say she wanted?”
He told her.
“I’m sure that is the truth. But know she hates and fears you, so—”
“She will betray me at the critical moment!”
“And do her best to erase you from the world. Don’t do it!” she cried in anguish, feeling what his fate must be, feeling her loss.
“Why not?” Rulke asked. “On whose behalf do you speak?”
She couldn’t say it. “I—I speak on behalf of the Three Worlds, if I speak for anything, and I have a better right to that than anyone.” But she yearned for the Charon too—her people!
“Perhaps you do.” Then suddenly: “Do you know who your father was?”
The question caught her completely off-guard, as he no doubt intended. That was something Faelamor had refused to speak about. “He was Faellem. That’s all I know. He is long dead.”
Rulke regarded her impassively.
She felt like screaming out, “Do you know? Tell me!” But she would not show that weakness. She fixed him with the same cool gaze as she had before. For all their passion in the night, this was a game and she had small skill at it. Far better that she be direct.
“Rulke,” she said, wanting him desperately, and wanting to please him too, but not at hazard of the only world she knew. “I cannot aid you. The risk is too great.”
Rulke tossed his head. The black curls quivered. His shirt was cut low at the front. The sight of his chest stirred her. I’ve got to have you, she thought. Taking his hand, she pressed her lips to it.
He groaned. “This is torment!”
“For me too,” she murmured. “But this is the only world I know, and I care for it as much as you do for your own kind. I can’t.”
“Then we will talk no more about it.” He stood up, but Maigraith held his hand and rose with him.
“Do you dally with me?” he asked roughly.
Maigraith was sweating. What did he really feel about her? She must know: at the price of her dignity, even her humiliation.
“I know nothing of coquetry or feminine wiles,” she replied. “Let me be honest. I want you, now and forever. My body aches for you. Say that you feel the same, or not, and end it.”
They stared into each other’s eyes. What was he thinking? What was he going to do? Great Betrayer! Never trust him. The silence stretched out to infinity, until Maigraith wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Rulke looked stern, implacable, utterly dominating. Then she saw that his face was a mask, behind which he was just as afraid and uncertain as she was. She put out her hands.
Without taking his eyes off her for a moment, Rulke took from his finger a golden ring. She could have put two of her fingers in it. He closed his fist about it, squeezing and compressing until beads of sweat appeared on his brow. He spoke a word, baring his teeth in a grimace as a wisp of smoke trailed out the end of his fist. She wanted to cry, “No! Don’t hurt yourself!” but was as much captured by his eyes as he was by hers.
Suddenly Rulke plunged his fist into a pitcher of wine, quenching the ring with a hiss. He pulled out his hand; opened it. The ring lay on his steaming palm, much smaller now. Spreading her fingers he slipped it on. It was still quite hot. It fitted her slender finger perfectly.
Maigraith held her hand out, gazing at the ring in wonderment. What could she give him in return? Then she realized that she had the perfect gift. Feeling in her scrip she found the red-gold ring—the single link of Yalkara’s chain left over from the making of the flute. She stroked her ring finger around the circle, faster and faster, until the gold began to glow and resonate and sing like a wine glass.
“Hold out your hand,” she said. She rolled the ring, which was now as soft as putty, onto Rulke’s broad finger. The tone sank lower and lower, the glow died down and the gold hardened to fit him as perfectly as hers did her.
“I want you too, now and forever,” he echoed.
“It is done,” she agreed. “Forever!”
They reached for each other but just then something strange happened outside, a subtle working that was familiar, for it had the print Maigraith had learned when she and Faelamor had made the gate to Havissard together.
“Faelamor!” Rulke cried, and ran for the door. “Stay here!”
The door crashed shut. Maigraith ran after him but this time found the lock immoveable. She sat down on the edge of the bed, aching with unfulfilled passion. What was Faelamor up to?
Rulke did not come back and shortly Maigraith sensed a strange, throbbing warping, very powerful. He was using the construct. Surely he had not allied with Faelamor in spite of her warnings? Cold fear almost overwhelmed her. She had found her mate and now she was going to lose him again.
Already she could feel the mismatch in the reverberations between the two: the lack of phase that became a noisy chaos. Sometimes it abruptly died down to nothing, one canceling the other, while at other times it rose up in a shriek as one strangeness added itself to the other. Could they not feel it? Or did they not care? How could Rulke not care, unless all he had told her so earnestly, and all she had believed, was just a fabric of lies by the Great Betrayer?
I will not believe that, she thought. He must not fully realize. All that about the Way and the void—that is delusion. He knows how it used to be, but that is not how it is any longer. It’s different now, and the Forbidding is decaying. We are in deadly peril and only I can stop it.
Maigraith focussed the entire power of her mind on the lock. Someone else might have used a little strength and a lot of cunning and worked the lock, but Maigraith had too much of the one and not enough of the other. The lock flew to pieces and the door into splinters. She kicked the kindling out of the way. Yetchah tried to stop her but Maigraith raised her fist. The look on her face was so terrible that Yetchah froze.
“Hinder me and there will be nothing left of you but a print on that wall,” Maigraith said.
Yetchah was wise enough to obey. The Ghâshâd were superlative guards but Maigraith had grown beyond their power. She ran past, heading down to the vast hall where the construct was.
On the way she passed a band of Ghâshâd arguing furiously. She caught only a snatch of their conversation but it w
as enough to make her deathly afraid.
“Llian’s telling was true,” said Idlis, “and we must learn from it.”
“We are sworn,” replied a squat fellow who looked different from the others. He was short and stout, his legs were bowed and his skin was as gray as steel. His name was Jarkun, the leader of the band that had hunted Karan from Fiz Gorgo a year and a half ago.
“How can we serve a master who is such a fool?” whispered an elderly woman. Her eyes were a glassy yellow and one arm shook constantly.
“We are sworn, Tyone,” Jark-un repeated, as if that was the answer to everything.
“Not to Faelamor!” Idlis said with a shudder.
So it was true, and now his most faithful servants preached sedition. Rulke was surely doomed. Maigraith hurtled through the marble halls and across the cobwebby walkways of Shazmak, terrified that she would be too late. She skidded into the Great Hall, searching for Rulke.
Despite her emotions, she could not but marvel at the genius of the Aachim who had created the vast space, with its walls soaring up to that curving, shell-like, transparent ceiling, the delicate stairs like wire and glass, the balconies and platforms that seemed to hang in the air. Then her eye was drawn down and down, to that black, strangely curved and impossibly dense object that was the very antithesis of Shazmak—the construct!
The construct was operating, warping the spaces all around. Even the light curved toward it as it went past. It had the opposite effect on the floor, which sagged beneath it like a sheet of rubber pulled down by a steel ball. Rulke stood tall on the top of the construct with his hands on the levers. Faelamor sat on a mat on the floor, her eyes closed, apparently linked with him. Maigraith knew what they were attempting to do: Karan had explained it to her. Rulke was trying to make a perforation through the Forbidding with his construct, and Faelamor to reach through it and find the forever changing Way between the Worlds, the Way to Aachan.