by Ian Irvine
As Maigraith hesitated in the doorway, a curving, shimmering surface sprang into view, like an enormous soap bubble cutting through walls, floor and distant ceiling. It spanned the whole vast room—the Wall of the Forbidding made visible. Rulke twisted a knob. A lens of light sprang into being before the construct. He brought the lens to bear on the Wall, focussing it to a small circle.
Maigraith crept forward, but before she was close Faelamor roused, staring at her with those cold eyes that seemed to have no bottom to them. The Wall faded from view again.
Rulke cried out, “Leave her be!” but he was in the middle of his working and dared not stop.
Faelamor did something with her eyes and Maigraith was unable to stand. She had never encountered such an enchantment before and could not defend herself against it.
All her senses were cut off, except sight. She could hear nothing, feel nothing, not even her feet on the floor. The whole room looped the loop. Her inner ears prickled, then Maigraith felt the most nauseating dizziness she had ever experienced. Nothing was up, nothing down. Her nerveless legs collapsed under her.
Maigraith’s head spun, far worse than being drunk. She tried to speak but could not remember any words. Her tongue snaked back down her throat. She clawed it out, gagging and choking until she could only lie down with her cheek on the stone, shuddering. Still her brain whirled.
It was a long time before she could get up but as soon as she did she was hurled down again. Maigraith pretended to rise, fell back with a groan, made another show, this time even weaker, and lay prone. She did not have the strength to face Faelamor. But Faelamor was using such prodigious forces that surely she must suffer for it.
Maigraith lay motionless on the floor, watching as the Wall of the Forbidding appeared once more. Faelamor paid her no more attention and Maigraith began to feel better, though now she was careful not to show it.
She had to husband her strength. Rulke was in deadly danger. He was dependent on Faelamor, for he needed her to find his Way. His plan was weak. He must have been desperate to try it. Once the Forbidding was opened, Faelamor could attack him and he would not be able to defend himself, for fear of the void emptying itself into Santhenar.
Maigraith gathered her strength, fueling her hatred of Faelamor for the chance that must come. All around her things were changing, warping and twisting in a way that was difficult for her to slide her mind around. It was a great risk she was taking. If she left it too long…
Then Maigraith felt the first faint stirring of another force, again familiar. Someone was using the flute. She recognized the dangerous aura first felt in Havissard. Mendark! The company must be near. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief—someone to share the load with. Then she realized what it really meant. The perilous flute might dissolve the decaying Forbidding completely. If that happened, nothing could save Santhenar.
39
The Sounding of the Sentinels
Tallia stood staring at the hollow. “Everything I’ve worked for these past eleven years is undone,” she whispered. The Magister she had served so faithfully had betrayed her. Jevi was nursing a badly wrenched wrist. Osseion propped himself up against the wall, panting. The rest of the company straggled slowly in.
“Mendark, I did not like the tone of that flute at all,” said Malien. “Beware!”
“Who will do the duties of the Magister now?” Tallia asked mournfully.
“You must!” gasped a red-faced Shand. “You’ve been his deputy long enough.”
“He kept his secrets to himself,” she said.
“Why don’t you look to Jevi’s injury,” said Shand, clapping her on the shoulder.
“Jevi hurt?” Tallia shook herself out of her malaise. She fell on her knees before him. “Jevi, I’m sorry. What must you think of me?”
“I think you’ve suffered a worse blow than a sprained wrist,” he said. “But nonetheless I would be glad to have it attended. And then…” he looked up at her and smiled, “I would help you with your own hurt.”
Tallia threw her arms around him and wept. He held her, saying nothing at all, but when she’d finished he mopped the tears away, as gentle as ever.
“Don’t let me go, Jevi. Don’t ever let me go.”
“I won’t let you go, Tallia!” And then he surprised her, and everyone else, and himself too, by kissing her full on the lips.
“We’ve got to get to Shazmak,” said Yggur, shaking his head.
“By the time we do it will be long over,” said Malien, as Tensor dragged himself up the stairs, more dead than alive, supported by two Aachim. “Tensor, can you make us a gate?” The irony was not lost on her, nor on Tensor either.
“Hah!” Tensor fell to his knees, arching his back, trying to find the position that caused him the least pain. Finding none, he lay down on the floor. The breakneck pursuit had treated him cruelly.
“I swore that I would not,” he said, “and I will not, unless it is the last hope.”
“If we can’t get there today,” said Yggur, “it will be no hope.”
“It would be quicker for you to walk there,” said Tensor. “I’m no triune, as Maigraith is, combining the talents of all the worlds. Nor have I the flute to aid me. My first gate took me weeks. Even now, with help, it would take many days. You must look elsewhere.”
“I have not the talent,” said Yggur.
“Nor I. I’ve failed and Aachan is doomed.” Malien cast herself on the floor in despair.
“Not yet!” said Shand. “I swore that I would never use my powers again. But time cancels all oaths, if you have the misfortune to live long enough. Nor have I made a gate before, but I know how, and this is probably the only place that a weak vessel such as I could make one. Even so, I will need your strong shoulders and your broad backs.
“Tallia, I remember how you labored in Katazza to give Karan and Llian the chance to come back. You can use those skills here. You, too, Yggur. Tensor, advise me!”
“How will you find the destination?” asked Llian, fascinated.
“The destination is Shazmak,” said Shand. “Look at the floor, molded in the form of the construct. Like calls to like—it will be a lodestone to our needle. Get out of the way, Llian.”
Llian stepped back. Shand moved back and forth around the depression, eventually settling on the spot near the embrasure where Karan had sat when she found the Way for Rulke.
“This is a good place,” he said. “Let me think about it for a while. I suggest we all eat and sleep first. Making gates requires a full belly and a clear head.”
It was after midnight before they were ready to begin. People were sleeping everywhere. Shand roused them with a roar.
“Give me your hands, Tallia,” he said. “Put your back to my back, Yggur.”
Tallia stood facing him, gripping his hands, and Yggur at his back. Shand concentrated.
“What will you use for a focus?” Llian broke into his thoughts.
“Be quiet, pest!” Shand thundered, looking very unlike his shabby old self. Then, relenting, “Watch carefully now, if you would put this in your tale.”
On one hand Shand wore the ring Yalkara had forged for him as a parting gift. In the other he had his black staff. He closed his hands around Tallia’s and drew them up till the knuckles touched his forehead. The ring began to shimmer. The shimmer spread to his hand, then his arm, enveloped his whole body and expanded until it came to the depression in the floor. It curved away around that to form a doughnut with a bite out of it.
“This is a special kind of gate,” came Shand’s voice, slightly muffled. “It will remain here, once I anchor it…” his voice was strained, “Thus! When you step inside and I reach out to the destination, it will stretch toward Shazmak, compressing the distance between here and there into just a few steps. But you will always be inside the gate as long as you stay within the light. Make sure that you do. Other gates send you and receive you, but in between the gates you are between, not within. Between is a
particularly dangerous place to be, just now.”
As they stepped into the gate, the shimmer became a golden-colored veil. A dozen questions trembled on Llian’s lips but he was afraid to ask them.
Now they were all in but one. Tensor stood by the broken wall, looking out listlessly. Shand called but he did not hear. The outside world was thinning; he was barely visible now. Abruptly Shand tugged the ring off his finger, put it in Llian’s hand saying, “Hold this tight. Don’t drop it. Think of nothing!” and stepped out of the mist.
The veil abruptly changed color and began to pulse. Llian closed his eyes, clinging to the ring, feeling that any minute it might turn into smoke and disappear. The colors began to oscillate around the surface of the doughnut.
Shand put his hand on Tensor’s shoulders. “Come, Tensor. We need you.”
“This is the end of the world!” he replied.
“Do you want to end it in Carcharon?”
“It doesn’t matter!” However, Tensor allowed himself to be led through the veil of light and Llian surrendered the ring thankfully.
“Why did you tell me not to think?” he asked, fearing that they might have been whipped to some inconceivable destination by the pure power of his thought.
Shand laughed. “Because it would change the colors.”
“How would that alter things?”
“It would frighten you,” he chuckled. “You have no power to direct a gate, Llian.”
“Oh,” said Llian. “But in the Nightland…”
“That was a set gate. Whoever stepped within it would go to the same place. Except Rulke, of course, who might direct it anywhere that it was possible for a gate to go. Now cease your chatter!”
Llian shut up. Shand put the ring to his forehead once more, the doughnut formed into a golden cocoon that began to elongate, first slowly then faster and faster, though strangely the other end did not seem to be much further away. In less than a minute it stopped extending.
“Wait!” snapped Shand, stepping to the leading edge of the cocoon, and through it into nothing. A minute later he reappeared.
Looking at the faces in the gate, Llian found no comfort anywhere. Everyone else was as afraid as he was.
“Come forward, to the edge of the light,” Shand said. “But on your life, no further.”
“What are we going to find there?” Yggur muttered.
“Calamity!” cried Tensor.
They went slowly forward, walking on the spongy base of the cocoon. Llian did not dare imagine what held him up in case it dissolved and dropped him into blackness. The distance between Carcharon and Shazmak was reduced to nothing, as if they stood at two ends of a great ovoid hall. Mist was all around except directly in front of them. There, distant but brought to a clear focus, they saw a clot of darkness shot with red flame: the construct!
Karan moaned deep down in her chest—she could not help it. There was no strength in her arms and legs. She worked her muscles, praying harder than she had ever prayed in her life that the trap would go off. This was a desperately ferocious opponent.
The creature crept forward, another step and another. The trap must have failed. Karan flexed her legs. Now it was only half a dozen paces away, just a bound from those massive thighs. She looked into its eyes and fell into pools as wild as the River Garr outside.
The thigh muscles corded, the lorrsk inched forward and without warning sprang at her. Karan had lightning-fast reflexes but she could not even move, it was so quick. Or had it used some mesmerizing power against her?
The trap snapped down beneath it. Instead of leaping high and landing on top of her, the lorrsk’s feet slipped on the down-swinging trapdoor and its leap went flat. It landed a body length away and her side of the trap dropped as well. The floor tilted right under Karan’s feet—she must have been standing on the edge, but been too light to set it off.
The lorrsk flung its immensely long arm at her. Karan tried to throw herself backward but her feet slipped and she fell flat on her back with her legs dangling over the edge of the trap. The lorrsk’s clawed fingers slashed between her spread legs, tore through the fabric of her trousers and caught the edge of the trapdoor.
Karan let out a terrified squeak—the claws were hooked through her pants just below the crotch. If it fell it would take her with it. She dropped the lightglass to scratch at the floor for any kind of handhold. Her fingers found a crack as the trapdoor dropped right open. The lorrsk fell hard, which forced a grunt out. Its joints cracked and the weight ripped the claws out of their hold. Karan was jerked so hard that the back of her head banged on the floor. She felt herself being pulled over the edge, then her trouser-leg tore from crotch to ankle.
The lorrsk slammed the fingers of its left hand into the crack between trapdoor and floor. This hold held. One claw was pulled right out, but somehow the creature managed to hang on. It swung there, its weight suspended on three fingers. She expected the doors to spring closed again but the weight of the lorrsk held them open. Karan was balanced on a knife-edge. She dared not move lest her legs pull her over.
The lorrsk groaned and thrashed about with its right arm, but couldn’t quite catch hold of Karan. One slash tore through her other trouser leg, shredding it as well and rasping down the inside of her thigh like sandpaper. Karan flung her legs up in the air, certain that she was going to fall, but somehow her legs passed the point of balance and she rolled backward out of the way.
She scrambled to her feet, gasping. Would the lorrsk fall or get out? With a wild lunge it caught the top of the trap with one claw of its right hand, making an unpleasant scraping sound on the metal trap. It was going to succeed.
She jumped up, retrieved her glass and felt around in the recess for the trapdoor release. Then the lorrsk spoke.
“Hwix thrung? Hwix tjart?”
It was not just a ravening beast. It was a thinking creature, like her. It must have sensed her hesitation for suddenly her mind was flooded with images. She saw a cave lit by a tiny fire, around which was a family of lorrsk. One, just like the creature here, held a haunch of something over a fire, while its mate played with two furry balls, baby lorrsk. Another, between them in size, was inscribing what could only be characters on the wall of the cave. Outside, a pair of red suns glowed in a purple sky. Its longing for its family and its nest, for a place that was not the terrible void, flooded her with emotions. Was it trying to show that it was human too, or just to weaken her?
She forced the images out of her mind. “That may be so,” she said, “but if you catch me you’ll eat me!”
Her fingers caught a knob in the recess. The trapdoors sprang up again. The lorrsk wrenched one hand out but the other fingers were trapped between the edge of the trapdoor and the floor. It screamed, then stood up, stamping on the trap with one foot, trying to set it off again. The trap shivered but did not open.
Karan did not wait to see what happened. There was a tiny gap between the edge of the trap and the wall, the width of a narrow board. She ran for it, one, two, three, four steps on dangerously wobbly knees. To her amazement she made it across. Karan raced up the tunnel without looking back.
Behind her the lorrsk kept screaming. Had it got free or had it fallen? She wasn’t waiting to find out, just pounded on with her shredded trousers flapping, until her knees would no longer hold her up. She lurched around a corner and ran head-on into a wall of rock.
Almost there! she thought, rubbing a bruised forehead. Back twenty paces was a side tunnel, if she could find the key to open it. She went back, searching for a hidden plate that would open the way up into Shazmak.
Here she encountered an unexpected difficulty. A vein of quartz pointed to the plate that must be pressed to open the door, but it was at the highest reach of an Aachim, much too high for her. She held up the lightglass, looking fearfully down the tunnel.
Her dismal foreboding was realized. Two pinpoints of light appeared in the distance. She sprang high but could not reach the plate. She sprang ag
ain—not even as high as the first time.
Now Karan heard a curious wet plopping noise, like longdead fish being repeatedly slapped down on a slab. It turned the blood in her veins to ice. It was the lorrsk, and though just a dark shape a long way down the tunnel, she could sense it in her mind’s eye as clearly as if a light shone on it.
She watched it come. Blood poured down its legs from the freshly opened buttock wound. Its huge hand-feet, wet with blood, slap-plopped the floor as it lurched stiff-legged toward her. Its long arms hung down, one hand dripping dark blood where it had torn the fingers off in its desperation to get out of the trap. The mouth was a toothed hole, the eyes bayonets fixed on her. Only death would stop it this time.
Karan backed across the passage, ran and sprang as high as she could. It was an awkward jump, since she had to hold the lightglass in her other hand. Her outstretched fingers slapped the side of the plate. The door did not open. Heel first, then fingers! She backed up, ran and leapt again.
Her elbow struck the wall, jarring the lightglass out of her hand. It struck the floor, cracked and went out. Karan dived for it and managed to coax a dim light out of the larger piece.
Flap-slap! Flap-slap! The lorrsk was close. It must have been as exhausted as she was, but it had survived the void. It kept on doggedly. Well, it wasn’t going to have her! Her knees were wobbling as she prepared for another attempt, her last. She leapt, stretching up as high as she could go. The heel of her hand struck the plate, then her fingers, one after another. Something groaned behind the wall and part of it slid away to reveal a dark tunnel that led up into blackness.
Karan landed like a cat, twisted, and as the lorrsk swung its claws at her she ducked under its arm, reeling from the stench of its gangrenous wound, and up the passage. Somewhere to her left was the mechanism that would seal it behind her. One of the stones of the wall—for this was cut stone, not native rock, and therefore part of Shazmak—worked a counterweighted block. But which one? She couldn’t tell in this light, and there wasn’t time to experiment. The lorrsk rushed after her. It seemed to have found a new reservoir of strength.