by Ian Irvine
She ran up the passage, slapping at the stones with her left hand, desperately hoping that one of them was the lever. She only hurt her hand. Ahead was a flight of stairs that led straight up—high steps meant for the long Aachim stride. Karan took them two at a time, sobbing and gasping, all the way to a landing where she had to rest no matter what. Her side was on fire and her breath came in huge, shuddering gasps.
The lorrsk had fallen behind in the ascent but it was still coming, one step at a time, with a deadly implacability. She knew it could keep this up all day, whereas another half hour would finish her. She moved on, step by step now, and every tread hurt more than the previous one.
How far was there to go? Karan had no idea—there was endless darkness above her. What was at the top? Tensor had not told her. She must keep going, just this step, just the next.
And somehow she did, up and up those endless stairs, a thousand steps and more. She climbed until the stitch in her side disappeared, and kept climbing until it came back again and would not go away. She climbed until the flesh of her legs felt to be melting, until every muscle was on fire and every sinew as tight as wire, until her throat burned and her stomach heaved bile up into the back of her nose, until her head was a serrated rasping pain that drove all thoughts away but terror. Finally Karan saw that she was approaching the top of the stairs.
She looked down. The lorrsk was only twenty steps below her, its feet still flapping the stone in that dead-fish zombie gait. The fur on its chest was matted with sweat and dried saliva that formed white crusts all the way down to its groin.
She looked up. Let there be a door, Karan prayed, and let it be open. She went up the last steps on hands and knees. Ahead she saw an iron Sentinel beside a studded metal door that was closed. If only it was not locked. She staggered to it and tried the handle. Locked! It did not even quiver under her shoulder. She was trapped! There was absolutely nowhere to go. Tensor hadn’t told her how to open this one.
Sobbing and choking, Karan screamed out, “Help me, help me!” She called over and over again at the shrillest pitch of her voice, a shriek of despair and terror. She pounded on the door with her fists and kicked it with her feet. Finding a piece of broken stone on the floor, she crashed it against the door, making the metal ring like a drum. Behind her the lorrsk lurched up the last steps.
“What’s that?” Rulke said, staring at Faelamor as if she had betrayed him. She looked as puzzled as he was.
“It is a device,” he said. “Though not operated with much skill.” He paused, sniffing the air. “At least, not with any skill that I am familiar with.”
“But a danger to us both,” said Faelamor.
Maigraith lay motionless on the floor, waiting for an opportunity.
Faelamor shouted, “I remember that aura. It’s Mendark!”
“Quickly!” said Rulke. “Before he gets here.”
Once more Rulke focussed the light-lens on the wall of the Forbidding. A larger lens formed there and soap-bubble colors raced back and forth across the surface. Abruptly the colors vanished and the lens began to wobble back and forth like a bag of jelly. The floor shook. The vibration became audible, a subliminal rumble.
“Now!” roared Rulke. As he spoke the whole shimmering Wall of the Forbidding rang like a vast gong and Mendark appeared on a balcony high above them, wrapped in a radiating sphere of light. The golden flute was in his hand.
Rulke swore, the construct swung round at his command and through the light-lens a doughnut-shaped pulse fanned up at the balcony. Mendark put the flute to his lips and vanished. The whole room tried to turn itself inside out. Maigraith choked up a clot of bile, that being all she had left in her. The Wall of the Forbidding whipped back and forth across the room, and though it was completely intangible, each time it passed through her Maigraith was wracked by another spasm of disorientation and nausea. Yet even in that desperate state she was capable of wondering how it could pass through her, but be the same on the other side.
The construct spun crazily, upside down, while Rulke struggled to control it. Eventually it answered his command again. He brought the machine down to the floor and sat for a moment clutching his stomach. With a supreme effort he stopped his guts from heaving back out of his mouth. Sweat drops on his brow were the size of peas.
Scarcely had he begun again when another interruption occurred. This time the gate meshed so smoothly that no one realized it was coming until the golden cocoon appeared in the distance. It stopped on the far side of the room and Shand stepped forth. Rulke recognized him this time. “Gyllias!” he swore.
Llian looked everywhere for Karan. He could not see her.
The construct drifted toward the company, giving off a ground-shaking rumble that made Llian’s bones and teeth ache. The floor rose and fell beneath him like the swell out in the Great Ocean.
It was close now, and huge. The potency of it depressed the floor all around, like a saucer, and that deepened until the machine hung above the bottom of a bowl into which loose objects began to drift. The floor curved steeply down right in front of them. A low table with a wine flask on it slid past Llian into the bowl, the wine spilling and forming a trail of red droplets behind it. Before reaching the construct, table, flask and wine vanished in a puff of mist.
Even inside Shand’s gate Llian felt the pull of the device—its gravity was dragging everything to it. His feet slipped on the suddenly slick surface.
Llian stared at the construct in terror and amazement. What wonders would Rulke do with it? He felt an urge to take up the offer Rulke had made long ago, to be part of the great adventure. Rulke was magnificent, no question of it. Who was to say that he was not the fittest, the one who would, in the end, do the greatest good for Santhenar? The temptation was overwhelming.
Someone put a hand on Llian’s shoulder. Malien’s voice was soft in his ear. “Be strong, chronicler.” The pressure eased lightly.
“Gyllias!” Rulke said in a low voice. “Be careful what you do. I have Maigraith here.”
“If you harm her…”
“We have sworn to one another! But this project is critical to my kind. I won’t let anyone stop me.”
“It is a perilous experiment,” Shand replied.
The Forbidding began to flicker and fade, and just as suddenly flared bright again.
“It’s decaying,” screamed Faelamor. “Get it back, quickly!”
“One matter is more urgent,” said Rulke. “I would have speech with Llian. Send him forth.”
Ignoring Shand’s warnings, Llian sprang right out of the gate. “Where’s Karan?” he shouted.
“You tell me, chronicler,” Rulke replied.
“She went with Maigraith,” said Shand.
“Where is she, Maigraith?”
“I put her to sleep and locked her in the way station at the eastern pass,” Maigraith said tonelessly. She looked quite drawn. “But she would be free long ago.”
“Find her!” Rulke roared at the Ghâshâd.
“Help!” Karan screamed, over and over again. The lorrsk’s head appeared above the top of the stairs. Step by step it lurched into view: chest, belly, thighs, blood-wet flapping feet. It stood on the top step, its mouth opened in a horrible rictus, then staggered toward her.
The hairy arms reached out. The claws extended. One mutilated hand was drenched with blood. Forcing herself back against the door, Karan hurled her rock. It bounced uselessly off one mighty shoulder. She frantically tried to think of some way to attack it, but there was no way.
One way! Snatching up another rock, she crashed it against the conical witch’s hat of the Sentinel. Light burst out of it and it boomed, a hollow echo that made the door vibrate. Then it began to sound the alarm, an awful clanging that set her teeth on edge. It had not recognized her as an enemy, else it would have given her a disabling shock. She ducked in behind it. The lorrsk slapped up to the Sentinel, reached over and was given a blast that raised every hair on its body and sent it reeling
off the edge of the landing. Karan prayed that it would fall all the way to the bottom, but it reappeared. This time it advanced slowly, deliberately. Karan knew it was over.
Springing, the lorrsk kicked the Sentinel with both feet, so hard that it was ripped off its mountings. Her leg was crunched against the wall. The device toppled, clanging more loudly than ever. The lorrsk took another discharge but had achieved its goal. Karan’s cover was gone. She limped to the door and pounded on it with her rock.
Back it crept, flap-slap! flap-slap! Karan could smell the sweat, the gangrene, the blood. “Open up!” she screamed. The door opened and the curious face of a Ghâshâd guard was framed in the gap. She darted through, evaded the grasp of the first guard and the second behind him, and careered across the room into the uncertain safety of Shazmak.
The first guard cursed and slammed the door. It was smashed open so hard that one of the hinges tore off. The guard went flying across the room. The second, back-pedalling furiously, reached for a rack of spears.
Karan fled. Let them fight it out! Ahead, another corridor crossed hers. Not knowing this part of Shazmak, one way seemed as good as another. She hobbled along the corridor, turned down another and up a third, one that was dimly lighted—probably not much used. A good distance along she flopped onto the floor and lay there until the hammering in her chest had died down.
That was a mistake, for when she tried to get up her leg muscles had seized. She tried to massage them back to usefulness. Against all odds she had survived. She was inside Shazmak. She did not know where yet, but soon she must come into familiar ways. All she had to do was hide from the Ghâshâd, evade the lorrsk if it had survived and find Maigraith without getting caught by Rulke, or her enemy Faelamor.
Child’s play, Karan thought, after what I’ve just been through. At that moment there came a hollow Boom! followed by a clang, clang, clang!. All the Sentinels in Shazmak were sounding at once.
40
The Nanollet
Karan played hide and seek with the Ghâshâd, and for all she knew with the lorrsk too, for what must have been a full day. She lost track of time after a while. Once she had been completely at home in Shazmak, and, inquisitive and mischievous child that she had been, had explored practically every part of that vast city. She knew the secret tunnels, the service corridors and ducts, the stairways that were practically never used. And she knew how to evade the Sentinels too, as long as they were not specifically set to recognize her. A few hundred, even a few thousand Ghâshâd, were nothing compared to the vast emptiness of Shazmak.
Once or twice she felt comfortable enough to hide in an empty chamber, lock the doors (she always picked one with two doors) and sleep for a while, though her restless sleep was filled with nightmares of running, hiding and always being discovered. Endless, cycling dreams, like this pursuit—like her life! Every time, after a few hours, the night-mares forced her on. The fear of being caught by the lorrsk overcame every other emotion.
And Karan grew increasingly afraid for Maigraith; that she had helped her into a situation which was beyond Maigraith’s ability to manage. So Karan had to keep on, trekking her circuitous way across Shazmak, following her senses to Maigraith, and to Rulke!
After some time Idlis came running back. “The Sentinels don’t show her,” he said. “But I have a report on that incident yesterday, when they sounded in the abandoned part of Shazmak, where the door goes into the old mines.”
“Go on,” said Rulke ominously. “Where the guards failed in their duty and ran away!”
“No, something broke in from the mines. We found the leg of one guard halfway down the stairs, still with its boot on, and the brass buckle of the second. That’s all that was left of them…”
“What else? Come on!”
“Bloody prints,” said Idlis. “It was one of the beasts that came out of the void in Carcharon. A lorrsk, and it’s somewhere in Shazmak.”
“A tougher opponent than I thought,” said Rulke. “Turn up the Sentinels so that not even a rat can get past them. Go after it, in pairs.”
“Karan!” croaked Tensor from Shand’s gate chamber, now swollen to cover half the room.
“What is it?” cried Rulke.
“I taught her the secret way into Shazmak, through the mines.”
Rulke cursed. “Then no doubt it’s had her as well.”
Llian reeled drunkenly. Rulke held him up with one hand.
“She must have disarmed all the traps along the way,” said Tensor, “else the creature would never have found the entrance.”
“There were one or two prints in the dust,” said Idlis, “but we can’t tell if she came through.”
“She’s here!” Rulke roared his delight. “What a woman. Find her!”
Faelamor stood up on tiptoes, looking haggard. The construct swung around to face her.
“Sweat!” he said. “I may not need you after all.”
The Wall boomed again. Tensor, tottering on his toes, waved a fist from which a feeble radiance spluttered. “You’ll not have Karan,” he shouted.
For an instant Rulke looked rattled. “Get out of my hair!” he roared, “or I’ll finish the lot of you.” He moved his levers, spun his wheels and a barrier slammed down between the cocoon and the construct, dividing the room from floor to ceiling like a seamless sheet of glass.
Llian hammered on it. It was immoveable. “Do something,” he shouted, kicking the glass, but it proved impervious to everything, even Shand’s gate.
Rulke had buffeted Mendark away to somewhere between—a place not unlike the Nightland. Mendark was not sure how to get out of it. He tumbled through space lit with fireworks, then put the flute to his lips again.
For all his study of the instrument—and he had spent half a lifetime learning about it, secretly hoping that he could make it again some day—he was not ready. The flute did not answer his playing as it should have. Mendark began to fear that he had lost the ability.
Hundreds of years ago he had gone to Saludith and stolen the one paper Nassi had written, that told how Shuthdar had used the flute. He’d had a dozen instruments made since then, as perfect replicas of the original as could be made, the only difference being that they were ordinary flutes from ordinary gold.
He had spent lifetimes playing them, mastering the intricacies of the instrument, until he was, in truth, one of the greatest flute players on Santhenar. But eventually, despairing that the golden flute would ever be remade, he had laid the instrument aside. Only after Katazza had he taken it up again, but his fingers had forgotten the paths of the notes. He was still very good, but he was no longer master of his instrument or of himself.
Well, in the next few hours he would either be victorious or dead. Probably dead, he told himself. He was not Rulke’s match; nowhere near. But at least he would have tried.
Mendark put the flute to his lips and blew. A single pure low tone came forth—soft and gentle. It meshed with a curious weft of unreality, some constantly changing point beyond all known dimensions. A green and golden luminance grew around him. Even the air began to glow, so that the tendrils of mist undulating before him gleamed darker than the enveloping sky, and his breath hung like liquid gold in the brittle air. Mendark maintained the tone, the color, while he sought for the perfect contact. He screwed his courage tighter and blew the note up a fraction.
But in the middle of his playing he felt a terrible pang, a feeling that his world was in awful danger. The path that he had been seeking coiled away like a swimming snake. With an audible snap everything faded to rainbow shadows, though still his breath hung golden there. Then all became as insubstantial as the mist.
What had gone wrong? He blew another note and it was as if the flute had exploded in his face. He tumbled in the air. His teeth felt to be rattling around his mouth, though when he felt with his tongue they were all still in place.
Maybe the Mirror had lied. He had always been aware of that risk. The flute would kill him. Maybe he would
starve in this dismal place. He strained to the utmost, to recover the genius his fingers had once had. Putting the flute to his bruised lips again, he recalled to mind a high balcony in the Great Hall of Shazmak, a place where he could wait unobserved, and blew the gentlest note he was capable of. The scene shifted but it still showed only fog.
Mendark clenched his eyes into focus, whispered another note and became aware of a dark clot of power somewhere in front of him. It was the construct. He had opened a gate back into Shazmak, and before him was the enemy. It was going to be all right after all.
The scene resolved. Rulke was arrayed in black with a scarlet cape. He was standing astride his construct, the device potent beyond all potency, a coruscation of ebony and adamant, exuding power, terrible in its strength. Fear almost overwhelmed Mendark, but this time he would not give way to it. He settled like thistledown on his balcony, made himself as comfortable as his throbbing mouth would allow, and prepared to wait it out.
Karan had taken refuge in a larder in a part of the city abandoned since Shazmak had fallen a year ago. She found edible food there: the pickled and highly spiced meats that the Aachim so loved, as well as dried fruits and vegetables, and cheeses protected in wax. After eating until she could cram nothing more in, she tapped water from a glass tank, curled up on the floor and slept for a few hours more.
This time she was woken not by nightmares but by surreal sensations, as if something had shivered Shazmak to its foundations. It had to be the construct. Rulke must be attacking the Forbidding again.
Karan gulped another drink, ducked her head out the door to check that the way was clear and set off like a limping, hobbled wraith on the last leg of a marathon. Her shredded trousers hung from her waist like a grass skirt. Her senses had gone into overload, and occasionally she caught a glimpse, just fleetingly out of the corner of her eye, though it was never there when she looked directly at it, of the shimmering Wall of the Forbidding made visible.