by Ian Irvine
The pit of her stomach alternated with fire and nausea. Faelamor was here already, Karan was sure. She could sense an unpleasant shifting of reality that might have been Faelamor, using her own mad instrument. Maigraith was in terrible danger. They all were. She had to stop it before it was too late.
Running around a corner Karan saw a group of Ghâshâd deep in discussion, at the other end of a long hall.
“The master is a fool,” said one, “How dare he ally with Faelamor, his enemy for all time?”
“He is still our sworn master,” said another fiercely.
“Well, I—”
She turned to run back the other way.
“Halt, Karan of Bannador!” someone shouted.
She raced back through the doorway, turned left and ducked up a narrow stair onto a mezzanine level. Peering through the rail, she saw them flood after her. Go the other way, she prayed, but of course a pair turned up her stairs.
She ran silently back, but before reaching the other side they topped the stairs and spotted her.
“Stop!” came their harsh cries.
Karan flung the door open and slammed it behind her. It was only a matter of time. And yet the overheard debate had given her a glimmer of hope. The Ghâshâd were having second thoughts about their master. If it were to come to a critical pass, and he did not have their help, there might be a chance after all.
She continued up the stairs, quite mechanically now. The construct and the Forbidding had fogged her mind with multiple dimensions. How changed Shazmak is, she kept thinking. How familiar, for all the passages and stairs and towers remained. Yet inside, how different it felt. The uniquely Aachim feeling that had been here for a thousand years was quite gone.
She reached the top of the stairs, knowing that she was near her destination. As she brushed past a squat Sentinel, it sounded, jolting her with a shock that numbed her arm to the elbow. That had not happened before. She yelped and jumped halfway across the corridor. The next one she passed went off too, though she managed to avoid its charge. She began to despair of ever finding Maigraith. There was no way to hide from the Ghâshâd now.
The lens in the Wall pulsed like a beating heart, developing clear pinholes that slowly began to coalesce. Alarming bodyparts pressed against the transparencies—knowing eyes, serrated claws, leathery wings tipped with spines. Soon the whole center part of the lens was transparent, and a wild thing clawed at it, trying to get out of the void into Santhenar. Maigraith felt a black mist of foreboding settle over her. She glanced at Faelamor, who was resting on her haunches like a panther about to spring.
“Don’t do it, Rulke! Faelamor will betray you,” she said to herself. Maigraith realized that she was sweating all the terrors of the world for him. Her way became clear at last.
The construct drifted, passing between her and Faelamor, and Maigraith sprang up on the side.
“I will help you!” she shouted, holding up her hand.
Rulke reached down and heaved her up beside him. With a great roar of triumph he spun the machine around.
Faelamor attacked with a sickening hallucination that had Rulke clinging to the side of the construct. He did not lose control for an instant. “Do your worst,” he shouted at her. “I designed it to buffer your Art.”
He swung the lens of light directly at her. Faelamor screamed, the vision was cut off and she writhed as if pinned to the floor with a spike. She clutched her belly and groaned. She rolled from side to side and shrieked. She flung herself about in marvels of dexterity that would have astounded a gymnast. She did everything possible to get away, but could not.
Faelamor went absolutely still, then flung phantasms back at Rulke that had the company on their backs. The images hurt Rulke but she could not break him, nor escape the impaling light.
Finally she was spent. She stood still, her chest heaving, her clothes and hair plastered to her skin with sweat. She was just a small woman, showing her age in sunken eye and flabby skin, no match for the big man and the implacable device that he rode.
Her shoulders dropped. She was defeated. She looked terrified, but Maigraith felt no pity for her.
Then Faelamor looked up at Rulke, her face twisted and she screamed out a word, a screech of desperation. “Mariem!”
Maigraith felt a chill of horror, though she had no idea why. Rulke froze into a pillar of ice. The blood drained away, leaving his dark face a muddy color. He swayed on the construct, having to embrace his levers to stop himself from falling down. The construct lurched and its nose screeched across the floor.
“Where—did you get—that name?” he choked. His words came out in bubbles, as if he spoke through a mouthful of blood. “That is our secret name, the single memory of our life before the void. It is all we have left from our lost world.” His voice became a scream of rage and pain. “Where did you get that name?”
For a moment he was paralyzed, and a moment was all Faelamor needed. She had screamed the name in desperation. Nothing else could possibly have diverted him. From the satchel over her shoulder she whipped an object made of red gold and precious ebony wood. It was a Faellem nanollet, a small instrument with a complexity of sounding boards and resonating chambers, and strung with layers of golden strings. She tapped one of the chambers and a low drone came forth.
Rulke stared, unable to comprehend. Then suddenly he did. “Tallallame!” he cried. “Tallallame, Tal-lal-la-me. Faellem. Fay-el-lem. Mariem. Mari-em!” Tasting the words. The names. Feeling the pain. The loss. The crime. The greatest betrayal of all—genocide!
He struck a knob with one knee and before Faelamor could use her nanollet she was flung backward against the barrier that kept the company at bay. She lay limp as a rag, still clutching the instrument, spitting blood.
“It was you that cast us into the void to die! You!”
“Not I,” she said. Blood ran down her chin to soil her white gown. “That was generations before my birth.”
“The taint has passed down the generations. The stink of it is on all the Faellem. You reek of it—you taunt me with it! I will torment you until the end of time. I will never let you go.”
He spun a little wheel and the lens of light shrank to a pinpoint that drifted in an oval around her heart. Her gown began to smoke.
“Tallallame was your home too,” she said. “Now it cries out for aid. Would you ruin your world for something done so long ago?”
“We were remade in the void. We have no world save what we take for ourselves.”
“You are cruel,” she wept. An oval of cloth fell from the front of her gown, but the golden skin beneath was unmarked.
“Cruelty we learned at the hands of masters.” Rulke was quite implacable.
“Everything I did was for my people and my world.”
“And what I do, I do for my own species. Now you die, Faelamor. And then you die again, and again, and again!”
He drew back his levers. “Rulke,” Maigraith said urgently. “Remember that the nanollet was made from the gold of the golden flute.”
Again Rulke hesitated, but Faelamor’s helplessness was another trick and she was too quick for him. She struck a desperate chord, a mournful wail that ended in a whip-crack, the sound of the Forbidding trying to tear itself apart.
The transparency starred in the middle and, with a screech like air escaping from the stretched mouth of a balloon, a tear appeared in the middle of the lens.
“No!” he screamed. “That gold is corrupt; you must never—”
Faelamor struck another chord. “You give me no choice,” she whispered.
“It will destroy us all. It will be your nemesis,” said Rulke.
The world turned inside out. The internal spaces of the construct became its outside. A vent opened in the Forbidding: gaping, uncontrollable, madly swelling and contracting. A multitude of creatures clawed at the opening, then it snapped shut again. Rulke appeared, disappeared, reappeared, inside the construct and then out of it. He wheeled through the
air, crashed down on his back and did not move. Maigraith scrabbled across the floor, touching his brow with moist fingers.
The vent tore open again and the boldest of the creatures thrust its head into the gap. It was the size of a small barrel, with a red horny crest on top, tipped with spikes.
Rulke groaned a word. The construct radiated a soft light on the vent. The creature screeched, jerked its head back and the puncture sealed itself over. Something clattered on the floor: an amputated horn, a bloody claw. The Forbidding tried to shake itself to pieces. Rulke staggered toward the construct like a drunken man, and with Maigraith’s help gained it. Faelamor struck another chord on the nanollet. Another vent opened in the Forbidding, and another. Rulke swung his lens of light and Faelamor was hurled between the double staircases that spiraled around each other all the way up to the translucent ceiling of that vast hall. She crawled into shelter, her nose dribbling blood.
Llian, Shand and the rest of the company beat their fists on the glass barrier. All they could do was watch. A horde of creatures now scratched at the vents. If they broke through, everyone in Shazmak would die.
“Do something!” Llian screeched at Yggur.
“We’ve got to get in there,” said Tallia. “Lend me your strength again, Yggur.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” said Yggur. He had already fired one of his colored blasts at Faelamor, but it had refracted unpredictably through the barrier, destroying several treads of the glass staircase. Molten glass made a fringe of threads that hung down from one step. “If I try again I might kill Maigraith. Maybe I should, since she’s gone over to my enemy.”
Shand seized him by the collar and shook the big man.
“I’m sorry, Shand,” Yggur said meekly, his fury evaporating again. “Take no notice. My rage is all that’s left of me.”
“Look!” called Lilis. “It’s Karan.” She pointed to a doorway, where Karan was just staggering in. Karan looked over her shoulder then stumbled away as a dozen Ghâshâd came after her. Her hair was wild, her face scarlet.
The sight of Karan set Llian mad with longing. Swinging a heavy metal chair back over his head, he smashed it against the barrier with all his strength. It bounced back just as hard, nearly knocking his head off. He skidded across the floor on his knees while the chair went the other way. He looked up at Shand and Malien.
“You’ll not break it,” they said at the same time.
They tried everything they could think of, but the barrier was impervious. They could not get round it either, for all the exits on their side of the room were blocked by the same material. They were neatly trapped.
41
Extinction with Dignity
Karan lurched into the Great Hall and saw Rulke across the room. He looked nearly as bad as she felt. Maigraith was next to him. She was safe! But Karan’s relief was changed to incredulity when Maigraith gave Rulke her shoulder and they scrambled up onto the construct. What on earth had happened?
“What are we going to do?” she heard Maigraith shout.
Karan followed Maigraith’s pointing arm. The clawing and scratching at the Wall was deafening. She dashed around the side of the central stairs and was brought up short by the glassy barrier, and by the sight of Llian banging on it. He was in a frightful state. Practically all his hair was gone, what was left was frizzed up in a clot on one side of his head, and his beard was singed to stubble.
In her state it was all too difficult to take in. Llian was shouting at her and pointing over her shoulder, but she could not make out what she was saying. Going to the barrier, she pressed her hands against the outline of his. Malien came up beside him, screaming through the glass. Karan knew what she was saying. “Stop Rulke, whatever it takes!”
“I’ll try to hold it!” Rulke shouted to Maigraith.
“Maigraith,” Karan screamed. “What are you doing?”
“It’s Karan!” Maigraith cried.
Rulke sent the construct soaring her way. Karan watched the black object hurtle toward her. She couldn’t run any more.
“Karan,” Maigraith yelled. “You’ve got to help us!”
Karan backed away, thinking that Rulke had taken control of her. The company hammered frantically on the barrier. What were they trying to tell her?
“Karan!” Maigraith roared. “Faelamor will destroy the world.”
Karan looked from Llian to Malien, to Maigraith, to Rulke. How could she decide?
“She’s lying!” shrieked Faelamor from up the stairs. “She’s in league with Rulke.”
If there is one person I’ll never trust it’s her, Karan thought. Even Rulke is a better choice.
She held up her hands, and knew as she did that Malien could never forgive this betrayal. Maigraith hauled her up the side, sobbing and throwing her arms around her.
“No time for that!” cried Rulke. “Karan, show us the way to Aachan, before it’s too late.”
Faelamor began to crawl up the pearly stair like a decrepit old washerwoman. “What about her?” said Maigraith.
“I haven’t the strength.”
Karan was remembering the horrible finale to her previous attempt to find the Way. “I can’t do it!” she gasped.
“What will they do to Gothryme when they get in?” Rulke said, pointing to the Wall. “And never doubt that Faelamor will let them in. If you truly can’t do it, we are all finished. But if there is an ounce of hope in you, I beg you, try! I will support you.”
“You said that before,” Karan murmured. Her eyes slid past his gimlet eyes and fixed on Llian, who had his hands flat out on the glass barrier in an attitude of desperation. His eyes were as wide as soup bowls.
“I’ll try,” she said, “but I have had… something of a day already. I’m a little tired.”
Gripping her hands, Rulke gave her a fiery kiss on the mouth that set her lips ablaze. “And so am I,” he said with a fierce grin, “but we’ll do our damnedest. Are you ready?”
Her throat was dry. Karan reached for a flask sitting in an open compartment, gulping the sweet cordial down. “I’m ready!” she gasped, though she felt as wobbly as a custard. She linked to Maigraith and to Rulke, and the link with Maigraith was like being encased in diamond. Karan felt utterly protected, sheltered and cared for—nothing could harm her this time.
Rulke cried out through the punctured Forbidding for Aachan, for the Charon. His longing reverberated across the void, leaping from Way to Way with Karan, secure in the knowledge that Maigraith guarded them back in Santhenar. And bolstered by Maigraith’s unique triune talents, developed from the decades of training with Faelamor and her own urgent need to meet her Charon ancestors, they found it.
Who’s there? The voice spoke in their heads, so clearly that she might have been beside them on the construct. It was a deep woman’s voice with a rasp to it as if she had lived her life in smoky rooms. Rulke, can it be you?
“Yalkara!” Maigraith whispered across the link. She knew this voice.
“Yalkara!” Rulke cried harshly. “I can’t see you. Show yourself. I’m desperate!”
He conjured a bubble out of the wall of the Forbidding. It floated in the air before them like a shiny metal ball, and the whole universe seemed to be reflected in it, curving away in all directions to infinity. The reflections in front of them misted, cleared and a face appeared that Maigraith knew almost as well as her own. It was Yalkara, but she was much older than she had appeared on the Mirror. The long hair was completely silver now. Yalkara’s lips moved but her voice spoke in their heads.
“Yalkara!” Rulke screamed. “Call the Hundred together. Our time is now, but the precipice yawns.”
Who is this with you? Yalkara whispered. Can it be her?
“I am Maigraith,” she said. “Aeolior’s daughter. Faelamor mated her to a Faellem to make a triune—me! Aeolior is dead. Rulke and I have sworn to each other forever.”
Maigraith—Aeolior! said Yalkara. She looked stunned.
“And here is my f
riend Karan, triune too.” She pointed at Karan.
So like Elienor, said Yalkara.
“Quickly,” Rulke said. “The Forbidding is decaying and must fail. Faelamor has made a nanollet device, and Mendark a new flute from your gold.”
“But I warned—”
“The Twisted Mirror!” snapped Rulke. “It would take too long to explain. Besides, I have a device that surpasses them all—my construct!” His voice rang with pride. “I can bring you here at last, and ensure the survival of our species. But I don’t dare open the Way from here, not with Faelamor rampant. Can you open it from Aachan and bring yourselves to my gate?”
You have come at the last possible moment, she replied. We despaired and were near to finishing ourselves. It won’t be easy, but I think I can do it.
Together they made rudimentary gates at her end and his, but Rulke kept his gate firmly closed.
I will seek out the Way to Santhenar from this end. These are very unstable gates, Rulke. Can’t you hold the Forbidding any better than this?
“I’ll be lucky to hold it at all,” he said grimly. “Faelamor’s nanollet is made from the golden flute.”
She’s insane!
“Or desperate! Come quickly! It’s going to be a harsh passage. Send the most important first, because it’ll get worse.”
Only ten of us are still fertile. Four men and six women. Guard them well. Without them we are extinct.
Rulke changed his mind. “No! Send the strongest. Protect the fertile ones till the last.” As he spoke, a burst of static misted over the mirror globe and Yalkara faded.
Rulke used the construct to fashion a chamber in the Wall, as far away from the lens as possible. It had the form of a silver egg, with a round door at the front like a porthole.
I have traced back the Way to Santhenar, said Yalkara. Something rang against his chamber like a hammer on an anvil.
“I can barely hold it.” Sweat dripped off his chin. “I’ve lost them! No, it’s all right, it’s all right!”