The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  He banged the porthole open and a woman appeared in the chamber. She was naked, as was everyone who passed between the worlds, limp and defenseless. The chamber clouded over as something tried to force the door closed again. Rulke worked feverishly at his controls. “Run, get them out while I hold it!” he said to Maigraith and Karan. “Ah, this is hard.”

  Maigraith and Karan dragged the woman out, and seven more Charon after her. It was a struggle to haul them over the lip through the small porthole, for they were big people. Maigraith’s shoulder was bloody before they had finished. The arrow wound had broken open again.

  Each Charon was as bewildered and helpless as a baby. The passage had shaken them. But Rulke was exultant, as were the faces of the other Charon in the reflecting sphere.

  “It’s getting harder to hold!” Rulke shouted to Yalkara. “Better come quickly, if you’re coming. Maigraith, hold this.” She climbed back up while he sprang down from the construct and lifted the last two out, both men, as gently as if they were his own children.

  The Charon lay scattered over the floor, stunned from the brutal journey. “We’ve got to get them into the protection of the construct. Come through!” he shouted to Yalkara, whose face had just reappeared on the reflecting sphere.

  We’re almost ready, she sighed. Oh, this is the greatest day of our lives!

  “And mine,” said Rulke. His smile stretched from one side of his face to the other. His eyes shone like indigo suns. “We’ve waited four thousand years for this,” he said to Maigraith.

  Rulke picked up the first of the Charon under his arms, a woman as tall as he was, big in the breast and the hips. She groaned and tossed her long black hair. Her bare feet slithered across the tiles.

  At that moment Faelamor stood up high on the central stair. Supporting herself on the glass rail like a crazed witch she played a veritable symphony of sounds on the nanollet—an achingly haunting tune that brought tears to Karan’s eyes, a lamentation for the death of a world.

  What? screamed Yalkara. What’s that? No, Rulke, quickly—

  Rulke spun around. High in the air another lens was forming in the Forbidding, all by itself.

  The lens solidified into an oval gate that shone like metal. “No!” Rulke moaned, dropping the woman. “Maigraith, get them into the construct. I’ve got to stop her.”

  He ran in leaping bounds toward the construct but Faelamor brought down her final deception, the greatest of her long life. Suddenly the floor moved under Rulke as if he was running on a treadmill. He ran harder but still made no progress.

  “The construct may be proof against my enchantments,” sneered Faelamor, “but you are not!”

  Rulke pounded away, running faster than any human had ever run. For a few seconds he seemed to be gaining, then the floor swept him backward again.

  The oval gate opened and a creature sprang through. It was almost as tall as the construct, with huge intelligent eyes and clawed wingtips. The wings soared over it, casting it into an impenetrable shadow.

  “What is that?” cried Maigraith.

  “It looks like a thranx,” Karan muttered.

  Rulke abandoned the fruitless chase. “It’s a kind of a thranx,” he said, his chest heaving. “The worst kind!” His clothes dripped sweat which puddled on the floor. “One of the most fearsome creatures in the void. It is violent, but clever too. And I don’t even have a weapon.”

  The thranx, a female, braked its fall with a snap of leathery wings and landed skidding on the floor.

  “Kill them,” screamed Faelamor, now on a balcony high above. “Kill them all and you can have your own world.”

  The thranx cracked its wings again and headed with soaring bounds toward the ten helpless Charon. The head of another thranx emerged through the gate. It flapped down in the same direction.

  Karan disappeared out a side door. “I can’t blame you,” Rulke sighed, but a moment later she came racing back with a horde of Ghâshâd behind her. One of them, the squat one called Jark-un, cried, “Master!” and flung a long sword to him.

  Plucking it out of the air, Rulke leapt at the first thranx. It towered over him. The thranx was blindingly fast. It flicked a wing at him and the spiked leading edge tore open his shoulder.

  Rulke sprang back and to one side, stabbing at the thranx’s plated knee, aiming for the joins. His sword tip skated across armor as hard as metal. The thranx kicked him in the hip, knocking him off his feet. Rulke skidded across the floor, desperately trying to hold on to his sword.

  Over near the door a band of Ghâshâd had begun to attack the second thranx but they were hopelessly outmatched. One lay dead already. A dozen others pressed the attack, then the thranx spun around, ripped a length of rail off a side stair and swung it like a scythe. Half a dozen Ghâshâd were bowled over, and not one of them got up again. The thranx sent the twisted rail flying across the room at Rulke’s back, then leapt among the helpless Charon.

  Karan caught sight of Faelamor’s impassive face. It showed nothing—neither joy nor triumph, just a deadly implacability.

  She doesn’t care about any of us, Karan thought. Another band of Ghâshâd surrounded the second thranx. They fought with more cunning than the first group, for they managed to put a spear in the back of the creature. The injury did not hinder it noticeably.

  Maigraith and Rulke fought side-by-side but were surely being defeated. Rulke bore half a dozen gashes and was tiring rapidly. Maigraith’s thigh was torn open to the knee, her injured shoulder useless. The thranx seemed to be unharmed. High up Karan saw a third thranx at Faelamor’s gate, but it was having trouble getting through.

  Karan knew it was futile for her to attack such a creature, but by circling round she had come right up to the construct. Suddenly inspired, she scrambled up its curving flank and flopped into the seat. In front of her was a bank of six levers, a console with glowing yellow plates, several small wheels and a shrubbery of colored knobs. On the floor five crescent-shaped pedals protruded in a row. She remembered which levers Rulke had used to control it. What she did not know was how he used his mind to direct it.

  Here goes! Stretching her left foot forward, she stamped on the left-hand pedal, having to come right out of the seat to do so. The machine was not designed for someone as small as she. The construct shuddered. She eased back the central pair of levers. It bucked, whined but did not move. Forward! she sent frantically. Colored lines appeared on the glowing plates. Lights flashed from one end of the spectrum to the other. Why won’t you go, stupid machine?

  The construct tilted back and took off at a steep angle. Karan hung on desperately, in danger of being flung over the rear. Now it began to climb vertically, rocketing toward the distant ceiling. A siren went off in her ear. Use the levers! She pushed one forward.

  The construct turned on its side, veered crabwise across the room and caromed off the glassy barrier behind which the company watched helplessly. Karan hung on by a finger. Her knee hit a blue knob, evidently a kind of throttle, for the machine slowed down, giving her a chance to experiment with the second lever. The construct resumed an even keel, drifting slowly in the air. High above, the third thranx was coming through the gate.

  Her airborne chariot curved around the room, heading up toward the balcony from which Faelamor had wrought so much damage. Faelamor’s hands were moving frantically, casting a deception that Karan knew would render her helpless. From this high, the fall would kill her.

  She wrenched the blue knob right out. The construct took off as if inertia had never been discovered and shot toward the pair of helically coiled staircases. The siren blasted again. Karan was paralyzed, afraid to touch the levers. At the last moment her hand moved by instinct, nudged one lever sideways, the construct altered course fractionally and shot between the twin spirals, almost taking her head off. Out the other side it roared up toward Faelamor’s balcony.

  Before either of them could react, it smashed into the balcony from underneath, knocking most of it away.
Karan’s head hit the flaring hood, she blanked out momentarily, but recovered to find the construct spinning crazily across the room. She lost sight of Faelamor. The battle down below came into view.

  Rulke was down. Maigraith stood over him, a frail forlorn figure overwhelmed by the might of the thranx. Karan tried to point the construct at them but the controls no longer seemed to work. Maybe the blow had robbed her of the capacity to control it. The siren emitted high-pitched screams, the lights were a firework display, the glowing plates went mad. The machine flopped across the room like a beached fish. She approached the melee, watching with horrified eyes as the thranx drew itself up for the death blow. Karan pushed her levers back and forth uselessly, feeling her own despair and fury building, then the construct gave a lurch, crossed overhead and all the lights went out.

  It dropped out of the air, crushing the thranx down flat. Karan fell off, landed like a cat and scrabbled across on hands and knees, terrified that she had killed Maigraith and Rulke.

  “Are you all right?” she choked, dragging her friend out from underneath.

  Maigraith helped Rulke up. “Just!” She was staring at the upcurving base of the construct above her. “You missed us by a finger,” she said in an awed voice. “How did you manage it?”

  Karan did not answer. She watched the death throes of the thranx, its wing spikes rattling across the corrugated underside of the construct. The ruined wing flexed and retracted, over and again.

  Rulke could hardly stand. He gripped Karan’s shoulder like a vice, wordless thanks, then staggered off to find the other Charon.

  The second thranx lay still with a dozen spears in it, front and back. Many of the Ghâshâd were dead. “Another few seconds and it would have been too late,” said Rulke. “Thank—”

  They turned around the body of the thranx, its bulk and upturned wings shielding them from what was beyond. The Charon were tattered and torn like a tiger’s playthings. All ten were dead.

  Rulke crushed his fists together, the Charon way of grief. For a full minute he did not move. Then his face grew as cold as the continent of ice at the uttermost pole. “I will avenge you,” he ground out, “no matter what it takes! Even if I have to come back from the dead to do so. You will rue this deed for a hundred centuries, Faelamor! I curse you and your descendants until the end of time itself!”

  Reaching into Maigraith’s coat, he plucked out the Mirror and wrested it to his will. “Let her try to use that ever again.”

  They looked up. Faelamor had disappeared from the smashed balcony. Her gate was gone too, but on the floor directly beneath lay the body of the third thranx, still twitching among the shreds of its vast wings. At least, all of it from the hips up.

  “The gate must have closed when it was halfway through,” said Karan, shuddering.

  The thranx writhed, one wing flapped like a banner in the wind, and died.

  With a flick of his wrist Rulke woke the globe once more. “You saw?” he whispered to Yalkara. She did not need to answer—it was written in the ravines of her face.

  “One last try,” he said. “Come all of you, at once.”

  It is over, Rulke, Yalkara sent.

  “No, I have control back now.”

  You’re too late. They were the last! The rest of us are as barren as the tombs that you will lay them in.

  Rulke was trembling. “What about you, Yalkara? You’re the youngest. You’ve proven your fertility.”

  Look at me, Rulke! I gave away half my life, and alas my fertility went with it. I am an old woman now. Our extinction is inevitable.

  “No!” Rulke screamed. “No! It cannot be. I will not allow it. Come to Santhenar. There are ways. We can harvest their eggs and seed, and plant them—”

  A host of Charon appeared, reflected in the brilliant curve behind her. They were called the Hundred, though barely seventy remained. They were all old now. No! they said as one. Some things are not meant to be. Let us at least face extinction with dignity.

  “I will do it anyway,” he said in an aside to Maigraith, “if I can just get them here.” He looked into Yalkara’s eyes. “Please come.”

  No, Rulke, said Yalkara. What time we have left will be bitter enough without spending it on a foreign world. Come back to Aachan. We will go to our extinction together.

  42

  The Thrice Betrayed

  Faelamor crouched high on the other side of the hall, out of sight. Karan’s onslaught on the balcony had almost sent her to her death, but her will kept her hanging on. At least the Charon were dead, one threat eliminated. I am almost there, she told herself, and began her own working.

  The mist that enveloped her extruded another lobe, which extended outward. At the other end it stopped before a crowd of Faellem, gathered together in Elludore, forty leagues and more away. They could have been a colony of minds, so regular was the linking. They made a perfect, translucent sphere, flecked regularly on the outside with each will, slowly revolving one way and then another, and in the center a greater spot, a darker will than any, directing the whole. Faelamor had gone on to the next stage of her plan, the linking of all the wills of the Faellem.

  “Not even Rulke can stand against this force,” she said to her people.

  The Faellem stepped between the trees and into the pale green light, that misty gate-lobe, and out of that into Shazmak. They gathered on the platform, waiting for Faelamor.

  “We should never have doubted you!” they cried. “Show us the Way, Faelamor. Lead us home to Tallallame!” There was not a dry eye among them.

  “And Maigraith lives. She did not harm us after all,” said Faelamor. “I am glad about that.”

  “She could have, but she has not,” Gethren agreed.

  “Two things remain to be done,” Faelamor caressed the golden strings of her nanollet. The music raised tiny ripples up Gethren’s bare arms. “First we must rid ourselves of Rulke and his construct,” she said, “else he will go back to Aachan and do it all again, and we will forever be looking over our shoulders. When the deed is done we will force Maigraith to burst apart the Forbidding. Then we can return to Tallallame with honor.”

  “Faelamor,” cried Hallal. “Put down your instrument. It is no longer needed. We have committed crimes enough.”

  “I cannot,” cried Faelamor. “If I let Rulke live, sooner or later he will come for us. While I distract him, fetch Maigraith back.” She began to play her nanollet again, more wildly than before.

  Llian, watching the struggle between Rulke and Faelamor, was in an agony of frustration. Tallia had been working with Shand and Malien for what seemed hours, but nothing had made any impression on the barrier.

  Yggur had given up. He just stood with his great hands pressed against the glass. “Maigraith!” he wailed. “How could you do this to me?”

  Shand took him by the arm. “It’s over, Yggur. What was between you and Maigraith ended long ago.”

  Yggur turned a blotched face to him. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. He’s bewitched her.”

  “Look how they work together, Yggur!” Shand shook him hard. “They were born for each other.”

  “She’s mine. I’ve got to have her!”

  “You must accept it, Yggur.”

  “I can’t!” he screamed. “I just can’t!”

  Malien drew Shand away. “I need to talk to you,” she whispered. “Seeing Rulke here, and Faelamor, and thinking about all that’s happened, I wonder if he’s the real enemy now. And there’s Mendark…”

  “I wonder too—” said Shand. He broke off as Yalkara’s face appeared on the reflecting sphere. “Yalkara!” he roared, but reflections on the barrier concealed him from her. Shand just stood there, staring at her, and no one could rouse him.

  The drum-tight Wall of the Forbidding began to lash back and forth. Smoke gushed from underneath the construct. The stairs and balconies shook; the whole of Shazmak felt ready to implode. While Rulke struggled to hold it all together, a squad of Faellem crept
out of a doorway, pelted across the room and seized Maigraith. Faelamor was among them, sheltering them with her illusions.

  The webs protecting the Faellem were like sticky threads that caught Maigraith’s arms and legs. She cried out for help but Faelamor hit her with a confusion at point-blank range. Maigraith could not move. Faelamor rifled through her pouch and plucked out the Mirror.

  “This is the last step,” she said to her people. “Time to find the hidden Way to Aachan. Bring her!”

  They formed a circle around Faelamor, shielding her with their bodies and their minds while she sought within the Mirror. “I have it!” she exulted. They marched off, still surrounding her.

  At Karan’s cry, Rulke sent the construct after the little band of Faellem. He came up as close as he could, nudging it forward in little jerks, but dared not use power while Maigraith was in the middle.

  “Keep back!” said Faelamor, making sure that Maigraith was between her and him. “She is my hostage.”

  Rulke’s eyes could have burned right through her.

  “Take us home,” the Faellem begged. “Leave her.”

  “Not while Rulke lives,” said Faelamor. Flickering images from the Mirror still reflected on her cheeks.

  “What are you doing?” asked Hallal.

  “I’m following Yalkara’s trace back to Aachan,” she said, taunting Rulke. “She will relish this irony, her own device used to unmake her kind.” Faelamor stood up, looked deep into the Mirror and, one-handed, played three chords.

  The Forbidding rumbled and the assemblage of creatures clustered outside disappeared as if they had been sucked down a plughole.

  “What have you done?” the Faellem cried.

  “I’ve opened the void into Aachan. Soon the Charon will be no more.” As she spoke, the reflecting metallic sphere that showed the mourning Charon vanished.

  Faelamor turned to Rulke. “Our enemies are finished now, all save one. Now to end the last.”