The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  “Go!” Maigraith shrieked. “It’s too late to atone now, and too little. If you spent a thousand years on your knees you could not make up for what you have done.”

  “You’re right,” Faelamor said. Her face was frozen solid. “To think that I so abused my own child. I can’t imagine why, anymore. I was obsessed.”

  Maigraith’s legs collapsed beneath her. “No, No!” she screamed. “You are not my mother. Aeolior was my mother.”

  Squatting down, Faelamor took Maigraith by the shoulders, desperate to embrace her but unable to. “Maigraith, here is the truth you have been searching for all your life. I am your other grandmother. It was my own son Galgilliel, poor frail emotional boy, whom I forced to mate with Aeolior until the evil business was done. I destroyed him too.”

  Maigraith’s went hysterical, beating Faelamor about the face with her hands. “No! I refuse to believe your wicked lies! How could you do this to me? You are a monster!”

  Faelamor did not defend herself. “I am, but will you give me your hand anyway? Will you forgive me before I go, granddaughter?”

  Maigraith swung her fists like wheels. “Never! I spit in your face.”

  Faelamor made no attempt to defend herself. “I deserve no better. I acted that my own species may survive, ignoring all other considerations. Move clear, granddaughter. I will go through the Way by myself. My people have gone home. My duty is done. My fate doesn’t matter.

  “I am the Faellem,” she whispered, saluting Karan, saluting Maigraith, saluting them all. “I am Tallallame!” That cry echoed in the room.

  The Way narrowed again. “Fare well, my granddaughter. Forgive me.”

  Faelamor leapt through the gate. It held for a moment then snapped tight like a steel stocking. They saw her face wracked by an excruciation. An explosive flare of blue and white light obliterated the gate, the funnel of the Way and all the creatures lurking nearby. The hole in the Wall fused over. The Faellem had gone home.

  Maigraith looked in the Mirror, watching them all the way to Tallallame. They emerged triumphant on their own world, even Faelamor. Maigraith flung down the Mirror and the image froze in place.

  “There is no justice anywhere in the Three Worlds!” she said to Karan.

  Karan coughed and groaned. The pain had come back. “What did you expect from the Twisted Mirror?”

  The great oval chamber of Shand’s gate stretched out into two teardrops separated by a thread, one in Carcharon, the other in Shazmak. The thread snapped the two back together. Shazmak vanished, and the gate with it. The company were left alone to stare at the ice-covered walls of Carcharon. The gate had failed and Karan lay dreadfully injured in Shazmak, at least four days march away.

  Shand turned to Llian. “She was Tallallame, and Tallallame was her. I wonder what they will find there. Santhenar was not the only world affected by the Forbidding.”

  “Make the gate again,” Llian wept. “Karan is dying!”

  “I don’t think I can,” said Shand. “Everything is changed now.”

  If Carcharon had been strange before, now it was positively bizarre. The walls were sometimes as soft as cheese, sometimes hard as metal, and they were never in the same place twice. There were wormholes through them too, like tunnels connecting different places in the void. The broken stone staircase appeared to spiral in a dozen directions at once, and ghastly, terrifying specters trudged up and down it, working devices that sprayed doughnuts of unreality in all directions. The air changed color constantly. Shards of every noise in the sound spectrum stabbed through their eardrums.

  Shand, Tallia and Malien went into a huddle, trying to block out Carcharon and recover the gate. Yggur joined them, desperate to get back to Maigraith.

  “This is going to take a while,” Shand grunted as they strained against the warped fabric of space and time.

  “I don’t understand what happened between Faelamor and Rulke,” said Malien. “For a moment he was helpless.”

  “Llian can tell you,” grunted Shand.

  Llian, rubbing red-raw eyes, shook his head. He was quite as tormented as Faelamor had been.

  “We need to know!” snapped Yggur as he worked at some obscure process with Tallia.

  Llian made a visible effort. “Part of the tale comes from Yalkara’s book. That’s where I found out the very beginning of the business.”

  “I thought the book was destroyed unread,” said Yggur suspiciously.

  “Another tale, for another time.” Llian managed a weak smile. “This is what it said—a summary of it, anyway.

  “Long ago in Tallallame there were two human races—Mariem and Faellem. The Faellem’s talents were of the mind, and they were numerous. The Mariem were clever with devices and machines, but not fecund. Over time the two races grew apart as they each developed their particular talents and cultures. They did not interbreed, and became quite distinct peoples.

  “The Mariem accumulated wealth and power, for they had built a civilization with machines that did their work for them. Feeling no kinship with nature, they set out to tame it. They cleared the beautiful forests that had once covered whole continents. They moved rivers, carved roads through the wilderness and built vast cities. The Faellem were forced back into the most rugged lands and the poorest, as the Mariem used more and more of the world’s wealth for their civilization.

  “The Faellem had a totally different outlook. Their kinship with the land was total, for they knew themselves to be just one species in a vast web of life. They felt no need for the trappings of civilization, save the arts. Their life was of the mind. They never cut down a tree, or slew an animal, without a prayer of thanks for the gift. They built no cities, used no machines. Their arts and their culture were simple, but very beautiful.”

  Yggur cursed and sprang out of the way as the process he had been working on failed in an explosion of purple cinders. The broken walls curved over them, oscillating like rubber. “I can’t do it!” he said hoarsely. “Carcharon is too strange.”

  “I’ve an idea,” Malien suggested. She spoke in his ear.

  Yggur nodded. “It’s worth a try.”

  Malien conjured up one of her bubbles and grew it around them all. Inside, the weirdness of Carcharon was blocked out, though it could still be heard and felt. It was completely dark, so Shand created light with his knobbly staff and they went back to their work on the gate.

  “Continue, Llian,” said Malien.

  “The Faellem realized that the Mariem were going to wipe them out. Once the forests were gone they would have no place to live, nor any reason to. The Mariem would destroy them, not from malice but from simple greedy indifference, and the beautiful world they were the custodians of would be no more.

  “The Faellem had to find a way to curb the Mariem and reclaim Tallallame. In their desperation they bred their most talented and sensitive people together like farmyard animals, to develop their powers of mind and illusion so highly that the Mariem would not be able to resist them.

  “The Mariem had been experimenting with gates, so they could travel instantly from one part of Tallallame to another. Their first were crude, clumsy devices that seldom worked properly, but the Faellem knew their enemies would soon perfect them, and when they did, no place on Tallallame would be safe. The Faellem learned how these gates worked, and how the Mariem used their minds to direct them from one place to another. Experimenting with their own vastly superior mind-powers, they forced a gate to go wrong. They directed it to the worst nightmare of beasts and barrenness they could imagine. To their astonishment the gate opened a way off Tallallame into an unknown place teeming with desperate life—the void!”

  Llian slumped down on the low wall. His voice had gone hoarse. He looked ghastly. “Has anyone got a drink?” he croaked.

  Shand tossed a flask to him. Llian took a huge swig, thinking that it was water. The liquor roared down his throat and lit a fire in his belly. “Thank you,” he choked.

  “So the Faellem began it al
l!” said Malien.

  “Yes!” He went on with the tale. “Here was an opportunity to save Tallallame. The collective wills of the most sensitive Faellem made a mass illusion, a pied piper for adults, and one by one the whole population of the Mariem were led through the gate, thinking that they went to their own wonderful world. As soon as they ended up in the void they knew differently, but it was too late. The Faellem had sealed the gate and it could not be reopened.

  “The Faellem busied themselves with regenerating beautiful Tallallame. They broke the dams, tore down the cities and planted the forests anew. That other race was eliminated from the Histories of Tallallame, and all use of the machines and magical devices that had almost ruined their world was forbidden. Eventually the genocide was reduced to just a rumor, a frightening myth. Within a millennium, nature had covered all trace of the Mariem.

  “And in the void, that desperate place where nothing matters but survival, most were dead within days. In a month the millions were reduced to a few thousand. Of those, over thousands of years a small number adapted. Things evolve rapidly in the void if they do survive, so that those who came out and took Aachan, not many more than a hundred, were quite different from those that went in. They were a new human species and they took a new name, Charon, after a frigid moonlet at the furthest extremity of the void. All they could remember of their former life was their name, and their betrayal.

  “The survival of the species now meant everything to the Charon. To Rulke that purpose was unquenchable. But they did not thrive on Aachan. For some reason the Charon were infertile there. So Rulke commissioned the golden flute, to open the way to Santhenar and offer them another chance. But Shuthdar stole the flute, and that crime led to war after war, misery after misery, calamity after calamity, all the way down the ages to today.”

  “How is it going?” Osseion asked while Llian slaked his thirst, with icy water this time.

  “A little progress,” Shand replied. “It’s tiring work though.”

  “I feel quite sleepy,” said Malien.

  “Open the sphere for a minute,” said Shand. “Let some fresh air in. And Mendark, Llian? I suppose you’ve worked that out too?”

  “Yes,” said Yggur. “I very much want to hear that.”

  Llian wiped his mouth and continued. “The Aachim and the Charon fought many battles on Santh, though at first neither was numerous and the world scarcely noticed them. That changed in the Clysm, when Mendark convinced the Council to side with the Aachim. His propaganda gave the Charon an evil reputation. Mendark’s strength was dependent on having a common enemy, and this was a lie that was in the interests of most. So much of the past had been lost in the Clysm that it was difficult to check afterwards. As Rulke said History is as it is written. Terrible deeds were done against the Charon and they retaliated in kind.

  “Had Mendark not been so concerned about his reputation I might never have discovered the truth. He had only been able to capture Rulke by betraying you, Yggur.”

  “How?” cried Yggur. “How did he do it?”

  “In the last battle he knew that the Council would be defeated. There was only one chance to save the world and Mendark seized it. He forced the Proscribed Experiments to fail and when Rulke attacked your mind, Yggur, Mendark forced Rulke’s consciousness inside it. You went mad and Rulke could not find his way out. Tensor captured his now helpless body and they expelled him into the Nightland. Mendark had saved the world, but only by betraying you, his closest friend. You were supposed to die, but instead you escaped and no one could find you. Little wonder Mendark was terrified when you reappeared.”

  Yggur clenched his fists in fury. The memories were too awful. “Air!” he gasped.

  Malien let the frigid, hallucinatory air into the sphere again. Llian went on with his story.

  “Within a year of Rulke being put away, most of the Council were dead. Mendark slew them one by one, in case they realized what he had done. Had you not disappeared he would have finished you too. Tensor alone was spared.

  “But ever after, Mendark lived in fear that one of the Council had written down the truth that would destroy his reputation forever. So he amassed a vast store of ancient documents to disguise his true intent, which was to seek out and destroy every record that could possibly link his name to the crime. It was the greatest library from that time ever put together. But it’s all gone now, except what I have copies of, and what I remember.

  “Mendark could not bear to have once been great, and then to fail and lose his reputation. History treats its heroes randomly. He felt that he had never had his due and was desperate to renew his name with one last heroic deed. So when the opportunity of the flute came, he could not resist it.”

  “How did he know how to use it?” asked Malien. “No one else did.”

  “He had been looking for it, and preparing for it, all his life. He spent months at Saludith. Perhaps he found the answer there, and took it away so no one else ever could.”

  “But why did the flute go so wrong?”

  “The gold was corrupted by time, as all things carried between the worlds eventually are. He knew that risk but was convinced he could overcome it. He wasn’t strong enough.”

  “Why did the Faellem come to Santhenar in the first place?” asked Tallia.

  “They had thought that they were alone in the universe, after the Mariem were sent into the void. Then Shuthdar used the flute and they knew that they were far from alone. Theirs was just one of the Three Worlds, and the Way between the Worlds was open. It let things out of the void into Tallallame. The Faellem were not troubled by them, for they were used to dealing with wild creatures, but they knew that the most dangerous creatures of all dwelt on the other worlds—other human species!

  “The Faellem went the perilous way to Santhenar to find out what had happened, and to restore the Three Worlds to the closed-off places that they had always been. Once they arrived here they found three more human species, and all were makers and users of the forbidden machines that so terrified them. They were too numerous for the Faellem to do anything about, except for one species.

  “The Charon were so familiar and so threatening, for all that there were but three of them on Santhenar. The Faellem knew that they were vulnerable, but not how vulnerable. Because the other species were so powerful, they had to work from the shadows. Then the Forbidding trapped them—”

  “I think I have it,” cried Shand. “If only we’re not too late! Into the gate, quick as you can!”

  45

  The Fate of the Faellem

  One by one the Faellem emerged from the gate into Tallallame, as naked as was everyone who passed between the worlds. They came out at a sacred meeting place, a grassy hillside shaped like a curving pyramid, standing above tall forest. It was dark but dawn could not be far off, for there was a light in the east.

  Faelamor emerged last of all, so covered in welts and claw marks that she was barely recognizable. She lay on the grass and could not get up. The Faellem lifted her high to show her her world. She embraced them one by one, and everyone was weeping. Millennia had passed since they left for Santhenar.

  “We have done it,” Faelamor whispered. “Our world is safe; our enemy is no more. We are free at last.”

  “But look at the cost,” said Hallal. “Look what you did to Galgilliel and Aeolior, and Maigraith too. We are all culpable. We warped, we twisted and we extinguished the Charon, as we did our best to eliminate the Mariem before them.”

  “I did it for Tallallame,” said Faelamor.

  “You emptied the void into Aachan,” said Hallal. “That was not necessary. You changed Aachan forever.”

  “I had no choice,” said Faelamor. “We are the noblest of all the human kinds. Look how we cared for our world, as no other species ever has.”

  The wind shifted and they caught the smell of burning wood and leaves. A faint cry came on the breeze.

  “What’s that?” hissed Hallal, straining her eyes against
the gloom.

  The burning smell grew stronger until they knew that it could only be a forest fire, and a big one too. Overlaid with that they caught the reek of burning flesh.

  The sun wrenched itself over the horizon and through the thunderheads of brown smoke they saw glimpses of the horrible scene. Vast tracts of forest were burning, as far as could be seen, and even in the furthest distance smoke made columns in the air as big as mountains.

  “What’s happened?” Faelamor whispered. The sun shone on her face, and her golden skin had withered. Her eyes were dull raisins in two deep craters. “What’s gone wrong? I don’t understand.”

  The Faellem had gone down the hill, seeking news. Faelamor remained on the pyramidal hillside, staring into the drifting smoke. High above, winged creatures soared and wheeled on thermals created by the fires. They seemed at home in the chaos. Terrifyingly so.

  As she watched, one folded back its wings and went into a steep glide, right into the billowing smoke. A long while later it flapped out again, holding something vaguely human in its claws. It was closer now, and Faelamor saw clearly how the leathery wings clubbed the air out of the way. No such beast had inhabited Tallallame when she’d lived here. Now she could see dozens.

  Faelamor felt a terrific pain inside her, as if that creature was tearing at her vitals. Suddenly she did understand. Time passes differently in the Three Worlds, and Tallallame was only a pale shadow of the paradise she remembered. In the peaceful beauty of its forests, violent, desperate creatures now stalked.

  The vent she had directed with the Mirror had emptied the void not into Aachan, as she intended, but into Tallallame. The Twisted Mirror had betrayed her yet again.