The Way Between the Worlds

by Ian Irvine

  All morning she sat on the grass, alone, as she had been alone for so many years. What was to be done? This was a greater trial than any she’d faced on Santhenar. How could she save her world? She felt so old, so tired. I must rally the Faellem, she thought. We are millions, and no doubt there are gatherings nearby, directing the fighting of the fires and the defense against the void-creatures. She made a broadcast link, to find out where they were and what they were up to, but where once she would have picked up a whole world of minds, now she sensed nothing but mindless terror. What had gone wrong? That terror echoed in her own head.

  She limped down the hill to find the gathering. In the valley below was a Faellem town—a beautiful place they had inhabited for ten thousand years. That’s where they would be.

  But in the valley she found nothing but ruins, so old that the stone was overgrown and crumbling. It looked as if no one had dwelt here for ten centuries. She sat on a column, staring up into the trees. Hours she remained there, not knowing what to do. Finally, in her exhaustion, Faelamor leaned back against the stone wall and dozed.

  A banshee shriek woke her. Faelamor leapt up as a winged shape plummeted through the treetops, snapping and snarling. It was one of the winged creatures she’d seen earlier. It settled on a high limb, darting a beaked head forward on its long neck, trying to get at something hiding in the uppermost branches. Something that looked very human as it weaved and ducked among the foliage.

  Suddenly the creature’s head flashed forward, incredibly fast for such a large beast, and caught the human by the arm. It let out such a scream of terror that Faelamor wanted to run away. There was a melee in the treetops; then they fell together, bounced off the end of a branch and kept falling, wheeling in the air.

  The great wings flashed just above the ground. The creature landed awkwardly and its prey—a young Faellem woman—tore free. Scrabbling across the leaf litter, she came face to face with Faelamor.

  They stared at each other. The young woman could have been a daughter, for she had the same colorless hair, translucent skin and golden eyes. She was a beautiful creature. Or would have been, had she not been dressed like a beast, in tatters of moldy fur. She was dirty, and she stank. Faelamor was profoundly disgusted.

  The woman threw out her arms to Faelamor, making a series of grunts that could only be interpreted as a cry for help.

  The winged creature arched its wings, staring at them. It’s afraid of me, Faelamor thought. It recognizes my power.

  The woman again made that grunted plea. Faelamor wanted to help her but was paralyzed by the realization that her people here on Tallallame, who had been the noblest of all the human species, had been reduced to this. She had destroyed a whole species, and corrupted herself, for this animal?

  The young woman gave up, ducked past Faelamor and tried to hide in the ruins. The winged creature sprang, the beaked head darted forward and caught her by one slender ankle. The woman struggled desperately. Faelamor did nothing.

  The ankle was transferred from beak to claw. The creature gave Faelamor a knowing look, leapt into the air, flapped up through the treetops and disappeared. Faelamor had to sit down. The woman’s cries kept echoing through her mind.

  She understood it all now. The Faellem who had remained on Tallallame, who had once been so plentiful, now dwelt in caves and the tops of trees, little more than beasts, and were dreadfully afraid. Over the millennia they had stagnated. After expelling the Mariem into the void, their mind-powers had given them so much control over their lives that they no longer had to strive, and the genocide of their rivals meant that they were unchallenged masters of their own world. They had forgotten that, outside Tallallame, the struggle for existence continued as relentlessly as ever.

  The forest was already reclaiming their great arts, and the fires would take the rest. The Faellem had lost their humanity and were now sinking down the one-way slide to beasthood. They would survive, but only to paw and grunt at the priceless treasures of their civilization, until time turned the last of them to dust.

  There’s nothing left of us, thought Faelamor as she crawled back up the hill to her followers. The Faellem are finished.

  “Our whole life and purpose has been a lie,” she said to Gethren. “If only I had listened. But I was too proud. I refused to believe that any device could get the better of me. What a fool I am! I said it a long time ago and never realized: I looked on the Mirror in Katazza and saw what I wanted to see.”

  “We deserve this fate,” said Gethren. “We lost our nobility when we betrayed the Mariem. We chose the wrong way and we have followed it ever since.”

  “I led you the wrong way. I am the Faellem, and I am Tallallame!” said Faelamor, weeping as she looked upon the ruin of her world. “This evil has come from my own. It must be immolated.”

  She went down into the forest to a place where three grand trees had fallen together and were blazing fiercely. The Faellem cried out to her. “We can defeat this enemy too,” said Hallal. “We can reclaim our world.”

  Fealamor would not hear them. “Our enemy is ourselves,” she said. She marched forward, never flinching as her colorless hair seared off to expose the death’s head of her skull. She reached out to embrace the pyre, to burn all the evil away.

  And just as they had followed her every decision for so long, one by one the Faellem followed her into the flames.

  46

  A Genuine Hero

  In Shazmak there remained only Maigraith, Karan and the staring Ghâshâd. When Faelamor disappeared, that fiery explosion had sealed the tattered remnant of the Forbidding over again.

  Maigraith took Karan’s hand. There were tears in her eyes as she looked down at the broken body of her friend. Karan opened her green eyes, liquid with pain, and smiled a wan smile.

  “We have done it, you and I,” she whispered. “Who would have thought it?” Her eyes drifted closed and she seemed to shrink in on herself. Her pale face went as smooth and still as wax.

  Maigraith was in an agony of shock and grief so deep that she felt no pain from her own wounds, and they were many. The arm that had gone beneath the construct was covered in weeping blisters. Her thigh was torn open to the knee. She was scratched, battered and bruised all over. But her work was not over yet. She steeled herself to complete the job—to restore the balance between the worlds. If only she had not given away her birthright. But how was she to find the way to Aachan? Her least gates on Santhenar were apt to go wrong because she could not see the destination clearly enough.

  “Don’t go!” said Maigraith, stroking Karan’s red curls. She laid her hand across Karan’s brow, wiping the beads of dampness away. “Stay with me—we have one final task.”

  Karan’s eyes fluttered open, though it took a supreme effort. They were cloudy, but Maigraith took Karan’s limp hand; it tightened and her malachite eyes grew clear again.

  “What is it?” Karan whispered.

  “The Forbidding is only hanging together by a thread, but the balance has not been restored. At every seam of the globe the creatures that dwell in the void gain entrance. I must make things the way they were before the flute. That is my destiny.”

  “How can I help you?” Karan’s voice was barely audible.

  “I cannot do it alone. The balance was broken, in Aachan. It can only be restored there.”

  “Once before you pressured me so very hard. Look what you got me into that time. Now Rulke is dead,” whispered Karan, “and Tensor too, and Mendark, and every one of the Charon, and half the Ghâshâd. Shazmak is a sea of blood, and all because of you and me.”

  “Rulke is dead!” Maigraith echoed, staring into eternity.

  “Where’s Llian? I must speak to him before I die.”

  “I don’t know where Llian is. Karan, listen! I must reach across to Aachan and work with the Charon, if any survive. But I do not know the Way. Only you can find it now. Will you help me?”

  “The pain is killing me.” Karan writhed, slipping into
delirium. “I want Llian. This is my dying wish, which you must honor.”

  “Then the fate of the Three Worlds is sealed, and we will fail under the weight of the void. We cannot survive.”

  “I can’t help you,” said Karan. “How can I sense the Way? The pain takes away everything from my mind.” She looked up suddenly and her eyes were fever-bright. “Llian, where are you, Llian?”

  Taking Karan in her arms, Maigraith carried her to a couch. There she arranged her broken limbs with cushions so that they troubled her as little as possible, but still the pain was terrible.

  Maigraith sat beside her, holding her hand. Of course she must honor Karan’s dying wish, if she possibly could. The Forbidding would surely hold for a bit yet.

  Where could the company have got to? Most likely Shand’s strange gate had carried them back to Carcharon. She tried to sense the Way there, but since Faelamor’s departure everything had changed. She could not visualize Carcharon at all.

  Karan stirred. “Llian!” she moaned.

  “I can’t find him.”

  Karan began to pant in little short breaths. Maigraith gave her some water, after which she seemed a little stronger. Karan closed her eyes.

  After some time Maigraith realized that the remaining Ghâshâd were gathered round, staring at them both. All they had striven for was undone, and they had failed their master in his time of greatest need. Rulke’s death had freed them but diminished them. They no longer had a purpose in life.

  Vartila the Whelm was the lowest of them all. Vartila, who had not recognized her master until it was too late, who had only become Ghâshâd at the moment of their greatest failure—Vartila was completely undone.

  “What was my life for?” she wept. “Nothing at all!”

  “People,” said Maigraith. “Rulke is dead and the Ghâshâd are no more. There is nothing for you here. Go back to what you were before Rulke first made you his, if you would live. Swear that you will take no master any more.”

  Vartila and the other Ghâshâd took that vow, then turned away, cowed, fearful and alone in the world, and went back to hide in their southern forests. All except one. “Are you coming, Idlis?” asked Yetchah, looking back longingly at him. They had been together constantly these last few days.

  “I’ll follow, wherever you go,” he said. “But first, I have unfinished business here.”

  Idlis looked down at Karan, and on his face there was an expression as close to tenderness as his blocky features would allow.

  “If only Rulke had listened,” he said to himself. “I warned him—Llian’s telling was not a fable but a prediction. Rulke would not hear me. Llian made the tale better than he knew. From nothing we came—to nothing do we return.”

  He turned to Maigraith. “I am a healer,” he reminded her. His thick voice was gentle now. “For more than a year I have owed Karan the debt of my life.” Crouching down, he took Karan’s hand with his skeletal fingers. “Once before you refused my aid,” he said, referring to the dreadful injuries she had taken when she choked his dog to death. “Will you let me help you this time?”

  “I would be most grateful,” Karan whispered. She did not fear him any longer.

  “She is cold,” he said to Maigraith. “Bring two braziers, some blankets and a hot drink.”

  While Maigraith did that, Idlis cut off Karan’s garments and laid her out on the couch. He exclaimed at her many scars, and particularly at her hand and wrist. “Poor Whelp!” he said wistfully, thinking of his dog.

  After covering her with blankets, he went away, shortly to return with a purple phial. He put a few drops of the secret fluid on Karan’s tongue.

  “Is that better?”

  “A little,” she whispered, “but now my head spins so.”

  He probed her flesh, but his touch was infinitely gentle. Taking her hips in his hands, he eased them this way and that, trying to tease the broken bones back together. Karan screamed.

  Idlis looked grave. “She should feel nothing at all,” he said to Maigraith. “I don’t dare give a stronger dose. I have only one remedy left, but I am afraid to use it on her.”

  “Anything,” gasped Karan, squirming, which only made the pain of her shattered bones worse.

  “It is the drug hrux,” he said to Karan. “You have tasted it before, have you not?”

  “Twice,” said Karan with a shudder, remembering the dried Ghâshâd fruit that she had accidentally taken from Carcharon. It had given her such schizophrenic dreams. Just the mention of it sent her body arching in yearning.

  Idlis frowned. “It could kill you, in your state, or possess you ever after.” He explained to Maigraith. “Hrux is a deadly drug. We used it when we all wanted to work together with one mind, to sense and to control. It was employed by the square against you when you fought the Second Army in Bannador last summer.”

  Maigraith remembered that day very well, the feeling that she was opposed by a community of minds and wills.

  “But to her, and to you too, Maigraith, it is the most addictive drug there is. She has tasted it twice already. A third time and she may never be free of the yearning for it. And it has other effects too, as varied as the people who take it. Who knows what it might do to a triune?”

  Maigraith wept. “If it doesn’t kill her, you say?”

  Idlis nodded. “It may. But nothing else can lift the pain from her.”

  “Karan,” Maigraith said, spotting Karan’s hand with her tears. “I am a cold, unfeeling woman, as you know. How can I demand from you what I cannot do myself? But—”

  “Say what you want,” snapped Karan.

  “Will you take this hrux and offer me the chance to restore the balance? I swear—”

  “I—” said Karan.

  “Don’t be hasty,” Maigraith interrupted. “It may kill you.”

  “Or if you become addicted and cannot get it, you will wish it had,” said Idlis.

  “What’s the difference?” Karan screamed. “I’m dying! If I can put that off and do this thing as well, then give me the hrux.”

  “Very well,” said Idlis. “I will begin with a small dose. It’s just possible that you may get away without ill effects.” He cut off a piece of hrux about the size of a pea and put it in her mouth.

  It was chewy in a leathery sort of a way, like an overly dried apricot. “My mouth burns,” she said.

  After an interval Idlis took her hips in his hands again and tried once more to ease the bones back in place. Karan screamed.

  Idlis looked up at Maigraith. “It’s done nothing! I’ll have to give a bigger dose.”

  It took a second piece and then a third before the pain diminished enough for Idlis to put her fractured pelvis back together. When that was done, and it was not done quickly, he straightened her legs, smoothing the flesh with his hands, and all of a sudden the stress went from her face. He fixed her bones, cleaned the many cuts and abrasions, and bound them with clean cloth. Finally he drew the blankets over her again. Even his iron-hard features showed weariness.

  “I thought her back was broken,” he said to Maigraith, who was standing at the head of the couch. “But it is not—only the pelvis, though that in three places, and both legs high up. One hip is dislocated, and sundry other bones broken too. Only time can fuse them together, but I have put them back as they should be. Bones are my special skill. Now we must encase her hips in plaster, and her legs, else she may never walk again. Perhaps she may not anyway. And as for childbirth…” he shook his head. “Best that pregnancy be avoided altogether.”

  “She is triune,” said Maigraith coolly.

  “Nonetheless!” said Idlis. “Tonight I will build a metal frame for her lower body, to force the bones to heal true.”

  He set to work with plaster, and when that was finished said to Maigraith, “You may begin your own work. But take it slowly. She is weak and has lost blood inside, and the hrux, as I said, is dangerous. For your sake as well as for hers, don’t push her too hard. But first let
me attend your injuries, or I will be laying you beside her.”

  Karan felt quite strange, as if she was floating above her broken body. There was no pain; she felt no sensations whatever. But there was work to do. She drew a link between herself and Maigraith. The hrux made that easy, for she was halfway into the world of dreams and hallucinations anyway, but the link was a tenuous, wavery thing.

  Maigraith hammered the fatal metal thorn down flat, climbed the construct and sat in the high seat. She worked the controls and instantly a section of the Wall thinned to gauze. The armies clawed against the other side. She let out a gasp.

  “Maigraith, are you all right?”

  “I can hardly breathe,” said Maigraith. “My throat feels closed up. I know I’m not strong enough.”

  “I can’t help you,” said Karan.

  “I know!” Forcing calm on herself, Maigraith spoke over the link. I’m ready. Now do your part, if you can.

  Karan sought out through the Wall for that wandering, ethereal path that was the Way between the Worlds, the path from Santhenar to Aachan. In spite of the chaos of the Forbidding the Way was easier to find than before. Perhaps the pain and the drug stripped away all distractions and allowed her mind to focus on just one thing.

  I have it, she said across the link. See, here it is!

  Maigraith used the construct as she had seen Rulke do, wrenched with her mind and opened the Way. At once the armies of the void renewed their assault, and the Wall began to flutter as it had done before.

  “Show me the Council chamber of the Charon,” cried Maigraith in a great voice. “The place where Rulke spoke with Yalkara.” Using the construct, she created a golden globe in the center of the wall, to give vision to Karan’s inner seeings. It was surrounded by an iridescent doughnut shape that shone with distorted reflections.

  Karan brought forth the image onto the globe, though with difficulty. The pain was growing again in spite of the hrux. The image wavered.

  “Hold it!” Maigraith yelled.