A Shadow on the Glass Read online

  “You will never tell that version of the tale again,” said Wistan, pursing his slab lips.

  “But…” said Llian. “I don’t understand…” Did Wistan know what he suspected?

  “Don’t play the fool, Llian. The paper proves that she was stabbed from behind. You have uncovered a deadly secret. A brilliant piece of work, but it must be suppressed. I will not allow you to risk the college.”

  Llian could hardly control his face. So, murder had been done! There was a Great Tale here, and he was going to uncover it no matter what Wistan said. “But hundreds of people heard me last night—the whole college.”

  “And I will speak to every one of them. Everyone will swear, on pain of expulsion, never to mention it again.”

  Not everyone, Llian thought, remembering the small red-haired woman who had touched his mind. He could hardly remember what her face looked like, but the impression of her mind touching his was still vivid. She was not from the college. She might have told a dozen people by now.

  “It’s like trying to hold back the tide,” he said. “You can’t control two hundred people. The story will be all over town already.”

  “Chanthed is a town full of rumors. If you do not substantiate them they will die.”

  “How can I deny what I’ve already said? Anyway, it’s traditional that the best tale of the graduation is told at the Festival of Chanthed next autumn. That is my right.”

  “Rights must be broken at need. If you wish to have what is your due, find another tale, or another way to tell that one. You have plenty in your armory.”

  “I demand my rights!” Llian said furiously. “I’m not a student anymore.”

  Wistan held onto his temper with an effort. “Grow up, Llian! You have a lot to offer, but a lot more to learn. You are about to go out into the world and seek a position, and for that you need my goodwill. Do you imagine that you can just write what you like, or tell what you like? If you do, then I assure you that your tenure will be very short indeed. Good day!”

  Llian went out and wandered about the grounds. He climbed up a little knoll, a favorite thinking place, and lay down on his back in the grass. From here he could look out over the college and the winding streets of Chanthed further down the hill. The town was a lovely sight, a green and gold oasis nestled into the folds of the sun-browned hillside and extending its flanks to the clear waters of the Gannel. The yellow sandstone buildings positively glowed in the afternoon sun. The cobbled streets were like gray streams running down to the river.

  If he looked the other way Llian could see the foothills of the mountain range that extended along the entire eastern side of the great island of Meldorin, a distance of three hundred leagues. Across the mountains were the fertile plains of Saboth and the ancient coastal city of Thurkad. Beyond that the long narrow gutter of the Sea of Thurkad separated Meldorin from the continent of Lauralin. The barren land where the Zain dwelt was on the other side of the continent, more than four hundred leagues away.

  Time to consider his future. There would never be a post for him here while Wistan was master. Nor did he want one. After fifteen years Llian was chafing to get out into the world. In three month’s time his stipend would expire, so he had to find a way to earn his living before that. He had no idea where to start. In truth Llian was naive about the world. Moreover he was clumsy and inept at most things save his art, telling, and his trade, the Histories.

  The Histories were vital to the culture of Santhenar and permeated every aspect of life on it. Even the poorest families kept their family registers, taught orally to their children if they were illiterate and could not afford the services of a public scribe. But to have one’s life told by a master chronicler, to actually play a part in the Histories of the world, was the greatest honor that anyone could long for. This longing supported a wolfpack of charlatans and false chroniclers, and it was a hunger that even the greatest were not immune to. Even Mendark, Llian’s grotesquely rich sponsor, longed to be honored in his own Great Tale.

  “Llian, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  It was Thandiwe, her face flushed from running up the hill. She flopped down on the grass beside him.

  “Is something the matter?” Llian asked.

  “No, I just wanted to see you. I suppose you will be leaving Chanthed soon.”

  “I suppose so.”

  They sat in the grass for a long while, pursuing their own thoughts.

  “So, what are you going to do with yourself, Llian?”

  “I was just wondering that. For the last four years I’ve done what I wanted, working on my project. Now it’s all over and I’m afraid. How am I to find a master? What if I end up with a coarse, stupid master who wants nothing but nursery tales?”

  “What about your sponsor?”

  “Mendark? I imagine that he will call me when he wants me. I’m… afraid to go to him. Afraid to presume.”

  “I would be afraid of what he wanted from me,” Thandiwe said softly.

  “That too!”

  “How was it that he sponsored you? That’s something you’ve never talked about.”

  “No, I haven’t, because his name has earned me nothing but envy and blows. Mendark first came to our house when I was eight. We were a close family, though poor. We lived in Jepperand, a desert land next to the Dry Sea, my mother and father and my two sisters, and me.”

  “Two sisters,” she sighed. “I have five older brothers.”

  “Llayis, my father, is a scribe. He looks like me, though taller, and he hasn’t got much hair anymore. I suppose that’s my fate too.” Llian laughed somewhat tentatively and ruffled his fingers through his untidy locks. “Zophy, my mother, is little and round and cheerful. She is a letterer, an illuminator really, as are my sisters. My older sister Callam is tall and serious, with very dark hair; she takes after my father. My little sister Alyz… How I miss her! She is more like my mother, and the best worker of us all.”

  “How come they sent you so far away?” Thandiwe asked.

  “I was too clever—I wrote a catalog of tales when I was eight. It amazed even our scholarly race, and I suppose that was how Mendark first heard about me. Anyway, when I was twelve, he appeared at the front gate. He bent down, inspecting me as though I was something he considered buying, then went into the house and closed the door. I was afraid.”

  “Mendark!” She gave a theatrical shudder. “I would have been too.”

  “As soon as Mendark had gone my parents called me inside. He had offered to sponsor me at the college, even to master chronicler if I could rise that high. An undreamed-of honor. I was shocked. The College of the Histories was famous even in Jepperand, but I knew it was on the other side of the world.”

  “You did not think to refuse?”

  “I wanted to, but I wanted the honor too, and I did not want to let my family down. It is not uncommon for clever children to be sent away to learn, but no Zain child had come as far as Chanthed in a very long time. Such an opportunity would never come again. Though my parents were both learned, they were still poor. Almost everyone is, in Jepperand. I suppose they would have refused had they thought I really didn’t want to go.

  “I can still remember the look on my little sister’s face as I joined that caravan of strangers. She was six; she couldn’t possibly have understood. I was almost as bewildered myself. But we Zain endure what cannot be altered, so I bit my lip and clenched my fists to stop them trembling, and kissed my mother and father, and my older sister.

  “Only little Alyz did not know how to behave. She started to cry. ‘Llian is never coming home again,’ she wailed. ‘Never, never, never!’

  “That broke us all. Callam began to weep, and my mother cried, and even my father shed a tear. Then they all embraced me together, which made it much worse. I wept till my eyes could make tears no more, and then it was time to go, so dutifully I went.

  “It was the worst time in all my life, that journey. I was the only child there and no
one tried to comfort me. It took six months of heat and dust and flies and miserable food before we reached the Sea of Thurkad. On the other side Mendark appeared, examined me briefly and sent me straight on to Chanthed. All he said was, ‘When the time comes, remember your debt.’ ”

  “Is that all?”

  “He spoke about posterity and his place in it. He was most concerned for his reputation.”

  “So, did the college live up to your dreams?”

  “Not for a long time. Everyone knew I was Zain and that I was only here because my sponsor was too powerful to refuse. It was years before I made a friend, and my work became everything to me. You were my first friend, Thandiwe.”

  “I envied you,” she said. “I thought you had everything. You seemed to do your work so easily. Your illuminated book of the Great Tales is as good as anything in the library.”

  “Not really! But I grew up with that art. I watched my mother do it every day.”

  “And your fees and board and stipend were paid for you. It has been such a struggle for my family to keep me here.”

  He made no comment.

  “Are your family all still living?”

  “Yes,” Llian said. “They write, though a letter takes half a year to get here, if it gets here at all, and my reply just as long to return. I would give anything to go home.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “I could not save enough from my stipend in fifty years, and they cannot afford to come all this way either. I want to go home as much as ever I wanted to be a chronicler and a teller. And now that I am one, if Mendark does not call me I may try to get passage on a ship, and work my way from port to port telling the Histories. But I’m afraid too. My parents are old now; even little Alyz is a grown woman. What if we have nothing to say to each other?”

  Just then a bell rang far away. Thandiwe scrambled to her feet. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Llian sat there after she had left, thinking over his options. Eventually roused by the rumbling in his stomach he turned his steps to the nearest stall, but on putting his hand in his pocket found it was empty. He headed down to the purser’s office to draw his monthly stipend. It would go up substantially now that he was master. As he entered, Turlew came out smirking.

  “Llian of Chanthed, master chronicler,” Llian said breezily to Old Sal, the tiny clerk behind the counter, who had been there even longer than Wistan had been master. No one knew what her real name was. Everything about Old Sal was bird-like—she had a small round head feathered with white hair, a long slender neck and stilt-like legs, and her arching nose had the look of a beak.

  Old Sal knew every one of the students and none better than Llian, who had been a favorite of hers ever since he had entered the college a shy and terrified little boy of twelve.

  “Master Llian,” she said, but for the first time ever she did not smile.

  “I’ve come for my stipend. It must have gone up now that I am master.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, consulting a register almost as tall as she was, although she knew every entry in it by heart. She angled her head to one side like an inquisitive bird. “I have nothing for you. Your allowance has finished.”

  “But it goes on for three months after graduation, and at the higher rate. How can it be cut off?”

  “Turlew came down with the authority not long ago. You’ll have to plead with Wistan. I’m sorry.”

  “But I just came…” He broke off and turned away.

  As he put his hand on the door Old Sal called out. Her wrinkled old face looked genuinely concerned. “I have a little to spare, if you…”

  Llian was touched, knowing how little a purser’s clerk earned. “Thank you,” he said bowing. “But I am not desperate yet.”

  “Then you will plead with Wistan?”

  He laughed hollowly. “I won’t give him the satisfaction. I shall sing for my supper.”

  That night he spread the story of his ill-treatment, though not the reason for it, and told a bawdy tale or two in a student’s inn down by the river. Llian’s treatment was unprecedented, arousing the sympathy of all but the most ardent Zain-haters. He passed his cap around at the end and it sagged most cheerfully when it came back, so Llian spent the better part of it buying drinks for all his new friends and mentally damning Wistan. The Histories were more than a profession to him—they were an obsession, and there was little that he would not do to feed that obsession; to track down the last fragment of a tale. When the festival came round in the autumn he would take his rightful place on stage on the final night and tell the Tale of the Forbidding just as he had done last night. Then he would leave Chan-thed forever.

  Llian arrived back at his room at midnight in a very jovial frame of mind, to find a stony-faced Thandiwe standing by the door. He stood there for a moment, admiring her lithe figure, her golden skin and black hair, her heaving bosom.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, swaying just a little.

  “I—I left something here last night,” she said, avoiding his eye.

  “Something’s happened! Tell me!”

  “Oh, Llian, I’ve been warned to keep away from you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve just spent the most unpleasant hour of my life with Wistan and that disgusting little worm of his, Turlew. If I’m seen with you again, I lose my place in the college.”

  “Well, damn them!”

  “Damn you! Llian, I don’t know what you’ve done, but you can please yourself now. I can’t. I have a chance for the Graduation Telling next year. You know how much that means to me. If I’m thrown out, my life will be ruined and everything my family has sacrificed for me will have been wasted.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Llian, though still he felt hurt. “Of course you must go.”

  “Llian, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care for you. I just can’t see you for a while.”

  Her dark eyes pleaded with him to understand, and he did. But he also felt let down. “Goodbye,” he said more coolly than he felt.

  Tears streaming down her face, Thandiwe crashed down the steps and out the front door. Llian flopped onto his bed. His whole world was collapsing around him and there was nothing he could do about it.

  He took out his book of tales and idly turned the leaves. The book had been his first major work, completed for his initial graduation four years ago, and its hundreds of pages contained short versions of all the Great Tales. There were enough blank pages at the end for another tale, a youthful fancy that amused him now. The book was indeed a beautiful object, gorgeously illuminated in lapis blue and scarlet, and here and there decorated with pilfered gold and silver leaf. The book was very precious to him, for all that he knew its every imperfection.

  Llian put the book down and lay there for hours, staring at the dark ceiling, until the scorpion nebula rose and shone in through his window, red and black. What would the next disaster be?

  He found out a few days later, when he signed himself into the library and went down to the archives to have another look at the documents from the time of the Forbidding. They were like old friends to him, these shelves full of tattered scrolls and parchments and codices falling apart from sheer age. He had spent four years of slavery here, teasing out the threads of his tale from the labyrinth of the Histories. Now the death of the crippled girl was preying on his mind and he wanted to see if there was anything he had overlooked.

  Along the interminable shelves he went, to the furthest corner of the basement, and signed himself in again to the room where the oldest and most precious documents were kept. Llian turned the corner, luxuriating in the smell of books and the warm spicy odor of the rosewood bookcases. He stopped abruptly. The whole row of shelves was empty—every single document about the time of the Forbidding was gone.

  It was like having a skewer thrust through his heart. Llian ran back out to the attendant on duty.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” the attendant sa
id, combing a magnificent black beard with his fingers. Crumbs rained down onto his polished boots. “You’ll have to ask the librarian.”

  There was no point running but Llian did so anyway, all the way up to the top floor where the librarian sat in her solitary eyrie, a room packed with catalogs but lacking a single book. She folded her arms and listened to his plea. She was an overly pretty woman, save that she had a tiny prim hole of a mouth. She dressed like a princess, in a purple silk blouse with gold tassels on the shoulders and a full skirt of green silk-satin interwoven with golden threads.

  “We can’t have such precious old things lying around where anyone can misuse, or even steal them,” she replied, arranging the pencils on her desk in military rows. “They were getting damaged, so they have been locked away.”

  “Libraries are for people,” he said sarcastically.

  “No—libraries are for books, and the fewer people in them the better for the books.”

  “Anyway, I’d like to see them,” said Llian. “May I have the key, please?”

  She consulted a catalog, pursing her lips. Purple lip paint extended beyond the edges of her mouth in a vain attempt to make it seem fuller. “For these documents you must have a permit.”

  “And how do I get such a permit?” But he already knew the answer to that.

  “Only Wistan can give it!”

  After a while Llian’s life settled down into a new routine. He would get up late, somewhat the worse for wear, and after the best breakfast he could afford would go to the library to work at his quest This was a frustrating and mostly fruitless exercise, since he was forbidden the documents he really needed, but he kept on until his eyes hurt from reading. Then he went to one inn or another, telling scurrilous yarns, often concerning Wistan, for the customers’ entertainment and his profit. After he had gleaned enough coin for the morrow—or not, on one or two occasions—he wavered his way home to bed. Sometimes he saw Thandiwe in passing, but if anyone was looking she turned away, and after a while it became easier to avoid her.