The Way Between the Worlds Read online

  Rulke almost had it under control, but it shuddered again, the front tilted and it began to glide downward, accelerating and plunging straight toward the rocky ridge side. Llian held his breath. Rulke struggled desperately, mastered it a moment before impact and began to inch it back up again.

  “We’ve done it!” Yggur shouted. “He’s weak! Do you dare use power against him now?” he challenged Mendark.

  Mendark hesitated, then, “Yes, yes! Together!” They shot out their arms. Red and blue fire flared out, writhing like colored cables across the night. The Aachim fired as one. A dozen arrows arched in formation toward their target, but immediately an opaline spheroid sprang into life around the construct. The fiery blasts reflected dangerously back at them, melting the snow into glassy patches as they ducked for shelter. The arrows sighed harmlessly into a dough-like barrier, then one by one fell free, quite spent.

  “That showed him!” Tensor crowed. “He won’t be so bold next time.”

  Mendark’s wit was quicker. “You’re a fool, Tensor,” he said in a dead voice. “He uses our power against us. The construct is proof against any force we can direct at it, and I was a bigger fool to think any different.”

  The construct regained its even keel, lifted smoothly and hung on the ruined brass lip of the tower. Rulke reached down with one hand, hauled up Karan and shook her at his enemies. She was still alive! He roared defiance, then the machine slipped back into the tower like a black egg into its nest. As it went down, the walls bulged outward around it like a snake swallowing a chicken. The eerie red glow reappeared.

  “What was that all about?” asked Tallia.

  “Intimidation,” said Yggur. “Maybe he’s not ready.”

  “He’s ready!” said Shand.

  The moon rose higher, its blotched face illuminating the scene raggedly. They stood together on a bowl-shaped rim of the ridge top. In front of them the living rock had been carved away to form a small amphitheater that looked back to Carcharon. Its shallow lower lip dropped in a series of steep steps that narrowed downward to a winding track running along the knife-edged crest of the ridge. The track was barely wide enough for two abreast, and deadly on account of ice and gale. On either side the rock fell steep, sometimes sheer, into a mighty chasm. The track wound down and then back up, broadening at the other end before a long, steep and upward-flaring stair which terminated at a landing outside the brass gates and iron-plated doors of Carcharon itself.

  Carcharon had once been an ugly tower of nine uneven sides, squatting on the sheerest part of the ridge. A high wall ran from the back of the tower, steeply up one side of the ridge and down the other, enclosing a large yard. The tower was built of glassy-smooth gabbro, violet-gray in color. Its walls were covered in clusters of rods, hooks, vitreous spheres and opaline spines like those of a sea urchin. The roof had been a spiky helmet of brass and green slate, but the slate was scattered and the brass remnants now hung down like metal petals. The place had never had harmony or proportion, but with the roof torn open and the walls deformed as if they had begun to melt, it was hideous.

  Behind the company the high back of the amphitheater descended by a steeper stair onto a winding, soaring ridge-top track, down and down and down for hours, eventually to reach a strip of plateau cut by ravines, encircled on the lower side by granite cliffs and covered in Karan’s magnificent but inaccessible Forest of Gothryme. Below the cliffs lay Gothryme, her impoverished estate in the valley of the Ryme, and further on, Tolryme town and the road to Thurkad.

  The red light sank to an uncanny glare. A freezing wind sprang up, so they moved into the shelter of the arena. Llian lay on the snow. If his rage had been a weapon, Yggur and Tensor would now lie dead among the rocks. His legs hurt, a torment that gave him no rest, but at least Karan was alive. He had to get her out. He knew she would do the same for him.

  “Lilis!” he whispered.

  Lilis came scuttling across. Her thin face was pinched. Her cold nose touched his even colder cheek. She was shivering.

  “What you warn’t?” she said, reverting for a moment to her street-brat argot.

  “I’ve got to get inside. Will you help me?”

  Lilis visibly took herself in hand. A street brat no longer, she was an apprentice librarian now and the great Nadiril was her tutor. She schooled her voice to calmness. “What do you want me to do?”

  “See if you can get these shackles off.”

  Lilis bent down, her hair caressing his boots. “Oh,” she said. “Your leg is all bloody. And your other leg too.”

  Llian couldn’t have cared less. “The ice scratches the skin. It’s not serious.”

  Her fingers worked at the irons. “They’re locked,” she said. “Do you know who has the key?”

  “Mendark! I don’t suppose—No, it’s too much to ask.”

  She moaned under her breath and stood up. “Poor Llian,” she said, looking into his eyes. In the light from Carcharon hers were the size of apricots. “Of course I’ll go. For you I will even rob Mendark himself; though I’m very frightened.”

  “I’m ashamed to ask you, dear Lilis.” He hugged her thin frame. “But I’ve got to get in.”

  She crept across the snow and ice. Llian was more ashamed than Lilis realized, for she was just a diversion. She would be discovered as soon as she tried to rob Men-dark, but it might just give him time enough. He did not wait to see what happened.

  Everyone else was huddled at the back of the amphitheater out of the worst of the wind. No one seemed to be watching him. Llian slipped down between the snow-covered stone benches. He was just above the steps and the path to Carcharon.

  There came an outcry from the other side of the platform. Lilis must have been caught! Llian slid over the edge and crashed down the steps feet first, bumping hard on his bottom. Landing right at the edge of the ravine, he staggered as fast as his hobbles would allow him along the treacherous path.

  “What are you doing, you little thief?” he heard Men-dark roar. Lili’s frightened squeak of an answer was inaudible. A minute later Mendark roared again, “He’s gone! After him!”

  Llian redoubled his efforts, his terror of being caught before he found Karan more powerful than his fear of Rulke, or the hideous pain in his legs.

  He reached the bottom of the steps that led in an up-curving arch to the front gate. He dragged himself up fifty or sixty steps, but near the top had to rest, no matter what. Llian slumped over the stone rail. At least there was one here, though each of the balusters was covered with gargoyle faces of profound hideousness, all grinning and jeering at him. In his fevered mind the railing seemed to move beneath his hand, as if they reached out for him. Llian snatched his hand away and looked up to be confronted by a sight even more palpitating.

  At the top of the stairs was a landing, on the far side of which the stairs curved away from the gate to meet the side of Carcharon tower. In the open space between the left-hand rail and the wall loomed a vast menace out of legend, a creature half-human and half-beast, with short though massive legs and a barrel chest, long hanging arms and overarching bat-wings that cast the crested head and fanged mouth into shadow. Its hands were the size of Llian’s head, with retractable claws. The joints of its wings and the bony crest of its head were tipped with spikes. In one hand it clutched a flail, each lash being tipped with a spiked ball like a tiny morning-star, while the other hand gripped a rod like a wizard’s baton.

  Llian fell back against the railing before realizing that the beast was just a statue, though a brilliantly lifelike one. It was made of brass, impervious to time and the elements. On the other side of the landing crouched another of the creatures, equipped with a spear in one hand and a set of pincers in the other. This one had wings that soared out on either side and the chest armor was curved to accommodate a pair of breasts as large as melons.

  Between the statues was a great gate of wrought-iron, clustered with heads and faces and squatting gargoyle figures. The gate was ajar but beyond was
a solid door set with decorated metal plates. Even knowing that the statues were mere metal, Llian could not move, they so embodied the mythical terrors his childhood had been steeped in. Then, looking back, he saw his pursuers emerge out of shadow below the arena. They were only a minute away. Basitor was well ahead, his impossibly long legs flashing.

  Squawking in terror, Llian clawed his way up the remaining steps like a lame crab. One, two, three, four, five. Five to go! He could see the fury on Basitor’s face; the snarl; the bared teeth. No mercy there! Basitor would bash out his brains against the steps, or throw him over the side without a thought.

  Llian hurled himself up the last high step, stuck for a moment as his hobbles caught on the broken stone, then with a tremendous heave freed himself, skidded across the landing, flung the gate open and crashed head first into one of the decorated plates on the door. It clanked; something inside gave forth a hollow boom that echoed on and on. He bashed at the door until his knuckles bled. It was too late. Basitor was already at the bottom of the steps. He leapt up, four steps at each stride.

  “Got you, you treacherous swine,” he gasped, striking Llian a blow in the belly that doubled him over helpless. “I should have done this a year ago.”

  He picked Llian up by the collar and the seat of the pants, shaking him until his brains felt like jelly. Llian tried to kick him but Basitor was too big and strong. The rest of the company was still too far away to do anything, even supposing that they cared to.

  “You’re dead!” raged Basitor, holding Llian out over the precipice and punctuating every phrase with another shake. “Do you remember Hintis? Dead because of you! Do you remember Selial, Shalah, Thel, Trule?” He went on with a litany of names, most unknown to Llian, as if he blamed him for every death in Shazmak and since, and planned to list each one too. “Do you remember the kindness my brethren in Shazmak showed you, treacherous Zain? Do you remember Rael? All dead because of you. Because of you beloved Shazmak lies in ruins! This is the least I can do for them.”

  Llian looked down. The gorge was bathed in the baleful glare from the dark moon. The beckoning rocks were as clear as daylight. Basitor shook him until it all became a blur again, then drew back his arm.

  As he did, Llian’s hand struck one of the many metal projections that stuck out from the walls of the tower. He gripped it like a drowning man, heaved and his knee struck Basitor in the eye. Basitor fell against the wall, relaxing his grip for a second. Llian kicked free and went hand over hand up the wall, using the rods and hooks like a ladder. His fear of heights was nothing to his terror of Basitor. One of his hobbles snagged on a hook and he almost fell. He freed himself, his upstretched hand caught the lip of an embrasure and without looking he threw himself in head first.

  Eventually his brain stopped whirling, his eyes uncrossed. He was in the upper chamber where the great telling had been held a week ago. There was a mound of wreckage on the floor—beams, tiles and metal, the remains of the roof—but the space around the construct was swept clear as if the rubble had been repelled from it. Snowflakes drifted down through the broken roof and covered every surface, though the construct was as black and clean as ever.

  Llian lay on the floor, literally unable to get up. His body had suffered too many injuries, too many insults in the past two weeks. He lifted his head. Rulke was sitting on the high seat of the construct concentrating hard on something. As his eyes adjusted, Llian saw that the room was hung with a ghostly web of light, like a barely visible fishing net curving from one wall to another. The fibers of the net began to glow more brightly, the light spreading and smearing out until the net became a shimmering wall, a barrier across which iridescent lights danced. Ripples passed gently across its surface.

  It was the Wall of the Forbidding made visible, curving through the ten dimensions of space and time. It touched all parts of Santhenar, the Three Worlds and even the Nightland equally, while separating these inhabited spaces from the Darwinian nightmare of the void. Rulke’s tale of a week ago had told Llian all that he cared to know about the violent creatures that dwelt in the void, and what they would do to Santh if they ever got out.

  Where was Karan? He picked her out across the other side, sitting cross-legged on a window ledge with a brazier glowing in front of her. Her eyes were closed but she looked alert, concentrating intensely on something.

  “Karan!” he screamed.

  Her eyes sprang open. The net of light vanished. “Llian!” she whispered, anguished and ashamed. “What are you doing here? Go back!”

  “Not without you.” He tried to get to his feet but only managed his knees.

  Rulke snapped back to reality with a shock that almost tumbled him off his seat. For a moment he looked dazed, as if the switch from one dimension to the other was like trying to think in a foreign tongue.

  “Take what you want and pay the price!” she said. “I am paying for my choices.”

  “The price is too high,” Llian said, hungering for her. He was helpless. His shredded legs were too painful to move. “Come with me.” He felt ashamed that Karan had bought his freedom with her own.

  “It’s too late,” she said softly. “It’s gone too far now and can’t be undone. Please go, or all I’ve done will be in vain.”

  “She’s right, chronicler,” said Rulke, recovering rapidly. “I don’t know what fool let you in, but it’s no use. If she refuses me I’ll take you back.”

  “I won’t go! Karan, don’t do this.”

  “I have no choice,” she said in her own agony. “Go away, Llian!”

  Llian was desperate to take her in his arms, and knew that despite her words she felt the same. She was weakening.

  Rulke shook his fist at the watching guards. “How can I work?” he roared. “Get rid of him!”

  Two came forward—Idlis, he of the scarred face, who had hunted Karan for so long, and the woman Yetchah. They had been banished to the lowest duties, in disgrace at having voted for Llian’s tale instead of Rulke’s a week ago. Taking Llian under the arms, they dragged him down the coiled stairway, past statues every bit as alarming as those outside the gates. Before he reached the bottom of the stairs, the room was lit up by the Wall of the Forbidding again.

  The front door of Carcharon was flung open. The wind whistled in. Idlis put his foot in Llian’s back and sent him flying through. He skidded halfway across the landing.

  Llian wished he was dead. He wiped the snow out of his eyes, turned over and looked up into the grim faces of the company. No one said a word. Basitor gripped him by the collar then marched down the steps, dragging him behind. The others followed in his wake.

  2

  The Way

  The previous night, Karan had lain squirming in her sleeping pouch, desperate for sleep. Tomorrow would be hythe, mid-winter’s day—the day she would betray her people and her world. To save Llian she had agreed to find the Way between the Worlds for Rulke. But what would the consequences be? Would she survive it? Would any of them? What was the word of Rulke, the Great Betrayer, worth anyway?

  A week had gone by since the great telling, after which he had used the construct to cast Llian out of Carcharon. Since then Rulke had worked Karan impossibly hard, day and night, in exercises her brain could scarcely comprehend. She practiced as though her life depended on mastering his lessons. She knew it did. The void was a brutal place and hers a deadly job, and the knowledge that he would torment Llian if she refused was all the goad she needed.

  Karan found it hard to concentrate. She made a lot of mistakes but Rulke never criticized her. A good teacher, he patiently instructed her over and again, yet she felt sure he found her stupid and incapable.

  She wriggled in her pouch but could not get warm. And being a sensitive, she could feel the age-old emotions stirring in this place. The stones were saturated with the death agonies of the hundreds of workers who had died building Carcharon, with the mad cunning of her ancestor, Basunez, and with strange, older passions that she could not disenta
ngle from the rocky matrix.

  Karan hated Carcharon. Her beloved father had been killed here too, seventeen years ago, a senseless crime. After all this time she still missed him. Just to think of Galliad was to bring back her childhood longings. She could not sense him here, but how she wanted to.

  Exhausted, she kicked off her pouch, drew on socks and crept across to where Rulke slept beside the construct. Evidently he was impervious to cold for he lay on the floor wrapped in only a single blanket, and his mighty chest was bare. His shoulders were each the size of her head. Karan eyed them in uncomfortable awe.

  “There is something I need to know,” she said.

  He woke instantly. “What is it?”

  “A question of the most surpassing interest to me.”

  “Then ask it,” he said, sitting up. His muscles rippled. She pulled her eyes away.

  “My father was killed here. Do you know why?”

  “I don’t know anything about your father, except that he was a blending of human and Aachim. What happened to him?”

  “He was the rock of my childhood,” she said in melancholy tones. “He was coming back from Shazmak but never arrived. Finally he was found here, beaten to death for the few coins in his pocket. No one could understand why.”

  “Why would he come here, so far off the path to Shazmak?”

  “He was fascinated by this place, and by Basunez.”

  “Mad Basunez!” said Rulke. “He can’t have been quite as mad as he was made out.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The bronze statues are too perfect. He found something here, and he had to have looked into the void for it. That was what first attracted me to this place.”

  “Last summer?”

  He smiled at her naivety. “Little Karan! You still think all this came about by accident, by some chance of fate.”

  “What do you mean?” Suddenly she felt panicky, all shivery afraid and choked up. “What wasn’t an accident?”