Mirror 04 The Way Between the Worlds by Ian Irvine Read Free Book Online Page A

with her conscience. Terrible things had flowed from her
previous actions - the wakening of the Ghashad, the fall of Shazmak, the
liberation of Rulke - and she had vowed to take no further part in the affairs
of the world because of it.
Yet now she collaborated in a worse crime for her own selfish reasons. For
Llian, to make up for the wrong she had done him before, and because she loved
him. But still, a crime. Would the next hundred generations, groaning in slave
chains, curse her name? Would even Llian come to hate her?
And, she could not deny it, curiosity about her triune nature drove her too.
That temptation was impossible to resist. And curiosity about Carcharon. What
had her father and old Basunez been searching for?
    But then again, perhaps this was fated to be; perhaps Rulke was the one who
could finally liberate Santhenar from all its petty squabbles. How could she
tell? How could she choose? She could not, and so she kept her faith with
Llian and her word to Rulke.
The Void
Rulke sat on the high seat of the construct (and how he gloried in his
wonderful machine) but Karan found that the very presence of the device took
away her mind's ability to see and to seek. They tried several times but the
metallic bulk of it oppressed her inner eye, warped her seeing. She had to be
as far away from it as possible.
She went around the corner to a small alcove where the room and the stairs
were shielded by a wall. It was the place where Llian had emerged through the
concealed stone panel a week earlier, before the great telling, and where she
had been captured after Llian's reply to Rulke's telling. On the other side
was an embrasure, taller than she was and as wide, glazed with plain glass in
small panels. The glass was so old that it had a purple tinge.
It was frigid against the window. Karan nested herself down on a pile of rugs
and wrapped a blanket around her. She stared out through the bubbly glass. The
window faced west of north, and the moon would come through it later on,
before setting behind the mountains that were tall and jagged in the west.
'I'm ready,' Rulke called down to her.
'I am too.'
She sat still, watching and waiting for him to begin. The
lights faded, the room grew dark, ghostly webs formed and extended to become
nets of light. She closed her eyes.
Before she could begin, a ragged bundle flopped in through an embrasure.
'Karan!' Llian screamed.
His wracked face stabbed her like a moth on a pin. Karan wanted to die of
shame, that he should see her doing this. How it hurt to send him away, and
when it was done she wept uncontrollably.
Rulke had remade the nets of light that were the Forbidding, but now he sighed
and let them fade away again. 'This is not working/ he said aloud. 'Maybe
she's not up to it. That's the problem with sensitives. Still, better to find
outnowthan later.'
Waving the Ghashad out of the room, he leapt off the construct and sat beside
Karan. 'Talk to me.'
Karan felt like bawling her eyes out. 'Did you see him?' she wailed. 'How
contemptuous he looked. How I must disgust him!'
He put his arm around her. 'I saw that he was in pain; that he was terribly
afraid for you.'
    'I hate myself,' said Karan. 'I want to go home.'
'Don't be a child,' he said. 'Hate me, if you must hate. I know how you feel
for each other. I spied on you and him together, remember?'
'I do hate you!' she shouted, pushing him away. 'You are the wickedest and
most evil man in all the Three Worlds. Everything you say is just to get me to
do what you want.'
'Indeed it is,' he said, and laughed. 'Now here is an offer. Go! I absolve you
of your debt to me. Walk free from Car-charon, right now.'
The offer was so absurd that she was not even tempted. 'Why do you taunt me?'
she said coldly. 'I know you will never let me go.'
'Unless you are willing, we will fail. Unless we can trust each other we will
never find the Way. I would be better off looking for a new