Ian Irvine - The Way Between the Worlds (The View From the Mirror, #4)

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright 1999 by Ian Irvine

Maps copyright 1999 by Ian Irvine

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First eBook Edition: October 2002

Contents

THE VIEW FROM THE MIRROR QUARTET

Volume 1

A Shadow on the Glass

Volume 2

The Tower on the Rift

Volume 3

Dark Is the Moon

Volume 4

The Way Between the Worlds

Rulke of the Charon: Is he truly the Great Betrayeror the last victim of a crime so terrible that its horror has tainted all of human history?

Karan of Gothryme: Can she forge a bridge between worldsor will the attempt be the path to her own destruction?

Llian the Chronicler: His ambition to find the lost Great Tale cost him his honorwill his resolve to find the truth cost Llian his life?

Maigraith: Is she merely a pawn to be used by the mightyor the bearer of an unimaginable power?

Mendark: Hes used murder, magic, and immortality to maintain his reputationbut is his wizardry great enough to save Santhenar?

Faelamor of the Faellem: Did she commit genocide to save her raceand will she destroy whole worlds to lead her people home?

A great find! Irvine writes beautifully refreshing, complicated, and compelling.

Kate Elliott, author of Kings Dragon

Books by Ian Irvine

A Shadow on the Glass

The Tower on the Rift

Dark is the Moon

I would like to thank Angus and Simon Irvine for the brilliant cover concept artwork

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield

MILTON, PARADISE LOST

The View from the Mirror is a tale of the Three Worlds, Aachan, Tallallame and Santhenar, and of the four human species that inhabit them: Aachim, Charon, Faellem and old human. The setting is Santhenar, a world where wizardrythe Secret Artis difficult, and doesnt always work, and every using comes at a priceaftersickness.

Long ago a whole race was betrayed and cast into the void between the worlds, a Darwinian place where life is more desperate, more brutal, more fleeting than anywhere. In the void none but the fittest survive, and only by remaking themselves constantly. A million of that race died in the first few weeks.

The terrible centuries ground on. The exiles were transformed into a new human species, but still they could not survive the void. Reduced to a handful, they hung over the abyss of extinction. Then one day a chance came, an opening to another worldAachan!

Giving themselves a new name, Charon, after a frigid moonlet at the furthest extremity of the void, they took Aachan from the Aachim. The Hundred, as the remaining Charon became known, dared allow nothing to stand before the survival of their species.

But they did not flourish on Aachan, so one of the Hundred, Rulke, commissioned the golden flute, an instrument that could open the Way between the Worlds. Before it could be used, Shuthdar, the old human who made it, stole the flute and fled with it to Santhenar. Unfortunately for Rulke, Shuthdar blundered. He opened all the paths between the worlds, and the four species scrambled to get the flute for themselves. Rather than be taken Shuthdar destroyed it, bringing down the Forbidding that sealed Santhenar off completely. Now the fate of the Three Worlds is bound up with those marooned on Santhenar. They have never ceased to search for a way home, but none has ever been found.

Llian, a brilliant young chronicler at the College of the Histories, presents a new version of an ancient Great Tale, the Tale of the Forbidding, at his graduation telling, to unprecedented acclaim. But Wistan, the master of the College, realizes that Llian has uncovered a deadly mysteryevidence that a crippled girl was murdered at the time the golden flute was destroyed. The crime must have occurred to conceal a greater one, and even now such knowledge could be deadly, both for him and for the College.

Llian is also Zain, an outcast race despised for collaborating with the Charon in olden times. Wistan persecutes Llian to make him retract the tale, but Llian secretly keeps on with his research. He knows that it could be the key to a brilliant storythe first new Great Tale for hundreds of yearsand if he were the one to write it, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest chroniclers of all time.

Karan, a young woman who is a sensitive, was at the graduation telling when Llian told his famous tale. She loves the Histories and is captivated by the tale and the teller. Karan returns to Gothryme, her drought-stricken and impoverished home, but soon afterwards Maigraith appears. Karan owes an obligation to Maigraith, the powerful but troubled lieutenant of Faelamor, and Maigraith insists that she repay it by helping to steal an ancient relic for her liege. Faelamor is the age-old leader of the Faellem, exiled on Santhenar by the Forbidding. Desperate to take her people back to her own world, she believes that the relic may hold the key.

Yggur the sorcerer now holds the relic in Fiz Gorgo. Karan and Maigraith steal into his fortress, but Karan is shocked to learn that the relic is the Mirror of Aachan, stolen from the Aachim a thousand years ago. Being part-Aachim herself, she knows that the Aachim have never stopped searching for it. She must betray her fathers people or refuse her debt to Maigraithdishonor either way. And Karan has a dangerous heritage: part Aachim, part old human, she is a blending. Blendings, though prone to madness, can have unusual talents, as she has. They are also at risk: sometimes hunted to enslave the talent, as often to destroy it.

Maigraith, fascinated by something she sees on the Mirror, is surprised by Yggur. Finally she is overcome but Karan flees with the Mirror into the flooded labyrinth below the fortress, pursued by Yggurs dreadful Whelm guards. Karan eventually escapes but is hunted for weeks through swamp and forest and mountains, the Whelm tracking her through her nightmares. In a twist of fate, Karan saves the life of one of them, Idlis the healer.