by A. H. Lee
Roland had retreated a few steps. Sairis often forgot that ordinary people found ghosts unnerving. He couldn’t understand why. The little creature was entirely harmless—more so now than when it had been alive. Sairis crouched and touched the dried blood of the rune on the glass. The mouse ghost came to the other side and waited patiently now that it had his attention.
“I think I’d better see what the mouse has found first,” murmured Sairis. Half-formed theories unspooled through his head. The events of the last few days began to rearrange themselves.
“Be careful?” Roland still sounded worried.
Sairis rolled his eyes. “I am just going into the mirror to spy. It would be difficult for someone to hurt me under these circumstances, and I will not get lost with the mouse. I’m not truly going anywhere. I’m not gating, only spirit-walking. Here, I’ll show you.”
He went over to the circle that he’d already drawn and added a few finishing touches. He didn’t need salt for this. Sairis lay down in the circle and composed himself. He’d already positioned the mirror to include this part of the room. He took a few deep breaths, quieting his mind, slowing his heartbeat, sinking...
If Sairis had been a new practitioner, this might have taken hours, but he’d done it so often that he could sink into the necessary trance in a matter of moments. He came out of it by degrees, a delicate process like peeling a grape. Sairis sat up. He appeared to be in the same room, although everything was backwards. Most importantly, Roland was only in the mirror, along with Sairis’s prone body.
The sight of his own body under such circumstances always gave Sairis a queasy sensation. He’d told Roland the truth when he said that his spirit would be safe. His body, on the other hand, was defenseless. He had a visceral desire to flee back to it. You’re not in your tower. You’re in a hostile city. How can you possibly take such a risk?
Sairis forced the panic down. This is a safe place. Roland thinks so, and I have decided to trust him.
Roland was watching Sairis’s body intently. Sairis had to rap on the glass before he turned. Roland’s eyes darted between Sairis’s body in the room and his phantom image standing in the mirror.
Sairis breathed on the glass and wrote, “Spirit-walking.”
Roland swallowed. “Can you hear me?”
Sairis nodded. He could hear Roland, but Roland couldn’t hear him unless he placed the proper spells on his own side of the glass. Sairis didn’t want to do that just yet. He didn’t want to do anything that would make the veil thinner here or his own trail easier to follow.
Sairis waved and tried for a lighthearted expression. Have fun at the old bastard’s funeral.
Roland stepped right up to the mirror. He placed his palm flat against it. Without quite knowing why, Sairis reached out and put his own phantom hand flat against Roland’s, separated by a finger’s breadth of glass and a world of magic. “Be safe,” whispered Roland.
Sairis breathed again and wrote, “See you tonight.”
Chapter 31. Back in the Palace
Something was bothering Roland. He told himself that it was just the aftermath of his first enjoyable sexual encounter in a year. Now he just wanted to spend the day in bed with Sairis, touching him, making him smile, and telling stories. Roland definitely did not want to leave his new lover lying on the floor, looking remarkably like a corpse. Roland did not want to go to a funeral or think about his father or be reminded of other funerals that had been cruelly brief in the mountains.
Roland told himself that this was the source of his discomfort. And yet, for some reason, he kept seeing Sairis from the night before, writing a rune in blood on the mirror after he’d made the mouse ghost.
That reminds me of something. What?
It took all of Roland’s willpower to leave the tavern half an hour later with Daphne. They were dressed in plain clothes. Some of Anton’s people met them at the stable entrance, and by the time they swept into the palace, the queen’s guard had swarmed about them, heady with excitement and bristling with weapons. Daphne asked whether Uncle Maniford had been out of his rooms this morning. Upon learning that he had not, she issued an order that he and all of his attendants be detained there. “Be polite, but firm,” Daphne told the guard. “Do not say or do anything to alarm him. Magus Marsden and some of his people will be meeting you at the suite, and you are to follow their instructions.”
Roland was taken to his rooms, where a valet dressed him. He was turned out in stiff blacks, a simple wig, and uncomfortable shoes. And all the while, Roland kept trying to figure out what Sairis’s actions reminded him of.
Daphne’s question: “What would have been required to prepare the glass?”
Sairis’s answer: “Runes written in his own blood on both ends of the gate. That’s the easiest way. But I can’t imagine that Hastafel would trust anyone with his own blood. He’s never been in your palace, has he?”
No, of course he hasn’t, thought Roland. But what if the blood came from someone else? What if a magician colluded with Hastafel by sending him their own blood or a mirror? Then all they would have to do is put their mark on our end.
As he walked through the palace corridors in formal procession with Daphne, Roland rehearsed the ill-fated conference from three days ago. Most of the guests had never been in our strategy room. If one of them did something to the mirror, it probably happened right there under our noses.
Roland listened with half an ear while Daphne spoke with one of her advisors. “Your Grace, King Norres would like a word with you in private. I believe he has gotten wind that you were...uh...in confidence with Lamont during your disappearance. He is not pleased to have been left out of any negotiations.”
“I will speak with him after the funeral,” said Daphne.
It’s got to be Norres, thought Roland. He remembered the man’s surly attitude and unreasonable demands. He certainly wishes us ill. He distrusts Lamont. He beats his child. He doesn’t respect Daphne as a ruler.
Another part of Roland’s mind laughed at the idea. Norres, a secret magician? It was difficult to imagine. Falcosta persecuted its magicians mercilessly. Still... I’ve seen men dancing in the Tipsy Knave by dark, and loudly reviling “perverts” in the light of day. Guilt can do odd things to a person. Could Norres be a self-hating magician?
Roland tried to picture where everyone had sat in the room. We took a break for lunch, he remembered. Daphne stayed in the strategy room. Uncle Mani spoke with her. Could he have done it?
But Uncle Mani seemed, if anything, an even poorer candidate for secret wizard than Norres. Roland had known Uncle Mani all his life. It was easy to imagine his uncle being seduced by a succubus, but it was very difficult to imagine him keeping a secret like magic for decades.
Roland thought back to the moment he and Daphne had entered the room. Everyone was milling around, eating, drinking tea, and talking. Anyone could have tampered with the mirror during that time.
Duke Winthrop met the queen’s party in the formal audience hall. Roland was relieved to see that his uncle had brought only his personal retinue, and they weren’t unduly armed, considering the circumstances. “Your Grace,” said Uncle Winthrop, bowing deeply. “I am glad you have safely returned to us.”
“Uncle,” said Daphne, “thank you for acting on my behalf in my absence. I realize you were put in a difficult position, and I am sorry for it. However, I needed to get to the bottom of this assassination attempt. I promise you, my time out of sight was well-spent. It seems Uncle Maniford has been manipulated by a demon.”
Winthrop’s surprise seemed genuine. “What sort of demon?”
“A very charming sort,” said Daphne discreetly, “or so I’m told. I have sent Marsden to deal with it. The magicians seem to feel that Uncle Mani may not be wholly responsible for his actions or even wholly conscious of them. I intend to lock him away until he has been restored to himself and then make a decision. The demon will be banished.”
“Marsden?” said Winthr
op carefully. “Not the necromancer?”
Roland could hear the question hanging in the air: Where is he?
But Daphne only nodded. “Yes, Marsden. I am sending you to rally the border garrisons, Uncle. I intend to strike with everything we can muster before the snows fall. I am riding out with my guard and Prince Anton to meet five thousand mounted knights from Lamont. You will meet us in the pass.”
Winthrop swelled, a look of satisfaction on his face. “Yes, Your Grace. I believe this is a wise course. A risky one, but the best under the circumstances.” His eyes flicked to Roland and he inclined his head.
I had nothing to do with this decision, Roland wanted to say, but it was not his place to speak.
“The necromancer—” began Winthrop.
“Magus Sairis is none of your concern, Uncle,” said Daphne. “If we are clear on our course of action, let us go put my father to rest.”
Chapter 32. Mirror Maze
Sairis wasn’t sure what to expect when he followed the mouse out of the door of the inverted room inside the mirror. His spirit had walked in the Shadow Lands on the edge of Death and in Faerie where the Styx became the Lethe. He’d walked in dreams and even used magic there. But he’d never walked more than short distances in mirrors—only between runes that he’d set himself. Those passages had been almost instantaneous. Sairis suspected that a mouse following a thread of magic would not take such a direct route.
One glimpse through the door of the inverted room confirmed his suspicions. Sairis fixed his eyes on the mouse and tried to keep them there. The mirror maze. Sairis had read about it, but never seen it. This was what happened when you wandered without a tether.
Sairis seemed to be walking in a space of infinitely refracted light—a hall of mirrors that opened in three dimensions around him, throwing back nothing but his own image into eternity.
What was more, if Sairis let his eyes linger on the reflections for more than an instant, he had the sense of his own essence diluted by the endless repetition—spread out, thinned into nonexistence. Sairis gritted his teeth and focused on the mouse. It had no reflection. It was a ghost with no body and no true place in the world of the living. Sairis suspected that it did not see the mirror maze at all, although what it did see, he couldn’t imagine.
The mouse moved with quick confidence, dipping this way and that, turning, then bounding ahead as though following an invisible trail. Sairis latched onto its sense of purpose. Purpose was everything in the mirror maze.
At one point, the mouse stopped and flattened itself against the ground. Sairis stopped, too. He waited for long moments, enduring the eerie silence, resisting the urge to make a noise if only to reassure himself that he could.
Something passed them by. Sairis didn’t see it, but he felt it—a cold shadow that made all the reflections flicker—one of the nameless creatures that hunted in the void. I am not really here, he told himself. I am asleep in a locked room in a tavern on the mortal plane... Then the hunter was gone, and the mouse was moving again.
Sairis could not have said how long he walked before he noted changes out of the corners of his eyes. The reflections began to break into fractal patterns—spirals of light that made it even harder not to turn and stare. The patterns fanned and flared and became more colorful. Sairis was positive that they now reflected more than his own image.
The mouse took a sharp turn and, out of nowhere, a doorway appeared. It was as though it had lain across their path in some other dimension, revealed only by the perfect angle. Sairis wondered if such doorways lay all around him. Perhaps the fractal patterns revealed a clue, if only he could read them.
The mouse paused on the edge of the doorway. It had fulfilled its contract, but it was now thoroughly in thrall to a necromancer. The sudden lack of purpose would be terrible. Sairis knelt and murmured a spell that would calm it. He said, “Wait for me a moment and then take me back the way we came. I will give you more blood after that.”
He should, in fact, send it down the River. Otherwise, it would forget how to properly die and end up haunting the Tipsy Knave. But it was only a mouse, and Sairis had larger concerns.
He stood at the edge of the door for a long moment, looking into the room. It was a private chamber with a canopied bed in green silk, a desk, a washbasin, and a dressing table with a large mirror. Sairis felt certain that this mirror was his vantage point. Once he stepped in front of it, he would be able to see who was in the real world beyond. For the moment, he couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see him.
Sairis could, however, see the inanimate details that lay in front of the mirror. More accurately—he would see objects that had remained in the same place for a long time, items with a well-worn reflection. As he studied them, all of his earlier suspicions flared anew. The mouse came back too fast. Distance in mirrors wasn’t the same as distance in the real world, but the two were related when a creature was following a thread of magic instead of gating.
The wall hangings included more floral patterns than Sairis would have expected in a warlord’s chambers. In fact, the whole room looked both too permanent and too impersonal for Hastafel. Sairis didn’t think it could belong to any of the magicians at the university, either. The furniture was heavy wood, the tapestries thick and expensive. They were all neutral colors. There were no weapons, maps, grimoires, or even mundane books. There were no paintings of human beings, only hunts and flowers. And yet this was the source of the magic from the shard of glass in the strategy room.
Sairis couldn’t see the entire space. Details faded into fractal spirals around the edges where the mirror did not reflect a view. Still, he thought he had a good idea of the layout and perhaps even a good idea of where the room was located. He thought the design of the tapestries looked familiar.
Sairis scrutinized the mirror itself. It was worth using a bit of his own magic to do a true examination. He was not surprised to find it warded.
Sairis felt fairly certain the glass had been used for gating or at least for scrying. That meant that sounds might carry from his side. Indeed, a paranoid practitioner might have made certain they would.
Quietly, then, on tiptoe, Sairis crossed the room and looked through to the mortal plane. He saw a young man whom he did not recognize lounging against one post of the bed. He had dark, curly hair, a full mouth, and green eyes that seemed unnaturally bright. Sairis followed his gaze to the desk, where a second individual was furiously stuffing things into a bag.
Sairis abandoned caution. “So,” he murmured, “it was you...”
Chapter 33. Blood and Magic
The blood oath was always taken at the boundary stone in the palace courtyard. The stone didn’t look like much. It was a rugged, dark gray mass about the size of a kitchen table, mostly flat on top with indentations that sometimes held rainwater or snowmelt. By long tradition, the stone was not sculpted or shaped in any way. Lichen and moss grew along the shady side. In his childhood, Roland had watched birds bathe there, and he’d even seen an unattended horse drink from the stone once. Marcus had once dared him to do the same, and Roland had shaken his head, horrified. “It’s got the blood of my ancestors in it!”
Marcus had shrugged. “Only every seventy years or so. Blood washes away.”
“Have you ever drunk from yours?” demanded Roland.
“No. I sat on it and read a book once. The hollow is perfectly ass-shaped!”
All of the major border lords had boundary stones of their own, and most of them took the blood oath in the same manner as the king. A number of villages had them as well, although most were nowhere near the current borders of Mistala. Roland assumed this was because borders tended to shift.
Villagers held the stones in almost religious regard and would sometimes take marriage vows or other serious oaths by shedding blood upon them. Fantastic stories involving boundary stones were legion. Everyone seemed to have a second cousin’s brother’s sister who’d been granted a wish by a boundary stone, or raised a va
luable animal from the dead, or had gotten into Faerie. It was said that the stones were always warm, like a living thing. And, indeed, snow tended to melt, rather than pile, atop them. Some people claimed that if you put your ear to a boundary stone, you could hear a distant heartbeat. Roland had tried this as a child, but heard nothing.
Legends claimed that the stones had been worshipped in the days before steel swords and perhaps even before bronze. Some priests of the modern gods attempted to incorporate the stones into their own legends, while others held the stones in contempt. Boundary stones were entirely outlawed in Falcosta, where they were considered a foreign cult. People from Lamont tended to scoff at them as superstitious nonsense—an idea shared by many at the university. However, even the most skeptical citizens of Mistala expected their king to take the blood oath. It was a tradition as old as the kingdom.
It was also traditionally uncomfortable. No chairs were placed for the ceremony, no awnings, rugs, or even straw. Horse dung was shoveled away, but that was all. Witnesses were expected to divest themselves of iron and steel before attending. They stood in a circle around the boundary stone and waited for Daphne to burn a token from her father and cut her own palm over the ashes. She would use an obsidian blade—stone over stone. Her blood would pool in the ancient rock where her father’s had pooled and his father’s before him.
Roland was relieved that Daphne did not make a show of greeting Anton before the ceremony. Tensions with Falcosta were strained enough without making her private confidences even clearer. Daphne greeted Anton and Norres together with equal formality and invited them to view the blood oath. Norres said nothing, not even to thank her, which was rude, but at least he did not make accusations.
Roland walked with the royal procession, his sword abandoned in his room in deference to the ancient ceremony. Mistala’s formal audience hall included stone and glass knives that might be worn to this event. However, they were not mandatory, and Roland felt he’d had enough interactions with obsidian blades of late. Guards around the edges of the courtyard would be properly armed, and that was what mattered.