Royal Falcon

by Chris Svartbeck

  She glanced sharply to the side. “Come to the table, little birdie!”

  Jokon didn’t dare resist.

  Several small mirrors lay on the table. “Let’s see which harmonizes best with you.” Kai picked up several different mirrors, held them up in his direction, and drew strange symbols in the air with her index finger. A few of the mirrors glowed. Finally, she picked up a small, round mirror. She had barely touched it when a bright beam of light shot from it.

  “Good resonance!” Nao commented from the fireplace.

  Tur also leaned over the table. “I bound that mirror!”

  For a moment, it looked like Kai was going to attack him, then she bowed her head and stepped back. “Very well. He’s yours today.”

  Tur took the mirror in both hands and pointed the beam of light directly at Jokon. Jokon felt as if he were standing in front of a hot oven. The light was blinding him. His face and hands felt like they were burning. Then he grew cold. Very cold. The mirror seemed to be drawing all the heat out of him. Jokon lost consciousness.

  When he awoke, it was night and he was lying in the corridor. His arms and legs felt like pudding. A thunderstorm was raging in his head. He tried to get up, but he felt like he was going to black out again. He finally crawled to his room on all fours.

  For the next few days, Jokon wasn’t even able to do the most minor of spells. Tevi was worried about him and asked him a million questions about what had happened. Jokon remained silent and stared bitterly at the wall. Finally, Tevi asked Marada for help. The housekeeper examined Jokon and knew what was wrong.

  “Drained,” was her diagnosis.

  Jokon shot up. He had heard that somewhere before. The thought slipped away like an eel.

  “He’ll be fine soon. Your friend is robust. With a bit more food, a lot of rest and a little tonic, he’ll be his old self in no time.”

  In the days that followed, Jokon was forced to drink a bitter and scratchy-tasting herbal tonic before every meal. Whatever it was, Marada’s medicine helped. Barely half a moon later, he had fully recovered, but he couldn’t shake the nightmares he was having about his experience.

  Over the course of the next few moon cycles, each of the Greens were called to the tower. Jokon began to fear like the plague what had once seemed so desirable. Nao and Master Go weren’t even that bad. They fetched the students they needed for their spells to the tower themselves or sent word through the servants. Rarely anything happened other than them losing time and being very tired afterward. All of the Greens soon learned to fear Tur and Kai. Tur always used the mirror to summon his guinea pigs. Kai, however, usually sent the Blue, Krudion, as a messenger. He was a slimy man who seemed to enjoy his duties.

  Jokon tried again and again to resist Tur’s summoning spell or Kai’s binding spell, without success. One evening, he was sitting on the steps, particularly drained, when Tevi squatted down beside him.

  “It’s fun for them,” he said. “If you resist, it’s fun for them. I have heard them talking. Tur and Kai bet on which of them will break you. Jokon, you can’t keep going like this!”

  Jokon looked up at him with his red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t stop. I have to defend myself. It is so disgusting when Tur summons me, and my body simply obeys him. And Kai... Kai laughs when she realizes how scared I am.”

  Tevi gulped. “I feel the same way,” he confided in Jokon, “I try to switch off completely. I just bury all of my feelings deep within me. Whenever I manage to do that, when they can’t make me react to their torture, they send me away fairly quickly.”

  After thinking for a moment, he continued. “We aren’t the only ones they bully. They always keep Thealina and Isito there for a long time, too. And Gavila, from the Blues.”

  Jokon pricked his ears. “Gavila?” His thoughts churned. "What do we all have in common? There has to be something!”

  “If anyone will know, Gavila will. We should talk to her.”

  “She is a Blue... Do you think she’ll talk about it with Greens?”

  "What other choice do we have? I will talk to Thealina and Isito. You know Gavila better than we do; you ask her.”

  Talking to Gavila was difficult. She pretended she didn’t even notice Jokon’s attempts, but one evening, Karados came into Jokon’s room and handed him a letter with a wide grin on his face. A message from Gavila!

  “In three nights, after the hour of the owl, when the gates are closed for the night. I will meet you in the empty room at the front end of the Blue corridor.”

  An Alliance Born of Necessity

  Gavila was quite irritated when not only Jokon appeared, but a whole group of Greens. “Have you lost your minds? What were you thinking?”

  “We need answers,” Tevi replied, unfazed, and Jokon added, “You have been here longer than we have. You must know more! What are the Reds doing to us? Why are we, of all people, always called so often?”

  Gavila crossed her arms over her chest. “That is none of your business. That is knowledge meant for the Blues.”

  Thealina pushed forward. “Please. Gavila, we need more information. I am scared, terribly scared!”

  That broke the ice. Gavila suddenly seemed old and tired. She sat down on the bare stone floor and the Greens followed her example. “What do you know?”

  Isito gave her a summary. “The Reds and Master Go have mirrors in the tower. Many, many mirrors, behind the wall hangings. They use the mirrors to do spells. And they use us to somehow charge the mirrors so they can cast more spells.”

  "And when they use us,” Jokon realized, “we are weak for several days after. When they use the Grays, they sometimes lose all of their magical power. Then, they become servants.”

  “So, you know that much,” Gavila said, her voice sad. “That’s all?” she sighed. “Okay then, I’ll explain it to you.”

  She stared blankly at the wall for a while before continuing. “The mirrors don’t just collect magical power. They consist entirely of it. Jokon, have you looked at the ring I gave you recently?”

  Jokon had nearly forgotten the ring he had sewn into his belt pocket. He nervously felt around at his belt, tore open the threads and carefully lifted the ring from his pocket. The ring wasn’t a ring anymore. Instead, he was holding a tiny, round mirror with a finely patterned obsidian frame in his hand! Amazed and fascinated, he ran his finger over it. The ring mirror seemed to vibrate in his hands, and he could hear a very gentle, light buzzing. He looked at Gavila enquiringly.

  “You attuned the ring to you when you used it. It collected your life force; a little each time. Over time, it collected enough to crystallize into a mirror.”

  “So, the mirrors are the life force of the sorcerers who use them?”

  “If it were only just that!” Gavila looked at each of her students. “There is another connection between the mirrors and a sorcerer’s energy. That is why Greens are only allowed to work with black water. Black water can’t store your energy and therefore can’t crystallize into mirrors. It is harmless.” She hesitated for a moment. “Mirrors don’t just collect the energy of the sorcerer who creates them. They harvest any kind of life force conducted into them. A powerful sorcerer can conduct the life force of a weaker being into his mirror, making his mirror stronger. That is exactly what the Reds and Master Go are doing. They call you so often because you have a lot of energy but can’t shield yourself from them yet. You provide a good harvest.”

  She stopped again for a moment. The topic seemed very difficult for her.

  “The Reds and Master Go aren’t the only ones who sap energy from the Greens and Grays.”

  She lowered her head, ashamed.

  “We Blues do it, too.”

  Jokon went ice-cold as he remembered... “You harvested my life force when you taught me the scrying spell with your bowl, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Gavila whispered, “but I only took a tiny bit...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Jokon had had enough. He jumped
up and paced around the room, from one wall to the other, while his thoughts spun in his mind like a top. There was something else... something that had been bothering him for some time... He turned around to face Gavila. “Marada told me they had drained me dry after my first visit with the Reds,” he said, slowly. “And Jacitin, the girl from my village who died so quickly, she said the Reds had drained her, too. That means, a mirror can drain so much life from a person, they die. Then there was Lira, the little girl who came here with us and I never saw again. Jacitin said...” He tried to remember the exact formulation. “Jacitin told me, ‘they consumed her’. What does that mean?”

  Gavila’s eyes were filled with unshed tears. “It means Lira became a soul mirror that very first night. When a sorcerer wants to create a new soul mirror without using his own life force, he has to fully consume another person’s life force. Small children are best suited for that. They can’t defend themselves yet.”

  Jokon froze. “But we didn’t see her dead body,” he said, slowly.

  “There is no body. When a new mirror is created like that, it extracts the life force so completely that nothing of the person remains. Nothing at all!”

  The four Greens sat there, paralyzed. Jokon sank to the floor. This was a nightmare! He remembered the many little clues he had been given and ignored. The strange, pitying looks from the servants. The lamentation for the dead his parents had sung.

  Gavila opened her mouth as though to say more but closed it again. She waited.

  “What do I have to do to not end up as a mirror?” Jokon whispered.

  “I’ll explain it to you,” Gavila said. “But not today. We will meet again in three days. Remember, you can’t tell anyone. No one must find out that you know!”

  One after the other, the Greens rose and slowly returned, like sleepwalkers, to their rooms. Gavila waited until there was no one left in the corridor. Then, she arose, walked to the window and looked out into the night. “My beloved mountains,” she sighed. “I will never breathe your air again, never...”

  In the moons that followed, the little group of Green conspirators began their difficult, secret extra lessons. Gavila started with the most important aspect.

  “First, you’ll need your own mirrors,” she stated and gave each of the others black rings like the one she had given Jokon. Then, she trained them to conduct their magical powers through the ring. Jokon, who already had experience with this procedure, acted as her teacher’s aide. It took a good four moons before Thealina, the last in the group, had created her own mirror. Only then was Gavila willing to continue their lessons.

  “These mirrors are your life insurance,” she said. “Look after them as though they were your eyesight. No, look after them even better. If you have to, you can live without your eyes, but you can never live without the mirror! Whenever you have to work with a mirror that isn’t yours, that mirror will absorb your life force. Of course, there is a spell for that, but it stores what it doesn’t need for the spell for its owner. So, this excess power is lost to you. However, if you hold your own mirror between them, it will intercept the excess power and store it itself. You can get your life force back from your own mirror at any time.”

  She brought her own mirror with her and let the Greens practice with her as a partner. Again and again, without mercy, until each of them instinctively held up their own mirror in defense, without thinking, as soon as she tried to do a spell.

  After that, they practiced using their own mirrors to protect themselves when someone unexpectedly cast a spell against them. Gavila ordered them not to try it outside the practice room until they had mastered it well enough to do it without the other sorcerer noticing. Many moons passed before Gavila deemed the Greens good enough to use their mirrors as a shield all the time. Still, she made it very clear that they should never try to use this defense against Master Go. Master Go would notice.

  She also taught them to consciously use their own mirror as a reservoir. “If you are called to the tower or to one of the Blues, store as much energy as you can in your mirrors. You will then seem weaker than you are. Then, they will underestimate you and won’t find you as interesting anymore. It will also give you the ability to quickly recharge afterward. But charge them carefully and in small quantities; no one must notice!”

  Gavila’s advice helped. Jokon realized they didn’t call him to the tower as often. Only Kai continued to summon him once a moon. Couldn’t that mean witch just leave him alone? What was it about him that made her want to constantly torture him?

  *

  Sasi was horrified. The crown prince had called for her again. The little serving girl could hardly fight back her tears. What was it about her that made him constantly torture her? Why didn’t he choose one of the stronger boys as his playmate?

  “Run!” Tolioro said.

  “Where to?”

  “To the big cedar tree and back.”

  Sasi didn’t ask. Tolioro never explained anything to her anyway. She simply started running. Five steps, six steps, seven steps... She started to hope that, this time, she really was only supposed to run, when something slammed into her legs. With a cry, Sasi fell. Thank the Goddess, she had at least fallen on soft grass. For some reason, her legs refused to obey her. Something was holding them together. Sasi propped herself up. A strange contraption made of bits of rope and stones was wrapped around her legs.

  Tolioro sauntered up. “Looks like this weapon works after all,” he remarked, grinning. “I didn’t want to believe it. Now, let’s see if that was just a lucky shot or if it always works so well!” He unwrapped the projectile from her legs. “Keep running!”

  Sasi didn’t dare object and started running again.

  An hour and several bruises later, she was completely exhausted. Tolioro had tested his new toy on every part of her body. Her arms and legs were scraped up and her left cheek was burning. One of the stones had just barely missed her eye.

  Tolioro still wasn’t satisfied. “Now, let’s see if the weapon works in the water, too!” he commanded.

  Exhausted, Sasi immersed herself in the goldfish pond and started swimming.

  The weapon was useless in the water. The water slowed it down so it couldn’t properly wrap itself around Sasi’s arms and legs. Submissively, the girl obeyed Tolioro and brought his throwing stones back, only to swim back out into the pond. Tolioro’s fifth throw missed her. The weapon flew past her and sank into the deep water.

  “Get it back!” Tolioro commanded her harshly.

  Sasi started to panic. “Please, Sire,” she begged, “Don’t demand that of me. I can’t dive!”

  “You dare talk back to me? Do as I say!”

  Sasi knew that tone of voice. Terrified, she swam to where the stone weapon had sunk. She couldn’t stand up anymore; the water was too deep here. She tried to dive. She failed. She barely got her head beneath the water, but her body refused to follow. And again. Again, she failed. “I can’t do it! I simply can’t get down!”

  "Come back,” Tolioro commanded.

  Sasi swam back to shore.

  Tolioro was already standing in the water. “I will show you how to get down!”

  As he spoke, he grabbed her head and shoulders and pushed her down. For a moment, Sasi was too surprised to react. Then, she felt mud in her face. Air! She needed air! Sasi tried to get up. It didn’t work. Something heavy was standing on her back, mercilessly pushing her body into the floor of the pond. She started to panic. Her hands grasped wildly to the right and left. There! She grabbed hold of a root! She pulled hard, rotated her body and the weight disappeared from her back. She emerged, coughing and snorting, dragged herself to the other shore and lay there, completely exhausted. Someone called to her. Two legs appeared in her line of sight. Legs that ended at feet in bejeweled sandals. Tolioro. “Seize this wicked little servant! She attacked and injured me for no reason at all while we were playing!”

  Sasi looked up, dismayed. Tolioro had a bleeding scrape on his
left arm. He must have fallen against the stones on the shore when she shook him off her back.

  Two garden servants were already there. Sasi was grabbed by powerful hands and put on her feet. “What should we do with her, My Lord?” the older man asked.

  “She attacked me, her master, a son of the Royal House of Mehme! Give her fifty lashes!”

  Both men winced. “She won’t survive fifty lashes! That would be too much, even for a grown man!” the man dared object.

  “Fine, then half that!” Tolioro demanded with a scowl. “And I will watch you punish her myself!”

  The men brought Sasi to the Courtyard of Screams without further ado and tied her to one of the whipping posts. Sasi didn’t protest. It was her word against the crown prince’s. Who would ever believe her? Tolioro stood before her, smiling. His tongue danced across his lower lip. That was the last thing Sasi saw. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the bite of the whip.

  Iragana listened intently to her maid’s report on Tolioro’s latest antics. Tolioro’s little serving girl had barely survived her punishment. How clever of Tolioro to twist the matter so he appeared the injured party! Hopefully, he would find his opponents’ weaknesses that skillfully when he was king.

  *

  Kai was well-trained in finding her victims’ weaknesses and she exploited them mercilessly. She noticed immediately that Jokon’s greatest fear was losing control over his body. Kai perfected her binding spell and didn’t allow him even the slightest movement. She enjoyed sensing Jokon’s fear and frustration in the mirror. He practically panicked when Kai blocked his ability to breathe and only allowed him to take a breath when he was close to losing consciousness.

  She often worked with Tur. Tur usually remained in the background and watched, but he gave Kai tips on how to torture her victims even more. Tur was also a specialist in finding the vilest mirrors and using them for targeted attacks. Jokon didn’t know which of the two he feared most. Kai was brutal; Tur was cruel. Their mirrors were like their owners. Jokon soon learned how to tell which of the Reds was summoning him the second a summoning spell hit him. Tur’s mirror felt disgusting, like snail slime covered in cobwebs. Every time he came into contact with it, for hours afterward, he felt compelled to wash himself again and again. Kai’s mirrors were like shards of glass; hard, raw, sharp and painful. They made him feel shattered and exhausted, interspersed with panic attacks.