by Unknown
“What is this place?” Isiem asked, walking toward the tiny fire. As he got closer, he could see that Ascaros’s face was white and frozen, as if his friend had received some devastating news and was still struggling to understand.
It was the other who answered. Up close, it was apparent that their host—if host he was—was not human. Wisps of shadow trailed around his form, constantly merging with and breaking from his body. The mask and cape seemed to be the only points anchoring his body; other than those form-granting garments, he was as ill-defined as a cloud of smoke.
A shae. One of the true children of the Plane of Shadow. Isiem had read of their kind, but never seen one before—the shadow-people had few dealings with the Dusk Hall.
“An illusion,” the shae said in a voice accented with the melodically guttural inflections of old Nidalese. “Some is of my making. Some is the mirror’s. But none of it, since you set foot on the stairs, has been real.”
“I thought this was a prison,” Isiem said. He sat on a horsehide-covered log near the fire, next to Ascaros. His friend shifted slightly to make space for him, but did not look up. He continued to stare blankly into the smoke-gray flames.
“It is.” The masked creature raised a hand and tilted it to and fro, as if to undercut his own words. “It was. Its nature has… changed, somewhat, over the years. I am hardly the rebel I once was, and the mirror has, accordingly, granted me a certain degree of comfort. Eternal torment has not proven to be my lot after all. But the place is still unkind to look upon, in its natural state, and so I have chosen to render it more appealing. A prison of infinity, not walls.”
“Who are you?” Isiem asked.
“Call me Silence.” The porcelain mask was incapable of showing expression, but the voice behind it was rich with amusement. “My captor was fond of shouting that word at me, so I took it as a name.”
“Your captor?”
Ascaros stirred. “Mesandroth,” he said. “My ancestor. Founder of my line.”
“A wizard of enormous power. One obsessed with immortality.” The shae shrugged. The silver pins threaded into his black cape gleamed in the cool gray firelight. “Whether he found it, I could not say. His offspring proved to be sorcerers, imbued with the magic and death in his blood. He himself was not. He had no insight into their magic and no interest in their lesser gifts. So he captured a sorcerer—me—and tasked me with teaching his children. He imprisoned me in here, because although the shaes are long-lived, we do die eventually. Mesandroth intended that I should live forever, serving his line. So he told me. Then he left.”
“And you’ve been in here ever since, teaching every sorcerer in the line,” Ascaros said.
“Not every one,” Silence corrected him. “In the early days, there were too many. Mesandroth had hopes that one of his sons or daughters might become a worthy apprentice. Not an heir—he had no intention of dying—but someone who might stand at his side. He had many, many children. Far too many for me to tutor.
“For centuries, I was a… prize.” A wry note crept into the shae’s voice, and under it a hint of age-old pain and anger. “They fought over me, his children. Dozens killed each other. The victors sought to learn my secrets. Some of them were kind, others cruel, but all wanted the same thing. Magic. I gave it to them, for I had no choice. And when each one died, I rejoiced, and added a pin to my cape.”
“I’m the last of them,” Ascaros said softly. He looked at Isiem. “The last with any gift for sorcery, anyway. My death wins his freedom. Silence has been engineering the destruction of Mesandroth’s descendants for thousands of years… and I’m the last one.”
“Yes.” The shae laughed quietly. “It troubles him, knowing that. As well it should. When he is dead, the terms of my bondage will be complete, and I will finally be free.”
“You just told him that?” Isiem asked.
“I always tell them. I give them all the same choice.” Silence stood, turning his back on them. He raised his hands to the illusory sky. “I am bound to serve, but I do not do so gladly. Walk away—release me from your part in your forefather’s sin—and I will have no opportunity to hurt you. But take this poisoned gift, and I will do my utmost to destroy you.”
The shae let his hands fall, but kept his back to the shadowcallers. “Every time a new would-be master enters the mirror, I repeat the same offer. I have done this hundreds of times over the centuries. In all that time, two have refused Mesandroth’s gift. Two. The others have all tried to evade their doom while using me. The master’s children do not give up their ambitions easily, and my knowledge is vast. The temptation is too great.
“Some try to beat me into submission. Some try to bribe me. Some try to seduce. I have seen all their stratagems over the years. But I am a creature captured and kept in a midnight mirror of Zon-Kuthon; pain holds no fear and no surprises. There is nothing I desire more than an end to my bondage, and bribes are meaningless in this place. The seductions I always accept. I lie with them, and enthrall them, and ensure they will leave no mortal children who might perpetuate my suffering.”
“You killed Misanthe?” Isiem asked.
The shae looked back at them. The eyeholes of his mask appeared to be blank black spaces, yet Isiem had the fleeting impression that laughter twinkled in those hollow gaps. “I did not. I am not permitted to cause harm to Mesandroth’s blood.”
“But you know who did.” That was Ascaros.
“Of course.” Now the laughter was clearly visible, a roiling in the shae’s smoky form. “It was her apprentice, puffed with ambition. An old story.”
“But you did the puffing,” Isiem said.
“And taught him the shadow garrote.” Ascaros’s voice was brittle ice.
Silence held his hands out in wordless acknowledgement. “And when the apprentice comes back to claim me as his reward, he will die, because nothing prevents me from slaughtering him. It’s an absurdly simple plan. Utterly predictable. Yet it rarely fails.”
“We could stop you,” Isiem said.
“You could,” Silence agreed, “but you won’t. Or rather, he won’t.” The shae pointed at Ascaros, who was once more staring into the fire. “No, he will do as his kind always does. Even knowing that it will doom him, even knowing that he will die, your friend will claim his inheritance.”
Chapter Four: The Burdens of History
They left the midnight mirror without speaking.
Once on the other side, safely back in the Cathedral of Bones, Isiem snatched up the fallen shroud of silk and swept it back over the glass. Then he sat heavily on the bed, shuddering, as Ascaros sank to the floor beside him.
“You can’t go back,” Isiem said.
Ascaros did not reply. He laid his staff across his lap, thumbing its silver adornments over and over in repetitive circles.
“You can’t,” Isiem repeated, more urgently. “Silence is a trap.”
“Is he?” Ascaros asked, as if the answer were of no great concern.
“Everything he said was meant to bait you. His false candor, the sly promises of power, the allusions to your predecessors’ failures, even the mention that two others had refused his offer, so that you wouldn’t be tempted by pride to be the first to say no… it is all calculated to bring you into his grasp.”
“My ancestor’s gifts are all curses,” Ascaros replied. He raised his bad arm in its sling, plucking at the linen bandages that concealed the dead gray flesh. “He left hundreds of children, the shae said… and of those hundreds, I am the last. What an honor. How proud he must be.” He shook his head bitterly. “The sorcery in my blood is killing me already. What does it matter, then, if Silence wants to do the same?”
“Is that what you want? A quicker end?”
“No. What I want is a way out. From all of this.” Ascaros gestured to the cathedral’s walls, to all the decades upon decades of human bones that hemmed them in. “Perhaps the shae can give me that. One way or another. Failing that, I’ll take a better chance of surviving the Dusk
Hall.”
“You don’t need him for that.”
“You don’t need him for that.” Ascaros’s smile was brief and weary. “We’ve discussed this before, Isiem. You truly have no idea what the Dusk Hall is like for someone without your gifts. It’ll only get worse now that we’re working individually with the masters. You can’t help me anymore. But Silence can.”
“Even if that help is not freely given?” Isiem pressed. “You would be the same as our masters, then. Forcing another to do your will with no regard for its own.”
Ascaros’s lips thinned. He looked away, feigning an intense interest in the arrangement of the bones upon their door. “I could offer him a limited term. Ten years, then a guarantee of freedom. After millennia in the mirror, that would be nothing to him. But for me… it might be enough to find a way out of Mesandroth’s curse. By embracing undeath, maybe. Finishing the transformation that began before I was born.” He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know if that’s the right path, or if it would work. But the shae might.”
“What about Voraic?”
The punishment for betrayal in Nidal is far worse than death.
“We should talk to him again.” Ascaros stood, leaning on his staff. “In here. I want to see him face the mirror.”
Isiem inclined his head. He left his friend in their room and went to find one of the Over-Diocesan’s lackeys. “Bring us the apprentice, Voraic,” he said when he found one. He took a seat on a bench of bones in the hallway until the acolyte returned with the man.
Voraic looked worse than he had the last time Isiem had seen him. His skin was almost as gray as his clothing. His fingers trembled visibly with exhaustion; weariness had scored deep lines across his face. And yet even through his bone-deep tiredness and guarded caution, the fear in him was plain.
“My time is precious,” Voraic said as soon as Isiem rose to greet him. “I have work.”
“We won’t keep you from it for long,” Isiem said, ushering him smoothly into the room. He locked the door behind their guest with a quiet click.
“What are you doing?” Voraic asked, turning back in alarm as Isiem turned the key. There were many locks on their door, and Isiem turned them all.
“Asking questions,” Ascaros answered coolly. He pointed the silver-capped head of his staff at the mirror behind its veil. “What do you know about that?”
“Nothing,” Voraic stammered. He knotted his hands together, wringing them in unconscious circles.
Ascaros gave him a thin, humorless smile. He wound the spiked chain of his holy symbol through his fingers and folded his hands in prayer, squeezing the barbs between his palms until both hands were studded with crimson droplets. A pulse of magic emanated from his maimed hands, filling the room with a flare of muddy red light and then receding. Isiem could still feel the enchantment in the air, however, and he knew the other two could as well.
“Try it again,” Ascaros said, unbinding his hand. The wounds had faded to small pink dots. “What do you know about the mirror?”
Voraic’s tongue flicked out nervously to wet his lips. His hands moved faster, over and over each other, strangling his fingers in fear. Silently his mouth moved, forming a protest that Ascaros’s spell quashed—
—no, Isiem realized in a flash of sudden terror, that’s not a lie. That’s a spell.
Fire exploded at Voraic’s feet. Isiem flung himself away to escape it. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ascaros do the same, taking cover behind the midnight mirror. It fell to the floor with a resounding crash, although the sight was obscured behind a rush of scarlet flames. The fireball Voraic had summoned was a sickly crimson thing, its colors murky and uncertain.
There was nothing uncertain about its heat. The mirror’s shroud burst into flames and, almost as quickly, into ash. The bed shielded Isiem from the worst of the explosion, but he still felt the blaze through his clothes and the incongruously gentle drift of his own burning hair against his cheek.
Through it all, Voraic stood still in a pillar of torment, engulfed in clinging fire and screaming wildly as he burned. His spell had not been directed at the shadowcallers, not really; it was meant for himself. The agony of burning alive was nothing compared to what the Kuthite inquisitors would do to him if he were taken alive. This was his escape.
Ascaros stopped it. He tore one of the heavy black drapes from the walls and knocked the burning wizard to the ground. The shadowcaller tossed the drape over Voraic and held it down to smother the flames, adding a few kicks for good measure.
“Misery take the fool,” he snarled, shoving a hand in through the drapes to pull Voraic back from death’s brink. Sweat and soot blackened his brow, but Ascaros’s concentration was untouched. “Help me,” he snapped at Isiem. “Hurry. The Over-Diocesan’s minions will be here soon. The idiot’s attempt was hardly subtle.”
Isiem nodded and fumbled through the drapes, ignoring his own pain. He caught hold of the man’s hands: a sticky, sloughed mess of raw flesh and bubbled skin. Several of the fingers were gone; he couldn’t tell how many. He closed his hands over Voraic’s, pressing each ruined mass into a ball, and prayed for Zon-Kuthon’s cruel mercy.
The Midnight Lord answered, and Voraic’s mangled hand healed. Isiem continued to press down, fusing the man’s remaining fingers—dead or alive—into the pulp of his palms. The flesh healed over itself, trapping the fingers like flies in amber. It was an effective, if grisly, safeguard against spellcasting. There would be no further surprises.
Slowly Voraic came back to consciousness as the healing magic flowed through him. The flames had ruined him. One of his eyes was gone, its socket a molten pit. His nose was a scab of charred meat pocked by two holes. The silver hoops in his ears had been blasted into globs of bubbled metal that dripped onto his shoulders. If he lived, he would be a monster… but there was no one in this room, Isiem thought, who intended for him to live long.
Ascaros dug his fingers savagely into the apprentice’s cheek, yanking his face up so that their gazes met. “What do you know about the mirror?”
Voraic’s mouth twitched. His shoulders sank under the weight of the drapes that still covered his body. “I have been inside,” he admitted in a feeble croak. “I have spoken to the shae.”
Ascaros jerked his fingers, flopping Voraic’s head as though he were a fish on a hook. “You killed my aunt at his instigation.”
“No. Not at the shae’s instigation.” The wizard rolled his good eye at the toppled mirror, staring at it without seeming to really see it. “Silence offered to help. He gave me the tools and the opportunity. But I would have done it on my own eventually, with or without him.”
“Why?” Ascaros released his grip and stepped back. He sounded genuinely curious. “Misanthe saved you. She plucked you from the Hovels and gave you not just survival, but a chance at greatness.”
“Should I be grateful for that? She took me from one hell to another. A worse one, I think.” Voraic’s burned lip curled, cracking at the edges. “And she murdered my mother.”
“How did you do it?” Isiem asked.
“Silence taught me the spell. It was Misanthe’s secret sorcery; no one knew that magic but her. Her refusal to teach it to anyone else—even her apprentice—was famous. It was a traceless weapon, or as near to one as I could manage.” Voraic grimaced, shifting under the drapes in a futile attempt to find a less painful position. “But I would have done it even if I’d known I would be caught.”
“Did he teach you anything else?” Ascaros demanded.
“Yes.” Voraic’s remaining eye squinted at the shadowcaller for a moment. Then he wheezed a strangled, mirthless sound that might have been a laugh. “Why, did he promise to share those secrets with you? It’s tempting, isn’t it? Centuries of lore at your beck and call. He isn’t lying. He has the knowledge. But if you’re asking whether it’s worth dealing with the shae…”
“Is it?”
Voraic closed his eye and let his head loll back. The
ribboned flesh of his cheek blew in and out with each breath he took. “Look what became of your aunt. Look what became of me. All Silence says is true: he invites you to destruction.”
Isiem glanced at his friend, but Ascaros did not return his look. “How did you get into the mirror?” Ascaros pressed, still intent on the apprentice. “It only admits those of my blood.”
“The blood doesn’t have to be in you.” Weakly, Voraic reached for a blackened chain around his neck. The links had become stuck to the man’s melted flesh, but Ascaros plucked it away with callous ease. Attached to the chain was a small vial, its glass shattered by the dying apprentice’s convulsions. A charred rime clung to the inner surfaces of the few fragments that remained. “I wore hers, and it was enough.”
Ascaros’s face hardened. He jerked the broken vial off Voraic’s neck, snapping the damaged chain. “Does anyone else know this?”
“No. Misanthe might have suspected… but it was a routine task for me to clean her tools after her prayers, so unless Silence told her, she would not have known that I kept the blood, or why.” Voraic coughed out another miserable laugh. “Kill me and the secret dies too. But you will have to hurry. The Over-Diocesan’s servants are coming. Give me a quick death, and I won’t shout your secret loudly enough for them to hear.”
“Consider it done.” Ascaros drew the dagger at his belt and plunged it into the empty socket of Voraic’s missing eye. The apprentice thrashed under the heavy drape, kicking spasmodically for several seconds and then stopping.
Ascaros withdrew the dagger and wiped it off on the thick black cloth. Before he could sheathe it, a sharp knock sounded at their door.
“Open,” a woman’s voice ordered, “or suffer.”
“Of course,” Ascaros called back, standing. He turned toward the door, but before he could take two steps, Isiem caught his arm.
“What will you tell them?” Isiem whispered. He canted his head meaningfully toward the overturned mirror. Resting lopsided on its halo of chains, the mirror seemed almost ordinary, by the standards of Nidalese decor. Yet one needed only a glance at its response to Ascaros’s reflection to see that it was anything but.