An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  Jean-Claude spun round in dismay. “Majesty!” Ambassador du Blain, apparently not one for the sight of blood, slumped over in a dead faint.

  Julio looked around wildly and pointed to one of the many mirrors covering the walls. “Assassin!”

  Isabelle espied the reflection of a man in a mirror who was not there in the real world: Felix. His espejismo had cut the emissary’s throat in the mirror. Saints, he could murder anyone in the room. His espejismo shook reflected blood from his blade as Grand Leon’s emissary crumpled to the ground. Felix in the mirror raised his blade to strike at Jean-Claude’s reflection.

  “Jean-Claude, duck!” Isabelle shouted.

  Jean-Claude threw himself flat just as the assassin stabbed where his reflection had been.

  The swiftest guard rushed Isabelle, sword drawn. She lurched to the side. Too slow, but Julio flew in, hammering the guard in the jaw with one hand even while relieving him of his sword with the other.

  Then the mass of guards was upon them, and Julio all but disappeared under a wave of crimson-clad guardsmen.

  “Julio!” Isabelle screamed, but he emerged from the crush, gained a step of separation, and proceeded to demonstrate just what “greatest swordsman in Aragoth” actually meant. Back in the aerie, he had been exhausted, half-starved, and wounded, but his espejismo knew no such pains. He was what he believed himself to be. He moved like an angry wasp, evading every blow until he could drive home his sting. He stabbed one guard through the belly, reaped the legs out from under another, and shattered the jaw of a third with a punch that would have broken his own knuckles had they been made of mere flesh and bone.

  The remaining guards learned caution, circling him like hounds on a bear.

  “Señors, to me!” Julio shouted to the Hundred. “If ever you were loyal to Carlemmo, to me!”

  Most of the Hundred had already produced hidden weapons from the folds of their garments. A handful rushed toward Julio, though to reinforce or betray him Isabelle could not guess.

  Margareta seized Clìmacio and dragged him from the dais. More guards rushed into the room from all sides, racing to her aid. Isabelle took one step toward the retreating queen—she was the key—then something slammed into her from the side and tackled her to the ground.

  “Traitress!” Kantelvar howled. He belted her in the face and cracked her head off the marble floor. “You could have been a saint!”

  Stars exploded in Isabelle’s vision. Silvery mirrorblood ran from her nose, and her limbs were as saggy as old rope. A manifestation of will it might have been, but her espejismo could still be hurt or killed.

  Kantelvar straddled her, grabbed her throat with one hand, and belted her with the other.

  “Whore!” he screamed, giving her no chance to regroup. “I made you. I crafted you to be the mother of the Savior. You belong to me!”

  Isabelle squirmed and fended off his blows with her crippled right hand, yanking at Kantelvar’s grip on her throat with her left, but nothing about her espejismo made her stronger than him.

  “Off, cur!” A bellow of rage and a heavy thump. Kantelvar’s weight flipped from Isabelle’s back as Jean-Claude put a thunderous boot in his side. The artifex’s howls of outrage became a scream of pain.

  Isabelle pushed to hands and knees and Jean-Claude scooped her the rest of the way up.

  “Get you out of here,” he gasped. His face was white as suet, his clothes sticky with fresh blood. Isabelle’s heart wailed for him even as she forced her mind back to the fray, the guards, the dons. Julio and his loyal dons fended off a full dozen guards. Margareta retreated, towing Clìmacio.

  “Get the queen!” Isabelle commanded. Control the head, control the body.

  Jean-Claude changed direction with a lurch. Isabelle forced her wobbly legs to move.

  Jean-Claude screamed and fell, a sudden gash appearing in his calf. A glance over her shoulder showed Felix in the mirror, his espejismo standing over Jean-Claude’s reflection, lining up for the coup de grâce.

  “No!” she shrieked. Time seemed to stretch and slow. Her espejismo had no reflection of its own, so she could not shield him in the mirror. She could do nothing but stand in horror as Felix snarled something wicked and—

  There came a massive bang and the mirror shattered. Isabelle whirled to see a tall thin man bedecked with lenses striding out from a pall of gun smoke at the head of a squad of arquebusiers. A black sooty ribbon of smoke rose from the mouth of his long musket.

  “Shoot any mirror with a sorcerer in it!” he bellowed.

  “Go!” Jean-Claude moaned, clutching his bleeding leg.

  Isabelle yanked herself from her paralysis and charged after Margareta. The queen was halfway to the back door, but she was dragging Clìmacio and Isabelle’s legs were longer. Reach and strike and push. Faster. Faster.

  Margareta saw her coming, shrieked, and let go of Clìmacio.

  Isabelle crashed into Margareta from behind, looped her good arm around the stout queen’s neck, and bore her to the ground. The woman thrashed like a stuck boar. Over and over they rolled until the queen ended up on top, her back to Isabelle. Her weight would have smashed the breath from Isabelle’s lungs if her true lungs hadn’t been elsewhere. She got hold of Isabelle’s arm to pry it loose. Isabelle couldn’t get a choking grip.

  Isabelle reached for her maidenblade, but her right hand still ended in a wormfinger because the espejismo was a reflection of the soul, of who she believed she was, of who she accepted herself to be.

  She’d reached for the knife, hadn’t she, expecting her spark-hand to be there?

  She closed her eyes and opened herself to the truth given to her by her enemy. I am Isabelle. Greatest-granddaughter of Saint Céleste. I am a sorcerer. I am l’Étincelle!

  Isabelle’s bones buzzed as if touched by lightning. Her crippled arm sloughed away like a snake shedding its skin and revealed her luminous spark-flesh beneath, pink and purple glimmers in the maroon clouds that expanded to fill the space she claimed for her limb.

  She yanked her maidenblade from its sheath and brought the point up under the queen’s throat. “Hold! Stop or the queen dies! All of you, stop!”

  “Abomination!” Margareta said. “She’s an abomination.”

  Fear churned Isabelle’s belly, for that was an accusation that might actually stick. “I am St. Celeste’s greatest granddaughter, now stop thrashing or my blade will bite deep.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Margareta said. “You need me—”

  Isabelle whipped the maidenblade down and then jammed it up to its hilt in her rump. Margareta screamed.

  “Tell them to stop,” Isabelle snarled. “Or I carve you a new arse.”

  The queen howled, “Stop! Halt!” The nearest guards hesitated.

  “Throw down your weapons!” Isabelle shouted. “Hold! The queen is mine!”

  “Do what she says!” Margareta wailed.

  Isabelle kept shouting, and slowly, the melee ground to a stop.

  Isabelle’s gaze fell on Jean-Claude, who lay but a few paces away, It might as well have been a kilometer.

  His face was pale, but he grinned at her. “Well done.”

  Isabelle’s heart swelled with relief to see him alive. “A surgeon!” she shouted. “Someone get this man a surgeon!”

  Kantelvar had picked himself up from the ground and stood clutching his side. A silvery mist leaked from where Jean-Claude had kicked him.

  He glared at Isabelle holding the queen. “Go ahead and kill her,” he spat. Kantelvar reeled about and shouted at the Sacred Hundred, “Kill the traitorous queen. Kill the changeling príncipe. Kill the regicidal heir. Kill the wretched abomination. Kill that limping churl, shat from his mother’s bowels.”

  The guards, the Sacred Hundred, and all the witness milled uncertainly. Many of the bystanders stared at Isabelle’s spark arm. Several made signs against evil, and the whisper of “Abomination” reached her ears, but no one challenged her just now. That was a battle for lat
er.

  “Be quiet!” shouted Clìmacio. Rapier in hand, he stumped toward Kantelvar. “You filthy lying son of a goat.”

  Kantelvar sneered at him. “Down on your knees, whelp. You are nothing but a whipping boy, sired by a cur and farrowed by a sow. I made you and I will unmake you, but not before you feel my lash! Your father was nothing but a—”

  Clìmacio wailed and thrust with all his might. The blade struck true. Kantelvar gasped and looked down at the hilt sticking out of his chest, and then up at Clìmacio, whose face was contorted in panic and anger.

  “You,” Kantelvar said. “You cannot. I made—”

  Clìmacio twisted the blade and Kantelvar gasped. He sagged to his knees and began to melt. His body lost its color, becoming a grayish silver. Rivulets of his mirror-flesh ran away and turned to silver mist before vanishing completely. Within seconds, he evaporated, leaving Clìmacio in the center of the platform, shaking like the last leaf in a high breeze, his sword stuck in nothing.

  Isabelle needed no air, but she blew out a long breath anyway. It was fitting that Kantelvar had been finally ended by one he had so cruelly debased. It was only ironic that Clìmacio thought he was defending a lie when in fact he was the true prince … or at least a true prince … to a certain value of true.

  She said, “Well done, Your Highness. I am glad to see you have come back to yourself after all your mother and Kantelvar did to you. I have read Kantelvar’s secret books, and I’ve seen the truth. How your mother bore twins, not identical, and gave you to Kantelvar in return for his help in bringing her to power.”

  Margareta heaved against Isabelle’s grip. The strangled squawk of pain and outrage from her throat did nothing to diminish the verisimilitude of Isabelle’s lie; quite the contrary. Every greater struggle made Margareta seem like a woman undone. Isabelle heaved her back down, drew out the knife, and put it to Margareta’s throat hard enough that it drew a trickle of blood.

  Clìmacio stared at Isabelle with the same starved look as a beggar at a king’s feast. “You read that?”

  “Oh yes,” Isabelle said. “Little did Margareta know that Kantelvar was going to make you a slave in your own house. You grew up thinking you were a mere whipping boy. Your brother never knew the truth, but your mother did. She loathed you and she beat you, trying to scourge away the stain of her own betrayal. She didn’t know that Kantelvar meant to give you your brother’s face in the end, to put you on the throne. Kantelvar wanted you to believe you were a pretender, so that you would murder both your brothers, rebel against your mother, and tear all of Aragoth asunder.

  “But now your true nature has shone through. Your inner nobility shines. Now the balance of war and peace lies in your hands. You’re not a pawn anymore. You have an open move.” Isabelle’s mouth was dry by the time she finished crafting this confection of wishful thinking. Could such a fabrication support the weight of a single moment, much less the whole future?

  “Lies,” Margareta whimpered, but so low and garbled that only Isabelle heard. “None of them are fit to rule. Julio is gutterborn, Clìmacio a fool, and Alejandro drove a knife through his own father’s heart.”

  “Good lies,” Isabelle corrected softly, squeezing Margareta’s throat tighter. “Julio is a good prince, Clìmacio more perceptive than you think, and if Alejandro held the knife, it was you who thrust it in.”

  Clìmacio licked his lips and said. “Go on.”

  Isabelle said, “The question that faces you is, to which outcome will you lend your weight? Will you follow the path that Kantelvar and Margareta laid out for you, choosing war and death and destruction, or will you chose peace and prosperity? Will you release your brother, Príncipe Alejandro, from his shackles and repudiate the lies told against him?”

  Clìmacio’s eyes narrowed. “In other words, will I take the path you choose for me, exchanging one master for another.”

  “Say rather a fellow traveler on a common road.” She took note of the sword hanging loose in his hand. “You’ve killed your first man today, a just killing, but a killing nonetheless. Do you like the taste of it? Because war will provide an endless feast.” Take the chance, she willed him. Bite!

  Clìmacio stared at the sword in his hand, and a look of dismay stole over his face. He turned to Príncipe Alejandro, still chained to the floor at the foot of the dais, and said, “And what does Alejandro say?”

  Alejandro glared at Clìmacio. “Release my wife from the Hellshard.”

  “Here,” Jean-Claude croaked, tugging the onyx ring from up what was left of his sleeve. “The key.”

  Julio took the ring from Jean-Claude and hurried to the tall, black, hard-to-look-at spindle that hovered at the flank of the throne. He passed the ring over the needle point and swept it downward.

  It seemed to Isabelle that the space within the circle was stretched tight, like the surface of a drum, and when the needle passed through it, it bent and warped and strained and finally popped. When that skin broke, the space around the spindle seemed to unwind, spiraling outward like a whirlpool in reverse, distorting everything around it to make room for a rapidly unfolding shape, the dark and haggard and harrowed Princesa Xaviera.

  She manifested several inches off the ground and literally fell into Julio’s arms, where she hung trembling, a long, anguished moan escaping her. Her silver eyes, wide and staring, were tarnished almost black. Julio carried her to Alejandro. Clìmacio was releasing him from his chains with the same trepidation as a man setting loose an angry badger. The elder príncipe took his wife in his arms. She clung to his shoulders, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Julio made his way to Isabelle, his face full of concern, and asked, “Are you well?”

  “We still have this problem,” Isabelle said, squeezing Margareta’s neck for emphasis.

  Julio held up the Hellshard key. “I think this is only fair.”

  “No!” Margareta bucked against Isabelle so hard that she lost her grip, and the maidenblade made a long, shallow gash in her neck. But Julio had seized the queen’s foot and deftly thrust it through the circlet.

  As her toes passed the circle’s plane, her body stretched like pulled taffy. She screamed and grabbed the floor to gain some sort of purchase on the slick marble, but space twisted around her, folding her into a tighter and tighter spiral, like fibers being twisted into an infinitely thin thread. Her legs went first, then her torso, then her shoulders, her head, and her flailing, beating hands. Then she was gone. The last thing to die away was her scream.

  Isabelle’s eyes felt like they were about to pop out of her head. “Saints preserve.”

  “The saints preserve those who follow their guidance,” Julio said, reaching out a hand to pull her up. “Margareta was not good at that.”

  Isabelle surveyed the scene. Príncipe Alejandro cradled Xaviera, a surgeon arrived for Jean-Claude, and the newly minted Príncipe Clìmacio stood looking somewhat alone and uncertain in the middle of the dais. The guards, the Sacred Hundred, and all the witnesses milled uncertainly.

  “Then who shall be king?” shouted someone from the floor.

  Julio drew himself up. “By right, the crown goes to Alejandro. I was pleased that he should be the heir before I was kidnapped, and I am still pleased that he should be.”

  “And what of him?” One of the dons pointed at Clìmacio.

  Clìmacio looked to Isabelle; she gestured him toward Alejandro. Clìmacio swallowed and said. “Alejandro is king.”

  Alejandro looked up from comforting his stricken wife and glowered at Clìmacio. “I will leave it up to Xaviera whether or not to forgive you.”

  Clìmacio winced but said nothing, which was probably for the best.

  Isabelle said, “I doubt Margareta consulted him before torturing Xaviera, nor provided him any chance to protest afterward.” She took in the assemblage with her gaze. “Indeed, no one here is guiltless. If justice were something handed down from on high, then we should all be punished most heinously. But justice is not handed
down from on high, it is a thing we mortals make for ourselves. It is therefore imperfect and flawed and it breaks from time to time and we must repair it, rebuild it, and improve it so that at least we will be forced to make new mistakes.” She met Alejandro’s gaze. “Have you no memory you wish you could change, no act to undo?”

  A look of anguish crossed Alejandro’s face, and he turned away from Isabelle. For a moment his body shook as if with grief. Yet when he looked up again, his mien was resolute. He turned to Clìmacio and said, “Much pain and suffering could have been averted if you had shown any courage at all. But if I were to condemn everyone who ever failed a test of courage, my kingdom would be a much emptier place.”

  With Xaviera in his arms, Alejandro turned to face the Sacred Hundred. “The last words my father spoke were these: ‘I have three sons.’ Go forth and let it be known that all who lay down their arms and swear to me will be forgiven.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-three

  Isabelle gasped and drew a huge breath of air as her espejismo returned to her body. How long had it been since she had actually been able to feel herself breathing? Ten hours? Twelve? She and Julio had stayed at the Hall of Mirrors as long as possible, hammering out the general shape of an agreement for the disposition and allotment of royal authority, pedigree, inheritance, and clemency. Both she and Julio had felt it urgent to finalize the major points of the agreement while everyone was still confused and distraught and willing to take direction.

  To Isabelle, who had played the role of arbiter of truth, the ad hoc congress had been rather like watching ice crystals form on a windowpane, order appearing almost spontaneously from chaos. Eventually, however, the needs of the flesh overcame the program of the mind. She and Julio had been forced to retreat. Isabelle had left Jean-Claude, weak as a newly hatched chick but steadfast in his resolve, in charge of her personal negotiations.

  Now she found herself curled on her side, her head braced by fat pillows and her body wrapped in a thick blanket, her flesh hand still clasped in Julio’s. Between them lay a platter of bread and cheese and fresh fruit.