The Soul Mirror

by Carol Berg

  “Aye. Her mam’s sickly and there’s none else to earn for her. We’ve hopes summat will take her in if we can give a bit to help out.”

  “I’m going to find out who’s responsible for this crime, Ella. I promise. But for now, I really need this letter sent—in hopes of saving another innocent.”

  “Alonso’ll see to it. He’s my brother’s coachman friend, and he’ll—” Her eyes widened as she recognized the name of the addressee. “He’ll do it most careful, damoselle.”

  After another embrace, I sent her off with a silver piece for the coachman and another for Naina’s handsel. The donation could not soothe my conscience. Only discovering the perpetrator could do that, for sure as I was born, the girl had died instead of me. Murdered for what?

  I pulled out Lady Cecile’s history book. Gautier. That name linked all of this: my father, my sister, and her encrypted books, the sorcery Duplais had called a kind not seen in ages of the world.

  Clearly the writer was an admirer of the Gautier. Gautieri architecture had been elegant and innovative. Gautieri students were the most diligent at any collegia magica. The family’s pursuit of knowledge had probed the farthest reaches of mysticism and magical practice, and the library at Collegia Gautier—twenty thousand scrolls and codices, an extraordinary number even by modern standards—had been the most complete literature ever recorded of any academic discipline.

  One footnote caught my particular interest because of its mention of encryption and blood transference:

  Historian Georg de Veon-Failleu posits that jealousy of the Collegia Gautier library and its restrictions on access, implemented by extensive encryption, lay at the root of the Mondragon-Gautier rivalry. The Mondragons were historically weak in their practice of the mystic arts and regularly enhanced their skills through the extensive use of blood transference. Their scholarship and investigative skills were substantially weaker even than their practical skills. Few Mondragon practitioners were literate.

  The theory struck me as illogical. Why would anyone start a war over access to books they could not read? But then, history was often distorted. Papa had always said the first task of victors in any war was to rewrite its history in their own favor. But both families were exterminated by the end. No one had won the Blood Wars.

  Duplais could likely explain more. Of all things, I had granted him the virtues of intelligence and intellectual honesty. Yet now that I believed my father innocent, even that was suspect. Had Duplais even a notion that his conclusions were wrong? The man was a cipher, and his hateful disregard for my family stung bitterly. Yet if I could learn what I needed no other way, I must learn from him, even if I had to take Lianelle’s potion and follow him around.

  I opened the treatise on the Blood Wars. Names leapt out from the page.

  Germond de Gautier, lamed by a Mondragon potion in retaliation for his sending a spy into the Mondragons’ desert fortress, labored for thirty years to develop a magical defense wall that could shield innocents from Mondragon spellwork. The Ring Wall was under constant siege by Mondragon raiders who called up daemonic spirits to burn every hovel and household in the district. The daemons ravished maidens and boys, bringing evil magics to bear upon the Gautieri works until they crumbled.

  In 693, Reviell, the last Conte Mondragon, wearing a horned helm, left a path of spectres, ravaged souls, and charred villages in his wake as he pursued the weakened Gautieri to their doom.

  Abandoning the broken Ring Wall, the Gautieri retreated into the Voilline Rift at the base of the holy mount. Backed deep against the foot of the crags where Ianne, the first of the Reborn, brought humankind the gift of fire, the valiant Gautieri mage line unleashed the fires of Creation against the Mondragon legion. Whereupon the Mondragons called upon the Souleater and his earth-bound daemons, wrenching the sun from the sky and thrusting it into a pit to swallow their sworn enemies.

  It was said that the dead walked on that foul day, and trees curled back into the earth, and arrows reversed upon the archers. Frost blighted the vineyards though it was the midst of summer, and throughout Sabria, infants crawled back into their mothers’ wombs. For ten days and nights the battle raged, until both sides lay bloodied and exhausted.

  The remnants of the two families had fled, but the Sabrian king and his subjects had declared them pariah and exterminated the lot of them.

  The other histories sounded the same notes. The collegia and its library had been wonders of the world. Yet scholarly achievements had not saved the Gautieri. Whatever the level of their magical or academic skills, the Mondragons were acknowledged as capable strategists who pushed their hated rivals to the brink of destruction. A length of string marked a page in one of the volumes.

  Reviell de Mondragon’s incineration of Collegia Gautier and its library in 693 threatened to send all of the known world back to the age of pictographs and stone tools. For this depredation, even more than the blood-leeching wreaked on hapless victims, even more than the systematic extermination of the noble Gautieri line, did the Camarilla Magica break its long tradition and execute the savage conte in public. On the day the Concord de Praesta was ratified by King Pascal and Camarilla, Reviell, the last Mondragon, was bound on the Plas Royale and flayed by Fassid knives. Scyllid scorpions, gathered from the deserts of Kadr, were unleashed upon his skinless flesh before his entrails were drawn and burnt. Defiant to the end, the devil conte warned the watchers that their beloved dead would “pay the price of Gautieri greed.” From that day forward, the family mark of the Mondragons was altered to dueling scorpions, reflecting the stinging poison of depraved sorcery. . . .

  The lurid descriptions nauseated me. And I marveled at yet more skewed logic. If the Mondragons were jealous of Gautieri spellwork, why would they destroy the very library where they might have learned how to imitate it? If my young sister could decrypt the Gautieri books, then surely the Mondragons could have found someone to do so. Fools, then. Perhaps the Creator’s saints did protect the world from its worst evils, ensuring our worst villains were either too stupid or too clumsy to carry their plans to completion. That did little to ease the pain they caused along the way. Pain and chaos . . . the Aspirant’s aim, so Duplais had said at Papa’s trial.

  A disharmonious clamor of bells from city, palace, and temple announced both the fourth hour of the afternoon watch and Cecile de Blasencourt’s journey feast. Saints and daemons, I’d used the entire afternoon. Dante’s books would have to be returned to the library later.

  As I returned Cecile’s history book to the drawer, I fingered Lianelle’s magical trinkets. The fortress wall of my convictions sagged. If her powder left me unseeable, then what of these other things? True magic. Gautieri magic, right out of these history texts. I doubted the pendants would have meaning without a sister to share them, but the ring . . . She’d said the falcon’s head ring could warn me of poison. Why hadn’t I been wearing it the previous day?

  Something had changed. The conspirators had wanted Lianelle’s book—which they’d gotten. They also wanted these things she had made, but they’d never shown any interest in me. Now someone was trying to kill me. Perhaps I was getting close to the truth.

  The fire smoldered in my gut. “Show me your worst,” I snapped. “I am Michel de Vernase’s daughter, and you’ll not take me down so easily.”

  I slipped the gold circle onto my finger, locked the hidden drawer, and set out for Cecile de Blasencourt’s journey feast. Everyone would be there.

  CHAPTER 17

  19 OCET, LATE AFTERNOON

  The Minor Hall of Castelle Escalon housed a glittering assemblage. At least forty long guest tables had been ranked across the hall and laid with fine linens and painted porcelain. The raised head table sat crosswise to the others in front of a newly completed mural that depicted The Creation of All That Walks in vivid colors and astonishingly lifelike detail.

  Every lady and gentleman of the court seemed to be present at the journey feast—we maids of honor sprinkled amid the
others like sugared plums on a cake. Tucked away in the corner behind the high table stood Duplais, his hands at his back, primly overseeing guests and servants alike. Chevalier Ilario, pensive in froths of black lace and taffeta, topped by a gray-plumed hat, sat at Queen Eugenie’s left hand. On her right Mage Dante slouched in his chair. Bored and disdainful, his gaze roved the crowded tables below the dais. When one person shuddered and turned away, his shadowed attention moved on to the next.

  A permanent position as the object of Mage Dante’s scrutiny seemed more attractive than my own seating arrangement. My assigned dinner companion had inflamed my complexion to a heat that could roast the duck on my plate.

  “The lady says ye ride astride like a man. Is’t true? As skill it’s fine, for Gurmedd paths are too steep for dainty saddling. And truth, the considering of a right lady spreading her legs rousts my rod. But then, I’ve a wonder about yer maidswatch.” The Honorable Derwin de Scero, Barone Gurmeddion, wiped his mouth on his grease-spotted sleeve and lubricated his most astonishingly vulgar conversation with yet another mug of ale. “Bad enough to take on traitor’s spawn, but I’ll have no bride broke without I do it myself.”

  “I am a skilled rider,” I mumbled, solely because failure to respond would cause him to repeat his vile speculations louder. The scandalized ladies and gentlemen seated across the table and to either side of Derwin had already averted their faces and retreated as far as the close seating permitted, but they would not ignore such ripe fodder for a long winter’s gossip.

  Only the barone’s avowal that he relished women who battled his will, “begging to be tamed” had quashed my fervent desire to smash a plate into his ugly face. Instead I had restrained my temper, spoken as little as possible, and distracted myself by searching the faces for Queen Eugenie’s late-night liaison. Such a strikingly confident man would stand out even in such a crowd, especially if he made a habit of out-of-fashion apparel. No luck at finding him. No luck at persuading Derwin to shift his attentions elsewhere.

  “Ye must speak up when addressing a lord, girl,” declaimed Derwin. “Women are best silent—and I teach ’em that right off—but when I ask, I expect a firm and truthful answer. No squirreling. No dainty-mouthing. Whispering bespeaks liars and sneaks. Won’t have it in my house.”

  Lady Antonia had snagged me as I hurried into the hall. Called me caeri and dithered over “this new and exciting prospect” like a child unwrapping a birthday gift, then whisked me off and introduced me to the most singularly unattractive man I had ever met. Leathery brown skin appeared to have shrunk to fit his hard, bony frame. Sparse gray-brown hair bristled on his knobby skull and jutting chin. His expensive camlet was splattered with remnants of a month’s meals, and the reek of sour flesh near had me gagging as he circled me, appraising as if I were a horse for hire.

  “I’ve not bedded a blood-kin woman before. Don’t you imagine to use your witching on me, though. There’s iron enough in Gurmedd’s crags; magic don’t work there. But please me with your female tricks”—his tongue darted out from wide-stretched lips—“and I’ll treat ye fair.”

  Antonia had lavished the lord—a very minor lord—with flattery, insisting that his warriors’ unmatched prowess, his staunch alliance with the king, and his determined stewardship of the most remote mountain passes between Sabria and Norgand kept our northern borders impregnable.

  The Honorable Derwin could be a duc or King Philippe’s sworn brother for all I cared. This particular alliance would not happen. I’d use Lianelle’s potion and walk to Syanar first.

  Derwin raised a grease-slicked hand. “Here, boy,” he shouted to a passing servitor. “More of that meat, and plenty of skin with it.”

  The musicians in an upper gallery began a new tune—a somber, driving pulse of tambours overlaid by shawm and pipes, sinuous melodies in the mode of ancient Sabria. A troupe of veiled dancers whirled and leapt down the wide aisles between the guest tables, the bells and links about wrists and ankles chinking in rhythm.

  The barone shifted his chair around to get a better view, dripping fat on his soiled garments while chewing the slab of duck breast impaled on his knife. He paused from time to time to lean toward the nearest gentleman and blurt lewd comments on the female dancers’ physical attributes and their movements or positions.

  The Temple taught that only family or dedicated mystics could, by their deeds of honor and righteous living, speed a soul’s journey through the trials of Ixtador Beyond the Veil. But most people of my acquaintance presumed the Pantokrator would not discount the offerings of close friends and liege lords in the weighing of a soul’s worthiness for Heaven. Queen Eugenie seemed to share that view. She had hired the city’s finest players and musicians to send Lady Cecile off on her Veil journey with dignity. Even assuming the Pantokrator cared at all for humankind, I doubted Derwin’s presence accorded the dead ducessa much benefit.

  With the barone’s attention diverted, I sought to clear my own thoughts of their murderous bent and focus my meditations on Cecile’s welfare. I trained my eyes on my hands, folded in my lap. The falcon’s head on Lianelle’s ring stared back at me with its silver eye.

  The exercise merely roused the inner voices I’d fought so hard to mute since slipping the gold circle on my finger. They forever lurked in the nooks and niches of my mind, waiting to be heard . . . as they had since childhood. Since I discovered that being around cities and crowds caused hissing and buzzing in my ears. The thought mystified and terrified me. Proximity to my sister’s magic seemed to swell them to a volume and intensity that threatened sanity. All my determination could quiet the din only to this muffled rumble. I would yield five years of my life to go back to Montclaire and the quiet countryside.

  There you are.

  I glanced up at Derwin’s back as he strained to see the performers, and then at my equally absorbed neighbors, before grasping the source of the quiet words. Inside me. The clarity of his voice left the others but a murmur.

  I’ve no wish to terrorize you. I glimpse you now and then, but I’ve stayed back to give you time.

  Glimpse? All gooseflesh, I peered around the hall, examining every man within line of sight without moving my head.

  Not with eyes. Don’t you understand? We could be ten kilometres apart or a thousand. I glimpse you in the mindstorm . . . in the aether, where the unseen energies of life are expended. I hear you despite the damnable noise, though what we do is no more connected to ears than these words I send you are connected to a tongue. It’s easiest to find you when strong emotion carries you into the aether, as on that first night. But with this gift you can open yourself to the storm at quieter times. Any time. Your voice is so clear, so distinct, I could pick it out were a whirlwind battering bricks round my head.

  His presence surged, as if he felt the need to expend his thoughts before I dismissed him again. The feasting company receded to a blur.

  If you’d rather I not intrude, I’ll honor your wish. But I’ve grasped this is new to you, and I’d like to reassure you. Selfishly, because it is so . . . fine . . . to hear another, to know I’m not the only one . . .

  Rushing now, like a stream broken loose of its channel. Because I did not stop him. Because I’d no desire to be trapped again in the vile present with Derwin of Gurmeddion. This voice reflected so much the barone was not.

  You needn’t fear it exposes you in any way. The very nature of the gift protects you . . . protects us both. I can only know what you reveal in words or by the tenor in which you speak them. Clearly you are a woman of strong passions who has experienced some upheaval of late—maybe only the unveiling of this gift. Yet were I standing at your side, I could not recognize you. I cannot know your face. I cannot know the place where you stand . . . or sit . . . or sleep. Try it. Tell me where I am just now. You cannot. I doubt you’d believe it anyway. Think of all you’ve divined of my history . . . my circumstances . . .

  Which was nothing, of course. He was a man, not a child. He seemed thoughtfu
l and well-spoken. Educated, his vocabulary and articulate grammar attested. Alone. Longing laced his every word. I told myself to be rational. He could be skilled at masking.

  It’s only natural you’re skeptical. But there is no lying in the aether. Withholding , yes, but untruth galls the inner ear. Let me demonstrate. I’ll tell you three things, and you must judge their truth. I live in Merona. Jolly pipe music will always lift my spirits. I spent one year of my life without speaking.

  Two statements flowed past me, clean and sure. One scraped my spirit, discordant, like a vielle played with a stick instead of a bow. Closing my eyes, I shaped words in that private darkness behind my eyelids: You detest jolly pipe music. Then I nudged them into the chaos.

  Pleasure . . . relief. . . a deep and resonant joy swept through me like a spring zephyr . . . feelings not my own, yet vigorous enough to crease my cheeks with a smile. Exactly so, he said. Now you. Come, test me.

  Silk embroidery is my favorite pastime. I have delivered a foal with my own hands. I was born in a tent. The game came easy, so like those played at Montclaire. And I was well practiced at masking any feeling that might register in face or voice. Perhaps the skill might hold me impassive for this odd communication, as well.

  So you are a woman of strong passions, born in a tent, who has helped a horse give birth and dislikes . . . detests? . . . embroidery. To despise mindless triviality makes perfect sense, but that you feel so strongly about the horse intrigues me. The birthing in a tent even more. Somehow I don’t imagine you a shepherdess. Those who labor in the rough world are rarely the gentle spirits noble ladies imagine—yet you could be. Such gifts flourish most often in those close to the natural world. Perhaps you are a warrior woman riding across the steppes of Syanar. I cannot say how far this bond might stretch. Almost all I know of it has come from study—a mention here, a whisper there, a great deal of listening and experimenting.