The Soul Mirror

by Carol Berg

  “But these Gurmedd—” He pursed his lips, frowning. “I can see there’s no arguing. A freeholder I know k-keeps a few horses not far from here. We’ll exchange and take the circuit road around the city, while you c-convince me not to turn you over to your g-goodfather’s safekeeping.”

  “How in the name of Heaven are you here?” I said, taking advantage of the slower pace. “The queen—”

  “She is quite safe. I’ve been watching the vile G-Gurmedd since learning of your prospects.” He ducked his head and lifted his shoulders in resignation. “There are advantages to b-being an invisible person. Last night I heard him bragging of his bargain with the Lady Antonia. I didn’t quite understand all of it, but . . . sometimes a man is forced to take action. Our mistress agreed.”

  “Eugenie’s awake?” The morning took a yet brighter turn.

  “She’d not been away from the p-palace a quarter hour before she shook off her stupor entirely. When I expressed my misgivings at your fate, she almost b-booted me out of the carriage to be on my way to your aid. I left her in the capable hands of the m-marquesa.”

  “Bless you, sonjeur. I shall be forever grateful.” More than he could know.

  He pointed to a stack of flat stones a few metres ahead. “Turn eastward at the cairn.”

  A track led through a stripped vineyard, the golden leaves half fallen. On any other day, the poignant reminder of Montclaire and the season’s completion would have tempted me to dismount and wander for a while. But my father was waiting.

  I urged the panting mare to yield a little more, as my thoughts raced ahead to Voilline. How could I surrender myself without raising the Aspirant’s suspicions?

  “Be at ease, lady,” said Roussel, coming up from behind. “They’ll not catch us now.”

  “It’s not entirely Derwin. There are other matters pressing . . . even more dangerous.”

  “Heaven’s gates, is the king c-complicit in this marriage? I c-can’t believe he’d hold so hellish a grudge.”

  “Not that at all. It’s—” Though relief and gratitude urged me to spew every detail, my friends had too many secrets I dared not reveal, even to my latest savior. Yet getting myself into play on my own was going to be difficult. A plan began to take shape. . . .

  “Would you be willing to help me more, sonjeur? The circumstances would be far more dangerous than those you’ve just ventured.”

  “I am at your service, of course. Our mistress c-commanded.” He bowed from his saddle. “Yet to accompany you into danger . . . I’ll confess, I’ve no d-defensive skills of any worth. Better I see you safe with friends or family who can help you.”

  “I don’t want a warrior, and I cannot afford delay. I need to reach Mont Voilline by sunset. Though it sounds awful, I need you to deliver me to the people there, as if you overheard Antonia bragging of her betrayal and saw an easy way to improve a physician’s poor pay.”

  Shock struck him rigid. “Great heavens, lady, we’ve just g-got you out of slavery!”

  “This is very different. A good friend is in mortal danger. The story would take me days to explain, but I swear to you, I am acting in the interests and with the consent of the King of Sabria.”

  “The king’s consent?” He seemed to relax a bit. “Clearly I’ve missed some fascinating twist to your presence at Castelle Escalon. Your c-confidence honors me. Tell me what to do.”

  With the expenditure of half an hour and a debt to a grizzled, taciturn hostler named Favreu, we were racing southward.

  AUTUMN SUNLIGHT MANTLED THE FIELDS behind us in gold, as Roussel and I hiked up Mont Voilline’s northern shoulder, otherwise known as Ianne’s Hand. Warblers and woodchats twittered from atop rocks and shrubs, or startled as we approached, then settled back to harvesting the year’s crop of berries. Though the sun had gone from the east-facing hillside, the lingering heat still carried the resinous fragrances of the maquis: juniper and tree heath, leathery smilax and madder. Spiny leaves scratched our arms, and midges swarmed our ears and noses as we trod the narrow pilgrim path. Horses had come this way in the past hours. We’d hobbled our own mounts a few hundred metres down the slope so they’d not give us away.

  The mendicant brother at the cult shrine in the village of Voilline had told us that Ianne’s Hand provided the best view of both the holy mount and the daemon-touched rift, as well as the easiest path to the site of the warrior saint’s imprisonment. He’d also cautioned that wise pilgrims would do well to keep away, for the sky had burned red the previous night, as if the Saint were at last cleansing the blood from his land.

  My stomach fluttered in anticipation.

  “The battle in the Voilline Rift effectively ended the Blood Wars,” I told Roussel as we approached the summit of the low ridge. “Two blood families almost exterminated each other that day. In the ensuing months the people of Sabria finished the job.”

  “I’ve read a bit of history,” he said. “A dreadful day that was, here on holy ground. Some call the slaughter the greatest sacrilege ever committed.”

  “Are you a Cultist?” I said, startled by the suddenly serious turn in his mood. He’d shown no particular reverence at the shrine. And throughout our long ride from Sessaline, our short stops to buy bread and cheese and rest the horses, and this sweltering climb, he had seemed singularly dedicated to bolstering my spirits. Laughing off incipient saddle sores, blistered feet, and uncomfortably unsuitable dress, he had professed simple delight at being outdoors in Sabria’s most glorious season.

  “My father was a Cultist. I don’t subscribe to most of their trip-trap, but I do believe truths can be found in their legends. It doesn’t make sense that our essence would be lost when the heart stops. It’s one reason I chose to study medicine after years of other studies. I do find it fascinating that your mysterious mission brings us to the holiest site in cult lore and the holiest site in the history of magic.”

  “Not the holiest,” I said as the delicious breeze of the heights welcomed us to the crest of Ianne’s Hand. “The most depraved . . .” And then the expansive landscape stole the rest of my argument, my questions, and my words.

  On our left Mont Voilline bared its craggy white face to the westering sun, afire in gold light near blinding in its brilliance. Easy to see how stories might arise here of a courageous young man who breached Heaven to bring fire to humankind.

  To our right and looping back to the west to form a U shape stood a palisade of jagged pinnacles, vertical bands of white stone and seamed vales thick with joint pines and prickly juniper. To the south—the open end of the U—Mont Voilline’s south shoulder fell away in long rills of white rock, like pale fingers plunging into the dusty green forest of Ardienne. Blue shadows had settled into the narrow vale between these bastions of stone—the rift.

  A gentle slope led from our position on Voilline’s shoulder down to a sun-drenched tableland that jutted from the mountain’s sheer face before plummeting into the depths of the rift. This was the holy place, where pilgrims came to honor Sante Ianne. A black scar marked the scene of countless bonfires. Rags and ribbons fluttered from wooden poles jammed into cracks in the rock. Legend said that when the wind snatched the rotted fabric away, it was truly the Saint of Wisdom’s hand, answering the prayers of the one who tied it there.

  Yet it was not the common exhibits of reverence that transfixed me, but the image of Lady Cecile’s stolen diagrams reflected upon the broad shelf. Thirty-six stone pillars, as ancient as Ianne’s story, stood in three giant rings set side by side.

  “Undeath, death, and life,” I murmured.

  “Sante Ianne’s holy mystery,” said Roussel at my shoulder.

  The leftmost circle was centered by a deep rectangular basin. A system of stone troughs seemed designed to divert the myriad seeps from their natural channels off the mountainside to feed it. Both channels and basin were dry. Beside the basin sat a slab exactly the size of the opening.

  A raised stone platform stood in the middle ring. Centered on th
e platform, a metal plaque or plate gleamed in the sunlight.

  In the rightmost circle, a single, small azinheira grew right out of the rock. The breeze swayed its pendulous lower branches, the dark leaves trailing on the stone tableland. Ever green, the azinheira was the tree that blazoned Sabria’s ensign, the sign and seal of my goodfather’s kingdom. On the otherwise barren rock it spoke everything of tenacious life.

  Though nothing moved on the tableland save windblown rags and azinheira branches, we had come to the right place. My skin itched; wind teased my hair, tickling my ears with ghostly fingers. Every sense cried out that something lived here beyond sun and wind and tree, and that if I would just look a little deeper, listen a little more carefully, touch a little more reverently, I would plumb the world’s mysteries.

  Friend, can you hear me? I’ve come to Voilline. For the tenth time since leaving Sessaline, I opened myself to the aether. On the road, the farther we were from Merona, the more the mindstorm had settled into a quiet murmur, like twittering birds on a summer morning or the brush of falling leaves when walking an autumn wood. But here, in this vast and mystic wilderness, I felt as if I stood in the Plas Royale on Feste Morde, two hundred thousand drunken Sabrians wailing for loved ones dead and the coming of winter. But none of them was Dante.

  I needed his voice. Doubts lingered on my palate like the taste of bad fish.

  Somewhere the Aspirant waited for sunset. One of the pennons flying from the prayer poles was striped green and black—the colors of Demesne Delourre, once known as the Grande Demesne Gautier.

  “This is a fascinating place,” said Roussel, offering me first pick of two rocks to sit on. Even in such vastness, we needed to stay low. “The columns are marble. Some say the Cinnear floated them down the river from the quarries in Coverge, then hauled them here with teams of mules. The basin is called Eilianna’s Sink. It’s named for the woman the Creator charged to wash Ianne and soothe his thirst in the years he was chained to the mountain. She lived in one of the caves, it’s said. Several of them are quite deep.”

  “You’ve been here before?” He’d not mentioned it at the shrine.

  “My father, as I said, was a believer, and brought me here as a boy. No matter one’s own doubts about the holy cosmos, it raises your neck hairs to stand around the bonfires in the center circle on Ianne’s Rock and hear the Cultists chanting. Or to see the echoing bonfires lit on the Ring.”

  “The Ring Wall, Germond de Gautier’s magical defense . . .”

  “Aye.” He pointed to the pinnacles beyond the rift. “Every few hundred metres along the ridgeline—wherever they could find a saddle or a flat spot large enough to hold wood for a b-bonfire and a few spelled artifacts, they built a small defense work. They hoped to make it a c-continuous boundary to provide safe shelter from their attackers, but it was destroyed before it was completed. With a spyglass you can pick out their ruins from the rest of the rock. Now, are you ever going to tell me what we’re doing here? Why would anyone need rescuing from the Saint’s holy place?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. This place . . . the eerie quiet . . . the sense of things unseen . . . had my nerves jangled and my skin buzzing. Yet I needed a way into the game, and I’d come up with no alternative. The physician’s enveloping admiration, his half-hidden smiles, his warm and eager solicitation promised he’d do whatever I asked. But justice demanded I tell him what he risked.

  “An unholy rite of sorcery will take place down there in the circles tonight. I know this sounds preposterous, but its purpose is to engulf Sabria in chaos. I aim to stop it.”

  “Stars’ g-glory! Sorcery? I didn’t think you even believed . . .”

  “I’m not sure what I believe anymore. But these people are murderers who plot the world’s ruin. I’ve some skills . . . language skills . . . that might help defeat their plan, so I must be there. Unfortunately I can’t appear to be there of my own will, else I’d never ask you.”

  “P-please don’t apologize.” He cupped my hands in his larger ones and gazed down at me, his well-proportioned face sober. “I am honored, lady. You truly would put yourself in my p-poor hands?”

  “Your hands are most capable, physician. There are few I’d trust so well.”

  He leaned down, his gray eyes sparkling, not at all shy today. “In t-truth, damoselle, I’ve not seen such adventure since I was fifteen, when my life turned in upon itself and left me this self-absorbed island of study and work. I’ve needed a challenge. And I c-cannot think of a person I’d rather share it with.”

  A month previous, or a tenday, Ganet de Roussel would have been everything I could ask for in a man—kind, good-humored, modest, intelligent, a big, well-favored man whose imperfection of speech only made his charm more human. I should grasp what he offered, relish it and hold it precious as we embarked on the dangers to come. That my thoughts kept drifting to an arrogant, half-mad, unrepentant villain of a sorcerer was lunacy. Yet Roussel seemed like the reflected image in a mirror glass, neither so marvelously vivid nor so painfully flawed nor so filled with passionate life as the quiet scholar who spoke in my mind. So I pretended I didn’t understand him.

  My companion’s earnest kindness unknotted one thread of anxiety, at least. “All right, then. As soon as we see someone preparing”—or as soon as I could exchange a word with Dante—“we’ll do as I proposed at the beginning. You’ll bind my hands and take me down there. While I struggle and protest, you’ll barter with them, telling the story we’ve agreed on. Keep your distance, though. If they refuse to pay or give you any reason to believe they don’t trust you, you must leave. Without question. Without argument. Without me. These are not gentlemen, but ruthless rogues and murderers. Promise me, Ganet de Roussel.”

  “Obviously there’s no point in arguing that you have no place among ruthless rogues and murderers, either. But I do wish you’d tell me what in the name of perdition an intelligent young woman with no training in magic thinks to do about such dire events. I am a man of science, and I very much dislike risking your life—or mine—by going in blind.”

  His rueful expression dredged a smile from my worries. “If all goes well, I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “If it goes badly, then nothing I could say will matter.”

  He sighed in resignation. “Does anyone ever win arguments with you? We’d best discuss something more pleasant than venal sorcerers. That day in the royal bedchamber you mentioned de Vouger’s theories. . . .”

  As we awaited some sign of life in the pillared circles, we kept our heads down on the breezy ridgetop, drinking from his water flask, eating the remainder of our bread and cheese, speaking no more of magic or the ruin of the world. Instead we talked of physics, and how strange it was that an anvil, the filled water flask, and a tiny pebble would land in the rift at exactly the same moment if we dropped them from the edge of Ianne’s Bench at the same time.

  “The wind would make a difference, of course,” he said. “The lighter objects could be slowed by the wind. One has to consider the ideal. . . .”

  It rankled when he doubted I really understood how this applied to planetary movements, but I exposed the fundamental principles as Dante and I had explored them.

  “Well-done, damoselle! As clearly as the astronomer himself could explain it.”

  “I’ve a teacher who explained it better than de Vouger did in his own writing.” My mind drifted in that dangerous direction again. “Weren’t you going to check on the horses half an hour ago? The daylight wanes.”

  “Ah, you send me on errands instead of letting me refute your premise. But I’ve come to serve. Perhaps your nefarious sorcerers chose not to work their scheme today.” The creases in his brow belied his light tone. He kissed my hand and vanished back the way we’d come.

  Indeed the sun was getting perilously close to the spiny tops of the ridge across the chasm. The wind was cooling rapidly. If all went according to plan, my goodfather and his men would find their way up here to Ianne’s Hand as soon as
it was dark, and on my signal would swoop down and take the Aspirant and his henchmen prisoner. By that time we would know the Aspirant’s identity. The Queen of Sabria and—if I was lucky, her maid of the bedchamber—would remain inviolate. De Vouger’s principles of objects in motion would remain stalwart.

  Head resting on my drawn-up knees, I again lowered the walls in my mind to reach for Dante. The mindstorm had swelled to a raging hurricane, battering, stretching, lacerating thought. Friend, I’m here. Roussel rescued me from Derwin and will play the mercenary to bring me in. Where are you?

  After only a few moments, I was ready to give up.

  Gods, you’re here! His voice sliced through the tumult. We had a report that Antonia was dead and you were taken north with that . . . abomination. His blunt horror and outrage and relief warmed my blood, more even than Roussel’s mannered gallantry. They’ve kept me buried in trivial work all day, so I’ve just now got to work at the book, and it’s damnably obscure. No fear the Aspirant will have scrounged it from me beforetime, even if he deigns to show his face this moment. You say the physician is here with you? Never imagined he’d discomfort himself for anyone. How—?

  I couldn’t wait. One question trumped all others. Please, my father?

  This time he withdrew, in our way, shaping his words carefully. He will hurry this to its end. They’ve bled him . . . four years.

  Thank you for your honesty. I held my grief to feed anger. If that was the only way I could rouse Mondragon magic, then so be it. What of Ambrose and Portier?

  Portier’s here. A shiver of outrage reminded me this was Dante. No hint of your brother. But these caves are bottomless, and I’ve the notion that there are more prisoners than I’ve seen. Can you see the circles of pillars?

  Yes. And I read the missing page and believe I’ve an understanding of it. Portier is supposed to die—or not—in the leftmost circle.

  Aye. Urgency bound his every word. I’ll place you close to him. You must convince him to hold on. I’ll keep him breathing, if he can just not yield to what they do . . . what we do. When he followed the false trail, knowing well it could be their trap, he consented to be used. But he must not consent to die. Tell him a student must trust and obey his master. That exactly.