The Crystal Palace was surrounded by several lush green gardens. Each of them had been arranged in a different fashion, and each had its own name. The majority of them were built to commemorate the births of important members of the Imperial Family over the years, these being given names of unclear provenance, such as the Garden of Origins, or Garden of the Spring of Service.
The Garden of Victory had been built three hundred years before when Gama Agrilius I established his unified empire after a protracted political struggle that spanned the entire northern continent. The garden was built on top of a platform that once supported heavyweight artillery. Wood and bricks from a historic fort had been used to build a memorial gazebo. This structure stood in the garden but still maintained its fierce, martial appearance.
Despite its wartime history and severe architecture, Lady Zophie was fond of this garden above all others. This was no less than the fourth time he had received an invitation to tea at this gazebo.
Most of the greenery in the Garden of Victory was shrubbery resistant to the wind and cold typical of the north. Like the other gardens in the Crystal Palace, it was rather drab. There were some high points, such as the former empress’s personal gardens, and the rose garden known as the Garden of Revelations. Yet, for some reason, Lady Zophie appeared to favor this desolate corner. Mitsuru remained baffled as to why.
Furthermore, the Garden of Victory was in perhaps the farthest spot from the Crystal Palace one could go without leaving the grounds. Mitsuru rode out on an animal called a paho, which was similar to a pony in the real world. The lady’s preferred mode of transport, on the other hand, was a contraption that looked much like a rickshaw. It occurred to Mitsuru that perhaps Zophie’s fondness for this garden was not actually for the garden itself but for her rickshaw—arranging meetings out here was little more than an excuse to go for a ride.
Or perhaps it’s that she has a fondness for the fellow who pulls the rickshaw?
The servant in question was a ruddy-faced lad without rank or title—he wasn’t even a soldier, let alone an Imperial Guard. He was not allowed to wear arms or armor of any sort, only a simple tunic that bore the crest of the sun, the symbol of the Empire. After delivering his lady to the Garden of Victory, he would wait patiently beneath a large shrub cut in the shape of a shield until she was finished with her tea. To Mitsuru’s knowledge, he’d never once called Zophie by her name. In fact, he never said a single thing.
But Mitsuru had noticed something in Lady Zophie’s eyes whenever she would glance at her servant.
When he’d first met the servant, Mitsuru had assumed he too was a member of Sigdora. Even on the palace grounds, the daughter of the emperor would certainly have a bodyguard assigned to her. It would make sense that the bodyguard would be a member of the emperor’s trusted elites.
However, Mitsuru had grown less sure of this with every passing day. His sorcerer’s staff was quite powerful, the gem at its tip having absorbed the power of no less than four gemstones. One of its many powers was subtle, yet very effective. By merely tilting it at objects, one could see them with absolute clarity. For instance, if he swung the staff in Adju Lupa’s direction, he could see all the weapons the mild-mannered man carried on his person. Not only that, but he could sense the skill with which he used them. Skill at swordplay appeared as an aura around his body. By the coloration and the brilliance of that aura, Mitsuru could determine just how good a swordsman the man was.
But no matter how many times he raised his staff in the direction of the lady’s servant, he found no weapons or any trace of martial skill. It was possible, of course, that he was looking at a man who had been highly trained in the art of concealing his identity. Or equally possible that he was simply a harmless rickshaw puller.
When Mitsuru arrived, he found the servant in his usual place, crouched in the shade under his favorite shrub. When he spied Mitsuru approaching, he swiftly stood, took the paho’s reins in his hand, and helped Mitsuru dismount.
Lady Zophie smiled pleasantly from a high-backed chair in the gazebo. The seating here wasn’t too comfortable, and the lady routinely brought a large cushion with her. An intricately embroidered cloth had been draped over a circular table. A silver teapot gleamed in the sunlight.
Whenever the lady came to have tea here, a full entourage of ten female servants would appear bearing teapots, teacups, and cakes. While they drank, the servants would pour tea, and those with nothing to do would hover by the lady and her guest, waiting with bated breath, ready to fill any request directed toward them. The first time he’d come, it had been rather difficult to enjoy his cup of tea with such excessively attentive service. The lady’s calm acceptance had seemed bizarre to say the least. This, Mitsuru thought, is what it means to be royalty. If there was always a crowd of people waiting to please you from the moment you were born, he supposed anyone could grow used to it.
Personally, Mitsuru thought the whole thing was an unneccessary extravagance. To have ten people serving one person seemed an egregious waste of resources. He knew things had been much the same in the real world once upon a time. In a way, visiting Vision was like getting in a time machine to visit the past of his own world.
“It’s quite cold today, isn’t it? Perhaps not the best day for having tea in a garden,” the emperor’s daughter said, rising from her chair to greet him. Over by a shrub, her servant bowed on his knees, placing his fists upon the ground in greeting. Mitsuru took his seat opposite the lady.
“Yet I find the sky a remarkable blue. It is so beautiful, I fear it might purify my soul just to gaze at it.”
“Such modesty! Did you know, perhaps, that my name Zophie means the color blue in an ancient tongue of our people?”
The emperor’s daughter happily gave instructions to her lady servants, and soon the table was covered with fragrant tea and a selection of cakes. All the while she talked in a pleasant, lilting voice. She began by telling him how splendid she had felt upon waking that morning, going on to complain about how difficult her history lectures had been, and how much time it had taken her to stitch the pattern for her new ball gown, and how she’d heard of a new play that was garnering much praise in the capital…
Zophie was all of fifteen years old. She was the daughter of the emperor, yet in many ways she was still just a little girl. She was as giddy and talkative as any girl one might meet in the town. Mitsuru, in general, spoke little, taking in all that she said while making the occasional requisite comment or murmur of approval.
On occasion he would smile or nod, be surprised or impressed. She seemed to revel in Mitsuru’s every gesture, and seem quite pleased that she’d found this clever fellow to enjoy conversation with—even if he was a shade on the young side. Mitsuru, for his part, enjoyed these times for his own private reason, which he could never tell her.
When he first went to meet with the emperor’s daughter, he’d been so surprised his breath was taken away. Her face looked like someone he knew. They were almost identical.
The woman was his aunt—his father’s youngest sister.
After Mitsuru’s father, enraged at his wife’s infidelity, had killed Mitsuru’s mother and his little sister, then taken his own life, Mitsuru had been shuttled around between various relatives, eventually ending up with his young aunt. In truth, he’d been pressed on her. Here was a young woman, just graduated from college, who doubtlessly sympathized with Mitsuru, yet certainly lacked the means and wherewithal to raise a young boy. She tried being nice to him and that failed, and when she tried to control him, she lost control of herself and ended up crying and screaming.
She was not, in general, a happy person. Her eyes always had a sad, forlorn look to them.
Mitsuru grew to hate his father. Had he not committed suicide, Mitsuru would have killed him with his own bare hands. That all-consuming rage opened the Porta Nectere. It provided Mitsuru the chance to enter Vision.
Everything about the emperor’s daughter reminded him of his aunt. H
er little affectations. The shifts in her expression. The timbre of her voice. Everything. He thought his aunt must have been like this when she was a high school student, beautiful and unafraid of what lay ahead.
The Watcher of the gate, Wayfinder Lau, told Mitsuru he would encounter people in Vision who closely resembled those he knew in the real world.
—Even though they may look like two peas in a pod, the people you meet here are not who they are in the real world. They may have not a single thing in common. It is merely your own energy that causes them to appear the way they do.
Mitsuru had taken Wayfinder Lau’s words to heart, and, for better or for worse, he hadn’t yet met anyone resembling someone from the real world in his travels until now. Lady Zophie was the first.
And now, staring at her face from such a close distance, he began to wonder if Vision wasn’t really more than just something created by the surplus imaginative energies of people in the real world. Perhaps the real world and Vision were like two sides of a coin, each complementing the other. Making the other whole.
What had been discarded in the real world, what had never seen form, those dreams that never came true, these were what made Vision.That was why Halnera required a sacrifice from both worlds.
If this were the case, then Zophie’s easy smile and unfettered happiness belonged by all rights to his aunt back in the real world. Mitsuru would reach the Tower of Destiny and straighten out his twisted fate. On the morning he returned to the real world, all the happiness that had been Zophie’s would be returned to his aunt. This he promised himself.
It made the task before Mitsuru quite simple. The relationship between his aunt and Zophie was a perfect example. He would merely apply the same principle to his mother, his little sister, and himself.
Perhaps this is why, before he claimed the final gemstone, he had been confronted with this challenge and forced to do a little self-reflection. The Tower of Destiny had given him this encounter with Lady Zophie to prepare him.
That is why, in Zophie’s mindless prattle, he felt the weight of his mission. The enormity of what he stood to gain made his heart race.
“Master Mitsuru?”
Mitsuru snapped back into focus. Zophie was looking directly at him. He was afraid his attention had wandered in the middle of their discussion. “My apologies! My mind began to drift off into the clouds.”
Zophie smiled brightly. Her hairpin—an elaborate affair covered with stones of many colors and bound with a silver chain—swayed elegantly. “Do not worry on my behalf, for I know what it is that concerns you and causes your mind to wander. I know the source of this concern is my father…”
Mitsuru’s face tightened.
Zophie turned to her servants standing ready. “I must speak on a very important matter with Master Mitsuru. I will call for you when I need you,” she ordered.
The servants shuffled quietly off, leaving them alone in the Garden of Victory.
“Sending your servants away?” Mitsuru asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course, sending them away does not ensure that one of Adju Lupa’s men does not hear our every word, but I care not. For it was none other than Adju Lupa himself who suggested I speak to you on this matter, Master Mitsuru.”
Mitsuru was not surprised to hear that they might be observed. He had assumed that Sigdora’s eyes gleamed in every dark corner. But he was startled to hear the revelation that followed. “What is it that Lord Lupa said?”
Zophie bit her lip lightly, glancing in the direction of the shrub where her manservant waited. “Before I speak of that, may I ask you, Master Mitsuru, if you have divined the true nature of the man who pulls my rickshaw?”
Chapter 46
The Mirror of Eternal Shadow
The change of subject was so abrupt that for a moment Mitsuru merely stared at Lady Zophie.
“Adju Lupa told me,” she continued, amused by the shock in Mitsuru’s eyes. “He said Master Mitsuru possesses strange powers as a Traveler, and he is able to see people’s true forms. Perhaps you use your staff for this, no?” Her gaze went to the staff leaning against the armrest of Mitsuru’s brick chair.
“Truth be told, I’ve seen you use your staff on my servant here several times. Each time, you have the most curious look on your face.”
So she’s sharper than she lets on. Mitsuru returned her smile. “It is as you say. You are quite clever, m’lady.”
Zophie did not seem pleased. “Tell me, what did you see? I’m betting you didn’t see a thing. That is why you look at him so suspiciously. Am I right?”
Mitsuru nodded, wondering where she was going with this.
“Of course you saw nothing—for there is nothing there to see. Though my servant has the shape of a man, he is not a man at all. He is what we call a shell—a form without a soul. Though he follows his master’s orders faithfully, he has no will of his own. He feels no emotion, or pain. Yes, he can fall ill, and if you kill him he will die, so he has life. Yet it cannot be said that he lives.” A pity, she added under her breath.
“This is the first time I ever heard this word, shell, used in this way,” Mitsuru said. “I never heard of this sort of thing in the south.”
“No, of course you did not. Shells are found only in the north.”
“Is it some disease?”
Zophie shook her head vigorously. “No!”
Mitsuru squinted. “Then a drug perhaps, or magic? Or is this the effect of some external device?”
For the first time a look of fear came across Zophie’s expression. “Such frightful things you say!”
“It was only conjecture.”
The emperor’s daughter straightened herself in her seat, fixed her hair, and regained her composure. “When a man gazes into the Mirror of Eternal Shadow, he becomes a shell. There are some who think that the mirror itself sucks his soul away. Others believe that what he sees in the mirror is so fearful as to scare his soul straight out of his body. None, I daresay, know the truth. Still, no matter how strong or how wise a man may be, if he should so much as gaze upon the Mirror of Eternal Shadow, he will never speak again.”
Mitsuru’s mind raced furiously. As far as he could tell, Zophie was telling him the very thing that her father had kept secret. The secret of the Imperial Family, unrecorded in any of the many documents Mitsuru had scoured. Yet this information was coming to him courtesy of Adju Lupa. Somewhere inside Mitsuru’s mind a scale was tipping as questions formed. Did Zophie understand the meaning of what she was telling him? What was Adju Lupa’s game?
“This Mirror of Eternal Shadow—this is the first I’ve heard of such a thing.” Mitsuru shook his head. “It sounds frightful. This is here, in the north?” Mitsuru spoke calmly, as though he was merely making conversation. Zophie on the other hand was as wary and nervous as a hare who has heard the soft footfalls of an approaching predator. Scare her even a little, and she would jump into her hole, never to poke her head out again. I must tread carefully.
As expected, Zophie slowly looked up, gauging Mitsuru’s expression carefully before continuing. “My father—he did not tell you about the Mirror of Eternal Shadow? It is about as wide as I am tall, silver in color. It is quite beautiful to behold.”
“Nope. I’ve never heard of it.”
“Truly?”
Mitsuru smiled. “Really. It must be a deep, dark secret to make you so fearful.”
Zophie sighed and put a hand to her throat. It was a more theatrical gesture than was called for, but her dismay seemed genuine. “Master Mitsuru, you journey toward the Tower of Destiny, where the Goddess resides, yes?”
“That is my mission as a Traveler.”
“And you need one final gemstone. And this gemstone rests upon the crown of the Imperial Family.”
“Yes, the Crown of the Seal.”
“Ah, you know of this?” Zophie’s long eyelashes swept down, her eyes closing in thought.
“I was told it was a very important crown, that it m
ight not be moved without proper precaution.”
“This is true. Thus my father makes you wait in this way, Master Mitsuru. Tell me, how did my father explain the need for your wait?”
Mitsuru sat up straight and recounted the details of his exchange with the emperor. Just talking about it made rage rise in him. He could feel it churning beneath his skin. He wanted to tell Zophie, right to her pretty face. I can no longer bear to wait on your father’s whim. What a relief it would be to admit how, only an hour before, he had stood on the terrace, plotting the destruction of her precious capital.
Yet Mitsuru’s anger was so great he knew he had to keep it inside. Zophie stared at his face, calm and composed. When Mitsuru was done telling her all he knew, he paused, taking a sip of cold tea.
“And this arrangement—doesn’t it strike you as odd?”
“In what way?”
“My father has not told you how important the Crown of the Seal is, or what calamity will visit us should it be moved, has he?”
“He has not,” Mitsuru said, carefully choosing his words. “I did ask, but he told me nothing more than I have related to you just now.”
Zophie suddenly leaned forward, reaching out her hand and placing it upon Mitsuru’s. “Please forgive him. I do not intend to make excuses for my father, but I believe he did not tell you because he did not wish to burden you with problems that are not yours. You see, the conditions surrounding the Crown of the Seal are, for the most part, taboo to speak of. It is…unclean. I’m sure my father felt that these were things unfit for your ears, coming from the real world as an emissary of the gods, as you do.”
“I understand,” Mitsuru replied, his hand resting under hers. “Yet, m’lady, if I’m not totally mistaken, you are now going to tell me these things about the crown?”
Zophie nodded, her eyes never leaving his. Then, with a start, she lifted her hand and stood from the table.
Brave Story Page 74