Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Beagle, Peter S.

  Her eyes were dark with urgency, as I have only rarely seen them. I said, “I understand your meaning, mother. But not your reason. Why not?”

  My mother hesitated again, longer this time. She said finally, her voice uncharacteristically muffled, almost mumbling, “Because it will alert the Being he has gone to seek. And may have found by now.”

  I gaped at her. She went on, increasingly defensive, “He came to me the very day before he ran off. He wanted me to know—though he swore me not to tell you—that he was away in search of a creature he had heard tell of, powerful enough to change fate and make maj of an ordinary man.” She paused a third time. “Even a man of Kalagira. He thought such a change might help him carry magic for you, even Outside born, and would not listen when I warned him of the terrible price the Being would claim.”

  There is a difference between being truly speechless and not having the air to make the sound come out. I felt as though I had been struck in the stomach, having had no warning and no chance to brace myself. I said stupidly, “A creature.”

  “A Being,” my mother said. “It was old when your grandmother was not yet born, and its power is not of this world. I believe, if it so chose—”

  “A maj.” My voice was rising slowly, like floodwaters. “You think Lathro has gone to this—thing—to be magicked into the knack, so that he and I might perhaps have….” My mother nodded, looking guiltier by the minute. I whispered, “And you tell me this now?”

  “It would have done no good before. You would have hared off straight after him, and you no more suited for such a quest than a—a chicken!”

  “All this time,” I said. I was cold with fury, shaking uncontrollably. “All these days wasted going over and over this stupid spell, that baby rhyme, the Three Theories—”

  “—which you should have learned as a baby—”

  “And all the time, Lathro going further and further away, disappearing….” I couldn’t speak anymore; it was language disappearing now. I turned and walked out of the house. My mother said nothing, and did not follow.

  I left the next morning on Belgarth, the warhorse my father had accepted in payment for a great floral vase, so huge as to require three handles, that he had created for a lord’s wedding. Belgarth was getting on by then, and grown fat with inactivity; but I had learned to ride on his king’s couch of a back, and we were fond of each other. Besides, he always smelled wonderful, like a dew-damp hayfield warming in the morning sun, and his chestnut hide set off my coloring to perfection. And yes, majkes do indeed think about such things, like anyone else.

  Dunreath made no objection to my taking his horse, but he looked so wretched that it hurt my heart, and I would have turned back then, if I could have. When he held me, I whispered, “I’m sorry,” which I could not say to Willalou, even when she held my stirrup while I mounted, and we bade each other farewell. Nor did she ask forgiveness for what she had said and done, but only stood at Belgarth’s head, tall and beautiful and dry-eyed, looking straight at me. She said, “I have no counsel for you, and only one suggestion. Accept it or not, as you choose.”

  I waited, not speaking. My mother said, “All I know of this Being that you and Lathro seek, is that it is in some way bound to running water. Look for it near rivers, brooks, the smallest streams, search where running water is used by men—in mills, in tanneries, canals, weirs. And if you go north, towards Chun—remember, Lathro may have been born there—seek out a river town called Mulleary, and a woman named Dragine. We were acquainted long ago. If anyone in the land knows where this Being can be found, it will be Dragine.” The way she held my gaze with her own was as near to an embrace as makes no matter. “Goodbye, then, my daughter,” and she stood aside to let Belgarth pass.

  I did not look back as I rode away.

  I had never been beyond the borders of Kalagira, nor even close to them. I had never been away from home for longer than three days. Yet here I was, journeying alone into what, for me, was wilderness: the country roads winding more or less towards Chun, so ill-kept and overgrown that half a dozen bandits could be crouched within arm’s-reach and you not know—and beyond those, the bare hills surrounding Fors na’ Shachim and the Queen’s black castle. Belgarth wasn’t much concerned with scenery—he’s all for tiltyards, short, lumbering charges with murderous clashes at the end of them—and he wasn’t happy with stony little roads overhung with brambly vines. Yet he strode on gallantly all the same, a warhorse ever, war or no. There would have been little forage for him, in the normal way; but I made certain to bring rich grass to birth unseasonably, wherever we made camp, and water pooling out of stones. And yes, it was my mother who finally hammered that smallest charm into me—and yes, I should have learned it at the same time I learned to dress myself.

  It seemed the most practical thing—grudge it as I might—to follow Willalou’s suggestion and seek out the Dragine woman. I had no notion of what a Being—and did that signify demon, lamia, yaroth, or some other monster?—powerful enough to turn a mortal man into a maj might look or be like, and if there was someone who did I had many questions to ask. I heeded my mother’s hint about running water as well, and set out to trace the course of everything flowing south of Fors na’ Shachim. Of course it was a completely absurd notion—was that a laugh? Does your kind actually make a sound to express amusement?—but I was frightened for my man, and certain that nothing was beyond one as much in love as I.

  Yes, that is a laugh-sound, isn’t it? But as dark and distorted as you are.

  Often I let Belgarth choose our road—why not, since all horses, left to themselves, will go toward the smell of water, and all paths were the same to me so long as they headed eventually toward Chun? Meanwhile I practiced my spells, like any novice, as we covered the country foot by plodding foot: singing to mark earth and stone and the air itself, to keep us from wandering in circles or unwittingly doubling back on our trail.

  As for what I would do when I at last saw Lathro Baraquil’s face, I had forced myself, days and miles back, to banish such imaginings altogether. I might—or might not, even after Willalou’s improvised disciplines—be a match for the Being I sought; but even if I were, that was no guarantee Lathro would choose to return home with me when I found him. What if he had not yet found the Being, but insisted on continuing the search? Or what if he had already become a maj and considered himself far too grand now for a scab-kneed childhood playmate? Too many unknown factors; nothing to do but trudge on, singing.

  We kept almost entirely to the mountains: since so many of the streams and rivers of this region spring up there, it did seem to improve the odds at least somewhat. But we might as well have been seeking roses in the Northern Barrens, for I encountered no smallest trace of Lathro, nor of the Being I was hunting so steadfastly. I learned not a thing from the rare traveler, and nothing at all in any of the few villages in which I stabled Belgarth and passed the night. Yet I could not rid myself of the awareness of both of them, the conviction that they were somewhere nearby, whatever my training, my observations, or my inborn senses told me to the contrary. The heart is not the infallible guide it claims to be, but it does get a few things right now and then.

  The nights were turning seriously chilly, and Belgarth was even showing early suggestions of a winter coat, when we followed a swift, restless little river into a town called, not Mulleary, but Muldeary, rather larger than any we had come across in some while. I asked if a woman named Dragine lived there, and was told that she was visiting in a distant village, but would return in two days’ time. Belgarth and I spent those days doing little else but eating and sleeping. I had been running for nearly two months on nothing but vague memories of rest, real meals and a proper bed; and for all that happened in Muldeary, I will remember it as the town in which I slept. And took baths.

  Dragine arrived at dawn of the second day, walking briskly out of a dust storm that drifted away when she told it to. She was a tiny creature with a face like a spiderweb and hair so b
lack you could hardly see it, if you understand me. I caught up with her crossing Beggars’ Square, where the homeless of Muldeary are fed every morning, and began to introduce myself, but she kept striding on without even looking at me until I said, “I am Willalou’s daughter. Willalou of Kalagira.”

  Dragine stopped in her tracks then, and I saw her eyes for the first time. I had expected them to be as black as her hair, but they were a tawny brownish yellow, or yellowish brown. She peered at me—I suppose I should say ‘up at me,’ small as she was, but somehow it felt as though our eyes were on a level—and she said, “I know your mother.” Her voice sounded like sand blowing against the sides of an empty house.

  “Yes,” I said. “She told me not to leave Muldeary until I had seen you.” She started to turn away, and I grabbed at flattery to hold her attention, adding “She speaks well of you.”

  Dragine said, “You are a liar,” but she said it indifferently, as though she were already tired of me. “I never could abide your mother, and she never had anything but contempt for me. Why are you still bothering me?”

  “Because my mother told me you had knowledge to fit my need.” Dragine did not reply, but she did not walk away, either, or turn her strange eyes from mine. We stood there together in Beggars’ Square, and I told her about Lathro Baraquil.

  Her expression never changed, nor did her tone. She looked me up and down for a time, then shrugged very slightly and said, “Come to my house tonight. Ten minutes to midnight, no sooner.” She never mentioned where her house could be found, nor did I think then to ask her for directions. Whatever she actually might be—witch, sorceress like my mother, or even a true enchantress—in her presence I had trouble thinking at all.

  I took Belgarth out for a fast trot, bordering on a canter, and spent the rest of the day searching for someone willing to tell me where Dragine lived. It was an interesting experience: none of them recoiled in obvious terror at the idea of revealing her location, and yet somehow I came away from none of them with an exact address. In the end I had to employ a finding spell, which is so childishly simple that it always gives me a headache. But I was there precisely at the appointed time, and I came on foot, to show respect, though it meant a long walk.

  It was an ordinary house she lived in, neither a mansion nor a hovel: it might well have been the home of an honest and energetic farmwife, one who spent great amounts of time scrubbing and polishing worn kitchen flagstones that would never come quite clean. I remember that it smelled of old fires, and that the river ran near enough that I could see its banks from the front yard, and hear its rambling chatter as I stood on the threshold.

  Lathro Baraquil opened the door to me.

  Do your folk have hearts? Do they serve another purpose, as ours do, besides hurrying the impatient blood along through your veins, if you even have veins? Mine stopped—just for an instant, but completely—and then it surged to the size of Belgarth, so that my chest could not nearly contain it, and with a cry the Queen must have heard in Fors na’ Shachim I threw myself into Lathro’s arms. I think we mortals must each be allowed one moment like that in our lives. I don’t believe we are constructed to withstand two.

  For the sake of accuracy, however, I must admit that I threw myself against Lathro’s arms, not into them. He made no effort to embrace me, but only stood still, looking not into my eyes but over my shoulder, his own eyes empty as eggshells of feeling. He did not know me at all; and what stood in his place, in his clothes—I had made him that shirt; made it, not conjured it—I could never possibly know.

  He did not recoil, nor thrust me away. He stood still, staring over my shoulder at the night, with every treasured bump and bone and angle of him turned foreign, after years of being as much my own as his. I babbled his name, but it had no more effect than the sound of the stream. Nothing in him knew me.

  Beyond him Dragine waited, her face as unreadable as ever, but her eyes glowing like the eyes of a hunting shukri. She said, “He has been here for some while, waiting for the Being to be called. I myself, however, have been waiting for you.”

  I pushed past Lathro to confront her, demanding, “What have you done to him? Tell me now, or I will kill you where you stand!” Eighteen and gently bred up, can you imagine me saying such a thing to anyone? I have not even said it to you, although the moon is on its way to setting.

  In her voice of blowing sand, Dragine answered me, “That would be wrong and foolish of you, since it was not I who set this spell upon him.”

  I could not respond. I simply stared. Dragine said, “It happens with humans. They often desire something so greatly, for so long, that with the proper push they cannot remember why they craved it in the first place. So it is with your man—he was in this state when he found his way here. Only if he came from where you did, I suspect there was little finding on his path. He has been here quite some time.” She paused, watching me take that in, and then went on, “In the end, it is your doing, even more than his.”

  “My doing?” The absurdity of the claim outraged me, but it frightened me as well. “How can it have been my doing?”

  Dragine pointed at Lathro, standing completely motionless, not even blinking. “When you told him that you two could never marry, because of his being an Outsider, what did you think he would do? You say you have known him since childhood—what did you think?”

  I could hear my mother’s “Where is your head?” under my own whispered reply. “I never told him that. I would never have….”

  “No? Well, someone did.” Dragine’s yellow teeth bared their tips in a smile of mean delight. “And that same someone directed him straight here, to me. What do you think of that, Breya Drom, daughter of Willalou?”

  There was a taste of copper in my mouth, and a distant braying in my ears. I said, “My mother set Lathro searching for you? I don’t believe it.” But I did, I did, even before Dragine answered me.

  “I would never dream of lying to you—I am enjoying the truth far too much, little witch-girl.” She was beginning to laugh, like a sandstorm gathering strength.

  Strangely, the contempt in the word witch-girl cleared my head, leaving me more coldly, stubbornly rational than I had been since I left home. I said, as haughtily as I was able, “I am no witch, but an enchantress, as you well know, and the daughter of one who could crumble you and a dozen like you into her soup.” The laughter grew until I could actually feel the sand against my skin, like tiny blades. Beside me, Lathro showed no reaction at all, his entire attention focused on nothing I could see or imagine. His eyes had not met mine squarely since he had opened Dragine’s door to me. I said again, “Tell me why you hate my mother so. Because she doesn’t know, I’m sure.”

  “You think not?” Dragine’s laughter did not return; rather, she looked at me with something almost like pity. “She told you nothing she did not have to tell you, did she then? Nothing?”

  I had no answer for her. With no further word, she turned and led me—and silent, obedient Lathro too—through the house to a curious place I’d not noticed from outside: neither a room nor a yard nor a veranda, but a plain high-walled space open in part to the sky. The walls were white and bare. There were no chairs, or even cushions, to sit on; the only distinguishing feature of the area was a small pool, ringed round with large stones, carefully arranged. There was no moon that night, but the stars were reflected thickly in the pool, darting like bright fish, as the current from some hidden inlet stirred the surface. I could see my shadow in it, but not my face.

  Dragine squatted on her heels, and gestured to me to do the same. She did not look at Lathro, who stood by, hands folded in front of him, staring away at nothing. She said, “I was born in Kalagira. I grew up with your mother. Did she tell you that, at least?” I shook my head. “Well, so it was. And as you and this one here—” she jerked a gaunt finger at Lathro—“have been to each other, so was I with your father. Dunreath the potter.” When she spoke his name she closed her eyes, barely for longer than a bl
ink, but I saw.

  “Were you promised?” I could not imagine her young with Dunreath—the bitter spider-lines gone, the tawny eyes innocently yearning—but my folk take handfasting seriously, and I had to know.

  Dragine looked at me for a long, cold time before she replied. “Breathe easy, witch-girl, your father never deceived me. We were close to promising—he even spoke of it, a time or two—but I was shy still. I was shy….” Her voice had grown soft when she spoke of Dunreath, almost wistful; but it turned to blowing sand again with her next words. “Then came your mother.”

  Oh, perhaps you can see it; perhaps you can take my word for my young father’s first sight of a maiden Willalou. Dragine must have seen the vision in my face, for she said, “Aye, there was never a day when I could match her for beauty. Nor for power, either… not then.”

  The last two words were uttered in a near-animal growl, and I could hardly catch them, but I did. I said, “And now?”

  Dragine smiled fully for the first time, granting me, as though by a flash of lightning, an instant’s glimpse of the girl who had had every reason to believe that Dunreath belonged to her, with her. She said, “I was not born a maj, or to a gifted line. There has never been so much as the feeblest barnyard witch in my family, search as far back as you will. How should my potter not have been drawn to such a face, such a gift, as Willalou’s? No, I blame him not at all, your father.”

  “But my mother must take the blame for everything,” I said, “every misfortune that has befallen you since you lost Dunreath to her. Even before then, am I wrong?”

  “I blame her for being exactly what she is, no more: for knowing that what is not hers is hers to take. Do you feel that unjust, witch-girl? Too bad. I also honor her for making me what I am.” The smile thinned, curling into the newest of new moons. “The Being your foolish man seeks draws no line between one sex and another. It responds simply to desire. To need.”