“I should be dressed in something sensible, like armor from head to toe,” she said to her reflection. “There might be dragons.”
“You don’t remember armor,” said the girl in the mirror, twirling around and holding her skirts wide. “Not the way you remember this dress, the one you wore to your very first ball. You stared at it for hours in the mirror.”
“I do remember armor perfectly well,” the princess said. And she did. It reflected the flickering torches held by her servants as she knelt in the mud and lifted the helm off the head of the dead man, her beloved father, the first of the royal family to fall victim to the wizard’s deadly spells.
“Stop that!” shouted her reflection. “Put that memory away. Do you think he won’t notice? He remembers that battle, too. The day his magic killed a king.”
The tortoise nuzzled her little gold slipper. “He keeps that memory close, the memory of his first victory. You will find it in a bedroom just across the hall. You can destroy it if you want.”
“No!” Her reflection stamped the same foot and the princess noted that no tortoise appeared beside her in the mirror. “The clocks are ticking rapidly toward dawn. You must go on. Taking away that victory will not destroy him.”
“Oh, if it is destruction that you seek,” the tortoise said, “I suggest the back stairs. They lead to the grotto under the house.”
5
The princess met the man with looking-glass eyes upon the winding stair. He was climbing up as she was going down, and she saw his crooked shadow against the wall before she heard the footfall of his steps.
He stopped upon the stair and stared up at her.
“How did you come here?” he said.
She looked down into a face impossibly young and handsome. Inky curls tumbled across a wide smooth brow. Dressed in beribboned velvets and gilded leather, she might have taken him for an elvish prince or a knight of a dreaming realm if she had not spotted the slender wand of ebony that hung from his hip.
Because the truth can be twisted into deception and defense, she answered his question as simply as she dared. “I fell asleep,” the princess said. In her left hand, she curled her fingers tight around the rusted key that she had found earlier. She shook down her sleeve to conceal it further.
The wizard climbed up the last three stairs to stand beside her. The narrow step broadened to hold them both. A long window appeared upon the wall to allow moonlight to brighten the landing where they stood.
“I heard footsteps in my house,” he said. “Rooms that I closed long ago seem to be open.”
As the princess gazed up into his puzzled face, she saw only her own reflection in the silvered perfection of his mirrored eyes. Even here, in the house built by his mind, he cast that spell of protection to keep her away from his soul.
“I fell asleep,” she repeated, “and found myself here.”
He reached out a hand. His fingers passed through the fluttering gauze of her sleeve. She stayed as still as the doe who hears the hunter’s hounds panting through the brush.
“You are nothing more than a dream,” he said. “Or perhaps a shadow of someone I met long ago. I know your face, I am sure of it, but you are none of my company tonight. How do I know you?”
“What do you see?” she said, unwilling to tell lies that could so easily twist into snares.
“I see a girl with shadowed eyes, a girl of fifteen or sixteen summers who carries some winter sorrow in her heart.”
She nodded. “That is what I see reflected in your eyes.” And still she spoke no more than the truth.
The wizard sighed and fingered the death-dealing wand that looked so innocent upon his hip. “I will remember your name. I am sure of that, for all my memories are here,” he said. “But I must retrieve the pieces of a spell tonight for a battle tomorrow. Will you walk with me in the garden?”
The princess dared not refuse. The long window became a door leading out to the moonlit paths that passed under the shadowed trees and curled around the fountain spraying a cold silver mist into the air.
“I crossed the Northern Sea twice,” the wizard said, “to discover a spell to shatter the heart of my enemy. In the swirling waves and flying spray, I found it.” He reached his hand under the jet of water falling from the urn of a stone maiden. As the water trickled across his skin, it glowed with a brilliant cold light.
“As water wears away stone, this wears away the years, ravaging both strength and vigor, turning the young old and the old to dust,” he said.
“And does your enemy deserve that?” the princess asked.
“That and so much more. For, every battle waged has stolen the young by the thousands and led them to their graves. Now one hundred stand in circle around my tent, the last of the thrice-bannered army that marched across the mountains. In these dark hours, my incantations must bind and snare, or all will be lost with the dawn. Victory balances on a blade’s edge tonight.”
His voice dropped lower and lower as he walked the perimeter of the fountain, gathering up his spell from the frothing water.
“Where are we?” she asked to distract him. Under the shadow of brush, the princess spotted the tortoise. The creature was carrying a clock in its mouth and she knew that time was ticking away for her. Once the wizard returned to the waking day with his spell, nothing could be done to save her kingdom.
She had fought so long, come so far, and now, in a garden growing in the mind of the world’s greatest wizard, she could see a grave opening beneath her feet.
“Be careful,” cried the wizard, turning away from the water to motion her back from the long hole that appeared in the center of his lawn. “That tomb is not meant for you. Look away, look away, before it consumes you.”
The princess danced back from the edge. “Tell me where we are?” she begged as prettily as she knew how. It had been many years since she had asked anything of anyone but herself, and the words sounded falsely sweet to her ears. But the wizard bent to her and crooked his arm in invitation. She placed one insubstantial hand upon it. As formal as any court dance, they paced side by side across the smooth grass.
“This is my place, built out of recollections and magic,” he said. “In the house I stored all my memories, cataloged each encounter, memorialized every friend and foe, placed my past behind locks and bars, so no one could steal it from me. No matter how far I travel, I need only close my eyes and come home to all that I hold dear.”
“Yet you keep your most powerful spell outside the house?”
He smiled and the moonlight glittered in his looking-glass eyes. “Are we outside or in?”
She glanced around. The trees stretched up, carved pillars that supported a painted sky. Behind them was the bottom of the winding staircase. In front of them was a plain wooden door.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A protection,” the wizard said. “Behind it dwells my only defeat.”
She tilted her head and wheedled as nicely as she could: “Tell me the story.”
Clenched in her left hand, the rusted key bit into her soft flesh. A drop of blood fell from her palm to spot her golden shoe.
“Once a great and terrible king invaded my country, trying to bind with iron and fire all the magic there,” the wizard said. “We fought in the forests, and the mountains, and by the banks of the rushing streams. At last, in the mud and muck of a field that once sprouted with sweet corn and fair flowers, he fell and his army fled.”
“Then you won?” she said.
“Then we lost,” he replied with a rueful shake of his head. “For he had a child who seemed as innocent and fair as he was terrible and cruel. So we let her go home, not knowing her heart was as blackened and burnt with witchcraft as his. And that the armies who would swear loyalty to her would be far greater and more demonic than any that bowed head to her father.”
E
ven as he spoke, she stepped forward to unlock the door with rusted key that she held in her bloodied hand.
A great wind came howling out of the door, a wind that smelled of winter and war, of witchcraft and thwarted spells, of all the enchantments that she had so long thrown against the wizard with looking-glass eyes.
The storm ripped through the grotto, uprooting spells and tossing memories into the maelstrom. The tortoise swirled away in the wave of water washing out of the fountain. The mirrors that protected the wizard’s eyes shattered. With a cry, he collapsed to his knees. Bloody tears rained down his face to splash at her feet.
“I know you,” the wizard gasped as he gazed up at her sweetly smiling face.
“And I remember you,” she said. She bent to kiss him, gently as a sigh, and pluck out his eyes with her long fingernails. “I remember how you prattled of mercy and justice as they burned my father’s body upon the battlefield.”
She raised her hands and let loose the winds of her rage. She sent the storm spiraling through the house, smashing open every door, breaking every lock, destroying the wizard’s mind and power one memory at a time.
Then she woke.
5
In her chamber, the queen rose from her bed. The twelve maidens surrounding her dais slumped from exhaustion, only the cords that bound them to the chairs keeping them upright. Streaks of silver ran through their hair and deep lines marred their once youthful faces. She passed them by without regret or praise, calling for her attendants.
Her witches came running with robes, jewels, and unguents. Even as she stalked to the throne robe, they arrayed her in splendor. When the queen swept into her chamber, all bowed their heads to her terrible beauty and power.
As she settled onto her silver throne, the queen glanced into the hand mirror swiftly raised by one of her ladies. Her reflection had none of the sweet aspect of the princess that she had been so long ago. The once riotous red curls were now bound and braided beneath her iron crown.
With a pleased smile, the queen waved away her attendants and motioned to her generals to come closer.
“What word?” she said.
“We overran their camp at dawn, as you ordered,” said the largest demon in smoking armor.
“The wizard?”
“A mindless husk mewing on the cold ground.”
“The one hundred champions?”
“Eighty-two were killed and all the rest were captured.”
The queen nodded. “Very good. Send the eighteen who lived home.”
“Home, your Majesty?”
She nodded. “In chains. Execute the villains before their friends and family so their people know well my mercy and justice. Then set up new princes and dukes to rule as we have discussed.”
“Very good, your Majesty.”
They bowed and withdrew.
The queen sat on her throne, considering the wisdom of building her own memory house to store her magic and protect her soul from her enemies. In one room, she thought, she would place a man with looking-glass eyes. Then she would close and lock that door and never think of him again.
ROSEMARY JONES writes adventures set in shared worlds like the Forgotten Realms and Cobalt City as well as short stories for numerous publishers. Mostly she writes about ordinary people struggling to be heroes in extraordinary settings, but she appreciates the opportunity to be a little wicked in this anthology. When she’s not writing, she’s collecting books or reading. Which only goes to show you can take the girl out of the printed page, but you can’t take the printed page out of the girl—or something like that! To learn more about her current projects, visit her website at www.rosemaryjones.com.
STARKEEP
Gabrielle Harbowy
Flames danced at the periphery of Riss’s vision and consumed the air in her chest. She scattered the black water in the scrying bowl, summoning ripples across the surface until she could only feel the aching in her neck and hunched shoulders, not the crackling heat that had engulfed Lord Blackburn and half his men. The vision of their soundless screams pounded in the silence between her heartbeats.
“Well?” Arabella Blackburn’s long-fingered hand tangled into the back of Riss’s hair and twisted, pulling at the knot and pushing knuckles at her skull, so that no direction she could squirm would bring respite. Riss curled her damp fingers around the rough, unglazed edges of the stone bowl, turning away from the glassy surface as the water rose to meet her. Flames or no, she didn’t relish a dunking.
“Fire,” she said too quickly, too loudly, just to make the pushing stop. She silently cursed herself for revealing even that much. Now she would have to see it through. “They found the den, and the dragons. And there was fire. Death.” Riss swallowed, tasting ash. A powerful headache was starting to build behind her eyes. Maybe a dunk would be refreshing, after all.
Lady Blackburn abruptly tugged Riss upright. Dampened ends of her hair landed cold and heavy across her flushed cheeks. The room spun, giving motion to the heavenly bodies woven into the hanging tapestries. The oily droplets and the fields of celestial blue quenched the last flames from the edges of her sight. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger, less parched. “They expected to capture one, on its own. They cannot defeat a whole flock. The survivors are retreating home.”
“And my husband?” The hand tightened and twisted. The guard at the door shifted, fingers curling around the hilt of his sword.
“I did not see his face among the dead, my lady.” It was the truth. But only because the side of him she could see had been burned away.
Lady Blackburn released her grasp. Riss bent over the claw-footed pedestal again, exhaling a slow ripple across the stale water. Only the midnight-blue glaze at the bottom of the bowl greeted her. No visions. When she pulled back her focus to the surface, she saw her own troubled reflection. Behind her, Lady Blackburn, with thin-pressed lips and eyes sharp as a crow’s. The lady straightened and disappeared from the image, but Riss didn’t dare relax the tension in her arms just yet. She knew she might still end up face first in the water, or worse. Silence hung, thick and cold as the droplets clinging to her cheeks. Finally, angry footsteps retreated, followed by the clank of the guard’s armor, and the heavy door on the east wall slammed shut.
Riss took a trembling breath and straightened, feeling air sting the raw skin where she’d clutched rough stone. She flexed her hands gingerly and looked down at her fingers. They were short and dirty, where Lady Blackburn’s were long and graceful. The tiny, delicate gestures of Arabella’s fingers had brought so much cruelty down on Riss, and on people Riss had known all her life. Cruelty she had learned from her lord. Riss tried to mimic that imperious flick of the fingertips, and frowned—she only managed to look like she was flinging porridge at a wall. And missing.
5
It had been called the map room in Riss’s youth. The plan had been to completely ring the round stone room in tapestries that mapped the known sky, but Starkeep had been taken before the work was complete. Four of the heavy tapestries hung: one at each cardinal direction, offering slices of the heavens in pale blues, silver and gold on fields of midnight. Lanterns between filled the room with harsh, wavering light.
The narrow door hidden behind the southern hanging was simple wood, painted convincingly with the shadows and stipples of the surrounding stone. Even if it were exposed, one would have to touch it to realize that its surface was smooth; Riss had been exploring these passages for most of her eighteen years, and it still fooled her eye. Yet, in all the evenings Riss had been watching her, Lady Blackburn had never even glanced meaningfully toward the tapestry. She didn’t know the door existed, Riss was sure of it. The same with the hollow bench with the spyholes in the great hall, the trapdoor in the observatory, the kitchen cabinet and the bedroom wardrobe with the false backs—all leading to a web of tunnels and passages. Never so much as a glance. Riss was
n’t sure whether she should be relieved or disappointed. Did they not have hidden passages at all in the Westlands? Who conquered an enemy keep and then didn’t explore it to find its secrets? Sloppy work, truly.
Perhaps when this was all over, she’d take the lady on a tour and charge a sterling for each secret door and tunnel the woman had missed. Mistress of Starkeep indeed, when a dozen mousers and Riss could slip quickly between places Lady Blackburn hadn’t even dreamt were connected.
Riss shut the hidden door behind her and felt for the lantern on its hook. A turn of the wheel produced just enough of a glow to see by, and she hurried down a stone passage narrow enough to scrape both her elbows. Behind the kitchens was a rounded intersection where three paths met. The fifth stone below the sconce was a false front, and from behind it Riss drew a cinched velvet bag.
“Wine for the mistress.” Riss froze. She recognized the chambermaid’s voice through the false backing of the pantry; the rustle of cloth and the hollow clanks of metal and glass.
“Any news of the lord?” The cook’s assistant. She had already been old when Riss was a child.
“She’d not say, but she’s angry as a storm. A bit of that loaf, too, if you don’t mind. Something to soak up the wine a bit so it doesn’t overflow into her temper.”
“Take some cheese in, too. Here...”
More kitchen sounds, and a sigh from the young chambermaid. “So calm around here, innit, with Lord Blackburn gone. That gash he gave you is almost healed.”
At the mention of his name, the flames from the scrying bowl flickered at the edges of Riss’s vision and a wave of dry heat baked her cheeks. She’d been so focused on what to say to Lady Blackburn that it hadn’t sunk in for herself, but now the realization struck her so suddenly that she had to lean her forehead to the cool stone. The fire. Lord Blackburn was dead. It was done.
“You hope his men come home soon,” the cook teased. “What’s the name of that one you fancy? The tall one, with the exotic Eastland eyes...”
With the velvet bag secured in a fold of her skirt, Riss rushed on. The kitchens were excellent for gossip, but her own appointment with an Eastlander was more urgent.
When the Villian Comes Home Page 39