by Ross Lawhead
Daniel rose. It was time to follow the next mind-string to its end-knot. But what to decide? Take all the heads, or only some of them?
_____________________ VI _____________________
The smell of fresh death followed him in a cloud, making his eyes tingle. He swallowed back bile and rubbed his eyes with the back of a hand. He was exhausted. He had decided on bringing all the heads, in the end. That would be the most impressive, make the greatest impact. And yet it was quite a trick to manage it. There were twenty-eight of them in all; twenty-eight traitorous heads of enemy agents. And it was no easy task getting the heads off of the shoulders. It had become easier after the first few when he knew more what he was doing, but then he’d had to work out some way to carry them all back. He’d struck upon taking a few spears and skewering them onto it, threading them on top of one another like beads on a needle. That took unique skill as well. Then he’d taken all the belts and bands he could find and tied the spears together so that he could drag the heads behind him.
It wasn’t easy work. They kept getting caught on rocks and outcroppings, and he had to stop and free them. It was possible he had lost one or two heads on the way. And if they were smelling worse, at least they’d become less messy, the blood and entrails already long gone.
At least it was easy enough to find his way back to Niðergeard; he just had to follow the light and keep himself low, out of sight.
“Sticky. Sticky. Lengthy. Length. Stick. In a pocket. In a pocket. In a pocket.”
When he got to the pile of dust that once used to be the outer wall, he thought he’d announce himself. It would be better not to let any yfelgópes see him without some sort of announcement, especially since he was dragging over two dozen of their heads behind him.
“Kelm! Kelm! I want Kelm!” he called at the top of his voice. He was surprised at how ragged and quiet it sounded.
At first there was no response, and then the terrible idea occurred to him that he might be alone down here in a deserted city. What would he do then? Just as he began to fret in earnest, tears springing to his eyes, a yfelgóp poked his head over the top of a roof. Looking around, he saw others as well, standing in archways, leering around the corners of buildings. One or two of them ducked away; a few of them started moving cautiously toward him.
He pulled the heads up onto the pile of rubble and then stopped. His arms ached so badly he thought that they’d just pop off. Yfelgópes were now surrounding him, looking at the heads, looking at him, weapons drawn. Keep it sticky, keep it sticky and folded down, he told himself. He gave them what he hoped was a winning smile and then casually rubbed his eyes. They were so puffy it was a constant effort of will to keep them open.
And then Kelm was there. Right in front of him, lumbering toward him with a puzzled look on his face. And well he should be puzzled, Daniel thought. He obviously wouldn’t have guessed that I could have tumbled to his little pantomime so quickly. Try to pump information out of me by sending some yfelgópes to “break me out” of prison and trick me into thinking I’m their friend and telling them everything I know. You’ll have to get up earlier in the morning than that to catch me out.
Daniel realised he wasn’t talking, just thinking loudly. “Hello, Kelm. I’m back. Did you miss me?”
“Scarcely. I didn’t even know you’d gone. Where have you been?”
“Recognise who I’ve got here with me?” Daniel bent down and hoisted one of the spears up. It had eight heads on it, each one pierced above the jaw and resting cheek-to-cheek next to the others. Daniel thought that one of them might be Argument. Something started to drip on his hand.
Kelm looked at the heads and Daniel, blankly.
Daniel almost laughed—or maybe he actually did. Kelm was putting on a good act. He really did act like he didn’t have a clue as to who his own double agents were.
“I’ll help you out with a hint: these are the ones that released me from prison.”
If Kelm had said anything at that point—questioned, commented, or even just opened his mouth in surprise—then Daniel might not have doubted himself in that moment. As it was, Kelm just stood, looking at him, his face still blank, his eyes searching for context in Daniel’s expression.
Does he really not know? Daniel asked himself. Or is he that good at pretending? Perhaps Gád sent them, unknown to Kelm. Maybe I’m doing this the wrong way; maybe I should play along. It was like a game of chess, each player making their move, doing the best with what they had. A player with fewer pieces on the board could still easily win, so long as they were smarter than their opponent.
Then Daniel was hit with a brain wave. There was already a lie in play that he could run with. His eyes lit up. “These are traitors, Kelm. They released me, thinking that I would help them to overthrow you, but as you can see, I’m loyal. I present these tokens as offerings to you of my intent. I—I want to help. Do you believe me now?” Daniel gave his best smile again.
Kelm took another moment to study Daniel head to foot. Daniel did his best to stand up to the scrutiny—Keep smiling, head and shoulders back, mind that posture, keep your arm steady, try not to let your knees jiggle, and keep everything, above all else, completely folded down. Stay sticky.
“No. No, I don’t think I do trust you,” Kelm said. “Not in the least. Take him back to the cell and put six guards in the corridor. We’ll hope that he actually has killed everyone who might try to rescue him again, but I would rather not take the risk.” He gave the orders with a flick of his hand and then stayed to watch them carried out, an eyebrow raised in amused disbelief.
Daniel dropped the spear with the heads on it and drew his sword. He looked at the circle of yfelgópes, already bristling with weaponry, closing in on him and then dropped it and raised his hands with a smile of resignation. He felt hands on him and a punch that winded him and nearly doubled him over. Then he was being pushed and shoved back toward the dungeon, back toward his cell.
“Thank you for coming back to me, Daniel,” Kelm said as he passed. “You have saved me from making a very unpleasant report back to Gád.”
Daniel nodded amiably at Kelm as he passed, happy, in a way, that he was going back to the cell. It would give him some time to analyse his situation and plot his next move. The game continued.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Pious Kings
_____________________ I _____________________
Backing away from the enchanted image, Freya turned to the other mirror that showed herself as she was now. Then she turned again and looked into the mirror directly opposite that showed her wearing the crown. The third mirror reflected her image as she was at thirteen. She gasped and raised a hand to her mouth.
She appeared as she had when she first came to Niðergeard. The bedraggled school uniform she wore was all dirty and dishevelled from walking through tunnels and swimming in icy streams. A chill went through her. Why was the mirror showing her this instance in her childhood and not any of the earlier, happier ones?
So, three mirrors. One showed the present, one showed the past, one showed the . . . future? Seeing the past, as reality, made her think this other held a measure of reality too. But what was she doing in that gown? With that crown on?
She turned again to the mirror that showed the future. She went right up to it. It was an incredible effect—her older face mirrored every tilt of the head and twitch of her face. Her eyes went to the crown and the reflection’s eyes went to her own bare head. She raised her hands and watched them in the image as her reflection lifted them to her head. Carefully, Freya mimed gripping the crown and then taking it from her head. The reflection followed the movement of her hands and removed the crown.
She turned the image’s crown over in her hands, studying it, watching how the light played across it. And then, as the light danced upon the silver surface, her eye fell on the reflection of the mirror behind her. When she looked at it before, it showed her as a child, but now it showed something different. It looked li
ke two people standing in the mirror.
She turned and looked at it. But when she looked at it straight on, it showed her as a girl and nothing else. She turned back to the future mirror and looked at one via the other; there was definitely something standing behind her young mirror image, but she couldn’t quite tell. How were the mirrors fixed to the walls? If only there was some way to move them closer together—
The racks.
She moved one of the racks closer to the “past” mirror that showed her as a little girl and then went back to the “future” mirror. She lifted it off of the wall—from its series of hooks that ran along a groove—and carried it across to the other mirror, placing it on the rack. Then, with her back to the “past” mirror, she moved the “future” mirror so that it showed her and then the image behind her as well.
What she saw was her older self in the mirror before her, but standing behind that image, reflected in the other mirror, was another reflection of her. By turning to the side and leaning forward, she managed to manoeuvre herself into a position where she could see past her future self to the other.
The face of a young girl peered out at her from behind the lavish red skirts of her future self. At first Freya thought it was her younger image again, but as she looked at it longer, she saw that she had different features, a different skin tone, but nonetheless still bore a striking resemblance.
Could it be her daughter?
Freya raised a hand and waved. The girl mirrored her perfectly. “Hello?” she said, and the girl mouthed the words at the same time as she. Was it still just a reflection, then? She stood still, studying her face and clothes. The girl’s expression betrayed no emotion other than her own, and so its thoughts, its personality, were masked to her.
She took a step back and knocked the frame of the mirror ever so slightly as she did. The mirror tilted and a whole line of images grew from behind the image of her supposed daughter. All her descendants curved away into the dim distance behind her.
What a remarkable enchantment.
An idea occurred to her and she turned around. She caught her breath as she found herself faced with herself as a young girl, and in the reflection behind that was her mother. And behind her was her grandmother, and then, presumably, her grandmother’s mother, and all the way down the line, into the far distance.
It was eerie and haunting. “This is too much,” Freya said.
But it wasn’t even the half of it. Turning to the door, she found that another mirror hung on the back of it. Closing the door, it latched, and she looked at the image that showed her in a regular, everyday outfit but surrounded by a busy, daytime café scene, which she recognised instantly—the Jericho Café, where she liked to do most of her revisions. Her mirror image was standing just as she was now, but to the side of her was a small, round table that had her book and an empty mug containing a sodden tea bag.
Was this her as she could have been? But could have been if . . . what? If she hadn’t returned? If she’d killed Gád? If she hadn’t come across Swiðgar and Ecgbryt in the first place?
People moved around in the background behind her, casually, calmly. A guy her age—a nice-looking guy, well-groomed and not too fashionable, just the type she liked—came and sat at the table behind her and started poking around on his laptop. Did this image show what she wanted her life to be like?
Freya brought the mirror to the centre of the room and hung it on another of the racks. Then she took the rack showing her future and turned them toward each other. They stood at a right angle to each other. Each one showed her reflection, and the reflection of herself in the other mirror—but they were different images.
On her near left was the reflection of herself in the café, and on her near right was the reflection of her future self. But the inside reflections were different from these two again.
The café scene’s mirror showed a sitting room, small—a little too small perhaps—but cosy. She was standing in front of a sofa, and behind her, where the image of the unknown student would have been, was a man she couldn’t quite see but whom she was certain she recognised. She could only see the edge of his face and so she tilted the mirror in order to show more of it.
It was Daniel. He looked at home. She could identify some of her things in the room—a print of a painting she liked, a carving a friend gave her from Africa. She was dressed in night clothes and seemed comfortable, relaxed . . . with Daniel, who wasn’t wearing the hard mask he’d picked up on the street, but who seemed pleasant and gentle, as if Niðergeard had never even happened.
She looked into the other mirror, and beside her future self, she saw an image of herself, still wearing the silver crown but wearing battle gear—darkly polished plate armour and chainmail, with black boots and trim, a sword fastened at her hip. Her hands were bare and smeared red with blood. The scene behind her was dim and dark, but she was pretty sure that there were bodies around her.
Freya realised she wasn’t breathing and took a deep breath. She forced herself to think this through. Surely they couldn’t both be true, so either of them must only be a possible future—or both of them might be. But if so, for what purpose? To show different options? To tempt her into certain paths? Who would create such things? Ealdstan, presumably, but why? What did he use them for?
Cautiously, very cautiously, she tilted the mirrors closer to each other and watched as the reflections stacked upon themselves, cascading behind one another.
In the right-hand mirror, she saw herself crowned, and behind that, wearing the battle armour, behind that was a reflection of her in rags and bound in chains, behind that she was wearing blue, papery pajamas and a white robe—like someone might wear in a mental hospital—and behind that she was wearing the Oxford graduation robes, and behind that were more and more images, although it was extremely hard to make them out.
What did it mean? If they were all probable futures, was there any significance to their order? Were the closest images the most probable?
She took a step back, out of the mirrors’ reflections, feeling light-headed. Again, she asked, what was the point of this room, besides a sort of dizzying diversion? Almost ten minutes passed and she was breathless, disoriented, with an overwhelming number of questions. Was it possible that Ealdstan, in his hundreds of years’ worth of time, could have cracked the secret to using these mirrors and could see the actual future? If anyone could, it would be him, although they’d not discovered anything in his study that related or even alluded to this place or the mirrors. And if he had figured out a way to exploit them somehow, then to what effect?
Things got really crazy when she set three mirrors up to reflect one another. They showed all different kinds of scenes of herself and people she knew and didn’t know in familiar and unfamiliar settings. She tried to track which images were shown in what mirrors, but it got very confusing, and the more complex the setup, the harder it was to make out exactly what was in the reflections. She strained her neck and her eyes trying to see as much of the different scenes as possible.
Then she placed all four mirrors around her and turned slowly, as if in a kaleidoscopic chamber. Her eyes watered and she experienced a sharp stab of vertigo that forced her to move out from the reflecting mirrors quickly before she keeled over. She almost threw up at that point, and it took her a long time to recover.
Unable to pull herself away from the room, she spent countless hours arranging and rearranging the mirrors—moving them just so, tilting them this way and then that, standing exactly here—but she eventually tore herself away, becoming hungry and tired. Her mind was so full of images that she could barely begin to process them all, and it made it difficult for her to think of anything else. She felt like screaming.
Used in combination, the mirrors all had so many different properties. The “now” one showed the friends and people she’d been close to when reflected in the “past” mirror: her parents in their garden, her sister in a classroom, Daniel standing in a forest—that
was odd—Ecgbryt in a dark tunnel, and beyond that she thought she saw Modwyn with her eyes closed in what may have been a bedroom. The images behind that were hard to make out. Trying hard not to look into their faces, she replaced each of the mirrors in their original places on the walls and behind the door. She shivered and left the room, closing the silver door behind her. She was continuing back down the thin passageway and back to the stairs when she remembered that there was another room on that floor.
Her head was spinning and she decided that she was in a very bad condition to face what might be in that room, if it was anything. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Vivienne had said, and the words came back to her now. She trudged down the stairs, back into Ealdstan’s study. Vivienne was at her usual place, going over the books again. Of the hundreds that lined the walls, it seemed she had made her way through at least half of them. No mean feat, but then Freya didn’t know how long they had both been at it.
“Ready to go at it again, Freya?” Vivienne said, pulling a stack of books toward her. And then moving her hands over to the pansensorum.
“No—no, I don’t think I am,” Freya protested as Vivienne stuck in her ear plugs. “Listen, wait—I found—”
But Vivienne whipped the top into a spin and the room gave a lurch. Freya grabbed for a chair and pulled herself onto it.
_____________________ II _____________________
London
21 May 1471 AD
Henry sat in his cell, more than a broken man—a broken king. Only fifty years old, Henry looked a hundred. He had seen too much of this world; his heart longed for the next. When would he see golden skies? How long would he be forced to endure the arduous pain of this world? The horror of existence?