The Mirror After the Cavern

by Jeffrey Quyle

  As he watched the three girls, one of them swept her eyes across the mirror, then focused intently on the mirror, seeming to stare directly into Silas’s own eyes. In panic, he slipped the mirror quickly back into his pack and closed the flap, then turned it over for good measure. He had no reason to think that the girl could look into the mirror to see him the way he saw her, but he didn’t want to leave it to chance.

  Instead he lay in the wagon with his heart racing. After several minutes, his pulse began to trend towards normal, and then Prima came along.

  “Here,” Prima tossed him some small dark object, which he caught. It was a fresh herb ball, and Silas gratefully thanked the caravan leader for it.

  “We’ve placed an order for dozens of them. It turns out we’re going to be here for over a week, while we wait for the ferry to be refloated and repaired. So we’re going to stretch our trading into some new products and some new fields, to find out if there are other profits to be had,” the man explained.

  The next day, Silas felt a noticeable improvement in his ribs, with far less pain and discomfort than he’d known before. In the morning he cautiously looked into his mirror, and saw only the empty room that had held the girls the day before. After that examination, he walked by the palace again, then strolled to the pearl-divers pier again, hoping to find that his wavy-haired object of attention was present, but her shift didn’t enter the water while Silas watched.

  As he walked off the pier, a belated realization struck Silas. He had memorized the coordinates of the Amenozume palace so that if he were a Speaker, he’d be able to send a message to the Speaker at the palace from some other assigned location. That meant that there had to be a Speaker there – someone who could receive messages from other Speakers!

  Silas decided to return to the palace and try to meet the Speaker, so see if he knew who it was. It would be something to do, and perhaps it would even mean a reintroduction to an acquaintance. Though he had qualms about facing a reminder of his lost Speaker almost-career, he looked forward to anything that would break the tedium of his days on the island.

  He walked as quickly as he comfortably could through the city, back to the palace gates, and then began a simple conversation with the guards who were stationed there.

  “May I speak to the Wind Word Guild Speaker of the palace?” he asked.

  The two guards at the gate looked at one another in confusion. No common folks from the streets of the city ever asked to speak to the Speaker. Certainly not any who had eyes of gold and purple.

  “Do you know his name?” Silas asked, as the guards fumbled to answer.

  “He is the lord Jimes,” one of the guards replied, as he studied Silas’s eyes with wariness.

  Silas laughed out loud in delight. Jimes was one of his best friends from the Wind Word Academy, a peer in age who had been further advanced in the academics of the program. Jimes had tutored him and helped him learn the many intricacies of codes and practices of the Speakers.

  “Please tell Lord Jimes that Silas from Brigamme is visiting Amenozume, and would like to speak to him,” Silas asked.

  “I’ll send a page to carry the message, but you may have to wait a while,” the guard warned.

  Silas nodded, then stood back and turned to watch the traffic that flowed past the palace. He observed the activity for a quarter of an hour, when he heard his name called, and turned to face the palace gate once again.

  He saw Jimes, sporting a thin beard on his cheeks and his chin, with a wisp of a moustache on his face. The newly-bearded face looked skeptic, then looked overjoyed, then looked puzzled.

  “Silas! It’s truly you – here in Amenozume! But what’s with your eyes?” he asked as he hurried his steps forward and joined his friend just outside the gate. The two clasped each other’s shoulders and studied one another with grinning faces.

  “I had an accident that exposed me to some gasses in a cave, and they stained my eyes,” Silas simplified his tale. “But what happened to your face?” he asked with a serious expression.

  “My face?” Jimes asked in confusion. His hand crept up to his face, then felt his beard, and his expression changed to annoyance for just a moment, before becoming a grin once more.

  “Do you like it? I think it makes me look older,” he pronounced.

  “He’s with me,” Jimes turned and told the guards, keeping one hand on Silas’s shoulder and suddenly leading his friend into the palace grounds, past the guards at the gate, who merely nodded and allowed the palace Speaker to vouch for and bring his friend inside.

  “Let me show you my domain,” Jimes said. “We can talk when we get there. We’ll have to walk most of the length of the palace to get there, but I can make it a tour. And then you have to explain why you’re here.”

  “These are the guard quarters,” he instantly changed the subject to point to low-slung stone buildings that stood with their backs to the barred fence around the palace grounds. “The stables are back there – thank goodness I’m not close to them! The place smells terrible when they muck it out every few days!”

  He continued on for five minutes of walking along the exterior of the palace, pointing out elements of the ground, then suddenly pivoted and led Silas through a small side door, directly into the palace building itself.

  “We need to be quiet,” he spoke in hushed tones as they went up an ornate set of stairs. “I’m going to save us five more minutes of walking by going through the private quarters, where we’re really not supposed to be – especially you as just a guest.”

  The stairs led them to a hallway with marble floors, frescoed ceilings, and marble walls, walls that were covered in tapestries and paintings.

  They quietly tiptoed along the hall, one that dove directly into the center of the palace building. As they went, Silas glanced into the rooms that had doors standing open, and he gasped when they were in the middle of their traipse through the hallway. The room they passed had yellow wallpaper with pink flowers and birds. It was the room he had seen in his mirror fragment!

  Silas quickly looked away, twisting his neck so quickly that he felt a muscle strain. He didn’t want to be seen by anyone, especially the girl he had most noticed in the mirror, the one who had happened to stare at the mirror in such a manner that Silas wondered whether she was staring at an image of him, just as he had stared at her image in his mirror.

  “Turn here, down this secret passage,” Jimes had almost abandoned him by turning to the right, into a passage whose door was painted to look as if it was a set of shelves of books. Silas stopped and joined him in the narrow and low passage, while they continued to walk at a rapid pace.

  “This is a special way for the palace Speaker to reach the Queen if there’s an emergency message that require instant delivery,” Jimes explained over his shoulder to the trailing Silas as they walked along.

  “Not that I can ever imagine an emergency here!” he barked out a laugh, just as they passed through another door and entered a tall, domed tower with an open atrium rising in its center.

  “Come up here,” Silas’s friend led him to a winding set of stairs that rose around the curving walls of the atrium, up to a walkway at the edge of the dome. The walkway led them to a door to another flight of stairs, and Silas soon found himself in a small glass-encircled room high above the palace and the city, with a view available in all directions.

  “Isn’t this great?” Jimes asked enthusiastically. “What do you think?”

  “It’s a fantastic spot,” Silas agreed gladly. “Is this part of your Speaker rooms?”

  “Yes, apparently someone told the palace builder that the Speaker needed to be able to see in all directions in order to receive messages from any direction, so they build a room of windows,” Jimes answered.

  “But tell me, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be finishing your studies?” he asked, as the pair sat down.

  “Botton got me exiled,” Silas found that he could say it without rancor. He could also say it
with relatively little pain. Though he had walked and climbed so many steps, and though he was breathing heavily, the injured ribs of his torso were much less tender than they had been before, making breathing and talking easier. “Botton had the Guild assign me to work with a traveling caravan, and so I’ve been driving a wagon full of mirrors for the past several weeks.

  “The caravan came to Amenozume, and now we’re stuck here for a while,” Silas offered.

  “Because of the ferry wreck,” Jimes interjected, as Silas nodded agreement. “I heard about that.”

  “Our caravan was on the ferry when it sunk. That’s how I got injured,” he lifted his shirt to reveal the tightly wound bandage that he still wore.

  “That’s something, but tell me about those eyes,” Jimes stared at Silas.

  “We were on a road in the mountains – maybe road is too kind a word, it was a large trail. A man attacked my wagon, and at that moment, the ground opened up beneath us and the whole wagon fell down into a deep cave, way, way below the road. There were gases down there, yellow and purple, it goes without say. It turned my eyes this way,” Silas told his story eagerly, glad to have a friendly audience who he could describe the details to with relish.

  “But that’s not all! Look at this,” he pulled up a sleeve to show the scar on his arm that had been given by the failed robbers in Avaleen. “I’ve got two other scars on my chest that show the same colors. And my knife!” he pulled his weapon off his hip and displayed the slight colored tinge to the blade. “This knife is amazing!” he said in a dramatic, low voice.

  Before he could begin to describe the magical way the knife could manage a fight, he heard a low buzzing noise, and a split second later, Jimes leapt to his feet.

  “Sshhh,” he said peremptorily, raising a palm towards Silas as he cocked his head upward and stared at the ceiling of the room intently.

  “Ah,” he appeared to relax, as the sudden tension melted away from his frame. “It’s just an ordinary message.” He listened a moment more, then chuckled. “It basically just says that it doesn’t have anything to say today.”

  He plopped back down into his seat.

  “This is such a quiet little kingdom, excuse me, queendom, and they don’t bother anyone or do anything except keep to themselves and sell pearls. We never get any messages or make any news,” his comment was close to a complaint, without quite being one. “But it’s a good first posting for me.

  “Brean got sent to work for the light wizards of Shoulteen,” Jimes told Silas. “Have you heard any news from him?”

  “I haven’t heard from anyone. My caravan has been to Ivaric and Avaleen and now here, and I didn’t even think of contacting any Speakers until I thought about it here. To tell you the truth,” Silas was ready to confess, both as a statement of fact and as a way to demonstrate how much he’d grown and changed, “I don’t really care if I ever become a Speaker now. I’m having a good life with the caravan.”

  Jimes looked at him sideways. “Really?” he asked skeptically. “After all those hours you studied and learned everything there is to know to be a Wind Word practitioner? You must want to finish it out, at least a little.”

  “Maybe a little,” Silas conceded.

  There was a distant noise from the palace grounds below.

  “Oh look, it’s the queen and the princess,” Jimes craned his neck to peer down at the paved yard below. “Look over there,” he pointed.

  Silas stood to see over the window sill, and saw a wooden stage erected to provide a view of the passing parade of palace guards, men and women who wore gaudy uniforms – almost costumes, Silas thought to himself. And on the platform sat a pair or women, one a stout older woman, and beside her on a slightly smaller chair – or throne, Silas supposed – sat a younger woman, one who was dark-haired and attractive, and one who Silas suddenly suspected was one of the women he had observed in the mirror that had offered its vision to his mirror fragment. From the distance of the tower room he couldn’t identify her with confidence.

  “Is the princess the younger one on the platform?” he asked as he felt his cheeks grow warm.

  “She is. She’s quite a spark, especially compared to her mother. Her mother the queen is calm and sedate and keeps things calm, while the princess is much more,” Jimes paused to try to find the right word, “she’s much livelier, more active, maybe even more pushy, though I wouldn’t use that word to her face.”

  The sun had moved a fair distance across the sky, Silas saw.

  “I better be going back to the caravan,” he suggested.

  “Already?” Jimes practically pouted. “We’ve hardly talked.”

  “The caravan is going to be here a few days. We’ll have lots of opportunities to talk,” Silas assured him, confident and pleased that his words were true. He wanted to talk to Jimes so much more, to learn more and to reminisce more. They chatted for a few minutes more, then departed.

  Jimes led him back down the stairs and through the Speakers’ passage, but when they were several steps into the royal residential hallway, a clatter of other footsteps sounded, and a group of five young women appeared at the end of the hall the two boys were heading towards.

  “Oh sparks!” Jimes muttered. “We’ll just have to carry on. Let me handle this.”

  Silas swallowed and nodded. He wasn’t so worried about being chastised by the princess, but he worried about putting Jimes in the poor graces of the royals. And he worried about being recognized by the girl in the mirror, if she was in the approaching group.

  “Your highness, I want to introduce a classmate of mine from the Academy of the Wind Word Speakers, Silas,” Jimes tackled the matter head on when the two groups drew close to one another. Jimes went down on one knee, and Silas quickly followed, keeping his face bowed.

  “I just received a message from the Guild, and the good news is that there are no unfortunate events occurring that would affect Amenozume,” Jimes reported.

  “That hardly seems of earthshaking importance; you don’t have many important messages to deliver to our palace, do you Jimes?” Silas heard the princess’s voice.

  “Your land has few troubles to report on,” Silas admired Jimes’s smooth reply.

  “So you say,” the princess answered. “You and your friend are free to go. Ladies, let us carry on,” the princess commanded, and the multiple pairs of feet passed across the ground in front of Silas’s downturned eyes.

  As the women left, Jimes and Silas rose to their feet. Silas glanced over his shoulder as he stood, and saw that the trailing member of the princess’s coterie was looking back over her own shoulder at the two men. And he saw that she was the girl who he suspected had spotted him in the mirror.

  “Let’s go,” he quickly turned his head and urgently plowed forward, ahead of Jimes, ignoring the pain in his injured ribs as he walked at a rapid pace to avoid the girl and her inspection. Not until the Speaker and his guest had passed out of the hall did Silas look back to make sure the girl was not following them. He was relieved to see no one behind them.

  He parted ways with Jimes at the gate, then walked back to the caravan parking field, and spent time with Hron until dinner.

  For the next week, Silas did not look into his mirror, afraid of being caught by the girl with the long dark hair. He healed to the point of removing his wrappings, and he found an armory in the city, where he began practicing sword work once again, trying to recollect and carry out the instructions Ruten had been drilling into Sareen and him before the caravan arrived in Avaleen. He went to see Jimes, but avoided going near the residential parts of the building. He also wandered by the dock and watched the pearl divers – sometimes seeing the girl with the smoldering eyes, and sometimes not, but never talking to her.

  And then after that week, Prima announced that the ferry repairs were finishing early, and the caravan needed to prepare to leave within two days.

  Silas decided to risk looking in the mirror once again. He sat in his bed in the back of
his wagon, and pulled the mirror piece out of his pack, then flipped it over to reveal the silvery reflective surface. For a fraction of a moment, he saw his own reflection, then the mirror flickered, and he was staring into the face of the girl from the palace, the girl who had seen him in the mirror before, and seen him in the hallway with Jimes.

  Her eyes widened dramatically, and Silas saw her head jerk back. He was frozen, so startled by the discovery that he didn’t flip the piece of glass over, or cover it. He simply stared at it in shock. And so did the girl.

  After seconds of looking at one another, the girl’s fingertips approached the surface of the mirror, then reached it, and pressed against it. She looked at him, then looked at her fingers, and Silas found that his own hand was hovering over the surface of the mirror just above hers. He realized that he could control his hand, and with a conscious decision, he pressed his fingertips to meet hers, the flesh pressing the cool glass at just the same spot that hers were.

  He felt only glass. There was no flesh, no softness, no warmth.

  His eyes flickered from the glass to her face again, and he saw that her eyes were examining his own face.

  The girl gave a tentative smile. Her mouth was wide, and her lips thin. She was pretty, and the smile, despite the unsureness it displayed, made her seem prettier.

  Silas smiled back, and saw her head give the briefest of nods, a sign of relief that he had reacted positively.

  Her fingers pulled back from the mirror surface, and waved, a friendly gesture.

  Silas didn’t know what else to do but wave back. He had been seen, and caught, and now he was reacting as a caged animal might, when its trapping captor unexpectedly offered a kindness, a treat of some type.

  The girl spoke. Her mouth moved. Her lips shaped sounds, opened and closed. But no sounds travelled through the pane of silver glass.

  She waited for him to respond.

  “I can’t hear you,” Silas spoke slowly, with exaggerated movement, so that she would comprehend his message. He held a hand to his ear, and shook his head in the negative.