The Mirror After the Cavern

by Jeffrey Quyle

  But that was besides the point for him. Prima had told him that the traders of Barnesnob despised the tyrants of Ivaric, Derith and Jarvis, who interfered with and demanded bribes from many traders. There was little likelihood of Ivaric assassins roaming freely in Barnesnob, particularly in the palace grounds. What Silas needed to focus on was deciding what to do while he was in the palace.

  He might as well go see Vertuco, he decided. He would see the man the following day in any event, but perhaps he could learn in advance what the proposed meeting was about. Perhaps he could settle the matter quickly and avoid returning the next day.

  He asked a passing gardener where the Speaker was located, and he was directed to an ornate door a hundred yards away.

  Inside the door, a passing servant directed him through three turns and a flight of stairs, then a maid sent him along a corridor, and to a door that was large and framed with large, impressive trim, sparkling with polished dark wood and gilded fixtures.

  “I’m here looking for the lord Speaker?” Silas opened the door and spoke into an antechamber with only his head sticking into the interior of the chamber.

  “What’s that, you say?” an elderly woman surprised him by appearing through a door that led from the chamber to another room on the left.

  “Speaker Vertuco sent a note, asking that I visit him,” Silas explained, lifting the parchment to make it visible.

  “That’s the Speaker’s signature, right enough,” the woman agreed. “Hold onto your seat here while I visit his lordship,” she directed, then left the room. Silas obligingly stepped fully into the room and waited.

  Several minutes later, a heavyset man with small eyes and jowls appeared. Silas recognized him vaguely; he’d seen Vertuco at a conclave that had been held in Heathrin the previous year, one of many such meetings that were held each year to try to bring every Wind Word Speaker together with others annually, to help build and maintain a sense of being a tight-knit society.

  “You don’t follow directions very well, do you?” the man asked grumpily as he stood in the doorway examining Silas, seeming to assess him, and perhaps find him wanting.

  “I don’t remember seeing you at any Conclaves, do I?” he asked.

  “I saw you last spring, but I was just a student, so you wouldn’t have noticed me,” Silas explained.

  “And I didn’t mean to come into the palace, but the guard waved me in, and I just ended up here,” Silas made his excuse.

  “Stay for a minute,” Vertuco stepped to the window, and opened it. He leaned out slighted to look around the corner, then spoke in low tones that Silas couldn’t catch. After a minute, he stepped away from the window and latched it shut.

  “We’ll do it your way then. Come along,” he directed Silas with a wave.

  “Do what?” Silas wanted to know.

  “We’ll have our introductions, of course,” Vertuco spoke over his shoulder as he started to exit the room through the door he had entered, waving Silas to follow. “As it happens, Grecco is already here, and I just invited Charms to join us.

  “He always manages to find his way into the palace somehow, and I’ve never asked how he does it,” the palace Speaker addressed Silas in a conversational tone as they passed through an office where the woman Silas had seen earlier was sitting at a desk. She looked up and smiled at Silas as he passed.

  And then they entered a parlor, where another man was sitting comfortably in a well-padded chair, sipping on what appeared to be wine.

  “Grecco, this is our traveling riddle, Silas. Silas, this is Grecco, the Speaker of the home temple of the Healers Guild. I’ve spoken to Charms, and he’s on his way,” Vertuco informed the still seated man in the chair.

  “Silas, so nice to meet you. You’re such a mystery! An unknown voice speaking out of nowhere. You’ve given us quite a bit of opportunity to gossip,” the man smiled with a warm smile that showed he meant no malice.

  “Have a seat, Silas,” Vertuco gestured to one of the empty seats, as he took one himself.

  Silas took a seat, slightly confused, as Vertuco made himself comfortable. Then the three of them looked at one another and sat in silence.

  “Why am I here?” Silas asked, after counting silently to ten with no words spoken in the room.

  “We want to meet you,” Vertuco answered.

  “You’re a new member of the Guild, and you’ve shown up out of nowhere,” Grecco agreed.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Silas said hesitantly, uncertain of how much was involved in meeting another Speaker.

  Settle down and relax. We’ll wait until Charms arrives, and then we’ll chat. We’re lucky to have three Speakers in one city, three who all get along with each other so well,” Grecco explained. “So we all three thought we ought to just meet you at once.”

  He sat back in the soft padding of his seat, then held his glass of wine up to examine it in the light.

  Silas sat and tried to be patient. The men seemed harmless, and perhaps well-intentioned, and perhaps a bit eccentric as well. Vertuco sat and watched his own fingers rhythmically drumming on the leather arm of the chair he sat in. Besides, Silas reminded himself, he had his magical knife on his hip as protection, the most effective protection he was likely to have.

  Minutes later there was a scrapping sound, and Silas looked up to see a bookshelf incredibly moving itself to the side. It revealed a narrow opening, through which an exceptionally thin man with greasy black hair entered the room.

  “Good timing Charms, but I wish you wouldn’t use that entry. You know there’s no problem for you to walk freely in the corridors in my portion of the palace,” Vertuco spoke in a mildly wounded tone.

  The newcomer stared at Silas. His eyes seemed to take in everything around him, but they focused on and penetrated Silas with particular intensity.

  “Why are your eyes like that?” Charms dispensed with any greeting as he asked the question.

  “Let the boy get comfortable before you grill him, Charms,” Grecco objected.

  “He’s a Speaker, or so I’m told. He can manage to answer a simple question,” the newcomer pointed out as he slid the disguised doorway shut and entered the room.

  “I was in a cavern, where there were gasses – yellow and purple,” Silas answered, as Charms settled into the fourth chair in the setting.

  “Where was the cave?” Charms asked.

  “Underground”, Silas was tempted to say. He felt the man ought to say something about himself before he began grilling the guest.

  “It was in the mountains north of Heathrin, on the trail that leads to Ivaric. “We were several days north of the Academy when it happened. It had some effects, like my eye color.”

  “I haven’t heard of any unusual caverns in that region, but not many folks go up there,” Charms replied, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

  “When did you go into the Temple of Krusima?” Charms wanted to know. “None of the three of us heard of your investiture.”

  “Charms, give the boy some time to breath,” Vertuco interrupted. “Let’s tell him who we are first. And I’ll go first.

  “It goes without saying that I am the Speaker of the palace,” the man began introductions. “I’ve had two other assignments before coming here, and I’ve been here for fourteen years. It’s one of the best postings a Speaker can ask for.”

  He seemed to finish, and there was a pause, until Grecco spoke up.

  “I was assigned to be the Speaker for the Healers Guild twenty-seven years ago, and I’ve never left. It was a natural fit for me; my own mother was a Healer in the village where I grew up in the eastern plains of Barnesnob,” he explained. “And I’ve been Vertuco’s partner in card games for ten years,” he added with a chuckle.

  The palace speaker chuckled as well, and Silas sensed the affection the two Speakers felt for each other.

  “Now Charms, why don’t you make all this politeness a little less boring with your story,” Vertuco suggested.

 
Charms laughed a loud, braying laugh. “My father was a nobleman who was not married to my mother, but he paid the fee for me to attend the Academy.

  “When I graduated, I was assigned to a nobleman who was a toady in Ivaric, and I didn’t like it, so I left him, and came down here to find lucrative employment with, eh, businessmen,” he said with a sardonic smile.

  “He means gangsters, smugglers, and thieves,” Vertuco explained.

  Silas looked at first Vertuco, and then at Charms in shock, expecting to hear a correction or confession.

  “Some people say that, but my clients are hard-working at what they do, and they need to communicate with others in their field from time to time,” Charms shrugged.

  “So, now that you know so much about us, let’s hear your story,” Charms changed the topic.

  Silas paused as he tried to evaluate what he could say. His audience were all Speakers, so he could say more about his newly-discovered ability than he might to any other audience. He might be able to ask them questions, as a matter of fact. But telling them about his knife and his strange, close relationship with Hron seemed less suitable, and more like something they would disbelieve.

  He could probably tell them about escaping from Ivaric – he was coming to realize that no one viewed the tyrannical nation favorably.

  “It started when Botton got mule manure all over him,” Silas began.

  One of his audience members gave a muffled giggle.

  “I can tell already that I’m going to enjoy this,” Charms said.

  Silas proceeded to tell the story of how the teacher rigged the situation to force Silas to leave the Academy and join the carnival.

  “Next Conclave, we’ll have something to say about that,” Vertuco growled. “He shouldn’t have done such a thing to a student.”

  Silas felt a sense of guilty pleasure at hearing someone sympathize with his plight, and propose to do something, too late though it was.

  He told of the days of traveling, and then told of the fall into the cave, and the gasses he had been exposed to. He pointed to his eyes. “These changed appearance immediately,” he said. “And there were a few other things too, but it wasn’t until we were leaving Amenozume a few days ago that I found out I could be a Speaker. I was thinking of the Speaker at the palace at Amenozume; he and I went to school together. When I said something about him while I was thinking about him, I felt funny – funny in my head and my chest and my throat. And he heard me!” Silas exclaimed in astonishment, still amazed at the accidental discovery.

  “What was the feeling like?” Grecco asked. Silas described the oddity of the sensations, the heaviness and density he had felt in his body as his comments had unintentionally come out as Wind Words.

  “It must have been odd to do that without warning and training,” Vertuco mused. “We all came out of the temple caves expecting it, and had the priestesses there to advise us on what we would feel.

  “So how did you manage to then send a message directly here, from a ship at sea? That takes remarkable mathematical skills to know and calculate the angles to the coordinates while traveling,” he commented.

  “Well, we have to learn all the coordinates and angles at school, and I knew I had left Amenozume, and that I was going to Barnesnob,” Silas was uncertain of how to answer. When he’d delivered it, he’d been uncertain his message had arrived, but he had felt that his logic had been sound. “I just guessed at how far we had traveled and what that might have done to the angle of delivery.”

  “He’s a natural math wizard, alright,” Charms spoke up. “I still use a written list of angles to this day to send messages.”

  “It could be that his voice is so strong that it had a wider broadcast that regular speakers,” Grecco offered. “Maybe he isn’t so accurate, but he just speaks louder.”

  “Whatever the story is, he’s one of us now, and we should welcome him to the Guild,” Vertuco suggested. “How long will you be in the city, Silas?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy replied, pleased by the acceptance he had received from the veteran Speakers. “Prima will want to do some trading, I imagine we’ll be here a few days.”

  “Well let us show you some hospitality as a fellow Speaker. Come back to the palace tomorrow and I’ll arrange for a tour,” Vertuco graciously said.

  “And I’ll give you a tour of the academy of the healing arts,” Grecco offered. “We can go the following day.”

  “I won’t give you a tour; you wouldn’t like the things I could show you,” Charms laughed crudely. “But I’m available if you need a hand with anything. And I certainly welcome anyone who has crashed the party and broken all the rules to get into the club!”

  Silas left the palace a short time later, smiling and pleased with the unexpectedly friendly reception he’d received from the Speakers in Barnesnob.

  “You were gone quite a while. Did you get lost on the way to the palace?” Prima asked when Silas arrived.

  “I was let in. The guards made a mistake, and I got to meet the palace Speaker today. He invited me back for a tour tomorrow,” Silas casually answered.

  “Oh really?” Ruten was standing next to Prima. “A tour of the palace from the Speaker? What else are you planning?”

  “The Speaker for the Healers said he’d give me a tour of their school of healing arts,” Silas replied.

  “Well, that’ll work out just fine,” Minnie told Silas. “We’ve heard that the wife of the head of the Healers Guild has expressed interest in buying a mirror, and you’ve still got one large mirror we need to sell out of your wagon. See if you can meet her and let her know about the mirror you’ve been hauling around the continent.”

  “And don’t waste any time,” Prima emphasized. “The gods alone know why she hasn’t just ordered a mirror from Renitia directly – she’s closer to the mirror makers than any other large city as it is.”

  Silas nodded his head. Selling a mirror wasn’t his own top priority, but he was happy to take advantage of the opportunity if it presented itself, to make Prima happy. Silas felt he had a closer relationship with Ruten and Minneota than with Prima, but he didn’t want to disappoint the caravan leader if he had a chance to carry out a useful service.

  He looked up at the sun, his eyes squinted, as he tried to reckon the time and his location relative to Amenozume. He thought that he might try sending a message to Jade telling her that he would be looking in the mirror later. It would be a welcome pleasure to talk to the girl in the island palace, and to learn how Mata was doing.

  “What’s up there in the sky that you’re looking at?” Ruten asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” Silas answered instantly.

  “If that’s the case, I’d say you’re due for a lesson in swordmanship. There’s no telling how much you’ve forgotten in the past month or so since your last practice,” the guard declared.

  “I’ve kept up my practicing, some,” Silas protested, knowing that he had practiced, though not at the level of intensity that Ruten would expect to squeeze out of him.

  “We’ll see,” Ruten said noncommittally. “Go find a couple of pieces of wood suitable for practice, and meet me at your wagon in fifteen minutes.”

  Silas nodded his farewell to the trio of adults, then went to the wagon, where he knew he had two suitable sticks. He had several minutes until Ruten would arrive, so he slipped his mirror out of the pack to see if by chance he might see Jade. Instead of the view of the bright and airy palace room, he found that the view he was shown was once again the warehouse, which in his mirror’s view appeared to be stacked full of crates and sacks. It had been the first alternate reflection his mirror had displayed, and now it was more crammed with material than he’d ever seen before.

  Silas slipped the mirror back into his pack, then pulled it out again. All it showed was his own reflection. He put it back in the pack one more time, and when he pulled it out he was looking at the room he had expected to see in the Amenozume palace; the room was em
pty. Apparently he wasn’t going to be able to see Jade, he sighed.

  “Don’t worry Silas, you’re still a handsome young man,” Ruten mocked him as he was caught once again seeming to look at himself in the mirror.

  The pair proceeded to work with their wooden swords, in a long, grueling practice session that extended almost to dinner time.

  “You’re in better practice than I expected,” Ruten cheerfully told him. “Good for you for practicing along the way. But there’s still plenty of room to improve.”

  Silas spent time with Hron that evening before dinner, then sat with the others of the caravan, as they ate dinner together and shared stories about what the two groups had experienced during their time apart. Minnie and Ruten had led their convoy of wagons on a peaceful cross-country journey, with a stop at the small harbor town of Leather, which was noted for the production of the finest leather on the continent.

  “We’ve got two wagons loaded with leather goods suitable for trade now,” Minnie proudly announced. “And what about you with all the time you spent on Amenozume? Did you pick up a queen’s selection of pearls?”

  “Not a queen’s selection, but we picked up some good quality gems,” Prima agreed. “Although our young Speaker seemed more intent on picking up a pearl diver than a pearl, it seemed,” he slyly noted, raising muffled laughs from a few of the others who had been with the Amenozume caravan.

  Silas blushed, and kept silent, letting the conversation move on to other topics that lasted through a spirited length of friendly camaraderie.

  In the morning, Ruten awakened Silas at an earlier hour than the boy had arisen since the two had parted ways. He was still rubbing sleep out of his eyes when they began to cross sticks and resume training on lunges and counters. After practice he fed Hron and took the mule for a walk around the area near the caravan camp, then returned his animal to the corral and went to see Prima.

  The caravan leader was absent, already somewhere in the city on a business trip, but Minnie wished Silas well before he left to visit the palace.