The Shattered Mirror (Winter's Blight Book 4)

by M. C. Aquila

  “But I don’t know anything about where they’ll be fighting.”

  James shrugged. “You’ll probably want to check out the area then.”

  When an awkward silence followed, with no one making eye contact, Alvey let out a long-suffering sigh and said, “There will be records and charts of the surrounding land here in this library. All the most recent texts are up there in the next level. As I recall, they will be in the highest tree house.” And she pointed with poor aim at the ladder to the next tree house up.

  Deirdre smiled at her, shoulders and body loosening. “Thanks, Alvey. I was worried I’d be wandering all over the countryside, trying to find something to work with! Thank you both!”

  After Deirdre left, James got to work researching. In one stack alone there were books ranging from poetry to philosophy to seemingly empty journals. At first he lifted the books with care, but the more he flipped through them, the more frantic and excited he became. “This… this is amazing,” he said, his voice shaking as much as his hands. “It’s incredible. All these books—I-I don’t even know where to start!”

  Alvey crossed her arms and gave an impatient huff. “I am certain they must be thrilling to you. However, I am merely sitting here with nothing to do. Is there a particular tome you are searching for? The keeper Brownie may help you locate it.”

  “Keeper Brownie?” His voice pitched high.

  A little Seelie Brownie poked his head out of a nook in the high-beamed ceiling, sleepily rubbing its beady black eyes with pale fingers. He had a pointed, floppy red hat like the one James had met in the shop before. And while this one narrowed his eyes at James and Mum, he did not outright make his distrust of thralls known as he scampered down the rafters and onto the shelves.

  “What knowledge are you looking for, boy?” the Brownie asked. The creature licked his fingers thoroughly, preparing to flip through pages. “It’s not often Fae even come here. Never had a human before.”

  Crawling across the floor with some difficulty, James told the creature, “I’m looking for anything you have on, um, minerals, metals, and geology.” Before the Brownie bounded off, James gasped and added, “Oh, and any books you have on Flora Magic—oh, and Kelpies. And I’ve always wanted to read about—”

  “Enough!” Alvey snapped. “You are going to bury us in books!”

  The Brownie bounded like a squirrel from each shelf and stack. Within minutes, the creature had scoured through every connecting tree house and delivered a few small stacks of books in three piles in front of James. Then the creature retreated to a far corner of the room, where it cleared, dusted, polished, and reorganized shelf after shelf of books.

  After taking the chunks of rock out of his pack, James opened one of the books in the geology pile and scanned the pages for information. Mum took a book from the same pile and cracked it open. “What I am looking for here, Jal?” she asked.

  “Well, um, I’m trying to figure out what metals and crystals are in these pieces of rock I found. It’s for research. Like, um, an educational side project.”

  While Mum looked through her book, James turned to a pouting Alvey and asked her, “Do you, um, want me to read aloud to you? I need your mind working on this too.”

  “Fine,” Alvey said, ducking her head to hide her smile. “You may read out loud, though try not to stumble over your words too much.”

  While James looked through a handwritten book on various types of crystals, gems, and metals, reading out loud to Alvey and making notes as she pointed out missing information, Mum was making odd, scrunched-up faces at the heavy, leather-bound tome she was looking at.

  “What are you reading?” James asked.

  “I am not really reading. There are no words in here at all. Just very odd, if not well-drawn, illustrations.”

  “Illustrations of crystals and stuff?”

  “It is more like symbols and people and animals. And it is old—medieval perhaps.”

  “I wonder why it’s with these other books,” James mused, shrugging.

  James and Alvey had been poring over the books for more than an hour before they started making connections and recognizing metals and crystals within the ore. “I know this one,” he said, pointing to an area of the rock with flecks of gold inside. “I used pyrite when I…” He trailed off, glancing at Mum, who was busy flipping through the ancient picture book.

  Leaning close to Alvey’s ear, he whispered, “I used pyrite when I created those black powder crystals. I had all the chemical components inside the crystals I had then, but I separated them into the ingredients I needed with magic. Then I bound them together.”

  Alvey’s mouth formed a pensive frown. “Interesting,” she said after a moment. “I have never heard of anything like that. Not with faery magic.”

  “Yeah. I kinda… made it up, I guess.” James cleared his throat, adding nonchalantly as he leaned back on his elbows, “Cecil didn’t even think to do that. He was, uh, impressed by it. Are… are you impressed?”

  The half elf only smiled in her sly, mysterious way before getting back to work. Holding up some of the rock in her hands to sniff it, she said, “’Tis quite heavy. There is an odd weight to this mineral. The other crystals inside carry bits of Air and Earth Magic. But this… I would almost say ’tis similar to iron.”

  Taking the rock from her hands, James looked back and forth between it and the notes he was making from the library books. “This metal is lead. Well, it isn’t average lead. It’s native lead in its purest form. It’s really, really rare!” Holding it up, he blurted, “Mum, it’s lead! Look!”

  Mum raised her eyebrows, saying with obviously forced excitement, “That’s great, Jal. That is… something.”

  Turning back to Alvey, he said, “This must be what was inside the rock that the Time Magic avoided. But we’ve got to test it out, experiment.”

  “Time Magic?” Mum asked.

  “Aye.” Alvey nodded. “There are Time Rapids located throughout the realm. ’Tis controlled only by Father Time, an ancient faery no one still living, save for perhaps Puck, recalls ever meeting.”

  Immediately Mum picked up the book of pictures she had discarded previously, then flipped through the pages. Holding the book open, she thrust the book toward James and pointed to an image. “This is Father Time, yes?” she asked. “I remember seeing him in some of the storybooks I used to read to you boys.”

  It was a colored pen-and-ink illustration on the worn, yellowed pages of an old man with a beard who was holding a sickle in one hand. Around him were various odd symbols and seemingly random shapes. “This looks like Kronos or Saturn,” James said. “You’re right, Mum. He is Father Time. And this symbol he’s got—I know what this is! This is a book used by ancient alchemists! It’s written in ciphers and symbols so people can’t learn their secrets.”

  “You mean those fools who attempted to turn metals into gold and create an elixir of life?” Alvey said with a scoff. “’Tis all nonsense.”

  “Well, of course it—” James froze, staring at one of the pages. It was an image of Mars, the Roman god of war, crushing a wolflike beast that looked like an Unseelie hound under his foot, a sword and shield in his hands. What truly stunned him were the two ciphers on either side of the god: the cipher for iron and a horseshoe.

  He traced his fingers over the familiar iron horseshoe image, the symbol of the Iron Guard.

  Flipping back to the Saturn page, James took a deep breath, turning to look at Mum and Alvey. “I-I think we’re onto something with this. See, this documents how humans figured out that faeries have an aversion to iron. And this page with Father Time—it has the alchemical cipher for lead. It’s not just normal lead though… There must be a special way to transmute it to make it this powerful.”

  “What does that mean?” Alvey asked.

  “I think…” James paused, uncertain if he should say what he thought out loud. “I think we’re discovering how to disarm or control Time Magic. Maybe magic entirely.�
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  There was a pause, and Mum snatched the book from his hands and slammed it shut. “I do not like this,” she said, shaking her head. “Jal, I do not like you researching this… magic. You said this was an educational project!”

  “It is an educational project. It’s just, um, a really big project.”

  “I was thinking you meant more along the lines of simply identifying rocks!” Mum covered her face with her hands, sighing.

  “Yeah, but”—James leaned toward her, lowering his voice and trying to steady the thread of desperation in it—“Mum, what if I could figure something out that could free you? What if—?”

  “No, James.” Mum’s voice was firm.

  “But… but I’m the reason you’re a thrall,” James choked out. “All of this—at least let me try to make it right. I could think of something—”

  “Magic is dangerous, and you will get yourself hurt or killed if you mess with it. I won’t allow it.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, his fists clenching, but instead he lowered himself back to his seat. The sharp ache in his chest from the magic’s deadly touch only made him want to try to understand it better. But next time, he reasoned, he would have the knowledge and skill not to fail.

  Cecil believed I could do it. I believe it too. Even if no one else does.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As the morning wore on, Noble faeries entered the library, some stopping to read in the same room as her, others passing through. For about an hour, a small group of female Nobles came, reading and discussing poetry focused on amusing tales, only a few of which were familiar. They read aloud with clear intonation, punctuating and emphasizing the humor skillfully. Deirdre got no work done until they left, listening and unable to hold back laughter (which greatly amused the other faeries, who teased her).

  About three hours had passed before Iain arrived, as she was staring at a book that recorded a series of faery battles in late BC, not understanding much of what she read.

  “Find anything so far?” he asked in a whisper, sitting on the cushion across from her and looking down at the map of the Lake District on the floor between them.

  She sighed, shutting her book closed firmly, groaning. “I have no idea!”

  “Deirdre, shh.” Iain glanced at the three other Noble faeries reading in the room and at the Brownie busily but quietly mending the cover of a couple of old tomes.

  “No one whispers in here,” she replied, though she lowered her voice a bit. “These girls in here earlier were practically shouting.

  “Anyway, James had this idea about using the landscape around the Court to kind of slow the army down or something. And I found this map”—she tapped it with one finger—“but I have no idea what to do next. I mean, I could maybe create a river, like Titania and Oberon first wanted me to do, but instead it would be outside the realm, blocking the army.”

  “You’d create a river around the entire Court? Can you do that, even through these stony cliff areas?” Iain pointed out locations on the map that were full of uneven gorges or hard but brittle limestone.

  “I think so.”

  Iain hesitated, then continued carefully, “A moat is one of the most basic defenses. If the faeries haven’t done it before now, there must be a good reason.”

  Deirdre groaned, running her fingers through her hair. “So you’re saying it won’t work?”

  “It may just not get approved by Titania and Oberon, that’s all.”

  “Well, I can’t think of anything else!” She folded her arms, slumping forward and glaring at the map. “Lonan told me they won’t accept any really big changes to the land and that they’ll probably already be making temporary barricades with Earth Magic. So I need something different!” She then looked up, gasping. “What if I, like, snuck in near their base like you all did on the hunt last night and used Shadow Magic to corrode the wheels on their trucks and tanks and stuff? I did it once by accident. I’m sure I could do it again.”

  But Iain was already shaking his head. “General Callaghan would definitely have backups, and backups for his backups. That wouldn’t delay them much. Plus their bases are too dangerous to approach. They’ve got more traps than I know about.”

  Deirdre threw her hands in the air. “Well, if I can’t sabotage them, and I can’t create any barriers, then I don’t know what to do!” She sighed, slumping forward again. A silence followed, prompting her to look up, seeing Iain’s slightly quizzical look. “What is it?”

  He gave her a small, crooked smile. “You know I’m here to help you, yeah?”

  “Well, yes.” She looked down, fiddling with her fingers. “Do you see something I don’t?”

  “Your idea about the tires isn’t a bad one.” Iain shifted forward, pointing at the map. “The army is here now, and they’ll come up through here toward the barrier.” He moved his finger to show their progress. “The general prefers direct assaults, especially when he’s got a goal in mind, such as breaking the barrier. I don’t think he’ll take any detours, so the army will be meeting him here. He’ll bring his tanks and trucks to do as much damage as quickly as possible.

  “To stop that from happening, we could wait around here”—he pointed at an area just outside the barrier—“and then, when they draw closer, if you could use your magic long-range to target and corrode the tires, that’d make a big difference. They could still use turrets on the tanks, but stopping them from progressing to the border of the realm will keep the damage mostly outside, which is a win for the Court.” Iain smiled up at her. “I think Titania and Oberon would approve, yeah?”

  Deirdre gulped, staring at the map. “I-I don’t know if I can use my magic long-range like that.”

  “I saw you do it at the festival. This would be farther, but if you could ask Lonan to help you train for this, I know you can do it.”

  “But I…” She fidgeted.

  “You don’t think Lonan could teach you in time?”

  She shook her head. “No, he could definitely get me where I need to be, but… but you know I only did that at the festival because you were there helping me keep my head!”

  “I’ll be there at the battle too—”

  “No!” She shot to her feet. “Don’t you get it? These faeries are so powerful—remember the storm? And now Alan has my magic too, and—this is more than you or I can handle! I want to help, but”—she shook her head, turning away, her voice shaking—“this isn’t the way. We’re not ready for this. We can’t be on that battlefield.”

  Iain stood and walked over, placing a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away but didn’t look at him either.

  “Deirdre, think about everything we’ve done. We’re ready for this. And it won’t be like last time at the festival when we got separated.”

  “How?” She quickly wiped her eyes, turning to face him. “How do you know everything will be okay?”

  “Because we’ll stick together. And if anything happens, I’ll be there. I won’t—” He gulped but still looked into her eyes, his gaze intent and earnest. “I won’t be late like last time. I promise.”

  She let out a shaky breath, then managed a smile. “Okay. We’ll try it.”

  The rest of the day was spent preparing and training. After they studied the areas that they’d likely be stationed during the battle, a rather sleepy owl Dryad guided them to scout out the areas in person, speak to bird faeries who lived around there, and gather information on everything from the Seelie army to the weather in the areas of question at different times of day.

  They also practiced Deirdre’s magic, though the first several tries were unsuccessful, as she kept getting distracted, her mind abuzz. But with Iain beside her, she soon relaxed and, by the end of the day, was successfully deteriorating stones from nearly an eighth of a mile away (stopping only because a gnome who lived in one of the quarries popped up and scolded them until he recognized Deirdre as a Noble and walked away, muttering complaints under his breath).

  A
s they returned to the campsite, twilight was drawing a purple veil over the sky above, streaked with black clouds. A persistent chill was in the air, and leaves fell all around them in an autumn breeze to rival all others, refreshing, cool, and rich in scent. And Deirdre felt it was a thousand times better as she and Iain walked together, hand in hand, laughing and talking about the gnome’s outburst.

  Though she quickly let go as they reached the campsite and she saw James there near the fire, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

  “Deirdre, Iain.” Kallista smiled warmly at them, gesturing her son over to the fire. “I want to show you how to prepare this boranija. I know you have your own ways, but—”

  Iain hastened over to her by the fire, where she had several small bowls of seasonings for the meat-and-green-bean stew, which she mentioned the faeries had helped her find today.

  Cai was also at the fire, leaning back against a stump, arms folded and head forward, apparently napping. That left Deirdre and James, sitting a yard or so away, on the far side of the fire from the cooks. James was writing notes in his notebook, squinting in the twilight and campfire.

  “Do you want a light?” Deirdre asked, scooting to the edge of her seat. When he blinked at her, surprised, she explained, “I can’t do Light Magic yet, but I can do some Fire Magic, better than Lonan thinks I can. See?” She summoned a string of small flames, which she rotated around her hand. “If I keep them small and in the air like this, they’re easy to control. If you want, I could hold them above you—”

  “That’s all right.” James shook his head, closing his book. “I was finishing up anyway.”

  “Oh.” Deirdre let all the flames but one die, fiddling with it between her fingers.

  After a long, painful silence, she cleared her throat a bit louder than necessary and asked, “So how was the library? Did you spend a lot of time there?”

  James shrugged. “Some.”

  “Did Alvey have fun?” Deirdre smiled as she asked, “Did you read to her?”