The Obsidian Mirror

by Catherine Fisher

  Jake was simmering, but he had to keep calm. He managed a bitter shrug. “I get it. So that’s how it is.”

  “That, I’m afraid, is how it is. I’m sure by tomorrow you’ll be feeling a little better about things.”

  “You can’t keep me a prisoner here.”

  Piers shrugged. “It was you who wanted to come, Jake.”

  Jake snorted. He walked past him, down a corridor lined with vases, not knowing or caring where he was going, striding around a corner and past a door that opened. A hand came out and grabbed him. “Jake. In here.”

  Sarah looked worried. She stood in the dim scullery and whispered, “What’s going on? You and Venn?”

  “Forget him. Sarah, listen, I need your help. Someone in the village has information about Dad. How do I get out of here without Piers knowing?”

  “You have to be invisible,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Sorry. Well, there’s a side door that leads out by the Wintercombe. But the gates at the end of the drive will be locked, and Piers…”

  “I’ll climb them. I don’t care if he sees me. Show me.”

  She led him through a tiny stillroom to a black studded door. It took both of them to grind back the rusty bolts; when it creaked open, they found they were looking into shrubbery that had grown thickly over the door. Jake suddenly remembered what Gideon had said, and stared at her curiously. “I know you only came here yesterday. How did you know about this?”

  She shrugged, irritated. The movement slid a small medal on a chain around her neck. It was one-half of what seemed to be a broken coin. “Maybe I know this place better than you think. Jake, listen! Try and get back before eight. I need to talk to you, because…”

  He slipped out, impatient. “Because you lied about not seeing my father in that mirror? Get out of my way, Sarah. Tell me later.”

  He had to hurry. Whoever made that call might not wait.

  He was gone before she could explain, rustling into the dimness. Annoyed, she spared one glance around for traces of the wolf and then slid back in and closed the door, making sure the bolts were rammed tight. He was breathtakingly selfish. She needed an ally here. Someone to talk to.

  She made herself stay calm. It was his loss. Because she would have shown him the journal. She kept it stuffed in her pocket now, afraid to leave it in her room, since Wharton had seen it.

  And because she was afraid Janus would come looking for it.

  She crept down past the kitchen and into the room called the Blue Closet. There she perched in a faded chair and looked at the gilt French clock as it pinged out three high notes. She had five hours, before…what?

  The Chronoptika?

  Suddenly cold, she pulled out the book and hastily found her place.

  I said, “As you see, I’ve come.”

  The scarred man nodded. “I was quite sure you would, Mr. Symmes. And I have the device, which, I assure you, is quite unique in this world.”

  He indicated a veiled object on a table in the darkness, and moved an oil lamp, so that the slot of light fell across it. My eyes fixed on it, and I dare say my greed was perfectly visible to him. I whispered, “What is it?”

  He did not answer. Instead he drew away the velvet cloth.

  I saw a black slab. At first I thought it stone, but then as I moved, a thousand reflections of myself slid across it and vanished, and I realized it was glass, black glass, high as a man, smooth as a mirror. As I stepped closer I saw my features strangely slanted and shadowed. It was held upright in a narrow frame of silver, an angular design incised with letters of some alphabet unknown to me.

  The man said, “It is pure obsidian. Volcanic glass forged in the deepest furnaces of the earth.”

  I was fascinated.

  I went to touch the mirror, but he forestalled me, quickly putting out his hand. “Not yet.”

  I drew back. He waved me to a chair, but I remained on my feet. “How is a mere mirror a device of great power?” I asked, careful to sound casual. “Or do you and your confederate think to make a gull of me?”

  He just gazed at me. His eyes were dark, his face half demon, half angel. I confess I found myself so mesmerized, my voice died to a pitiful silence.

  Standing before the mirror, he said, “Let me explain. Some years ago, while clearing ground for building work in a remote district of London, workmen struck stone. Eagerly they uncovered it, and found a tomb. And then another. They had stumbled on a small, forgotten graveyard belonging to some long-demolished church. The tombs were ancient, their very existence lost. There was talk of plague-pits, of disease, and lurking horrors. The men refused to dig further and their employers became uneasy. So they called me in.”

  “Why you?”

  He smiled. “Because sir, I am a specialist in moving the dead.”

  I thought then he must be a gallows-crow. A body-snatcher. One who robs graves for the insatiable anatomists of London’s hospitals. I said, “I see. But there would be nothing…fresh…there, surely.”

  His dragging smile. “The owners wanted the site cleared. I desired knowledge. Does that surprise you? Maybe you are a mere amateur in the dark arts, Mr. Symmes. I am not. In that place I opened many unusual graves. Monks and nuns, soldiers and merchants. But one tomb was special. In it, I found this.”

  His hand went out and gently caressed the mirror frame. I felt a shiver of jealousy, as if it were already mine.

  “It was buried with a body?”

  “No. That was the strange thing. There was no body, not even the smallest fragment of bone. But the tomb slab had a few words still legible, upon it, including the name MORTIMER DEE and below that ALCHEMIST AND PHILOSOPHER. Alchemist was a word that interested me deeply. The grave I would date from the 1660s or perhaps earlier.”

  I stared, astonished, at this beggarly man who could read and who spoke like some scholar and yet was obviously a practiced rogue. Then I walked cautiously around the mirror. It gave a disconcerting twist to my reflection, as if some other Harcourt Symmes peered out of it. “And what does it do?”

  He gazed at me. For a moment I thought I saw the depths of a great despair in him. He said, “It allows a man to walk through the doorway we call time.”

  Sarah looked up. She gazed out at the darkening estate where the wolf and its handler waited for her.

  “And make a hole in the world,” she whispered.

  Jake kept out of the Wood. Whatever the Shee were, he had seen enough of them. He half expected Gideon to be waiting for him behind some oak tree, but the drive was dim and gloomy, and only the rooks looked down at him with their beady eyes.

  He ran. It was already getting dark, the brief December day fading to a smoky twilight. Tomorrow was the shortest day, the solstice. Dad’s birthday. Dad always said it was his luck to have less daylight than anyone else, and to be so close to Christmas. He’d always insisted on having breakfast in bed to make up for it. Jake had had to bring it up on a tray—toast, usually burned, and black coffee. Once, when he was about nine, he’d put a picture of Mum on there and a rose in a thin vase, but his father had just put those aside and said “Nice try, old man,” and crunched the toast.

  What was the point of remembering that now?

  He raced all the way up the foggy drive, stopping only to gasp for breath, sure he was watched. The bare tree branches interlaced over his head. Finally he saw the dark metalwork of the gates emerge from the fog.

  He avoided the small camera. It clicked and whirred—maybe Piers was searching for him. The fog was lucky; curling out of the damp ground, it would keep him hidden. He climbed the wall, his boots scraping against the mossy bricks, and jumped down the other side into the lane.

  Then he took out his cell phone and called Rebecca.

  Wharton stood rigid on the landing.

  Of course he totally disapproved of eavesdropping, but there was no way he was missing this.

  Piers’s and Venn’s voices were muffled by a heavy b
lack baize door. He approached it carefully, praying the floorboards wouldn’t creak. He kept still, his hand on the doorknob, and glanced back up the Long Gallery. Then he crouched and put his eye to the keyhole.

  “I should throw you into the river!” Venn was pacing, glaring at Piers. “Are you mad or just stupid? You bring these people here now, just when we’re ready, when we’ve found a subject…”

  “I didn’t know that when I sent the e-mail. Besides, it was David. I was thinking of David.” Piers came up to Venn and sat on the floor before him, squatting like some eastern sage. It was a posture that astonished Wharton. “Think, Excellency! The boy is a connection to his father. That might be vital. It seems clear that the device responds to emotion as much as anything else.”

  “It doesn’t respond to mine.” Venn’s voice was bleak. He moved; for a moment Wharton saw only blackness blocking the keyhole. Then Venn was slumped in a chair by the window. He drew his hand through his tangle of hair. He looked weary.

  Piers crouched by him. “I worry about us using the girl.”

  “Not that again!”

  “We might lose her too. We have no right to put her in such danger.”

  “Don’t we?” Venn’s voice was so low, Wharton had to press against the keyhole to hear. “There’s no other way. After David went…I dare not use it on myself. If I vanish in there before we can calibrate it, I’ll never see Leah again. Otherwise it would be me. You know that.”

  “But a girl we don’t even know.”

  Venn looked up, staring at the door so intently Wharton jerked back, suddenly sure those ice-blue eyes could see straight through to him. “That’s the strange thing. I do know her. As soon as I saw her, I felt as if I did. I can’t explain it. But if it’s her life against even the chance of getting Leah back, I’ll take the risk a hundred times over. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, Piers, no one I wouldn’t sacrifice! And remember, you work for me. I own you, body and soul, and you will do whatever I say.”

  He was out of the chair and striding toward the door.

  Wharton leaped back, looked desperately around for somewhere to hide. There was an alcove with a curtain across it; he dived behind it and stood there, the dusty folds against his nose and mouth.

  Even as he was trying not to sneeze, Venn swept past him, the curtain billowing.

  He waited. He heard a click, as if Piers had followed his master into the corridor. Then the small man said, “Wharton knows about her.”

  Venn answered, but Wharton didn’t hear the words. His heart was beating too loudly. Then a distant door slammed, but a few creaks of the boards told him Piers hadn’t gone. Carefully he edged the curtain aside and put one eye to the slit. The small alert figure was standing only feet away, with a laptop in his hands, but he wasn’t looking at it.

  He was listening.

  His eyes were bright.

  Wharton shuffled back into the darkness.

  Piers instantly turned toward the curtain. “Sarah? Is that you?”

  He waited a moment, then walked over and tugged the material aside.

  The alcove was empty.

  Rebecca pulled the car up near the bridge and dimmed the headlights. “Here?”

  “It’ll do. He must be parked up in the pub yard.”

  They both gazed out. “Look at it,” she muttered.

  The fog had thickened as night fell. Now it was a gray, swirling, freezing mass against the windows, even the village lights reduced to barest pinpoints. “I can’t see any car. I can’t see anything.”

  “He’s there.” Jake opened the door, but she said quickly, “Oh, I don’t like this. It’s scary. Maybe I should come with you.”

  “I have to go alone.” He was already outside. “Thanks for the lift. I can find my own way back.”

  “You must be joking.” Rebecca leaned over and turned music on, a blast of rock. “I’m not going anywhere. Look, I’ll give you ten minutes, then I’ll drive in next to you. Or sooner, if you scream.”

  He managed a smile. She was so excited, in her tilted blue beret. “Okay, Superwoman. You can come in and rescue me.” He slammed the door, turned his collar up against the freezing night, and walked toward the parking lot.

  It was a gray vacancy. He felt he was walking into nothingness, into nowhere, that he might crash into a wall or a door or stride off the edge of the earth and fall forever.

  Headlights flashed, once, to his right.

  He groped toward them and found a vehicle—something low and dark, but he couldn’t even see the make, or find the handle, until a door swung open and the husky voice said, “Please get in, Mr. Wilde.”

  He hesitated. Then he slid into the warm interior.

  The stranger in the driver’s seat clicked on the inner light. He was a dark-haired man, astonishingly handsome, until he turned, and Jake saw the scar that furrowed the left side of his face.

  “So you came, Jake,” he said.

  10

  I felt most uneasy. I was in a desolate place and only the cabman knew my whereabouts. But I kept my voice calm. “I fail to see how one can walk in Time.”

  “One thousand guineas, Mr. Symmes.”

  “This is ridiculous. Do I look such a gull? It is simply a mirror.”

  “Buy, or leave. Others will be desperate for it.”

  An old line. I put on a scoffing look, but I was tormented. The name of Mortimer Dee was known to me—he had been an astrologer in the reign of Elizabeth. Anything belonging to him was of great interest. But a thousand guineas! I said, “Five hundred.”

  He came close, his face twisted in sudden anguish. “I’m not here to bargain! Do you think I would sell this treasure to a fool like you if I wasn’t utterly so deep in debt, I cannot survive!”

  Affronted, I stepped back. “Very well.” We would see who was the fool. I put my hand to the revolver in my pocket.

  But at that moment, in the next room, a woman screamed.

  Journal of John Harcourt Symmes, December 1846

  JAKE KNEW AT once he shouldn’t have come. The situation prickled with danger. He said, “Where’s my father?”

  The stranger stared straight ahead. “On the phone you asked my name. It’s Maskelyne. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “They really have kept you in the dark. You haven’t read Symmes’s journals?”

  “Who’s Symmes?”

  Maskelyne nodded, weary. “It’s a pity. We could have been useful to each other.”

  Jake kept his hand on the door. “Tell me what you know or I leave now.”

  “This place is too public.” Before Jake could even object, the man had started the car and was backing swiftly out of the parking lot into the lane. Jake said, “I could jump out.”

  “You won’t.”

  He glanced back, imagining Rebecca’s total panic. This wasn’t working out as they had planned. “Where are we going?”

  “Nervous, Jake?” Maskelyne glanced across at him. “Please don’t be. Soon, at least one of us will have everything he wants.”

  Piers tugged the curtain wider and looked at the empty alcove. Then he balanced the laptop in one arm and tried the handle of the door leading to the Monk’s Walk. It opened. He looked inside—a tilted, listening scrutiny. Then he closed the door, locked it securely, and walked away.

  Wharton watched the small shadow vanish from the gap under the door. He came from the dimness, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his face. Stupid. Stupid! But it would have been so embarrassing to be caught out there peering through keyholes. When he was sure Piers had gone, he tugged the door, but it didn’t move. “Oh bloody hell,” he said hopelessly to the darkness.

  He was trapped in the Monk’s Walk.

  He turned. There was a great emptiness at his back, a long stone corridor, with mullioned windows along the right side, the left a bare stone wall running with green damp. Forbidden territory.

  He crossed to the nearest window and opened it.

&nb
sp; The river ran twenty feet below, crashing through its gorge, a surging swollen torrent, leaves and boughs snatched away in its roar. Reflected in it was the moon, a circle fragmented by branches.

  No way down.

  He looked up the stone arcade. Sarah was in danger; he needed to speak to her and quickly. There must be some other way out. He just had to find it.

  Five minutes later he was shivering with cold and totally lost. The remains of the medieval Abbey were tangled under the house—a warren of low halls and cellars, stairs and storerooms. Moonlight slanted in through the few windows, and damp had caused acrid yellow mold to accumulate over the carvings of faces and wide-winged beasts. Worm-riddled angels regarded him serenely.

  And the fog seemed to gather here. The rooms and corridors were full of it. Descending three wide steps, his footsteps loud in the stillness, he came to an archway with the stone mask of a snarling devil on each side. Beyond, wide and dark, seemed to be a vast space. He put his hand up and groped along the wall. Surely there must be some electricity.

  His fingers found a round switch. He clicked it down. Lights crackled on above him, and then all down the length of a great hall, and he stared in astonishment.

  It must once have been a refectory, or maybe the monks’ dormitory. Now the pillars were roped with wiring, the roof festooned with cables. Every inch of the floor was cushioned with a layer of soft carpet, so thick, his feet almost sank into it. There were banks of storage cabinets; in one corner a powerful generator hummed. But what puzzled him most was the netting. It hung, like the cobweb of an immense spider, from all the vaults and pillars of the room down to the floor, fixed into pinions, stretched rigid. Gazing up, he saw that the stuff was like thick wool. It was a dark malachite green, and had a bright, sticky sheen. He reached to touch it, and then stopped, overcome by the ridiculous idea that if he did, he would be glued to it forever, unable to pull away until Venn came and found him.

  Carefully, keeping his head low and his hands at his sides, he ducked under and between the mesh. There was a way that led into it, a clear pathway that twisted and turned back on itself. It reminded him of a maze of grass hedges he had once been lost inside as a boy.