Arigan came closer, kneeling, with evident pain, beside the bed so she could lower her voice even more. “It is magical, all right,” the old woman said. “That’s why it has been handed down, generation to generation, within this family.”
“But we are not . . . we aren’t a family of wizards or witches, are we?”
“Not at all,” Arigan assured her. “But one of your ancestors did one a favor, long ago. That favor was returned, with the gift of the mirror. The mirror that now belongs to you, along with that gift.”
“But . . . what good is its magic if no one knows what it does, or how to work it?” Alanya wondered aloud.
“Who said that no one does?”
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. “Do you?”
“Aye, child,” Arigan said. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “Your mother showed me, years ago. I never really knew why. Now I think it was so that I might show you, when the time came.”
Alanya felt a rush of excitement, as if she were being initiated into some great mystery. “I have it in my bags,” she said. She had very few personal possessions. But she and Donial still had the horses Kral had acquired for them, and they’d loaded their things onto those mounts for the move. Her bags had been brought to her room by one of the staff, at her request. She went to the one in which she thought she had stashed the mirror and dug around until she found it.
When she brought it back, she knelt on the floor beside the old woman and reverently laid the precious thing on her bed, glass side up. “Here it is.”
Arigan sighed. “I would recognize that anywhere,” she said. “Even after a hundred hundred years, if I lived so long.”
“I hope you do,” Alanya said. “But . . . how does it work? What is it supposed to do?”
Before Arigan could answer, Donial strode into the room and flopped down on the bed. “Wondered where you were,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Arigan is telling me about mother’s mirror,” Alanya explained. “It really is magic.”
Donial sat up, his interest piqued. “It isn’t.”
“Oh, but it is,” Arigan countered. “Very much so.”
“What does it do?” Donial demanded.
“I was just getting to that,” Arigan told him. “Because it is a looking glass, its magic is tied to its natural function. In this case, if you look into it and speak a name three times—and if that person has ever looked into the mirror—it will show you his or her image.”
“Even if they are not looking in it now?” Donial asked.
“If they were looking in it now, it would just be a normal mirror, silly,” Alanya pointed out. “That would not be magic, would it?”
“Anyone who has ever looked into it,” Arigan assured them.
“So . . . I could see Mother?” Alanya asked.
Arigan put a long, bony finger to her wrinkled lips. “You could,” she said. “But when viewing the dead, you will not see them as they are now. You will see the last time she gazed into the glass.”
That seemed fine to Alanya. Her mother had been dead for years, and now she would be nothing but bones. But still, she wanted to see what the woman had looked like, to see if it matched her memory, her imagination. She pictured her mother as almost impossibly beautiful. Could it really be true?
“All right, then,” she said. She stared into the glass until her own reflection swam, unfocused, before her eyes. “Martene, Martene, Martene.”
Seconds passed, and nothing happened. Alanya waited, disappointment rising in her like a tide. The mirror wasn’t magic after all. Not that she had really expected anything different. Everyone heard about magic, knew some sorcerer or other by name and reputation, if not personally. But no one she knew seemed to have any genuine experience with it. It was something in stories, not something that touched the lives of people like her.
She let her eyes focus again on her own reflection, then . . .
... and then, it was not her reflection at all. It was a woman with golden hair, like hers, and eyes of the bluest blue. But it was not Alanya.
For a moment, she wondered if the other woman in the glass could see her. But, of course, she couldn’t. Alanya was just seeing what her mother had seen the last time she had looked into the glass. She squinted, she poked at the corner of her lips, a bit thinner than Alanya’s own, she tilted her head to examine her own neck.
It was Mother, as clear as day! The magic did work, after all!
Alanya wanted to cry out, to speak to her. She showed Donial, who stared, wide-eyed. “That’s Mother?”
Alanya knew his memory of their mother was more vague than her own. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that is Mother. Absolutely.”
“She is so pretty,” Donial said.
“Isn’t she?” Arigan responded. “Like her daughter.”
Alanya felt suddenly embarrassed. Yes, she did look quite a bit like her mother. But her mother’s face was more mature, more elegant in some way. She felt as if her own had not fully formed yet.
Before she could say anything more, the image faded away, and the mirror returned to reflecting those things before it. “She is gone.”
“You get only a glimpse,” Arigan explained. “Especially of the dead.”
“But with the living,” Donial began. Alanya could tell by his face that he had an idea. “It will show them as they are now?”
“Exactly.”
“Alanya,” Donial said anxiously. “Ask it to show us Kral!”
She understood at once. She had shown Kral the mirror, that fateful day when Donial had discovered them together. He had gazed into it on that occasion, which should, if Arigan was correct, be enough to let its magic work on him. If it would show Kral as he was at that moment, perhaps it would also show enough of his surroundings for them to be able to figure out where he was. If, by some horrible quirk of fate, he had been killed, she hoped they would be able to tell that as well.
She looked deep into the mirror again, as if trying to see the glass surface beneath her reflection, and spoke his name three times.
A few moments passed, as before, and then, with no warning, she saw an image of Kral.
He wasn’t looking into the mirror, as her mother had seemed to be. Instead, the vantage point was from a foot or more away from him, as if Alanya, Donial, and Arigan were unseen viewers, observing him. He looked tired. His dark hair was matted, strands of it hanging loosely around his face. He appeared to be hunched over, sitting or squatting, in a dark place.
“What is that behind him?” Donial wondered.
Alanya had been closely examining her friend’s weary face, without looking at the surroundings. Donial was right—there was something visible in the darkness—four bands of light, evenly spaced.
“A window of some kind?” Arigan offered.
“Those are . . . those are bars!” Donial said excitedly. “He is in some kind of cage.”
“Or a cell,” Alanya added. “Perhaps he was arrested.”
“That would make sense,” Donial said. “It would explain why he never made it back to Cheveray’s.”
Alanya knew that seeing Kral’s surroundings could be a major breakthrough. Cheveray had been making discreet inquiries, but without any certain knowledge of the young Pict’s whereabouts, his efforts had necessarily been widespread. Now he could narrow them.
Somewhere, likely here in Tarantia, Kral was being held prisoner.
All they had to do now was find out where—then figure out a way to get him out!
6
CONOR KNEW THE youngsters were counting on him to find their friend’s missing crown—although from its description, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want it. And he knew he would not be paid any more until he did so.
What he didn’t know was how to go about it.
He’d been popular with his fellow villagers back in Taern—feared, respected, and liked in more or less equal proportions. But he had also been curious about life outside Cimmeria.
As stories about Conan’s exploits filtered out of the warmer lands to the south—and especially after he had become king in Aquilonia—that curiosity had become overwhelming.
Anxious to see what Conan had found in the wide world, Conor had left home and made his own trek, south to Tarantia. Here, he had found friendly, voluptuous women who were drawn to big, muscular men like him—although his appeal seemed to fade the emptier his purse became. He also found occasional opportunities to replenish that purse, most of them illegal and a number of them dangerous as well.
Now an opportunity had come along that seemed to be legal, and could—if these teens were really as wealthy as they seemed—wind up filling his purse. All he had to do was figure out which thief, of the hundreds or maybe thousands who inhabited Tarantia, had stolen the odd head ornament.
Dusk was settling over the big city, softening shadows before night thickened them, and drawing the night-dwellers out onto the streets. Fathers hurried home to be with their families. Thieves, cutthroats, and whores emerged from their dens. Lamps were being lit all over the city.
It was the time of night Conor liked best in Tarantia. At home, the fall of dusk drove people into their huts to wait for the sun’s return. But here it just signaled a change in who was out and about. One never needed to be alone in Tarantia; someplace in the city there was always someone to pass the time with.
With the thieves out, maybe he could get started on his appointed task.
He stepped onto a narrow side street and waited in the gathering gloom. It didn’t take long for a man to start down the street, a big fellow with a surprisingly light step and a rolling gait. He wore a narrow-bladed sword at his left hip, and a dagger on his right, ready to be cross-drawn.
Instead of letting him have that chance, Conor waited, motionless, until the man had passed, then stepped out close behind him. “You a thief?” he asked quietly.
“Could be,” the man asked, startled but covering it well. “Why do you ask?”
“I seek something stolen of late,” Conor replied. “A barbaric crown, of bones and teeth. Have you heard of it?”
“Me, I specialize in gems from the boudoirs of noblewomen,” the man said. He still hadn’t turned around, but his posture was tense and coiled, ready for anything. “A crown such as you describe would not interest me in the least.”
Conor felt a sudden, inexplicable rage boil up in him. “That is not what I asked!” He swung at the back of the thief’s head, a glancing blow that nonetheless knocked the other man sprawling in the middle of the street. “I asked if you had heard anything about it.”
The thief worked his way to a sitting position, rubbing the back of his head and glaring angrily at Conor. “No,” he declared flatly. “I have not.”
“If you do,” Conor suggested, “find me and tell me. My name is Conor, of Cimmeria. I would find the crown I have described, if it is yet in Tarantia.”
“I . . . I will ask around,” the thief volunteered. “Just don’t hit me again.”
Conor folded his arms across his massive chest and nodded. “Very well,” he said. The thief scuttled backward, away from Conor, then rose and hurried away.
That gave Conor an idea for how to go about his task. Before being swatted, the fellow had been unwilling to cooperate at all. After, he had offered to help.
Conor could happily knock around thieves all evening. One of them, surely, would know something about the missing crown.
He started for a tavern where he knew he could find some likely candidates.
FOUR HOURS LATER, Conor pounded on the door of a second-floor apartment in which a thief named Tremont was said to live.
The apartment, coincidentally, was only a couple of blocks from the basement where Conor himself had found lodging, shortly after arriving in Tarantia. The building was ramshackle and pungent, and there seemed to be as many people sitting or sleeping in the hallway as inside the apartments themselves. Several scratched at themselves, some even in their sleep. Conor supposed that meant that this fellow Tremont was a more successful thief than these others, who huddled against the walls, dressed in rags, quaking with fear at Conor’s approach.
There was no response to his pounding, so he opened the door. Unbolted, it swung open easily when he worked the latch. As he stepped inside, the stink of rotten food assailed his nostrils, and through an open window, a single shaft of moonlight illuminated a trembling form, lying on a bed.
“You,” Conor said. “You are Tremont?”
The person on the bed said something, but Conor couldn’t make it out. He moved closer, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his broadsword, ready to draw and strike at a moment’s notice. His sandals stuck to something covering the floor, and he knew at once, by the smell, that it was blood.
As he neared, he saw a man under a threadbare blanket, shivering with such ferocity he was practically vibrating. The man was skinny, with long hair sweat-plastered to a face that looked like horses had stampeded across it. “You are Tremont?” Conor asked again.
“I am,” the man said, his voice barely a whisper.
“I am told you stole a crown, made of bones and teeth,” Conor said. “Where is it?”
“G-gone,” the shivering man managed.
“Gone where?” Conor demanded. “You sold it?”
The man on the bed might have been shaking his head, but with his trembling it was hard to tell. “What, then?” Conor wanted to know.
“St-Stygians,” Tremont said. It almost seemed that the thought of them made him shiver harder. “Priests, in black robes. Th . . . three of them. They took it.”
“Do you know where these Stygians might have gone?” Conor asked.
Tremont shook his head again.
Conor leaned closer, trying to scare the injured man with his sheer size and presence. “I need the crown,” he said. He caught a whiff of Tremont’s odor and realized that the spoiled food smell in the place came from him. The thief was dying, and fast.
“T-teeth,” the thief mumbled.
“Yes, it has teeth,” Conor said impatiently. “What about them?”
“The crown . . . is not whole . . .” Tremont explained. “I sold some teeth.”
“You sold them? To who?”
Tremont hesitated, then a violent paroxysm gripped him. Conor was afraid he would die before he was able to speak again. But after a few moments it passed, and Tremont, face wet with new perspiration, managed to speak again. “A . . . a man named . . . Chellus.”
Conor nodded. He had heard of Chellus, though he had never seen the man. Rumor was that Chellus would buy anything stolen, no matter how hard it might be to resell. He paid low prices for everything and made his money by purchasing the occasional genuinely valuable item from thieves already indebted to him for taking less pricey items off their hands.
Maybe Chellus still had the teeth. And maybe, now that Conor knew where they were, he himself could get his hands on them. He didn’t know precisely what they were or what they might portend, but if Stygian priests were after the crown, then it was likely that someone would pay a decent price for the missing parts of it. He decided he would have to pay a visit to Chellus soon.
He had heard enough, he thought. Tremont was going to die at any time, and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. The place stank enough already.
Without bothering to thank the shivering thief, he walked out of the man’s apartment, leaving the door wide open.
The sooner someone found him, the sooner they would get his body out of the apartment. Maybe if it was cleaned up, it wouldn’t be half-bad.
Conor wouldn’t have minded moving out of his basement, not at all. There could be some real benefits to being on the second floor.
He would have to keep an eye on the place.
HIS HANDS CLASPED before him, Cheveray nodded and smiled. “I have some good news, children,” he said. He sat in a chair, with his cane balanced across his knees. “Very good news indeed.”
Having sent word, via a servant, to Cheveray about what the mirror had revealed, Donial and Alanya had spent their first night in their childhood home, feeling a warmth and sense of comfort long denied them. But with morning, the urgency to find Kral had reestablished itself, and they had returned to Cheveray’s house to discuss what they had seen in the magic mirror.
“What is it?” Alanya wanted to know.
“Because of what you saw in your mother’s mirror,” Cheveray revealed, “I had a place to start that I had not before. During the night, agents of mine asked some pointed questions, and we have located your friend.”
“You found him?” Donial asked in stunned surprise. “Where is he?”
“We didn’t even know what prison it was,” Alanya reminded them.
“True,” Cheveray acknowledged. “But we knew more than we did before, and were able to focus our search. He is being held in a city prison, accused of having killed an Aquilonian soldier, in addition to murdering your uncle and Rufio, his Ranger guard.”
“Murder?” Donial asked. But he quickly remembered that Kral had done just that, on numerous occasions, back in Koronaka. Why should it surprise him now? He was, after all, a savage, who didn’t cleave to the same customs as civilized folk.
“Aye,” Cheveray confirmed. “A serious charge indeed.”
“Then . . . how can we get him out?” Alanya demanded. “We cannot just leave him there. We know he did not kill Lupinius or Rufio. Have you asked King Conan for help?”
There had been a time when Donial had not been so sure that prison wasn’t the best place for him. After all, it was Alanya, not he, who had made fast friends with the Pict. What difference to him if Kral stayed in jail? Alanya would grieve, but she would get over it. Even Donial would miss him to some extent, having enjoyed his company on their trip to Tarantia. Not nearly as much as his sister would, but he had come to respect the savage’s primitive outlook on things.
“That, I fear, is where I have run into a stone wall,” Cheveray said. “Since he is accused of killing one of the King’s soldiers, I do not dare appeal to Conan. And the only way to prove that he did not commit the murders at your house would be for you both to admit that you were also there. Then, of course, you might all be charged. The other crime of which he is accused—having been committed before several witnesses, soldiers and Rangers alike—is perhaps more troubling still. There’s little doubt that he is guilty. From the sound of things, I suspect he was simply trying to escape and saw those soldiers as a threat. I understand his actions. But you must understand that the authorities have every intention of seeing him executed for it.”
Winds of the Wild Sea Page 5
