Demon in the Mirror

by Andrew J. Offut

  Wiry little Nadya’s final word was not quite out before Tiana was upon her. After an initial squeaky sound, the Stromvili fought back in the traditional style of biting, kicking, scratching. She was strong, Tiana swiftly learned, as she lost her sombre cloak in a way that came close to strangling her. The eyes of the onlookers widened at the way her tight silk shirt and short breeches moulded and revealed her luscious formations.

  It was an intense encounter, and swiftly over. Not only was Tiana the stronger, she fought with warrior’s skill and lack of inhibitions, coupled with a natural knowledge of the female anatomy. But for Nadya’s surprising ability to absorb punishment, the fight would have been even shorter. As it was, Tiana knew in a few moments that her opponent had enough — which did not prevent the highrider from receiving one more kneejerk high between her wiry thighs. Then Tiana was standing astride the groaning little boy-girl, and flaunting her deep full chest with arms akimbo.

  “Any else thinks I am overblown, rather than un-skinny — like this?” She spumed her defeated detractor with her toe.

  Obviously none did, and Bandari intervened swiftly, handing Tiana her cloak.

  “You see, Tiana is considerably stronger than she appears. We’ll just have to be wrapping her a bit tighter, is all.” And he led Tiana away from the others, who either gazed after her or clustered about Nadya. “The redhead temper remains, I see.” He gave her no time for a heated reply. “I must prepare for tomorrow’s highriding. As for you — tomorrow you watch, and learn.”

  Tiana halted. “Bandari,” she said with an intensity of voice that matched her gaze, “tomorrow I join you. I haven’t time to watch. And after my reception by that boy, I will not let them think I hold back.”

  He did not smile at her characterisation of Nadya, but returned her gaze levelly. “It may mean your death, Ty. Like — pardon me, but — like a splattered egg. And that has nothing to do with your build. The — ”

  “Bandari. I highride on the morrow.”

  Bandari firmed his mouth, considered, agreed with a jerky nod. “You highride.” Suddenly, he grinned maliciously. “Custom demands that you spend the night before your first time in the chapel.”

  *

  “Talking with a priest and sleeping on a bench?” She whipped her cloak about her and fastened it at the shoulders. “I can stand both, so long as he has somewhat to eat. A chapel bench has more yield than a ship’s deck — where I’ve slept many times. But — my instructions…”

  “Tomorrow,” Bandari said, and nodded. “There is the chapel.” And he walked away.

  “Hmp. Peevish, is he — mayhap he likes the boy-built girl,” she muttered, but showed more pride than resignation in walking, alone, to the chapel.

  It was not much, a cavelet laboriously hollowed out of the mountain to the depth of thirty or so feet. Carpeting of woven plant fibres, nine benches, tables for candles, a tiny shrine and altar, and a wall of wood with a door. Priest’s quarters, she assumed, and a sudden mischievous impulse made her flip back her cloak. It was cold, with night coming on here just at Erstand’s snow line. But — most orders of the Theban priesthood were celibate, and Tiana of Reme was hardly above teasing even a priest.

  He emerged from the door in the wall of wood at the chapel’s rear. They introduced themselves; he was Father Golub, almost a comical figure. Like the others of Stromvil he was rangy of frame and limb, but he had acquired a substantial pot belly. The man looked, simply put, pregnant. Tiana watched his gaze sweep her appreciatively — yet without apparent desire. Catching her frown, he smiled.

  “Daughter, you may as well be for protecting yourself against the cold, for you can’t tease me. My two wives keep me most happy indeed.”

  Tiana blinked. “What? Most priests are celibate — and you have two wives?”

  “Aye, my strapping child. My order believes that a priest’s primary vow is that of poverty. To enforce this vow rigorously, bigamy is essential. You seek absolution?”

  Tiana swallowed her surprise, then her chuckle — and refrained from pointing out that both Golubwives must be superlative cooks. “I am here only because it is custom, for tomorrow I highride, Father. All my life I have been honourable.”

  “I see, I see.” He bobbed a jowly head on which there was less hair than shining skull. “Commendable, commendable. Call me Golub. Hideous name, isn’t it? Honourable all your life! Commendable, commendable. I’ve put a small supper on the board, my child. You’ll be for joining me — highriders do not breakfast.”

  Tiana felt as if she were on one foot and was happy to be ushered into a large room with nice hangings and to be seated before what Golub called a “small” supper. Now if lean keep my mouth full and hell eat rather than babble or ask questions…

  But Golub asked, “What is honour, my child of Reme?” He shook his head. “Reme. Whew.”

  Tiana chewed elaborately while her brain worked. “My name is Tiana. Ty-anna. My foster father, Caranga — whom I call father — taught me that honour is to take no note of small offenses but never to leave a greater one unavenged; to be loyal to my friends in danger and trouble — and to hate my enemies.”

  “A strong, simple code,” he said, bobbing his head. “Tell me, Tiana, what do you do?”

  “I joined the family business with my father.”

  “Ah, ah. Commendable, commendable — and what is your father’s business?”

  “We’re pirates,” Tiana said, and stuffed a large helping of mutton stew into her face.

  Golub stared. “Pirates!?”

  “You know, sea-thieves,” she nodded, chewing. “I am Captain Tiana, Father Golub. Of the ship Vixen.”

  “But my child — piracy is not honourable!” Golub was nearly stammering.

  She waggled a two-tined Narokan fork at him. “Don’t call me child, please. And why not? Nothing in the code says I shouldn’t rob and slay those I don’t like.”

  Golub drew a great deep breath and seemed to forget his heaped plate. “Daughter… what did you last… steal?”

  “A bottle of wine from the nunnery near a village called Woeand.” She reconsidered. “Two.”

  “Well… that’s not so serious, though a convent… How did such a strange theft come about?”

  “It was easy,” she said, sipping a bit of his watered wine, which was ghastly. “The nuns were all in their chapel, so I nailed the door shut and set the place on fire.”

  “Theba intercede! My, my… Tian-Captain, what did they, to receive such treatment?”

  “They were vampires. Literally, I mean; the thirst of those demonic nuns had nigh onto depopulated the countryside.” Golub was silent for a time, though he regarded his food more than he partook of it. At last he looked up; Tiana was eating with gusto. “Daughter, this was surely no dishonourable deed. Nevertheless, do partake through me of Theba’s absolution. I had much trouble gaining permission to absolve highriders.”

  Now that was interesting, Tiana thought, gravying hard brown bread. “Why?” she asked, and popped the large morsel.

  “Some members of the bishop’s council had heard distorted rumours about highriding, and suspected it involved the black arts. When I was for explaining the purely natural means involved, there was new opposition, on the grounds that there is no absolution for suicide.”

  That interrupted Tiana’s unconcerned eating. “Come now, Father,” she said after a long, surprised stare. “I don’t know yet just all that highriding entails, but it can’t be that dangerous. All the young villagers do it.”

  “Only a few, and some do not succeed. Have you looked off the edge of Stromvil cliff?”

  “Aye. It’s a drop of ten thousand feet straight, if it’s a finger’s breadth.”

  “My child, to go highriding, one begins by leaping off the cliff, and that is generally accounted the safest part.”

  Splatter like an egg…

  *

  Tiana was awakened by a heavy boom of thunder followed by its long after-grumble. Though the
building shook with each succeeding bellow of nature, light streamed in the open door of the little chapel. Wondering, she rose, stretched tall, bent to place her hands on the floor and kick back her legs one by one, rose to stretch again toward the rafters. Then she left the chapel and its hard benches to investigate the anomaly of stormy thunder and clear skies.

  The mystery was simple of solution, once she’d advanced to the cliff’s edge. Tiana stared down at the thunderstorm.

  All else was invisible. Below, a black seething mass roiled, troubled and amorphously unstable even for a moment and shot through constantly with intolerably brilliant streaks of lightning. Intense winds blew up from the storm, so that she backed, lest a sudden shafting gust carry her over cliff’s edge.

  She could not take her eyes from nature’s rage. At sea, storms were an ever fearsome danger that kept all hands frenetically busy lest their ship capsize or be rent plank from plank. Here, she could look with safety into the very heart of the monster.

  Its violence and power were beyond belief. Here were all the gods, surely; here was the power that could destroy the world. The force with which it attacked land and sea was but a tiny fraction of those that ravaged the sky. Those blue-white bolts of lightning that felled the tallest trees and shattered man’s proudest towers were pallid shades of the blinding white titans that here blasted from cloud to cloud with splitting crashes of thunder that she could feel.

  With a shudder, Tiana realised that some religions defined Drood’s dark demesne as a place much like this titanic prowler of the skies…

  “Ho, Tiana!” It was Bandari. “A bonny day for highriding — you’re favoured! Come, you must be readied.”

  Clutching her cloak close so as not to sail away, Tiana hastened to Bandari and the little group of highriders with him. When she would have spoken, he cut her short.

  “Time is short, Ty. I’ll instruct you whilst the girls prepare you and the lads ready me.”

  Even as he spoke, the others were commencing to enwrap her and Bandari with broad bands of hard, only slightly elastic leather.

  “These instructions I’m for giving but once. Your life depends on your heeding them, Tiana. Make one error, and none on all the broad back of the world can help you. The time to change your mind is now.”

  Tiana glanced down to meet the unfriendly grey eyes of Nadya, who seemed vying with another for the task of wrapping her upper body. “I go. You could instruct me a thousand times, Ban, but you remember I know how to listen, and to act on it. You have taught me much; teach me more, Bandari the Cat. Ow! Here — is that necessary? Must that be so tight there?”

  It was not Nadya who answered, but another: “Yes, and you’d live.”

  Bandari smiled — and sobered instantly. “Attend. The human body — even a weak one, which yours and mine are not — is well designed. Very well designed, with great innate strength. We bleed so readily and are so easily slain that we have no notion of the punishment our bodies can withstand if we use our full strength and resilience — intelligently. Highriding uses this strength. The highrider must exert all that strength, and endure the greatest possible stress a human being can survive.”

  “Best you but watch, beautiful,” one of those wrapping Bandari said, and he grinned. “I’ll be for holding your hand.”

  Tiana kept her gaze on Bandari.

  “Tiana,” Bandari snapped, “be still for your wrapping. Be glad you’re not a man whose stones must be half-crushed in the wrappings! Davri — hush. Keep your attention on readying me, or I’ll come back and haunt you. Now. Highriding was born centuries ago when a boy named Longo dived off this cliff to the lake below.” Bandari paused while a particularly horrendous crash of thunder subsided into a long rumbling. “He was being pursued by a cliff cat. Longo was clever, even then. Jumping, you see, is safe — the danger is in hitting the water! If one hits headfirst, the head is driven up between the shoulders and the spine is severed — snap! Feetfirst, and the thighbones are driven up through the soft stomach into the chest.”

  Tighter, Tiana directed mentally, though already her breathing was slightly restricted.

  “Longo spread his arms and legs, wide apart, and fell flat — also hanging onto the cloak he wore. He reasoned that thus he would be as a sail that caught the air, and be slowed. Too, the shock of impact might be less dangerous when spread over his entire body.”

  “You mean — he actually survived a fall from this cliff?”

  “A leap, Tiana. And… no,” Bandari told her. “But an examination of his body showed that Longo Stromvilo had the right concept. The Stromvili became interested — fascinated! They tried this and that, though none ever thought of leaping into a storm. Then, well over a century ago, a child was standing at the cliff’s edge, watching a storm. Its mother saw, and cried out. The child turned, slipped, fell. I bear an auspicious name: the child was called Bandari.”

  “Spread your legs,” Nadya said.

  Tiana knew some trepidation, remembering the several nice kneelifts she had administered to the girl, but she obeyed. Both Nadya and her companion were now wrapping her legs, having cocooned her torso.

  “The horrified mother ran to the edge,” Bandari said. “Tighter there, Davri. She saw her son not falling, but flying, his arms and legs outspread, being carried along eastward rather than down — and then suddenly he seemed as if hurled upward.”

  “The winds,” Tiana breathed.

  “The winds. By now many saw: that long-ago Bandari sailed high above Stromvil, his limbs outstretched like a great bat. And then — he fell. He landed on the ledge, from a height of many feet. It was as if a miracle had spared him.”

  “He lived,” a bright-eyed highrider said breathlessly.

  “He lived,” Bandari nodded “A cripple for life. His mind was good, though, and it is Bandari who is called Father of Highriding. He devised the method. We’ve only been for improving on it, for over a hundred years now. These leather wrappings are later developments: they decrease the chance of collapsing one’s lungs. The long silk streamers the girls are now attaching to your arms and legs provide extra air resistance. They are a great help.”

  Tiana’s heart was pounding. Bandari went on. Tiana listened, knowing she could not back out now — and wishing she were not so prideful and impetuous. When he seemed finished, both he and Tiana had been completely encased in leather that flashed with enamel. Well-padded leathern helmets enclosed their heads, while their arms and legs trailed multi-coloured streamers of the silk from the spiders of Il-Zadok Marsh. At Bandari’s stomach they had attached a large sack, filled with small bags of salt.

  Below raged a storm; here, Tiana was hot in her wrappings beneath a clear bright sky.

  “Questions, Tiana?”

  “A thousand. But I see no reason to bother.”

  “Then… let’s go,” Bandari said.

  The others lifted a great cheering cry of “HI-I-MGHRIDERS-S-S-S!” that Tiana assumed was ritual. And Bandari leaped from the cliff.

  She stared after him. She swallowed. Instructions? Obviously he and his companions were insane. To jump that way was surely suicide — but to remain was cowardice. With a short running leap, Tiana threw herself off the cliff.

  Following Bandari’s instructions, she spread her arms and legs. Furious wind howled around her, and she found he was right; she was able to steer into it. The wind shrieked, her leather creaked, the streamers flapped and rattled — and she realised that she was indeed falling more slowly. Elation was a surging swell in her.

  It’s true! Bandari had said that in a thunderstorm there were updrafts strong enough to carry a person — and it was true! She was being buoyed. It was wonderful; she could stay up here forev - without warning she slipped into a down-current and fell like a plummet toward the dark heart of the storm.

  Manoeuvring desperately for an updraft, she was thrown suddenly into a roll. Tears were wind-blasted from her eyes. The sun above and the storm beneath flashed dizzyingly past, changing
positions — and then she pulled out. Again she rose. A yellow streamer fouled and she began to spin. The terrible natural force stretched her arms and legs as if she were on a rack, and she remembered with horror that this was what Bandari had warned was the gravest danger. She had to straighten that streamer — and if she misjudged her manoeuver, the resultant snap would break her spine.

  Gritting her teeth, she exerted all her strength to force her arm back. Her fingers plucked stiffly in their protecting gloves, however supple. With maddening slowness, she unfurled the streamer. Still she spun. Then that long strip of yellow silk leaped out with a cracking sound to join the others of blue and green, and instantly her spin slowed.

  Again she was flying free.

  The sensation was akin to that of running before the wind on a good swift ship — no, it was being that ship, arms and legs the sails, the streamers her proud pennons, on an ocean unbelievably turbulent. Yet freedom was absolute, and — her eyes were drawn by a hissing movement to her right. An avalanche of hailstones shot past. Bandari had warned her; the soft raindrops to which all on land were accustomed were stone-like pellets in the upper skies.

  Suddenly the entire sky was filled with a blinding light that emanated from just beneath her, and her body was struck as if by a gigantic hammer. After a moment of fear, she laughed; Tiana sat astride the lightning; Tiana was riding the thunder.

  And… I’m… I’m rising!

  She was. It was true; she was lifting, and a vast sensation of exaltation surged through her.

  It was then that her stomach expressed its opinion of this new kind of sailing. What little remained of Golub’s supper was soon dispersed to the sky.

  Bandari sailed into view on her right. His hand signal indicated his satisfaction with her flying. Now he would seize control of nature, salt the storm to drive it around the mountain and up the north slope to the top, to what they called Longo’s Mesa. Gently, surely, he sank into the roiling dark heart of the storm. In that unstable hell, cracklingly alive with thunder and violent wind, lay the secret of control. “There lies the whip I use to drive the monster to do my will,” he’d said, “and that whip is the lightning itself.” He would unleash the bolts himself, with his little bags of salt.