Demon in the Mirror

by Andrew J. Offut

  His Highness lifted a palm against happy comments, and continued.

  “I now propose that the people be given a double occasion for celebration. My Lady Tiana, saviour of Lieden and Collada and perhaps other lands as well from the mad dog Lokieto, any man else is free to deal with his personal concerns in private. Not so I. I am and must be public, for my life and decisions affect many. I beg you not to be offended by this necessity. My lady, I love you. Collada loves you; I ask you to marry me and be my queen.”

  Tiana was hardly offended by the public proposal. A king, no less! Why, she was almost flattered.

  In a rather oily manner, Counsellor Orld leaned her way and spoke. “My lady Tiana, it is evident from your poise and bearing that you are well born and reared to the gown and jewels you flatter by wearing. Might one ask his future queen from what house and lineage she springs?”

  Tiana gazed blandly at the man. “One might well ask, and it is a sensible question, directly put. Surely, my lord, a simple and direct reply is called for. I am a bastard.”

  Eltorn hastened to assure shocked faces that under Colladan law the marriage between Tiana’s mother and her father, Duke Sondaman, would be valid. Only an unjust technicality of Ilani law prevented Tiana from being a Duchess of Dan.

  “One must ask,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, a man lean as the kingdom’s treasury, “about the handsome jewels my lord Orld mentioned. An inheritance from your noble father the duke, my lady?”

  Tiana smiled pleasantly on the bald man. “Oh no, these I stole while robbing the royal graveyard in Calancia but a short time ago.”

  As that lean, bald man fell back in his chair and silence gripped all others, the Chief of Protocol fair leaped with his query. “I noticed the Lady Tiana’s gentle table manners, though they are of a style I have not previously seen. May I ask what master of etiquette instructed her ladyship?”

  The question was sincere, she was sure. This man knew that customs varied greatly through the world, and he doubtless wanted to know in what nation of the world it was considered good manners to touch each bit of one’s food with one’s tongue, and then to attack it like a ravenous wolf.

  “My foster father, Caranga, instructed me, my noble lord.”

  “Ah. And whence comes he, this noble Caranga?”

  “Originally, he is from the Dark Continent, where he was a cannibal, but he had to give that up when he took up residence with civilised folk. As a pirate. Now may I say something? I think I can be just the sort of queen this land needs. The treasury is depleted and I have a number of sound moneymaking projects. First, though there is great commerce on Lake Belanda, there are no pirates. As queen, I shall recruit pirates and serve too as admiral of our pirate fleet. This will be a major new source of revenue. Too, as you see from my jewellery, grave-robbing can be most profitable. I fear that I accidentally flooded the Tomb of Kings at Calancia, but several of our neighbours have royal cemeteries well worth plundering. I shall lead those expeditions. Ah yes — also, I know several skilled counterfeiters who need a good base of operations. With them minting large quantities of our neighbours’ currency, our balance-of-payments problem will be greatly eased. It was after all no fault of Collada’s that we were forced to fight off a ravening boar from Thesia!”

  Tiana went on, outlining a domestic program that included such social reforms as nationalizing the monasteries, breaking up large baronial estates and giving the land to the farmers …

  Soon the advisers were howling in incoherent rage. At last, Orld emerged as spokesman.

  “Your Highness,” he said with asperity, “we know that this woman was somehow connected with the favourable weather during the battle against Lokieto. If you insist on this absurd marriage to a witch, we cannot prevent you. But it must be made clear that as queen this … woman will provide only the normal royal duties. Except when she leaves the palace to attend state functions, she will remain at home and bear royal heirs.”

  Tiana’s sigh nearly bereft her dress of her bosom. “I see that you won’t let a queen have any fun hereabouts. I’m not surprised, as you’ve never let the prince have any fun. Prince, here is my proposal. I am captain of the best pirate ship on the Great Sea. Marry me and you can be second mate — aye, and commander of marine forces. Our life will be one glorious adventure after another.”

  Prince Eltorn smiled rather sadly. “Yes, I’m sure such a life with you would be joyful, and at least I’d appreciate your jokes as these men do not. But — I can’t abandon my duties here. You very well understand that, as you have been at pains to make us realise you cannot remain.”

  Tiana nodded, rising. “Then there is naught to do but kiss and part friends, Eltorn. Might you first be interested in showing me the sip-wine you … told me of?”

  Tiana slept that night in comfortable self-satisfaction. Proposals were ever so awkward to reject. Her straightforward answers and absurd proposals had been effective; she’d not had to refuse a royal proposal, and only Eltorn knew she had done so. Humourless old men! A wicked thought entered her mind, even in her dreams; some day, some day wouldn’t it be fun to be queen and do the things the very thought of which had outraged the humourless old aristocrats of Collada!

  In the morning she and the prince kissed a last time and, as she was indeed fond of him, she said, “I have something for you to remember me by. This necklace should be easily turned into two or three ships — mind you sell it elsewhere than in Nevinia! And have your gardener plant these.”

  After handing His pensive Highness some oddly-shaped bulbs, she mounted and rode away.

  It came to pass in a later time that the children of Lieden learned and spoke of Saint Tiana, who rode the thunderstorm and hurled lightning bolts to destroy the alien invaders. Though she loved the handsome prince and he her, she was too pure to dwell among mere men. Her parting gift was the flowers of light that still illumine the parks of the City of Light.

  14

  Pyre of Ice

  Success, Goriarch Redbeard of Reme had said two centuries before Tiana’s birth, is a treacherous friend, inclined to depart with little or no warning.

  Bearing in mind those words of a pirate become duke and slain ignominiously in gamic bed, Tiana eschewed the quickest route back to Reme. She chose instead the safest, though it was a perdurably divagating one. She avoided the excellent Hangtree Road that would have taken her directly westward across Morcar, by way of Sceptre and teeming Kla, instead wending south-westward through sunlit sheepherding land that sprawled for the most part in clear, well-grassed plains. With her black cloak drawn about her, her face veiled, and the coffin resting on the cart that rattled along behind her mule, she was treated with respectful avoidance. Alas, poor widow!

  On the evening she reached the little border village of Taromplexis, she stopped at its only inn. The Ram’s Head was small, comfortable, cosy; its family proprietors were most hospitable and pleasant. The woman, fat and bustling about in constant scutter saw to the few customers. Her husband, also fat and as taciturn as she was bubbly, remained for the most part out of sight; he was the cook, and a good one at that.

  A cheery little fire warmed the room Tiana was given rather than a cot in the common sleeping room, as she was a woman alone and a widow besides, poor thing. She saw to it that the firm oaken door was securely barred, though against what, in this pleasant out-of-the-way place, she had no idea. Outside, the dark of the moon reigned, and thick clouds shrouded the stars. A brumous wind wailed through the trees and around the eaves. The fire with its riant rays was comforting indeed.

  The wind came from the north.

  *

  Far to the north, a table was crowded with excellent models; the burned ruin of the chapel of the Sisters of Death was there, and the opened cairn atop Mount Erstand, and the flooded Tomb of Kings in Escallas of Nevinia; here sprawled the scarious remains of Turgumbruda’s garden and here was Lieden’s royal palace and not far away the house of Sulun Tha. Scattered here and there
on the table, too, were three blots of char that had been at once hawks and men, and yet neither. And there was a model of a little inn in southwest Morcar, nudging up against the border of Ilan.

  In a cruelly straight chair beside the table sat the rigid form of a man. Motionless he was, without breath or heartbeat. The staring eyes were empty, exanimate, the face without expression.

  *

  Tiana had stowed away a good supper. Her possessions, including the several pieces of Derramal’s body, were safely stacked in a corner of her room. She was content. From here her peregrinating trek appeared easy; an Ilani widow disconsolately towing home her husband’s coffin, across the pasturelands of Dan, where people were happy and minded their own business.

  A disturbing factor arose. Despite the fire, her room was growing chilly. She moved closer to the hearth, frowning. There was no window, yet the northerly wind was puffing flagitiously right through her room. It was not her imagination; the candles flickered. The walls were alive with strange, moving shadows.

  The candles died. Only the dull glow of the fireplace lit the room, making the shadows the more sinister amid the flickers. Suddenly even the flames were oddly, inexplicably, subdued, The room grew colder still. Tiana reached for the poker and, as though abruptly sucked up the chimney by a giant mouth, the fire gave a spasmodic leap and died utterly.

  In the blackness of the tomb — which Tiana knew only too well — she snatched up flint and steel.

  She was able to produce not so much as a spark.

  The situation had become worse than incongruous. Tiana knew the preternatural when it stalked her; a veil of sorcery had been flung over her room.

  She straightened in the dark, listening, straining to see the unseeable. Now came sound: something was walking along the hall toward her door. From the sound of its tread, it came not on two or four legs, but on eight. Her rapier was somewhere over there in hellish darkness. The poker was a thick and comforting chunk of smooth iron in her hand. She hung onto it, staring into the darkness and not able even to see her door, where the footsteps stopped. She heard a snuffling that was definitely not human. Then something began scratching at the door.

  There came the trill of a songbird, but Tiana was reminded of a hunting hound that had treed its prey. And aye, here came the hunter. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall with such force that the building seemed to quiver. She heard the sound of heavy breathing. Squaring her shoulders against the horripilation that was an unpleasantness all up and down her arms, Tiana sensed that the cold wind now came in spurts, as if it were the icy breath of one of those creatures the men from the Northland spoke of — a frost giant.

  Surely some kind of a giant, this second visitor stopped and instantly pounded at her door with a fist like a sledgehammer.

  Tiana gripped the poker, and waited, all still in the dark, and she gave the matter her best excogitation. An attack, and not a natural one. Yet she had defeated the three brothers, the werehawks; the acolytes. Then… this must be the master himself! Pyre! Come to Tiana himself!

  The acolytes, though, had attacked in suddenness and without warning, seeking to kill swiftly ere she prepared. Why then did the dread wizard thus announce his coming?

  For the matter of that… even if he left his lair in the north the moment I obtained Derramal’s head, how can he have got here so swiftly?

  With a sudden flash of insight, the springing forward as if by intuition to a more than logical conclusion that some had seen in her as sorcerous, Tiana knew. Pyre thus proclaimed his presence because he was in fact absent! This was a Sending, an illusion. There was no eight-legged creature at all. The most brilliant and accomplished of thaumaturges had sent werehawks in physical attack, swift and vicious. Their objective was to slay. Now the attack was mental, and the chief weapon was fear. And the objective…

  The knowledge was small comfort and little help. She was at once freezing cold and covered with sweat. Her heart was beating like a war drum, and her breath came in short rapid gasps. Her bones felt like molasses on a warm day; her will made threat to crumble.

  If I’m to keep my sanity, much less prevail, I must counterattack… but how?

  She could launch no physical assault on a man who wasn’t there, an ephemeral Sending. The only weakness Pyre could have brought with him was his vanity. And his object — Ah! Either to frighten me to death, or…

  Thought fathered deed; springing forward, Tiana pulled the bolt and threw wide the door.

  “Come in, Pyre of Ice. You are late.”

  “Death,” came the reply hollowly from the hall’s blackness, “makes no appointments.”

  The speaker was visible to her only chatoyantly; a pair of burning red eyes surrounded by blackness. They stared with evil intent.

  “Oh no, but men do, when they want to parley. For two weeks I’ve had the head of Derramal. Tomorrow I’ll be in Ilan, and you are lamentably out of werehawks. Since you can’t stop me by force, you must either try to frighten me to death, or parley. You must know that I am without fear,” she said, noting that her legs were firming again and that the fine hairs on her arms were lying down, “and you should have come sooner.” Besides… all this noise I heard has not roused the inn-keeping family!

  “Pertinacious little fool, do you think you can thus defy me and escape my vengeance?”

  “Certainly, red eyes. You wish to prevent me from putting Derramal’s body into the hands of Lamarred — returning it, that is. Once I have done that, I will no longer be important to you — and you’ll be far too busy battling real enemies to waste time on empty vengeance. Too, ’twould be as unworthy as this… showmanship.”

  Silence held the dark only for a moment as Pyre took those words — hopefully, Tiana Highrider thought, like slaps across the face. Then he reacted.

  Candles and fire leaped into life. In their light stood revealed Pyre.

  A tallish man the wizard of wizards was, spear-straight, with the hard polish of a diamond. Ferocious setose brows ambushed dark eyes bright as a hawk’s. The tiny beard, pepper sprinkled lightly with salt, covered only his chin and was clipped close, as though it were the growth of less than a fortnight. The planes of his face were sharply defined; this, with his rigid erectness and slenderness, made him appear even taller than he was.

  Pyre of Ice, come to Tiana! Aye, and when she spoke, this arresting, pride-radiant man’s voice was bitter with defeat, his deep-voiced words like calx.

  “For the first time in many years I must tell the truth. This is an unpleasant act for a wizard, but there is no other way now to stop you. Once — what do you now plan to do with that poker, might I ask?”

  “Put it down right here,” Tiana said, and she did so — and fetched her rapier.

  Pyre affected to ignore that fact. “Once you return Derramal’s body to Lammared, it is true that I shall take no vengeance. You will be beyond all harm, so-arrogant hoyden, for you shall have been eaten body and soul. Lamarred promised that you might rescue your brother, Bealost, Now I will reveal to you your brother’s fate — and the true nature of Lamarred.”

  “You needn’t. I already know. There were several clues. When first I met Lamarred, I recognised his face as that of one I had seen at court when I was but eight. It is the face of Derramal. When he handed me my brother’s locket, it had been reversed — as Lamarred is the mirror image of Derramal.”

  “Mirrors, indeed. Your mind is as extraordinary as your contumely and your… daring.”

  “And Pyre, of course, is above mentioning the extraordinary body,” Tiana said with affected comity. “I found an inscription on Mount Erstand. It said that the demon Derramal’s soul is free and reigns ‘beyond the silver plane. He cannot be slain save by a countless host of swords striking from beyond infinity.’”

  “And you understand that?” The great Pyre was impressed.

  “Pertinacious I am. Pyre, but I am no little fool. It’s become clear to me that when that long-ago conspiracy against King Hower failed,
Derramal transferred his ka, or soul, to his reflection in a tavern mirror. Since his ka was thus absent, his body did not die even when it was dismembered. Since then he has remained in an inn, the Smiling Skull in Reme, like a spider catching flies in a web. For nourishment he eats the souls of the inn’s patrons — like that of my friend Gunda. His promise concerning my brother was that he was not dead and, if Derramal’s body were brought him, it could tell us Bealost’s hiding place. This he swore on his Power.”

  “Meaningless! He —”

  “I know. From Turgumbruda I learned that such an oath indicates the most evil possible meaning. My baby brother is hidden in the monster’s stomach because he ate him, body and soul. Derramal’s victims do not thus find the peace of death, true death — and so Bealost is dead and not dead.”

  Pyre made no effort to conceal his surprise at her having reached such conclusions on her own. “Knowing this, you help Derramal/Lamarred?”

  “Of course. Think, wizard! How else may I avenge Bealost? When the soul and body of Derramal/Lamarred are united, I can make him pay in full. It should be very easy, since he will hardly expect me to attack him. I am to be his victim, of course.”

  Pyre heaved a great sigh that Tiana recognised as partially drama. The man had a fine sense of it! “With all your titles-… my lady Captain Tiana Highrider Duke’s bastard of Reme… you are without doubt the most contumacious and bravest fool in creation. Now learn the black mystery you so recklessly challenge.”

  “With pleasure, and seated,” Tiana said, and she sat.