Mirror Sight

by Kristen Britain

  Down an austere side passage, she found storage rooms full of draped furniture, chests, and lamps missing shades. She hoped not to accidentally open a door to the servants quarters. Mirriam, who was exalted above all as head housekeeper, got a room in the plush upstairs. The rest of the servants would be housed in more utilitarian quarters. Still, she did not have a sense of anyone sleeping or otherwise inhabiting this corridor.

  The next door she opened proved more interesting, for she found a very messy and cluttered office. She stepped inside and marveled at the piles of paper and stacks of books rising like columns almost to the ceiling. There was something of a path to a chair and desk, likewise buried in paper and books. The black eye sockets of a horse’s skull peeked out from a shelf crowded with books and rolled documents. A rusted dagger sat on a pile like a paperweight. Here and there shovels and pick axes leaned against a bookstack. Some were buried up to their handles. She saw no sign of her own belongings, but there was no way to tell if they were buried anywhere in this clutter.

  Karigan thought that if the professor wished to conduct archeological excavations, he should begin with his own office. She dared not touch anything for fear it would all come crashing down on her. Across his desk a map lay unrolled, but she could not make sense of it with its gridwork of numbers, transects, and layers.

  She froze when she heard a door open and close somewhere else in the house. She wondered what to do—hide, or stay where she was? What if it was the professor coming to work late in his office?

  She hastily lowered the light of the taper to a dim glow. She headed for the door, brushed against a stack of books, and watched in horror as they listed precariously. She gritted her teeth and tried to steady them so they would not topple, but the stack was over-balanced and fell, taking out the stack behind it, and another.

  The noise was like thunder, and she flung herself out of the room, across the hall, and into one of the storage rooms. So much for her stealthy sojourn. If they discovered her, she’d be banned from leaving her room ever. Not that she’d let them stop her.

  Hurried footsteps came down the corridor. She extinguished the taper entirely so no hint of light leaked through the crack at the bottom of the door. There was a second set of footsteps, and she opened the door just the tiniest bit. She saw the professor’s back, and Mirriam’s, each of them holding a taper.

  “What in the world?” Mirriam demanded. She wore a plaid housecoat over her nightgown and a bonnet over her hair. The professor was attired in what looked like formal evening wear, as if he’d just returned from a party.

  “It appears,” he said, “one of my bookstacks gave way, leading to a chain reaction.”

  “I’ve warned you many times, Professor, that it is dangerous in there—a death trap! A whisper could’ve knocked those books over. What if you’d been in there? We’d be sending for Mender Samuels is what.”

  “Then a good thing I was not.”

  “I guess we’ll have to set it right in the morning, then,” Mirriam said with a mournful note in her voice.

  “No, no,” the professor said. “I’ll let the boys handle it. What are first year students for anyway? You go back to bed and don’t worry one iota about it.”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure. Go back to bed.”

  Dismissed, Mirriam retreated down the hall. The professor continued gazing at the mess in his office, tugging at his bushy side whiskers.

  “And my night’s just beginning,” he grumbled, and he shook his head.

  Karigan expected him to make some attempt at straightening his office, but he turned and walked away. She did not hesitate but slipped out of the storage room to follow him, keeping to the darkness, away from the halo of light emitted by his taper.

  He swept past the kitchen and pantry area, past the dining room, and veered into the library, leaving one of the double doors ajar. By the time Karigan reached the doors and peered inside, she discovered he’d left his taper at dim glow on the main table, but he was gone. Vanished.

  She stepped boldly into the library, but he was nowhere to be seen. She had observed him entering the library, hadn’t she? Here was his taper as proof. Vanishing was usually her trick and the absurdity made her want to chuckle, but she swallowed it back.

  She hid herself behind a big leather armchair in a dark corner to see if Professor Josston reappeared, but she’d barely gotten herself situated when she heard what must be the house’s front door opening and closing. She’d made a serious miscalculation about the amount of night time activity in the house.

  She dared not leave her hiding spot, and was glad she hadn’t when someone entered the library. She peered around the chair, and in the dim light took in the wide shoulders and serious expression of Mr. Cade Harlowe, his face etched in shadows. He glanced over his shoulder as if to ensure he had not been followed, then did something very curious. He stepped over to one of the bookcases and reached up to a dragon sculpture on one of the shelves. He twisted its tail. This was followed by a distinct snick. He then pushed the bookcase, and it swung open silently on well-greased hinges and tracks. He stepped through the opening and the bookcase moved smoothly back into place leaving no evidence of his passing except for a stray wisp of air current. Now she knew how the professor had vanished. A hidden room or corridor behind the bookcase.

  Just what were he and his student up to?

  She smiled. There was only one way to find out.

  UNDERGROUND

  Karigan allowed several minutes to pass before she left her concealment. She made right for the dragon sculpture, its bronze surface aged to a dark patina. It crouched with wings partially unfurled and sinuous neck curving so that it seemed to gaze directly at her with shadowed eyes, almost daring her to touch it.

  She took a deep breath, reached for the tail, and turned it as she’d seen Cade Harlowe do. The snick made her jump. It sounded so much louder when she did it that she feared it would awaken the entire household and bring Mirriam running. It did not, but she understood Cade Harlowe’s impulse to check over his shoulder.

  A gentle push of the bookcase was all it took to swing it open. The space beyond was dimly lit with a wall lamp, but she took her taper with her just in case and passed through the opening into a cupboard of a space just large enough for the bookcase to move and for her to stand in. When the bookcase swept closed behind her, her heart pounded—it was difficult to breathe—too like the sarcophagus in which she’d so recently been sealed.

  She steadied herself with deep inhalations. There was no lack of air, just nerves too tautly strung in this tiny, closed space. How would she get back out? She saw no mechanism for unlocking the bookcase. She shrugged, telling herself she was going forward, anyway, not retreating, and the way forward was clear, a door outlined by the lamplight.

  She lifted the latch and opened it, cool air exhaling into the little room. The lamp sketched out stone steps descending into blackness. Three unlit tapers sat on the top step, but she bypassed them and ignited hers. Closing the door behind her, she began a spiraling journey downward.

  She plunged down and down on rough cut stone steps, the air growing increasingly damp. She felt she must surpass even the house’s foundation before she reached the bottom, her bad leg quivering from the strain of bearing her own weight with each step down.

  In a small chamber at the bottom she found another door, this one much older-looking and ironbound, yet when she tried it, it opened as easily as the others with no groan of ancient hinges. Hoping she’d finally found where the professor and Cade Harlowe had snuck away to, she stepped boldly across the threshold into a dark space dense with silence of which she could make no sense.

  She brightened her taper, and even then the scene mystified her. The path before her was like a cobblestone street, and along its sides were dusty shop fronts, hitching posts, troughs. Rubble filled the spaces
between and behind the buildings. Hefty beams and brick and masonry arches supported the earthen ceiling above.

  “Gods,” she murmured, her voice clamorous in the silent world.

  Mill City must have been built right over the remains of this old city, she thought, or at least part of it. These stone and timber structures were more like what she was accustomed to in her own time than the brick of Mill City. She limped over to one shop front, her slippers raising puffs of dust, and used the tail end of her shawl to rub grime from the rippled glass. Her light revealed little of the interior but the rough plank floor riddled with debris and a table with a chair pulled slightly away as if its occupant might return at any moment. A plate and tankard draped in cobwebs also waited.

  Karigan shivered and backed away. A sign hung askew from one hook over the door, drawing her eye. The sign of the Cock and Hen.

  The Cock and . . . ? No! She almost dropped her taper. This could not be possible. The Cock and Hen was in the lower quarter of Sacor City. But there could be no mistake—this was the Cock and Hen, a disreputable inn in a rough neighborhood that nevertheless brewed the finest darkest ale in the city. She knew the sign—and the ale—well, and now she began to recognize the rest of the exterior, even as out of place as it looked underground.

  Mill City had been built on top of Sacor City, or at least part of it. That was the only conclusion she could come to. The street she now stood on was the Winding Way. The revelation that her city lay buried beneath the foundations of another sent her reeling. She sat on the edge of a trough, oblivious to the dirt smudging her nightgown. “I can’t be seeing this.” Passing her hand over her eyes did nothing to change the scene before her.

  Was all of Sacor City buried? How had this come to pass? And when? She had to keep reminding herself she was in the future, but she could not draw herself away from the enormity of it, the sense of loss. Her time, her world, was hidden, literally buried. She shook her head and released a rattling breath.

  The only one who could explain it to her was down here somewhere in this strange, but familiar, muted world, and now she was more eager than ever to find him. The way was not difficult, for footprints over the dirty, dusty cobblestones had made a clear path she could follow.

  She passed buildings she recognized, though sometimes she had to think about which one was which, because of their new setting and the damage to otherwise familiar facades. There was the harness shop that made the special lightweight saddles of the Green Riders. It was next to a blacksmith’s shop. She peered through the cracked window and spotted an anvil and forge still intact. If ghosts wished to visit her, she thought, this was the appropriate time and place, but not one so much as whispered past her ear or fluttered among the ruins.

  More buildings were crushed beneath rubble, actually cutting off the Winding Way. The footprints veered off to a gaping doorway. There was not much inside the building to suggest what it had once been, but some broken shards of pottery littered the floor. Karigan racked her brain but could not remember.

  Plain wooden stairs ascended to an upper level. They were not old, these stairs, but of a more recent construction and covered with dirty footprints. She followed them, climbing into an upper story and landing in a room that could have once been a bed chamber. She discovered another set of stairs that led into the attic. Up she went again and, once in the attic, discovered steep, narrow stairs that rose through a square cut in the roof, through which faint light trickled.

  She gathered herself and climbed again, clutching a rope that served as a handrail, and rose through the roof, the roof of the old city, as she thought of it, and for several lengths through a vertical shaft of stone and rubble braced with cross beams. Eventually she emerged into a long chamber of bricks with barrel-arched ceilings. The room smelled dank, of wet stone. Her light fell across hulking metal contraptions that shone with a dull green gleam, rust eating painted surfaces. They’d valves and levers and gears, and she had no idea what they were supposed to be used for.

  The faint light she’d seen had not originated here but spilled down the shaft of a stairwell behind her. Got to keep going. She entered the stairwell, took a deep breath, and climbed again, her feet ringing dully on wrought iron steps, the handrail clammy to her touch. When she spiraled up to the top of the first flight, she found a lamp at low glow and a door hanging open. She stepped out onto a wooden floor splotched with dark stains, the air thick with dust and a metallic, oily tang.

  Even at full brightness, her taper could not begin to illuminate the vast space. She couldn’t tell how far the long room extended, but support beams marched down its length like lines of soldiers before vanishing into the dark. Shafts were attached to the ceiling, and wide belts of looping leather dangling down from pulleys swayed in subtle air currents like beckoning nooses. She shuddered.

  Deeper in the room, her light glinted on square-framed skeletons of steel heaped in a jumble of parts: rollers embedded with fine metal tines, toothy beveled gears the size of cart wheels, rods and pipes and chains, and many other unidentifiable pieces. She could not fathom their purpose or how they might all fit together—an impossible puzzle. The building groaned and complained with settling noises, and its listless air currents stirred loose tendrils of her hair.

  To Karigan it was as if the building echoed the energy, activity that it must have once known; that something of it remained captured here, restless, contained by boarded up windows and disuse.

  She shuddered again and backed into the stairwell. No one was in that darkened room of derelict mechanicals. More light shone from above, so she climbed up the spiraling stairs yet one more level, and when she stepped through the door into the dazzling light, she stood blinking some time before her eyes adjusted. When they did, she could see the actual proportions of the room. It was longer than even the king’s throne room, and wider, too.

  Chandeliers, half a dozen of them, hung down the center of the room between whatever shafts were still attached to the ceiling. The floor, unlike the rough one below, shone to a high polish, and it was almost like standing in a ballroom, though the battered support beams and brick walls were clues to the room’s more utilitarian past. The windows were not simply boarded up, but were hung with heavy velvet draperies. Lamp sconces provided additional light.

  She was not alone.

  About halfway down the room and to the left, Cade Harlowe, stripped down to his trousers and quite unaware of her, punched at a heavy oblong bag hanging from the ceiling, the sweat gleaming on his muscles. The wall near him held racks of swords, pikes, staffs, and other weapons. Weights were lined up along the wall, as well.

  Standing near him was the professor, watching his student as critically as any arms master, still dressed in his fancy attire. He noticed Karigan first, his gaze alighting on her. Then Cade Harlowe paused what he was doing and followed the professor’s gaze. The three of them stood frozen like that for a long time, just staring at one another, then the professor broke the spell by striding toward her with his arms outstretched.

  “How very good to see you up and about, my dear,” he said, his voice ringing out across the large space. “I see your curiosity finally got the better of you.”

  SANCTUARY

  Karigan waited as the professor crossed the long space between them, followed by Cade Harlowe, who grabbed a towel along the way to mop his face. Would she get any answers from them, including one to explain what this building was all about? Or would her “uncle” continue to play the mysterious professor and try to put her off. When they reached her, he was all smiles beneath his mustache, but Cade Harlowe’s expression was one of suspicion, which must, she thought, match her own.

  “I told you she would come looking sooner or later, didn’t I, Cade?”

  “Yes, Professor.” Cade’s tone was bland.

  “And I would bet all my sweet, old auntie’s finest gems—she had seven husbands, you know—tha
t our young lady is the one who caused the disarray in my office tonight.”

  Karigan chose not to respond one way or the other.

  “Well, I suppose it was not unexpected,” the professor said as if to himself.

  She wondered if he meant the shambles of his office or her causing it.

  The professor came back to himself, his gaze turning to one of concern. “I’d hazard you’ve had a tiring journey to find us, my dear. Shall we retire to someplace more comfortable?” He extended his arm.

  Her leg was sore after all the stairs. Cade relieved her of her taper, and she took the professor’s arm. The professor walked slowly to accommodate her limp, and she was grateful to be able to lean on him.

  “How do you like my little sanctuary?” he asked, waving his arm at their surroundings.

  “It’s . . . it’s not little—it’s huge! What is this place?”

  “It is what remains of the original Josston Mills complex, number four,” he replied. His smile faltered slightly. “Five floors of industry in this one building alone. This floor was once the spinning room.”

  Karigan tried to imagine how many spinners and spinning wheels it would take to fill the place but found she couldn’t quite. The professor continued to smile down at her as if he guessed just what she was thinking. She shook her head.

  “Nowadays, it is believed this building is but a shell I occasionally use for storage.”

  “Is it?”

  “I do use it for storage,” he replied, “though it is not precisely a shell.”

  As they crossed the great length of the room, her wonder grew. The far end appeared to be an opulent sitting area and library with stout furniture upholstered in rich leather. The wood of furnishings and shelves was dark, burnished with brass fittings. An old Durnesian carpet covered the floor. It was not old in that it looked worn or faded, but that its dyed weavings were of a texture and deepened tint that suggested age. Only the most masterfully made Durnesian carpets aged so well. It also featured the “homestead pattern” that had belonged to a clan of the most revered of makers.