“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret,” Karigan replied, trying to make it sound like a joke. To her relief, Lorine did chuckle. “Actually, I haven’t the faintest.”
Lorine nodded in acceptance. “Who knows what that girl has dreamed up. I can’t believe she went so far as to damage one of the professor’s precious books. This has gold leaf in it.”
“She was looking for attention,” Karigan replied.
“Yes, I agree.”
When all the pages had been picked up and placed on top of the library table, Lorine said, “I’ll leave those for the professor so he can decide what to do with them. He’ll know if the atlas is beyond repair or not.” And she left to tend to other duties.
Karigan gazed at the pile. On the very top were the pages comprising the map of the Capital—with lettering in gold leaf. It had been a two-page spread, and now had holes ripped out where it had been stitched into the binding. Without a second thought, Karigan snatched the map and folded it up into as small a square as she could make, tucked it into her hand, and headed upstairs where she could study it in private and think.
In the Present:
YOLANDHE’S ISLAND
A storm came in the night bringing shadows to Amberhill’s mind. As waves tossed onshore and the sky rumbled, he turned restlessly beneath his furs.
The outer turmoil seemed not to affect the shadows. They remained stolid, somnolent forces. Where were they? Just in his head? What or who were they?
Soon his breathing eased, the restlessness fading as though he mirrored the shadows. Beyond the veneer of stillness, he knew, lay ferocity, chaos, and destruction. It should bother him more, even cause him fear, but as the beating of his heart slowed into counterpoint to the storm, it did not.
• • •
“What are they?” he asked Yolandhe the next morning.
“I do not know of what you speak, my love.” She was rearranging sea shells on a rock in the cave, something she did from time to time to please herself, as though they were priceless art pieces on display.
Amberhill remained beneath the furs at his ease. How to explain? “The shadows. I sense them in my sleep. They sleep, too. It’s not exactly a dream.”
Yolandhe turned away from her shells to stare hard at him. After a time, she came to some decision and said, “Let us take a walk.”
Amberhill tossed aside his furs and rose. Once out of the cave and on the beach, they passed Yap’s lean-to, which had miraculously withstood the storm. The pirate snored within.
They crossed the beach, Yolandhe leading Amberhill along a shoreside trail wet with puddles.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Ahead of him, Yolandhe shrugged. Her gait was easy and unhurried, but Amberhill felt like he had to rush to keep up, splattering mud in all directions.
“The place has no name,” Yolandhe said. “It is just a headland.”
Amberhill was not surprised. Yolandhe had not seen fit to name any of the features of her island. In fact, he did not think she had even given the island itself a name. Had a Sacoridian come to take possession of it, the first thing he would do would be to name it after himself.
Amberhill Island. He considered the flavor of it and shook his head. It didn’t sound right. This was Yolandhe’s Island, and that’s how he would always know it.
Even if he should take his treasure and form his own kingdom, naming a realm after himself would sound awkward: Amberhillia, Amberhill Land, New Amberhill. Even while he considered the idea of his own kingdom absurd, a kernel of ambition awakened to the idea.
As he hastened after Yolandhe, his clothes ragged, a scruffy beard on his face, and mud sucking at his feet, he imagined himself upon a throne, his vassals kneeling before him and praising King Xandis. They offered gifts and their loyalty . . . Now where would I put a kingdom? he wondered.
A voice inside him that was not his own, replied, Wherever I am, it is mine to rule.
The voice belonged to a leader of warriors who raided and sacked settlements wherever he went, incorporating the land, its wealth, and its inhabitants into his own vast holdings. The intrusion of that voice chilled Amberhill, and he tried to extinguish it like stamping out the embers of a fire.
The trail rose on granite ledges, moss and sedges growing in the joints between rock layers, the roots of evergreens fingering across the trail, seeking the barest pockets of sandy soil. Gulls squawked offshore and terns skimmed the waves. As they climbed up, the water fell away below them. Amberhill avoided the edge.
Yolandhe halted at a good lookout point—or it would have been had a veil of fog left behind by the storm not sat offshore obscuring the horizon and just about everything else. Amberhill discerned the cold, white disk of the sun behind the clouds. Perhaps the fog would burn off before long.
Yolandhe sang, more a whispered melody than a full-throated song. The birds, the trees, the plants all seemed to lean in toward her, and as always, Amberhill’s body reacted, this time prickling all over as her power passed into, and through, him. He could not describe the song, except that it was soft and lilting, like aural fog, if fog were a song.
Her song was a command and the fog receded, revealing some of the granite girding the islands of the archipelago, but did not dissipate entirely. The islands farther out remained ghostly behind the veil of mist.
She had command of the elements, Yolandhe did, the power to light fire, and to manipulate the air and water. What could she do with earth? Or did even her power have limits?
Amberhill never ceased to be amazed when he witnessed such power at work. When he found his voice again, he asked, “Why did you bring me here? What does this have to do with my shadows?”
“I brought you here because some of them sleep out there.” She swept her arm out toward the water.
What were they? Amberhill wondered. Fishes?
“They are ancient,” Yolandhe said. “They were here before Akarion, before even the Eletians, but Akarion learned the command of them, his greatest, his most terrible power. His was a devastating weapon. It made him a king of kings. It is how he and his people came to dominate so much of the lands.”
“Well, what are they?” Amberhill felt an inner burble that could only be his “infestation” laughing at his impatience.
“Hold my hand,” Yolandhe instructed, and Amberhill did. Though he enjoyed holding Yolandhe’s hand, he didn’t see what it had to do with anything. Until he did. The presences were suddenly there, slumbering away in his waking mind.
“The ruby is your key to their awakening, to commanding them. But I do not advise it.”
“No? Why? Can you at least tell me what they are?”
“Think deep into the heartstone and you will discern their shape.”
Heartstone—that is what the Berry sisters had called the ruby on his ring. And he was to think deep into it? He wanted to snap his irritation at Yolandhe for giving him no concrete answers, but he took a deep breath instead and settled. Yolandhe might come at things from an odd angle, but she had not been wrong about arcane matters so far. It was just her way to be abstruse. If she said he should think deep into the ruby to get his answers, well, then he should.
He was not sure how to go about it, but he figured asking Yolandhe would accomplish little, so he took another deep breath and gazed at his ring, at the ruby. He stared at it till his eyes watered. Nothing happened.
Think into it. The words came to him on a breath of air or in a stream of memory, and then something, a knowing, clicked inside him. He fought the urge to resist the knowing, for it came from his infestation. He closed his eyes, and saw red. Red bathed his inner eye, deep and glistening. Before he could repress it, the part of him that was Akarion issued a non-verbal command, more a force of personality, an order for the shadows to awaken.
Glowing, faceted eyes snapped open and stared into
Amberhill’s mind. He recoiled as a sense of the shadows’ raw, primal nature washed over him, their cold intelligence, their anger at his intrusion.
When he opened his eyes, the surface of the water around the nearest islands roiled with waves and counter-waves, for the islands were moving.
BREAKING BONDS
Karigan sat in the chair by her window. The morning mist and fog appeared to be burning off, but sunlight fell through it in a dull haze. It was going to be a warm and humid day.
She wondered how Lhean fared, where he was being held, and if it was true he was going to be moved to the Capital. She gazed at the creased map spread on her lap. Roughly, the Capital was comprised of L’Petrie Province; and the Capital’s city, Gossham, had replaced Corsa, her home. It was a Corsa she would not recognize with its many waterways and realigned streets, all emanating outward in circles from the city’s central point, the emperor’s palace. The palace and its grounds were situated on an island in a lake that had not existed in her own time. Lake Scalus was fed by a diverted Grandgent River, now the River Scale, which then emptied into Corsa Harbor, also renamed. It was called the Great Harbor, and of all the changes, she found this the least offensive.
When she had browsed the atlas on previous occasions, it had pained her to look too closely at what once had been her home. Her father’s estate was in Corsa’s countryside, but if she was measuring the scale right, it appeared to have been swallowed up by Gossham.
Gossham? What kind of name was that? It did not inspire greatness if that was what Amberhill had wanted for his capital city.
She wondered once again what had happened to her father and aunts, to the extended Clan G’ladheon. She had guessed that many of her Rider friends had perished on the field of battle, or when Sacor City and the castle had been demolished by Amberhill’s great weapon. But her family? She still believed it was best that she not know, but she couldn’t help but wonder. She prayed they had died peacefully of old age despite the turmoil Amberhill’s victory must have wrought.
She glanced again at the map. It appeared that the Corsa Road remained, though it was now named the Capital Way. The map did not encompass enough of the surrounding countryside to show the Kingway, but when she flipped it over, there was the wider view. The Kingway had simply been renamed the East-West Road, and the Corsa Road split off where it always had. Names may have changed, but at least the essential layout of some of the roads remained. She would find her way to Gossham.
Someone tapped on her door. She folded up the map and concealed it up her sleeve.
“Yes, come in.”
To her surprise, it was the professor who entered. He closed the door behind him. “I wish to apologize for Arhys’ abominable behavior,” he announced.
“I’m not sure you are the one who should be apologizing.” Karigan replied.
“I know, I know. She is a difficult girl. Still, I am not sure what brought on this destructive behavior.”
Karigan raised an eyebrow.
“All right,” he admitted. “I know that she has been terribly jealous of you since your arrival, but I’ve had a, hmm, talk with her, and I think she’ll behave much better now.”
Karigan was, needless to say, skeptical. “What did you tell her?”
“First of all, she is confined to her room without supper.”
Karigan did not expect that this was likely to change the girl’s attitude anytime soon. “And?”
“And second, I promised to pay her more attention and to buy her some pretty dresses.”
Karigan couldn’t help herself. She laughed and shook her head. He was hopeless.
“I know. I should be more firm with her.” Then he leaned close to her ear and in an almost inaudible whisper said, “The dresses are a bribe so she won’t give away our secret door in the library.”
“You can trust her with that?” Karigan whispered back.
“I have to.” He shrugged to indicate the futility of it. In his normal voice, he added, “We will also step up her education. She is very sharp for a girl, and I suspect boredom with her studies has allowed for mischief. I also request that you reach out to her, my dear. Become her friend. I think you could be a positive influence on her.”
Oh, dear gods. Karigan hardly knew what to do with children under the best of circumstances, much less with such a beastly imp who hated her. Well, she would not be staying around for much longer and would not have to deal with Arhys forever. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
The professor nodded as if her reply was about what he had expected. He turned to leave, but she tugged on his sleeve.
“The Eletian,” she mouthed.
The professor’s wolfish eyebrows shadowed his eyes. He shook his head subtly and bent close to whisper in her ear. “I asked. The opposition said no. Too risky. I’m sorry.”
“I am sorry as well,” she murmured.
“Promise me you will not go after him.”
She nodded because that was what was expected of her. He expected compliance of a woman of his time, but she, of course, was not of this time. She did not, however, have to feign looking upset.
“Very well,” the professor said aloud. “I’ve a few matters to settle at the university today. I shall see you again at suppertime. Also, think on Arhys and how you two might make peace.”
She did not reply, but glowered toward the window. The professor sighed, then left her, once again closing the door behind him as he retreated into the corridor.
Karigan tugged the map of the Capital out from her sleeve. It disappointed her, angered her even, that the professor and his opposition would do nothing to help Lhean, but she hadn’t really expected their aid. Cade’s group was right—the professor and his opposition were a bunch of useless old men. Would Cade’s group help her? She did not know, nor did she know when she’d see Cade again to ask him. Time was slipping away, and the longer she waited, the less of a chance she had of reaching Lhean. She had little idea what she’d face if she tried to enter the Capital by herself, but at least she had a map to show her the way. She also had the entire day to plan.
When she thought of time slipping away, Captain Mapstone’s riddle came back to her.
The scything moon is held captive in the prison of forgotten days. Seek it in the den of the three-faced reptile, for you are the blade of the shadow cast. Beware! The longer you linger, the faster we spin apart.
The final line seemed to reinforce the idea that she was running out of time, that the longer she hesitated to act, the less likely she was to reach home. And if she succeeded in reaching home, would she be too late to prevent the fall of Sacoridia?
• • •
Through the rest of the day, Karigan ran through several scenarios for finding and rescuing Lhean, but all of them were incomplete. She knew too little about the outside world and how she might move safely through it. The professor had done his job of protecting her all too well.
Her planning alternated with quiet recitations of the captain’s riddle as she paced her room. She hoped some inspiration would reveal all to her and somehow tell her both how to save Lhean and how to get home, but none was forthcoming.
She peered into her shard of the looking mask, shivering as she remembered the dream of the mirror eyes. The shard likewise remained elusive. She saw only her reflection.
She decided she must destroy the first message from Captain Mapstone telling her to go to the Heroes Portal. She did not wish to leave behind any evidence that might lead to the tombs. At first she wondered how she might destroy it without attracting attention, then an idea set in. She strode down to the privy, locked herself inside, and ripped up the message. She did so with some regret because it was a link to home.
She dropped the shredded pieces into the sitting bowl and pulled the big lever. She watched sadly as the paper whirled out of sight down unknown pipes and into the
fathomless depths.
I will see Captain Mapstone soon, and everyone else, too, she thought, more determined than ever. She returned to her room to resume planning. Tonight was as good a time as any to move and she was tired of waiting.
At supper, it was just her and the professor dining on boiled dinner. Or rather, the professor dined. Karigan stared at her portion with lip curled at the stench of cabbage. Why did her final supper have to be this? Luckily there were dinner rolls.
She had hoped Cade would join them, but he rarely ate supper with them, so she was not really expecting him. Had he been there, however, she would have found a way to speak privately with him, told him what she planned to do. Would he have helped her or tried to dissuade her? Perhaps it was better she did not see him, though it gave her pangs of regret.
“You look preoccupied tonight, my dear,” the professor said.
Karigan looked up, startled. She must not give away her intent. “I am sorry, Uncle, but I am not fond of boiled dinner. I was wondering if there might be some soup left over from midday.”
“Is that all?” He nodded at Grott, indicating the butler should look into the availability of soup. “You look as if you had the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
She did rather feel that way, but said, “It’s the cabbage. And corned beef.” She shuddered.
The professor laughed. “I shall have cook strike it from the menu then. No more boiled dinner for my niece.”
No, there certainly would not be. She was not his niece nor was she staying.
“I actually have a piece of pleasant news,” the professor said.
She looked up, attentive and hopeful that he’d changed his mind about Lhean.
“Mrs. Downey expressed her desire to me, today, that you meet her son.”
“Oh.” Karigan tried not to reveal her disappointment.
“Oh?” The professor echoed, raising both eyebrows. “My dear, he is a fine young man.”
Mirror Sight Page 46
