The Night of the Solstice

by L. J. Smith

  Flattened against the wall, with Briony sniffing at her feet and Claudia sobbing convulsively beneath her arm, Alys tried to think. If only they were truly shadows—but Janie had said they ought to be, that they just weren’t willing it hard enough.

  She thrust Claudia away from her and sprang to stand before the closed shutter. “Briony! You hideous old lizard, come here!”

  “Alys!”

  “Charles, if this doesn’t work out for me, you get the others back! At least you’ll have moonlight. Here I am, kitty! You want me, don’t you? Come on. Come for me, you snake!” She drew the gannelin dagger, and alone of all her possessions it shone out brightly, etched against the shadows. Footsteps sounded in the hall. Briony crouched low, snarling, her eyes fixed on the dagger. “Come for me, girl!”

  With a blood-chilling yowl the beast leapt for her throat and Alys closed her eyes and thought for all she was worth about shadows, about vapor, mist, and ether. The savage yowl shrilled into a cry of surprise as Briony passed right through her and crashed with a terrible impact into the shutter. With a tearing sound the ancient wood gave way and the sorcerer’s familiar, unable to stop herself, went with it. Unlike Elwyn’s laughter, the scream emitted by Briony did not hang on the air, but went down and down and down.

  “Now!” cried Alys, moonlight pouring in the shattered window. As they plunged toward the mirror she saw Aric reflected behind them, and saw that he saw their reflections and had the Gray Staff outstretched, his face twisted with fury as he mouthed words. Then, with a final bound, she reached the Passage and the air blazed turquoise blue around her.

  Chapter 12

  THE THIRD MIRROR

  That same night, in the Wildworld, in a room that had been stripped of anything she might find useful, Morgana Shee leaned her head wearily against the sorcerous bars in the window.

  It had been twelve days since her capture, and she still could not understand what Cadal Forge wanted.

  She had known his mother, a lady of one of the great houses of Findahl. And she had known him, child, youth, and man. She had watched him win a Red Staff at an unprecedentedly young age and listened, with delight, as he then adroitly argued his way out of the traditional apprenticeship in Weerien. When he set himself up in a city-state of the Stillworld called Florence, and began to study with a human master, she had visited him often.

  She remembered the last time she had seen him there, when he had showed her—oh, with what enthusiasm!—his chemical compounds and reagents and his newest treatise on the nature of matter. She had admired them—and then she had begged him to go to one of the Eastern countries where witchcraft was not a crime, or at least to come with her to England, where the Inquisition held less sway.

  He had laughed at her, handsome in his loose silk shirt and fur-trimmed jerkin.

  “I’m tired of wandering. Besides, how can I leave Firenze? My teacher, Signore Gallura, is here.”

  “And his daughter, also?”

  “Ah …” He had smiled sideways at her. “So you’ve seen Celeste. Well, they are both here, and I can leave neither of them.”

  “Oh, my friend, you are so young… . Stay, then, but be on guard. What your teacher teaches is not orthodox, and that”—the treatise—“is close to heresy. If you need my help, send your cousin Terzian to me in England.” And she had left him.

  Terzian had come less than a year later, not by portal, for the White Staff had not the power to cast one, but over land and sea. By the time she reached Morgana, Cadal had been in the hands of the Inquisition for a month.

  “And they will burn him soon, for they are afraid of him,” the young sorceress had said, shuddering, as Morgana made frantic preparations for the journey.

  “They should be afraid! The wielder of a Red Staff—how could they even hold him?”

  Terzian shook her head. “When they summoned Signore Gallura for questioning my cousin went, too, but he did not take his staff. Instead he took his notebooks and his drawings. He was convinced that even the Inquisitors could be swayed by reason, that he could make them understand that science is no heresy, no evil.”

  “Oh, Cadal!”

  “When they showed the signore the instruments of torture, he fell to his knees and wept. He recanted all he’d taught or written contrary to doctrine, and he said that he was not a heretic but that Cadal was a sorcerer. If he’d known how right he was he never would have dared say it.”

  Morgana had arrived in Florence barely in time to snatch the young sorcerer from the very heart of the flames. She had known, as she cast a protective sphere around him and bore him away, that he had been terribly injured, but only back in the Wildworld, at Fell Valdris, the castle of Terzian’s father, did she see the extent of what the humans had done.

  Although his joints healed, and his hands, and the flesh they had bruised and burned and bled, his mind remained in darkness. He would listen to no excuses on behalf of the Stillfolk he had so recently loved, and when she tried to give him comfort he repulsed her.

  “You don’t know,” he’d said, his gray eyes burning like coals in a thin and ravaged face. “You have no conception of what they can do—yes, what feeble, short-lived humans can do to the wielder of a Red Staff! With it I could have killed them with a word, a gesture… .” He turned away and his voice sank to a whisper. “Instead, I prayed to die.”

  “Cadal, I understand—”

  “You do not understand. How could you, you—Quislai.”

  She returned to England without speaking to him again. Yet, three months later, when Terzian appeared at her gates with the news that he had been imprisoned by the Council, she did not hesitate.

  “I do not ask you for help this time,” his cousin said in a low voice as Morgana cast a portal to Avalon passage, “but I thought it your right to know. As for me, I renounce him. If he had killed only the man … but not the household and the servants! The daughter was only a child.”

  “A human child,” said Morgana. She was terribly afraid of what it might have done to Cadal himself, to awaken from the daze of maddened fury and find Celeste’s blood on his hands. For he had truly loved the girl.

  The Council had merely taken his staff and confined him to a room at Fell Valdris. His uncle Calain said that Cadal had not slept or eaten since arriving there, and when Morgana entered the room she found him sitting far from the candlelight, his head so low she could not see his face.

  A tremor seemed to go through him as she entered, but he would not rise or look at her. And Morgana’s heart had been torn by pity.

  “You must not sit here in the dark,” she said. “And you must listen to your uncle, and eat.” She sighed and shut her eyes and tried to think what to do next.

  When he finally spoke his voice was so hoarse and indistinct that she had to step closer to hear him.

  “At the end,” he said, “she begged for mercy. She wept and said I was far more terrible than the Inquisition… .”

  Morgana winced and turned away, then turned back and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Cadal. I know. You must try to forget.”

  It was only then, bending close to comfort him, that she saw that he was smiling.

  She had spoken but a single sentence to Calain, who waited outside the door: “If the Council does not lock him up, I advise you to do it.” She had returned to England only to find nothing was fresh or fair there anymore, and had begun to think seriously about moving to the New World.

  And still she could scarcely credit that he was doing what he was doing now. Intrigues against the Council, yes, that she understood, but this madness …

  Madness, yes! For when had Cadal Forge’s ambition ever run to sovereignty? She had heard his speeches to his Society, heard him promise them a new order where they could rule over humans as they had been destined to do. But she could not believe it for a moment.

  Whatever he was planning for the Stillworld, it was worse.

  Hands clenched around the luminous, unyielding bars, Morgana raise
d a pale face toward the waxing moon.

  “The moon,” said Janie the next morning, “is rising later every day.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Charles. “We just barely beat Mom and Dad home last night. If they find us gone …”

  Alys spoke heavily. “They’ll be out till after midnight tonight. They always are on Saturdays. That should give us enough time.” She stared dully into a bowl of cereal. “I suppose.”

  No one answered. Four breakfasts sat uneaten on the table, and the comic page of the newspaper, which Charles generally read to Claudia in the morning, lay folded untouched on top of the homemaking section.

  Seeing Cadal Forge face-to-face had changed everything.

  “Hey—you could just ask,” Charles said edgily as, without warning, Janie lunged across him to grab the paper.

  “Where’s the front page? Did Dad take it again?”

  “Why?” said Alys.

  “You wanted to know how much time we’ll have tonight, didn’t you? Well, the paper tells when the moon rises. And if it’s rising late enough—after ten, say—”

  “I know, Janie. Believe me, I’m already worrying.”

  “Worrying, as such,” said Janie, “isn’t going to do much good. I’m going to the little library to get an almanac and find out when moonrise is.”

  The little one-room library, located in the tiny Villa Park shopping center, was nestled against the City Hall. Janie wheeled her bike out of sight of the sheriff’s cars, which were always parked in front of City Hall, and approached the library with averted face, nearly running into Danielle Selby at the door. Danielle was new at Janie’s school, French on her mother’s side, and a shoo-in for this year’s cheerleading mascot. Janie muttered something in response to the other girl’s friendly greeting and ducked around the librarian’s counter to thumb through the pamphlet files. Most people weren’t allowed behind the counter, but the librarians knew Janie well.

  All Souls’ Day, Alphabet, no Almanac. Janie opened a cupboard and stuck her head inside, looking for the scanty magazine files. Above her a voice called out.

  “Hey, Dani—oh, there you are! I thought I saw you come in here. What’re you doing?” The voice belonged to Bliss Bascomb, head cheerleader and by far the most beautiful girl at Cerro Villa Junior High.

  “I have to renew this book,” came Danielle’s voice.

  “Oh, homework, gah.” Bliss made noises of appropriate disgust. “What’s that for, English?”

  “No—I was just reading it myself.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “It’s a very interesting book.”

  A pause. Then: “Look, Dani, you aren’t going to read again at lunch next week, are you? Like you did on Friday?”

  “Why not? I got to practice on time.”

  “Oh, Dani.” A heavy sigh. “Let me put it this way. I’m only saying this for your own good, right? You want to be mascot. Well, nobody’s going to vote for a … for an—an egghead. I mean, you don’t want to turn out like Janie Hodges-Bradley, do you? A walking encyclopedia?”

  There was a choked sound from Danielle and noises indicative of frantic gesturing. Then a burst of hysterical laughter from Bliss and stifled wild giggling as both girls fled.

  Behind the counter Janie knelt, staring sightlessly, her cheeks on fire.

  “Why, hello, Janie,” said the librarian. “I didn’t see you down there. Are you finding what you need?”

  Janie swallowed once, then stood without facing her.

  “Thank you,” she said expressionlessly. “I don’t need anything at all.”

  When she got back the others were waiting.

  “What took you so long?” said Alys. “Dad brought the paper home. It says the moon rises at nine-thirty-nine P.M. That should give us—hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

  The door of her bedroom locked behind her.

  Presently Alys called softly, “Janie, we’re going to the old house to have a conference. Don’t you want to come?”

  Silence.

  “Janie, we have to go back there tonight. We’re going to be very careful, but we have to go. Are you with us?”

  Silence. Then Janie opened the door.

  “I do not care how careful you are,” she said, with precision. “Nor do I care what you do. I am similarly indifferent to the fate of Morgana, or for that matter to the fate of this entire stinking planet. Now leave me alone.”

  “Are you serious? You’re not going with us?”

  “Your perspicacity astonishes me.”

  “Cadal Forge will come through—”

  “Let him!” Janie could not remember when she had screamed like that before. “Just leave me alone!” She slammed the door with all her strength in Alys’s face.

  All that day Janie stayed in her room, refusing even to come down for dinner. At eight o’clock, as she lay on her bed, she heard her parents leave, and at nine Alys knocked once again at the door. Janie ignored this and presently Alys and the others left, too.

  The house was deadly quiet once they were gone. Heaving herself off the bed, Janie sat down at her desk with a book.

  The words danced before her eyes, full of hidden meaning she could not extract. She read the beginning of the same sentence over and over, and each time before she reached the end she found herself staring over the top of the page into space. Not thinking, just staring.

  She hoped something unspeakable happened to them in the Wildworld. She didn’t know why she wanted this exactly, but it seemed to soothe the small volcano in her chest. She spent some minutes imagining just the sort of things that might happen to them. Then, after a glance at the desk clock, which showed it was after moonrise, she clenched her teeth so hard she felt a pain in her temples and returned to the book.

  The effort of concentration was exhausting, especially on top of that bruised and aching feeling she’d had all day. Presently the chair began to feel very comfortable, and she thought she would just rest her eyes a moment before reading any more.

  She woke with her head on the desk and a cramp in her shoulders, and sat up groggily, listening for the sound that had disturbed her sleep. A familiar sound … yes, the garage door opening. Now, why on earth should that send alarm signals tingling down all her nerve ends?

  One look at the clock and she leapt out of the chair so quickly she bruised both knees on the desk. Ten after one! And she hadn’t heard Alys and the others come home.

  It was just possible they had come in without waking her. But a moment later she had thrown open the door to Claudia’s room and was looking at an empty bed.

  Downstairs, a key turned in a lock. Her parents would not check up on Charles or Alys, but Claudia was another matter. One of them was bound to look in on her before going to bed.

  Janie cast one wild glance around the room, then tore open the door to Claudia’s closet. On the floor was a jumble of stuffed animals and toys, and one ancient battered doll which stood nearly three feet high. Its plastic face was smashed, and one blue eye rolled gruesomely loose in its head, but it had mouse-colored hair like Claudia’s. Janie stuffed it under the covers of Claudia’s bed, with its head on Claudia’s pillow, and drew the blankets up all around. She just had time to hit the light switch and get into the hall before her parents appeared on the stairs.

  “Hello,” whispered her father. “Up so late?”

  Conscious of her flushed cheeks and rapidly beating heart, she whispered back, “I thought I heard something, so I looked in Claudia’s room to see if she was okay.”

  “Alys put her to bed on time?” Without waiting for an answer, her mother softly opened Claudia’s door and peeped in. A moment later she softly closed it again. “Sleeping like an angel.”

  “She’s a doll,” agreed Janie involuntarily.

  “Well, good-night. Don’t go to sleep in your clothes.”

  “No. Good-night. ’Night, Dad.”

  Safely back in her own room, she collapsed on the bed and thumped the pillow wit
h her fists. Blast Alys! Was she crazy, staying out so late? And keeping Claudia out, too. Didn’t she realize the consequences?

  And then, slowly, she raised her head from the tumbled bedclothes. Because of course Alys realized the consequences. She would never deliberately do this. Something was wrong.

  Janie had never shinnied down a drainpipe before, and halfway down the one outside her window she fell, numbing her left arm and side. The night was cold and crystal clear, the half-moon sailing high in the sky as she rode to Morgana’s. Shivering with anxiety and chill, she let herself in the back door to be greeted by echoing silence.

  It was almost more than she could do to look through that dark, abandoned house. On the second floor she jumped, then darted into Morgana’s bedchamber, only to find that what she had taken to be a knot of people was her own reflections in the double mirrors. Shaken, she pushed aside the tapestries around the bed and sat on it to think.

  They were still in the Wildworld, all right. And what she was going to do about it she had no idea. What could she do? There was a rusty poker in the bedroom fireplace, and she picked it up and looked at it, then flung it back. Madness. If they had been captured by Cadal Forge’s Society it would take an army to rescue them.

  Anyway, it would serve them right… .

  But the thought trickled away as she drew in her breath sharply, her eyes narrowing. Once again she reached for the poker, and, weighing it thoughtfully in her hands, she turned to look speculatively at the mirrors.

  “We have nothing to say to you.” Alys’s voice was hoarse, and she blinked away sweat that streamed into her eyes.

  She was standing with Charles and Claudia, backed against the wall, facing the sorcerei. There were five of them, tall and graceful, with inhuman smiles on their lips. Three had staffs.

  Aric was one of these, and the Gray actually trembled in his hand as he contemplated the joy their capture would bring to Cadal Forge. His whole face was alight with happiness.

  “You will speak to us, eventually, you know,” he assured her, as he’d been assuring her for the past hour, and he held the Gray Staff to her throat, and smiled tenderly.