“If you break the mirror the magnetic confinement will become unstable. All manner of processes may drift beyond their designated bounds . . .”
“We’re here to turn the engine off. It doesn’t matter if we damage it a bit beforehand.” The Lady Blue could glance our way at any moment. The mirror was her last escape route from her tower in Blujen: she would hardly ignore it. The panic that had been bubbling away in me, up to about chest height, ever since I regained my senses now started to rise toward my eyes.
“Well . . .” Professor O’Kee pursed his lips. “You would have to go down to the original mirror in Hall E. It’s marked on the map. But if you break the prime image you might only have minutes left.”
“Before?”
The professor knotted his fingers into a single tight fist. “I would hurry.”
“Kara?” I turned to the v?lva, cold in my sweat.
She looked up from the map. “Follow me.”
I kept close to her heels, urgency nipping at my own. Three tight corridors, one left turn, two right, a ladder up, a ladder down. We passed facets of the mirror at three points, each time with the professor’s nervous face watching us pass. Each time my heart beat out the rhythm of my panic against my chest. Each facet was a window through which any number of horrors could be watching.
“We’re close,” Kara said, crouching to edge beneath another of the mirror facets.
“I need to see,” I said.
“What?” Kara’s mouth was a tight line.
To be observed and not know whether you are being studied or not is to be prey. The predator stalks from cover. “I need to see,” I repeated, taking the key. I moved to the mirror. For a moment it showed scattered images of Prince Jalan shimmering about the main reflection, each as pale with fear as the next, vanishing down the scale into insignificance. The professor’s face reappeared, frowning. Before he could speak, I set the key to the mirror. “Show me.”
The scene changed, from the alcove at the base of the engine and the bare stone floor beyond, to a luxurious room deep with woven carpets, lined by elegant sideboards, an inlaid box on one vomiting strings of pearls and golden chains across the polished top. And on every wall, mirrors, dozens of them, all sizes, all shapes, framed in silver, in wrought iron, elaborately carved timber gilded and gleaming, in bleached pine, splintered with misuse . . . nearly all of them shattered, their shards hanging like broken teeth, littering the floor.
“That’s her tower. Now we can see her too, if she comes in to spy on us.” I felt a little better. Not much.
Kara grabbed my arm and jerked me past the mirror. “Come on.”
Another corridor and a short descent brought us to a locked silversteel door. I tapped it with the key. Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Snorri stepped off the last rung, cramming himself in behind us.
“I don’t know.” I looked for a keyhole. Normally the key made its own.
“Try again.” Hennan hissing from behind me.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Sarcasm is wasted on children.
I pressed the key against the door, flat between my palm and the steel. “Open!”
The portal shuddered and a noise like a giant grinding his teeth started up beneath us, vibrating through the soles of my boots. “Open, damn you! In the name of Loki!”
I felt a sharp pain deep between my eyes and somewhere in the thickness of the wall an unbreakable something broke. The door grated back into a recess in the wall.
“Builder locks were made to hold,” Kara said and pushed me forward.
The room beyond lit as I stepped over the threshold. A great mirror dominated the far wall. I say it was a mirror, though it showed only the Lady Blue’s sanctum, and nothing in that room moved, so one might think it a painting. It stood maybe nine feet tall and as wide across as my spread arms. The edges fractured in strange patterns, breaking into tendrils of mirror and finally into a peculiar sparkling dust or smoke.
I took one more step before stopping, arms pinwheeling as I tried not to take another—not easy with the others crowding behind me. “Stop!”
“Why?” Kara at my shoulder.
I swept my arm around in answer, index fingers extended to point at the bright yellow crosshatching painted in a band across the floor, following up each wall and across the ceiling. “It’s not shielded.”
“How bad can that be?” Snorri grabbed my shoulder and thrust me forward.
In a heartbeat I found myself face to face with Cutter John, his face broken by his skull-grin that was far more terrifying than rage. Iron-hard fingers closed on my upper arm and collarbone. Snorri jerked me back and I came free with a scream, flesh torn and bruised where Cutter John’s grip had almost got a proper hold.
Snorri and I both fell back, the Viking stumbling into the wall while managing to slow my descent to the floor. Cutter John threw himself forward . . . and flattened against the invisible shields, spreading and dissipating like a liquid against glass.
“He’s gone,” Snorri said, heaving me up.
“What the hell were you doing?” I screamed.
“Testing.”
“Well test with your own damn self next time!” I straightened my shirt, then rubbed tentatively at the scrapes Cutter John’s fingers had left on me. They hurt. Wincing, I looked up to see Snorri taking my advice, stepping forward, axe-haft held across his chest like a bar to ward off attack.
The figure rose almost immediately, the ground opening, swallowing itself to reveal a fissure like that at the back of Eridruin’s Cave on the Harrowfjord, the one that had swallowed Kelem’s shade back into Hell.
Out scrambled Einmyria, muddy and howling, an awful noise that made me want to drive a knife into each ear to kill my hearing. As Snorri’s child raised her skinless face to us flies rose all about her, vomited from the pit in tens of thousands. I saw her hands, the end of each finger darkening into a cruel black claw. And then I saw nothing but buzzing flies until Snorri hurtled back across the yellow crosshatching and the whole nightmare broke into fading wisps like smoke rising into still air.
Snorri, back against the wall once more, stood doubled over, his face hidden behind the dark fall of his hair. For a long minute no one spoke. I watched the mirror, the false calm of Mora Shival’s inner sanctum, praying that the Lady Blue would not return from whatever business kept her elsewhere in her tower and see us as we saw her.
“I’m sorry.” Snorri spoke at last. “It was wrong of me to push you forward. It can be hard to understand the depth of another person’s fear.”
“We could throw something to break the mirror . . .” Hennan suggested.
“I’m all out of rocks,” I said. “And I’d rather not lose my sword. Plus, there’s no guarantee the mirror will break . . .” I shot Snorri a sideways glance. “An axe is a good throwing weapon . . .”
Snorri scowled and, stepping away from the wall, plucked the dagger from its scabbard on my hip then flung it at the mirror. It hit dead centre with enough force to bury it hilt-deep in a man . . . and bounced off to come skittering back over the painted boundary.
Kara moved between us as I picked up my dagger.
“If I set this to the mirror,” Kara opened her palm to reveal an iron rune tablet no larger than my thumbnail, “and say brjóta—which means ‘break’ in the old tongue, it will break.”
I gestured toward the mirror. “Be my guest.”
Kara narrowed her eyes at me, then advanced toward the boundary, arm extended, one finger reaching out to touch. She moved so slowly that sometimes I thought her motionless. Even so, the effect proved sudden. Darkness blossomed where her fingertip brushed the shield’s limits, spreading like drops of ink in water. Within moments night had swallowed the space beyond and a pervasive silence wrapped us.
No sound. I held my breath. And then the faintest creak. Perhaps a floorboard beneath a foot.
Kara pulled her hand back as if bitten. “I can’t go in there,” she whispered. I shivered at the thought of a darkness that could scare a dark-sworn mage. The fear made her look older, as if something precious had been sucked from her. She drew a deep breath as the darkness evaporated.