Mirror Sight (4 page)

“A
llow me to introduce myself properly.” The professor rose and with a half-bow, said, “I am Bryce Lowell Josston, adjunct professor of licensed archeology to the Imperial University.” And he sat once again.

Archeology. The term was not well known in Karigan’s world, but she had visited enough museums to recognize it. “You dig up old things.”

“That is quite right, my dear, and study the artifacts so my colleagues and I may understand the past.”

“I’m afraid I have not heard of your Imperial University,” Karigan replied. “In fact, all I know about where I am is that this place is called Mill City.”

“What is your name and from where do you hail?” the professor asked, his gaze on her sharpening.

Karigan returned his gaze no less keenly. She wanted to trust but was not sure how much. Still, she was a Green Rider whose embassy made her a representative of the king, which meant she should not hide but declare herself, especially in the presence of someone who seemed intent on helping her.

“My name is Karigan G’ladheon. I am a king’s messenger, a Green Rider, from the realm of Sacoridia. I noticed you have some furnishings in your house that are from Sacoridia, which tells me you are not unfamiliar with my country.”

When she had said her name, he leaned forward staring right into her eyes, squinting as if to divine something about her, and then opened his mouth to speak. But instead, he clamped it shut and rose abruptly from his chair to pace as though deeply unsettled.

Karigan watched as he walked furrows across the floorboards, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture stooped. He spoke as if to himself. “Delusional. Delusional is the only rational explanation. But the objects. Those appear to be authentic.” He paused once more, pivoting toward her. “The objects. How did you come by them?”

“If you are referring to my belongings,” she replied, her irritation flaring, “the crystal I inherited from my mother, and the walking cane was a gift. I would like them back, please, and my uniform, too.”

“You do not claim the winged horse brooch?”

He could see it? Another indication magic was not working here. Rider brooches had spells of concealment on them so that only other Riders could see them.

“The brooch is my badge of office.”

He leaned over her, the friendly smile absent from his face. “Do not lie to me, girl. You are playing a very dangerous game. Where did you acquire those artifacts?”

“Who is the one playing games here, I wonder. I am telling you the truth.” If he actually reached out to shake her, which it looked like he wanted to do, she would break his nose. “I demand you return my belongings to me, and that you present me to an authority of your government.”

“You would not want me to do that,” he said, backing off without touching her. “Tell me,” he continued, “who is the king you serve?”

“Zachary Hillander.”

“Zachary the first, or the second?”

“There is only one Zachary.”

“And his queen?”

Karigan raised her eyebrow. Did he believe there was more than one Zachary, or was he testing her? “He is not married, though he is betrothed to Lady Estora Coutre.”

“Coutre,” the professor murmured, looking as if he might faint. Then he grew sharp and intense all over again. “Where did you learn this information? Who told you?”

“I am a Green Rider,” Karigan said through gritted teeth. “I serve Zachary, the king of Sacoridia. The betrothal is general knowledge.”

The professor slid weakly into his chair, all intensity vanishing. “My dear, King Zachary and Queen Estora have not reigned for one hundred and eighty-six years.”

Karigan’s mouth dropped open. “One hundred . . . ?”

“And eighty-six,” the professor supplied, nodding. “I can only conclude you are a very disturbed young woman, delusional as I said. But how you acquired information and artifacts of our history that are forbidden is another matter entirely.”

“This is Sacoridia—the mask brought me forward,” Karigan said with a start but maybe less surprised than she might have been, for she had traveled in time before, though never this far forward. Considering the involvement of the looking mask in all this, she shouldn’t be surprised at all. Still, discovering oneself in a future time was a bit of a jolt. But how far forward had she come? When had the reign of Zachary ended relative to her entering Blackveil and smashing the looking mask?

“There was no mask among your items,” the professor said, “and how one would . . .
bring you forward
is a notion I do not understand.”

Karigan didn’t understand it herself, but the mask had been an object of great power. She said no more of it, however, and would not speak of her ability to cross thresholds, to step into other times. He’d only think her more mad than he already did. If this future was without magic, then how would he believe her anyway? Not to mention, Rider abilities were not discussed outside the messenger service.

“You are correct,” the professor continued. “This is Sacoridia, though it is no longer called such, and it would be best if you did not say any of these names to anyone. The land that was once called Sacoridia has been incorporated into the Serpentine Empire.” His gaze searched her face. “I’d say you were a ghost, but you are all too real. I’ve seen the wounds of your flesh.” He pointed at her plaster encased wrist. “Ghosts don’t wear casts. You must be a scholar, then, of secret history, to know these things. Rare for a woman to be of a scholarly bent, but not unheard of. A scholar then, with a sickness of the mind. It appears my claim that I’d removed you from the asylum is rather apt.”

There were times, Karigan thought, that she wouldn’t argue with the idea that she’d a “sickness of the mind,” but this was not one of them. “I want my things back,” she said. And somehow she’d have to discover a way to return to her own time. Traveling to the future explained both the strangeness of this world and its similarities with her own, but it looked to be a dangerous future. And the empire? Did this mean Mornhavon had overcome all to conquer her homeland?

“I have placed your artifacts in safe keeping,” the professor said. “It would not be prudent to leave them lying around. I am shocked no one found you before we did, elsewise you’d be in Inspector custody, or in the hands of Adherents.” He shuddered. “Good thing about the asylum story. Now no one will take your ravings about Green Riders or the old realm seriously, though I warn you not to speak of it at all. The emperor forbids that aspect of history, and he has spies everywhere.”

As Karigan tried to digest his words, another thought occurred to her. “You are not the person who stole me off the street.”

“No, not personally, but a friend did so at my request,” he replied. “And I’d rather not say
stole,
but brought to safety. I do have a reputation for helping unfortunates.”

Especially those garbed in historic Green Rider uniforms, she thought. “I am not an . . . unfortunate, and I’d like to be released. You’ve no right to hold me here.”

“Yes, I can see you are a proud one, but trust me, my dear, you do not wish to find yourself on the street again. We shall care for you as Mender Samuels has decreed. In the meantime, I hope you will tell me how you came by those artifacts and learned your history.”

“I will leave of my own accord then,” she said, tossing her covers aside to do just that.

“Where will you go attired in only your nightgown?”

“Darden!” she snapped.

The professor blinked in surprise, clearly not knowing what she was talking about, and shook his head. “Please rest. Mirriam informed me you turned down a dose of morphia. Perhaps I should have her administer one anyway?”

Karigan heard the inherent threat in his words. “You’ll find yourself seriously injured if you try,” she said, tensing, ready to spring into action, but he did not move.

“I do not doubt it,” he replied. “My friend said you’d fought admirably against those Dregs the other night, which is also curious. No genteel lady would have managed it, had the skill.”

“I am no genteel lady. I am a Green Rider.”

“So be it. I will not force you to stay, Karigan G’ladheon, or whatever your real name may be, but I hope my hospitality will suffice to keep you peaceably abed until your wounds heal. Just know that the outer world would not be so kind. But perhaps you are beginning to understand that.” He rose and gave her a curt bow. “I’ve no wish to see you come to harm.”

He strode across the room, but paused at the door. “Another thing. The name you have given me would incite too many questions from the wrong people. Do not speak it again. We shall use another name. Let us call you Kari Goodgrave. Several Goodgraves have married into the Josston family out east, so it makes sense my niece should be one, too.”

After he left, Karigan stared at the door for a long time trying to digest it all. It was forbidden, at least dangerous, to speak of the past—her own present. What had been Sacoridia was now part of an empire, and she could only conclude that Mornhavon the Black had defeated her people. She needed to learn details about how this occurred so she could take word of it home and tell the king. Maybe some advantage could be gained in advance warning.

And just how would she get home? The looking mask had brought her forward, but she hadn’t even the shards that had stuck in her flesh.

Her thoughts returned to the professor. If knowledge of the past was forbidden, or at least certain parts of it, then how had he acquired it, even as an archeologist? And how was it that archeology was permitted under such conditions in the first place? She did not understand the contradiction. In any case, she guessed that one reason for holding her here was to prevent her revealing his knowledge of this secret history to others, thus endangering him. And then there was the issue of her name. He had not wanted her to use it—her name was known in the forbidden history.

Why would the empire repress the true history, and what stories did it promote instead? No doubt those that glorified Mornhavon and made the queens and kings of Sacoridia’s past appear terrible tyrants. Anything to ensure the populace saw their circumstances as better than what had come before.

She shook her head. Too many questions and too few answers. It was all giving her a headache.

Then she barked a laugh. “Goodgrave!” Of all the possible names. How very appropriate.

L
hean Lifeson, child of leaf and wind, born beneath the verdant eaves of the
Vane-ealdar,
the forest of Eletia, now found himself curled in a crevice of tumbled rock and earth. A shaft of daylight plunged through the narrow opening overhead. It occurred to him that this must be what the graves of the mortal dead were like—deep, desolate, though infinitely darker than this.

How did the mortal humans stand it, knowing their lives were so short, spanning but a mere breath of an Eletian’s eternal life? That this was where it would end for them, deep in the earth, fodder for worms? And how they struggled to fill that brief life with all the passions humankind could muster. They struggled, struggled as the salmon swimming upstream, only to end, to end forever in nothingness. He did not understand why they did not just collapse in despair, but perhaps he could better appreciate why they clung to myths of their gods and an afterlife—these beliefs of theirs, false or not, gave them hope, allowed them to continue on.

Lhean shook his head. One day, perhaps, he would discuss the peculiarities of mortals with Ealdaen or maybe Telagioth. He never used to care, but now that he had traveled among and with humans, he’d become curious and taken an interest. But that was for another time; at the moment, it appeared he had a problem.

The rupture force of the shattering of the looking mask had thrust him—and likely his other companions—out of Blackveil. One moment he’d been standing in the dying remains of Castle Argenthyne, and the next he’d found himself in this crevice somewhere else. He uncurled himself to climb up, mindful of loose rock that tumbled clattering down if he misplaced his weight. When he reached the rim, he peered cautiously over it, observing only more rocky rubble awash in thin sunlight and stunted scrub trees growing from between black-flecked, gray granite blocks. The air smelled poorly and unclean, of acrid smoke that burned the back of his throat.

He pulled himself the rest of the way out, noting that this upheaved terrain was not just a rending of the land, but the obliteration of some great human work, for the edges of the rubble had not been formed by nature, but by tools. There was also evidence of some great conflagration, for soot adhered to the bottoms and fissures of rock not exposed to weathering.

He turned and found a face of stone staring back at him, its sculpted planes cracked and stained, its beard crumbled away, the remnants of a crown about its temple. The rest was lost beneath the rubble. Despite the ruins and the ill air of the place, it confirmed he was no longer in Blackveil. He knew this place, and he did not. The etherea was nearly gone, sick, dying. A being infused with etherea, as all Eletians were, he could sense inside himself its waning light. It was not just that it was tainted, but that it was almost
gone
from the land, from existence.

And so it was with his home. No matter where an Eletian may be he could always sense Eletia, the water running through the Alluvium, life throbbing through root and leaf, the spirit of his people. Even in the depths of Blackveil he had felt Eletia as a strong presence within.

He placed a trembling hand on his breast plate, over his heart, seeking but failing to feel a stronger awareness of his people. So alone, so bereft, the despair almost broke him to weeping.

Instead he turned his attention to the devastation around him, the jutting angles of hand-cut stone, rotting, sooty timbers. The ruin was upon a high hill, and more stretched all the way to its base where a city, a human city, stood. It was all symmetrically laid out, long rectangular buildings set in precise rows, their huge chimneys spewing filth into the sky. False streams glinted among them, too perfect to be made by nature. Humans called them canals.

He made out streets straight as swords, and more buildings of varying size and shape but still precisely placed. There was little green among the structures and nothing of nature in the design, no curves, no turnings, which made it all so foreign to Lhean’s Eletian eyes, so difficult to reconcile in his mind. It was an injury to the land, and the injury extended even beyond his long sight, for the city had beat back the forest that once stood there and much of the farmland, as well.

A clacking of rocks started him to caution again, and he crouched, tugging his gray cloak around his shoulders to conceal the brightness of his armor. He scanned the ruins and discerned two men encumbered with tools, making their way uphill over piles of rubble. They were some distance away, but Lhean’s keen hearing was good enough, he could pick up every word they spoke.

“—thought I saw someone up there,” said a fellow wearing a brimmed hat.

“Some of the stones look like people and, depending on the light, looks like they’re moving.”

“Still . . .” the first trailed off, his breath ragged from the effort of climbing over treacherous ground.

“Could be Ghouls,” the other replied, “hunting for relics.”

“Could be, though they’d be in big trouble if they got caught without a license.”

“Enough’ll take the chance if they think they’ll find something good.”

The man in the brimmed hat paused to catch his breath and mop his brow with his sleeve. His companion also stopped, removing an implement from his shoulder and leaning it against a block of granite. He arched his back and kneaded the small of it with his knuckles.

The man in the hat took a long look up the slope. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I think there are real ghouls in these ruins.”

His companion laughed. “You’re letting all the old stones get to you, friend. Come, if we don’t finish the survey today, we’ll be the ones in trouble, especially if we’re the cause of a delay for getting that drill emplaced.”

His friend shuddered, and they began making their painstaking way, wobbling on loose rocks, sending debris skidding down the hill behind them.

Lhean slid back into his crevice and huddled at the bottom with his knees drawn to his chest. He knew with certainty where he was: these were the ruins of Sacor City, and the one structure in the city that had created so much of the rubble on the crown of the hill was the king’s castle.

The force capable of tearing it down must have been terrible beyond imagination, for the strength of the castle was not merely in stone but subtle touches of magic, far less than what was used in the crafting of the D’Yer Wall, but enough to reinforce it. He’d felt the will to endure in the stone when he’d visited King Zachary with Graelalea and Telagioth at the end of winter. He’d felt the castle’s confidence and pride even though it was several centuries old. He was also certain the humans who inhabited it, worked and lived within its walls, were entirely deaf to the life in it.

But now it was gone, the castle dead, echoes of memory.

Since Eletians did not see time as necessarily linear, Lhean was not surprised he had traveled forward. He could not sense Ealdaen or Telagioth, so either they had not come here with him, or they lay dead. As for the others, his human companions? He could not say.

It did not matter. He must find some way of returning to the time he’d left behind. Otherwise, in this land where etherea had dwindled to almost nothing, he too, would sicken and fade until he was no more.