The ship that took me back across the Summer Sea was not Ramla’s, but the vessel of a woman from the northern shore. Her name was Astraea of Danar, and she possessed the golden hair and sky-blue eyes that I had only ever seen before in my countrymen from the far reaches of the North. I myself, however, favored my mother, and my hair was dark and my eyes were the same as any other man who walked these southern shores. Only my build set me apart from the people who walked the streets of Gallia, whence I was returning.
I asked, but Astraea had never seen the floating mountains of ice, nor walked among the mountains that I had crossed in the early days of my exile. She did not speak my mother tongue. In response to my next question, she declared that she had met the man called Hamilcar and his ship, the Lady of Osona, and remembered him fondly.
“He sails these waters from time to time,” she said. “At the beginning of the year, when the winds are swift and the waves high. If you stay in Gallia, you might see him again.”
I hoped that I would, but my hope lasted only a brief moment. What could I tell him of my adventures since we parted? That I had found the birthplace of my beloved Khalim, and found that I had known him for so short a time that I was hopeless to follow him through the land of the dead? That I had destroyed the city of Svilsara by slaying the being who called himself his god, and left them starving and alone without even the illusion of prosperity to comfort them? That I had aided a man who wished to assassinate a king, and escaped only because I was deemed a lesser threat than my guide?
Perhaps I would tell him that I was in service to the sorcerer in the tower, the former student of Maponos the Ever-living—the author of the evil book, and a name I was promised would open the way but only led me to more trouble.
I had the Sage’s Mirror. It weighed down my pouch, feeling heavier than even its composition of glass and copper should have allowed. In that way, it was not unlike the book. With every step, it reminded me of its presence, and my heart turned cold with the thought that I was carrying an artifact of dark magic to a man who could not be trusted.
I would trust him, nonetheless. I could not give in to despair. I had harmed no one in obtaining the mirror, and Deinaros seemed content to keep the evil book in his tower, poring over it at odd hours and keeping it from the entire world, even his apprentice. Let him do that as long as his unnaturally long life lasts, I thought. It was better than the book being in the hands of the dead king of Salmacha, or the mirror corroding in the vaults of the mage-kings, of whose arts I knew nothing. If I had done evil, I told myself, then the evil I had done was a trivial thing. I had freed Svilsara from the serpent, and left the mage-king alive, giving his foes nothing. If I had to do penance, I would do it after I found Khalim.
Still, if I feared what Hamilcar might say to a report of my adventures, I feared Khalim’s reaction more. Though he never held a weapon, he had promised me once that he did not hold the lives I had taken and the harm I had done against me. But he was once the vessel of a god—a god who had deemed even Khalim unworthy of the task of rebuilding Phyreios. He might judge the compromises I had made more than the taking up of arms in the defense of others.
Did I know the mind of the god Torr more than I did Khalim’s? I could not say. On the rare occasion when gods chose to walk among the people of the world, they often made their thoughts very clear.
The thought put me in a black mood for the remainder of my journey. It lifted at last as I stepped off the ship onto the harbor of Gallia, when the sun shone and the familiar sight of the market filled my vision. Though I would never call this place my home, I had the sense that for a brief moment, my journey had come to an end. I even had someone to greet me upon my return: Cricket, the sorcerer’s apprentice, selling her charms and trinkets in the marketplace.
“You’re back,” she said. The look of surprise and relief on her face that had appeared as I disembarked disappeared just as quickly as it had come, replaced with an expression of sullen indifference.
“Good morning, Cricket,” I greeted her. “I trust you’ve been safe from the monsters in the library.”
She shrugged, and the trinkets hanging from her arms jingled in a chorus. “Safe enough. I expected you back yesterday.”
“So you’ve been expecting me? I’m grateful for your confidence in my return.”
Cricket scowled. She took a coin from a fishwife in a yellow dress, and handed her a silver pendant in the shape of a sparrow in flight, hanging from a delicate chain. Turning to follow me away from the harbor, she said, “When you didn’t arrive last night, I told my master that you were probably dead.”
“Then my return will be a surprise for him, I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve recovered his artifact.”
“Can I see it?” Cricket asked, her trinkets ringing as she struggled to keep pace with me.
I slowed my steps to let her catch up. “When we get to the tower.”
“Did you climb the trees?”
I smiled, but my chest ached. She reminded me so much of my sister in the years before I left our home, never to return. I hoped that she had married, or crossed the ice to live with our mother, and did not remain in our father’s longhouse all these years later.
Unlike my sister, Cricket appeared not to have any friends her own age, and she ignored the cries of children playing as we crossed the city. Other than her customers, she interacted only with Deinaros, and now with me.
“I climbed the tree with rope and my harpoon,” I told her. “I crept up the arduous, unseen path to slip into their vault undetected.”
She raised a dubious brow. “Why didn’t you just take the stairs? My master said there’s a grand staircase that leads all the way up to the first level of the city.”
“I was stealing from the vault,” I said. “I couldn’t just come in through the front door.”
“You weren’t stealing. Deinaros sent you to fetch something of his,” said Cricket.
“I doubt the mage-kings of the upper kingdom see it that way.”
I regaled Cricket with every detail I could remember about the two kingdoms of the south, from the brilliantly-dressed folk of the market to the strange concoction brewed in the dark, and from the fungal blooms to the delicate arches over the bridges between trees. She took it in with wide-eyed gravity.
“I wouldn’t have trusted that man,” she declared when I was finished. “The drink could have been poison.”
The drink had not made me ill, but I could not say if it had other effects—effects like, for instance, making me more susceptible to the suggestions of Kural son of Irreni. “Then you are wiser than I,” I said. “You’ll make a fine sorcerer.”
“Maybe Deinaros will send me with you on your next task,” said Cricket.
I shook my head. “You’re not a sorcerer yet.” I had enough trouble keeping myself and my horse alive. Any attempts to protect and provide for a young girl on my travels would end in disaster. Fenin and her companions had been my last charges, and they were too weak from malnourishment to flee from me into the desert. Cricket, who was permitted to wander the city alone and answered only to the sorcerer, would not do as she was told.
I took Bran to the inn where I had recently boarded him, and I continued on with Cricket to the tower. Deinaros was occupied, as usual, with his books. I waited in my room overlooking the sea and searched the horizon for any of the ships I might recognize.
Deinaros summoned me at sunset. I had kept the mirror in its pouch, and thus I carried it up the stairs to the room in which I had received the assignment to retrieve it. I removed it and set it on the table beside the book, and it gazed balefully at the ceiling, black as a bottomless pit.
“You did well,” Deinaros said.
“I might have done better, had I the information I needed,” I told him. “Have you heard nothing from the south in recent years? I suppose you do not often leave this tower.”
Deinaros favored me with a steely gaze. “I have my sources of information. You performed admirably, despite your entanglement with the cultists. You’ve brought the mirror, just as I asked.”
His sources of information, evidently, included Cricket. “I mislike this relic,” I said. “You called it a mirror, but it reflects nothing, not even light. What does it do?”
“It will help open the way,” said Deinaros.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ve risked my life three times over to bring this to you,” I told him. “Once on the climb up, once to flee the guards, and again on the climb down. I’ve trusted you. It would only be fair for you to do the same with me.”
Deinaros sat in a high-backed chair, his robes pooling at his feet. “You’ve proven yourself more than trustworthy. I only spare you the details to preserve your focus on your goals. You could not read the book—I’d not ask you to burden yourself with its nuances.”
I matched his cold stare. “You’ll find I understand a great deal.”
“Very well.” He picked up the mirror and looked into its surface. No reflection gazed back at him. “The Sage’s Mirror is not a mirror at all. It is a key—or, more accurately, it is a lock into which the correct key can be inserted. I only need to fit it into the proper door.”
How a mirror could be a lock, I did not know, but I understood the metaphor well enough. “And the door will open into the world beyond?”
“It will open a secret way—much like the one you took to the upper kingdom. I hope you are better at evading wandering spirits than you are the guards of Rhakyan.”
“I suppose, then, that I next have to locate the key,” I said.
“No need,” said Deinaros. “I already know where it is, though it falls to you to retrieve it. One of my fellow students took it north when Maponos gave up his long life. If my calculations are correct, and I am all but certain they are, it remains in the seaside town of Moroda. You can take the road as far as Verrus, but the fastest way to the coast is through the forest.”
I did not know either of these places. Deinaros had been correct about the location of the mirror, so I would not question his divination. “What is this key?” I asked instead. “If the mirror is a lock, then how can I identify this second relic?”
“It’s an obsidian blade,” Deinaros said. “Of all my teacher’s creations, it has changed hands the most, and has gone by many names. You’ll know it by the smell of fresh blood that clings to it no matter how many times it has been cleaned.”
Back to Chapter L: The Way Down
Forward to Chapter LII: A Temple of Faces
I am officially Covid negative! I also have twelve more chapters left in my outline (I’m seven or eight chapters ahead of you, if you’re keeping up here). I can’t wait until I can make this mess into something coherent. I appreciate you coming along for the ride.
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