The Soul Mirror (8 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction
An hour of Duplais’ prodding, and we arrived at the clogged approaches to the city gates. Market carts laden with potatoes and beets, and wagons hauling wine casks, coal, tin pots, or anonymous crates of merchants’ wares were strung out fifty deep at a customs station bristling with soldiers. We three were halted in a queue of horse and foot traffic almost as long.
“Soul charm, damoselle? ’Tis Camarilla approved.” A pock-faced woman draped in dusty scarves dangled a glittering bracelet of glass and silver beads where the sunlight could catch it. “Protect thy sight and soul from haunts and daemons, spectres and ghoulies. Twenty kivrae only . . .” Her left hand rested on her right shoulder, exhibiting a blood family mark. Its smudged lines testified it to have been drawn with ink, however, and not the indelible birth-marking of the Camarilla.
I refused, and the woman moved on, deftly avoiding the scrutiny of a collared mage in the striped robe of a Camarilla inspector.
A sultry breeze off the river swirled the dust rolled up from cart wheels, boots, and hooves. As the orange-hazed sun slipped toward the horizon, the crowd of travelers grew fractious. Our line lurched toward the massive gate tunnel from time to time in the mode of a caterpillar. The thrumming in my ears worsened with every centimetre, making my cheekbones throb and my teeth ache.
“Will they truly shut the gates with all these people outside?” I asked, to take my mind off the unpleasant sensations. “We’re not at war.”
“It’s disturbances inside cause the gate closings.” Duplais did not shift his roving gaze from the crowd, examining the multihued sea of faces as if a magistrate might arrive to explain further. “Officious fools believe they can lock out the wind.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Duplais rose in the stirrups and waved to a sober, soft-cheeked gentleman who had just emerged from behind the customs station. “Henri! Over here.”
The man squeezed his way through and handed over a rolled page, tied with a ribbon. “You’re a fortunate man, Portier,” he said, blotting his forehead and bearded chin with a linen kerchief. “Chevalier de Sylvae provided this just before he left for the country. You’re right that the imbecile can expedite tricky matters, though I’ll throw myself in the river if I must listen to one more crocodile story.”
“Many thanks. I had to leave in such a rush, I’d no time to arrange for a gate pass.”
“She’s still not bound for the Spindle?” The man lowered his voice, eyeing me without staring.
My cheeks scorched. This Henri, his close-barbered beard and mustache encircling an ill-defined mouth, had been one of Duplais’ witnesses at Papa’s trial.
“She’s the king’s gooddaughter,” said Duplais, “and deemed little threat should she be in custody of a forceful ally. The dowry His Majesty settled on her in infancy will attract notice from a number of useful quarters.”
I wanted to vomit. For these long three days in the saddle, I had relived the bizarre attack in the wood, wrestled with the heartache of leaving Montclaire, the impossibility of Lianelle’s death, and Duplais’ implication of murder. I’d given my own future no thought at all. Now here it was, laid out before me like the view from the hilltop.
My father had been a king’s First Counselor, ensuring that I would take substantial property, connection, and influence into a union. Since my first inkling of what marriage meant, my father had assured me that any husband would be my own choice, a choice of the heart, as my parents’ had been. Yet observing my mother’s heartache every time Papa rode out, often absent for months at a time, I had decided that love and intimacy created a bondage every bit as confining as arranged marriage. Friends, family, study, and travel were everything I wanted. But in this, as in all, Papa’s crimes had changed everything.
“Best not let word get out who she is,” said this Henri. “A mob demolished a cult shrine last night, screaming they were sheltering the Traitor. Night begets rumors of hauntings like a corpse begets maggots. And pick your route up the hill carefully.”
We never heard his reasons. The crowd shifted, quickly engulfing Duplais’ friend, as a rider in dusty scarlet livery charged through the press. “Make way! Step aside! Royal dispatches for Castelle Escalon!”
Duplais pushed his mount into the wake of the royal messenger, shouting at Margriet and me to keep close. The deft maneuver slid us to the head of the queue, where he presented his scroll. To the disgruntled murmurings of other travelers, the gate guards passed us through after only a glimpse.
“Why would anyone believe a shrine would shelter my father?” I said as we rode through the gate tunnel.
“It was a cult shrine—the Cult of the Reborn,” said Duplais. “Since your father’s conviction, Merona has suffered a plague of. . . unnatural . . . happenings. These
hauntings
or
incidents
spawn rumors that the Great Traitor seeks to raise an army of revenants to overthrow the king. The frightened and ignorant lash out at any group who speaks of souls returning from the dead.”
hauntings
or
incidents
spawn rumors that the Great Traitor seeks to raise an army of revenants to overthrow the king. The frightened and ignorant lash out at any group who speaks of souls returning from the dead.”
The Cult was a small, devout branch of Temple worshipers. They believed that our saints were actually heroic souls who had turned their backs on Heaven, reborn repeatedly to succor humankind in times of our direst need. Yet I’d never heard that Cult beliefs encompassed
necromancy
, an aberrant—and wholly unsubstantiated—practice anathema to the Temple and renounced by the Camarilla. And an
army of revenants
? What nonsense! People must be truly frightened.
necromancy
, an aberrant—and wholly unsubstantiated—practice anathema to the Temple and renounced by the Camarilla. And an
army of revenants
? What nonsense! People must be truly frightened.
We emerged from the gate tunnel onto the ring road between the thick outer bastion and a less imposing inner wall, draped with straggling vines grown right out of the mortar. What struck me first was the quiet. Not only was the ring road almost deserted, as if the passage of the gate tunnel had transported us much farther than thirty metres from the noisy throng outside, but the quality of the sounds themselves seemed muted. A gaggle of street urchins pelted past us, making no more noise than if they tiptoed. Our own mounts’ hooves made more of a dull
thwup
than the ringing
clop
one would expect.
thwup
than the ringing
clop
one would expect.
The dimness was less surprising. Sunlight might yet stream across river and vineyards, but the orb itself hung low enough that shadows collected in the gorge between the walls. Even so I would swear that someone had draped a gray veil between the city and the silvered sky.
The wind tore green leaves and full-hued blossoms from the rattling vines, whipping them into odd whirlpools that rose high like dust devils in fallow fields. Odder yet, the wind was not the usual sultry breeze off the Ley, stinking of river wrack, but dry and cold enough to sting my cheeks and mock my light clothing. Had I not noted Margriet’s shivering as Duplais counted out her pay, I might have assumed I’d caught a chill along the way.
“We must move quickly,” said Duplais, heading up the road as Margriet and her mule vanished down the steep way toward Riverside. The odd light grayed his complexion, as he scanned the road, the walls, and the towers.
The rapidly deteriorating light had evidently sent many people home to supper early. Streets and markets were deserted, booths and stalls locked up. A number of streets were blocked off by barrels of sand or piled stones. At every barricade stood a quartiere—an iron pole with three crosspieces, hung with animal bones, bells, or strips of tin and copper, and topped with a snarl of laurel—a magical artifact supposed to ward off malevolent spirits. One spied quartieres in the countryside from time to time, but never in cosmopolitan Merona.
Indeed almost every house we passed sported runes painted on its lintel or inverted lamps hung in the windows or some other charm or witch sign near its threshold. The king’s city bled superstition and fear—enough to shiver my skeptic’s blood and loosen my tongue.
“What is everyone so afraid of?” I said as we took yet another detour into a street entirely deserted. My skin prickled in the gloom.
Duplais pointed a finger at a shabby tenement, painted all over with witch signs. A burning torch had been mounted in a bracket beside the door, yet the stoop, the door itself, and the lintel, carved with the open hand sign of a moneylender, remained indistinguishable in the gloom. In fact . . .
“The light seems bent,” I said. The fire glow curled around the left side of the house and illumined naught but an alley choked with smoke. The smoke itself streamed round the corner in a direction directly opposite the wind.
“Moneylenders throughout the city are particularly beset with such strangeness. Pawners, too. Did your father have difficulty with his debts?”
“I’ve told you repeatedly, I know nothing of my father.”
In the next street, he pointed out a cracked signboard painted with three gold balls, dangling by one corner over the door of another house. The windows and door gaped black like empty eye sockets. Air rushed into them as if they were sucking every breath out of the world.
“You’re going to tell me this is sorcery.” Worms riddled my stomach.
“Give me a scientific explanation for such unnatural spectacles. They’ve spread throughout Merona like plague. There are streets in Riverside where fire does not heat food or melt iron. Others where wild pigs have taken up residence. Sorcerers have repaired some, only to see other disturbances break out. Just this past tenday, I’ve heard report of an incident in Sessaline—a village fifteen kilometres north. Here, this is interesting, too . . .”
He led me past a small district that had been leveled by fire—recently, from the rising trails of smoke and the heavy stink of char and refuse. The area was an exact square, the bordering houses lacking even a trace of soot. “This was a street of solicitors and small banking houses. It burnt three years ago.”
No response came to mind. I was, after all, plain, plodding Anne de Vernase, who could speak seven languages but could not come up with a witty retort until a day late, who preferred a book to any adventure, who believed that everything in the world had a rational explanation, save my father’s great betrayal.
Duplais urged his skittish mare closer to Ladyslipper. “Keep moving, damoselle. Sunset is the riskiest time.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to make straight for the palace if we’re in such a hurry?” I said as Duplais detoured through yet another narrow lane, behind Merona’s Temple Major.
“There is no
straight
in Merona just now. Damnation . . .”
straight
in Merona just now. Damnation . . .”
Duplais’ mount shied, dodging sideways and forward all at once, near unseating the man. Only my most insistent persuasion kept Ladyslipper from doing the same. A soft hissing, as of spewing steam, swelled into a pulsing, whining, scratchy rush of sound from every side. Rats flooded the alley before and behind us. Pouring from the shadowed verges as if birthed by the brick walls, they surged toward the temple’s back steps and its servitors’ entry as if summoned to the god’s service.
A bolt of violet light shot from Duplais’ raised palm, halting the squirming, screeching vermin before they started climbing our horses’ legs. A second bolt parted the flood in front of us. We kicked the horses onward, bursting from the alley in disarray. Sweat dripped down my back and from my brow, the air suddenly a furnace. Appalled, disgusted, it was all I could do to maintain any sort of calm instruction for the quivering Ladyslipper. Duplais mumbled epithets and wrestled his mount into nervous compliance. “Saints and spirits, should have known he’d not exempt the Temple . . .”
Which comment I understood not at all. But I needed no urging to stay close and move faster. We turned onto a wide, paved boulevard, divided by a row of spreading plane trees—the Plas Royale. Duplais glanced up at the deepening sky, now the hue of charcoal, then released an unhappy exhale. “Watch your step, damoselle.”
Duplais reined in to a slow walk, picking the way up the broad street as carefully as he’d done on the narrowest hillside track. Grand stone buildings with sculpted facades and fluted columns lined the Plas Royale: the Academie Musica and the Collegia Medica, and merchant halls such as the Vintners’ Consortium and the Wool Guildhall. Farther ahead of us stood a striking edifice of deep green granite, the Bastionne Camarilla. I could just make out the sculpted figures that stood atop its facade—a pair of robed male and female mages, each with one hand upraised to Heaven and one opened in generous provision to the onlookers below.
Despite the benevolent images and the elegance of its carvings and polished granite, the headquarters of the Camarilla Magica had always made my skin creep. Its lack of windows brought to mind an eyeless face. And that was before I had learned that inside those impenetrable walls, magical practitioners who violated Camarilla strictures were routinely whipped or branded in the name of preserving magical purity, even if they were naught but ignorant countryfolk. In its deepest bowels, so it was said, the prefects executed the most serious violators, as they had my father’s magical accomplices.
“Great Heavens!” I said. As we closed on the Bastionne, it became clear disaster had struck. Two of the fortress’s walls and a third of its slate roof had collapsed, exposing the blackened skeleton of its interior. Floors hung at rakish angles, and massive columns leaned like felled trees, supported by the piled rubble that shifted . . .
I blinked.
A few faint lights—pale green and yellow—flickered through the dark interior. Their pulsing movement must have fooled my eyes into seeing the rubble expand and contract as if it were a wounded man’s chest instead of crumbled stone.
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