The Mirror of Her Dreams (22 page)

'Master Barsonage shaped that one several years ago,' Geraden explained. 'It's the kind of mirror King Joyse wants the Congery to concentrate on. Something useful, practical. Master Barsonage was searching for a world of water-an Image Mordant could use in case of drought. Or fire. The story is that he extrapolated this glass from a small mirror Adept Havelock once had. If that's true, it's an amazing achievement-to reproduce exactly every inflection of curve and colour and shape on such a different scale-' With his fingers, he ran a stroke of admiration down the side of the frame. As he recovered the glass, he added, 'Unfortunately, the water is too bitter for our soil and crops.'

Shaking her head in gingerly astonishment, as if her brain were a bit loose in her skull, she followed him into the next room.

This chamber was roughly the same size as the one they had just left. It was similarly lit with lamps on pedestals. But it contained four satin-covered mirrors.

'I don't mean to lecture you,' he was saying. 'If you really are an Imager, I'll bore you. And if you aren't, I'll just confuse you. Stop me if I get carried away.'

He considered for a moment, then selected a mirror.

When he uncovered it, she gasped involuntarily and stepped back.

From the glass stared a pair of eyes as big as her hands.

They glared at her hungrily; and the teeth under them seemed to drip poison as the mouth gaped in her direction. She had an impression of a body like a gargantuan slug's hulking behind the eyes and the mouth-an impression of a dark, cavern-like space enclosing the body-but she couldn't look away from those eyes to confirm the rest of the Image. They were eyes that wanted, insatiable eyes, consuming-

Geraden stooped to the lower corner of the mirror and nudged the frame. At once, the eyes receded a few dozen feet, and Terisa found herself blinking her horror at them from a safer distance. Now it was plain that she was looking at some kind of huge, slug-like beast in a cave.

This is how we adjust the focus.' He nudged the frame again: the Image retreated farther. Then he pushed lightly on the side of the frame, and the Image panned in that direction, revealing the mountainside where the cave opened. The range is limited, of course. But once a true mirror is made-one that works, instead of just throwing distortion in all directions-we can look at its whole Image-in this case, the whole mountain-by adjusting the focus. If we have that much patience.'

He stood up and tugged the cover back over the glass. She hardly noticed the darkness gathering in his mood. The story is that King Joyse captured this mirror during his wars for Mordant's independence. The Imager who made it had already translated that'-he shuddered-'that abomination, and it was busy eating an entire village, hut by hut.

'But that was in the days before Adept Havelock lost his mind. When King Joyse captured the glass intact, Adept Havelock was able to reverse the translation.

The Congery was founded to keep Imagery under some kind of control. So that no more mirrors like this one would be made.'

Terisa's arms and legs felt weak, and her head was full of air.
'
How-' she asked faintly. 'How could something like that get through?'

'
Oh, size is no problem. Imagers discovered long ago that once a mirror reaches a certain size-about the size of the ones you've seen-it can translate anything. Nobody knows quite how that works. But if you had a glass focused at the right place at the right time, you could bring an avalanche through it.

'Come on.'

Without looking at her, he strode into another room.

Viscerally expecting the slug-beast to lift its own cover and come after her, Terisa followed him. Mordant was being threatened by things like
that?
There were people at work here mad or malicious enough to translate things like
thatl
Then he was badly mistaken. Mordant didn't need her. It needed the champion in Master Gilbur's mirror. And all the armoured men who fought under him. And all the weapons from his ship.

She trailed right on Geraden's heels because this whole situation was crazy and she had to get out of here.

He led her into a chamber larger than the previous ones: apparently, an extra cell or two had been used to make it. Six covered mirrors stood on the smooth stone floor; but four of them had been set back against the walls, leaving room in the centre for the remaining two. Those two were the same size. Under their coverings, they seemed to have the same shape.

As he considered the mirrors, his face clenched into an unself-conscious scowl. 'We usually keep the flat mirrors here,' he said towards one of the side walls. This is the largest display room, and we have a number of them. But the Masters had some moved out to make room for these two. The Congery does a lot of experimenting with flat glass, trying to find some way to use it-or at least understand it.'

Abruptly, he moved towards one of the mirrors against the wall. 'Here,' He sounded angry; she couldn't tell why. 'I'll show you what happened to Adept Havelock.'

With a rough jerk, he pulled the cover off the glass in front of him.

Involuntarily, she winced.

Nothing terrible happened.

The mirror did in fact appear to be flat. Its colour, the sand from which it was made, the slight irregularity of its edges-she guessed that these things determined what Image the mirror showed. But because it was flat its Image existed in this world rather than somewhere else.

Something about the scene looked vaguely familiar.

'It's dangerous,' muttered Geraden. 'I don't know who shaped it, but if it was an accident it was dangerous to make. And even if it wasn't an accident, it's dangerous to keep.'

She was looking at what appeared to be a place where roads came together. The roads were deeply packed in snow, of course, and were only marked by the wheel tracks cut into them by passing wagons. But lines of stark, winter-stripped trees made the roads more obvious than they would otherwise have been against the piled white background. The Image was so vivid that she could see cold aching among the outstretched limbs of the trees.

On the other hand, she had no idea why it was dangerous.

Had she seen those trees or that intersection from her windows this morning?

Apparently so. 'You can see that place from your rooms,' Geraden explained. That's where the one road out of Orison branches south towards the Care of Tor, northeast towards Per-don, and northwest towards Armigite. But why would anybody bother to shape a glass that shows a place we can already see from here? If someone is coming it doesn't exactly give us a lot of warning. As I say, it could have been an accident. Or else whoever did it was trying to produce a mirror that would show Orison itself-and only missed by that much.'

'Who would do that?' she asked.

He shrugged. 'Someone who wanted to spy on King Joyse.

'But what makes this dangerous-more dangerous than most flat mirrors-is that we're so close to being able to see ourselves in it. If we took this mirror out to that spot and stood in front of it, we would see ourselves in the Image. And we would be lost forever, erased-caught in a translation that took us away without shifting us an inch from where we stood.'

He dropped the cover to the floor and stepped back to consider the glass. 'I guess we're lucky that didn't happen to Adept Havelock.
He
was lucky, anyway. He's just crazy-he hasn't been erased. But if we tried to use this glass now-if we tried to translate ourselves out to the branching of the roads-we would end up like him. The stress would destroy our minds.

'Nobody knows exactly why.' He began to sound more and more irritated, vexed with himself. The people who believe that Images don't exist-that mirrors create what we see-argue that the stress comes from being in a created place which exactly resembles a real place. You expect reality and don't get it, so your mind snaps.'

'And what if Images are real?'

Then it's the translation itself that does the damage. I guess you could say translation is too powerful to be used so simply. If you want to get from here to there'-he gestured at the scene in the mirror-'you need a horse, not Imagery. Because you aren't using the true power of translation, it rebounds against you instead of taking you safely where you want to go. Anyway, something like that happened to Adept Havelock.'

Geraden turned his back on the glass; and now she caught the flash of anger in his eyes. That's why the Masters want to understand flat mirrors. They're so dangerous-and fundamental.

'Come on,' he growled. 'I've dragged my feet long enough.'

Brusquely, he moved to the two mirrors in the centre of the room.

Now she understood him. He was angry because he was conflicted: he was acting against his own wishes as well as the King's, forcing himself to do what he thought was right despite his belief that Mordant needed her.

And he was risking the accusation that he was a traitor in order to give her a chance to go home.

Despite the warmth of her gown, a chill went through her as he pulled one of the covers off, and she recognized the glass which had stood in the Congery's meeting room the day before -the glass which had brought her here.

Its Image was both different and unchanged. The fighting had stopped. The metallic figures had enlarged their defensive perimeter and were holding it unchallenged. But the alien landscape, red-lit by its old sun, was unaltered, as was the tall ship in the centre of the scene.

Like his men, the armoured figure who dominated the Image had moved: he now walked the perimeter, pausing briefly at each defensive station as if to check how his forces were placed. Again, his power was almost palpable across the distance between the worlds. He looked like a man who conquered whole continents almost daily, as a matter of course.

Geraden gave her a glance, measuring her reaction. Then he lifted the satin from the second glass.

She saw at once that it was identical to the first. The shape was the same; the tint was the same; the curvature was the same. Even the curved and polished wooden frames were indistinguishable. And yet the Images weren't the same. Under a red-tinged light, against a stark background, a colourless metal helmet with an impenetrable faceplate looked in her direction as if the eyes hidden in it were studying her coldly.

A moment passed before she realized that both mirrors showed the same scene: the first reflected the ship from some distance while the second depicted the commander of the defence in extreme closeup. Looking at both mirrors, she could see that each portrayed exactly the movements of the commander's helmeted head: only the perspective was different.

Softly, Geraden muttered, 'It's too bad we can't hear thoughts through the glass. It would even help if we could hear language. But of course most of the Masters believe there aren't any thoughts or language in there to be heard.'

He adjusted the focus of the second mirror carefully until it duplicated the first. Then he stepped back to stand beside Terisa. Still he avoided her gaze.

'I made one of those,' he said. The one we used yesterday. It's a duplicate. Master Gilbur created the original. I couldn't use his. Imagers learned a long time ago that there's some kind of essential interaction between a mirror and the talent of the man who shapes it. So I made a copy.' He snorted sourly, 'It took me a long time because I kept doing things wrong. Can you tell which is which?'

She shook her head. The question didn't matter to her. She cared only about his distress and her opportunity. It might really be possible for her to go back to her world, to her apartment and her job and her father-

-and the man with her wanted her to stay. He wanted it so intensely that the bare thought of letting her go hurt him.

'Actually,' he murmured, 'nobody else can. But Master Gilbur and I don't have any trouble. Any Imager can always feel his own work. The one I shaped makes my nerves tingle,' He pointed to the glass on the left. That one.

'My lady.' At last he forced himself to face her. He held his arms clenched over his chest, as if to keep them from reaching out. His scowl had become a knot of worry and pain. 'Are you sure you want to do this?'

'Geraden-' Now that he was finally willing to meet her gaze, she wanted to look away. She had never learned how to refuse other people. If she did what was expected, or asked, or even suggested of her, she could at least fit herself to her circumstances. But she didn't belong here. It made no sense.