Yethyr and Jaetheiri scrambled back up the tunnel, back through the communal hot springs, and back the way they had come through the ice city. Leaf led them on, guiding them back toward that room that had been designated for them.
All Yethyr’s questions hung in the air, unanswered. Leaf knew only what had been related to her, which was a confusing warning of some commotion she didn't understand.
Reaching the entrance to the room shed no further light. The entrance was sealed off by ice, and various Lethonese men and women crowded it.
“What is happening?” Leaf asked in her own tongue.
They stumbled over each other to speak, the loudest voice exclaiming, “a red shadow ate the skeleton!”
“What are they saying?” Yethyr asked Leaf in Datrean.
She scratched her head, and I felt for her. I was not sure how to translate that either.
“I think your hooded friend might have been consumed by your mirror.”
Yethyr knocked on the ice barring his way. “Wesed!”
There was no response. I could hear a roar of powerful, intricate stonesong beyond that ice door, but of course, Yethyr could not hear it. He drew on his composition of calling. “I, Yethyr, son of Yevvar Kentheir, call upon the pact between us. Answer me!”
The Prince felt the slightest of tugs, but still no response.
“We should wait for the wolves,” Leaf said.
“You should,” Yethyr agreed. “But we ought to protect you in the meantime. Let us enter.”
Leaf hesitated. “What if it comes out the moment we open it?”
Yethyr stared at her. “Are you servants of Maethe or not? Don’t be a coward. We’ll block the way regardless.”
“What are we arguing for?” Jaetheiri asked in honest confusion, and I wanted to laugh. There were three languages between everyone in the room, and only I, silent by choice, knew them all. Whatever was said in Lethonese had to be translated into Datrean by Leaf, which then had to be translated into Brinn by Yethyr. In a crisis such as this, the inefficiency of it was potentially dangerous and definitely hysterical, so all Yethyr told Jaetheiri was three words.
“We’re going in.”
Jaetheiri needed no further explanation. She pushed Yethyr behind her and unsheathed her warfang.
At Leaf’s direction, a watersinger carved some lines into the ice blocking the entrance, and at once, it melted away.
Nothing happened. No shadow or monster or devouring mirror came charging out of the entrance. Shadows danced to every flicker of the roaring fire within. That was the only movement.
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Jaetheiri entered the room warily, Yethyr close on her heels.
The Lethonese shut the ice behind them, and still nothing happened.
The fire still burned. Everything from the beds Leaf had brought them to the bones of their previous meal was just as they left it. Everything was calm and the same. Except, of course, that Wes wasn’t there.
“Wesed?” Yethyr called.
Again, he felt that same weak tug. It came from the table on the far side of the room, and Yethyr approached it slowly. Louder and louder, I heard the stonesong that had called to me even from outside the room. Sure enough, in the dim firelight, I could see the hand mirror that Kvelir and Tular had betrayed their hunting parties for.
It glittered an alluring red, like a ruby cut by master stonesingers.
Wes truly was my father’s apprentice through and through. His nimble fingers had carefully put the red obsidian shards back together. Evidence of the shatter ran through it like a spiderweb of cracks, but it was whole. Surely, only someone with as deft a hand as Wes could have solved such a puzzle of glass in only a few hours, but the smith was nowhere to be seen.
Yethyr darted his eyes around the room, but he knew the truth. He could hear it, just as I could.
The faint lullaby of Wes’ death song was coming from inside the mirror.
“What do you hear?” Jaetheiri asked, growing closer to the table.
“Keep away!” Yethyr hissed. “Wesed appears to have been swallowed by the mirror.”
Even in the flickering firelight, I could see Jaetheiri frowning. “Is it a Hellgate?”
“Maybe.” Yethyr hesitated. “It doesn’t sound like one. I can just barely hear Wesed’s composition, but beyond that, it doesn’t sound like anything.”
How wrong Yethyr was. Perhaps he could not hear the stonesong screaming from that mirror, but I certainly did.
It sang of molten reflections. It sang of brittle entrapment. It sang of hard truth.
It was the song of obsidian made red by the blood of a witch.
I dropped warnings into his thoughts. I didn’t want him to go rescue Wes. Yethyr was about to use him to help subdue me for good. Leave Wes in this glass prison for all I cared!
But of course, Yethyr ignored me.
He drew closer. I listened to the sharp ticking of his mind and heard him conclude that so long as he did not touch the mirror, it was safe. I understood enough from the composition of the mirror’s song to know better.
“Don’t look in the mirror!” I tried to warn him with his voice. “Don’t let it catch my reflection!”
It was too late.
In the soft red glow of the room, in the red reflection of the mirror, there was the Prince’s sullen face staring back at himself. And for a moment, the mirror reflected the truth of the moment: Yethyr’s dripping curls, raising brows and worrying frown.
And then that reflection curved into a wide smile the likes of which had never carved its way across Yethyr’s grave face before and certainly wasn’t now. The Prince recoiled at the discrepancy, terrified of the sudden stranger that wore his face, but the reflection followed him. It reached out of the mirror and grabbed his throat.
Yethyr gasped. The hand was as cold as glass; the hand was glass. The shattered mirror had rearranged itself to form the facsimile of a hand, his hand, and it was crushing his windpipe. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t speak. His hands fumbled to unsheathe me. Blindly, he flailed me at the obsidian arm and wisely, it splintered apart before I could touch it.
The sharp shards cut Yethyr, surrounded him and then he could breathe. He heaved air back into his battered lungs. Red obsidian twinkled in the air. No. Red obsidian was the air.
Yethyr gaped. Everywhere he looked, he was cocooned by red glass walls.
We were inside the mirror.
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