I nodded reluctantly. “All right, you guys get together and draw up a list for me to consider. Those who should get their torcs right away, those who should but only after they’ve proved themselves worthy, and those who won’t ever be trusted with a torc again.”
“Such as?” said Penny, her cool eyes openly challenging me.
“Anyone who knew about the secret of the golden torcs and just went along with it,” I said sternly. “Any unrepentant Zero Tolerance, and anyone who’d more than likely use a torc to start a civil war within the family. Use your own best judgement. We’re only talking about a small percentage of scumbags, I hope. Strange, any problem with producing so much strange matter, for the torcs and armour, so quickly?”
“Please, call me Ethel.”
“Not if there was a gun to my head.”
“You can have as many silver torcs as you want, Eddie,” Strange said easily. “It’s just a matter of bringing more of me through from my home dimension. I am great and limitless, wise and wonderful…But you don’t really need torcs, you know. I could teach you all to be superhuman. You have such potential within you, you humans. To be far greater than any torc could ever make you. You could all shine like stars.”
I looked at the Inner Circle, and they looked at me.
“How long would this take?” I said.
“Years,” said Strange. “Generations, maybe. This whole consecutive time thing is a new concept to me.”
“I think we’ll stick with what we know, for now,” I said. “The family needs to be strong as quickly as possible. But by all means, consider the alternative, Strange, and let me know when you’ve got something more specific to tell me.”
“Oh goody!” said Strange. “This is going to be such fun!”
“Any other matters?” I said quickly.
“Just one,” said the Armourer. He produced a small object wrapped in white samite from under his lab coat and passed it to me. I accepted and then unwrapped it with great care and caution. Gifts from the Armourer have a tendency to be downright dangerous, if not actually explosive. The object turned out to be a simple hand mirror, with a silver frame and handle. I hefted it a few times cautiously, just in case, but nothing happened. And the face in the mirror was quite definitely mine, so … I looked inquiringly at the Armourer.
“Jacob and I have been studying in the old library,” said the Armourer. “When I can tear him away from his…other pursuits. And we’ve turned up some quite remarkable items. A number of books thought to be long lost, or destroyed, a number of ancient maps of dubious provenance but exciting possibilities…and a handful of lost and quite legendary treasures. That… is Merlin’s Glass. It disappeared from the Armageddon Codex in the late eighteenth century, under somewhat murky circumstances. Jacob discovered it inside a hollowed-out book about voles.”
“Don’t even know what made me look there,” Jacob said cheerfully. “I was just looking for something with dirty pictures.”
“Hold everything,” said Molly. “Though not literally in your case, Jacob. Merlin’s Glass. Are we talking about the Merlin?”
“Oh yes,” said Jacob.
“He was a Drood?” said Molly.
“Hardly,” said the Armourer. “We do have our standards. No, he was Merlin Satanspawn, the Devil’s only begotten son. Born to be the Antichrist, but he refused the honour. He always had to go his own way…But according to some quite fascinating records in the old library, he did work with the family, on occasion. When it suited him. And apparently he owed us a favour, and repaid it by gifting us that mirror.”
Molly reached out for it, and I handed it over. She muttered some Words over the mirror, made a few quick gestures, and even held it upside down and shook it in the hope something might fall out, but nothing happened. Molly sniffed and handed the mirror back to me.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll bite. What’s it supposed to do?”
“It can be used to make contact with other members of the Drood family, in the past or the future, to ask them for advice or information.”
There was a pause, and then Molly said, “No offence guys, but I think you got stiffed on the deal. I mean, it’s not the most useless magic object I’ve ever seen…but it comes pretty damned close.”
“You’re a witch,” the Armourer said kindly, “and therefore used to thinking mainly in terms of the here and now. The Glass has many uses. Vital information lost in this time can be found in the past, before it was lost. Or in the future, after it has been rediscovered. The greatest family tacticians, of the past or the future, are now ours to consult. We can even take specific advice from the future, on which matters to pursue and which are best left strictly alone…”
“If this Glass is so useful,” I said, “how did it happen to go missing for so long?”
“Ah,” said the Armourer reluctantly. “There are many stories about that. The one I tend to believe the most, because I dislike it the most, is that someone asked the Glass a very specific question, and got a very specific answer that disturbed the shit out of him. So he took the Glass and hid it, to prevent anyone else from asking the question, or learning the answer.”
“I can’t see this family giving up anything that useful so easily,” said Molly.
“I can,” I said. “The Droods have always been very cautious about anything involving time travel. Ever since the Great Time Disaster of 1217, when the family almost wiped itself out after inadvertently setting up a Möbius-strip time paradox. There’s still some rooms in the Hall we can’t find, because of what we had to do to break free. And we don’t even think about what might still be happening to the poor bastards we had to abandon in those rooms. The human mind just isn’t equipped to deal with all the possible complications and downright nasty ramifications of mucking about with time.”
And then I stopped short as an idea came to me, hitting me hard enough to stop my breath, while a cold hand curled around my heart. I looked into Merlin’s Glass, and my face stared back at me, so cold and harsh and determined I barely recognised it.
“Can I contact anyone in the past?” I said, and even I could tell that the voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded reckless, and even dangerous. Everyone looked at me sharply. I think Molly got it first, perhaps because her mind had already begun moving along similar lines. I looked at the Armourer, and I think anyone else would have flinched at what he saw in my eyes. “I know it’s dangerous, and I don’t care,” I said. “Tell me, Uncle Jack, can I use this Glass to talk to my parents in the past, before they were murdered?”
“I’m sorry,” the Armourer said gruffly, kindly. “I thought of that. There’s always someone we’d like to speak to in the past. Friends and relatives and loved ones, gone too soon, before we could say all the things we meant to say to them. The things we put off saying, because we always thought there’d be time…until suddenly there wasn’t. But the Glass doesn’t allow anyone to ask questions for personal gain. Only for the good of the family. And the Glass can always tell the difference. A built-in safety factor, perhaps, to prevent…abuse of time.”
“Or perhaps the sorcerer Merlin Satanspawn just had a built-in nasty streak,” said Molly.
“There is that,” said the Armourer.
“I need to know what really happened to my father and my mother,” I said. “I will find out the truth, whatever it takes.”
“I spent years trying to find out,” said the Armourer. “So did James. She was our sister, poor dear Emily, and we loved her dearly. We even approved of your father, or we’d never have let him marry her. But the truth is … no one seems to know. The odds are it was just a stupid mistake. Poor intelligence, insufficient briefing, too many things going wrong at once… It happens. Even on the best planned missions.”