“Can this be possible?” Shia asked her softly, breaking in on the Mage’s thoughts. “And if it is, what do you intend to do about it?”
Aurian scowled. “About Forral? I know what I have to do. I must confront him and find out the truth. It’s just a matter of finding the courage to do it.”
Forral’s heart gave a wrenching kick within his chest as he recollected Aurian calling Anvar’s name. He turned cold all over. It wasn’t possible ... it couldn’t be. But he remembered Anvar’s arrival Between the Worlds, and recalled Death’s warning. Then the portal had opened again... . “No,” he muttered desperately. “It was an accident—I didn’t mean to ...”
Did you not, jeered a small voice at the back of his mind. Are you sure?
“No, no! It isn’t true—it can’t be.”
A stray gleam of light kept catching at the edge of his vision, like a child tugging at his sleeve for attention. Forral half-turned, and saw the slip of candle flame reflected in a looking glass that hung on the wall at the foot of the bed. He hadn’t noticed it before—nor, until that moment, had he realized that he was once again in the Archmage’s chambers: ironically, the very place where he had died.
Where is that bastard Miathan anyway? Forral thought. Has he somehow contrived to bring me here? Has he placed the mirror there, to hurt and confound me?
“Don’t be a damned fool, Forral,” he snarled at himself. “The bloody thing was there all the time. You wouldn’t have noticed it until you’d lit the candle.”
The mirror waited, hanging there, dark and enigmatic. The swordsman knew he couldn’t put it off forever. He had no choice but to look, and discover the truth. And Aurian—Aurian had fled from him with horror in her face. He shouldn’t be wasting time here—he ought to go after her, to find her, and reassure her that everything was all right.
Is it really? Will it ever be all right again? Forral ignored the insidious thought. Taking a deep breath, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled to the mirror.
The candle, held high to illuminate his features, began to tremble in Porral’s hand. He recognized the man in the mirror, though the tawny hair was longer now, and bleached by the sun. The face, too, was tanned; its features older, more firmly defined, more mature and confident than those of the terrified boy that Aurian had rescued and Forral had befriended. Aurian’s lover had become a man now—but Forral had displaced him.
“Oh Gods,” the swordsman groaned. His legs folded beneath him. He dropped slowly to his knees, moving like an old, old man, and put the candle down on the floor. He buried his face in his hands, as if to hide Anvar’s stolen features—as if to deny the truth. “What have I done?” he whispered. “What have I done?”
“What have you done?” The voice was unwontedly sharp. Aurian stood in the doorway, square-shouldered and resolute. Her jaw was clenched with determination, though her eyes glittered darkly with pain. He leapt to his feet, wanting desperately to run to her, to enfold her in his arms and comfort her as he had done when she was a child—but something in her face forbade him.—Anvar was not the only one who had matured, the swordsman thought. This was not the naive, trusting young girl he remembered. Even when they had become lovers, Aurian had still retained a quality of uncorrupted innocence at odds with the arrogant, invidious nature of the Mageborn. Why, up to the very last, she had still been trying her hardest to think well of that black-souled monster Miathan. In those days, Aurian had never made an issue of her magic, preferring indeed to play down the legacy of her Mage blood in the company of Mortals. Now, he could see the power blazing from her. Her gaunt, grim face was that of a warrior, with the pain-chiseled features and guarded eyes that had looked too often on suffering, betrayal, and death. A shiver passed through him as he remembered the little girl he had warded and guided long ago. What in the name of all the Gods had been happening to her, while he had not been there to protect her?
Forral couldn’t hide his bitter disappointment. “Is that all you have to say to me after all this time? Aurian, don’t you recognize me?”
Grince’s last stub of candle guttered and went out, and the blackness pounced on him like a lurking wild beast. Supposing the ghosts of the Magefolk realty did exist? Grince wished, right now, that he had left the Academy and its hidden secrets alone. Using the candle stubs that he always carried in his pocket, he had made his way through the sewers and managed to find a crevice that led into the tunnels beneath that Hargorn had told him about. It had seemed a good idea at the time—clearly Pendral’s guards didn’t dare follow him into the haunted lair of the Magefolk—but he had never imagined that the tangle of passages beneath the promontory would be so complex. Even before the light had railed, he’d been wandering around these tunnels for what seemed like hours, and he was well and truly lost.
The thief was exhausted, and desperately thirsty. He hurt from his aching head, hit by the swinging iron hook, to the scorched soles of his feet. He was scratched in a hundred places from his headlong flight through Pendral’s shrubbery (wouldn’t you know that the crafty bastard would have filled his garden full of thorns?) and bruised and aching from his fall. The shallow sword cut in his leg was stinging, and his shoulder and side were stiff with dried blood where the dog’s great teeth had torn him. That was the worst of his injuries by far. Every step jarred it into an explosion of blinding pain.—The darkness of the underground tunnels pressed close around him and the air was dusty and stale, making it difficult to breathe. Grince crept slowly along the passage, feeling his way along the rough-hewn wall with both hands and shuffling like an old man so as not to trip or stumble on the uneven stone floor. So much for the ghosts of the bloody Magefolk, he thought bitterly. My chief enemy in this place is my own accursed stupidity. Why didn’t I just stay in the sewers until the coast was clear?
It was greed that had brought him into the Academy archives. Greed and curiosity. Once he had shaken off his pursuers he should have given up the insane scheme and gone home, but he knew he would never have the nerve to come here again and had been unable to resist the challenge to explore. Surely there must be something of value down here! “Something of value, my arse,” the thief muttered sourly. Why had he been so stupid? Right now he could be sitting by the fire, warm and well fed, with his injuries treated and a mug of ale in his hand. A small, cold knot of panic began to form in Grince’s chest.—His heart began to race and clammy sweat sprang out on his skin. I’ve got to get out of here! He never did remember starting to run. The next thing he knew, he was falling.
The impact knocked the breath from him before his scream had become more than a squeak. Grince lay there, gasping, until his heart stopped trying to hammer its way out through his ribs. For one appalling second, he had not known how far he would fall—it could have been one foot, or one thousand. Not since he had been a child and the soldiers had attacked Jarvas’s refuge had he known such abject terror. He supposed he must have started running when he had panicked, and had simply run into thin air as the level of the passage dropped. A shudder ran through him as he realized how lucky he had been. Right now, he might only just be hitting the bottom of a chasm.
“Grince, you damned idiot! That’s where panic gets you,” he told himself, merely for the comfort of hearing a voice in the black and silent void.—Cautiously, he eased himself up into a sitting position and began to feel his limbs for damage. Apart from some bruising, however, and the feeling that every bone in his body had been jolted loose, he seemed to have taken little harm—though when he got out of here, he assured himself grimly, he would probably find that his hair had turned white. Feeling around himself in the darkness, he discovered that he had fallen down three steps into a shallow alcove in the passage wall. Grince stiffened, as his groping fingers encountered a different texture: smoother, warmer than the rugged stone of the tunnel. Of course—there was a door in the alcove, and the steps led down to it. Even as the thought crossed his mind, the smooth wood slipped slowly away from the pressure of his fingers, and left him reaching out into empty space.—The creak of the hinges sounded loud in the shattered silence, and Grince felt a sudden cold draft on his face as the unlatched door swung open.