"You have misused your position," Ylith said to Mack. "You were not sent through space and time to seduce maidens with your devil-given gift of language. You are supposed to be working in a serious contest dealing with important matters, not flibberti-gibbeting around like an adolescent gazook. I am going to lodge a strong complaint with the Board of Governors about your behavior. And in-the meantime, I shall see to it that you don't repeat your unwarrantable actions."
"Lady, listen, you've got me wrong," Mack said, and was about to explain in detail what had actually happened. But Ylith wasn't interested in listening to the lies of a not-bad-looking young yellow-haired seducer with a spell for languages.
Ylith said, "I'm going to put you where you can do no further mischief until I get a definite ruling on this case. It's the Mirror Prison for you, my lad."
Mack raised his hands to remonstrate. But he wasn't quick enough. Nothing comes on faster than the spell of an irate witch. Between two blinks of an eye and a lightning-fast gesture of long, blood-red fingernails, Ylith was gone. Or so it seemed at first. But when Mack looked more closely, he saw that it was him self who was gone. Or, if not gone, at least somewhere else.
He was in a small room with mirrors. There were mirrors on all the walls, floor, and ceiling. There seemed to be more mirrors than the number of walls would accommodate. They formed reflecting quicksilver tunnels and precipices, a baroque topography of mirrors. He saw himself reflected and re-reflected in a hundred mirrors at a hundred angles. He turned, and saw himself turn in a myriad of surfaces. He took a tentative step forward and saw his doubles do the same, though some seemed to go backwards. Another step, and he bumped into a mirror. He recoiled, and his many likenesses did the same, except for a few who hadn't bumped into anything. Mack found it strange and somewhat sinister that some of his mirror images weren't doing what he was or what the others were doing. One of those aberrant images was sitting in an armchair reading a book; he looked up and winked at Mack. Another appeared to be sitting on a riverbank, fishing. He didn't look up. There was even one who was sitting backwards on a chair, legs stretched out, grinning into Mack's face. At least Mack assumed it was his face. Suddenly he was no longer sure what the front of his face was wearing.
Mack stared, disbelieving. A voice in his head said, "I'm going crazy!" And another voice said, "I wonder if they've left anything to read around here." Mack realized there was nothing he could do about any of it, and so he closed his eyes and tried to think pleasant thoughts.
CHAPTER 7
Mephistopheles flashed into existence in the Princess Irene's chambers, accompanied by a roiling of sulphurous yellow smoke that gave some hint of his mood. He had been plucked from his favorite chair in front of a nice log fire reading Memories of an Evil Childhood, one of the most inspirational books he had come across in a long time. He had just reached the place where the story's young demon hero-prince discovers the pleasures to be gotten from betraying those near and dear to him in morally ambiguous circumstances.
And then the telephone had sounded, tearing him out of his daydream, and he heard a message from one of the unseen witnesses to the contest, reporting that an interference of a serious nature had just occurred; viz., the protagonist had been unlawfully removed from the drama and exiled to a mirrored room of tumultuous reflecting surfaces.
Mephistopheles had had to put down his book and come hurrying to Constantinople, even though he was technically off duty at that moment. He didn't really resent it, though, because those who are serious about evil are ready to hurry off whenever the call to iniquity comes, leaving behind more passive pleasures when the chance to do something really bad comes up.
"Ylith," Mephistopheles said, "what are you trying to do? Why have you locked up Faust?"
"I am correcting a great wrong," Ylith said, with bravado, but with some of the certainty already leaking out of her, punctured by the demon's sharp look.
"What did you do with Faust?"
"I locked him up on a morals charge, that's what," Ylith said.
"Woman, how dare you! You have no right to interfere in this contest! You are here purely as an observer."
"As an observer," Ylith said with sudden asperity, "I have an observation to make. You have obviously been tampering with Faust and suggesting unsavory things to him, and permitting him to stray from the narrow path on which he has been set; otherwise explain how he finds the time to seduce innocent princesses when he should be making one of the choices offered in the situation?" "Me? You dare accuse me? I had nothing to do with it!" Mephistopheles replied hotly. "If he seduced the wench, he did so on his own responsibility!"
Then they both remembered that Princess Irene was there. They turned and looked at her, then at each other. They reached an unspoken agreement. Ylith raised an eyebrow; Mephistopheles nodded. Ylith produced a small Sleep Spell, light as fairy's down, which she cast over the princess. It carried sleep, with a retrograde memory blank-out for the last half hour. With Irene safely out of the way, and Mack still in his mirrored prison, Ylith turned to Mephistopheles, fury in her dark blue eyes.
"It's all your fault! And don't think to get around me with blandishments and so-called learned arguments.
Remember, I was once of your camp." "Woman, control yourself," Mephistopheles said. "The Language Spell I gave to Faust was simply to enable him to operate in this oriental babble of tongues. Anyhow, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, you can't just take the protagonist out of the drama. That's a worse crime than anything Faust might have done." "You are a liar," Ylith said.
Mephistopheles nodded. "Yes, of course, but what has that got to do with it?"
"I want Faust replaced with a more moral creature!"
"Woman, you presume! There is no place for dogmatic moral judgments in Heaven or in Hell. Release Faust at once!"
"No! I am not yours to command!"
Mephistopheles glared at her, then, reaching into the pouch he carried under his cloak, he took out a small red portable telephone. He punched a number into it—999—the number of the Beast upside down—which is the number of the Angel—and stood, tapping his toe.
"Who did you call?" Ylith asked. "One who will talk a little sense into you, I hope."
In a moment there was a puff of light-colored smoke, and a chord of harp music. The Archangel Michael appeared, looking annoyed, dripping wet, and dressed only in a very large fluffy white towel. "What is the emergency?" he said, as annoyed as an archangel ever gets. "I was just having my bath."
"You're always in the bath," Mephistopheles commented.
"So what? You know what they say about cleanliness."
"It is a vile canard! Evil is easily as fastidious as Good. Cleanliness itself is neutral. But we have no time for disputation."
"Correct. Why have you called me here?"
Michael turned to Ylith. His broad brow was puckered into an expression of annoyance rarely seen on the brow of an archangel. His face had taken on the contours of bemused quizzicality. "Removed Faust?
Can this be true?"
Ylith, in a voice not quite as certain as before, but still defiant, said, "What was I to do? His Faust was seducing the princess Irene."
Michael said, "And who is the princess Irene? No, don't tell me. It doesn't matter who the princess Irene is. Why by all that is holy did you see fit to interrupt our Millennial contest because of some silly little seduction?"