Obsidian Mirror (32 page)

The Replicant eased Sarah aside and walked toward Wharton, who pointed the shotgun with tense resolve.

Janus didn’t pause. “Even if you fire, you’ll find nothing happens to me. I am not here. How can you kill a reflection?” It stalked into the Monk’s Walk and glanced down the dark stone corridor, then back, appraisingly, at Wharton. “Look at you. A rational man, an educator of the young. And yet after less than a week in his company, what has Venn done to you? He has taken your mind and twisted it to believe impossible things.”

Wharton said, “Sarah. Come over here.”

She stepped across to him. She couldn’t see Piers—surely he must be staying close to the mirror. She said quietly, “It’s true. You can’t hurt him. But he can hurt you.”

Wharton glanced at her. She was staring at the Replicant with a bitter hatred.

The image of Janus smiled. It made to stride swiftly down the Monk’s Walk, but Wharton did not move and they came face-to-face under the vaulted roof. Icy winds whipped snow through the open arches; far below, Sarah heard the roar of the swollen river in its winter flood.

“You don’t get past me,” Wharton growled.

The Replicant shook its head. “You have no idea what I am. Or what she is. You’re so out of your depth,
you’ve drowned and you don’t know it. Get out of my way,
old
man.”

Wharton scowled. “I’ve faced down bigger men than you in…”

He stopped, astonished. Janus had turned sideways and vanished.

He spun around. The dark figure of the Replicant was walking swiftly down the corridor. Snow gusted through the lean shape. It turned and laughed, and then whistled, and behind it the shadow of a wolf slunk at its heels.

Sarah grabbed Wharton. “We have to protect the mirror.”

“I really fail to see how.”

She tugged the chain with the half coin from her neck. “If all else fails,” she said, “with this.” She held it up.
“Summer! I call you. I need you. Now!”

Maskelyne had only time to yell “Becky!” before the wolf raced in from the dark and leaped on his back. He fell and it was on him; he rolled and gasped to find its white teeth snapping at his throat.

He gave a wild cry of terror, scrabbling for the dropped gun.

Rebecca froze. For a moment she could not even breathe. Then she dived for the glass weapon and whipped it around.

She raised it, double-handed, and pointed it straight at the wolf.

But there was a man in the way.

He was standing there, bewildered, a stout, perspiring mustachioed stranger in a red dressing gown. He was staring blankly at the wolf, in a sort of horror, and he said something, but she didn’t know what, because at the sound of the whisper, the beast swiveled, its sapphire eyes glittering with instant new greed.

“Good God!” Symmes backed away.

“Fresher prey,” Maskelyne gasped. “He’s just
journeyed.
”

Rebecca swung the weapon. The wolf jumped. Symmes screamed, a sound that made Rebecca’s fingers clutch and slip on the trigger.

Then he, and the wolf, were gone.

They burst back through the black mirror in a furious tangle of flailing limbs, the man and the white-furred beast a tight confusion of violence. Venn moved instantly. He grabbed the wolf and hauled it away, but it was a thing that twisted and dissolved through his fingers, it snarled and backed, its great muzzle snuffling, bewildered, toward Moll.

She screeched, ducking behind Jake.

But already they saw it was fading, its whiteness clotting. Whining, it squirmed around, biting at its
own tail as if it would devour itself, but now they could see through it, and even as it died it tried to leap, but Jake held Moll safe. With a shiver that struck deep into his heart he felt the thing fling itself over him. Become nothing more than a jagged spark that briefly lit the keyhole.

And then nothing at all.

Outside, there was a brief silence.

Then the butler’s voice. “Mr. Symmes! Sir!”

“He’s fine,” Venn yelled quickly. “Don’t shoot. We’re coming out.”

He already had the bracelet off Symmes’s wrist. The man was in a state of compete collapse; he sat huddled on the rug, his eyes closed, his breathing a strangled gasp. Venn went to the desk, swept papers aside, snatching up every notebook and journal he could find.

Jake picked himself up and helped Moll to stand. Even her composure was shattered; her eyes were wide and terrified under her tangled hair.

“Come on.” Venn grabbed Jake’s elbow and hauled him toward the vacuum of the mirror.

“No! Wait!”

“That wolf must have been in the Abbey!”

“Yes I know, but what about Moll?” He dragged to a stop.

Venn clasped the snake tight on his own wrist. “Not our problem. She’ll be fine.”

“We take her with us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Jake stared at her; she smiled back, wan. “Don’t worry, Jake. You can come back and see me anytime, can’t you?”

Numb, he nodded. He had a sudden understanding of her misery here; saw she would probably die young, in some stinking cholera-ridden slum. Her faith in him made him ashamed. He turned to Venn. “Take her. Come back for me.”

For no more than a second Venn’s ice gaze flashed over her. Then, without a flicker of pity he said, “No.”

“He’s right.” Moll was moving backward, to the door. “I won’t let you. I’ll be out under the rozzers’ arms and running, Jake. No worries.” Tears stood in her eyes.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Course you can. Go on. Go now.”

“Come out of there!” the voice in the corridor thundered. With a great lurch, the chest of drawers was shunted away; the door shuddered its way inward.

Venn said, “Good-bye Moll,” and his cold clasp hauled Jake headlong into the mirror.

He looked back, but the room was already so incredibly distant, she was tiny as a doll, her face lost in shadows.
“I’ll come back,”
he breathed, but she was gone, and for a moment that had no measurement he was alone
in a terrible, dimensionless space, alone and desolate, a small spark of light in an immense, whirling star-field.

Which was suddenly snow.

He gasped in the bitter cold.

He and Venn were standing knee-deep in drifts before Wintercombe, under a sky of breathtaking stars, and out of the Wood, Gideon was walking, and he carried, high on a pole, the skull of the Gray Mare, its white jaw clacking in the howling gale.

Behind him, in a rustling, ramshackle flock, came the Host of the Shee.

T
HE CATS CAME
into the Long Gallery. Seven in a line, their tails high, they padded and prowled down its silent length.

Outside, faint through the casements, the drums of the Shee pounded. Flame light rippled on the pargeted ceiling.

One by one the inky identical shadows climbed and dropped and searched. They leaped on chairs, under tables. They slid in through any open door. They sat and scratched on books, sprawled on the piled papers of desks.

One of them looked up at the jar.

It was blue and white and the cat’s pupils widened
as it jerked, very slightly. Once, then again.

Nearer the edge of the high shelf.

The cat climbed quickly up, padded along the tops of buckling books, and crouched. It lay in a flat slant of fascination, its fur bunched, its tail fat. When the jar shuddered again it reached out, one swift, exploring paw.

The jar toppled. It slid and rolled. It crashed into porcelain slivers and the cat bolted to the safety of an armchair, green eyes wide.

Piers, dusty, hot, and irritated, stood on the floor and spat out shards of pot. Then he glared at the cats. “What the hell took you so long?” he snarled.

Maskelyne picked himself up. Rebecca said anxiously, “Are you hurt?” but he didn’t answer her; he was gazing at something behind her. She turned, fast.

The Replicant smiled at her.

As Sarah and Wharton ran in they saw Rebecca whisk the glass weapon quickly behind her back.

Sarah glanced around. Where in God’s name was Piers?

Casually pushing through the broken remnants of the web, the Replicant walked right up to the obsidian mirror. It stood and looked at its reflection in the glass, the lank hair, the neat dark uniform, with a mild, humorless smile.

The mirror rippled. Wharton saw it clearly; a vibration that traveled within the glass, as if some unbearable tension had been set up.

Maskelyne must have seen it too. He stepped out, anxious. “Don’t stand so close. Keep away from it!”

Janus spared him a swift, interested stare. “So there was an anomaly! It was you on the bridge last night. What sort of journeyman are you?”

Maskelyne said, “Journeyman?”

“Don’t play the innocent. Has ZEUS sent reinforcements?”

“No one sent me. I belong to no group. I travel alone.”

Behind the Replicant, Wharton edged sideways, toward Rebecca. From the corner of his eye he saw that Sarah was standing just inside the open doorway. She was listening intently.

The creature seemed intrigued. “Alone! How?”

Maskelyne kept his eyes away from Rebecca. He seemed for a moment to be subtly altered, his dark hair longer, his face unmarked, but as he moved into the light, the scar was back, the jagged violence of it ageing him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, quiet. And then, “Step back. The mirror is troubled at your presence. It rejects you.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I can feel it.”

The Replicant stepped forward, calmly. “Can you? A wretched scarred thief from some lost stinking city? Don’t tell me—you really think the mirror is yours. That it has some sort of loyalty to you. That’s a common delusion for journeymen, did you know that? A slow, helpless fall into insanity. Unless of course, you’re different.” A glimmer of fascination lit its eyes behind the blue lenses. “Are you different? Was it you who created the mirror?”

Maskelyne came forward too, so that they both stood before the glass.

“Perhaps the mirror created me,
” he whispered.

And even as Wharton heard Sarah’s indrawn breath he saw it too, all of them were reflected in that obsidian darkness, all except Maskelyne. Where his reflection should have been, there was only the smooth image of the room.

The Replicant looked as astonished as any of them; there was a confused envy in its voice. “Now that
is
interesting.” Suddenly it caught Wharton’s stealthy movement and turned. Wharton froze, so near to Rebecca, he might have touched her. Behind his back, he felt the cold grip of the glass weapon as she slipped it into his hand.

Janus swung back to Maskelyne. “In fact, you’re wrong about me. I have no intention of harming the
Chronoptika. Quite the contrary. You see, I’m not the enemy. She is.” It pointed a bitten fingernail at Sarah, where she stood alone, in the shattered web.