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This chapter is dedicated to The Ferrett, who actually reviewed. To those who actually read this far; thank you. If you could leave a review, even just to say that you liked it or to tell my why you didn't, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanx. echonymph
Chapter II
Sitara lounged on her new bed; examining the antique mirror Asha had presented her with. She rolled her eyes; Asha must positively delight in being mysterious. That is what you got, she supposed, when you have and old soul in a young body. She sighed; like both her living siblings she had inherited the magics of her ancestors, but unlike them she found herself loath to use them in more than small amounts.
“What’s so great about that thing?” Daruka complained, looking over her shoulder. Sitara jumped; Daruka had a knack of appearing just as suddenly and as silently as Manjit, and usually didn’t even realize that he was doing so.
“I don’t know. It’s a thing of magic, extent of my knowledge.” She rolled off the bed, setting the thing down on the vanity. “It creeps me out; that isn’t glass in there,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself as if chilled as Daruka leaned down to get a better look at the thing without picking it up.
“It could be a kind of glass, maybe obsidian?” he asked, rapping on it. It chimed, and the siblings looked at each other in surprise.
“It’s crystal,” Sitara breathed.
Daruka smirked “Now she likes it. Too bad it’s magic, otherwise we could hawk it on eBay or something.”
Sitara threw a pillow at him, “Get out of here and go to bed.” He laughed, and Sitara had to smile once he was out the door. She turned back to look at the mirror, and her smile vanished, a shiver running along her spine. Four quick steps brought her to the vanity, and she placed the mirror on its face.
The room seemed to warm a little. Sitara sighed, stretching her neck. Why did the thing make her so nervous? With one last uneasy glance at the mirror, she went off to get ready for bed.
Darkness. So it was night in the outside world. Or he was still stuck in that box. He still wondered about that. Gesine hadn’t done it; he was too useful to her. Some other mage probably. He had never heard of a human being used for the Slave in the Mirror; so why should they even so much as think that there was anything but a demon trapped behind the Black Glass?
Hesitantly, Rune stretched a hand out to touch the glass. It didn’t yield to him. He was either still swathed in black silk, or the Mirror was facedown. Rune sank to his knees, clutching his blond hair in his hands. He was trapped. He couldn’t even look outside, like he had for Gesine. Granted, she had only had him search for women who became lovelier than herself, and then follow her stepdaughter around, but it was still more freedom than this. He was going mad in here. At least in that box he hadn’t been conscious to wait out the centuries he knew had passed. What was the world like now? What were the people like?
Did he really even want to know?
Rune looked at his reflection in the Black Glass that imprisoned him, for him almost as large as his torso, but outside the mirror little smaller than a woman’s face. He hadn’t aged; he never would, not until the curse was broken. That didn’t mean he was the same. His eyes were so much older now, half-mad with inactivity and full of anguish.
Within the confines of the Mirror, Rune waited for dawn and the face of his new Bearer.
Rune bolted upward, staring at the glass. Light and darkness swirled within the Black Crystal, spiraling away from the center. Rune shielded eyes no longer used to anything but the half-light of his prison, then looked up into the face of who he supposed was his new bearer. He stared in shock.
“A child?” he said incredulously. The girl had a sweet, smiling face with pale blue eyes framed by long, strait black hair. He considered her cautiously; she would be a beauty someday, but he had learned from Gesine not to trust to outer beauty.
“Hello,” the girl said cheerfully. “What’s your name?”
“Rune,” he replied guardedly. “I take it that you’re my new master?”
“No,” came the surprising reply. “In order to be your master, I would have to see your face.”
“But you’re looking right at—oh.” Rune stared at the pale eyes. “You’re blind.”
“Yes, so I’ve given you to my sister; she’s asleep though. My name is Asha, hers is Sitara.”
Rune regarded Asha’s dusky complexion, “Those are not Christian names,” he observed. Had he fallen into the hands of pagans or heretics? He didn’t suppose it mattered anymore, but still, look what Gesine had done, and she knew about Hell. The thought may have been unjust, but having been raised in the Holy Roman Empire, Rune had a rather blighted view of any religion but Christianity.
“They’re Sanskrit; Indian. Our mother is a Hindu, our father is a Christian.”
“Mixed-raced? I can’t imagine that your neighbors have treated you very leniently. There must be many people you wish vengeance upon,” he said with resignation. One of the first acts common for a mirror slave's master to command was the punishment of those who had wronged them.
“Different times, dude,” said a different voice. A young man about his own age—well, at least the age he appeared to be—looked over the little girl’s shoulder. From his dark hair and complexion, he appeared to be her brother, but he had a kind of glow about him that she did not…
“You’re dead!” Rune exclaimed in shock.
“So are you, technically,” the man retorted, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder to lean in better for a better look.
“This is my older brother, Manjit. He died as an infant—“
“—But I couldn’t leave my family if they still needed me. I had to make sure that Daruka survived the separation surgery, even if I didn’t, and then Sitara came along.” He shrugged.
“You’re dead; you are not supposed to walk among the living,” Rune said flatly.
“How would you know? Maybe there’s a purpose in my being here. It’s not like I’ve ever seen a light or anything. When God wants me, He’ll send for me. Whether it’s to Heaven or to be reincarnated, I don’t know,” the man said philosophically, as if it were the weather of which he spoke and not the fate of his immortal soul.
“It’s almost breakfast, so we have to go,” Asha informed him.
“Please leave the Mirror face-up,” he begged. “I cannot see out when the Mirror is facedown.”
Asha smiled, “Manjit will show you around later, after Sitara lets you out,” and with that startling statement, she skipped off.
Asha had left the Mirror propped up on the table so that he could see the entire room. It was lovely and strange at the same time, decorated in cool turquoise and sapphire, emerald, violet and lavender. The circular bed was canopied with translucent gauze curtains of different shades, resulting in the appearance of moving water. More thin curtains fluttered in the open windows, and crystal wind chimes refracted the light off of many tiny, circular mirrors hidden throughout the room, giving one the feeling of being inside of an opal. The vanity he was on was across from the windows; the door was to his left and the bed to his right.
This Sitara seemed to have made a shrine out of each corner of the octagonal room. In one corner there was a bubbling fountain with three layers, the topmost being an elephant with water coming out of his trunk. Sloping waterfalls were built around the tiers as well, creating two streams framing the fountain’s falls. In these were placed many colored stones, creating a babbling brook counterpoint to the sound of falling water. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there were fish in the bottom tier.
Next to that was some sort of stone vanity with tiers of plants growing on it. It was actually between the windows, and overrun with flowers and garlands, both real and silk. He wondered momentarily how she had gotten those to grow so fast, then reminded himself that these people, half-cultured as they were, could pull on magics he knew nothing about.
Moving eastward, there seemed to be some sort of shrine to a Hindu God or Goddess. Rune couldn’t tell; it seemed to have characteristics of both. It seemed to be dancing, with one leg raised to hip height and its many arms positioned gracefully. Incense oil boiled in a crucible above a small brazier before the idol, and this spot in the room alone held vivid reds, yellows, and oranges.
That was the extent of his sight to his right. To his left was what appeared to be a mini-shrine to trees, with a small, healthy sapling in an ornamental clay pot surrounded by baskets of wax fruit. The tree pulsed with vitality and content to his eyes, and as he watched, opened up several buds in an instant.
This Sitara, whoever she was, must be one of the strongest mages he had ever encountered. These were difficult spells; he could see the intricate weavings of magic. To have so many spells intermingling in such proximity to each other and not interfere...it was mind-boggling the kind of skill one must have. He counted at least five separate spells on the plants alone!
One thing in the room puzzled him, however, and that was a single small table placed directly under the center of the domed ceiling, holding only a small orb that was seemingly covered in pinpricks and dashed lines. It wasn’t a crystal ball, although he could sense that there was one in the room, and he had no idea what it could be.
Just then, the door next to the tree shrine opened, and a young woman walked into the room, humming softly. Rune stared. She wore the same draping clothing her younger sister had worn, only in a brilliant sapphire that made her warm brown skin seem to glow. He thought at first that her wide, multicolored eyes were outlined in charcoal, but then he realized that the effect was her eyelashes, which were the longest and thickest that he had ever seen. She was beautiful, and he could only think that it was a good thing Gesine wasn’t alive, because she couldn’t hold a candle to this young woman, and would have gone mad with jealousy.
“My God,” he breathed.
The young woman jumped, whirling around. “Who’s there?” she called, looking around. Rune held his tongue, wishing the little blind girl was there. If this Sitara didn’t know about him yet, she might react badly to his presence.
Sitara looked about cautiously, searching for the source of the voice. Her gaze fell on the mirror Asha had given her. Slowly she approached it. Was there something in there moving around? She froze; inside the circle of silver frame, an astonished young man with green eyes and blond hair stared at her as if he had never seen anything like her in his life. That, oddly enough, irritated her; he was staring out of a mirror, and he thought she was strange?
“What are you staring at?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips.
“I—My apologies. I didn’t mean to stare,” he said, looking away from her.
She softened a little. “What are you doing in there?” Pulling out her stool she sat facing the small mirror.
“I—That is, well…”
Rune felt himself turning what must be an astounding shade of red. He told himself that it was because he hadn’t had much contact for so long, but the truth was that he had never really been able to talk to women. Girls, yes; elder women, certainly, but woman his own age? Not unless they were married, completely ugly, or related to him. It had been something of a running jest among his circle in the Empire.
“Why don’t you come out of there?” Sitara asked him.
“I cannot, I am trapped,” he said in despair.
She raised an eyebrow, “Oh really?” Reaching out, she calmly plucked the mirror from the vanity and held it up before her. Rune experience a brief state of vertigo then fell hard on carpeted floor, although his landing made no sound.
“Huh,” Sitara said, gazing into the mirror. “So you’re still alive; your body is still in there.”
Rune looked around himself in amazement, and then looked up at the mirror. “I have never seen the Mirror from the outside before,” he said. He looked down at himself and was alarmed to see that he was transparent. A thin silver cord connected him with the mirror. “You expunged my spirit?”
“Sure. I thought you were just a ghost possessing the mirror, but I guess you were put in there, body and all. Nice bit of work, that.” She placed the mirror back on the vanity and held out a hand to help him up. “I’m Sitara.”
“L-Rune,” he said, almost giving her his real name, which could have been disastrous. Real names had power, and she already had more power over him than he wanted. Reflexively he took her hand, and was shocked when his didn’t go through it.
“Nice outfit,” the woman commented. “Hey, Manjit!” she called, and the ghost from that morning materialized before them.
“Hey, you’re out!” the man cried happily.
Sitara rolled her eyes, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got to take a shower; could you keep an eye on him please?” she said, wagging her fingers in his direction as if he were a recalcitrant child that couldn’t be left alone before pivoting and heading for a door next to the vanity.
Rune stared after her as she walked off, quite as if she broke powerful, ancient curses every day.
Manjit regarded him with amusement. “You get used to it after awhile. Between her and Asha, there’s never a dull day around here.”