Heart's Blood

Muirne’s neat brows went up; her lambent eyes were incredulous.“The mirrors can’t harm you,” she said. “Just don’t look in them.”

I swallowed hard and moved on, trying not to glance to either side. But the mirrors made it difficult. From either side of me came their voices, Look here! Look here!, and try as I might, I could not ignore their pleas.With my skin crawling and my heart beating like a drum, I glanced to the right and into the surface of a tall, thin artifact in a dark metal frame. A figure stared back out at me: myself, yet not myself, for though she wore my clothing and bore the shape of my features and my body, she was white-haired and old, her skin wrinkled with time, her mouth not full-lipped and red like mine but seamed and tired, the flesh of her face fallen onto the bones, so I could see death’s touch on her. She smiled at me, revealing shrunken gums in which a few blackened teeth still maintained precarious hold.

My heart knocking, I walked on. Here to the left, a round mirror, artfully made, on a curious three-legged stand with little iron feet. The surface highly polished metal, perhaps bronze; in it, smoke and fire, and from it a roaring, crackling sound, as if I were looking, not into a reflection, but through a window to a scene of terror and destruction.And amid the flames a woman’s voice crying out: Help! Help me! The words turned into a hideous, wrenching scream, and I knew the fire had taken her. I ran after Muirne, glimpsing here a clutching hand, there a pair of anguished eyes, there a scene of snow falling over pines, there a maelstrom of twisting, tangling monsters.

At the far door I stopped to recover myself, leaning on the frame, eyes clenched shut, chest heaving. I told myself I would not be sick again, not indoors, and not in Muirne’s company. I fought to get my breathing under control.

“I’m sorry,” Muirne said, fishing a handkerchief from her pouch and putting it in my hand.“I did not realize you were so disturbed.” She waited patiently while I mopped my eyes, blew my nose and tried to compose myself. “Would you prefer to leave the clothing until later?”

“No,” I gulped, opening my eyes and squaring my shoulders. “Let’s go on. Muirne, is that the great hall? Was there a fire at some stage?”

“Yes.” She offered no more.

We went on through a maze of passageways, then up a long spiral of narrow stone steps.Without ever going outside, we had reached one of the towers. The treads were as worn in the middle as the ones leading to my bedchamber. There were landings, some with rooms opening from them, but Muirne did not pause long enough for me to get more than a quick glimpse in. I had thought perhaps this was the north tower, but where I caught a view from a window I saw no trace of the sea, only dark forest untouched by the light of the rising sun. Another showed mist hanging low over bare fields, which was entirely wrong for any side of the fortress, as far as I knew. The higher we climbed, the harder the claws of unease gripped my stomach.

We reached the topmost landing.There was a low door leading from it.

“It’s in here,” said Muirne.

The little chamber held two storage chests and a colony of spiders, but nothing else save a steep stairway in one corner leading to a trapdoor up above. It was open; I glimpsed pale sky.

“You wish to climb up?” Muirne asked. “There is a wide view from the top: the hill, the settlement, the region all around.”

No! shrieked a little voice inside me.After the mirrors, I simply wanted to get my clothing and go. But Muirne was making an unusual effort to be friendly. I should do the same. “All right,” I said. “Provided it’s safe.You go first.”

I was somewhat relieved, on emerging at the top of the tower, to find that it was securely edged by a waist-high stone wall. I had wondered if the view would be as odd and changeable as the vistas from those windows, but I looked out over the hillside and, turning, saw slow smoke rising from the morning fires of the settlement at its foot, and sheep grazing on level ground to the north of the wooded rise. In the distance was a blue-gray smudge that must be the sea. It was not so very far off. To the northeast, along the coast, I could see another settlement with a defensive palisade around it. “What is that place, my lady?” I asked.

“It lies beyond the borders of Anluan’s territory.” Unspoken but plain in her tone was, Therefore it does not matter.

I looked closer to home.The garden still slept. Down below the towers the sun had not reached the wilderness of bush and briar, the dark pond and the shadowy edges of the woodland. I caught a glimpse of Olcan striding out through a little archway in the fortress wall with a scythe over his shoulder. Fianchu bounded ahead.

“Where is the farm?” I asked. “Magnus spoke of cows and other stock.”

“Down below the wall.” She was thrifty with words.