Obsidian Mirror

9

What is a reflection? Where doth it exist…in the eye, or in the glasse? What properties in the light return us to our selves? Is it divine revelation, or doth the devyl taunt us with our imperfections?

Above all, this. How can any man be certayn that what he sees in the mirror is true?

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

“THAT WAS DELICIOUS,” Wharton said.

“So glad you enjoyed it.” Piers piled the dishes on a tray.

“I’ll take those,” Sarah said quickly. She took the tray and went out with it. She hadn’t eaten much, Wharton thought, and she had seemed tense, on edge. Once, when something had howled far off in the Wood, she had almost jumped, and gone over to the window and stared out at the bleak day for a long time. People must be looking for her. Really, he ought just to phone the police.

He said, “I’m sorry Jake is so late. He’s a bit…preoccupied.”

Piers nodded. “Secretive?”

“Most certainly.”

“Hell to teach?”

“Believe me, you have no idea.” Wharton stirred his coffee. “So, Mr. Piers. It must be pleasant having your niece here working with you.”

Piers’s smile never flickered. Today he was wearing a butler’s outfit, smoothly black over a red waistcoat, the tailcoat ridiculously long. He had already tripped over it once. “Most pleasant, yes.”

Now he leaned against the table.

They gazed at each other; it was Wharton who broke first. He tapped the newspaper, suddenly impatient. “It’s odd then that there’s a picture of a girl in here who looks just like Sarah. A young woman who’s absconded from—”

“I saw that.” Piers swept up the crumbs. “An amazing resemblance. They say everyone in the world has a double, you know. A sort of reflection of oneself.”

“Do they?”

“Of course, this other poor girl who’s run away…we don’t know what she’s running from. Those places must be hell. Not that His Excellency would care. He’s not the sort to hide fugitives.”

“Unless she could be of some use to him.”

Piers smiled, but it was a brittle effort. “Yes. Unless that.” His gaze fixed on the window. “Ah. Here they are.”

Wharton stood and saw Venn stride swiftly out of the Wood, and to his surprise, Jake stalk behind him, obviously freezing, and even more obviously, furious.

Piers turned hastily. “Whoops. I fear lunch might not be wanted. I’ll just take the rest of the dishes down.” Wharton held the door open for him and he stepped out with a tray, vanishing discreetly as Venn barged into the entrance hall in an icy draft that gusted right up the corridor. Jake hurtled after him, mid-shout.

“I’ll make you talk to me! First off, you lied. All right, maybe you didn’t kill him. But you know what happened to him. This machine she was talking about…”

“He’s not dead. He’s lost.”

“Then find him. You’re the explorer. You can’t just—”

“Jake.” It was the first time Venn had used his name. It stopped him. He saw that the tall man had turned at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister, at bay like a trapped animal. “Jake, listen to me. Your father is lost. He’s not here. He’s not anywhere I can find him. He’s lost in time.”

Jake shook his head. “What sort of rubbish is that?”

“I wish it was. I wish to God I had never meddled with it. But I did and now I have to go on. Whatever it costs.” He looked weary and haggard, Wharton thought. No, haunted. He looked like a man who sees a ghost in every mirror. Except that there were no mirrors in this house.

Venn turned away. “I’ll talk to you about this later.”

“You’ll talk to me now!” Jake leaped up the stairs, right up to the man, so close that Wharton hurried forward. He had seen too many schoolboy brawls not to recognize the sudden urge for violence.

Venn didn’t move. His eyes were as cold as winter. “I should get rid of you,” he breathed.

There was a terrible moment of silence.

Until the phone rang. It erupted like a small explosion in the charged air.

They all looked at the old black telephone on its shelf in the hall, as if they barely remembered what it was.

Then Piers had slid out of the kitchen and was answering, the abruptly cut-off ringing still echoing in the high vaulted ceiling.

“Wintercombe Abbey,” he said, his voice prim and high. “Yes. Yes…Certainly. One moment please.” He turned to Jake and held out the receiver. “It’s for you.”

Jake stared. Then he came and took it. At once Venn stalked up the stairs and slammed a distant door. Piers glanced at Wharton and went back to the kitchen. After a moment, awkward, Wharton took himself off up the stairs too. At the landing he paused and looked down. Jake was talking quietly, into the receiver.

Thank God for whoever that was.

Because, for a moment there, it had all looked very nasty.

“Sorry? Who is this?” Jake snapped.

“You don’t know me, Mr. Wilde, so my name would mean nothing to you. But I have some information for you. Something you might dearly want to know.”

The voice was a man’s, quiet, faintly husky.

Jake leaned with his back against the paneled wall. “Like what?”

There was a small breathy silence at the other end. A scratchy sound. Then the voice said, “I know where your father is.”

Jake kept very still. His hand shook a little, as if he was holding the receiver too tight. He said, “Where?”

“I can’t tell you that over the phone. The line might not be secure. You understand?”

Another scratchy sound. Was someone listening in? Piers? Jake said, “Yes. Okay. But how do you know?”

“I’m calling from the village. From the parking lot of the pub. Can you get here?”

“Yes, but…”

“Come at once, Mr. Wilde. Come alone. Then I assure you, I will explain everything.”

A click.

Silence.

He replaced the receiver slowly and looked around. Should he find Wharton? No time. And he didn’t want the hassle. He grabbed a coat that hung on a peg and went to the front door. It was warped with damp, and stiff; he pulled at it, but Piers said softly, “Going out again, Jake?”

He swung around, fast. “Maybe.”

The tiny, smiling man gave him the creeps. Always that mocking grin. As if he knew so much.

“It’s just that Mr. Venn would rather you didn’t leave the estate at the moment. In your state of mind.”

“Venn, or you?” Jake stepped forward. “Who’s really running this place, Piers? Because you seem to be the one in control around here.”

“I assure you, I’m just the slave of the lamp. The controller of the cameras.”

Jake was simmering, but he had to keep calm. He managed a bitter shrug. “I get it. So that’s how it is.”

“That, I’m afraid, is how it is. I’m sure by tomorrow you’ll be feeling a little better about things.”

“You can’t keep me a prisoner here.”

Piers shrugged. “It was you who wanted to come, Jake.”

Jake snorted. He walked past him, down a corridor lined with vases, not knowing or caring where he was going, striding around a corner and past a door that opened. A hand came out and grabbed him. “Jake. In here.”

Sarah looked worried. She stood in the dim scullery and whispered, “What’s going on? You and Venn?”

“Forget him. Sarah, listen, I need your help. Someone in the village has information about Dad. How do I get out of here without Piers knowing?”

“You have to be invisible,” she said softly.

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Well, there’s a side door that leads out by the Wintercombe. But the gates at the end of the drive will be locked, and Piers…”

“I’ll climb them. I don’t care if he sees me. Show me.”

She led him through a tiny stillroom to a black studded door. It took both of them to grind back the rusty bolts; when it creaked open, they found they were looking into shrubbery that had grown thickly over the door. Jake suddenly remembered what Gideon had said, and stared at her curiously. “I know you only came here yesterday. How did you know about this?”

She shrugged, irritated. The movement slid a small medal on a chain around her neck. It was one-half of what seemed to be a broken coin. “Maybe I know this place better than you think. Jake, listen! Try and get back before eight. I need to talk to you, because…”

He slipped out, impatient. “Because you lied about not seeing my father in that mirror? Get out of my way, Sarah. Tell me later.”

He had to hurry. Whoever made that call might not wait.

He was gone before she could explain, rustling into the dimness. Annoyed, she spared one glance around for traces of the wolf and then slid back in and closed the door, making sure the bolts were rammed tight. He was breathtakingly selfish. She needed an ally here. Someone to talk to.

She made herself stay calm. It was his loss. Because she would have shown him the journal. She kept it stuffed in her pocket now, afraid to leave it in her room, since Wharton had seen it.

And because she was afraid Janus would come looking for it.

She crept down past the kitchen and into the room called the Blue Closet. There she perched in a faded chair and looked at the gilt French clock as it pinged out three high notes. She had five hours, before…what?

The Chronoptika?

Suddenly cold, she pulled out the book and hastily found her place.

I said, “As you see, I’ve come.”

The scarred man nodded. “I was quite sure you would, Mr. Symmes. And I have the device, which, I assure you, is quite unique in this world.”

He indicated a veiled object on a table in the darkness, and moved an oil lamp, so that the slot of light fell across it. My eyes fixed on it, and I dare say my greed was perfectly visible to him. I whispered, “What is it?”

He did not answer. Instead he drew away the velvet cloth.

I saw a black slab. At first I thought it stone, but then as I moved, a thousand reflections of myself slid across it and vanished, and I realized it was glass, black glass, high as a man, smooth as a mirror. As I stepped closer I saw my features strangely slanted and shadowed. It was held upright in a narrow frame of silver, an angular design incised with letters of some alphabet unknown to me.

The man said, “It is pure obsidian. Volcanic glass forged in the deepest furnaces of the earth.”

I was fascinated.

I went to touch the mirror, but he forestalled me, quickly putting out his hand. “Not yet.”

I drew back. He waved me to a chair, but I remained on my feet. “How is a mere mirror a device of great power?” I asked, careful to sound casual. “Or do you and your confederate think to make a gull of me?”

He just gazed at me. His eyes were dark, his face half demon, half angel. I confess I found myself so mesmerized, my voice died to a pitiful silence.

Standing before the mirror, he said, “Let me explain. Some years ago, while clearing ground for building work in a remote district of London, workmen struck stone. Eagerly they uncovered it, and found a tomb. And then another. They had stumbled on a small, forgotten graveyard belonging to some long-demolished church. The tombs were ancient, their very existence lost. There was talk of plague-pits, of disease, and lurking horrors. The men refused to dig further and their employers became uneasy. So they called me in.”

“Why you?”

He smiled. “Because sir, I am a specialist in moving the dead.”

I thought then he must be a gallows-crow. A body-snatcher. One who robs graves for the insatiable anatomists of London’s hospitals. I said, “I see. But there would be nothing…fresh…there, surely.”

His dragging smile. “The owners wanted the site cleared. I desired knowledge. Does that surprise you? Maybe you are a mere amateur in the dark arts, Mr. Symmes. I am not. In that place I opened many unusual graves. Monks and nuns, soldiers and merchants. But one tomb was special. In it, I found this.”

His hand went out and gently caressed the mirror frame. I felt a shiver of jealousy, as if it were already mine.

“It was buried with a body?”

“No. That was the strange thing. There was no body, not even the smallest fragment of bone. But the tomb slab had a few words still legible, upon it, including the name MORTIMER DEE and below that ALCHEMIST AND PHILOSOPHER. Alchemist was a word that interested me deeply. The grave I would date from the 1660s or perhaps earlier.”

I stared, astonished, at this beggarly man who could read and who spoke like some scholar and yet was obviously a practiced rogue. Then I walked cautiously around the mirror. It gave a disconcerting twist to my reflection, as if some other Harcourt Symmes peered out of it. “And what does it do?”

He gazed at me. For a moment I thought I saw the depths of a great despair in him. He said, “It allows a man to walk through the doorway we call time.”

Sarah looked up. She gazed out at the darkening estate where the wolf and its handler waited for her.

“And make a hole in the world,” she whispered.

Jake kept out of the Wood. Whatever the Shee were, he had seen enough of them. He half expected Gideon to be waiting for him behind some oak tree, but the drive was dim and gloomy, and only the rooks looked down at him with their beady eyes.

He ran. It was already getting dark, the brief December day fading to a smoky twilight. Tomorrow was the shortest day, the solstice. Dad’s birthday. Dad always said it was his luck to have less daylight than anyone else, and to be so close to Christmas. He’d always insisted on having breakfast in bed to make up for it. Jake had had to bring it up on a tray—toast, usually burned, and black coffee. Once, when he was about nine, he’d put a picture of Mum on there and a rose in a thin vase, but his father had just put those aside and said “Nice try, old man,” and crunched the toast.

What was the point of remembering that now?

He raced all the way up the foggy drive, stopping only to gasp for breath, sure he was watched. The bare tree branches interlaced over his head. Finally he saw the dark metalwork of the gates emerge from the fog.

He avoided the small camera. It clicked and whirred—maybe Piers was searching for him. The fog was lucky; curling out of the damp ground, it would keep him hidden. He climbed the wall, his boots scraping against the mossy bricks, and jumped down the other side into the lane.

Then he took out his cell phone and called Rebecca.

Wharton stood rigid on the landing.

Of course he totally disapproved of eavesdropping, but there was no way he was missing this.

Piers’s and Venn’s voices were muffled by a heavy black baize door. He approached it carefully, praying the floorboards wouldn’t creak. He kept still, his hand on the doorknob, and glanced back up the Long Gallery. Then he crouched and put his eye to the keyhole.

“I should throw you into the river!” Venn was pacing, glaring at Piers. “Are you mad or just stupid? You bring these people here now, just when we’re ready, when we’ve found a subject…”

“I didn’t know that when I sent the e-mail. Besides, it was David. I was thinking of David.” Piers came up to Venn and sat on the floor before him, squatting like some eastern sage. It was a posture that astonished Wharton. “Think, Excellency! The boy is a connection to his father. That might be vital. It seems clear that the device responds to emotion as much as anything else.”

“It doesn’t respond to mine.” Venn’s voice was bleak. He moved; for a moment Wharton saw only blackness blocking the keyhole. Then Venn was slumped in a chair by the window. He drew his hand through his tangle of hair. He looked weary.

Piers crouched by him. “I worry about us using the girl.”

“Not that again!”

“We might lose her too. We have no right to put her in such danger.”

“Don’t we?” Venn’s voice was so low, Wharton had to press against the keyhole to hear. “There’s no other way. After David went…I dare not use it on myself. If I vanish in there before we can calibrate it, I’ll never see Leah again. Otherwise it would be me. You know that.”

“But a girl we don’t even know.”

Venn looked up, staring at the door so intently Wharton jerked back, suddenly sure those ice-blue eyes could see straight through to him. “That’s the strange thing. I do know her. As soon as I saw her, I felt as if I did. I can’t explain it. But if it’s her life against even the chance of getting Leah back, I’ll take the risk a hundred times over. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, Piers, no one I wouldn’t sacrifice! And remember, you work for me. I own you, body and soul, and you will do whatever I say.”

He was out of the chair and striding toward the door.

Wharton leaped back, looked desperately around for somewhere to hide. There was an alcove with a curtain across it; he dived behind it and stood there, the dusty folds against his nose and mouth.

Even as he was trying not to sneeze, Venn swept past him, the curtain billowing.

He waited. He heard a click, as if Piers had followed his master into the corridor. Then the small man said, “Wharton knows about her.”

Venn answered, but Wharton didn’t hear the words. His heart was beating too loudly. Then a distant door slammed, but a few creaks of the boards told him Piers hadn’t gone. Carefully he edged the curtain aside and put one eye to the slit. The small alert figure was standing only feet away, with a laptop in his hands, but he wasn’t looking at it.

He was listening.

His eyes were bright.

Wharton shuffled back into the darkness.

Piers instantly turned toward the curtain. “Sarah? Is that you?”

He waited a moment, then walked over and tugged the material aside.

The alcove was empty.

Rebecca pulled the car up near the bridge and dimmed the headlights. “Here?”

“It’ll do. He must be parked up in the pub yard.”

They both gazed out. “Look at it,” she muttered.

The fog had thickened as night fell. Now it was a gray, swirling, freezing mass against the windows, even the village lights reduced to barest pinpoints. “I can’t see any car. I can’t see anything.”

“He’s there.” Jake opened the door, but she said quickly, “Oh, I don’t like this. It’s scary. Maybe I should come with you.”

“I have to go alone.” He was already outside. “Thanks for the lift. I can find my own way back.”

“You must be joking.” Rebecca leaned over and turned music on, a blast of rock. “I’m not going anywhere. Look, I’ll give you ten minutes, then I’ll drive in next to you. Or sooner, if you scream.”

He managed a smile. She was so excited, in her tilted blue beret. “Okay, Superwoman. You can come in and rescue me.” He slammed the door, turned his collar up against the freezing night, and walked toward the parking lot.

It was a gray vacancy. He felt he was walking into nothingness, into nowhere, that he might crash into a wall or a door or stride off the edge of the earth and fall forever.

Headlights flashed, once, to his right.

He groped toward them and found a vehicle—something low and dark, but he couldn’t even see the make, or find the handle, until a door swung open and the husky voice said, “Please get in, Mr. Wilde.”

He hesitated. Then he slid into the warm interior.

The stranger in the driver’s seat clicked on the inner light. He was a dark-haired man, astonishingly handsome, until he turned, and Jake saw the scar that furrowed the left side of his face.

“So you came, Jake,” he said.