Page 1 of The Dark Mirror

PART ONE

UNDER THE HARROW

Aduantas:[Irish, noun] A feeling of fear or solitude, brought on by unfamiliar surroundings.

1

FORGOTTEN

Once, while it rained outside the den and the lamps burned low in Seven Dials, Nick had told me about a certain prison in Stockholm. Rosenkammaren, it was called – the Rose Chamber, the name a torture of its own. No roses could have grown down there, where sunlight never reached. Its prisoners were hung in chains and left to stand in icy water.

The night Nick found his sister dead in the forest, and devoted himself to destroying the anchor, he accepted the possibility that he could end up in that place. Sometimes he woke in a cold sweat, wondering if the æther had already condemned him to the Rose Chamber.

I’ve often wondered if my choices shaped my life, or if it was drawn before I existed, spun out for me like thread from a spindle. I’ve wondered if any of us have a fate; if the pattern and flow of time is ordained, or if we can force it to carve a new path. All voyants reckon with the idea. Some among us glimpse the future, and we like to believe that means we can stop it, but I suspect that degree of control is an illusion, and we have no more power than amaurotics. All we can hope for is a warning. A glimpse of time before it comes.

So we trust in the æther, or we try. As someone I love told me once, trust is never being sure if you should trust at all.

My dreamscape had changed. Gone was the field of flowers that had grown there since I was a child.

Now my safe place was a room in Paris, rendered skeletal.

There was the bed, the sheets turned down, lamps on either side. Some way from it, I lay in shadow. White flowers reached between the floorboards – my poppy anemones, still trying to grow, their petals bleached and translucent. Snow gathered around me, like dust on something left forgotten.

Beyond the distant windows, all I could make out was darkness. Night cupped the safe house in its hands. That was normal for a dreamscape; the pallor on its walls was not. Time and again I tried to rise, but an unseen weight pinned me in place, keeping me on the floor.

It might be for the best. Part of me wanted to get to the bed – surely it was soft and warm – but I sensed it would carry me farther away than I could stand to go. It would throw me to a world of teeth that wanted to rip me to shreds. As I slipped back into oblivion, I saw the blood that stained my spirit. Reph blood, human blood, all over my hands.

I slept for hours or weeks or years. Between my periods of absence, I thought I strayed towards the bed – thought I felt the sun, heard a voice – but I always ended up back on the floor, as if I had never moved. The flowers wove around my limbs, as if to hold and comfort me.

And then I stopped falling asleep. Now I was aware and cold, and I realised I had to get to the bed. My silver cord pulled me that way – a weak tug I had rarely felt when I was in my own dreamscape.

When I moved, the white flowers loosened their hold. I turned on to my front and crawled.

Another light trailed in my wake, faint and unresisting.

It was as if my limbs were stone. Each inch I gained left me exhausted, and the closer to the bed I moved, the worse my creeping fear that this was the wrong choice. The lamps had seemed dim and comforting from my place in the deep shadows, but now, as I approached, they shone too bright. No one could fall asleep with those lights flanking their bed. I feared what they might yet reveal, because something was different out there. I could sense it.

I grasped the sheets and hauled myself up. My arms gave way, and I crumpled back to the floor, almost surrendering.You have risen from the ashes before, the flowers said in a voice I remembered, a voice I both cherished and feared. And then I climbed, and I was there, curling up tight.The only way to survive is to believe you always will.

When I woke, I was on another bed. My head rested on a pillow, my hand on my ribs. I lay heavy and woollen for what felt like hours, my breathing slow.

This was not a dreamscape. No shadow pooled at its edges. Red sunlight passed through sheer curtains and glinted off a television on the wall. I sat up, rubbing coarse sleep from my eyes.

The room where I found myself was pristine, except for the unmade sheets on its twin beds. Beside a table, a chair was upholstered in beige leather, a coat thrown over its back. I braced myself with my good hand, listening to the quiet. A door slammed in the distance.

‘Arcturus,’ I said, unnerved.

No answer. I reached for the golden cord, but felt nothing. Not even a flicker of emotion in return.

Are you there?

Something was off about the room. The smoothness of the wooden floor, the straight clean lines of the furniture, the starched bedsheets – all of it spoke of regulation. This was a hotel – and no cheap dosshouse, at that – but it wasn’t Anchotel, the only chainin Scion. Those rooms had scarlet runners and anchors stitched in gold on the pillows.

The last thing I recalled was the masquerade in Paris. Léandre in his lion mask, Le Vieux Orphelin at his side. My private conversation with Inquisitor Ménard. After that meeting, there was only fog, and now I was in a hotel with a headache. Even for me, this was bizarre.

‘Arcturus,’ I said again.

And then, with a sickening jolt, it came back to me.

---