Chapter Nineteen Simran
Chapter Nineteen
Simran
The Parys Mountain is in mining country, rich in lucrative seams of tin and copper. Its survival is supported by the incarnate tale The Knight and the Witch.
Cyclical presence of the witch may briefly hamper the efficacy of your investments. Inquire further in our offices for full details.
Source: Advertisement for investment opportunities in the Copper Mountains
Archivist’s Ruling: Destroy. Publication barred. Refer to region as “Copper Mountains” only, as per the tale.
The tale was burning in her, leading her through the ancient forest. It dragged her forward with eager hands. She didn’t need to try to find the Copper Mountains. The tale would get her there, urging her to the place where the witch was destined to live, to bewitch, and to die.
That left her free to remember what the chalice had shown and feel hot-and-cold all at once with sickness.
She’d stabbed him. The pale assassin. The boy she—Elayne—had raised. She could still remember his trusting eyes. She could feel the blade in her hands. She’d chosen to hurt him, and she didn’t even know why.
Drinking from the chalice had shown her so much, but not enough. She still didn’t have the assassin’s name. She still didn’t know why he couldn’t die.
It’s all my fault.
That, at least, felt true.
Her heart was aching.
The forest was bitterly cold with the coming solstice, and she could still feel the heat of Vina’s fingers around her wrist. The entreaty in her voice.
She cared for Vina too. It was awful, caring for her.
Could it happen so fast—liking someone? Caring about someone? It felt cruel, for something sweet to grow in her heart, all full of possibility, when she was carrying broken knowledge to her own doom, hoping against hope that at least she’d be able to save her best friend from death.
She traveled for days until finally the tale’s demand became urgent, a hand to the throat.
The tale urged her. This way. She looked to her left.
There were stone slabs set along the hillside, surrounded by ferns that swathed the soil like shrouds.
Beneath the ferns, the stones were more red than gray, ruddy with ocher dust. She raised her skirt to her knees and walked up, until the trees began to thin around her, opening to an undulating rocky countryside of autumnal stone, burnished green and purple with moss and heather, beneath looming mountains.
The mountains were green, like velvet under the feathered shadows and light of the cloud-flecked sun.
But their zeniths were bright as knives—bronze-tipped beneath snow.
In her chest, her tale twisted and settled like a satisfied cat.
It knew this land: these mountains, this copper dust and copper-laced stone.
This land lived and breathed because of her tale, and her tale alone.
That sudden knowledge held Simran frozen for a long moment, alone on the windswept copper landscape, cold wind tangling her hair.
She clenched her teeth and forced herself to move.
She passed a few mining towns—dimly lit buildings, surrounded by low walls.
She thought of going into them. But she knew what the witch did to the villages surrounding the Copper Mountains; knew she bewitched and enthralled their people, and had done it lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation. She kept on walking.
The sky was gray, dismal.
The Copper Mountains were all around her, rising and falling in stone the same color as the mountains’ namesake.
She walked high, the air growing cold. Finally, she came to the base of a tower—an old, soaring thing.
The witch’s tor. At its base lay a door carved into stone.
It was filigreed in copper—a rose-golden, embellished arch of metal hewn into the rock.
She hesitated in front of it. The assassin had told her to meet him here. For Hari’s sake, she had to do it.
She pushed the door wide. It swung open at her touch, greeting her like an old friend. She supposed she was.
Inside the air smelled of dust. No one had been here in at least two decades, of course.
She walked farther in, exploring. She found an abandoned room, with wide windows, no glass in their stone frames.
There were broken pots on the ground, and ivy climbing the walls.
Some witch had clearly been green-fingered, and built her own garden here. It was gone now, just like her.
There was a bedroom: a large bed, curtained, dusty, and spangled with cobwebs. A witch gone by had left a dress on the bed. She touched it—the dust rose as she pressed her fingers to the sequins embroidered into the cloth. It was rotting, moth-eaten, but it was utterly Isadora’s taste.
She kept on moving.
A new room. A bathing room, with a recessed pool of water that rippled, still full to the brim.
She kneeled down and dipped her fingers into it.
It was cold but fresh. The waters beneath the mountains must have been feeding it constantly.
She traced her fingers around the edge. A hum of magic etched into the gold around the rim of the broad, shallow bath explained its existence.
Then, finally, she went to the hall of mirrors.
She’d not been entirely truthful to Vina, when she’d told her witchcraft came from blood and bone, and hexes carved in soil. There were as many types of witchcraft as there were tales of witchcraft, which were almost innumerable. She’d avoided the magic of mirrors all her life.
The room was full of mirrors of beaten bronze. Dozens of mirrors, taller than her, suspended around the circular room. She pressed her fingers to the edge of one; dust rose under her touch. When she pressed harder, the mirror moved—shifting to catch the light from the windows. Its surface glowed.
Her reflection in the reflective bronze was distorted, softened and blurred. Her eyes were dark, her sharpness turned a haze. She looked… sad.
She turned the mirror to the wall and left the room.
She searched the rest of the tor and found no sign of the pale assassin or Hari.
She was no judge of the skies, but she was sure the solstice was almost here.
Panic was an itch under her skin. Who was the pale assassin to her?
Why were they connected? What had she done to him?
The questions whirled in her head and heart.
Finally, as the sun fell, she accepted there wasn’t going to be any sign of him yet. She felt the tale tug at her, urging her to move.
There was nothing she could do. The tale had snared her.
The moon was moving across the sky. Her body carried her back into the witch’s bedroom, even as dread pooled in her stomach.
She stripped off her forest-stained clothing, without controlling her limbs; without any intention to do so.
She opened a trunk of clothes—drew out a witch’s gown, rich velvet, bloodred. She dressed.
She went back to the hall of mirrors, and moved those vast discs of bronze with her hands. The tale tugged at her hands, inexorable. The magic sang.
It was good she hadn’t gone to those villages before coming here.
If she had, she’d feel even more guilty than she did, as her magic poured from her, through the conduit of the mirrors—spilling onto the serrated edges of the mountains, where any villagers who raised their eyes to the mountains would be snared into her enchantment.
“Serve me,” the tale whispered through her. “Love me.”
Finally, the tale released her again. She gave a gasp. She wasn’t just the witch. She was Simran in a ridiculous, musty gown, moth-eaten at the hems. She drew her hands back as if they’d been burned.
She fell asleep in the huge bed, then woke in the morning, and found food set out for her.
It would have been nice to have a magical home that produced its own meals, but she was sure it was the bespelled villagers that had left it.
The food was simple: bread, a little cheese, some pickles and thin slices of pork pie. There was wine too.
“Thank fuck for wine,” she muttered, and knocked the bottle back.
“Is there any for me?”
Vina’s voice echoed, low and warm and achingly welcome. Simran turned.
Vina was there, watching her.
Simran’s mouth was dry. Joy at seeing Vina and terror at seeing the knight warred in her.
“Are you here to kill me?” Simran’s voice was thin.
“The tale wants me to go to the Eternal Queen, and kneel at her feet, and take up a quest to destroy a wicked witch,” said Vina. “But I resisted. I came here instead.”
“Why?” Simran asked. “Why—why would you follow me?”
“Simran,” Vina said, voice velvet. Tender. “I think you know why.”
“I told you not to. I told you to leave me.”
“I’m not sorry I came.” Vina’s voice was strained, her eyes bright. “You can’t push me away, Simran. Until our tale compels me to leave, I’ll stay by your side.”
Simran looked at her, her heart like a bird rattling in her chest.
“Does it hurt?” Simran asked. “Fighting the tale?”
“Of course,” said Vina. Her smile was faint. Hopeful. “But it’s worth it.”
That threw Simran out of her shock. She walked over and grabbed Vina’s hand. Their fingers entangled.
“Come with me.”
They went to the hall of mirrors. In the sunshine it was glorious. Light shifting and refracting, sunlight radiating into new shapes. She breathed her own magic through the mirrors and the moving light, letting it expand.
She couldn’t leave the mountains, but she could do this at least. She heard Vina exhale. Heard her voice, full of wonder. “What just happened?”
“The mirrors are easing your pain,” said Simran. “It’s… it’s a magic I used to do in other lives. I suppose now that I’m here, and the tale has me, I can do it too. The magic in you won’t last long—the turn of the moon, at most—but it will buy you time before you have to return to the Queen.”
“I’ve never seen magic like this,” said Vina.
“You’ve seen it hundreds of times.”
“I haven’t,” Vina said. “I’m not playing my role yet. I’m still me.”