Chapter 6 #2
Laxius sat back, humbled. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly.”
“I feel nothing,” she snapped back. “Nothing for you. Nothing for Shioven.” The last part wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter.
“You both knew the consequences, but you weren’t thinking of your children.
So no, Laxius of the Twilight Sparrows or Eagles or.
.. No, I don’t feel strongly about either of you.
I save those feelings for the ones who bothered to love and raise us. ”
A slow breath trickled from a gap in his lips. “Yes. All right. I do owe Esmeray and the Easterlands baron for their commitment to you. I suspect your fate would have been realized sooner without them.”
“His name was Wilder Hawthorne.”
He nodded, glancing down in reflection. “Illumina will not last forever.”
Elloven burst out laughing. “I hold up a mirror, and you slink away. At last, I know where my weakness comes from.”
Laxius wrapped his hands tight around the cushion and pushed himself to stand. “If you do see your mother, tell her—”
“What did your brother and mine want with me? What would they have done if Ryquin hadn’t dealt with me first?”
His head shook at the ground. “It no longer matters. You’re here, and—”
“I will not be your messenger in addition to your afterthought.” She leaped to her feet. “I wouldn’t trust your answer anyway. Call back your sentinels, Laxius. Illumina won’t last forever.”
Weak men were either useless or dangerous, and she’d known her share of both.
She’d been wrong to assume he was the source of her weakness though; she’d received nothing from him.
There was no sadness in the revelation. They’d arrived with a measure of peace.
Now she knew who he was and who he could never be.
Seeing things and people as they were was far better than waiting for them to be what she needed.
He raised a weary hand. A door formed in the curved wall, and two sentinels appeared on either side. “See that she is escorted safely to the gates. If our fickle overlord cuts short the daylight, see her to her havre.”
They retreated to the side.
“I wish it all could have been different,” Laxius said meekly. He wouldn’t even look at her.
“You can keep your wishes,” she answered as she passed him by. “They resolve nothing and mean less.”
His silence followed her out the door but no farther.
Jesstin didn’t think he’d been knocked out. He wasn’t sore. No hazy sluggishness of having been drugged. He was actually the most rested he’d felt in a while. But he had no memory at all of anything after his agreement with the Conductor until he’d woken up in a giant wheel enclosed in glass.
The “wheel” was as tall as a two-story structure, with no evident way to climb out or escape. She had called it a cell, as he’d signed his family away with his blood. But the wheel’s purpose was mystifying. What was the point of it? To distract him before his trials?
If he pushed hard enough on the curvature, would he roll? Where?
Jesstin estimated about ten feet of width where his bedroll was—enough to move around—and, standing, he could walk roughly the same distance left or right before the curve stopped him. Beyond the thick-paned windows was nothing but darkness. The only sound was his own breathing.
He traced and tapped his fingers along the wood grain of the inner wheel, searching for a soft spot, a hidden door... anything that might serve as an explanation for how he got in or how to get out.
The wheel groaned and began to move. Jesstin tried to brace, but his arms didn’t stretch long enough to reach both sides, so he crouched and moved with the wheel’s turn as it traveled, arduously, into the dark, making him feel an awful lot like the rat Gennady had rescued as a pup.
They’d built it a little wheel for it to run on, endless entertainment for both the rat and the boys watching.
How many were watching him, entertained?
The wheel came to a screeching halt. Jesstin was thrown forward, then backward as it settled, finally landing on his bedroll in an inelegant back tuck.
The wood in front of him creaked, and a door formed that had not been there before.
Lines appeared around the perimeter, backed by a bright light, and a chunk of wood popped outward with a hollow thud.
He palmed the sides of the freshly hewn exit, peeked out, and found the same opaque view.
But once his boots hit soft ground—dirt—the world came to life piece by piece, materializing with his steps like candles flickering on, revealing a lush, verdant forest. The cheerful morning birdsong was disorienting, like he’d dreamed up the netherworld and was back in his own life.
A sign materialized on his left, dangling from a leafy arbor with gilded blossoms. Follow the path to the river and be cleansed in the waters.
Jesstin required no cleansing from any waters, but like everything else, this existed for his benefit.
Or detriment.
He was in it now though, and the only way out was through.
He tossed caution behind him and charged forward.
The Conductor was a trickster, already trying to get in his head with the whole rat-in-the-wheel nonsense.
Jesstin fully expected to be put through the paces, and fear would slow him down.
So would wasting time trying to make sense of the Conductor’s attempts to confound him.
Before long, he heard the gentle roar of a river, and he saw peeks of it through the trees. The path didn’t veer there, but to his left was a partly worn stretch where others had trampled.
Jesstin approached a steep embankment leading to the water.
He used roots to guide himself down, half tumbling, half running the rest of the way.
A mirror, twice as tall as he was, hovered above the middle of the river.
The morning light hit the reflection in a blinding display.
He raised a hand over his eyes, but a monolithic shadow soon made it unnecessary.
A person.
Creature.
The Conductor, judging from the strange pinstriped suit that no one in their right mind would ever wear. She was a woman again, tall and lithe, with golden hair cropped sharply at chin level and gleaming violet eyes, icy yet disarming.
“You slept well,” she remarked.
“Funny, I don’t remember sleeping at all.”
Her mouth turned up at a corner. “It’s the wheel, isn’t it? It’s unusual, but it does its job for a weary traveler.”
“I could sleep in mud if I was tired enough, but I wasn’t tired at all when I signed your contract. You’re not the first to play games with my memory, so if you’re expecting fear and obedience, well...”
“Undisturbed rest was a favor. It’s less cleverness you’ll need for this, Jesstin, and more stamina.
” The Conductor gestured toward the mirror with a spindly, outstretched arm.
“Time is indiscernible in the trials, and attempting to understand it is a waste of precious energy. You will not be the same man when you emerge, if you emerge, on the other side. Some who face the especular get what they want only to find it was not worth what they gave up. But I see in your eyes you don’t care, do you? ”
Jesstin didn’t indulge her rhetorical bullshit.
The Conductor withdrew a scroll from inside her tailored jacket. It unfurled from her hand. “Would you like to see the contract again?”
“You barely let me read it the first time.”
The scroll snapped back. “Then allow me the honor of instructing you.” She tucked it away.
“There will be three challenges. Once you enter, there will be no turning back; however, you will be offered a momentary reprieve between each experience to catch your breath and reorganize your thoughts. If at any point you fail to go on, you will not be offered a second chance. Your soul, in its entirety, will belong to the especular forevermore.”
“To you, you mean.”
“I am but a conductor,” she said with a humble bow.
Jesstin held out his palms. “There some magic words I need to chant, spin three times, face west, what?”
The Conductor lightened in surprise. “No, dear, you merely step through.”
“And when I pass all three challenges—”
“If—”
“When I pass all three challenges, I’ll emerge at the Magna Annalis? The library?”
“As promised.”
“What happens if it’s dark when I get there?”
“Then you will have to be swift about finding safety, won’t you?”
He crossed his arms and squinted at the mirror. “You get nothing unless I fail. That’s your payment. Yesterday you said you get more if I win, but I don’t believe it. You use this... especular, not the other way around.”
“Nothing I say will satisfy your scrutiny.” The Conductor’s arm remained extended, as stiff and still as a wooden rod.
“I have already collected the fragment of your soul as payment. There are no refunds. Squandering time seems ill-advised if you’re to come out ahead in the bargain, but you know best.”
Jesstin contemplated the river and the mirror. He couldn’t measure the water’s depth underneath, but judging by the nearby rocks, it was likely shallow enough to walk through. Removing his boots might be easier, but he’d need them on the other side.
It could still be a trap. It was a trap.
Any questions he had wouldn’t be answered by the creature whose integrity was a scythe.
But she wouldn’t have a business if all she did was swindle desperate travelers out of their souls.
The odds were stacked against him but not insurmountable.
He’d beat the maze. He’d beat the fucking mirror too.
He flicked her a sly smile and trudged into the river without even rolling up his trousers. The light prisms vivified as he stepped sideways, half-blind and dodging rocks, until he was right in front of it.
Reflecting back was not himself but the stern, almost-despondent faces of three people he recognized immediately.
All looking past him. Through him.
These were his trials? Men he’d already forsaken or subdued? Men he’d have no trouble striking down?
He almost laughed. He’d already won.
All right, bitch. The game is on.
Jesstin cleared their faces with a swipe of his hand and toppled into the especular.
He landed on air, falling through an abyss, hurtling at speed and accepting, too late, that he’d miscalculated, dangerously intoxicated from the high that had never quite dulled after braving the Labyrinth of Deception, that she didn’t care a whit about her reputation or business because she didn’t need to.
There’d never been any test, never any reward. Only another na?ve soul for the Conductor to add to her collection.