Mirror Sight (21 page)

“N
aturally it comes back to the sea kings,” the professor said. “As you pointed out, they were long gone from here during your time, and one of the enduring historical mysteries is why they left, and why so suddenly. A major focus of my research was trying to figure out the answers, and I eventually discovered some tantalizing clues.”

Cade joined them while he waited for the tea water to boil. “Perhaps, you should have asked why they came in the first place.”

The professor waved his hand dismissively through the air. “Oh, the usual. Land, resources, the fishing. A people to dominate. Why they left is of more importance to the opposition so we may learn something from it. Did our ancient ancestors somehow banish the sea kings? Or did the sea kings leave of their own volition?”

The professor gazed intently at Karigan like a storyteller relishing the build up to a dramatic point. “On the far east coast of what you knew as Coutre Province, I found a possible answer chipped into a rock ledge, submerged by the sea at high tide. It was almost worn away by the constant surf, and it was miraculous I found it. I would not have but for a local fisherman who knew the shore well. One of my finest discoveries!”

“If the fisherman knew of it, it wasn’t precisely a discovery now, was it, Professor?” Cade asked. Karigan espied a mischievous glint in his eye.

The professor
harrumphed.
“Semantics! To him it was nothing. To those of us searching for the stories of the past, it was a breakthrough. Now make yourself useful, student, and fetch my journal.”

“Yes, Professor. I am your obedient servant.” Cade bowed with an affectionate smile for his teacher and headed for the desk.

“Cheeky lad,” the professor said good-naturedly.

Cade rummaged through various drawers before producing a worn leather book tied with a string. The professor said nothing until Cade placed the journal in his hands, leaving Karigan to wait in suspense. The whistle of the tea kettle pierced the silence, and Cade sauntered off to attend to it.

The professor untied the journal and rested it on his knees. As he flipped through the pages. Karigan caught images of diagrams and sketches, and copious writing. It brought to mind the memory of Yates’ sketching in his own journal as they sat in camp so many nights in Blackveil. His duty had been to map and document their journey, and she’d seen some of his beautiful drawings of other members of the company, as well as that of the flora and fauna there. She closed her eyes trying to push the images away, for they were suffused with sorrow and loss.

By the time Cade returned with a tea tray and poured, the professor had found the page he was looking for. He turned the journal so Karigan could see it right side up. His drawing showed the figure of a man with some sort of helm or headdress who held a shield and an oblong object like a sword or rod. Three ships with triangular sails and curled bows and sterns, with lines dashed through the hulls that must have been oars, seemed to sail away on surging waves from the male figure. Beneath the picture the professor had written in a strange script.

“This is what I found chipped into that rock ledge,” he said. “The script is a primitive form of Old Sacoridian and it says,
Anschilde, son of Ansofil, chief of men, bearer of the erangol.
Erangol roughly translates to ‘dragonfly.’ The rest of the inscription has weathered away.”

Bearer of the dragonfly?
Karigan wondered.

“However,” the professor continued, “the Second Age historian, Havoness, relates the legend of Anschilde, who banished the sea kings by using his ‘dragonfly device,’ perhaps a weapon with arcane qualities. Anschilde was considered a great leader and was something of a king of his day after his defeat of the sea kings. The few historical references I can access disagree about whether or not armies and battles were involved or if it was just Anschilde and his dragonfly device. I was lucky to find that unpurged volume of Havoness.” He glanced fondly at his library of damaged books.

“What does this have to do with the tombs?” she asked.

The professor slapped his journal shut, and Karigan jumped, almost spilling her tea. “Patience, my dear, I am getting there. Now, there are other elusive references to this incident with Anschilde, but most interesting is what’s handed down orally in the east about him and his weapon. Stories are passed down, despite suppression by the empire, and tell how the dragonfly device became a revered heirloom of Anschilde’s line, later known as Clan Sealender. No one after Anschilde knew how to use it or even what it was capable of—if anything—besides sending away the sea kings.

“Oral tradition holds that the heirloom was hidden away during the Scourge after the Long War so it would not be destroyed, and then brought to Sacor City when the Sealenders ascended the throne. Then it vanished altogether about the time the first Sealender king died. One concludes it was interred with him in the royal tombs.”

“Ah,” she said, “so this is what Silk is after. This heirloom, this dragonfly device.” It seemed more than plausible to her such an object would be hidden in the tombs, if it really existed in the first place.

“Yes,” the professor replied. “You see, he too, did much research into the sea kings, trying to excavate along the coast. Back then we were still on friendly terms, sharing in our discoveries, so he, too, knew of Anschilde’s device. In fact, I suspect he may know more.” He glowered. “Little did I realize he was just using me back then, on top of his access to a library of forbidden books hidden away in the emperor’s palace. Naturally, as the scion of one of the emperor’s inner circle, Silk would seek ways to further the empire for his own benefit, to be rewarded with immortality as his father had been. Finding the dragonfly device would be a coup because by handing it over to the emperor, Silk would insure that the emperor could not be threatened by it. We, the opposition, of course, desire it in case the old stories are true. We would like to banish the Sea King Reborn. You were my best hope, my dear, for helping us to find another way into the tombs, a way to get there before Silk.”

She sat and stared at the steam rising from the teacup warming her hands. The vapor twisted and drifted in a ghostly dance, dissipating long before it reached the high ceiling. Was there a way to help the professor without giving away the secrets of the tombs? Could she do so while minimizing her entanglements in this world’s problems? If Silk was going to excavate his way into the tombs—and she could not imagine how he’d get through all the rubble and solid granite bedrock—wouldn’t she rather the professor reach them first? But if the tombs remained intact and contained powerful relics of the past, she preferred that no one enter them.

She found it interesting how forcefully the taboo concerning the tombs kept her silence. Few were permitted entrance: only royalty, the Weapons who guarded the dead, and the caretakers who tended the tombs. Rules had been bent to allow Karigan to enter and then leave again. Interlopers were not usually permitted to see the living sun ever again, and were doomed to live out their lives in the tombs assisting the caretakers.

If the tombs had survived the devastation of Sacor City, they were the last bastion of old Sacoridia remaining in this time, and she was reluctant to see them overrun and defeated as the rest of the realm had been.

“How does Dr. Silk plan to reach the tombs?” she asked. “How can he excavate through all the rock?”

Cade and the professor exchanged glances.

“A drill,” the professor replied.

“A drill?” Karigan was incredulous, trying to imagine workers pounding and pounding on iron hand drills. Even with a multitude of drills and workers, it would take decades to reach the tombs. The thought eased her mind until the professor explained.

“My dear, do not forget this is the modern age, the age of machines. Silk’s drill is not the simple tool of your era, but a gigantic instrument powered by a steam engine. Once the site is made ready and all is set in place, it will take no time at all for the drill to work through the castle ruins and bedrock. Weeks. A couple of months at the most.”

His words shook her, the idea of such inhuman power.

“Which is another reason why,” the professor said, “it is time to step up the opposition.”

“You must destroy the drill!” Karigan said.

“Even if it can be destroyed,” Cade said, “it can be remade.”

“Machines can be tampered with,” the professor said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “and work sites compromised. Even if Silk can remake the drill, it would slow him down, buy us time. Unfortunately, the warehouse it resides in is too well guarded.”

“The work site will be, too,” Cade said.

“Perhaps, but Silk’s men can’t possibly secure the entire mount. We shall see, we shall see . . . I will have to consult with our brethren to find out what they know of such things, so we can prepare.”

He left the armchair for his desk. He sat and searched through drawers, producing paper, pen, and ink, and then writing furiously and with such focus that Karigan and Cade might as well not have existed. Cade shrugged, collected the empty teacups on a tray, and carried them away to the kitchen.

As Karigan watched the professor work, she wondered just exactly what had been set in motion.

N
either Cade nor the professor paid Karigan any mind. The professor stayed at his desk scribbling away on papers, and after Cade deposited the tea tray in the kitchen, he proceeded to the training area without a glance in her direction.

She switched chairs so she could watch Cade work. First he removed his suit coat, and then his waistcoat, hanging them on a brass hook on the wall. Perhaps conscious of her gaze, this time he did not remove his shirt. He next looked over the weapons arrayed before him on wall mounts, and after some consideration, chose a longsword. He stood with it at his side for some time, his eyes closed and head bowed, chest rising with slow, deep breaths.

Karigan waited and waited, while he stood there breathing, wondering when he would begin. If he were one of Drent’s students, he’d have been pounded into the ground already, solely for standing there, with Drent screaming in his face. Sword fighting was not about peaceful contemplation but acting, and Drent never let his trainees forget it, for in a real-life fight, hesitation meant death. Enemies did not wait for an opponent to be ready.

Finally, Cade moved slowly and deliberately into some warm-up exercises, stretching his limbs and torso. This, too, went on for far longer than Drent would have ever permitted, and Karigan found herself tapping her fingers on the armrest of her chair.

She settled in when he finally, and swiftly, transitioned to forms, the sword arcing through the air with a bright silver gleam. He began with simple, beginner moves, gradually progressing to intermediate and more advanced forms. It was much as she had observed before—his posture and balance were very good, but his execution lacked finesse. Some of his transitions were rough, and a couple of the forms were plainly incorrect. Drent, she thought, would have enjoyed tearing Cade Harlowe apart.

After he tried to sweep from Crayman’s Circle into Aspen Leaf—very advanced moves—and executed them so poorly, she could stand it no longer. Before she knew it, she was on her feet and crossing over to the training area with her bonewood in hand. She halted before him, but he seemed determined to ignore her, and she had to admire his focus, though the longer she stood there, the more his movements became jerky, less clean, her proximity having some effect on him. No, Drent would not approve.

He fumbled with the simple but elegant Deer Hunt form in such a way that he was inviting an opponent to impale him. Karigan decided to oblige. With a single swift thrust of the bonewood, she knocked the sword out of his hand, then jabbed him in the belly. The clang of steel on the wooden floor echoed through the vast room. He staggered back, hunched over and clutching his belly, gasping for air, while simultaneously shaking out his sword hand. Karigan watched faintly amused while he tried to regain enough breath to swear.

“What in damnation was that for?” he roared.

It was a pleasant surprise to see the usually stoic Cade show some anger. “Your sloppy technique provoked me.”

“What do
you
know about it?”

“Enough to disarm you, evidently.”

“You could have caused me to injure you by interfering like that.”

“You’re more likely to injure yourself,” Karigan observed.

Cade’s face reddened as he fought to stifle his anger. He swiped his sword off the floor. “How do you know? Girls may have played at carrying swords back in your day, but they could hardly fight men.”

His pronouncement irked her, but she could hardly blame him for the teachings of his world. The empire had reduced the roles of women significantly from what she’d been accustomed to in her own. Women couldn’t even bare their faces in public and were relegated to passivity, systematically made powerless by the rules of the empire. If this was all Cade had ever known, she could not expect to change his attitude about “girls” in one evening, but she could try.

“Apparently you do not have all the facts of your history correct.” The bonewood hummed toward his face and he barely blocked it in time. The blood now drained from his cheeks. If she’d the use of her dominant hand, she might very well have bashed in his face had she so desired. As it was, she easily disarmed him again by catching the crossguard of his sword with the bonewood and yanking it right out of his hand.

He bent once again to retrieve his sword, rage building in his expression, but she stepped on the blade and jabbed the tip of the bonewood into his neck. He stilled. “I’m a swordmaster initiate,” she said, “as were other
girls
of my time, as were so many who came before me over the generations. You forget that the armies of the Long War were filled with females because so many of the men had died, and many
were
children when they took up arms. You forget that
girls
were swordmasters and Weapons. Even female Green Riders, who never trained for swordmastery as I have, are very handy with swords and are taught to fight men as well as other
girls.
If this bonewood were a sword, and we were enemies, I’d have killed you at least three times already.”

She removed her foot from his sword blade and withdrew the bonewood from his neck. It left a red mark on his skin. He stood, sword in hand, once again trying to master his anger. “We don’t fight with swords here,” he snapped. “We use other weapons.”

“Like your guns?” She gestured at the cabinet with several of the objects displayed behind glass.

“Like the guns,” he replied with a curt nod.

She still did not understand exactly what the guns did, but she understood swords. “If you don’t use swords, why bother to train with them?”

“For discipline. To master the techniques of . . . of the past. Of the Bl—swordmasters.”

Karigan narrowed her eyes at him. It had sounded like he almost said, “Black Shields.” His demeanor had reminded her of the Weapons she knew. Her suspicions were roused, but she chose not to pursue them at the moment. “If you are going to work with swords, even if just for discipline, you should do so correctly to properly honor those who perfected the techniques. To do otherwise shows disrespect.”

Cade started to protest, but the professor cleared his throat, startling Karigan who had been so intent on Cade that she hadn’t heard his approach.

“You would do well to listen to her, Cade,” the professor said. “The king would not have anointed her a knight without cause, especially since there had been no knights for two hundred years previous.” To Karigan he explained, “I train Cade in the techniques as they were handed down to me, and as they’ve been handed down in secret since the rise of the empire, but as you can see, we’ve remembered them imperfectly. Cade, I believe you have a new teacher.”

Cade’s mouth dropped open. It would be, Karigan thought, a huge challenge for him to accept her as a teacher, but she relished the thought of actual arms practice and not just sneaking through forms with the bonewood in her bedroom.

“I am returning to the house now,” the professor said. “See that Miss Goodgrave is also returned before dawn.”

Cade nodded.

“Good night, then,” the professor said, and he strolled away from them across the mill floor.

Karigan and Cade watched him until he disappeared through the door, and then they glanced uncertainly at one another. Unable to hold her gaze, Cade paced restlessly, testing the heft of his sword. Would he accept her instruction, even when told to do so by the professor? Or would he prove obstinate, too stuck in the ways of the empire?

He paused, and without looking at her, he said, “This all seems very improper. Females do not teach. They bear children and keep the home. They certainly do not teach sword fighting.”

Karigan sighed, thinking that any discussion between them would deteriorate rapidly into philosophical arguments, but Cade continued, “However, I know things were once different, and if we are to defeat the emperor, we must shed the ways of thinking he has shackled us with. Teach me what you can.”

She nodded, guessing how humbling a concession this was for Cade to make. With renewed respect, she said, “Why don’t you show me all the forms the professor has taught you, one at a time, beginning with the most basic.”

Cade complied, and as he performed one form after another, Karigan commented and corrected as necessary. When she had to, she stopped him to demonstrate the proper execution of a form, using her bonewood as her sword. Occasionally she had to position Cade, placing her hands on him, to move his shoulders or arms or legs. Initially he flinched at her touch, but as they went on, he relaxed. She could only imagine what Arms Master Drent would think of his least-favored student teaching another.

“I want to show you that Crayman’s Circle into Aspen Leaf you had trouble with before,” she said, “so you know what it’s supposed to look like.”

Cade rested his sword tip on the floor and placed his other hand on his hip, waiting as if he were simply indulging her. Karigan dropped her shawl to the floor and pushed it aside with her foot. She inhaled deeply and settled into her starting stance, but unlike Cade, she allowed no time to pass. She released her breath and began.

Although she was not in top form and relying on her left hand did not come as naturally to her, the movement felt good. So good that she did not stop with Aspen Leaf, but flowed into a series of forms that was one continuous progression, a dance ascending and falling to accompaniment of the silent tempo so ingrained in her that it beat through her whole being. She twisted and turned, the bonewood carving the air. Unleashed from her burdens, unhindered by the fear of someone discovering her secret practices, she lost herself in the freedom of motion. Her body awoke to the dance stretching, flexing, blood surging, her hair flowing about her shoulders, her nightgown billowing. Her slippers flew off as she leaped and whirled, shoulders rotating and hips following. She landed lightly on bare feet only to surge seamlessly into the next form.

She became unconscious of her surroundings, of her exile here from her own time, of Cade’s gaze. Though most forms demanded restraint and minimal movement, she felt as though she soared, choosing to repeat those forms that required the big leaps, the long-reaching strokes. Then showing the utmost control, she stopped. Simply came to a standstill, back erect, the point of the bonewood coming to rest on the floor. Her hair brushed across her shoulders and settled. She panted a little, felt how her nightgown clung to the perspiration on her skin. Cade just stared. She could not read him. She shrugged and slid her feet back into her discarded slippers, and retrieved her shawl. And still he stared.

“Well?” she demanded.

“You—you are a swordmaster . . . ?”

“No,” she replied acerbically, thinking he was going to launch into criticism. “I am a swordmaster
initiate.
I may never make swordmaster.” She definitely would not if she couldn’t find her way home to resume training. “Swordmasters are the best of the best.”

“I—I can’t believe there are any better than what you just showed me.”

A tart reply formed on Karigan’s tongue, accustomed as she was to the criticism and sarcasm that she always received from Drent and her fellow trainees, but then she saw the awe forming in Cade’s eyes.

“I have never seen anything like that,” he said. “Such beauty . . .”

Taken aback, she did not know what to say, especially when Cade knelt before her as if in obeisance.

“You can teach me how to . . . how to do as you did?” he asked.

“Um . . .” His tone was so humble, his reaction so unexpected that it took her a moment to regain equilibrium. “I think so. It’ll take some work though.” She smiled tentatively.

Cade seemed to collect himself then. “Good. I had no idea what . . . I just had no idea.” He bowed his head, then stood.

Karigan wasn’t sure whether he meant he’d had no idea of what she was capable, or what the forms were supposed to look like when executed properly.

“It’s fortunate you are left handed,” he said, indicating her right wrist in its cast.

“I’m not. I’m right handed.”

Cade stared once again.

His discomfiture both pleased and amused Karigan. “I was made to train my left side after a previous injury to my right elbow. Swordmasters, especially those who become Weapons, are trained to be capable fighters using their whole bodies.”

Cade shook himself. “Seems I’ve a ways to go.” He turned and placed his sword on its wall mount, and stood there in silence for a moment before striding over to the closest window. Behind the drapes it was boarded over, but there was a minute crack he peered through. “It is nearly dawn,” he announced, “so we’d better head back.”

As he dressed, she glanced at the cabinet of guns once more.

“Tell you what,” she said, “if I help you with the sword work, you can teach me how to fight with your gun weapons.”

Cade cocked an eyebrow. “I will have to ask the professor, but I will do so if he permits it.”

“Good,” Karigan said. It occurred to her that if she learned the use of advanced weaponry from this time, she might be able to reproduce and use it in her own, bringing Sacoridia an advantage over its enemies. It could change everything.