All her diligent work at the mine had given her the acceptance she wanted. Everyone in the village respected her now. She could have the man she’d always wanted. All the pieces of her perfect plan had fallen into place, like the wooden shapes of a child’s puzzle. And she would have the man she’d always wanted, because it wasn’t going to be safe to do anything else. She was going to have to take him, just to keep an eye on him. Her perfect mate thought, after all her hard work at the mine, he was going to step back in and take over where he’d left off, that he’d become the leader, and she’d fall into place as his perfect follower.
She shifted, moving so that his forehead no longer had the support of her shoulder, forcing him to sit up. “I’m tired right now, Quinn,” she said coolly. “I want to sleep for days and days. We’ll talk about it then.”
His surprise was plainly visible on his handsome face. “All right.” He stood slowly, giving her time to change her mind, say something, to reach for him. When she didn’t, he touched the top of her head, so lightly he barely stirred her hair. He kissed her just as lightly. “We’ll talk about it later, Dem.”
He was gone, long strides taking him away into the darkness, and she was alone again.
The dying fire was all red and orange and yellow, without even a hint of blue to the flame that would have reminded Demial of Taya’s eyes or of magic. As she watched the fire dance, the rain began. Drops fell down the chimney, into the golden flame, sizzling angrily as the fire ate them.
The Thief in the Mirror
Richard A. Knaak
He felt so cold, and she looked so warm. He wanted to reach out and touch her, just as he had always wanted to touch the others before her. However, Mendel did not permit him that; the cursed little bald man didn’t want him to take any chances. Vandor Grizt was expected only to watch and wait, wait to obey his master. Wait and obey, that was all Vandor was permitted.
The gem-encrusted brooch she wore he once would have coveted for himself, but as Vandor could not keep it and Mendel would have no use for it, his interest in the jewelry swiftly faded. He had come here for something else, something more important.
She stared past him, amber eyes admiring her reflection. He knew her name, but only because Mendel had told it to him. That she had reason to be vain was obvious. But such mundane observations were beyond his purpose. . at least so he told himself.
With a sweep of her long, silver hair, the noblewoman rose from her mirror and departed the chamber, no doubt on her way to visit the lover her much older and generally absent husband knew nothing about. Vandor watched her as she paused to admire a tiny sculpture, then look herself over one more time in another mirror.
He ducked away, shivering from the ever-present cold. Her chance glance at the second mirror had nearly put them eye to eye. She probably wouldn’t have been able to see him, but one could never tell. . and Vandor Grizt had no desire to taste Mendel’s anger.
At last she stepped out of the chamber, closing the door behind her. Vandor eyed the prize he sought, the very sculpture the noblewoman had stopped to admire. It had been given to her not by her lover but by her husband, and she could not suspect that it contained latent magical forces. Probably even her husband had not known it when he had purchased the sculpture. Mendel, though. . Mendel had learned of its existence only two days after the sculpture had arrived in Lauthen. Mendel always knew, Chemosh take him!
Vandor shifted position, knowing he would not have long to act. The ungodly chill made him feel stiff and clumsy, but he could no longer hesitate. He had to do it and do it now.
The mirror melted away from his hands as he reached out and seized his master’s prize.
Fingers tingled as blessed warmth coursed over those parts of his arms that protruded from the mirror world. Without meaning to, he paused to savor that warmth, allowing it to spread even a little to the rest of his body. How delightful to be warm again, however briefly, to feel even some hint of the real world!
The warmth grew until the heat no longer pleased Vandor, but rather began to burn. Tendrils of smoke rose from his hands, and his sleeves began to shrivel and blacken. With a sudden sense of urgency, the thief picked up the statuette, an intricate figurine of a dryad and her tree, and drew it into the mirror.
As ever, it took some gentle forcing to make the object pass through the mirror. Once it was done, Vandor Grizt folded his arms, cradling his prize, and turned around to stare at the chamber from which he had stolen the statuette. Here, inside the mirror, everything lay bathed in cold, blue light. The statuette, which had been brightly colored, almost lifelike, now resembled some frost-covered miniature corpse.
Vandor shivered and, turning from the mirror surface that separated reality from reflection, returned to Mendel.
The journey took but a thought. Where, before, the dark-haired thief had stared into a room of rich furnishings and elegant appointments, he now looked into an old, decrepit chamber lined with row upon row of dusty bookshelves. Once those shelves had been lined with scrolls, tomes, and artifacts, the envy of almost any mage, whatever color his robes, but necessity had, over the past few decades, obliged its aging master to utilize much of the collection. What remained were only the vestiges of greatness, just as what remained of Mendel was only a shadow of the black-robed terror who had dominated this region for more than a lifetime.
Mendel’s power might be dwindling, yet over Vandor it remained absolute, even some thirty years or so after the Chaos War.
Looking around, Vandor could see no sign of the cadaverous little man, the foul rodent who had kept him in absolute servitude since that fateful day some ten years after the War of the Lance. In the past, Mendel had precisely scheduled his every waking moment. He could be counted on to know how long Vandor’s errands took and when he would return. Mendel was beginning to slip. Where was he now?
In his hands, the figurine grew colder, even colder than usual. Knowing what would happen if he waited much longer, the thief pushed the prize against the mirror before him. The mirror resisted at first, as it always did, but then both Vandor’s hands and the statuette came through. He quickly stood the dryad on the small wooden table on the other side of the mirror, the one that Mendel had placed there years ago to ensure that his slave would never again have an excuse for losing one of the treasures.
As Vandor’s hands pulled back into the pale, cold world behind the mirror, the once-great Mendel stalked into the room. He had lived more than two normal life spans, and it had been during the second half of that overly lengthy existence that so many changes in the man had occurred. Where once he had stood taller than Vandor, who was six feet, Mendel had somehow shrunk to barely more than five. He moved hunched over, which accounted for some of that height loss, but Vandor often wondered if the man’s deep ties to the old magic of the gods had had something to do with what had happened. Magic had all but vanished from Krynn, and Mendel was clearly shrinking.
The flowing brown hair, broad, sharp nose, and strong chin had given way to a vulturelike head with heavy brows, under which peered bitter black orbs. Mendel still wore the black robes of his office, but they were worn and not of the best quality. He could replace the robes readily enough, thanks to the precious objects Vandor stole for him, but never the power those robes had once represented.
“So, returned at last!” rasped the mage, leaning on his formerly magical staff. “You’ve kept me waiting too long, dandy!”
As Mendel’s appearance had changed he had become increasingly prone to making disparaging remarks about the thief’s time-frozen features. Vandor’s handsome, patrician face, his piercing emerald eyes, coal-black, shoulder-length hair, elegant mustache, and expensive gentleman’s garments had served him well during his life, garnering him entrance to both a superior class of maidens and an even more superior class of valuables. However, to be envious of Vandor’s good looks hardly seemed fair. Vandor did not change because he could not change. He remained the reflection of what he had been that day when, fool of fools, greediness and, especially, vanity, had made him linger to inspect Mendel’s intricate and bewitching mirror. Not until too late did he discover that the mirror had been set as a trap for just such a one as he.