It was unbelievable, how these arrogant, brainless peacocks came strutting to her, offering their throats for the knife if they but knew it! She had a guise in the world outside this basement room. There was a small apartment just above where Shivani held forth in the person of a dispenser of arcane knowledge of the shadow-shrouded sort. To her came the seekers who had no patience for study, who had rather they could achieve mastery over Fate and Men by overmastering demons and that by the quickest means possible. They thought themselves greatly daring, these chattering apes. They did not see the serpent gliding silently behind them.
Some would not be missed. Those, she would gather unto Kali, strengthen the Goddess with their blood, and thus increase her own strength.
One, she already had taken.
It had been a temptation she had not been able to resist, for the fool so courted his own death. Disowned by family, despised by those who knew him, even by his own fellows in the arts of darkness, he was overripe for the taking. Believing the tales she told him of his potential prowess and future bliss, he had drunk Shivani’s potions, smoked her Black Smoke, and laid himself down on her altar without a qualm, so certain was he in his arrogance that she, a mere Hindu female, could never harm him. She was no more than the common vessel who brought him his just rewards, a bearer, a servant of a power far greater than she. He was Man, he was White, and he was destined to command Unseen Powers.
He was stupid, he was a fool, and his Powers answered him not when he commanded them. On her altar he died, the scarlet silk cord about his neck, tongue protruding, eyes bulging, face blackened. Shivani herself had twisted the cord tight, taking the greatest of satisfaction in it.
Shivani dedicated his death to Kali Durga, but she drank his strength herself, imprisoning his spirit in a little, round mirror she had found in a street market. The stall keeper had not known what he had got, but few would have recognized the plate of black glass set in a carved wooden frame for what it was. She bought it for less than a shilling, and straightaway took it to her sanctuary.
The mystery of it delighted her; it was as if some unknown hand had made it and placed it in the market for her to find. A Black Mirror! Who in all this benighted country had the wit and the knowledge to create a Black Mirror? And mystery piled upon mystery—why had it never been used? For it was virgin, empty of the least hint of magic, when she discovered it.
One guess was that perhaps the Black Mirror was not used in this land as Shivani was wont to use it. That was the only answer she had for the puzzle.
Now the Mirror slept in the basket beside her throne, swathed in a shroud of black silk, waiting only until she was ready to make use of her newest servant.
She had made use of him already, in several smaller trials—ordering him to show her where her thugees were at work, or having him find the strongholds of other practitioners of magic, who could presumably see her as a rival or as a threat. She knew now where the strongest resided, and had added them to her long-term plans, but now it was time to put her servant to work on something nearer to home.
She sprinkled powder of a different kind on the charcoal in the brazier at her feet, breathed in the drug-laden air, and felt at last the moment of disorientation that she had been waiting for. She did not drift off, she merely felt as if she hovered just a little above her body.
That was all she wanted. Any more, and she would lose her grip on her awareness and drift free. That could be useful, but it was not what she wanted to do at this moment; she needed only to be relieved of the distractions of a physical form, not to escape altogether. Her hand reached, seemingly of its own volition, into the basket beside her, and brought out the little, round mirror of black glass.
She cradled it in her lap, staring into depths that did not reflect the lazy swirls of smoke, nor her own face, but held a restless, glowing, featureless shape that swam within the glass like a furtive fish among water weeds.
“Mirror-servant in my hand,” she murmured languorously to it, “Answer thou to my command.”
The glowing presence moved to the foreground, fogging the mirror with sickly light. Release me! the prisoner wailed soundlessly. Let me go!
“I thought you wanted to live forever?” she replied with a smile, aloud, although her servant understood her well enough if she only thought what she wanted to say at it. “You begged, you pleaded for magic and immortality, for the ability to understand the Unseen world, for the knowledge to move bodiless through this world and go into the realm of spirits. I gave you immortality, did I not? So long as a single grain of this glass remains intact, you are bound to it; surely you will live forever! I gave you all the rest as well!” Then she laughed, throatily. “You understand the Unseen as no other of your acquaintance, you go into the realm of the spirits, and though you move through the Unseen at my will, and not yours, I never told you that you would have freedom therein. But—still! You show your ingratitude, and how little you deserve any kind of freedom!”
You didn’t tell me what you meant! the shape howled in protest. You didn’t tell me I’d die! You deceived me!
“You deceived yourself,” she retorted severely. “I told you, and promised you exactly the truth. That you put your own interpretation on that truth is hardly my fault. Now, enough of this nonsense. Obey me, else I will force you, and you have had a taste of what I can do to you. Show me the traitor to my people and my land!”
For a fleeting moment, before she lashed it with a spark of pain and punishment, so that the thing trapped within the glass cried out in anguish, the mirror showed her own face.
“No more of that!” she snapped, before regaining control and composure. “Show me the treacherous daughter of my traitoress sister! Show me the thing that claims the power that is mine by right of blood!”
But there was nothing forthcoming. Shivani frowned, and prodded the mirror-servant again with the sharp and punishing goad of her will. I can’t! the servant wailed. I cannot show you!
“Cannot, or will not?” she asked, furious. “You will do what I command!”
Cannot! She is here, somewhere, she is near to you, within the bounds of the city but I cannot find her! There are signs of her everywhere, but not one leads to her!
Shivani cursed her pawn for being a fool, weak, and useless—but did not curse him as a liar. She could command the truth if she wished, but she already knew that her unwilling servant had told the truth in the first place. She had already tried every means at her disposal to find the girl, and had come to the same end as her servant. Surya’s daughter was nowhere to be found, yet traces of her were everywhere. The only possible explanation for this was that she had somehow managed the magic that enabled holy men to walk amid crowds and yet remain unseen—or to be precise, completely ignored and isolated among them. That should not have been possible, with no one to teach her the secrets that Surya had learned in her own temple, but there was no denying the facts. The girl knew, was using her knowledge, and even a mirror-servant, who should have been able to eel his way past any common protections, could not find her.