"Well yeah, but that was different."
"Not that different. Wiz, old son, you’ve never exactly been a fount of social graces, but you’ve always gotten by. And you have never, never, given up before."
"So I should beat my head against a stone wall?"
"How do you know it’s a stone wall? Face it, you haven’t tried all that hard. There’s got to be something here for you. All you have to do is find it."
"I’m not so sure."
"Patrius was. He must have had a reason to bring you here."
"Moira says Patrius made a mistake."
"Moira may be beautiful, but she’s not always right."
"Well…"
"Moira is a consideration, though. If you were someone here, it might change her attitude."
"If you’re going to offer to play me a game, I refuse," Wiz told the mirror.
"No offer," the mirror told him. "Only the observation."
"Okay, but what could make me special here?"
The mirror was silent.
"Well?" Wiz demanded.
"I don’t know the answer to that."
"Great. Then why the hell bring it up?"
"Because you have two choices," the mirror bored on inexorably. "You can believe you will never amount to anything here, never fit in, and dissolve in your own bile. Or you can believe you have a place here and try to find it. Which do you prefer?"
"All right. But how? What do I have to do?"
"You’ll think of something," the mirror told him.
"You’ll think of something," Wiz mimicked. "Thanks a lot!"
"Sparrow?" Wiz turned and there was Shiara standing in the open door.
"Who are you talking to?" she asked. Wiz flushed and opened his mouth to deny it. Then he changed his mind. After all, magic worked here.
"I was talking to the mirror, Lady."
Shiara frowned. "The mirror?"
"Well, it talked to me first," he said defensively.
Frowning, the mistress of Hart’s Ease swept into the room, her long black gown swishing on the uneven floor. "This mirror?" she asked, putting out a hand to brush her fingertips across its silvery surface.
"Yes, Lady. That mirror."
Shiara smiled and shook her head.
"I’m sorry, Lady, I know you don’t allow magic in the castle, but . . ."
"Sparrow, I think you have been brooding overmuch," Shiara told him gently.
"Lady?"
"There is no magic here. This is an ordinary mirror."
"No magic?" Wiz repeated dumbly.
"No magic at all. Just a mirror."
Wiz felt himself turning crimson to his hair roots. "But it talked to me! I heard it."
"It talked to you or you talked to you?" she asked gently. "Sometimes it is easier to hear things about ourselves if they appear to come from outside us."
Wiz looked back at the mirror, but the mirror remained mute.
Late one afternoon Wiz happened to pass Moira in the great hall.
"Moira," he asked, as she went by with a nod, "what happened to Shiara?"
The hedge witch stopped. "Eh?"
"She was a wizardess, wasn’t she? But Ugo told me magic hurts her."
"It does. To be in the presence of even tiny magics causes her pain. That is why she lives here in the quietest of the Quiet Zones in a keep built without the least magic."
"How?"
"What happened?"
"By carpenters, masons and other workers who built without magic. Isn’t that the way you build things in your world?"
"No, I mean how did it happen to her?"
Moira hesitated. "She lost her sight, her magic and her love all in one day. It is a famous tale, but of course you would never have heard it." She sighed. "Shiara the Silver they called her. With her warrior lover, Cormac the Gold, she ranged the World recovering dangerous magical objects that they might be held safely in the Council’s vaults.
"Not only was she of the Mighty, but she was a picklock of unusual skill. No matter what wards and traps protected a thing, she could penetrate them. No matter how fierce the guards set over a thing, Cormac could defeat them. With him to guard her back, she removed magic from the grasp of the League itself."
"What happened?"
"We went to the well once too often," Shiara said drily from the doorway.
They both whirled and blushed. "Your pardon, Lady," Moira stammered. "I did not know…"
"Granted willingly." Shiara swept into the hall, moving unerringly to them. "So you have not heard my story, Sparrow?"
"No, Lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about you behind your back."
"There is no need to be sorry." Her mouth quirked up at the corner. "The bards sing the tale in every tavern in the North, I understand. The price of fame is having your story told over and over by strangers."
"I’m sorry," Wiz said again.
"Perhaps you would like to hear the story as it happened?"
"We do not wish to pain you, Lady." Moira said.
Shiara chuckled, a harsh, brittle sound. "My child, the pain is in the loss. There is little enough ain in the telling." She seated herself in her chair by the fireplace. "Sometimes it even helps to repeat it."
Moira sat down on the bench. "Then yes, Lady, we would like to hear the story, if you do not mind."
"I’ve never heard it, Lady," Wiz said, sitting down as close to Moira as he could without being too obvious about it. Moira shifted slightly but did not get up.
"Well then," Shiara smoothed out the folds in her skirt and settled back. "We were powerful in those days," she said reminiscently. "My hair was white even then and Cormac, ah, Cormac’s hair was as yellow as fine gold."
"And he was strong," Moira put in breathlessly. "The strongest man who ever lived and the best, bravest swordsman in all the North."
"Not as strong as the storytellers say," Shiara said. "But yes, he was strong."
"And handsome? As handsome as they say?"
Shiara smiled. "No one could be that handsome. But he was handsome. I called him my sun, you know."
Ugo entered unnoticed with a bundle of wood and set about kindling a fire.
Seven
Shiara’s Story
Shiara sensed the boy and girl looking up at her. Young, Shiara thought, so very young. Convinced the world is full of hope and possibilities and so blind to the truth. She felt the warmth of the fire on her face and turned her head to spread the heat. Then she sighed and began the old, old tale.
"Once upon a time, there was a thief who loved a rogue…"
Cormac, tall and strong with his corn-ripe hair caught back by a simple leather filet. He had doffed his leather breeks and linen shirt and stood only in his loin cloth. The fire turned his tan skin ruddy and highlighted the planes and hollows of his muscles. The scars stood out vividly on his torso and legs.
"Well, Light. Do we know what the thing is?"
Shiara shook her head and the motion made her tresses ripple. The highlights in her hair danced from the flames and the motion.
"Only that it is powerful—and evil. An evil that can shake the World."
"Mmmfph," Cormac grunted and turned back to his sword. Again he checked the leather cords on the hilt, running his fingers over them for any sign of looseness or slickness that might make the sword slip in his hand. "And it lies above us, you say?"
Shiara nodded. "In a cave well above the tree line this thing sleeps." She bit her lip. "It sleeps uneasily and I do not like to think what it might become when it awakens."
"And we must either possess it or destroy it." He shook his head. "It’s an awful way to make a living, Light."
"Terrible for two such honest tradesfolk," she agreed, falling into the well-worn game.