Royce ran down the mountainside as quickly as any tumbling pebble, fighting to keep his footing, trying to pick his way among the chaos of the collapsing island. He passed one of the white stags, but his father’s signs meant nothing now; the island was a fundamentally different place in the wake of Barihash’s death, and there wasn’t a spot on it that could be trusted.
Royce stepped to the side as rocks fell on the spot where he had just been, then leapt as a crack started to open up at his feet. He rolled as he landed, tucking tight so that he could shield the mirror he carried from the impact. He kept the obsidian sword tied tightly in place at his side, checking that it was still there as he rose up and started to run again.
Fire burst around Royce, in spurts of flames that threatened to engulf him if he didn’t move quickly enough. This wasn’t the targeted threat of Barihash’s magic though, and the spurts of flame and lava came randomly, flaring and then gone again, some so close to Royce that he could feel the barest hint of their heat on his skin.
“I have to get to the others,” he said, trying to find a route that would lead to them. The crack that had barred the way to the tower was easy to traverse now, at least, covered by a fresh layer of boulders, so that Royce could sprint his way across them. The sudden slope that a landslip had caused was harder, and Royce had to slide his way down it, struggling to keep his balance as he picked up speed. He had to leap at the slope’s end to avoid another chasm that had opened up, landing hard, but refusing to stop. To stop now was to die.
He saw the space with the cave ahead, and better than that, he saw that his friends were already on the move, making their way along the path toward the shore in a bunch, and hurrying, with Gwylim behind them, urging them along the way a sheepdog might have. Royce saw Matilde glance back, and she stopped, obviously spotting him.
“Keep running!” Royce bellowed. “I’ll catch you up!”
He sprinted after them, finding reserves of energy that he hadn’t had in the fight against Dust. Royce could see the others moving fairly quickly together; apparently, Bolis and Mark had recovered enough that they weren’t being slowed down anymore. He saw Bolis pull Matilde to one side just before rocks fell in the spot she was standing in. Royce hurried to catch up.
He leapt over the trunk of a spindly tree that had fallen, then sidestepped as a geyser erupted with the pressure of the island’s devastation. Royce made it to where the others were, running with them as the island fell apart.
“You found the mirror,” Neave said. “But not your father?”
Royce shook his head. “He’d been there, but…” He ducked as another fragment of rock flashed past. “There’s no time to explain.”
“What about the gray-skinned man?” Mark asked. He had his hand clutched to his wounds as he ran, obviously ignoring the pain.
“He’s still back there,” Royce said.
“We should have tried to stop him,” Bolis said.
“You would have died,” Royce assured him. “You did the right thing. Now, keep running. We have to get to the boat!”
“The assassin said that he left his boat past ours,” Matilde said. “It’s… Neave!”
Royce saw the ground next to the Picti girl start to open up. Faster than the others could react, he grabbed for her, catching her arm and yanking her back from the precipice of a chasm with lava bubbling at its base.
“We have to get off this island,” Royce said. He looked through Ember’s eyes, trying to pick out a route, and saw that there was indeed a boat that wasn’t theirs beached on a shelf of rock just a little way away. They definitely had a better chance of reaching it than they did their own small vessel, and it looked as though this boat had a better chance of surviving the voyage back as well.
“This way,” he called, leading the others and trying to pick out a route through the chaos of the island. Around him, ground crumbled and rocks fell, producing a perilous pathway that he and the others had to run through like a gauntlet.
“Just like being back on the Red Isle,” Mark said.
Royce nodded, thinking back to the field of traps and tripwires that they’d had to run through as a part of their training there. Back then, he’d been able to get some of his fellow prisoner-recruits across it safely. He could do the same here; he had to.
“This way,” Royce said, picking out the safest route he could see to the boat. Even that wasn’t entirely safe, leading through a series of obsidian pillars, sharp-edged glass ready to scratch at his skin if he so much as brushed against them. Royce picked a path through them, trying to find a route wide enough for the mirror he held, and for the bulky form of Gwylim.
They ran through, and there was a broad expanse of glassy rock ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, Royce thought he could see movement. The lizard-things of the island were coming, and now it appeared that there were hundreds of them.
“They’re coming for us,” Matilde said. “We won’t be able to get the boat into the water in time.”
Royce realized she had a point. The boat was large, and it was fully pulled up out of the water, wedged with rocks to keep it in place. In the time it would take them to get it back in the water, the lizard-things would be on them, and in the open there was no way that they would be able to stand against their numbers.
“Go,” Royce said, tossing the mirror to Matilde. “Get the boat into the water, and don’t look in the mirror, whatever happens! I’ll hold them here. They can only come at me a few at a time.”
Neave, Matilde, and Gwylim did as he told them, moving out across the open ground to where the boat sat. The two girls pulled away the rocks from beneath it and started to push it toward the water. The Bhargir lent his bulk to the effort, pushing along with them, and now it started to move.
Mark and Bolis stood with Royce, obsidian-tipped spears ready.
“You don’t need to be here,” Royce said.
“You can’t hold them alone,” Mark said. “No one can.”
Royce wanted to argue, and to try to keep his friends safe, but there was no time, because the first of the lizard-things was already upon them. Royce pulled out the obsidian sword and cut the creature down, then turned to strike at the next of them. Beside him, Mark thrust his spear deep into one, while Bolis deflected a blow from another. Royce cut down that one, and Mark deflected a blow aimed at him in turn.
The creatures kept coming. The pillars of obsidian meant that they could only come at them one at a time, but for every one that fell, another was there instantly to take its place. Royce felt a spear scrape along his arm, cut the creature down, and another stepped forward to try to strike at him. One grabbed Mark, and Royce saw Bolis plunge his spear into it. Royce cut another down, then another.
He heard a splash behind him, and Matilde called out, “We’re ready! Come on!”
Royce glanced back to see the boat in the water, its mast raised, Matilde and Neave holding its oars, ready to row. Only the broad expanse of rock lay between Royce, Mark, Bolis, and the others. There was just one problem with that…
“You two run,” Royce told them, even as he cut down another of the creatures. “If we all run at once, they’ll cut us down.”
“You run first,” Bolis said. He speared a lizard-thing. “The world needs you. We can’t risk you.”
“I can hold them!” Royce insisted, although there were so many of the creatures that he wasn’t sure how he could do it.
That was when Bolis hit him, the butt of his spear slamming into Royce’s jaw. Royce staggered, the obsidian sword falling from his hands. Mark caught it, and caught him too, dragging him back semi-conscious. Through half-open eyes, Royce could only watch the figure of Bolis receding as he and Mark made their way across the expanse of the rocks.
He saw Bolis spear one lizard creature, then another, parry a spear and then slash with the point of his own. He saw the knight cut down a beast on his left, drop to one knee and reverse the weapon to spear the next. For a moment, it seemed to Royce as if he might actually be able to hold against all of the creatures coming at him.
Then the spear stuck in one of the lizard folk, the point snapping off, so that now he could only strike out with the branch as a staff. Royce saw a spear lance into his side, and Bolis spun to strike down the creature, but another struck him, and another. Bolis pulled one of the spears from his flesh, striking down another of the beasts, fighting on impossibly in the face of the wounds he’d suffered.
Then he fell, buried under a swarm of the beasts.
“Run!” Mark said, and all Royce could do was try to manage it, even while his heart wanted to break at the sight of someone who had trusted him, come with him this far, getting torn apart by the creatures.
They flowed from the stand of obsidian pillars, surging toward them. Mark and Royce ran for the edge of the rocky shelf, and the boat was waiting in the water, a little way below and a dozen yards offshore. Royce had enough of his wits about him now to dive, striking the water hard and plunging down into the shocking cold.
That brought him back to himself, and he swam for the surface, seeing the lizard creatures there on the edge of the island as he surfaced, unwilling, or unable, to follow. Royce swam hard for the boat, managing to pull himself over the side just as Mark did. Behind them, the island continued to collapse in on itself, crumbling now that there wasn’t Barihash’s presence to hold it together.
“Row!” Royce yelled. “We need to get as far from the island as we can. Row!”
***
Royce sat in the boat, looking down through Ember’s eyes, using the hawk’s view on the world to pick out rocks beneath the waves and provide a safe route away from the Seven Isles. The distance of the view helped, because it also seemed to give him a hint of distance from the pain he felt at Bolis’s death, and at the failure of their attempt to find his father.
“He was an arrogant invader,” Neave said, bringing Royce back to himself, “but he was a good man. Without him, I would have died back there on the island.”
“We all would have,” Mark said.
Royce sighed. This journey had cost them so much. It had cost Bolis his life, had seen the rest of them bruised and battered, hurt and haunted. It had cost him both the crystal sword and the armor that his father had given him, and had given him back… what? A crude sword formed of obsidian? No sign of his father? A mirror so dangerous that it had driven Barihash mad, and left Dust begging for death?
“Bolis was a hero,” Royce said, “and a true knight by the end of it.”
It didn’t seem like enough to say. Sir Bolis hadn’t believed in Royce at the start of all this, and had hated the presence of both Picti and commoners among his forces. Yet he’d died fighting to save all of them. Royce could hardly believe the change that there had been in him.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get back safely?” Mark asked.
Royce honestly couldn’t say. He thought the boat had enough supplies in it for the journey. He thought it was large enough and sturdy enough to survive the trip across the sea, even if it wasn’t on the same scale that the ship that had brought them had been. He thought the sail would carry them quickly enough to bring them back before the king could attack and they missed the fight that mattered.
Royce found himself staring at the covered mirror, sitting in the stern of the boat just a little ways from him. He found himself thinking of the promises that it offered. With it, would he be able to see a safe way back for him and his friends? Would he be able to see a way to get back in time to help, and see the best way to win the coming battle?
He might, but he might also find himself maddened, believing lies, as paranoid about enemies who didn’t exist as Barihash had been. If the mirror had been able to twist someone who claimed to have been a great king and a sorcerer, what would it do to him?
Had his father looked? There was every sign that his father had seen enough of the future to set out a path for Royce, so had he looked in the mirror? If so, where had he gone afterward? Where was he now?
Royce didn’t know, but he did know the way that Dust had looked in the moments after Royce had made him look into the mirror. He’d stared into it, and there had been horror there, but he’d also said things that made it sound as though he thought he’d been completely wrong. Royce didn’t know what to make of that. What had he seen?
There was only one way to find out.
Royce went to the mirror, putting one hand on the bag that covered it, trying to make up his mind. His father had warned him not to look, and he’d seen the consequences that could come from looking. The sensible thing was to take this mirror back home, find Lori, and ask the witch if there was a way to use it more safely.
Royce found himself thinking of Bolis, though. He’d given his life to try to save them. How many others would have to do it? How many people would die because Royce didn’t know what was coming, and didn’t have a way to see a strategy to win this war? If the knight could be that heroic, shouldn’t Royce be prepared to look into it?
Put like that, he knew there was only one choice, whatever his father had said.
He closed his eyes.
He knew that when he opened his eyes—if he opened them—his world would change forever. He could descend into madness. Into horror.
Or he could rise to a level of wisdom beyond any he could ever achieve.
Either way, his life would change forever.
He stood there, trembling, knowing he should walk away. He should just turn around, forget that this mirror existed.
He knew it was the sensible thing to do.
And yet, he could not.
He took a deep breath, pulled the cloth from the mirror.
He opened his eyes.
And he stared.