Chapter 194
Smurjan on his feet, two shadows behind him, his white braid loose, his face like a closed door.
sitting down cross-legged in the nettles at the field's edge, Drekk beside her with the sleeping panther against his boots.
A chain of hands: Bali at the front, then Rougeina, Räva (eyes shut, gripping Rougeina's hand), Vigolas, Kompis with Mingus pressed against his leg, Öde, Isa, Smurjan with a sleeping Trollmage over his shoulder. Bali steps into the great silver mirror as if it were water, and pulls.
half through the glass. With each person he draws after him, a new crack opens across his skin, tik, tik, tik.
The Hall Between: an endless corridor with mirrors for walls, a floor of glass, and no ceiling, only Astralis's stars reflected into infinity. On both sides, reflections of the crew, then reflections of the reflections, each a little fainter, receding forever.
awake on Smurjan's shoulder, the crow peering over his head.
In every one, at every depth, the half-faced woman appearing, smiling.
Placing.
Kompis takes one step, and he's gone: yanked to where his reflection stands three hundred mirrors deep. Mingus is already bolting after him down the hall at full speed, barking.
Öde, one step, gone: two hundred mirrors deep.
Smurjan, gone, five hundred deep, Trollmage still on his shoulder.
Bali lets go of the chain and slips into a wall of glass after Kali, without a word.
Who's left at the mouth of the Hall. Rougeina, standing perfectly still. Isa, standing perfectly still. Räva, eyes shut, clinging to Rougeina's hand. And Vigolas, and all round him his reflections flickering, trying to be pulled and finding nothing to pull.
grinning crookedly at her.
(A beat. In the glass, Echo doesn't answer.)
The endless corridor of mirrors seen from high above, a glittering line running away to a vanishing point where everything goes grey. Strung along it at different depths, each in their own fight:
Kompis, three hundred mirrors down, Mingus at his heel, firing Bror.
Öde, two hundred down, scythe in a long sweep.
Smurjan, five hundred down, Trollmage on his back.
Vigolas, running straight down the middle of the hall, coat flaring, fist cocked.
Near the mouth, Rougeina and Räva, walking hand in hand, Räva's eyes shut tight.
Back at the entrance, Isa, standing perfectly still.
And reaching for every one of them out of the walls: the same silver hand, out of seventy-two mirrors at once, fanned like the spokes of a wheel.
The deeper you look, the fainter they get.
Two hundred mirrors down. Seventy-two identical silver hands come out of seventy-two mirrors at Öde, all at once, all in the same beat. Her scythe sweeps through a dozen of them, and then stops dead in mid-swing. In the nearest mirror a silver hand is holding the reflection of her scythe.
Kompis, arriving at a run with Mingus, eyes gold, the pulse-line live along the border. Subtick. One shot from Ivar, a plain lead bullet, into that mirror. It bursts. The scythe comes free, and Öde staggers.
Silver hands passing round Isa like water round a stone, finding nothing to take hold of. She hasn't moved a hair.
stopping dead in the middle of the hall, emerald eyes ringed with gold. Greed-sight on an endless corridor: glitter, glitter, glitter, nothing worth anything. Then KEYSTONE: the one small point that holds the whole hall together. Far, far down, at the very vanishing point, a dark speck.
on its cord at his throat, swinging away from the crew toward the speck. And for one heartbeat a completely black panel: no gold threads, no hum, nothing.
(Next panel: the Knot humming back, gold, all the threads at once. He breathes out.)
on Smurjan's back as the two of them catch up, peering into a mirror at his own reflection. In the glass his troll-iron crown sits perfectly straight.
Rougeina and Räva walking, hand in hand, slowly, toward the vanishing point. Räva's eyes shut. Her voice low, quick, the way you talk so you don't have to think.
eyes still shut, half smiling at something inside.
walking, tears running, not wiping them.
The smile going.
Inside the glass: a room, the little Astralis cottage copied in reflection, blue door, lamplight, a table set with four bowls. At the table, Kali, one arm, red braid, talking, nonstop and outraged, at a silent table. Beside her, Bali, sitting with his head down.
seeing Smurjan through the glass.
And she's through the glass and back into his shadow in one leap. Behind Smurjan: three shadows again.
Art note, pages 14–17: Null-scene grammar. Grey seeps in from the panel borders, the SFX boxes for footsteps are empty, and Kompis's pulse-line skips.
All of them together again, Isa rejoining at the end of a chain of hands, walking down the last stretch of the Hall. Here the reflections are only outlines, then dotted outlines, then nothing at all. The grey seeping in from the edges of the panel.
on the glass floor, bare and booted and pawed. No footsteps.
(Every SFX box: empty.)
Where the reflections run out: a small plinth of black glass sand, the last real ground, and beyond it, nothing, the flat soundless grey. On the plinth, alone, a tall, narrow, frameless mirror of blue-grey mirror-steel, a head taller than a door, with eight long slivers missing from its left edge.
And in it, solid and close for the first time: Echo. Long crimson hair drifting. One green eye. Her clear half kind and tired. Her other half not there.
looking past her daughter at the woman with her eyes shut.
Behind the dark mirror, in the grey, on the far side of the glass: a long hand in a grey sleeve, a black bar across its knuckles, resting flat on the back of the mirror like someone fond of what they're watching. Nobody looks at it. Nobody sees it.
(No balloon. Empty SFX box.)
eyes shut, jaw tight.
She steps back, and her heel catches on a curl of glass on the floor.
Räva falls. Her free hand flies out to catch herself, away from her eyes, and her eyes open, straight into the dark mirror.
the fox face, amber eyes wide, lit by whatever the glass is showing her. We don't see what it is.