reflection! There are lots of fine and beautiful things in it; you just don’t know how to take advantage of them.”
I said nothing, waiting.
“Well, all right,” he said with a sigh. “What do you want all this for?”
“All what?”
“You don’t understand?”
“No,” I told him quite sincerely.
“All this stress and strain trying to save someone or something, all these friends, all these moral complexes and other unprofitable garbage. Why did you get involved in this crazy adventure? You were never like this before. You used to be more like me.”
“I’m glad we have nothing in common any longer.”
“Oh, come off it, Harold! All this scurrying about has turned you into a namby-pamby, a wimp who depends on other people. Remember the golden days when there was just you and the night, when you relied on no one but yourself and didn’t drag all these friends, obligations, and rules around with you? Didn’t we have good times then? Remember the times when you used to break into some fat-assed goon’s house just for fun and completely clean him out! Remember the times when you used to plant a crossbow bolt in anyone who got in your way without thinking twice. You used to kill easily, you wouldn’t have left Paleface alive before.”
“I never killed anyone who simply got in my way, reflection! That way I’d have put half of Avendoom in the graveyard. I always defended myself to save my own life. Don’t confuse me with you. I don’t take any pleasure in killing! If this is just a friendly chat about old times, I’d better be going. This conversation’s not going to get us anywhere.”
I stepped back and ran into the cold silver surface of a mirror. He laughed, and I didn’t like the sound of it. He and I were not at all alike now, we were completely different people.
“You can only leave here with me, Harold.”
“Who are you?” I asked him again.
“I already told you who I am.”
“You didn’t call me over just for idle conversation, did you? You’re always looking for your own advantage, aren’t you, double?”
“Advantage? Well, you’re not completely hopeless, reflection.” A faint gleam of interest appeared in his eyes. “Yes, there’s a very profitable deal in the offing, and for old friendship’s sake, I want to offer you a share in this little business.”
I decided to play by his rules.
“A little business means small profits,” I said with a grin, trying to copy his leer.
He laughed again.
“Good old Harold! And I thought I’d lost you completely! Don’t worry, there’s a great big profit to be made from this paltry little business.”
“What do we have to do?”
“We? I swear by the darkness, but I like that! Strictly speaking, nothing. How do you like those odds? A heap of gold for doing nothing at all?”
“I’m always ready to take part in that kind of difficult business.” This time it was much easier to copy his leer.
“Excellent! All you have to do is not drag that cursed tin whistle out of the Palaces of Bone, and we’ll collect a whole sackful of gold.”
“A whole sackful?” I asked, making a surprised and doubtful face. “Are you sure about that?”
“Don’t worry, my old friend, I’ve already agreed to everything.”
“And who’s the client?”
“Let’s just say, an outside observer. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
“I’ve got nothing against it in principle, but there’s just the previous Commission.…”
“Oh drop that. I don’t believe in stupid signs and the wrath of the gods. Well then, do you agree?”
“I think so,” I said with a nod, and the reflection relaxed. “But I do have just one small thing to add to what I said before.”
“What’s that?” he asked, moving closer to me.
“Remember I said I didn’t take any pleasure in killing?”
“Well?” my double asked, with a puzzled look in his eyes.
“I lied,” I said, pulling out my knife and stabbing at my reflection’s chest. He either knew what was coming or he sensed something and managed to jump out of the way. I only tore his clothes. And an instant later there was a knife in his hand, too.
“Fool!” he spat out, and flung himself on me.
It’s very difficult fighting yourself. I always knew where I was going to strike, and if I knew, then he knew, too. We were equally good with our knives, and after a minute circling between the mirrors we only had a few shallow cuts each.
Now he was going to strike at my throat, and when I stepped forward and to the left, he would try to get me on the shoulder with the backswing.
He struck at my throat, I stepped forward and to the left, and the reflection immediately tried to strike me in the right shoulder. I knew it was coming and parried his knife with mine. Then I moved straight into the attack, aiming for his face, grabbed him by the chest with my free hand, pulled him toward me, and immediately got a knee in the belly. I jumped back and ducked to avoid a slashing blow, put some distance between us, and tried to get my breath back.
“You’re getting old,” he chuckled, blowing a tuft of hair from my head off the blade of his knife.
I didn’t say anything, and he came at me again. Whirling and spinning, knife clanging against knife, hissing through teeth when one of us got another scratch. Neither of us could win; all my efforts to reach my double ran up against my own (or his?) defense. Finally we stopped, facing each other and breathing heavily.
“It’s tough fighting someone who can read your mind, isn’t it, reflection?” he asked, licking his bloody wrist.
“It’s easy,” I said, and threw the handful of the metal stars I’d taken from Paleface at my double.
Of course, he read what I was going to do and tried to dodge out of the way, but this time he couldn’t. I threw the stars without aiming, and with my left hand, and he didn’t know which way to jump. After I flung them, each of the five stars followed its own absolutely random trajectory (I told you already that I’m not much of a thrower).
Three missed, but two struck home. The first hit my double precisely on his right wrist and he dropped his knife and jerked out of the way of another two stars flying at him, but ran into a third that stuck in his left leg. My double cursed and collapsed on the floor. In two bounds I was there beside him, then I moved behind his back and held my knife against his throat.
“What a stupid way to get caught,” my reflection said in a wooden voice. “I don’t think you’ll do this.”
“Why not?”
“It’s rather hard to kill yourself. Did you know there’s a superstition that if you kill your double, you follow him into the darkness?”
A single drop of sweat slid down his temple.
“Wasn’t it you who said you don’t believe in stupid signs?” I asked the reflection, and slit his throat.
The mirrors around me broke and I was back in the hall, only now there was a door where one of the mirrors had been. The body of my double trembled and spread across the floor as white mist.
I’d passed the test of my own self, and now the way ahead was open. I stepped out of the mirror hall.
At first I didn’t even know where I’d got to. It was a perfectly ordinary, entirely undistinguished space without any exit. I walked forward uncertainly, not understanding where I had gone wrong, and what could have brought me into a dead end. And then it happened. The hall changed.
It gave me such a fright I almost wet myself. At least, my stomach dove down into my boots, and I thought I was falling off a precipice. A perfectly understandable reaction from anyone who suddenly found himself suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. I had to try really hard not to panic, and understand that I was still
