Songs of the Dying Earth

his second eye patch and placed it upon her face. “Use it as you will.”

T’sais understood that he was talking past the cliff, past the stone house.

“You have twenty-seven freckles on your back,” the Captain said sadly as she left the ship for the cliff. “Your left wrist has a scar from where you broke it, bucked from a horse. Your hair smells like lavender in the mornings. You do not like the sound of bees but love the taste of honey.”

In the stone house, T’sais Prime found a woman who looked remarkably like her but for the graying of her hair. She sat upon a flaking gold throne in the middle of a great hall made entirely of starkest marble. Surrounding her were the remains of many skeletons sunken in amid many skulls, some still with flesh upon them. The smell in that place was sickly sweet, as of many attempts to rid it of another scent entirely.

With caution, T’sais Prime approached.

The woman looked up and gave her a wicked smile.

“I see myself approach,” she said, “and wonder why the mirror always moves, though I wish it to be still.”

“Are you Vendra?” T’sais asked as she threaded her way through the bones.

“And lo! the mirror talks,” the woman said. “It tells me my chosen name, not that given to me, although in truth I am always and forever my own reflection. There is no escape for that.”

“Why are there so many bodies here?” T’sais asked of Vendra. She hated the smothering silence, the sense of arriving in the aftermath of something gone terribly wrong.

“Them?” Vendra asked, with a wave of a beringed hand. “They escaped the broken glass to worship me — climbed up the cliff — but they bring the glass with them in their minds and they forget to eat and drink and they die all the same.”

“But why?” T’sais asked.

A hungry smile. “Because to look upon me is to look upon the glass itself — I am a memory of the Dying Earth, a living reflection, just like you. But no matter that they die; others follow. That is the way of shadows.”

“A spell?”

Vendra shrugged. “I cannot leave this hell of my own volition, but I have learned a few spells of my own from those who adore me. Spells built this stone mansion. Spells made the face in the cliff: a beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse…”

But T’sais had sensed the sting behind the nectar and removed the eye patch, so that after several moment T’sais’ urge to lie down and sleep among the corpses faded.

Vendra sighed, and her voice and intonations became normal again, and her gaze directed itself upon T’sais with unnatural intensity.

“I release you from your own spell, and willingly,” T’sais said, “but if you attempt a second, I swear I will throw you off the cliff. It is a long way to fall.”

Vendra took a long and shuddering breath. “Not that I’d kill a man willingly,” Vendra continued as if nothing had happened, unable to look at T’sais. “But you are not a double of a double in your purpose. Why are you here?”

T’sais almost did not tell her. “Sarnod has sent me to bring you back,” she said, although in truth, Vendra horrified her almost as much as the thought of returning to Sarnod as one of his servants.

Vendra laughed bitterly, her amusement like salt upon a wound. “Sarnod is a cruel man, but I suppose he had one kindness within him: he let me choose a name that did not remind me I was a reflection, even if I am now required by my ambition to embrace it.”

“And yet when he created me,” T’sais said, “he named me a reflection but told me naught of my origins, that I might think myself original.”

“One kindness,” Vendra repeated. “One kindness amid so much else.”

“He is much saddened by your absence,” T’sais added, although she did not know the truth of this. In truth, though, Vendra did not seem much like her. This observation made her heart beat faster, made her think of the Captain waiting in his ship. “What will you do?” he had said, and she had replied, “I do not know.”

Vendra’s gaze narrowed. “And Gandreel?” For a moment, Vendra looked younger and without guile.

“Sarnod forgives all. I am here to take you back. Gandreel is also sought.”

Vendra stirred on her rotting throne like something coming back to life. “I would like that,” she said, managing to sound weary and hopeful at the same time. “Even if it is untrue.”

“I have been given the power to send you back,” T’sais Prime said, “but I will not return with you. You can tell Sarnod he would have to kill me first.”

Vendra laughed. “My sad reflection, he wouldn’t kill you. He would just punish you by sending you here.”

After Vendra was gone, T’sais used her last spell to bring the stone house roaring down into dust, to release her own likeness upon the cliff face into faceless oblivion upon the broken glass below.

Then she rejoined the Captain on their ship.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

T’sais Prime smiled, and, handing him his eye patch, said, “You have seventeen scars on your body, four on your left arm, three on your right, two on your chest, three on your back, and the rest on your legs. Seven are from knives, the rest from all manner of spells and other weapons. You wear a beard to disguise your weak chin. You snore in your sleep like a wounded soul. You are as loyal and good as you are stubborn and pig-headed. There is nothing behind your second eye patch but a puckered scar.”

This answer seemed to satisfy the Captain deeply.

The bellowing of The Mouth brought Sarnod startled from a nap on his divan at the top of the tower. He had been dreaming of the cool, deep lake, a vision enhanced by allowing one dry hand to float within the ever-present bowl of water set upon the table next to him.

“They return from the UNDERHIND! They return!”

His heart a nervous patter, Sarnod rose quickly, gathered his green-blue robes about him, and descended to the Seeing Hall, there to stand, waiting, before the two eyes and now-silent Mouth. The sun through the great oval window shed unwelcome heat across the marble floor. The room, so large, felt small and stuffy as a trap.

The Mouth said, “Soon there will be an end to all of this,” in no way reassuring Sarnod.

A sound came as of a screaming across the world.

Up popped his brother Gandreel, looking spry and healthy in white robes, despite the spots on his hands, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Gandreel stared at Sarnod with a puzzlement that Sarnod knew must be mirrored on his own face. For now, seeing his brother, Sarnod felt no outpouring of familial love, no lessening of the discomfort from the hook in his heart. Instead, he felt worse, his sense of unease deepening.

And yet, perhaps this was just the shock of first impressions, made worse by the manner in which they had parted company. Thus thinking, Sarnod stepped forward to greet his brother, saying, “Welcome home, dear brother, after what I know has been a time of much sadness, confusion, and long exile.”

Gandreel’s frown deepened, and he flinched away from Sarnod’s embrace, saying, “Difficult enough to now meet the brother who was my brother, but you are not even Sarnod. Who are you then?” His tone hardened, and in his expression, Sarnod saw no hint of even a friend. “By what right do you come to be here?”

From off to Sarnod’s left came Whisper Bird’s voice, infused with unexpected emotion. “If not Sarnod, then to whom have I been enslaved all these long years?”

“Are you both mad?” Sarnod said, “Has the UNDERHIND robbed you of your senses? I am Sarnod. And you, Gandreel, you are my brother, who I admit I wrongly exiled. And, you, Whisper Bird, you must attend me now or risk great harm, for I am your master.”

“I will attend you, but what would you have me do?” Whisper Bird said, suddenly very close to Sarnod.

Before Sarnod could respond, The Mouth said, “Sometimes reflections become shadows.”