“Talk to Anluan, lass. He’s going to go through with this, but he’s not happy with what it means. I expect he’ll come to find you again later, explain it all to you.”
“I’ll talk to him now.” I got to my feet, steadying myself with one hand on the table. “Where do you think he is?”
“You’re not going anywhere on your own,” Magnus said.
A slight form appeared in the outer doorway: Muirne, with purple marks like bruises under her eyes. She hadn’t been lying when she spoke of a debilitating headache.
“You are recovered, Caitrin.”
“I’m feeling somewhat better, thank you. Is your headache gone?”
A wintry smile. “It will pass.”
“You left the garden rather quickly, earlier.”
“You could not understand. The pain is such that one does not act sensibly. I was unable to help you.”
Magnus was concentrating on his cookery, leaving the awkward conversation up to the two of us.
“Muirne, do you know where Anluan is?”
She took a step into the kitchen, then turned to adjust some cups on a shelf so they were perfectly in line. “Yes,” she said.
“I need to talk to him. Will you walk there with me?” I glanced at Magnus, expecting him to order me straight back to bed.
“Where is he, Muirne?” the big man asked.
“Through there.” Muirne waved a hand vaguely towards the inner doorway. “Close by.”
“I suppose it’s all right, provided Caitrin doesn’t go on her own,” Magnus said. “He’ll likely have words with me for letting you get out of bed so soon, Caitrin. Muirne, make sure you look after her.” He was lifting the ham down from the hook where I had hung it.
“Of course.” Muirne’s brows went up, as if it were ridiculous to suggest she would be anything other than the most caring of companions. She took my arm—her touch chilled me—and we went through the inner doorway into the maze of chambers and hallways beyond.
I was foolish, perhaps. Once before, up in the tower, I had imagined her pushing me over the edge and down to oblivion. I had suspected her of shutting me in. I had even wondered if she was responsible for the damage to my belongings, though it was hard to imagine such a self-possessed creature shredding a gown or ripping out a doll’s hair. As for her sudden disappearance earlier, just before I noticed the fire, she had a perfectly plausible explanation for that. I had seen how the frenzy affected the host, causing those men on the walkway to turn on one another, sending the steady Gearrog suddenly mad. I should be grateful to Muirne. If she had not removed herself from Irial’s garden, she might have been driven to attack me.
“Something amuses you, Caitrin?”
“Not really. This has been a difficult day. I thought the whole library would be lost.”
“That would indeed be bad, since you seem to believe the host can be dismissed if only you find the right page. If the records were gone, you would have no reason to stay.”
After a moment I said, “Fortunately, it seems nothing was burned. Some smoke damage, that was all. Not a real fire. Something else.”
“This is Whistling Tor. It is not like the outside world.” She stopped in front of a tall bronze mirror, hung flush with the stone wall.Verdigris crept across its surface like a spreading canker.
“In many ways that is true,” I said. “But Whistling Tor exists in the outside world; it cannot be forever isolated, keeping only to its own rules. Without Magnus’s trips down to the settlement and the readiness of those folk to send supplies back with him, this place could not keep going. Now the Normans are coming, and Anluan is going to put up a fight for his lands. He has gone into that outside world, Muirne, and he’s made a pledge that he’ll confront the threat bravely, he and the host together. Times are changing.”
Muirne had her hand flat on the wall beside the bronze panel. There was a small frown between her neat, pale brows. “You’ve never really understood, have you?” she said, and the mirror swung away from the wall to reveal a shadowy space within, and steps going down. “Anluan is down there. Come quietly.”
The hairs on my neck rose in unease.There was something deeply unsettling about this hidden entry, a menace, a wrongness. I hesitated, warning bells ringing loud in my head.
“Afraid?” Muirne said softly, her hand on my sleeve. “It’s quite safe. Come, I will show you.”
Something in her eyes led me down the steps after her. At the bottom a heavy iron-bound door stood ajar.We halted. Lamplight shone from within. The chamber was deep in the ground; there would be no windows here.
I took a breath to ask what the place was, but Muirne’s cold fingers were suddenly against my lips, rendering me silent and still. Her eyes moved from me to the gap in the doorway, and when I followed her gaze I saw that Anluan was within the chamber. He sat on a bench, quite still, his back to us. He was staring into a mirror. I wondered why he had not immediately seen our reflections and turned.Then I glimpsed a swirl of movement and color on the surface before him and realized that this was another of Nechtan’s artifacts, showing something quite different from what stood before it. I should not be here watching. I should retreat or make a sound to alert him to my presence. But I couldn’t. The images that held Anluan there were plainly visible, and they gripped me as it seemed they had him. Beside me, Muirne stood quiet as a shadow.
This was a mirror of glass with a reflective surface behind it, an object such as one would find only in the wealthiest of homes.The images within it were as clear as if seen through a window on a sunny day.There was Anluan astride a tall black horse, riding fast along a dappled forest pathway. He sat straight, his shoulders square, his head high and his flame of hair streaming out behind him. A sword hung at his belt, a bow was slung over his shoulder.Two sleek hounds ran at the horse’s feet. Behind him a company of men-at-arms rode two by two, one of them bearing a banner: a golden sun on a field the hue of a summer sky.
