A Hero's throne

She turned and looked at it. But when she looked at it straight on, it showed her as a girl and nothing else. She turned back to the future mirror and looked at one via the other; there was definitely something standing behind her young mirror image, but she couldn’t quite tell. How were the mirrors fixed to the walls? If only there was some way to move them closer together-

The racks.

She moved one of the racks closer to the “past” mirror that showed her as a little girl and then went back to the “future” mirror. She lifted it off of the wall-from its series of hooks that ran along a groove-and carried it across to the other mirror, placing it on the rack. Then, with her back to the “past” mirror, she moved the “future” mirror so that it showed her and then the image behind her as well.

What she saw was her older self in the mirror before her, but standing behind that image, reflected in the other mirror, was another reflection of her. By turning to the side and leaning forward, she managed to manoeuvre herself into a position where she could see past her future self to the other.

The face of a young girl peered out at her from behind the lavish red skirts of her future self. At first Freya thought it was her younger image again, but as she looked at it longer, she saw that she had different features, a different skin tone, but nonetheless still bore a striking resemblance.

Could it be her daughter?

Freya raised a hand and waved. The girl mirrored her perfectly. “Hello?” she said, and the girl mouthed the words at the same time as she. Was it still just a reflection, then? She stood still, studying her face and clothes. The girl’s expression betrayed no emotion other than her own, and so its thoughts, its personality, were masked to her.

She took a step back and knocked the frame of the mirror ever so slightly as she did. The mirror tilted and a whole line of images grew from behind the image of her supposed daughter. All her descendants curved away into the dim distance behind her.

What a remarkable enchantment.

An idea occurred to her and she turned around. She caught her breath as she found herself faced with herself as a young girl, and in the reflection behind that was her mother. And behind her was her grandmother, and then, presumably, her grandmother’s mother, and all the way down the line, into the far distance.

It was eerie and haunting. “This is too much,” Freya said.

But it wasn’t even the half of it. Turning to the door, she found that another mirror hung on the back of it. Closing the door, it latched, and she looked at the image that showed her in a regular, everyday outfit but surrounded by a busy, daytime cafe scene, which she recognised instantly-the Jericho Cafe, where she liked to do most of her revisions. Her mirror image was standing just as she was now, but to the side of her was a small, round table that had her book and an empty mug containing a sodden tea bag.

Was this her as she could have been? But could have been if. . what? If she hadn’t returned? If she’d killed Gad? If she hadn’t come across Swi?gar and Ecgbryt in the first place?

People moved around in the background behind her, casually, calmly. A guy her age-a nice-looking guy, well- groomed and not too fashionable, just the type she liked-came and sat at the table behind her and started poking around on his laptop. Did this image show what she wanted her life to be like?

Freya brought the mirror to the centre of the room and hung it on another of the racks. Then she took the rack showing her future and turned them toward each other. They stood at a right angle to each other. Each one showed her reflection, and the reflection of herself in the other mirror-but they were different images.

On her near left was the reflection of herself in the cafe, and on her near right was the reflection of her future self. But the inside reflections were different from these two again.

The cafe scene’s mirror showed a sitting room, small-a little too small perhaps-but cosy. She was standing in front of a sofa, and behind her, where the image of the unknown student would have been, was a man she couldn’t quite see but whom she was certain she recognised. She could only see the edge of his face and so she tilted the mirror in order to show more of it.

It was Daniel. He looked at home. She could identify some of her things in the room-a print of a painting she liked, a carving a friend gave her from Africa. She was dressed in night clothes and seemed comfortable, relaxed. . with Daniel, who wasn’t wearing the hard mask he’d picked up on the street, but who seemed pleasant and gentle, as if Ni?ergeard had never even happened.

She looked into the other mirror, and beside her future self, she saw an image of herself, still wearing the silver crown but wearing battle gear-darkly polished plate armour and chainmail, with black boots and trim, a sword fastened at her hip. Her hands were bare and smeared red with blood. The scene behind her was dim and dark, but she was pretty sure that there were bodies around her.

Freya realised she wasn’t breathing and took a deep breath. She forced herself to think this through. Surely they couldn’t both be true, so either of them must only be a possible future-or both of them might be. But if so, for what purpose? To show different options? To tempt her into certain paths? Who would create such things? Ealdstan, presumably, but why? What did he use them for?

Cautiously, very cautiously, she tilted the mirrors closer to each other and watched as the reflections stacked upon themselves, cascading behind one another.

In the right-hand mirror, she saw herself crowned, and behind that, wearing the battle armour, behind that was a reflection of her in rags and bound in chains, behind that she was wearing blue, papery pajamas and a white robe-like someone might wear in a mental hospital-and behind that she was wearing the Oxford graduation robes, and behind that were more and more images, although it was extremely hard to make them out.

What did it mean? If they were all probable futures, was there any significance to their order? Were the closest images the most probable?

She took a step back, out of the mirrors’ reflections, feeling light-headed. Again, she asked, what was the point of this room, besides a sort of dizzying diversion? Almost ten minutes passed and she was breathless, disoriented, with an overwhelming number of questions. Was it possible that Ealdstan, in his hundreds of years’ worth of time, could have cracked the secret to using these mirrors and could see the actual future? If anyone could, it would be him, although they’d not discovered anything in his study that related or even alluded to this place or the mirrors. And if he had figured out a way to exploit them somehow, then to what effect?

Things got really crazy when she set three mirrors up to reflect one another. They showed all different kinds of scenes of herself and people she knew and didn’t know in familiar and unfamiliar settings. She tried to track which images were shown in what mirrors, but it got very confusing, and the more complex the setup, the harder it was to make out exactly what was in the reflections. She strained her neck and her eyes trying to see as much of the different scenes as possible.

Then she placed all four mirrors around her and turned slowly, as if in a kaleidoscopic chamber. Her eyes watered and she experienced a sharp stab of vertigo that forced her to move out from the reflecting mirrors quickly before she keeled over. She almost threw up at that point, and it took her a long time to recover.

Unable to pull herself away from the room, she spent countless hours arranging and rearranging the mirrors-moving them just so, tilting them this way and then that, standing exactly here- but she eventually tore herself away, becoming hungry and tired. Her mind was so full of images that she could barely begin to process them all, and it made it difficult for her to think of anything else. She felt like screaming.

Used in combination, the mirrors all had so many different properties. The “now” one showed the friends and people she’d been close to when reflected in the “past” mirror: her parents in their garden, her sister in a classroom, Daniel standing in a forest-that was odd-Ecgbryt in a dark tunnel, and beyond that she thought she saw Modwyn with her eyes closed in what may have been a bedroom. The images behind that were hard to make out. Trying hard not to look into their faces, she replaced each of the mirrors in their original places on the walls and behind the door. She shivered and left the room, closing the silver door behind her. She was continuing back down the thin passageway and back to the stairs when she remembered that there was another room on that floor.

Her head was spinning and she decided that she was in a very bad condition to face what might be in that room, if it was anything. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Vivienne had said, and the words came back to her now. She trudged down the stairs, back into Ealdstan’s study. Vivienne was at her usual place, going over the books again. Of the hundreds that lined the walls, it seemed she had made her way through at least half of them. No mean feat, but then Freya didn’t know how long they had both been at it.

“Ready to go at it again, Freya?” Vivienne said, pulling a stack of books toward her. And then moving her