A Mirror Against All Mishap Read online

  A Mirror Against All Mishap

  Jack Massa

  Published by

  Triskelion Books

  http://www.triskelionbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual sorcerers, pirates, or witches, is purely coincidental.

  A Mirror Against All Mishap

  Copyright © 2017 by Jack Massa

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means now known or hereinafter invented, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Cover Design by Shaun Stevens, https://www.flintlockcovers.com/

  Dedication: to John W. Kelly.

  Because only a true friend critiques your fantasy novel

  using a spreadsheet.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Part One At the Hall of the Brigand Queen

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Part Two To the Ruins of Lost Valgool

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Part Three To Tallyba the Terrible

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Epilogue East of Alone

  Glimnodd Calendar, Map, and Glossary

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  A Mirror Against All Mishap is Book 2 of The Glimnodd Cycle. It continues the story begun in Cloak of the Two Winds—although you can begin reading here with absolutely no harm to your psyche. For information on the world of Glimnodd, including a Glossary and access to a map, see the Afterword.

  Cast of Characters

  Amlina - Wandering witch from Larthang, a nation of great witches. Seeking the rightful path.

  Glyssa - Young warrior of the Iruk people. Seeking to heal her wounded soul.

  Glyssa’s mates, members of her klarn:

  Lonn (m), the klarn leader, strong, passionate, stoical.

  Draven (m), Lonn’s cousin, brave and optimistic.

  Karrol (f), brawny, decisive, outspoken.

  Brinda (f), Karrol’s sister, quiet and reserved.

  Eben (m), lean, quick-witted, mercurial.

  Beryl Quan de Lang - Archimage of the East and Amlina’s great enemy. Seeking revenge.

  Zenodia - Administrator in Beryl’s Temple of the Sun, but secretly a priestess of the outlawed cult of the Lost Moon. Longing for Beryl’s overthrow.

  Meghild - Pirate queen of Gwales, aged and crippled. Wishing for one last adventure.

  Wilhaven - Bard of Gwales and man of many skills. In the service of Meghild.

  Kizier - A human scholar trapped in the shape of a sea-fern.

  Buroof - A talking book, once a human. Three thousand years old and morally deficient.

  Torms -Winged people of the mountains; wild and savage.

  Myro - Dolphin people of the sea; fond of music.

  Others: brigands, princes, sailors, boatwrights, herdsmen, priests.

  Part One

  At the Hall of the Brigand Queen

  One

  A meltwind blew late in the night. The steady breeze from the sea grew to a roar, the gray cliffs and pine-covered hills shimmered in witchlight, and the ice in the fjord changed to blue water.

  Glyssa watched from a high battlement as the curtain of sparks and blast of warmth passed over the castle. She had risen from her bed, wakened by a fearful premonition. Leaving the alcove where she slept with the other Iruks, she had stepped quietly through the great hall, where servants and retainers lay huddled near the fires. Barefoot, dressed in thin tunic and leggings, Glyssa ignored the cold, just as the sentry posted at the round-arched portal ignored her—a small, black-haired woman, a foreigner from distant parts. The guards had grown used to Glyssa's silent wanderings in the night.

  Like a ghost, she thought, a lost spirit.

  For nearly three months, Glyssa and her mates had been guests in this castle, the keep of Meghild the pirate queen, here on the western coast of Gwales. They had voyaged to this remote northern land in the company of the witch Amlina, after fleeing the city of Kadavel where Glyssa had been enslaved.

  Memories of that time still tormented her. Her body had been taken over, her mind submerged and trapped in a foul, dark place. Reduced to a mindless one, a thrall, she could only watch in hopeless despair as her body moved at the will of another mind—an ancient, nonhuman sorcerer. After nearly two months, when her identity had all but vanished, her mates had arrived as if by a miracle and saved her.

  She loved them for it. And yet, so many days later, she still felt apart from them. The Iruks hailed from the distant, south polar region of the world. Together, Glyssa and her mates formed a klarn, a band of hunters joined by oath and a group soul.

  But Glyssa had felt little of the klarn-soul’s presence since her rescue.

  Her strength had slowly returned, and she tried constantly to be her old self, the Glyssa her mates remembered and loved. But inside her was an emptiness, a frozen void she could not dispel. Whenever her mind touched that icy place she became miserably frightened—or else enraged.

  Now, as the meltwind passed away to the north, she felt a clawing, hopeless dread. The night was dark again, no moons or stars piercing the clouds. The fjord was lit only by the luminous blue water—the witchlight that gleamed through all seas and sea-ice on this world of Glimnodd. In that dreamy luminescence, Glyssa could see cranocks on the beach—wooden sailing ships the Gwalesmen used for trading and pirate forays. One craft, smaller than the rest, lay up on rollers. This was the boat the Iruks had commissioned from Meghild's shipwright. They had waited through Second and Third Winter, and now at last the boat was finished. Soon the klarn would sail from Gwales.

  They still had not decided where.

  Either they would return home, to the South Polar Sea, and resume their former life of hunting and raiding, or they would continue their partnership with Amlina and sail with her against her enemy, the fearsome witch known as the Archimage of the East.

  Glyssa did not know which course frightened her more.

  Or perhaps, what terrified her to her core was the feeling that it made no difference—that if she could not melt away this ice in her soul, then no life was worth living.

  Her shoulders jumped at a footstep behind her. Whirling, she saw that it was Lonn, climbing the stone steps from below. He had risen from his bed and come to find her.

  “Glyssa,” he whispered with concern. “You'll freeze up here.”

  “I hadn't noticed,” she murmured. “The meltwind blew.”

  Lonn craned his neck to stare over the rampart. “So it did. But it's still frosty cold.”

  He spread his arms and embraced her, wrapping the bearskin bed cover around them both. Pressed to his body, feeling his warmth, Glyssa noticed the chill for the first time and shivered.

  “Dear Glyssa,” he said. “I've told you before, if you must go wand
ering in the night, at least take a bed fur with you.”

  Glyssa said nothing, only clung to him tighter. Lonn was the klarn's leader—strong, soft-spoken, deep of thought and heart. These past months, Glyssa had slept many nights in his arms. If anything could bring her back from despair, she thought, it would be his strength and patient love.

  “So the changing-weather's begun,” he said. “And Amlina is in her deep trance, and expects to have a plan when she awakes. The klarn must decide soon if we will sail with her.”

  “Yes,” Glyssa answered. “We must decide.”

  * O *

  Candles flickered in tiny spheres of red glass. Prisms, mirrored balls, and feathered desmets hung suspended from the ceiling, swaying and twirling on impalpable breezes. Amlina the witch sat cross-legged on her bed and stared vacantly at the shifting lights and shadows. It was three or four days since she entered the dark immersion—the trance of dissolution into the Deepmind.

  After many hours her mind had begun to coalesce, self-awareness gradually returning. Now, she had almost come back to the surface mind.

  But she still had no answer.

  A fretful sigh escaped her. She shook herself and came fully awake.

  Cautiously, trying to control her frustration, she stretched her limbs, then rubbed her numb thighs and ankles. Presently, she climbed to her feet and walked unsteadily across the dim chamber. The room was circular, set in a tower—one of the few private apartments in Meghild's castle. Amlina brushed past the hanging trinkets, the lamps on the floor meticulously arranged to facilitate her deep trance. She came to a trestle table, picked up a ewer, poured water into a cup. She drank it down and coughed.

  She wiped her eyes, ran fingers through her long, pale hair. Her form was slender, narrow-shouldered, almost childlike. Her face showed the delicate features of noble Larthangan stock, with high cheekbones and flashing, sea-blue eyes. She wore a silk shift under a brocade robe, and on her head a silver fillet set with moonstones.

  She poured a second drink and gulped it down. Three or four days without water brought a powerful thirst.

  On one end of the long table sat an ancient book with parchment pages and leather binding—the talking book Amlina had taken from the lair of the sorcerer Kosimo. Near her hand sat a three-foot high fern-like plant in an ornate ivory pail. Amlina leaned over and gently touched the plant's green stalk.

  “Kizier,” she said softly.

  A single eye on the stalk opened and regarded her alertly. The plant creature was a bostull, a windbringer—one of the sentient races of Glimnodd. But this windbringer was something more. He had once been human, a wandering scholar, and he was Amlina's trusted friend.

  “What have you learned?” Kizier spoke in a whispery voice.

  Amlina sank wearily into a chair. “Nothing I didn't know already.”

  “Even the Bowing counsels it?”

  “So it would seem.”

  Prior to entering deep trance, Amlina had enacted a rite called Bowing to the Sky. This technique of deepseeing was advised only when all other methods of choosing a path had failed. It required the seeker to affirm that she would relinquish all personal choice, accept whatever answer the Deepmind gave.

  “But how can I?” Amlina said. “How can I even contemplate using such magic?”

  “You can, if you truly wish to vanquish your enemy.” A brash voice sounded from the far end of the table. “It is only logical: to destroy a great witch, you must invoke power stronger than hers.”

  The voice belonged to a talking book, who called himself Buroof. His opinion was no surprise—it was he who had proposed this course that Amlina so feared to travel. Her enemy, Beryl, was a mighty witch. She had long outlived her normal lifespan, had mastered not only Larthangan witchery, but much obscure ancient sorcery as well. For many days and nights, Amlina had meditated and consulted the book, seeking a strategy to defeat Beryl. Persistently, Buroof had pointed her to the almost forgotten magical arts of ancient Nyssan. After much consideration, he had selected one formulation in particular—a grand ensorcellment called The Mirror Against All Mishap.

  But on learning the particulars, Amlina balked. An example of the most barbaric kind of Nyssanian sorcery, the Mirror required human sacrifice.

  Like Kizier, Buroof had once been a human, a mage and scholar of vast learning. Long ago, his mind had been captured and caged in the book by a serd sorcerer. For nearly three thousand years, his mind had continued to thrive and learn, absorbing the knowledge of each mage, sorcerer, and witch who possessed the book.

  But over those centuries, Buroof had apparently lost whatever capacity for human morals he once possessed.

  “How can you still dispute the choice,” Buroof said, “when even the Bowing confirms it?”

  “Because it is blood magic,” Amlina answered. “And, as I am a witch of Larthang, my very soul calls it unspeakably evil.”

  The book made a sound like a dismissive grunt. “For how many nights have I labored on your problem, young and naïve witch of Larthang? Yet, when I offer a viable solution, you are too qualmish to accept it. I honestly fail to see why I should assist you any further.”

  Amlina glanced at Kizier, one side of her mouth pulled back in a frown. She stood, walked to the far end of the table, and shut the book—pre-empting further comment from Buroof.

  Her shoulders slumped, and her glance returned to the solemn, one-eyed gaze of the bostull. “Perhaps he is right, Kizier. Perhaps I am too squeamish.”

  “I do not believe that, Amlina. I do not believe that the only way to oppose Beryl is to plunge yourself into evil as deep as her own.”

  Amlina returned to her chair, drained by doubt and indecision. “Sometimes…Sometimes the Bowing sheds further light a day or two after the seer emerges from trance. Perhaps a way will be revealed that is…not so terrible.”

  Kizier blinked but said nothing.

  “A forlorn hope, I admit.” Amlina fell silent for a time. Presently, she spoke quietly, as if to herself. “We were so close to defeating her in Kadavel, in that cavern under the Temple of the Air. If only it had gone the other way…”

  Instead, though wounded, Beryl had managed to escape through a Gate of Spaceless Passage, taunting Amlina and the Iruks before she vanished, vowing she would hunt them down and kill them without mercy.

  In the months since, Amlina had been constantly on her guard, pouring energy into a protective aura, wary that Beryl might strike at any moment. But no sign of the Archimage had appeared—no mental attacks through the Deepmind, no flaming mask and gloves materializing in the air, no squadron of warships or troop of monstrous drogs. Perhaps Amlina's concealments held and Beryl could not find her. Perhaps Beryl's wound had weakened her more than Amlina suspected, and she was not so capable as before.

  “Perhaps she will never come after us at all,” Amlina murmured.

  “Perhaps not,” Kizier said. “And perhaps, if you return to Larthang, to the Celestial Capital, she would not dare to follow you there.”

  Amlina steepled her delicate fingers, stared at them blankly. She had considered that option, of course.

  But what would she do in Larthang?

  She had left her homeland as a young student, after failing to advance in the Academy of the Deepmind and earn the gray mantle of a mage-adept. She had wandered through the Tathian Isles, hoping to develop her skills and knowledge. Finally, that quest had led her to Far Nyssan and Beryl's court, in the city known as Tallyba the Terrible. She had hoped to learn from Beryl, become her student. But that idea was folly.

  Amlina had disregarded the tales of Beryl's evil, believing them to be propaganda spread by the Witches of Larthang, because Beryl was an enemy who had stolen from them, mocked them, and escaped all retribution. But Amlina soon learned the tales were true, that Beryl did practice abominable sorceries, did drink the blood of human sacrifices to sustain her youth. Beryl appraised her in a few moments, and Amlina was fortunate that she truly did seek only to learn
from the Archimage. At first, Beryl had her imprisoned, later forced her to serve as a kitchen drudge. But in the end, she did take Amlina on as a kind of apprentice.

  For nearly seven years, Amlina dwelled in the Archimage's palace and learned a small portion of her arts. Amlina stayed on her guard, knowing she was in constant danger of being murdered, or else reduced to a mindless thrall. Then, when that peril seemed imminent, when Beryl seemed to have tired of her presence, Amlina fled.

  She planned her escape meticulously, waiting until Beryl was in deep trance and stealing the Cloak of the Two Winds. The Cloak was an age-old magical treasure that Beryl had taken from Larthang long ago. Amlina knew she could use it to drive a ship quickly across the seas. She planned to return it to Larthang, hoping that to do so would win her prestige and a place of honor.

  Of course, that plan too went astray. The Cloak was stolen from her by the Iruk pirates who captured her ship—when Amlina herself was in deep trance. The Iruks, in turn, lost it to the sorcerer Kosimo, who seized the mind of Glyssa and made her bring it to him in the Tathian city of Kadavel. Amlina had joined forces with the Iruks to hunt it down. They had rescued Glyssa and almost won the Cloak—until Beryl arrived and snatched it away.

  If only it had gone the other way. Returning the Cloak to Larthang might have won Amlina not only status and honors, but protection from Beryl. More than that, it would have given her a feeling of accomplishment, a reason to believe that her wandering life amounted to something worthy, had not all been a pointless waste.

  A soft rapping on the door snapped her from her reverie. She glanced at Kizier, frowning. Crossing the chamber, she noticed it was now morning, gray daylight slanting through the high, narrow windows in the stone walls.

  She reached the door as the knock sounded again. “Who is there?”

  “Draven.”

  A smile curved her lips. She slid the bolts and pulled the door open.

  The Iruk grinned at her. “I had a feeling you had come out of your trance.”

  He had sensed her awakening, Amlina thought. In Kadavel, the Iruks had joined with her in a wei circle, searching in the Deepmind for Glyssa. This had established a psychic bond they all shared.