In shame, Sir Gareth knelt before Lord Frey. He wished his body was battered and bruised, but it seemed the ancient power gifted to him had healed his injuries. He had only his humiliation to wear like a scar as he pressed his forehead to the cold stone of Frey’s meeting hall.

  “I found the demon, Nick, as well as two companions of his, one a woman named Frost who I believe responsible for murdering Baron Hulh, the other still unknown to me. They were hiding amid a cult dedicated to continuing the ancient practices of the Majere.”

  He hesitated. They were seemingly alone, but if guards lingered, or spies listened, he feared to speak of the power granted to him through heretical rituals, feared uttering Eiman’s name in a kingdom still loyal to God-King Vaan in Castle Goltara.

  “But even with the strength you gifted me, it was not enough,” he concluded, deciding that was vague enough to protect their secret. “The three of them wielded powerful magics, and they defy death as if they were the Majere lords of old. Perhaps they even are, given the cult they befriended. I struck a killing blow on the two demons, but then Nick returned, and when we battled, he…defeated me. Forgive me, my lord, I should have fought until my last breath, but I fled instead. Whatever punishment you would ask of me, I am ready to accept it.”

  Gareth heard a shifting of the padded fabric of Frey’s ornate chair, set upon a small dais, but he dared not look up. Instead he stared firmly at the floor, unwilling to rise from his humbled state.

  A footfall. Frey had stood.

  “Look at me, Gareth.”

  He lifted his eyes to his lord and was shocked to find the older man so close. Frey knelt before him, and he gently placed both his arms upon Gareth’s shoulders.

  “I did not grant you power because I thought it would remove your challenges,” he said. “I gave you power because you face such challenges. You bested the three monsters, even when outnumbered. It is no fault of your own that the demons can return and challenge you again. But if you can slaughter them once, you can do so again, and again, until this matter is settled and our people made safe.”

  Gareth felt something catch in his throat.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And I will. I promise. The carnage they inflict upon Vestor shall not go unavenged.”

  Frey’s smile tightened the lines around his eyes.

  “I hold faith that you will be up to the task.” That smile shifted slightly, in a manner Gareth could not read. “But now I must ask of a different matter. I sense something about you. Something linked to Eiman.”

  Gareth did not understand what his lord desired at first, but then he remembered the strange mirror Nick had dropped. He reached into his pocket, withdrew it, and offered it to Frey.

  “Nick was in possession of this,” Gareth explained. “I took it in case it was dear to him in some way.”

  Lord Frey lifted it, his touch surprisingly gentle.

  “Come with me,” he said, cradling the mirror within his grasp. “I would have you bear witness to the wonder our god is capable of.”

  *

  The pair entered the hidden shrine in the bowels of the castle keep. Frey shut the door behind him and then locked it, encasing them in darkness. Gareth stood perfectly still, repeatedly telling himself to remain calm, as Lord Frey easily moved through the darkness to the two torches positioned above Eiman’s shrine. With but a touch, they burst to life, blanketing the room with yellow light and long shadows. “Stand there,” Frey said, pointing to one of the barren walls. “Do not interfere, only watch.”

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  “As you wish, my lord.”

  The older man moved to the table opposite the looming statue of Eiman, set the mirror down upon it among the other artifacts, and then grabbed what appeared to be a simple silken bag dyed black. From within, he drew out a thick piece of chalk.

  “There is power in all things,” Frey said as he knelt in the center of the room. “Symbols. Shapes. Words. Beyond communication. Beyond meaning. There are forces shaping this world we do not understand, bound by laws older than our ancestors.”

  He carefully drew a long line upon the stone with the chalk. It eventually curved, turning back toward the center of the room. Frey continued it toward the shrine, only to curve it yet again at a slightly different angle. Back and forth, turning and shifting, drawing the first of what appeared to be concentric circles. After a moment he paused, returned to the bench, and retrieved the strange mirror.

  “I gave this mirror to Baron Hulh,” Frey said as he placed it in the center of the crisscrossed lines. “I told him to think on his greatest fear, to make it real within the mirror, and then bring it back to me. He never did. I wonder why.”

  His hands moved slowly, steadily, drawing more lines with the chalk.

  “Was he afraid of the magic? Did he not trust my desire to help him conquer his own lingering paranoia and fear? Or was his professed faith in Eiman shallow, or even false?”

  Gareth’s stomach tightened as the lines took shape, twisting, turning, and looping so that there was an undeniable circle enveloping the mirror. A re-creation of the black sun, only instead of solid and pure, it was twisting and rotating within the chalk center, suddenly granted depth and motion.

  “After Hulh’s murder, I will never have those answers,” Frey said, finishing the last of the lines. He pocketed the chalk and stood. The light of the torches flickered across his face. “But I will learn what secrets torment this troublesome demon. I will give face to the beating heart of his terror.”

  “Through this mirror?” Gareth asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “The fool likely thought it granted him his wants and desires,” Frey said. He walked to the table of artifacts and returned holding a familiar knife. It was the same one used to grant Gareth his powers. “But the Mirror of Theft has earned its name over these centuries, and shall do so again, with Eiman’s gift.”

  Frey bowed his head while raising his hands. Before him, the statue of the Beast of a Thousand Mouths seemed to seethe and grow.

  “God of all cycles and rebirth, hear my cry,” Frey said, his deep voice rumbling in the hidden depths of the castle. The chalk lines flared with sudden light, changing from white to red. He slashed his arm with the knife, and the blood flowed in a sudden spray across the ground. Not a drop landed upon the mirror, but it did not stay clean for long.

  The blood crawled like worms, chalk seeping into it. The deep glow burned within the blood, shining red light across the entire cramped room.

  “God of a hundred mouths, a thousand eyes, and a million tongues, honor my faith!”

  The blood swirled toward the mirror, faster and faster, a sudden crimson tempest. Upon its empty surface, the blood gathered, first as a thin sheen, then as a shimmering orb that hovered. It vibrated with energy, as if at any moment it might erupt.

  “God of Yensere, lord of all that must die, bring forth the thief!”

  The mirror cracked once, twice, and then into a sudden thousand shards breaking away from what was once a single pane. They rose into the air, hovering as if the pull of the world itself had surrendered to Eiman’s power. The shards shimmered and reflected the light of the torches as they rose higher and higher. Their jagged edges twisted and tumbled, sometimes clinking against one another.

  Gareth clenched his jaw and demanded bravery of himself. He would not cower. He would not humiliate himself before the power of gods. That which was frightening and new must be endured, for it was the path to freedom from the blight, and a revitalized Vestor.

  The glass turned liquid, the shards widening outward. They no longer reflected fire. They showed flesh and cloth as they came together, the surface curving and molding to become something entirely new. Something human, which let out a long, horrified wail as he dropped to his knees. His blue and gold clothes were strange and foreign, his hair cut short and neat around the ears and neck.

  “Stand, thief,” Frey ordered. He loomed over this nightmare creation, unafraid. “Tell me your name.”

  The man slowly pushed to his feet. The image of him wobbled, not quite steady, not quite real, but quickly hardening. Gareth shivered despite his best attempts to remain still. There was something so very wrong with this creation. It was like his clothes were too clean and his smile too rigid. No light reflected from his eyes. His chest did not rise and fall with drawn breaths.

  “Lucien,” the thief born of the mirror said. “Lucien Wright.”