Shield's Lady
fairgrounds, but I know a shortcut.” He caught hold of Sariana’s hand. “Let’s go. It’s a lot of fun.”
Sariana smiled down at him, unable to resist his enthusiasm. Keri reminded her a bit of Luri, and she was surprised to realize she missed the youngest Avylyn. “All right. Let’s go see this House of Reflections. Then I really must be going.”
“It’s great,” Keri assured her as he pulled her into the crowds.
Sariana was totally disoriented by the time the boy stopped in front of a garishly decorated structure. Unlike the other booths, this was not a tent. The outer walls appeared quite solid and they were covered with intricately beveled reflective surfaces. It was gaudy enough beneath an overcast sky. In the full glare of a noonday sun, Sariana decided, it would be impossible to look directly at the thing because of the intense reflections.
“It’s very large,” she observed as she stood with her young escort and watched crowds of laughing people walk toward the entrance.
“Once you’re inside, it looks like it goes on forever because of the way the mirrors and the prisma work. Wait’ll you see it. I’ve been in there four times already and I’m going in again. I know my way around inside now. Come on, Sariana. I want to show it to you.”
Sariana reluctantly bought two tickets and followed Keri through the mirrored doors. “I really should be getting back to the ship, Keri.”
“We won’t stay long,” he promised.
An instant later they stepped into total darkness. Delighted screams of mock fright echoed in the blackness. Keri let go of Sariana’s hand. She groped for him, glancing around uneasily and seeing absolutely nothing. The room was perfectly sealed. No outside light penetrated anywhere.
“Keri?”
“Over here, Sariana.”
She tried to edge toward the sound of his voice, but the total darkness was confusing. She called out again.
This time there was no response.
“Keri? Where are you?”
Not only was there no answer from Keri, there was no longer a sense of anyone else being present either. The laughter and screams of delight had faded. She didn’t brush up against anyone when she turned around in the inky dark. Sariana edged backward, seeking the door through which she had entered.
In that moment the room was suddenly flooded with light. Far too much of it. Bright, blazing, multi-colored light bounced off a thousand beveled surfaces and ricocheted from an endless corridor of mirrors. Countless pieces of prismatic glass dangled from a ceiling that appeared to have no permanent structure.
When she glanced up Sariana could see a million Sariana Daynes receding into the distance. When she looked down she had a wrenching attack of vertigo. She appeared to be suspended over a bottomless sea of reflective surfaces. Beneath her feet her own image was disrupted and reorganized in a kaleidoscopic array of color and light. She couldn’t tell where the reflected images left off and her feet began. It was the most dizzying, disorienting sensation she had ever experienced.
The really unnerving part was that there was no sign of Keri or anyone else. She was alone in a hall full of endless reflections.
Sariana didn’t begin to get nervous until she realized she couldn’t find the exit.
Fear set in when she became aware that someone was stalking her through the maze of mirrors.
Chapter
12
SARIANA heard the laughter first. Stifled, malicious giggles and wildly excited bursts that were nervously cut off. Then the flapping edge of a cape filled the room, only to vanish an instant later as if the owner had retreated to some safe spot.
A low hiss from Sariana’s cloak pocket announced the scarlet-toe’s questioning concern.
“Hush,” Sariana said soothingly. “I just need to find the door, that’s all.”
But she couldn’t find the door. Every time she moved in a new direction the whole geography of the room shifted around her. It was like being in the center of a kaleidoscope. She tried closing her eyes and walking in a straight line, one hand extended in front of her, but that only led her into another dazzling room. This one was even worse than the last.
She thought she found a flight of mirrored steps, each tread a shifting maze of refracted light, but when she tried to climb them, they flattened beneath her and turned into a mirrored slide.
Sariana screamed as her feet went out from under her. She sat down hard on the slick surface and found herself
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