The Mermaids Madness

Snow stepped back, smiling as the vines lifted the mirror from the wall, tilting it until the mirror stood flat like a table.
    She pulled a stool up to the mirror. “Trittibar showed me that trick. What do you think?”
    “Can you teach it to fetch and roll over, too?” asked Talia.
    “I tried, but there’s too much power in the mirror. It ran off and tried to mount the queen’s leg. She made me stop experimenting after that.” She smiled and set the knife on the glass, then went to the bookshelves. Running her finger along the spines, she selected four tomes.
    “What are you doing?” Talia asked.
    “The mirror helps me to see the weave of Morveren’s magic.” She set the books on one end of the mirror, then waved a hand over the glass. The light in the room brightened. “Mirror, mirror, on the floor. Show me now the mermaid’s lore.”
    “You really need to talk to a bard about those rhymes,” said Talia. “Someone to tutor you in matters of word choice and rhythm.”
    Snow made a gesture she had picked up from Captain Hephyra. Then she reached out and moved the knife to one side.
    The reflection of the knife remained behind. Snow bent over the mirror and willed the image to expand. The colors in the mirror brightened as the reflection grew, from the rainbow shimmer of the abalone blade to the cracks of purple where Lirea’s scales peeked between layers of hair.
    Snow massaged her forehead as she studied the knife.
    “Are you sure you don’t want me to get Trittibar?” Talia asked.
    Snow glanced up, then groaned. Squinting, she addressed the Talia on the left. That one appeared slightly more solid than the other. “His magic and mine don’t obey the same rules.” She rapped her knuckles on the metal vines beneath the table. “I spent three weeks translating his spells to make this trick work for me. Even if Beatrice had that kind of time, Trittibar doesn’t know anything about binding or releasing spirits. I asked him about it last year after we returned from Fairytown.”
    Snow turned her attention back to the knife. Working with the mirror was a tremendous relief. Like her smaller mirrors, its magic didn’t seem affected by her blurred and doubled vision. She brushed her fingers over the reflection, wiping away the likeness of the knife and leaving only the image of Morveren’s magic.
    The binding spell was clearest: loops of green light where the hilt had been. Inside those loops, two shadows moved about like bottled smoke.
    Snow rested her cheek on the glass, trying to see into the end of the loops. She expected a cap of some sort, a symbolic net to keep the souls from escaping. Instead, spokes of light crossed through the entire length of the hilt.
    Talia’s reflection appeared beside the knife. “What is it?”
    “Morveren’s spell.” Snow rubbed her eyes, but the images didn’t change. She grabbed the soul jar she had stolen from Morveren and set that on the mirror. When she moved the jar away to study the magic, the differences were obvious. The jar’s spells formed a hollow prison, as she had expected. She looked back at the knife, with its tendrils of magic that pierced both souls.
    “The knife doesn’t just trap souls.” Snow blinked back tears and pressed a finger to the glass, trying to reach through to Beatrice. She could hear Talia moving closer. “It’s feeding on them.”
    Talia whispered an Arathean curse. Snow was already grabbing the top book from her pile, a treatise on ghosts written sixty years ago by a dwarven priest. She flipped pages, searching for the chapter that talked about binding spirits, but the words blurred and swam together. She had hoped her vision would have improved by now, but instead it seemed to be getting worse. The dwarf’s handwriting didn’t help matters either. Gritting her teeth, she squinted and tried to force the words into focus.
    This was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER 13

    T ALIA HOOKED ANOTHER LOOP of green yarn, pulling the row tight. She tugged more wool from the skein and studied her progress before starting the next row. A flat snake of green and black squares, barely as wide as her hand, sat in her lap. “Maybe I should just make the kid a scarf instead of a blanket.”
    She rested her shoulders against the wall, shifting ever so slightly to loosen the muscles of her back. The light from Snow’s mirror really wasn’t bright enough for knitting, but Talia had learned these patterns as a child. She could stitch