The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

The Goyl pulled an amulet from under his lizard shirt. It was made of jade. “If I were you, I’d want it back as well. Who’d be so stupid to trade holy stone for a snail’s skin?”

“Yes,” Will managed to say. “You guessed it. The Fairy is the only one who can give my jade back to me.”

Lies... He forced himself to look at the unicorn head. Jacob had told him so many lies about the scars on his back, until Will had finally found out that they’d come from unicorns. Would Jacob have believed that he wanted his jade skin back?

“I guess we have a deal.” The Goyl dropped the amulet into his shirt again. “And to seal it, you will show me the mirror you came through.” He smiled. “Let me guess. It’s close by, isn’t it? Look at your clothes. Nobody wears such things in Schwanstein.”

Will stopped himself from looking toward the ruin on the hill. A Goyl in the other world…and then? A child-eating Witch? The Stilt who’d attacked him on his first trip through the mirror? He was—very briefly—tempted to ask the Bastard about the stranger who’d given him the sack with the crossbow. But he was afraid of the answer he might get.

“What mirror?” he said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do we have a deal?”

The Bastard looked toward The Ogre. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

His Roads

Humans. They were everywhere. Like mosquito larvae on a pond. Mortality was so fertile. Fields, roads, cities... The world created anew according to their mortal tastes, groomed, straightened, pruned, and tamed. Had she always loathed humans like that, even before Kami’en discarded her for one of their women? The Dark One didn’t want to remember. She wanted to give in to the hatred, the disgust, the rage. If only all that hadn’t also washed away her love.

She didn’t even try to avoid their settlements. Let them see she didn’t fear them, though they’d throw rocks at her, burn her effigy in straw. She saw them peering nervously from behind their curtains as Chithira drove her carriage past their houses. “There she is, the Fairy Witch!” she heard them whisper. “She murdered the child of her unfaithful lover. She has no heart.”

So many villages. So many cities. Like a fungus sprouting mortal flesh. And they all had Amalie’s face.

Initially, she’d let the moths weave the web under which she slept during the day in front of one of their churches or town halls, or next to one of their monuments. But after someone took a shot at Donnersmarck as he guarded her sleep, she’d begun to go into the forests for rest. There were at least some left that hadn’t been fed into their factories’ furnaces.

Donnersmarck would sometimes ride into the nearest town to find out how things were in Vena. He reported that the rubies Amalie had pledged to the Fairy’s captor had already cost six women their lives just because they’d been mistaken for the Dark One. Crookback and the Walrus had declared that Lotharaine and Albion would grant her asylum. Asylum... How stupid did they think she was? Did they really believe she’d sell her magic to the highest bidder? Or that she was looking for another crowned lover? None of them could compare to the K

ing of the Goyl. She’d loved the best of them, only to be betrayed.

Donnersmarck also gave her news of Kami’en. He tried to utter the name casually, as though the Goyl King was just any other man. The Dark One was touched that Donnersmarck was trying to protect her from the pain caused by her lover’s betrayal, from the humiliation that was Kami’en’s silence. The Goyl still hadn’t said a word in her defense. He’d made peace with the rebels in the north, and he was negotiating with the renegade Man-Goyl. He was so much better than his enemies. Maybe because they only fought to enrich themselves. Soldiers didn’t like to die for the gold in their officers’ pockets. But revenge was something one could fight for with passion. Kami’en only ever went to war for revenge. He was the fox who’d turned on the hunters.

Yes. She was still on his side.

At night, Chithira steered the carriage over the roads built by Kami’en’s soldiers, and in her heartless chest, sadness and rage rose and fell like tides. The memories followed her, no matter how hard her dead coachman drove the horses. Memories that were as alive as the present, more real than anything rushing past outside.

Would she ever be again what she’d been before Kami’en? Did she even want to be?

She traveled only at night, yet her carriage was often blocked by groups of men who’d drunk up enough courage in some tavern to try to earn Amalie’s reward. In most cases Donnersmarck handled them, even when they’d armed themselves with scythes and axes or hid themselves behind barrels of burning tar. Sometimes Chithira’s shifting in front of their eyes was enough to make them scatter. But one night there was a woman among the taunting masses, and the Fairy set her moths on her, imagining it was Amalie who was doubled up screaming on the muddy road.

Of course, she wondered whether Kami’en was also looking for her. Four days after her flight from Vena, six Goyl soldiers had blocked her carriage’s path. They didn’t answer when Donnersmarck asked them if they’d been sent by their kind, and they quickly looked down when the Dark One descended from the carriage. “Don’t look at the Fairy Witch.” That’s what Hentzau had taught them. But the Dark Fairy forced them to look, and poisoned them with her beauty.

They stumbled after the carriage for miles. Chithira ignored them, but Donnersmarck kept looking back, and when they finally disappeared into the night, it was the first time the Fairy saw a hint of fear in the soldier’s eyes, along with the stubborn warning not to try her magic on him.

Blind

The dogs were barking. There was no sound Jacob feared as much now that the vixen’s life meant more to him than his own. He wanted to stop, turn around, but Sylvain, who to Jacob’s silvered eyes was barely more than a broad-shouldered shadow, dragged him on. The world consisted of shadows and silver, of what his fingers could feel, and of the barking of the dogs.

How many more times would she have to save him?…He should never have brought her into this world...Useless thoughts. Fox was so much better at suppressing those.

He stopped again.

Shots. The only sound worse than barking.

Sylvain pulled him along, uttering curses in French—no, Quebecois. Behind the mirror, that part of Canada still belonged to Lotharaine. Jacob had never been there.

Onward.

If Jacob hadn’t known they were in his world, the dense undergrowth would have made him believe he was lost in the Black Forest again. Even the brick walls they were sneaking along felt like the weathered walls of a Witch’s house. The Elf had brought these worlds too close together. It had all been so much easier when Jacob thought the mirror was all that connected them.

Sylvain opened a gate and quickly pushed him through. It was pitch-dark inside, and his unwilling helper stumbled around as blindly as Jacob. Jacob felt crates. And glass. He quickly pulled back his hand.