[Hammer and Bolter 16] - The shadow in the glass by Steve Lyons

Author:Steve Lyons [Lyons, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

he said

The priest said

The priest told you, said the crone, to put your faith in his Emperor. He promised you that the Emperor loves you – but where is that love?

The Emperor took your father from you, Yriel, and left you without love. He sends you to sleep each night on cold sheets, an empty stomach and a pillow of tears. So, by what right does He presume to judge you for doing what you must to survive?

She was right, of course.

The Emperor’s world is unfair, thought Yriel, so, how can it be a sin to look into a simple mirror and wish that things could be otherwise?

And how could it be a sin for other

beings to do the same?

She thought she understood now. Suddenly, it was clear to Yriel that the crone needed her as much as she needed the crone.

Will you do one favour for me? she asked, hesitantly. Will you let me see

? And the crone’s face softened into an indulgent smile, and she agreed.

Yriel took down the mirror. She sat down on the edge of her cot with it cradled in her lap and gazed upon her true reflection in the glass, until the sun rose outside and dispelled the night’s shadows and with them its blissful dreams. Then, with a sigh, she forced herself to stand. She hung the mirror back up on its crooked nail in the wall.

And never once set eyes upon the princess’s face again.

The final seeds of Icthis’s ruin were sewn with the discovery of a book.

It had been mixed up with the bric-a-brac on a stall at the market plateau: an unlabelled journal filled with spidery handwriting that, when deciphered, was found to describe the foulest of blasphemies.

The stallholder – by chance, the same one who had called Yriel a thief – protested his innocence. But his name and the names of his wife and his sons and his closest friends were all recorded in the journal, along with minutes of secret meetings.

It was enough, in the eyes of most villagers, to convict.

They demanded that a magistrate be sent for, but the constables demurred.

There was no dark cult operating in Icthis, said the constables, for certainly they would have known about it. It was likely that the journal was, as the stallholder claimed, a fake. They issued some pointed reminders about the dangers of baseless rumours and, for a time, suspicious tongues were – reluctantly – stilled.

No one wanted the Inquisition to come back, after all.

But then, someone said something – not much, just an idle thought voiced, but someone else saw the sense of it and passed it on – and, within days, a new and even more pernicious rumour had taken root in the villagers’ hearts and minds, although no one could remember what had started the rumour in the first place.

One overcast evening, an inflamed mob fought their way into a constable’s cabin and discovered, in the space beneath his floorboards, exactly what they had expected to find: crude, handcrafted symbols of fealty to the darkest of powers.

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