The Mirror of Her Dreams Read Online Free PDF

trying.'
     
    'But you said you wanted some tea.'
     
    'I didn't know what I was afraid of until you started to leave.'
     
    'I'm not going anywhere,' she responded slowly. 'I'll be back in a few minutes.'
     
    Again, she headed towards the kitchen. She was definitely going to call security. This had gone on too long.
     
    'My lady!' he called immediately. His voice was strong, strangely commanding. 'I beg you.'
     
    She tried to continue; but her steps slowed of their own volition. In the entryway to the kitchen, she halted.
     
    'If I twist and pull suddenly, my lady,' he said quietly, 'I can probably free my ankle. Then I'll be entirely here, with no way to return. And the Masters won't know where I am, since what they see in this mirror is the champion. Then I'll be lost here forever, unless by some chance or miracle they shape a mirror which shows me to them. If, in fact,' he added to himself, 'I am anywhere at all, and not lost in the glass itself, as Master Eremis insists.
     
    'But I'll do it,' he went on more intensely, 'before I will permit you to leave without hearing me.'
     
    For a moment, she remained where she was. She felt herself leaning forward, trying to take the next step which would carry her out of his sight and into the sanctuary of the kitchen. Yet his appeal held her back as if he had a hand on her shoulder.
     
    After all, she asked herself in an effort to think logically, normally, what would happen if she called security? The guards would come and take Geraden away. If they could-if they could wrench his leg free. And then they would have to let him go. He would be free to haunt her life. Unless she pressed charges against him. Then she would have to see him again as his accuser, making herself responsible for what happened to him. Perhaps she would have to see him several times. And she would certainly have to explain him to her father. Either way, she was stuck with him.
     
    She had no desire to stand up in front of a court-or in front of her father-and say that a man she had never seen before had broken into her living room through one of the mirrors and had asked her to save something called 'Mordant'.
     
    Slowly, she turned back to face the young man. For the first time since he had startled her with his unexpected arrival, she was scared. But he was a problem she had to solve, and security wasn't the solution she wanted. Trying to keep her voice level, she said, 'None of this makes any sense to me. What do you want me to hear?'
     
    'My lady-' At once, embarrassment and relief made him look ten years younger. 'I'm sorry,' he said again. 'I've done this all wrong. The way I've been talking, you probably think your mirrors have destroyed my mind. Which is what they should have done. I still don't understand it. But please-'
     
    He had risen to his hands and knees. Now he pulled his torso upright, so that he was kneeling erect among the splinters of glass. Forcing down his confusion and abashment, he achieved a semblance of dignity.
     
    'Please don't judge Mordant by me. The need is real. And it's urgent, my lady. Parts of the realm have already begun to die. People are dying-people who don't have anything to do with Imagery or kings and just want to live their lives in peace. And the threat increases every day. Alend and Cadwal are never exactly quiet. Now they're forming armies. And King Joyse doesn't do anything. The heart has gone out of him. Wise men smell treachery everywhere.
     
    'But the gravest peril doesn't come from the High King of Cadwal or the Alend Monarch. It comes from Imagery.' He gathered passion as he spoke. 'Somewhere in the realm-somewhere where we can't find them-there are renegade Imagers, Masters of mirrors, and they're opening their glasses more and more to every kind of horror and foulness. They're experimenting on Mordant, trying to find in their mirrors those attacks and evils which will be most virulent to the peace, stability, and life that King Joyse forged in