One depicted a bipedal form with a boulder for a head. There was even a sapling whimsically drawn growing out of its elbow. Next to it was a note reading “Stone creatures—more difficult to destroy?”
This wasn’t the work of some helpful soul, studying the creatures in order to better defeat them. This was where the monstrosities had been envisioned, created, tested, and refined into deadly predators. This was where my death had been planned.
“Who lives here?” I said to the mirror. “Who made these drawings and bred these creatures?”
It shouldn’t be possible for a glimmering, abstract impression of a face to look so smug. “Powerful enchantments prevent me from revealing any information about my master.”
Of course they did. Although, with my knowledge of magic, there was a chance I’d be able to break those enchantments. It might only take me five or six years of trial and error, if I got lucky.
“We need to let King Gervase know about this place,” I told Sam, “as soon as we possibly can.”
“You don’t think we should stay here? Lie in wait for…whoever this is, catch them unawares?”
I shook my head, the bloodcurdling shrieks of the monsters echoing in my ears. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. When we come face-to-face with this sorcerer, I’d much rather do it with the king’s entire army at my back.”
The face in the hand mirror scowled. “Don’t you dare bring an army to my home. If you try it, my master will rip out your bones and dance in your blood.”
“That’s kind of why I want the army,” I informed it before turning back to Sam. “We have to bring word of this place to the castle, and we have to do it quickly. Before the next attack.”
He took a moment to stomp on a spiked tentacle that had snaked a hairbreadth too close to my foot. The creature howled in pain and whipped its injured limb back behind the bars of its cage. “What if we’ve been going in the wrong direction?” he asked. “It might take us days to find the castle. Weeks.”
I was about to remark that we didn’t have any better optionswhen a thought struck me. “How did the sorcerer know where to attack us?”
“What do you mean?”
“The spider wolves could have been waiting to ambush me on the road. But how did the stone giants find the hunt at a random spot in the middle of the woods?”
Sam shrugged. “Magic, I suppose.”
“Exactly.”
A good rule of thumb when it comes to enchantments is that function follows form. A magical sword is meant to cut through something, whether that something is flesh, steel, or cheese. A magical harp will play bewitching music, and a magical goose will lay marvelous eggs of some kind. I have encountered exceptions to this rule—spinning wheels, as I’ve noted, are so easy to curse they can drop you into a coma rather than doing anything as sensible as producing golden thread. But the exceptions are rare. In general, if you know the purpose of a regular object, you can make a decent guess at what the magic version willdo.
The purpose of a mirror is reflection. Creating an image of whatever’s nearby.
The purpose of a magic mirror is scrying.
“Show us how to get to the castle,” I said to the looking glass.
The glittering eyes glared at me. “No. You didn’t say the magic words.”
I grinned. You didn’t grow up in my stepmother’s household without learning that little trick. “Mirror, mirror on the wall—”
“I’m not on the wall!” it interrupted.
“Really? You’re going to be a stickler about that?”
“Yes.”
A pedantic mirror. Just my luck. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, you know. Mirror, mirror on the desk…” Hm. Grotesque? Statuesque? No effective way of using either one sprangto mind. I glanced at Sam. “Can you think of something that rhymes with desk?”
He hesitated, thinking it over deeply, before saying, “Pesk?”
“Pesk?”
“Like pesky? Only without they?”
“Doesn’t look so inevitable now, does it?” the mirror said.
