“Now that we’ve gone underground, she’ll send that thing against our loved ones as bait. That’s what I’d do.” Ström’s brimstone eyes flash with his darkest Bone Magic, dire. “Mirror. Show us the Old Palace in Sweden.” He says at once, as he faces the mirror.
As the mirror-view changes again, throughout its antiqued, rune-scrolled patina, we see the Old Palace on the same sunny day. Just like theGrand Palace, there’s no ruination in sight; all three of us breathe a sigh of relief now, none more so than Ström, to see that his family’s home is hale.
But if the Grand Palace was swarming with guards, the Old Palace is thrice that. Jarl Jorg Eriksson is taking zero chances with his people and the central seat of the True Black Dragon Knights.
It shows, as dragons crowd the ancient towers and high blue skies.
“At least my great-grandfather won’t let our enemies in without a fight. A good one,” Ström says tersely now, though we all know how fast the Black Dragon can carve through ranks of regular Blood Dragons, if they don’t have anyone with intense mystical abilities to combat it.
“Mirror. Show us Jurggadden.” As I ask the mirror to check up on the village of my stepfathers now, I see all is peace there, as well. Though the cliffside village is still being rebuilt from when the Black Dragon already ransacked it a few weeks ago, there’s no new destruction, only building happening upon the steep cliffs beside the ocean.
As I take a chance now and ask the mirror to show us the Thorsen twins’ locations, it scrolls through about thirty different places, all without harm. Other than The Chartreuse club, already devastated in Copenhagen, I know Mikkel and Lærke’s clubs are not on the Black Dragon’s hit list just yet, either.
It’s then that Bjorn asks to see his father’s hall up in Magnussen lands—and I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing when we see it hale before us on the same sunny day.
It’s forbidding, as its white towers stand strong in a stiff high-north wind, snow still thick upon the ground. Bjorn doesn’t ask to see inside the Jarl’s hall, however, or to see his father. I understand why not, as a conflicted hatred seethes through my First Drake now.
His father, Jarl Oggi Magnussen, so not a friend to us.
As the mirror swirls back to its runic silver winds again, however, I suddenly have a thought. “Show us Litha,” I say, wondering how far this object’s power extends.
But even as I ask to see our enemy, the silver mirror blows into intensecarnage. Indistinct, there’s only a cyclone of power that whirls through it, before it gives up and goes back to its calmer, more inert state.
As I ask to seeLitha’s hideout,Litha’s mates, evenEmil Beck, I get nothing now, only that intense whirl. As if the mirror can’t latch onto them, it seems to have trouble finding their dark magic, or they’ve shielded themselves with their power somehow, in a way the mirror can’t pick up on.
I don’t want to think about why it showed me the Black Dragon as I entered this space, though. It’s not a good thought that perhaps the silver mirror can find the Usurper because I’m somehow connected to the creature. My dual dragons gnash their teeth, knowing we share some deep inner darkness with the behemoth, as the bloodline of its creator.
Still not understanding what.
“Well, at least we got to see a few things,” Ström says as he glances at me. “That our King is still safe, for one, and that he’s in conference with the True Knights, for two. And that our homes and loved ones are still intact.”
“For now.” Bjorn’s low basso growl conveys everything Ström won’t say, however, as he stares daggers at the inert mirror with his arms crossed, his gold eyes burning. “But they don’t have shit to fight the Black Dragon with. We know that—they don’t. They’ll die to the last dragon if we can’t get them something useful against the Usurper, stat.”
“Bjorn’s right. Even if the True Knights do share all they know about the Black Dragon with our King, his forces are far from fighting it.” I gesture with a sigh at the swirling mirror, calm right now, though it blows with all those millions of tiny runes scrolling all over it. “When I spoke with Insinio Brandfort at Chambord, even he admitted the Intercessoria have no clue how to fight this thing, and are only working on possible containment. We need to figure out how it was made; we need tounderstandthe magic that created it, for any of us to battle it.”
“Which we are even further from doing now, ever since Emil Beck betrayed us and stole all our artifacts fromUnhaemmerten.” Ström gives asnarl as a nasty brimstone-green fire flashes in his eyes, his wrath renewed as that sheen simmers around him again in the vast hall.
“If there was anything useful in that pile of scrolls and oddities, it’s gone now.” I fight a howling black wrath of despair as I set my hands on my hips, ignoring the black shimmer that swirls around me now in the hall—my inner Bone Magic surging as I stew. “We don’t even have a phone or anything to access the documents Mikkel and Lærke deciphered for us. This place is ancient… no cell service or internet here.”
Even as I have that thought, however, the silver mirror suddenly swirls again. Harder than before, the entire runic pattern seethes upon the massive stone, like a hurricane of water and wind all blending together inside the silver.
Then the image stabilizes—with a blink, I realize we’re looking at a page from one document Mikkel and Lærke decrypted for us from the scrolls we found atUnhaemmerten.
This is the translated version stored on the web, however, picked right up off the magically bio-encrypted link Lærke created for us.
Accessed without a computer or anything now, by the strange silver stone.
4
CURSE
Astonishment fills me as I gaze up at the scroll fromUnhaemmerten, displayed larger than life on the silver mirror-stone. I step forward now, inspecting the document; it’s exactly as I remember it, though it still makes no sense. It’s one of my Ancestor Hedda’s scrolls, which has preparatory details pertaining to the Black Dragon’s creation. It goes through endless references to star positions in the sky,triunethis,andvectorthat.
Making my mind spin with everything my Ancestor knew and used to create the Usurper.
“The fuck?” Ström lifts his eyebrows in shock now, gazing up at the scroll on the silver mirror like the rest of us. “Did this thing just pick up aURL from the internet?”
“I believe so.” I keep inspecting the document, shaking my head in amazement. “Incredible.”
