2012-07-Misery's Mirror by Unknown Read Free Book Online

Chapter One: A Death in Nisroch
    “I need a favor,” Ascaros whispered, stopping before Isiem’s library table.
    “Of course you do,” Isiem murmured back, unsurprised. He did not lift his head from the scroll he was copying.
    Once, he and Ascaros had been friends. As children in the village of Crosspine, they had been almost brothers. That friendship had survived the early years of their tutelage in the Dusk Hall of Pangolais… but only the early years. The isolating influence of Zon-Kuthon’s faith and the weight of their respective sins of survival had pushed them apart. Now, as they neared the end of their time as students, that childhood friendship seemed nearly as distant as childhood itself.
    The last time they had spoken seriously, almost two years ago, it had been Isiem who asked a favor of Ascaros. His friend had refused him then, Isiem reflected. It was tempting to do the same in turn.
    But there was real fear in Ascaros’s voice, under his Nidalese reserve, and Isiem had never been one to abandon his friends—even old friends, even strained ones—in times of need.
    Besides, he was curious. What could be so important that it would drive Ascaros to this desperate attempt at reconciliation?
    Isiem put his pen aside and looked up. Ascaros was still standing before his table, unmoving. His left arm, wrapped from fingers to elbow in white linen, rested useless in a sling, as it had for years; his right hand gripped the incense-filled Osirian staff he used to mask the odor from that ruined arm. The dim silver magelights of the Dusk Hall’s library made it difficult to read Ascaros’s expression, but Isiem would not have expected to see much anyway. No Nidalese worth his name let pain show on his face.
    “What do you need?” he asked.
    Ascaros ran his good hand through his dark, curly hair. In Crosspine that hair had been a rich russet, but years of living under the shadow of Pangolais had drained the ruddy warmth from the boy’s locks. Now his hair was almost black, with only the barest hint of red remaining. Compared to some of the other changes the Dusk Hall had wrought in them, Ascaros’s hair was a small thing, but Isiem’s eye was often drawn back to it. They were not who they had been, either of them.
    “Not here,” Ascaros said after a long hesitation. He glanced down the hushed rows of shelves. “Can we talk in your room?”
    “If you like,” Isiem said. He was due to begin an apprenticeship with a Chelish wizard soon, but his new mistress had not yet come to claim him, so he still had student’s quarters in the Dusk Hall. Although small and spare, they offered more privacy than the library did.
    He stood, closed his scroll case, and led the way back to his room.
    With the door locked behind them, Ascaros relaxed. He leaned the silver staff against Isiem’s wall and sank into a black iron chair, leaning into its spike-filigreed back as if the thorny metal were a silk cushion. Eyes closed, he said: “I’m going to Nisroch.”
    “Nisroch?” Isiem echoed. “Why?”
    “Misanthe. My aunt. The one who served in the Midnight Guard. She… died.” Ascaros rubbed his dead arm through its wrappings. “I don’t have many details, but it happened in Nisroch, two days past. The Dusk Hall wants me to investigate.”
    “Why you?” Isiem asked quietly.
    “Because she was my aunt, I suppose.” Ascaros shrugged. “And because I am a student here, and they have some measure of control over me. Misanthe had several objects of value, and I imagine the Dusk Hall intends to claim them. I am her last living relative—or the last with any standing, which amounts to the same—so if I do not object…”
    “Will you object?”
    Isiem no longer puts much stock in friendship.
    “I don’t even know what she had.” Ascaros pursed his lips unhappily. “An enchanted staff, a silver necklace. I remember a black mirror, too. It might have been a nightglass.”
    “Yes, that could cause trouble,” Isiem