The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World by Brian Stableford Read Free Book Online

made it a part of me.”
    “Or you a part of it,” answered the man with purple eyes.
    “I’ll tell my father!”
    The image shook its head. “No, my dear. You will tell no one. This is a secret spell. Our secret.” “You can’t do this….”
    “I can. You prepared my ground. Perhaps I put the idea into your head, but you spoke the words…. It was you who sought to use the plan. Three questions are yours, and three belong to another. That is the game. You asked to play, and now you must.”
    “Who are you?” she demanded again. Then she remembered the name at the top of the parchment. Even while he was rolling it up again her eyes picked it out. “Jeahawn Kambalba!” she whispered. “Jeahawn the Judge! But he’s been dead for…” she trailed off.
    “As I said,” the image reminded her, “I can be with you only in spirit. I am dead, but a little of me lives on—in the spells I cast and the implements I once owned. You knew, of course, that this mirror was once mine?”
    Helen shook her head. “Father bought it at an auction,” she said. “He was always buying things at auctions. After the war, you know–-“
    Again, she stopped. Of course he knew. Wasn’t it Jeahawn Kambalba that had put an end to the wars? Hadn’t he imprisoned Elfspin and Ambrael, defeated Jargold?
    “What do you want with me?” she whispered. “Your help,” he answered. “I’ve no magic.”
    “Nor has the boy. And perhaps you have a little more than you know. The verses will tell you what you must do. I know you’re frightened, but that will pass. I can’t promise you definitely that no harm will come to you, because it might. I know that this is terribly unfair, but it has to be done. The one thing you need to know is that now the pattern is begun it must be completed. You understand that. You know the ways of enchantment. Look at me.”
    Unwillingly, she stared straight into the terrible eyes, which grew once again in intensity until they seemed almost luminous.
    Helen’s hand took up a pen from the table beside the bed, and a page of parchment, and she began to write. As soon as the letter was complete, the image began to fade, but Helen was still entranced. She put it in envelope and sealed it in, and set it down in front of her. By this time the mirror was absolutely blank.
    Then there was a small sound, like a polite cough. Helen woke, and in the mirror before her she saw her own image, clear and beautiful. She stared at it hard, trying to remember something—a dream or a reverie. She couldn’t recall it, although she knew that it was still there, in her memory, waiting to be unlocked by the right key.
    There was a knock on the door, and Sirion Hilversun came in.
    “I really must have that letter now,” he said. “They asked for a reply by return of post, and it’s nearly bed time.”
    Without a word, Helen handed him the envelope.
    “You’ve sealed it!” exclaimed the enchanter. “Don’t you want me to read it?”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, softly. “I must have done it absent-mindedly. But it doesn’t matter. It’s only a silly question. Quite trivial, really.”
    Sirion Hilversun frowned. He had harboured dark suspicions about what kind of questions his daughter might ask of Prince Damian. Now, it seemed, he wasn’t to know.
    “You are giving him a chance, aren’t you?” he asked. Helen turned to him, and smiled. She took his old, gnarled hand into her own, and squeezed it reassuringly.
    “Oh, yes,” she said. “Every chance. All that it needs is a little initiative and…”
    She stopped, frowning slightly as if trying to remember something that was scurrying away into the corridors
    of her mind.
    “What, dear?” he prompted. “What were you going to say?”
    “Judgement,” she finished. “I was going to say… judgement.”
     
    At noon the next day Coronado went to see Ewan, who was delving deep in the dustiest corners of the palace library, inspecting the titles and indices of