A companion piece to 'Gates of Horn', taking place very shortly after it. Again, this is yaoi and based only on the anime. No other warnings apply, but spoilers abound up through ep. 14. Catoptromancy is the term for any form of divination using a mirror or other reflective surface.

This fic is dedicated to all the cool folks who emailed me just to say they liked 'Gates of Horn'.
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In my heart there's an image like looking through glass;
Could be looking at me- could be looking right past.
I don't like it when I can't tell which is true,
But I wouldn't trade the world for that picture of you.
- Bruce Cockburn, 'Bone in My Ear'

"All oracles are only mechanisms to make mirrors that talk *back*."
- Jaeger Ayers: Finder #14


GATES OF IVORY : CATOPTROMANCY


The rain had stopped hours before, but the sun did little as yet to dry anyone's spirits. Now it was Raiel's turn to sit brooding, on different pavement and up against a different wall, watching a storm of people rather than water. Priest-warrior archetypal crossbreeds dashed thisaway and that across the cobbles, burning off nervous energy in an oxymoronical attempt to prepare for the unexpected. All of them were bellowing at full lung capacity given the slightest opportunity, as if there were demons of silence to be defeated as well. For the time being, Raiel Alone sat in his corner, unnoticed.

/This__shouldn't__be__happening./ He had caught Hamel in his arms, kissed him, been kissed by him, even. He had laid aside his suspicions for once, and sat on his quest to avenge his parents... And now Hamel was across the barrier having a family reunion with the mazoku, and Raiel was watching men in silly hats assemble any means possible to kill him. So much for *his* irresistible charm.

Footsteps clicked quietly across the pavement to his right as a shadow dropped over him. So here it was. It had been a fairly safe bet that from the moment Queen Horn learned about his ability to play magical music, it was only a matter of time before she would proposition him to use his skills against the mazoku army. He glanced up to find the high priest... Clori? Clarei? standing beside him with a frosty deadpan icing his too-pretty face. Two small sacks of field rations landed in Raiel's lap.

"Here's some water and food," he began without introduction. "If there's any trouble, I want you to work for us."

He didn't bother to cloak it in the polite language of a request. It sounded more like a threat, a bribe, an order, or maybe a little of all three; but Raiel wasn't having any of that. His willingness to aid Horn's forces had been effectively squashed by her reaction to Hamel, after already having been unhinged by the Queen's glacial reception of her daughter. Right now his loyalty was to his friend... for as long as he could continue to call him that.

"He'll return--."

/'And what happens if I *am* mazoku?'/

"Is that what you think?"

Of course he would. He couldn't _not_. Raiel was with him, now. They had been reunited against all odds, for a 'great purpose', as Oboe had said- and to throw that away would be... would be... it wouldn't be. It would not and could not happen and dammit, the sneer of dire warning on those lovely features was slicing right through his denial. It was impossible to lie to that remorseless, flinty glare without looking the fool. He _knew_, watching without pity as Raiel's fears whipped his feelings for Hamel from one corner of his mind to the next, eyes devoid of sympathy or reaction.

/I have to./ He mouthed helplessly to Clari. The alternative yawned hollowly before him, a hell-bound road that could end in nothing good. To walk through that gate and lay feet to that path would be to shut it behind him, forever. But the priest only twitched his shoulders in an almost imperceptible shrug and knelt down beside him. He fished around under his robes for a minute, producing a flat, glinting disc that he offered to Raiel.

"The Mirror of Truth?" If he trusted the man at all, it couldn't be anything else.

"If you wish from the bottom of your heart, you'll see the truth."

/' "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse..." said the mazoku to the traveling salesman." And will it still work if I wish from the bottom of my heart to see something other than what _you_ want to show me, Daishinkan-sama?/

"What do you want to see?" the blonde priest pushed, "His past?"

The mirror reflected back only Raiel's own uneasy features, but translucent, unfocused images began to leak into his mind like water soaking through silk.

/Firelight warming skin on one flank, almost past the point of comfort, while cold window drafts chilled the other. A woman, her unbound hair flung across her naked skin like a gossamer blanket, cat-curled on rumpled sheets. A figure that was at once a man and not a man lying beside her, clamping teeth just a little too sharp to be human exquisitely around the finger she offered him as his tongue slipped out to caress its tip.../

/ A sensation of floating, warm and weightless. Close by a steady double rhythm that was the opening and closing of valves in two other hearts. Beneath the level of thought, the comforting presence of another person that was him/not him sharing his watery little world.../ Raiel shut the images out with a scowl.

"Or, the future?"

/ The point of a sword inches from his nose, pinning him to the earth.... The woody, citrus sweet-annie breath of Hamel's hair reacting wildly with the adrenaline already pulsing under Raiel's skin as he used his own body to hold his friend back... A twisted parody of a human figure dipped in the carnelian of old venous blood arched like a scream given flesh under a vault of leathery wings.... /

"I see." He closed his eyes and tried to hand the mirror back to Clari, not sure if he had really seen anything at all. He wouldn't put it past the priest to try to gain his cooperation by separating him from his friend. Yes, that was it... Horn's lapdog was using magic to distort the images and what he had seen was only what the priest wanted him to, preying on his fears like a vulture and....god, oh god, those _were_ tears forming behind his eyelids; gathering like a second storm. In rain they had come together, and with rain would they come apart.

"DAISHINKAN CLARI-SAMA! DAISHINKAN CLARI-SAMAAA!"

Their heads both turned at the interruption, breaking the spell. The priest was already on his feet and halfway across the bastulade before Raiel could respond, answering some urgent babbled summons about Trom and a 'Lady Cornet'. He feebly held out the mirror as his tormentor fled, but Clari merely threw out a preoccupied "Raiel, I'll lend that to you for awhile!" behind him. Just before they were out of earshot, he heard the other priest querying as to whether he would use it to unveil Hamel's intentions, but the blonde hastily shushed his subordinate. Apparently Raiel wasn't of high enough strategic value to command any further effort at the moment.

He curled back into himself, closing his eyes to shut out the noise and bustle around him. He really should go see what had happened to Trom- for all his bravado, the boy really wasn't old enough to take care of himself. He should chase Clari down and give him back his damned piece of magical propaganda, say sorry, no, I'll help you but I won't work for you. He should find a church and pray to the spirits of his dead parents for forgiveness and explain that he was abandoning his quest and choosing love over death for once.

He should turn tail on all this and go home; and he should have never come here in the first place.

The travelling circus was where he had belonged; with Birdy and Zampono, Brick and Dance, and Horo to watch over them all. Not one of their lives lay unspoiled by tragedy, and most of the others had been... searching... as well. Zampono would comb the streets in every town they passed through, tentatively offering a smeared and creased drawing of a towhead little girl and asking if anyone might have seen his estranged daughter, run away seven years before. Brick often accompanied him, but he had simply been adopted out as a baby, and his interest lay in finding his birth mother. Dance had an elaborate lineage of revenge and counter-revenge to keep track of, bound and tasseled by family honor codes that spun backwards through the generations; when he went out inquiring about names, the others knew to lay low for the night. Birdy no longer made any pretense of actively looking, but Raiel knew that during every performance she was scanning the faces of the crowd searching for her husband; long ago disappeared in Rondador when his politics became too loudly in opposition to the ruling duchy. And Horo... Raiel had seen his scars, but didn't know his story.

Yet together they had still managed to build for themselves something worth living for outside of the personal quests that lashed them onwards. How much better he would be able to sight a clear path out of this mess if he could just see them now... he would braid Birdy's hair for her while asking her advice, get Horo to pull out Scope and tell his fortune...

In fact, he *could* see them- could picture his adopted family with such mirrorlike clarity it was as if they were right there before him. Brick sat on a rotted stump with his foot propped up in Birdy's lap as she made clever with bandages, scolding him all the while for breaking his toe and _that_ would teach him not to run through the woods. Beyond them Horo squatted, stirring something bubbling in a copper pot that looked vaguely like tea, his puppet mutely cradled against his chest. As he watched, Zampono staggered into the clearing, Dance bounding to try to help the big man untie a load of kindling strapped to his back. Greasy smoke veiled the stars, and the pungent nose-tweak of horse sweat and Birdy's greasepaint bit into his nostrils as if he was...

Raiel's eyelids snapped apart. The mirror lay in his lap, glowing ever-so-faintly. It hadn't been a memory. That much he was sure of. Brick has never broken any bones in his time with the troupe- he would have remembered something like that. Feeling a little chilled, Raiel reluctantly picked up the glass. Horo had warned him long ago that most oracles can only offer worst-case scenarios...and that they always took more than they gave. But if that were true, then why had he witnessed such a peaceful everyday scene, instead of the carnage his deepest fears could provide? Was it simply because they had gone on living just fine without him? Or because the mirror was exactly what Horn's catoptromancer claimed it to be?

He snatched a quick look around him. The thrum of nervous expectation had risen almost palpably over the last few minutes; whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon. If he was going to use the mirror, now would be his only chance. Taking a deep, calming breath, he placed both hands on the glass and *focused*...

/Ha-chan. Show me Ha-chan.../

****
This mirror eek, that I have in myn hond,
Hath swich a myght that men may in it see
Whan ther shal fallen into any adversitee
Unto youre regne or to youreself also,
And openly who is youre freend or foo.
And . . . if any lady bright
Hath set hire herte on any maner wight,
If he be fals, she shal his tresoun see,
His newe love, and al his subtiltee.
- Chaucer, "Squire's Tale" II. 132-140, c. 1390