Chapter Two: Tambelon's Mirrors
After a brief discussion, we agreed to forgo sleep. Our energies renewed by hope, we began to explore the library.
Shady sniffled a bit as we walked into the labyrinth of books. "Just think! We might get to sleep in Ponyland tonight after all!"
Dear Shady. When I heard the raw emotion in her voice, I vowed I would take the place apart book by book if necessary to get us back to Ponyland.
Shady, Sweet Stuff, and I each paired up with a unicorn and chose our first books. The tome that Shady took from the shelves fell on its spine. With a cry of dismay, she discovered that the pages had all rotted.
"Don't worry, Shady," Galaxy said. "I think Grogar would have recorded his spell in a newer book since he used it so recently." But the book Galaxy and I opened together contained a new surprise; it was completely illegible.
"Oh no," Galaxy said.
"Is this…" I was afraid to say it, "the language of Tambelon?"
"Hey, what are these funny lines?" Gusty asked nearby.
"It must be," Galaxy said.
When Galaxy and I broke the news to our friends, a sudden weariness descended upon us. Tears and anger, I sensed, would wait until we had rested. We huddled near the windows. I slept little, dreaming that I was running toward the Tambelon gate while mist obscured Ponyland just outside of it. When I woke, gray dawnlight glowed around the columns.
I found Gusty standing in the wind again. Shady and Sweet Stuff were talking quietly while Fizzy and Galaxy still slept. Fizzy woke first, and Galaxy some time later. "We must return to the library," the pink unicorn said before she had even opened her eyes.
"Why? The books are useless," Gusty said.
"I had a dream…" Galaxy said. "There is something there that can help us."
Her soft voice gave me hope, although it was as faint as the light of the Tambelon morning. I let her lead us through a maze of books we could not read. Sometimes Galaxy stopped and closed her eyes, pointing her head in different directions as though a voice we could not hear were telling her the way.
At last we reached a new section of the library in which the shelves gave way to tables piled high with treasure and strange devices. "They are magic," Galaxy explained. "This is what I saw in my dream."
"Wow!" Fizzy said. "I can feel their power, too!"
Gusty's horn, along with the other unicorns', took on a gentle glow. "They're so strong!"
"There's so many of them," Shady said. "How do we know which one will help us?"
"I don't know," Galaxy said. "But finding them is a start."
Once again, we split up to explore the room. Sweet Stuff found a brazier with its tinder and flint on the nearby table. Working together, we lit the flame and split up.
"Why does the rest of Tambelon look so ugly, but the things here are so pretty?" Shady wondered aloud.
"Maybe Grogar had the Troggles serve him and work on these treasures while neglecting everything else," Galaxy said, which seemed like a good explanation to me.
Soon my head ached from the torchlit glint of metals and winking jewels. These were no more helpful than the Tambelon books so far. And we couldn't eat gold or gems. Before long, we would have to find food, and…
A chilling blue light distracted me from my thoughts. It came from an oval-shaped pendant sitting atop a book bigger than me. Perhaps the strangeness of Tambelon was affecting me, but it seemed voices called to me from within the shining stone. I leaned closer, thinking perhaps they were words I could understand. When I did, the necklace leaped from the table and fastened its icy cold chain around my neck. I gasped and backed into another table piled with stacks of paper. The sheets, covered in Tambelon's characters, rained down on me.
"Paradise," called Sweet Stuff, who was closest. "What happened?"
"This pendant seems to have a mind of its own," I answered, meaning the words as a joke. "Come help me pull it off."
Sweet Stuff and I did our best, but the chain bested both of us. "Such powerful magic," Sweet Stuff said with wide eyes.
Although all three unicorns examined the pendant, even Galaxy knew no way to break its hold around my neck. "It seems to mean you no harm in any case, Paradise. Perhaps we should go back to our search."
"At least it looks pretty," Fizzy said after I had concurred with Galaxy.
I resigned myself to wearing the pendant, wondering all the while about its purpose and whether I would discover more sinister properties about the trinket when I had worn it for longer.
I had searched for nearly an hour in a half-distracted state, finding my eye continually drawn to the pendant when Shady called out, "Everyone, come over here quick!"
She stood before three mirrors connected together like the panels of a folding screen. Gazing into their depths, I saw a dim reflection of the library, but also –
"A rainbow!" Fizzy called out. "Sorry," she whispered in response to our alarm at her outburst.
"What a strange rainbow." Galaxy moved so close to the mirror that we could no longer see the reflection of the rainbow. "The colors are…different from the one over Ponyland, darker somehow."
"I think the mirror's just dirty," Gusty said.
"If only we could read about the mirrors," Galaxy mused. "What do they do? Are they for scrying, or can they transport us?"
"Then we'd be here longer than we have to be," Gusty declared with a toss of her head. "Look. I bet we can see better with more light."
"Gusty, don't!" Galaxy warned just as Gusty's horn flared with light. Rather than show more of the landscape encompassed by the rainbow, the light intensified. Its rays pulsed back and forth like a wave in the water. It seemed to me that the white tendrils were reaching for the other panels of the mirror. I wondered what would happened if they met. In mere instants, I found out. Rainbow and reflection vanished from the mirror, swallowed in a storm of white that seared my eyes. Then I was falling. Though I tried to fly free, my efforts could not dislodge me from this radiant vortex that defied both gravity and sense.