Chapter 7
The Missing Mirror
KIARA
My feet touched the ground. I saw the achingly familiar Dragsmeade High Street: dark shop fronts, and the outline of black mountains beyond the village, and the curve in the road ahead that led off towards Dragon Mort, and light spilling from the windows of the Flying Owls, and with a lurch of the heart, I remembered, with piercing accuracy, how I had landed here, nearly a year before, supporting a desperately weak Crighton; all this in a second, upon landing - and then, even as I relaxed my grip upon Chris and Sian's arms, it happened.
The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Zira's when she had realised the cup had been stolen: it tore at every nerve in my body, and I knew immediately that our appearance had caused it. Even as I looked at the other three beneath the Cloak, the door of the Flying Owls burst open and a dozen cloaked and hooded Love Destroyers dashed into the street, their wands aloft.
I seized Chris' wrist as he raised his wand. There were too many of them to Stun: even attempting it would give away our position. One of the Love Destroyers raised her wand and the scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.
"Accio Cloak!" roared one of the Love Destroyers.
I seized its folds, but it made no attempt to escape: the Summoning Charm had not worked on it.
"Not under your wrapper, then, Pride-Lander?" yelled the Love Destroyer who had tried the charm, and then, to her fellows, "Spread out. She's here."
Six of the Love Destroyers ran towards us: Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I backed, as quickly as possible, down the nearest side street and the Love Destroyers missed us by inches. We waited in the darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams of light flying along the street from the Love Destroyers' searching wands.
"Let's just leave!" Sian whispered. "Disapparate now!"
"Great idea," said Chrissie, but before I could reply, a Love Destroyer shouted, "We know you're here, Pride-Lander, and there's no getting away! We'll find you!"
"They were ready for us," I whispered. "They set up that spell to tell them we'd come. I reckon they've done something to keep us here, trap us - "
"What about Stingers?" called another Love Destroyer. "Let 'em have free reign, they'd find her quick enough!"
"The Scarlet Lady wants Pride-Lander dead by no hand but hers - "
" - an' Stingers won't kill her! The Scarlet Lady wants Pride-Lander's life, not her soul. She'll be easier to kill if she's been sucked first!"
There were noises of agreement. Dread filled me: to repel Stingers we would have to produce Patronuses, which would give us away immediately.
"We're going to have to try to Disapparate, Kiara!" Sian whispered.
Even as she said it, I felt the unnatural cold begin to steal over the street. Light wads sucked from the environment right up to the stars, which vanished. In the pitch blackness, I felt Sian take hold of my arm and together, we turned on the spot.
The air through which we needed to move seemed to have become solid: we could not Disapparate; the Love Destroyers had cast their charms well, I'll say that much. The cold was biting deeper and deeper into my flesh, even as the droning buzzing sound grew louder. Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I retreated down the side street, groping our way along the wall, trying not to make a sound. Then, round the corner, their mottled wings buzzing, their huge blood-red eyes fixed unblinkingly on us, came Stingers, ten or more of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks and their scabbed and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity? I was sure of it: they seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths I detested, tasting despair on the air, closing in -
I raised my wand: I could not, would not, suffer the Stinger's Suck, whatever happened afterwards. It was of Chris, Sian and Chrissie that I thought of as I whispered, "Expecto Patronum!"
The silver lioness burst from my wand and charged: the Stingers scattered and there was a triumphant yell from somewhere out of sight.
"It's her, down there, I saw her Patronus, it was a lioness!"
The Stingers had retreated, the stars were popping out again, and the footsteps of the Love Destroyers were becoming louder; but before my panic-addled brain could decide what to do, there was a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-hand side of the narrow street and a rough voice said, "Pride-Lander, in here, quick!"
I obeyed without hesitation: the four of us hurtled through the open doorway.
"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" muttered a tall figure, passing us on her way into the street and slamming a door behind her.
I had no idea where we were, but now I saw, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust-strewn bar of the Dragon's Eye. We ran behind the counter and through a second doorway, which led to a rickety wooden staircase, which we climbed as fast as we could. The stairs opened on to a sitting room with a threadbare carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single large oil painting of a brown haired boy who gazed out at the room with a kind of vacant sweetness.
Shouts reached us from the street below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak, we crept towards the grimy window and looked down. Our saviour, whom I now recognised as the Dragon's Eye's barmaid, was the only person not wearing a hood.
"So what?" she was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send Stingers down my street, I'll send a Patronus back at 'em! I'm not having 'em near me, I've told you that, I'm not having it!"
"That wasn't your Patronus!" said a Love Destroyer. "That was a lioness, it was Pride-Lander's!"
"Lioness!" roared the barmaid, and she pulled out a wand. "Lioness! You idiot - expecto patronum!"
Something huge and puffy emerged from the wand: head down it charged towards the High Street and out of sight.
"That's not what I saw - "said the Love Destroyer, though with less certainty.
"Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of her companions told the barmaid. "Someone was out there in the street against regulations - "
"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!"
"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"
"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Death Trails and summoned her. She's not going to like being called here for me and my old cat, is she, now?"
"Don't you worry about us," said one of the Love Destroyers, "worry about yourself, breaking curfew!"
"And where will you lot traffic potions and poisons when my pub's been closed down? What'll happen to your little sidelines then?"
"Are you threatening - ?"
"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"
"I still say I saw a lioness Patronus!" shouted the first Love Destroyer.
"Lioness?" roared the barmaid. "It's a sheep, idiot!"
"All right, we made a mistake," said the second Love Destroyer. "Break curfew again and we won't be so lenient!"
The Love Destroyers strode back towards the High Street. Sian moaned with relief, wove out from under the Cloak and sat down on a wobble-legged chair. I pulled the curtains tight shut, then pulled the Cloak off myself, Chris and Chrissie. We could hear the barmaid down below, rebolting the door of the bar, then climbing the stairs.
My attention was caught by something on the mantelpiece: a small, rectangular mirror propped on top of it, right beneath the portrait of the boy.
The barmaid entered the room.
"You bloody fools," she said gruffly, looking from one to the other of us, her gaze lingering momentarily on Sian before moving on. "What were you thinking, coming here?"
"Thank you," I said, "we can't thank you enough. You saved our lives."
The barmaid grunted. I approached her, looking up into the face, trying to see past the long, stringy, wire-grey hair. She wore spectacles. Behind the dirty lenses, the eyes were a piercing, brilliant green.
"It's your eye I've been seeing in the mirror."
There was silence in the room. The barmaid and I looked at each other.
"You sent Dokey."
The barmaid nodded and looked around for the elf.
"Thought she'd be with you? Where've you left her?"
"She's dead," I said. "Katalina Outsider killed her."
The barmaid's face was impassive. After a few moments, she said, "I'm sorry to hear it. I liked that elf."
She turned away, lighting lamps with prods of her wand, not looking at any of us.
"Hello, Aunt Sara," said Sian quietly to the woman's back.
"Hi," said Chrissie awkwardly.
"'S'up?" said Chris, trying, and failing, to sound cool. Sian rolled her eyes at him.
Sara did not answer them, but bent to light to fire.
"How did you get this?" I asked, walking across to Pumbaa's mirror, the twin of the one I had broken nearly two years before.
"Bought it from Mona 'bout a year ago," said Sara. "Susan told me what it was. Been trying to keep an eye out for you."
Chrissie gasped.
"The silver lion!" she said excitedly. "Was that you too?"
"What are you talking about?" said Sara.
"Someone sent a lion Patronus to us!"
"Brains like that, Chrissie, you could be a Love Destroyer. Haven't I just proved my Patronus is a sheep?"
"Oh," said Chrissie. "Yeah … well, I'm hungry!" she added defensively, as her stomach gave an enormous rumble.
"I got food," said Sara, and she sloped out of the room, reappearing moments later with a large loaf of bread, some cheese and a pewter jug of mead, which she set upon a small table in front of the fire. Ravenous, we ate and drank, and for a while there was silence but for the crackle of the fire, the clink of goblets and the sound of chewing.
"Right then," said Sara, when we had eaten our fill, and Chris, Chrissie and I sat slumped dozily in our chairs. "We need to think of the best way to get you out of here. Can't be done by night, you heard what happens if anyone moves outdoors during darkness: Caterwauling Charm's set off, they'll be on you like Bowtruckles on Doxy eggs. I don't reckon I'll be able to pass off a lioness as a sheep a second time. Wait for daybreak, when curfew lifts, then you can put your Cloak back on and set out on foot. Get right out of Dragsmeade, up into the mountains, and you'll be able to Disapparate there. Might see Mina. She's been hiding in a cave up there with Harlow ever since they tried to arrest her."
"We're not leaving," I said. "We need to get into Dragon Mort."
"Don't be stupid, girl," said Sara.
"We've got to," I said.
"What you've got to do," said Sara, leaning forwards, "is to get as far from here as you can."
"You don't understand. There isn't much time. We've got to get into the castle. Crighton - I mean, your sister - wanted us - "
The firelight made the grimy lenses of Sara's glasses momentarily opaque; a bright, flat white, and I remembered the blind eyes of the giant spider, Aratota.
"My sister Susan wanted a lot of things," said Sara, "and people had a habit of getting hurt while she was carrying out her grand plans. You get away from this school, Pride-Lander, and out of the country if you can. Forget my sister and her clever schemes. She's gone where none of this can hurt her, and you don't owe her anything."
"You don't understand," I said again.
"Oh, don't I?" said Sara quietly. "You don't think I understood my own sister? Think you knew Susan better than I did?"
"I didn't mean that," I said. My brain felt sluggish with exhaustion and from the surfeit of food and wine. "It's … she left me a job."
"Did she, now?" said Sara. "Nice job, I hope? Pleasant? Easy? Sort of thing you'd expect an unqualified witch kid to be able to do without overstretching themselves?"
Chris was frowning at Sara. Sian was looking strained. Chrissie gave a rather grim laugh.
"I - it's not easy, no," I said. "But I've got to - "
"'Got to?' Why 'got to'? She's dead, isn't she?" said Sara roughly. "Let it go, girl, before you follow her! Save yourself!"
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I - " I felt overwhelmed; I could not explain, so I took the offensive instead. "But you're fighting too, you're in the Order of the Centaur - "
"I was," said Sara. "The Order of the Centaur is finished. She-You-Know's won, it's over, and anyone who's pretending different's kidding themselves. It'll never be safe for you here, Pride-Lander, she wants you too badly. So go abroad, go into hiding, save yourself. Best take these three with you." She jerked her head in Chris, Sian and Chrissie's direction. "They'll be in danger long as the live now everyone knows they've been working with you."
"I can't leave," I said. "I've got a job - "
"Give it to someone else!"
"I can't, it's got to be me, Crighton explained it all - "
"Oh, did she, now? And did she tell you everything, was she honest with you?"
I wanted with all my heart to say 'yes', but somehow the simple word would not rise to my lips. Sara seemed to know what I was thinking.
"I knew my sister, Pride-Lander. She learned secrecy at our father's knee. Secrets and lies, that's how we grew up, and Susan … she was a natural."
The old woman's eyes travelled to the painting of the boy over the mantelpiece. It was, now I looked around properly, the only picture in the room. There was no picture of Susan Crighton, nor of anyone else.
"Aunt Sara?" said Sian quietly. "Is that your brother? Our uncle? Shaun?"
"Yes," said Sara tersely. "Been reading Peter Meter, have you, Sian?"
Even by the light of the fire it was clear that Sian had turned red.
"Ellie Dodge mentioned him to us," I said, trying to spare Sian.
"That old berk," muttered Sara, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my sister's every orifice, she did. Well, so did plenty of people, you four included, by the looks of it."
I kept quiet. I did not want to express the doubts and uncertainties about Crighton that had riddled me for months now. I had made my choice while I dug Dokey's grave; I had decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for me by Susan Crighton, to accept that I had not been told everything that I wanted to know, but simply to trust. I had no desire to doubt again, I did not want to hear anything that would deflect me from my purpose. I met Sara's gaze, which was so strikingly like her sister's: the bright green eyes gave the same impression that they were X-raying the object of their scrutiny, and I thought that Sara knew what I was thinking, and despised me for it.
"Ma cared about Kiara, very much," said Sian fiercely.
"Did she, now?" said Sara. "Funny thing, how many of the people my sister cared about very much, ended up in a worse state than if she'd left 'em well alone."
Sian's eyes widened as her face drained of all colour.
"W-what do you mean?" she said breathlessly.
"Never you mind," said Sara.
"But that's a really serious thing to say!" said Sian. "Are you - are you talking about me? Or your brother?"
Sara glared at her: her lips moved as though she were chewing the words she was holding back. Then she burst into speech.
"When my brother was six years old, he was attacked, set upon, by three Muggle girls. They'd seen him doing magic, spying through the back garden hedge: he was a kid, he couldn't control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when he couldn't show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it."
Chris looked slightly sick: Sian's eyes were huge in the firelight: Chrissie's eyes were brimming with tears. Sara stood up, tall as Susan, and suddenly terrible in her anger and the intensity of her pain.
"It destroyed him what they did: he was never right again. He wouldn't use magic, but he couldn't get rid of it: it turned inwards and drove him mad, it exploded out of him when he couldn't control it, and at times he was strange and dangerous. But mostly he was sweet, and scared, and harmless.
"And my mother went after the bitches that did it," said Sara, "and attacked them. And they locked her up in Azkaban for it. She never said why she'd done it, because if the Ministry had known what Shaun had become, he'd have been locked up in St Mungo's for good. They'd have seen him as a serious threat to the International Statue of Secrecy, unbalanced like he was with magic exploding out of him at moments when he couldn't keep it in any longer.
"We had to keep him safe, and quiet. We moved house, and country, put it about he was ill, and my father looked after him, and tried to keep him calm and happy.
"I was his favourite," she said, and as she said it, a grubby schoolgirl seemed to look out through Sara's wrinkles and tangled hair. "Not Susan, she was always up in her bedroom when she was home, reading her books and counting her prizes, keeping up with her correspondence with 'the most notable magical names of the day'," Sara sneered, "she didn't want to be bothered with him. He liked me best. I could get him to eat when he wouldn't do it for my father, I could get him to calm down when he was in one of his rages, and when he was quiet, he used to help me feed the sheep.
"Then, when he was fourteen … see, I wasn't there," said Sara. "If I'd been there, I could have calmed him down. He had one of his rages, and my father wasn't as young as he was, and … it was an accident. Shaun couldn't control it. But my father was killed."
I felt a horrible mixture of pity and repulsion; I did not want to hear any more, but Sara kept talking and I wondered how long it had been since she had spoken about this, whether, in fact, she had ever spoken about it.
"So that put paid to Susan's trip round the world with little Dodge. The pair of 'em came home for my father's funeral and then Dodge went off on her own, and Susan settled down as head of the family. Ha!"
Sara spat into the fire.
"I'd have looked after him, I told her so, I didn't care about school, I'd have stayed home and done it. She told me I had to finish my education and she'd take over from my father. Bit of a comedown for Miss Brilliant, there's no prize for looking after your half-mad brother, stopping him blowing up the house every other day. But she did all right for a few weeks … 'til she came."
And now a positively dangerous look came over Sara's face.
"Femwazz. And at last, my sister had an equal to talk to, someone just as bright and talented as she was. And looking after Shaun took a back seat then, while they were hatching all their plans for a new wizarding order, and looking for the Hand, and whatever else it was they were so interested in. Grand plans for the benefit of all wizardkind, and if one young boy got neglected, what did it matter, when Susan was working for the good of the magical?
"But after a few weeks of it, I'd had enough, I had. It was nearly time for me to go back to Dragon Mort, so I told 'em, both of 'em, face to face, like I am to you now," and Sara looked down at me, and it took little imagination to see her as a teenager, wiry and angry, confronting her eldest sister. "I told her, you'd better give it up now. You can't move him, he's in no fir state, you can't take him with you, wherever it is you're planning to go, when you're making your clever speeches, trying to whip yourselves up a following. She didn't like that," said Sara, and her eyes were briefly occluded by the firelight on the lenses of her glasses: they shone white and blind again. "Femwazz didn't like that at all. She got angry. She told me what a stupid little girl I was, trying to stand in the way of her and my brilliant sister … didn't I understand, my poor brother wouldn't have to be hidden once they'd changed the world, and led the wizards out of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?
"And there was an argument … and I pulled out my wand, and she pulled out hers, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my sister's best friend - and Susan was trying to stop her, and then all three of us were duelling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set him off, he couldn't stand it - "
The colour was draining from Sara's face as though she had suffered a mortal wound.
" - and I think he wanted to help, but he didn't really know what he was doing, and I don't know which of us did it, it could have been any of us - and he was dead."
Her voice broke on the last word and she dropped down into the nearest chair. Chris was almost as pale as Sara and Sian and Chrissie's faces were wet with tears. I felt nothing but revulsion: I wished I had not heard it, wished I could wash my mind clean of it.
"I'm so … I'm so sorry," Sian whispered.
"Gone," croaked Sara. "Gone forever."
She wiped her nose on her cuff, and cleared her throat.
"'Course, Femwazz scarpered. She had a bit of a track record already, back in her own country, and she didn't want Shaun set to her account too. And Susan was free, wasn't she? Free of the burden of her brother, free to become the greatest witch of the - "
"She was never free," I said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Sara.
"Never," I said. "The night that your sister died she drank a potion that drove her out of her mind. She started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn't there. Don't hurt them, please … hurt me instead."
Chris and Chrissie were staring at me. I had never gone into details about what had happened on the island on the lake: the events that had taken place after Crighton and I had returned to Dragon Mort I had eclipsed it through so thoroughly. In fact, the only one I had told was Sian, and we shared a brief smile.
"She thought she was back there with you and Femwazz, I know she did," I said, remembering Crighton whimpering, pleading. "She thought she was watching Femwazz hurting you and Shaun … it was torture to her, if you'd seen her then, you wouldn't say she was free."
Sara seemed lost in contemplation of her own knotted and veined hands. After a long pause, she said, "How can you be sure, Pride-Lander, that my sister wasn't more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure you aren't dispensable, just like my little brother?"
A shard of ice seemed to pierce my heart.
"I don't believe it. Ma loved - loves Kiara, just as much as she loves me," said Sian.
"Why didn't she tell you to hide, then?" shot back Sara. "Why didn't she say to you, take care of yourselves, here's how to survive?"
"Because, Aunt," said Sian, losing all patience now, standing up and looking down at Sara, "this is not just about us. This is about the entire world we're talking about here, or have you forgotten about this war that's going on around us?"
"But you're seventeen - "
"Do you think we care about how old we are?" Sian said heatedly. "Do you think we wanted to be a part of this? Of course we didn't! We were unwillingly unforced into this mess, just like everyone else was! So we don't care that you've given up, Aunt, because we certainly won't! We will fight and keep on fighting until we succeed or die, thanks to the information my mother passed on to us. This is war, Aunt; death and war don't care about age, they care about how many victims they get, which evil seems to always relish."
Chris, Chrissie and I stared at Sian. Sara merely scowled at her.
"We are going to get into Dragon Mort, tonight if possible, with or without your help, Aunt," Sian told her simply. "If you can't help us, then we'll wait 'til tomorrow, find a way in ourselves, and you'll never have to bother with us again. If, however, you can help us in some way, then we'd be really glad to hear it."
Sara remained fixed in her chair, gazing at Sian with the eyes that were so extraordinarily like her sister's. At last she cleared her throat, got to her feet, walked around the little table and approached the portrait of Shaun.
"You know what to do," she said.
He smiled, turned and walked away, not as people in portraits usually did, out of the sides of their frames, but along what seemed to be a long tunnel painted behind him. We watched his slight figure retreating until finally he was swallowed by the darkness.
"Er - what - ?" asked Chrissie.
"There's only one way in, now," said Sara. "You must know they've got all the old secret passageways covered at both ends, Stingers all around the boundary walls, regular patrols inside the school from what my sources tell me. The place has never been so heavily guarded. How you expect to do anything once you get inside it, with Triphorm in charge and the Csintalans as her Deputies … well, that's your lookout, isn't it? You say you're prepared to die."
"But what …" said Chris, frowning at Shaun's picture.
A tiny white dot had appeared at the end of the painted tunnel, and now Shaun was walking back towards us, growing bigger and bigger as he came. But there was somebody else with him now, someone taller than he was, who was limping along, looking excited. Her hair was longer than I had ever seen it: she appeared to have suffered several gashes to her face and her clothes were ripped and torn. Larger and larger the two figures grew, until only their heads and shoulders filled the portrait. Then the whole thing swung forwards on the wall like a little door, and the entrance to a real tunnel was revealed. And out of it, her hair overgrown, her face cut, her robes ripped, clambered the real Nikita Bore, who gave a squeal of delight, leapt down from the mantelpiece and yelled, "I knew you'd come! I knew it, Kiara!"
