The World to Come
by Eildon Rhymer
What if the Dark had won at the end of Silver on the Tree? The world is sliding into darkness, and only tattered remnants of the Light remain. Will, Bran and the Drews grow to adulthood, and each to their own destiny in this World to Come.
Part three: chapter three
The man in the mirror
A stranger stared back at him from the mirror.
Bran studied him. The stranger was called Pendragon. Sometimes - more and more often, now - Bran thought of himself as Pendragon. The name his mother had given him was fading further away, dying from lack of use. Other times, though, the difference was stark. Mirrors made it the starkest of all.
One man stood before the mirror; another man stood within, gazing back.
The man in the mirror was strong and sleek. His white hair was raked back severely, and his tawny eyes did not blink. His mouth was pressed into a straight line. It was silent now, though it knew how to shout. Even better, it knew how to be icy cold, to reduce people to grovelling terror just with a few quiet words.
No-one laughed at the man in the mirror. Long ago, a boy with tawny eyes and white hair had been laughed at by all the other boys at school. Freak, they had called him, and they had pinched and shouted and laughed. Then had come the Old Ones, who had pretended friendship, like a lifeline in a storm. They had laughed, too - laughed behind their hands at the stupid freakish boy they had tricked and ensnared.
Then Bran had become Pendragon. The boy had become a man, and the man had begun to rise through the ranks of the secret police, sustained by his hatred of those who had tried to use him. A few had laughed at him even then, thinking him soft, a fool promoted because he had connections in high places.
Those men, too, he had silenced.
No-one had laughed at him for years. Neither, too, had the man in the mirror ever laughed. Bran's hand rose to his face. In the mirror, he thought, the movement looked like a threat, but all he did was touch his mouth, pushing the edges gently, testing the feel of a tiny smile.
It felt wrong. Cold smiles he could do - the smile of a captain who had caught his man; of a gaoler spreading chill to the heart of the man at his feet. But a true, happy smile… He lowered his hand. He did not know how to do them. He had forgotten how.
He knew he was not happy. He was many things, but he was not a man to lie to himself. Circumstance and choice had set him on this path, and one thing had led to another, and now he was captain of the secret police, the most feared and hated man in Britain. He did not like what he did, but the alternative was worse. It was better to be feared than mocked. It was better to be hated than to have people pretend to love you.
It was better to be Pendragon than to be the boy who had once been called Bran.
"And besides," he told the man in the mirror, "if it wasn't me, it would be someone else, and that would be even worse." There were many beneath him, eager for his job, who were cruel and sadistic and would torture prisoners just because they could. At least Bran only ordered pain when there were genuine secrets to be discovered. They called him merciless, but he spared people when he could, and let their deaths be as clean as he could make them. "I'm helping them, in a way."
The man in the mirror blinked. Bran sighed. No, there could be no lies. He could not hide behind that excuse. He did what he had to do. He did not enjoy it, but he could have walked away years ago, and he had not. He had made his choice. They were right to hate.
"But I was right, too," he told the man in the mirror. Those lips moved, speaking with the voice of a stranger. You were right, too. He had made his choice. He had refused to be used. He had raised his sword, and the world had fallen into place around him. Much had happened that he had not foreseen, but better this than rule by those deceivers. Better the honesty of Darkness, than the smiles of the Light, that hid only tricks and lies.
And now it was over.
He half brought his hand to his mouth again, struggling for that smile, but still no smile would come. He felt nothing. A few days before, Merriman Lyon, the chief of the sorcerers, had been captured and sent out of Time forever. The lords of the Dark had been terrible in their jubilation. The last Old One had gone, and the world belonged to the Dark forever.
Bran had not been there to witness the last moments of Merriman, master of lies. When they had told him the news, he had frozen, as still and cold as the man painted on the glass of the mirror.
Over, he thought. No more sorcerers to hunt. No more. Nothing. The end.
But he had not smiled. He had not mourned at the loss of his life's purpose, now achieved. He had paused only for a few seconds, then walked on, his face unchanged. Why? he asked the man in the mirror. He did not understand why. Pendragon, the man in the mirror, carried on unchanged. He led his men, and he ordered death. He hated, even though there was no-one left to hate. The Dark had won, but he still did their work, and still told himself that they had not won his heart.
He did not understand it.
The man in the mirror stared back, and gave no answers.
End of part three: chapter three