Doppelganger

24 Void

“What do you need?”

Mirage swallowed before answering, in an attempt to keep the thickness out of her voice. She was exhausted from riding, but she didn’t want Wisp to know that. Not that it was possible to hide much from the older Hunter.

“Refuge,” she said, and was reasonably pleased with her crisp tone. “For at least a few days. Me, and one other person. And no questions asked.”

Wisp raised one eyebrow. “No questions. I see. And I’m supposed to hide you. From whom?”

“That’s a question.”

“Damn straight it is, and I intend to get an answer to it. For one thing, I’ve got to know who I’m hiding you from, if I’m to do it right.”

“Hiding us from everyone would be a good start.”

That didn’t amuse Wisp. “You answer my question, or there’s no deal. You’ve barged in on me, ignoring the methods you’re supposed to use, and now I get the feeling you’re dumping a bucketful of trouble on me. This has to do with the commission, doesn’t it?”

“Jaguar agreed Eclipse and I could claim refuge if necessary. Are you going to disobey him?”

“Your ‘other person’ isn’t Eclipse. And yes, I damn well will disobey him if I have to; there may be a better way to handle this problem than straight refuge.” Wisp glared at Mirage. “This has to do with your commission. Tell me.”

Mirage thought about continuing to refuse, and gave the idea up. On a good day, she might be willing to face Wisp in a contest of wills, but not now. She had to save her energy for her real enemies. “All right. The ones behind the assassination are after me.”

“Why?”

“I killed their Hunter. Wraith.”

A slight flicker of an eyebrow was the only sign of surprise Wisp showed at the name. “And?”

“And about ten thousand other things I won’t go into now. I don’t have the time, and frankly, it’s personal enough that it’s none of your damn business.” Mirage summoned all her energy to glare back at Wisp. No way in the Void was she going to explain the doppelganger issue.

“Fair enough,” the Hunter said after a pause. “Answer me one thing, and then I’ll give you your help. Who’s after you?”

Mirage considered it for a moment, and finally decided on honesty. Lying wasn’t going to make her any safer. “The Primes.”

She’d never seen Wisp show visible shock before. “All of them?”

“All five.”

“Void.” The old Hunter exhaled slowly. “You don’t do trouble by halves, do you?” Mirage didn’t bother to answer that, and Wisp didn’t seem to expect her to. “All right. You and one other person. Why in the Warrior’s name did you pick Angrim for your hideout? Those damn bastards are all over the place, and if rumor’s to be believed, one of them sold you out. Nobody knows to whom, but I’m guessing it’s the Primes.”

Sold me out? Ice. I will rip that bitch’s guts out and hang her with them. Mirage gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the immediate issue. “Probably. They came after me awfully fast.”

“So why are you sitting still? They’ve got spells they can use to find people. You’re stupid to stay in one place. Only way you’re going to stay safe from them is to keep moving, as fast as you can.”

“They can’t find me.”

Wisp raised an eyebrow.

“It’s part of the stuff I can’t explain to you now. Just trust me on it. Eclipse is on his way to Silverfire, so ask Jaguar if you want the whole story; he’ll have it soon enough.”

“Don’t think I won’t do just that.” Wisp tapped a finger against her jaw, then nodded. “How about you be a priestess for a while?”

Mirage blinked. “What?”

“I can hide you at the temple. They’ve got cells for the ones who’ve taken vows of silence, and I can get you a pair of those. You wear a hooded robe and don’t talk to anyone, ever, or even leave your room if you don’t want to. Is your friend male or female?”

“Female.”

“Good. You can be neighbors. If it were a man he’d be stuck on the other side of the compound, and that would make things more difficult.”

Given how Miryo was behaving right now, splitting up would be more than just difficult. Mirage did not want to leave her double alone for very long. “That’ll work. Where should I meet you?”

“At the temple. Midnight. Bring your friend.”

When Mirage returned with news of a plan, Miryo simply nodded. She trusted her doppelganger to arrange things; she herself didn’t have the resources to hide them both. Or even just herself. She really didn’t have any resources, period. And it was easier to just accept what Mirage had set up.

The irony of their hiding spot did not escape her. Miryo felt a nearly overwhelming urge to apologize to the silent, cloaked figures who lived along their corridor. They came here for a Me of peace and meditation, living to honor the Goddess, and here she was, in their midst, her hands stained with the blood of women who had just been doing their jobs.

Goddess, I swear on my soul, I never meant to kill them.

But it felt so good, to finally do something, and touch the power I can feel all around me.…

Tsue’s choked-off scream echoed in her memory, and she flinched.

The old Hunter with the hatchet face had given her an odd look before leaving. Miryo had been hidden beneath a hooded cloak, so she doubted the Hunter had seen her clearly. Still, she could not shake the suspicion that Wisp had somehow guessed what lay so heavily on her heart Which was nonsense. But the idea would not leave her alone.

“Void it,” Mirage cursed softly, and Miryo jumped. “I should be sent back to Silverfire to be retrained. I bloody forgot to keep the paper with me when I came after you.”

Miryo felt dead. “So we don’t have any way to contact Ashin.” The desire to try the spell herself welled up inside her, and she gagged. Mirage didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll go find Wisp this afternoon and get her to send a bird to Silverfire, for Eclipse when he gets there. That way he can tell Ashin, if he hasn’t thought of it already. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can manage.”

Miryo shrugged. If she had hoped to conceal her apathy from Mirage, though, she was disappointed. Her doppelganger gave her a sharp look. “What’s bothering you?”

What do you think? Miryo couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Mirage guessed anyway. “The Cousins.”

Miryo stood and walked two steps to the wall of her cell. They were not supposed to be in here together, talking, but it was an hour for private meditation, when they were unlikely to be interrupted, and they were keeping their voices low. “I can’t be as calm about it as you can.”

She half expected her doppelganger to be unsympathetic; how many lives had Mirage taken? A few Cousins were nothing, especially in their situation. But Mirage nodded. “No, I understand. Believe it or not, I still dream about the first man I killed.” Miryo looked at her in surprise, and Mirage shrugged. “The rest don’t bother me as much—Wraith, for example—but the first one does. I didn’t even know his name.” Her eyes dropped to her boots, and she sighed. “You can tell yourself that it was self-defense, and that will help. A little. If you hadn’t cast that spell, getting you out of there would have been a lot more difficult. And odds are good I would have had to kill those Cousins anyway.”

At least it would have been you, and not me.

She was well aware that she had once been at least superficially prepared to kill her doppelganger. Questions of self-defense and so on had bothered her, but she had thought she had come to terms with them. It had been easier then, though. She had seen Mirage not as a person, but as an obstacle to be eliminated.

That was the problem. Tsue had been a person. And so had the other Cousins, even though she hadn’t known their names.

Mirage stood and laid one hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s hard. And nothing I can say is going to make it any easier for you. But please, before you beat yourself up over it, remember that it was self-defense. And defense of the other doppelgangers and their witches, whose lives are also at stake.”

Then she slipped out the door and left Miryo to her thoughts.

Wisp would eviscerate Mirage if she kept breaking contact protocol, so she had to jump through the usual series of hoops, though a different set from those she’d used the last time she was in Angrim.

At least it gave her something to do. Getting out of the temple and back into it without being identified or trailed by Thornblood people let her feel that she was accomplishing something useful, instead of sitting in her cell, waiting for—

For what? A miracle?

They were no closer to finding an answer than they had been when they faced off with knives in a hallway here in Angrim. With the Primes pressing them, they had no leisure to think, to experiment. They just kept on having to move, constantly running to stay alive.

Mirage kicked herself mentally. You’re not running now. You’re sitting in a temple. Complain about having to sit still, or complain about not having time to sit and think, but for the Warrior’s sake, don’t do both at once. Idiot.

And one task was even more important than figuring out the answer to the doppelganger problem. Not more important in the long term, but more important in the short term, because without it, they weren’t going to accomplish a damn thing, whether they were hiding in a temple, racing along a road, or sitting in a library with all the collected knowledge of the world available for their use.

She had to get Miryo back on her feet.

Miryo’s sleep that night could barely be called sleep. It was a shallow doze plagued by horrific memories: breaking her neck at the stream, hearing Satomi condemn her, killing Tsue and the other Cousins.

She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, wishing she dared climb up on the temple roof. It had always been her instinct, when she wanted to think something through. Was it some spillover from Mirage’s Hunter training? No, because it went back further than that; she’d been climbing roofs since her double was a Temple Dancer.

She went up there because it brought her closer to the stars, the eyes of the Goddess.

And yet, was under the eyes of the Goddess where she really wanted to be right now, with the blood of the Cousins on her hands?

Miryo pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and rolled over in her narrow, hard bed. No. Not the roof. Not with her memories of the last time she’d been on a roof.

Instead, she pulled on her robe and went into the hallway.

She was not the only person awake; the hermits under a vow of silence sometimes walked the corridors or the gardens as a form of moving meditation. She passed by two others, whether men or women she could not tell, making no acknowledgment of their presence, as they did not acknowledge her. They walked in their own minds with the Goddess.

Miryo envied them.

Low came and went, and still she walked. It had been at least an hour, as near as she could judge it, since any other priestesses had gone by. She was alone in the halls of the temple.

Then she turned a corner and found someone else there.

The hooded figure paced forward steadily, but, unlike the others, stopped instead of passing her. “I take it you can’t sleep.”

Miryo swallowed, trying to slow her pounding heart, and said, “Not really.”

Mirage tipped her head up enough to peer out from under the hood. “I figured as much. Nightmares?”

Miryo glanced away, unable to meet her double’s gaze.

“Of course nightmares.” Mirage held out her hand. “Come with me.”

Miryo looked at the hand for a long moment, pale and barely visible in the dim light of the hall. She wondered where her doppelganger wanted to lead her, and almost asked.

Instead she took Mirage’s hand, and followed her silently through the corridors of the temple.

Mirage felt Miryo tense the minute they passed through the archway into the pentagonal sanctuary of the temple. Moonlight spilled through the opening in the center of the roof, creating a silver island in the center of the floor. Along the walls, the five figures of the Goddess stood in shadow.

“I know you don’t want to be here,” Mirage said quietly, before Miryo could speak. “You’re not a devotee of the Warrior. You feel like having blood on your hands means you don’t belong in a place like this. But that’s exactly why you should come.” She turned and faced her double, saw the stricken expression on Miryo’s face. “We haven’t prayed since the ambush. I won’t say we need to; this isn’t about obligation. But I want to, and I think you do, too. Even though you’re telling yourself you don’t.”

Miryo stood motionless for several heartbeats, looking almost like a statue herself. Then she nodded, slowly, stiffly. “Yes.” She hesitated. “Thank you.”

They made a circuit of the sanctuary. Mirage bowed to each of the five Aspects, while Miryo touched her heart. The moonlight reflecting off the floor of the temple cast the faintest of glows onto each statue, so their faces were just discernible in the darkness.

Then Mirage spoke again. “Do you want to pray to any one of them, or all together?”

She could see Miryo thinking it over. “All five.”

Including the Warrior. Mirage nodded, and the two of them together went into the center of the sanctuary, where they knelt, pulled their hoods forward, and began to pray in silence.

Some time passed—at least a quarter of an hour, by the movement of moonlight across the floor—before Mirage became aware of eyes on her. She glanced up and found Miryo looking in her direction.

“What is it?” she asked.

“When you were a Temple Dancer,” Miryo said, “was this how you prayed?”

Her voice was hesitant, yet behind it lay a kind of unconscious conviction. As if she knew the answer before Mirage gave it.

“No,” Mirage said. “Sometimes, yes, and sometimes we went to regular services. But other times—for me, most of the time—we prayed as Dancers.”

“What does that mean?”

“We prayed with our bodies. Not with our voices or our minds. We Danced. Together, or alone, following the music in our hearts.”

The words were a poor description for it; usually only Avannans or other Dancers understood. But Miryo was nodding, and the unconscious conviction had grown visibly stronger. “Witches do something like that. Usually alone. We just sing. No words, ordinary or magical; whatever notes and sounds seem right. It’s not a spell. It’s prayer.”

Mirage cast a glance around the temple. The Aspects of the Goddess gazed back at her in the reflected moonlight. Even the breeze had died; there was no sound from the town outside.

She began to strip down to the Hunter uniform beneath her robe. “Do you want to take turns, or do this together?”

Miryo stood in the center of the room, the moonlight casting her shadow onto the stone, and closed her eyes.

Mirage stood nearby, eyes also closed.

For several heartbeats, the two of them stood, silent and motionless, and composed themselves.

Then they began.

Miryo was tentative at first, her voice hardly more than a whisper. She was not accustomed to an audience. But Mirage was not listening to her, not consciously. Each was in her own place, speaking to the Goddess in the truest way she knew.

Miryo sang with no particular plan. Her voice strengthened as she went along. Mirage, moving in a circle around her, also began hesitantly; her motions became more assured with every step she took.

Goddess, Miryo prayed through her wordless song, forgive me for what I have done. I meant Tsue harm; I wanted to do something that would get her out of my way. I succeeded, but at afar higher price than I had intended. Forgive me for that. And forgive me for the joy I felt when I held that power. I took pleasure in acting, if not in the act. Please, forgive me. I beg you.

Mirage, too, sent up a prayer, writing it in the air with her hands and her arms, the angle of her head. Help us, please. Don’t let us lose our momentum. For our own sakes, as well as those who will follow us, we cannot afford to let this go. Too much depends on it. Please, help us keep our course.

And, behind it all, from both of them: Give us the answer. Please. There is another way; show us the path to it.

Miryo’s singing took On a sense of direction. It was the progression she had seen in Haira: the Aspects of the Goddess, from youngest to oldest. Four of them she sang, from Maiden to Crone, while Mirage moved around her. The doppelganger made no sound, but her dancing provided a sharp counterpoint to the notes Miryo sang; the kicks and leaps, with their fierce, hard perfection, were sworn to the spirit of the Warrior.

Their separate prayers flowed into each other, creating a single plea, sound and movement, voice and flesh. The styles were different; Miryo sang the four, while Mirage danced the Warrior, but the rhythm that underlay them was the same.

And then they felt the change.

To Mirage, the air became filled with an electric energy. Her tired body took on a sudden drive that lifted her to greater heights, as it sometimes did in battles, in Dances, when words and thought dropped away and there was nothing but the movement. To Miryo, however, it was something more.

Without intending to, she lowered the guards she had placed so carefully on herself, and reached for power.

Panic tried to claw its way up her throat, but faded to nothingness before it could paralyze her. Miryo knew, distantly, that she should be afraid; this was not in her control, and she did not know what it would do. But the strange purity of mind that had overtaken her would not allow her to fear. She watched, with detached immediacy, as she sang onward, and the power took shape around them.

Mirage leapt into the air, a spinning, kicking leap, and did not land again. The power that filled the air around them lifted her up. She danced on, with nothing beneath her feet but air, and also found she could not fear.

The energy pulsed into visibility. Miryo, singing full-voiced to the four Aspects she had invoked, was also lifted from her feet; around her she could see the shining strands of power. Earth, Water, Air, and Fire; they wove a dizzying, exhilarating web around her and Mirage, and together they wept at the beauty.

And then, through those strands, something else.

Void, Mirage whispered in her mind, and Miryo recognized it as well.

The four concrete Elements and the one that was not pulsed in counterpoint to each other, a pulse that fit the rhythm they had created. And still Miryo sang, and still Mirage danced. The tornado of energy around them was not even remotely in their control, but they had created it, and it continued to draw on them, feeding its own growing power. The strands of the Elements spun them around each other in a dizzying circle, and the air grew to an incandescent white glow.

Goddess—

Show us—

Show ME—

The white fire tore through them, a blinding rush of pure energy, and all thought disappeared into the flames.