Page 118 of Reap & Sow

Tripp went in first. He was swallowed by the darkness until his eyes blinked back at them: two red dots hovering eerily. “Light the torches, mortals.”

A phantom tingle on the back of her neck told Eda that the Gateway was here, even before Ben took the candle out of its housing and lit the torches by the door. Cloth burned. Flickering light filled the chamber. The shadows retreated, and there it was.

Lich’s mirror was not nearly so grand as their own. It stood just as tall and almost as wide, but where the Shaws’ Gateway looked nearly untouched by time, this one bore the marks of its years. Black obsidian was scuffed and even chipped in various places. Rather than writhing masses of carved thorns and creatures, this mirror’s frame consisted of simple robed figures at each corner. Hooded and without faces, their arms stretched in each direction, as though holding the stone together.

“It isn’t how I imagined,” Ben said quietly. They put the lantern down by the mirror’s base, daring to look closer.

“It must have changed hands often to look so worn.” Eda knew what to expect of their own Gateway, but this one was a stranger. It made her uneasy. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it. Tripp, go back up the stairs and keep watch, if you please. I’d like a warning if anyone comes.”

He slunk off with a reluctant “My lady.”

Eda slung her borrowed bag off her shoulder and pulled out the tools within.

“They don’t look like much,” said Ben.

She raised the chisel and hammer to the light.

Bright as silver coins, they were inarguably plain, without engraving or ornament. Like the weapons used by the Blades, these tools were a fine silver alloy—pure enough to rend demonic flesh burned and bubbling. Silver is a demon’s weakness, but without enchantments, it is also ours, Tenelle had told her in the gardens. It’s too soft to make for good weapons or tools. The Alchemists’ Cloister imbue our blades with the strength they need. It’s the same for this hammer and chisel.

“Tenelle called them Breakers,” Eda said. With a deep breath, she pressed the tip of the chisel to the mirror’s surface. “Let’s find out how true that is.”

She struck hard.

A high, resonant tchting filled the room. White sparks flashed where silver met obsidian. But the mirror stood unchanged. Frowning, Eda tried again.

Tchting!

Sparks and nothing more. Had Tenelle given her duds? She set her jaw and struck a third time.

Whether she was more forceful or not, this time a distinct crack sounded beneath the singing metal. A fracture webbed from the tip of the chisel, a thin gray vein marring depthless black. Eda spared Ben a victorious look.

“Let me try,” he said.

Tchting!

Tchting!

Tchting!

Little by little, the crack grew—spearing outward like a flash of lightning with each hit. Eda stood at Ben’s elbow and watched in fearful fascination.

A Gateway might chip or scratch, but it could not be so easily broken. Before the destructive properties of silver were fully understood, the histories told of mirrors being smashed with great hammers, dropped from cliffsides, dragged behind cart horses for miles. Nothing worked. Eda herself had felt so small before the quiet, menacing power of Mr. Night’s mirror that she could hardly conceive of even trying to destroy it.

But the crack grew, and with it, a fierce sort of satisfaction. Gateways were a result of human magicks. Human magicks would unmake them too. Lucky that demons have yet to surpass the resourcefulness of we lowly mortals.

When Ben brought down the hammer again, something split, like a frozen lake in spring. Cracks forked to the very edges of the mirror. Ben raised his arm, emboldened by the nearness of success.

The impenetrable black seeped with new color.

“Wait—!” Eda grabbed him. Ben lowered his arm in shock.

The mirror’s inky surface was rapidly thinning out, as though someone were washing it away with water. Through the darkness, an image took shape. Eda stiffened.

Not an image. Not a reflection. A view to the other side.

Rippling like an uneasy stream, the details were hard to make out, but it was unmistakably some sort of temple. A single blood-red runner flowed from the mirror’s base and down wide, curved steps—all the way to a set of open doors. Everything else was austere and white as snow. Through the doors, a skyline of some indistinct city glowed beneath an orange, fiery light of three suns. It spilled into the temple, gilding everything in orange gold so alike Kit’s eyes that it took Eda’s breath away.

Then she saw a figure racing along the runner toward them. A humanoid shadow, backlit by the light.