A Plague of Mirrors
The Outernationalist has been brought to Aswadistan to help launch GnosisNet, a cortical-modem program that will render police and politicians obsolete. Up in a palace minaret, he asks the Sultan's court narratrix, Najwa, about the nature of reality. He gets a tale in turn:
Taken from my novel Angels With Engine Failure. [Here is Part One.]
Long before the queen became the king's bride, when very young, and a commoner, she had an eye for a tall, handsome mage, who, though a criminal, knew how to respect a girl's honor. This mage vowed to return for her when she became of age. She never forgot him, even after she became queen. Three years into her marriage to the king, she began receiving messages from the mage through her gilt-framed mirror. The mage, who had been dismembered by brigands on his way to Antioch, had been converted to a demon, not because of his intentions, for he never harmed a soul, but because Allah disapproved of his spells and wares.
In the morning upon waking, and at night before going to bed, Al-Din began to hear his wife murmur imprecations of love as she combed her hair while gazing into the mirror on the far side of the bedchamber. Tending to herself in such a way was new, because she usually relied on her chambermaids to prepare her for the day or night. She used the very reflection to see him approaching from behind, way on the other side of the room where sat the bed, whereupon she would cease her sordid whisperings and conspiratorial cooing. Al-Din became suspicious of this, and he was determined to find out what she was saying. Manhandling her into confessing would not work. And for whatever reason, she would never consult the mirror when alone, as slaves he had hidden in the bedchamber would attest to. She only spoke into the mirror when he was present.
He sought the help of one of his viziers, who was of the same stature as he. This vizier was to hide out under the royal bed, readily dressed in the same pajamas as the king, and, at night, when the queen became engrossed with her mirror, would emerge from under the bed and linger in the background of the queen's reflection, posing as the king, as Al-Din himself would have taken his position inside an large hamper a few paces away from the mirror, and listen.
The ruse worked perfectly, and Al-Din immediately wished that it had not.
"I care not if he knows, my darling," came a guttural voice from the wall. "I will be able to wipe out his whole army once I am ready, which is nigh."
"You know that I am ready to give whatever you may ask of me," murmured the queen. "I will defile myself for you with objects of iron, of bronze, and of stone."
"He will have to be present," replied the guttural voice. "Only then will it work. You will need to be bold, as you will be performing for me while he is present."
"Then you will have to be quick," said the queen, unleashing a lascivious moan, as if clutching herself.
"I do everything quickly," said the voice, "as you shall see."
Ardashir removed his forefinger from the storytelling whore's spine and approached the mirror on the other side of the room. In vain he searched for his reflection in the glass. Azam, who still sat on the bed directly behind him, wore a mischievous smile. "Do not worry," she said. "No harm will come to you. I only hold your soul ransom in exchange for your services."
"How did you snatch up my soul?" he asked, still searching for it by touching his body.
"It was out in the open like no other," she said, smile gone. "It could be grasped like a banner from a pole. Do not worry. I have it stored inside this here." And she produced a wooden box from a drawer beside the bed. "People say that you speak the language of the wind, and are proficient in its poetry. I imagine the job would be simple for you."
Ardashir, upset that pretty Azam had not told him the story out of attraction, but as blackmail, controlled his temper. "I could produce a translation within minutes,” he said calmly. “But what's to stop me from wresting my soul from you and strangling you?"
Azam chuckled. "You can take this box by force, and even open it up, but you know not the spell to apply it to your person. Not only am I willing to give it back to you, but I will also tighten up its seams so that it does not get into further trouble."
Ardashir gazed back at the mirror. Her reflection ran fingers through its hair. He had nothing to lose. "Very well," he said, whereupon her reflection left the bed naked and went to fetch a clay jar. He produced a pen and a parchment from his satchel.
Azam asked that it be translated into Syriac. The work, though simple, was drawn out, as wind words consist of very many syllables. It was near dusk when he finished. "Now," she said, neatly setting his pen and parchment onto the table, "we continue the story." And she led him back to bed.
Rare is the cuckolded man, let alone a king used to having his way in all matters, who will not act rashly when presented with the guilty party. Al-Din, boiling with rage, exploded from the hamper. He commanded his vizier to seize the queen and toss her into the dungeon, while he moved to exact revenge from the mirror. "Stygian dog!" he howled, reaching for the shadowy image beyond the glass surface.
The mage, who could not be reached, for the king's claws only met the hard mirror, moved his lips in an invocation. The spell began near inaudibly, but increased in volume, until it became a roar. Al-Din could not understand a word, and seeing that attacking the shadowy figure before him was futile, rammed his fist into the middle of the mirror, shattering it.
The invocation continued, and Al-Din, now terrified, began to back away. He meant to run from the scene, but the reflection of one of the various shards of the now-broken mirror followed him. He exited the bedchamber and turned down a hall. Looking back, he found that the light from the reflection had bent. He attacked his reflection, and fell into the world of the mirror.
The Egyptian mage had cursed him with a mirror plague. If you hold a hand-held mirror up to large mirror on the wall, you will see a reflection of a reflection, into infinity. Each reflection begets another, which begets another, diminishing beyond the sight of human capability, sure, but truly never ending. All of this is performed with a straight trajectory. Now imagine how this grows more complex once you are able to bend light. This terror is the first order of the mage's mirror plague.
The cover to my novel Angels With Engine Failure
If a mirror image is a two-dimensional reflection of its three-dimensional cause, then a mirror plague's second order is to reverse this—so that reality as it has been known becomes a mere analogue; and what was once a reflection becomes a portal onto a tactile reality. The reflection in this case is the conjunction of all the space-time trajectories, all the multiversal vectors leading up to it. It subjects the victim, in this case a king, to a multiplicity of existences, fading in and out of various pasts and presents, future providing the illusion of hope.
We know that a single existence can oftentimes be unbearable. Now imagine having to cope with innumerable realities, wherein each one you are condemned to do your best as a king. He might achieve progress in one of the innumerable cross-sections, only to split into innumerable others. The mirror plague took on the crenellated aspect of barnacles on a hull. Or a deck of cards being shuffled. In some lives he was murdered by ambitious viziers or relatives. In others, the Rum invaded from the west. In some, the mage forced himself on the queen while the king was compelled to watch. In others, the king successfully choked the mage to death. Like a poisoned thread, the king traveled across that vast multiverse, vowing to exterminate the "real" mage. In one cross-section, the king succeeded in blinding himself with hot irons. A mirror need not be observed to reflect light, much like a black hole. Each cross-section bore an oppressive loneliness, sealed off forever from all other versions of himself, though inextricably linked in the plague of self-replication propagated by the bending light. He took to shouting as a futile exercise in communicating with the other versions of himself, in vain trying to piece together a manageable life that retained a modicum of linearity. Al-Din's only hope was to happen upon a reversing spell. In one of the millions upon millions of cross-sections of the multiverse, he discovered hidden in an earthenware jar a scroll written in an unknown language, and in that same cross-section, he searched for a translator.
"The true horror of the Egyptian mage's spell on Al-Din," Azam's body continued to narrate, "is not that it threw the king into an ontological paradox, but that it forced him to see reality as it truly is. Know, then, that there is a version of you that has indeed strangled a version of me for having pilfered your soul. In vain, of course. There is also a version of you that has proposed marriage to a version of me that has agreed to be your faithful wife, to renounce her vocation and to tell her stories solely for the amusement of her husband. And though I subsist only on river water, bread, and butterflies, I would gladly learn the ways of the kitchen for you."
"Since you have agreed to restore my soul to me," Ardashir said, "and in good order, and are becoming to me as no other girl has ever been, and are adept in the ways of the bedroom and can spin a good yarn by means of those ways, I have decided to ask for your hand in marriage. My only demand is that you no longer deceive me."
Azam bit her lip. She appeared to bandy about a great thought in her head. "Very well, translator. I consent to marry you, and to be faithful to you. I beg for your forgiveness. I only deceived you because my uncle, desperate for help, asked me to have the scroll translated, and you are the only one throughout the world (for I have searched far and wide) who speaks the language of the wind, which can bend and unbend light."
Ardashir emerged from the bed and approached the mirror. Seeing this, Azam popped open the wooden box. She swayed seductively on the bed, coaxing forth his soul, which spoke fluently the florid language of her body, and thereby did her bidding. Ardashir saw his reflection slowly emerge before him.
"My uncle has suffered long enough," she spoke. "Will you accompany me to Nabataea? He will regain his sanity, reestablish his kingdom, kill the queen, banish the mage to a world of torment, and lavish gifts on us."
Upon their return to Ctesiphon, Ardashir took his new wife to the desert. Though no longer in need of solace, for his soul had been stitched uptightly, he wished to express gratitude to the winds. A dust devil had plucked the notorious raconteur El-Misri from the tenement, mid-story, and to the horror of his listeners, whipped him to death. Winds hate to be coaxed into performing dark deeds. They are not meant to bend light. Everyone knows that that domain belongs to gravity.
Angels With Engine Failure is available in ebook and paperback.
Nonsense! But thanks!
Damn the elegance of this prose. I need to redo everything I've done and try to make it read as beautifully as this.