The Mirror of her Dreams
"Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel " the chants ran down the corridors of Remiel’s palace making the walls echo and seem to repeat it. Even the servants in the smallest kitchen carried on their daily chores murmuring ""Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel" again and again. The servants swept the floor in time to it. Gardeners trimmed the hedges of her fabulous mazes with bronze shears as they murmured it. The cooks chopped onions with their heavy stone knives against the stone tables murmuring "Hail Remiel, beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel " until it had no more meaning to Remiel than the babbling of the stream under her window or the rustling of the leaves in the trees in her arbour. In the evening they would gather to repeat the litany and strike the heavy bell in the courtyard so that she would hear them, but she always heard them. She sometimes however, chose not to listen. It was a noise that she had grown up with, a noise that they had repeated over and over and over again until it was almost silent, and when she did stop to listen to their constant adulation – she felt alone, more alone than usual.
She was alone in the giant tower that she had lived in all her adult life, from the pinnacle she could see the sea, a great expanse to the east and the bay to the west, but in between were her lands, the deserts of the south, deserts she called Danev. She understood the desert and the desert understood her, they were both eternal and alone. She was adulated without question and she was lonely, separated by her scions by her strangeness and power and again by their absolute devotion. They worshipped her as their queen, not one of them. She was not one of them; she was a queen.
She wore the robes of a queen; her silver grey skin barely on show under the tight gown she wore and a collar of diamonds around her throat and her long iron grey hair was arranged in twin knots before it fell to the floor in a shower of ringlets and curls. She never needed to have her hair dressed and when she cut it short it grew back. Life was too long to bother with such trivia. She wore the knots only to lift her hair off the floor. As if the wishes and the litany had done it Remiel was beautiful and alien and kind. Eternal and ancient, as terrible and beautiful as the deserts around Danev. Yet for her kind she was young, and eternity stretched before her for a great distance, a way she would travel alone. She sighed as she listened to them chant, even as she stared into the mirror, into her beautiful reflection of a woman who seemed to have been cast of metal with shining metal eyes, because even though that they adored her, even though that they worshipped her, she was alone. Surrounded by her scions she was as utterly alone as if she stood in the desert. "I greatly fear," she said to her reflection, "that my throne is not safe" Her scions were stupid mindless beings unable even to hear the thoughts of their fellows when their thoughts were like klaxons down the empty halls of the tower of Danev.
She loved Danev, it was her home, she had built it as surely as if she had laid one brick upon the other. She was the queen of this place and no one would take that away from her. She reached out and touched the cold hard glass of her reflected self, "I greatly fear," she said, "that my throne is not safe." The mirror did not answer her, it never did. Of all those here in this place the mirror was the only one that did not mouth the litany and that could possibly understand what it was like to be hailed, beautiful, blessed and alone.
She had sister queens who ruled the lands that were not hers, but sisters they were in name alone. Each was covetous, only Remiel was happy with her desert home which reflected her and which she reflected. She was the desert and the desert was her; it was alone, and so was she. As she was beautiful then so was it. Clean and barren, harsh and beautiful, the desert and its queen were linked. When she walked it was with the rustle of shifting sands, alien amongst her scions, as impenetrable as her fortress despite the litany. They were hers as surely as the furniture around the room or the gown she wore. She owned them and they belonged to her, but equally she served them. She was mother; teacher; queen, as untouchable, beautiful and alien as the stars in the night sky. They were shining with life, their skin touched by gold and sunlight, their eyes black and hard, where she must have seemed to cold and strange to them with her bright metal eyes and her silver skin. They loved her. Nevertheless she was still alone.
Alone and afraid she stared either over the calm golden expanse of the desert or into the reflection of her own metal eyes. Remiel was alone and afraid and no one in Danev could soothe or loneliness or assuage her fear. "I greatly fear that my throne is not safe." Who could rule Danev but Remiel who had chosen it, had fought for it, great wars like worlds ending against her sister-queens until she stood victorious over the land, the greatest of the tracts that they claimed. Poor but beautiful and hers and hers alone. She had fought and killed her sisters and mother for this tract of land, because otherwise they would have killed her. Danev was hers, she had fought for it, and no one was going to take it from her.
The queen of the Gorge by the Bay had had a daughter.
"I greatly fear my throne is not safe," she murmured again as the corridors of her tower echoed with the adulation "_Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel; Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel ; Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel._" She was Remiel and she was alone. She had grown in this place when it was rocks and chosen the most loyal of her scions even then. She had fought for this land and bled for this land but she was something alien in it, a queen amongst scions and the queen of the gorge of the bay, Anael, had had a daughter. A son was nothing to be feared, boys were scions to be exploited, an after effect of an evening’s amusement but a daughter. A daughter would grow to be a Queen and Anael would not give up her rich and arable lands, her docks and her city. Another throne would be found for the child. Of all the queens none was so isolated as Remiel and she knew it. None excluded the other queens and was excluded as was Remiel. Beautiful, beautiful as the desert of soft windswept curves and soft shine as if she was carved of coloured glass, the others despised her strength and her beauty and they were wealthy. They would gather against her and the daughter, she almost spat upon her polished stone floor, would sit upon her throne and appraise herself in this mirror.
They were gathering to the north, and she had not been invited.
The mirror did not offer condolences to her wounded pride or solace to her fear, it never did. It just reflected her beauty. She was beautiful and cold like the moon at night , "Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel," she could hear them, they thought it without even having to coax them with her power. Her people loved her, not the daughter of Anael of the Gorge by the Bay that she had not even named. She was the queen of Danev, not some child. Never. She would not give up her throne. She would never give up her throne.
She pulled away from her mirror, away from her throne and left the apex of her tower to descend to the world blow spreading her fingers to slow her descent she glided to the floor. There were no stairs in the tower of Danev for she had no need of them and only she could see her mirror, her most prized possession so although they had been built she had removed them to secure her privacy and her treasure. A mirror that could show the whole of her beauty from the tips of her ears to the nails on her feet. A treasure even amongst the queens of this world but to the scions it was a show of her beauty and grace, at how great she was that even common sand, from which she had made the mirror, ached to show her beauty.
Her scions were about their tasks and did not stop to admire her, "these are my people" she thought, "these are the people that love me." These people were hers, as surely as the tower or the desert she had fought so desperately to keep. She had fought with claw and magic that seared the sky for this land, these people. They would not take them from her. They would never take them from her.
There was a girl at the door with a broom in her hand, her black hair dancing like water off rocks as she worked, she had not seen her descend, she was so busy with her task. She was their queen and many queens demanded obeisance, but not Remiel; she loved her people. An old woman knelt before her but she still scrubbed the floor of the tower and outside a man was liming the wooden arch they had erected since the last time she had come down from her tower.
"Come to me." She said to the maiden who stood sweeping the stoop, the girl obediently placed her broom so it stood against the door-frame and lifting the heavy leather skirts in a curtsey she approached her strange and beautiful queen. "Am I beautiful?" She asked the girl, she was a scion with olive skin and slow eyes, but her mouth was slack lipped and her colouring was wrong for beauty. Like all of the scions she was wearing animal skins cured to make fabric, there were no plants for the growing and they could not weave air, as Remiel did, to clothe their nakedness. Beautiful girls were killed in Danev for only Remiel could be beautiful though Remiel herself never saw or judged them. To her they were all the same- scions.
It had been ten years since she had last descended from her tower.
The girl was speechless. Remiel could hear her thoughts though as surely as if she had spoken, the goddess lives and talks, I am talking to the goddess. The goddess, her beauty blinds me. Remiel could feel fear and awe and excitement as the girl fell to her knees before her. A scion, only half her height. She smiled at the thought, "would you like to kiss me?" Remiel asked the girl. She nodded bravely knowing what it meant and shocked to be offered such an honour and Remiel kissed her on the mouth with her cold hard small mouth and with that kiss she stole the girl’s will, her mind and her dreams, swallowing them whole and drinking them down like wine. There was no greater rapture, Remiel thought, than the daydreams of a child.
She held her to her mouth with her sharp fingers which were clenched in the girl’s hair as Remiel kissed and killed her. When she was dead there was nothing left in the girl but flesh and her black eyes were bloodshot and Remiel cast her down. She folded unnaturally on the stone floor as Remiel licked the blood from her lips, sated on the meal as surely as if she had eaten. The girl’s mouth was bloody where Remiel’s small sharp teeth had bitten through her lip. She looked at her hands as the meal coursed through her like a drug, the girl had had a lot of dreams upon which she had fed and saw the light of a ruddy pink filter through her skin like wine blushing through water.
Some of the queens in the north fed almost constantly upon their scions and could move amongst them as an unseen predator with their pink skin and dark eyes, and many of those who had not been able to claim thrones were forced to do so, but Remiel loved her people. She needed to eat but they deserved her beauty, cold and hard like metal. Others came forward to take the girl, a sacrifice because she had gone willingly to the queen’s kiss she had tasted of pride and not of duty or fear. They took her body, she would be honoured and revered and for a day and a night whilst they would pray to Remiel who had taken her sacrifice. It was the place of queens to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead. The girl had given her life that Remiel could feed as she had not in ten years since she last descended from her tower.
"My lady," they said as they gathered around, one picked up her hair to hold it above the floor, another the train of her dress, others reached out to touch her and carry the blessing home to their families in their rude animal skin huts. They did not live with her here, in this tower. Even after all these years they camped outside in their crude homes. "How might we serve?" Remiel stood at least three feet taller than all of them as the richness of the girl’s dream sated her and pinked her silver skin. She was among them, adored but not one of them, never one of them.
"Anael of the Gorge by the Bay has borne a daughter." Remiel told her people for it was her right, she was their queen- she protected them. She always had.
"Will my lady travel to see the child?" the old woman who had been cleaning the floors asked, she had three triangles painted on her face with blue dye, it had been so long since she had lived amongst them that Remiel did not know what it meant. She vowed she would spend some time with them as she had not for so long, at least a century or more, when she descended it was because she needed to feed. She also knew that when the woman said see it could be heard kill. They loved their queen and would have no other willingly, it gave Remiel a moment’s peace to know that.
"The queens of the north gather against me," Remiel said as if she had not heard the old woman’s question.
"You will destroy them," the old woman said firmly, "for you are Remiel and they are not."
At that Remiel smiled, she had not expected the fervour of this old woman. Rue, she called herself in her thoughts, and Rue Remiel would call her. "Rue, I am one and they are many, if I leave the sanctity of my stronghold here in Danev then it is very possible that I will not return and another queen will come to take my throne from me." But she did not say that, she wanted to, she thought it hoping the old woman might hear her thoughts, but she could not. "Rue, I will travel to the Gorge by the Bay, and like all the other queens of this world I shall bring the child a gift."
That baffled Rue, she couldn’t understand why Remiel would give a child who was of her own kind, when she had, legend told, killed her own mother and sisters, a gift. Rue could not understand the intricacies of the mind of her queen; she was a scion, a woman who had before swept the floor of the tower like the girl who had died. An old and brave woman who asked about the queen that she had worshipped all her life. "As you wish," she said, "what is it that you wish prepared for the child?"
Remiel reached down and patted Rue on the head like a favoured pet; her hand was cold and heavy on the old woman’s head as if it was made of stone, metal or glass and not flesh. But Remiel was a queen; she was different and beautiful from her scions, beautiful and brave. They were flesh and bones, little different from the animals in the field. She could not understand the way her queen thought and worked, she was only a scion after all. But Remiel liked this old woman for her bravery though her skin had long since turned to leather and her hair was as grey as Remiel’s own. She would show her. She held out the palm of her hand and in the folds of it was a mirror, her mirror.
"My lady," Rue protested, "your mirror is your greatest treasure, and you can not give her that." Remiel looked at the mirror a little longingly, she had spent most of her life with the mirror. It was, in truth, the only companion she had. The scions, as fond as she was of them, died as soon as she knew their idiosyncrasies, so she had taken the steps from her tower so she would not watch them grow old and infirm and stop. Like favoured pets it upset her when a favourite died so she lived aloof from them, occasionally descending to feed or tell them their futures - a practise she enjoyed as a spoiled child on her mother’s knee before her sisters ripped off her wings, jealous that they did not have them. A woman married or a child born when Remiel was descended was blessed. Lonely as she was Remiel loved her scions.
"It is not this I will give her," she turned the mirror, tiny as it seemed in her hand and on the back was a symbol. "It is this," It was a sword pointing to the top of the mirror, with delicate cross hatching along its length and a notch just below the tip from which there appeared to be a pair of wings, outstretched as if to take flight. The hilt of the sword had a man crucified but the way the sword was drawn he hung upside down. A third of the way down the sword was a cross in the position of a saltyre, detailed but shaped like crossbows, and topped with acorns. It was fixed to the sword by what appeared to be an angel fixed to the cross by its wings. Around them were two concentric circles, one which circled the sword and one which, though it never crossed it, circled the cross. Rue could feel the malice of the symbol but she did not know what it meant. "This is a curse," she said explaining herself to the old woman though she did not know why, except maybe to reassure her scions of her power, "the most fearsome of all the curses that the Queens know, it is this curse that sealed my throne to me." She closed her hand and the mirror and its cargo vanished. "It is this that I shall give to Anael and her baby." She turned, "I greatly fear that my throne is not safe." She murmured so low that Rue could not hear with her scion ears.
"Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel," Rue said mouthing the old inflection to her queen, "and may she return to us safely, secure in the knowledge that we will wait for her if it takes until the sky falls." For a moment Remiel suspected this was how scions felt, she searched for the word, love. She had never known it, it had been an amusement for a while to watch them love, but Rue loved her as her queen, and she worried for her. She was mistaken- it was pride. Pride she knew, pride she could have too. She was proud of her people and she would return to them, and spend time among them again as she had not in so long. Soon, after maybe a hundred years or so she would feel the loneliness as she watched favourite after favourite die and she would return to the top of the tower. With a wave of her hand the stairs to the tower were restored for she was a queen and she was powerful. They were like fireflies to her, brief but shining lives.
"Rue," she said, "make sure that my rooms are ready for my return, place fresh linen on the bed," a bed she never slept in, a bed that was a scion affectation, she did not need to sleep any more than she ate the food that they gave her, "and that they are cleaned and aired for my return." Rue bowed acknowledgement and then curtsied blushing, no one in a century or more had had access to Remiel’s rooms high above in the tower with no steps.
She outstretched her fingers and let herself rise, the air she wrapped around her as clothes heating and lifting her. Her face shifted, becoming more squat, her teeth pushing out so that her face was like that of an animal as her fingers stretched and elongated before the flaps of silver skin stretched between them and her long hair receded back into her skull. She had been born with wings but every queen could fly. Her feet arched up like those of a cat as her claws got longer and heavy lids covered her eyes. She could not have managed the transformation had she not eaten but now it was simple. In the palace of Anael, queen of the Gorge by the Bay, there would be feasts, and she would not be a starved and icy cold queen, she would be as ruddy with life as a scion and have more than enough power for the curse. Anael and all those who gathered against her, all those who whispered in secret corners, those who had supported her mother or sisters, they would pay. She did not want their kingdoms as they wanted hers; she only wanted Danev.
Danev was her home; Danev was her country; The desert was hers; she had no need for anything else.
Without even leaving her tower she rose flapping her leathery wings and then left by one of the observation windows from which she looked out to sea. She let the winds and rough updrafts carry her across the gold and desert she loved so much, here and there were pools of silver with small bursts of the lush vegetation that had been there when she had been a child, dandled on her mother’s knee, before their battle seared the sky and burned the land gold. When the sky burned with fire in the aftermath of her battle the water had been drawn from the soil and lush land became desert. She preferred the desert, it was hers, and none of the others came to take it. No one wanted land so barren.
In the far north Meriel had cut down the trees until there was nothing left and she had found herself queen of a desert. In the west Erael had planted trees until there was no more land for her scions to farm or to live upon and in the centre of their world a great forest had grown up around her, as dense as the desert and as sacred. Each of the queens had changed the lands they lived in, beautiful gardens in places; they brought water to the surface to give them lakes. They created pleasure gardens for their existence, choosing where every tree or rock was placed. Not so, Remiel, she had fought tooth and claw to live and seared the sky when she had done so. The sky had burned with fire. Even now, centuries after, she remembered how the sky was hot and her lungs burned as if she breathed fire, how the hair was burned from her head and the cold dark spiral into the sea. She flapped onward to reach the city of the Queen of the Gorge by the Bay. A city, what kind of blasphemy was that? She had changed her scions, taught them the secrets of working metal and how to build with stone and not use it for their tasks. She had changed them. No other queen had dared so much. They were scions, they were little more than animals only because animals did not notice their nakedness and sought to cover it. Anael had built a city. It perched on the cliff overlooking both the black gorge that formed when she fought her mother for this land when the earth itself had screamed in protest and split, and the bay to its side. A beautiful location if too green to Remiel’s eye which was accustomed to the seared skin of the desert.
When she landed at the gate, in order to walk as a scion might through the wooden gates she was horrified at what she found. Men guarded the gate; they were no impediment to her. They were short scions with no more power about them than the gates they guarded and she was Remiel, Queen of Danev. They did not even ask her of her business but when they spoke amongst themselves it was with a separate language to that which her scions used and they were changed. Their brows were more like her own, without the thick and heavy ridge, and their hair was fair, like Anael’s. They walked with a straighter back with their heads held high despite the deformities that Anael had given them. Their faces were more oval, and their eyes pale, and to her surprise a bony lump came from under their mouths. She had remade her people not only in knowledge but in her own image. They were all beardless.
They wore linen, which was common for scions, but instead of decorating it with coloured earths and beads it had been bleached white and they wore short bladed swords and leather kilts. The guards at the gate had, on top, worn sheets of metal bolted together. Her own people seemed more animal than these but she knew it didn’t matter, her people were as they were meant to be, they talked with their hands and their hearts, these men spoke as she did. Anael had changed them, and not necessarily for the better. They bowed to her, as if to an equal and she had to stay the urge to destroy them. It was a momentary urge, they were abomination, but it would alert Anael to her purpose. She did not know, yet, how many of her kind had gathered in Anael’s city of the Gorge by the Bay, and two or more linked would be more than enough to destroy her. She stopped for a moment in the shade of a willow tree that overlooked a brick well in a plaza in the city, scions milled about only one of many looked like he or she might belong in Danev. An old woman with her hair held up with a leather kerchief dyed with ochre holding a rude willow basket, a young man in horse hide with his long black hair tied at his neck. These were scions. They had dark hair and dark eyes, their brows heavy and their chins drawn back into their necks. They were short and broad, built to labour, as expressive with their eyes as they were with their language. After a couple of moments resting on the bench which circled the bottom of the tree as she surveyed the wooden city with her metal eyes it occurred to her that these were not Anael’s scions, they had come as part of an envoy. Some of the other queens had brought their own scions for amusement. The old woman was probably a dresser, someone who painted her queen’s face or arranged her hair; the boy was probably a toy. The guards had not questioned her because others of her kind were here. It reassured her doubt-, others had arrived before her. Others had known of the child before she had. Had they been invited?
The thought was like a flash in her brain. They had been invited and she had not. They had gathered here without their isolated Sister-Queen. They had gathered in the Gorge of the Bay without her. The only reason there could be for that was that they intended, together, to give Danev to the child. Her suspicions had to have been right, why else would they not invite here to bless the child. She had felt them gathering in the north, she had supposed in her naiveté that they had had the same suspicions as she, that Anael would use her wealth and power to steal their lands. They had formed a coalition against her. They would know the might of the symbol on the back of her mirror. She would destroy them. She would destroy their abomination. Their towers would tumble, and protected by the glass of the mirror she alone would remain. Aloof in her tower, watching her scions. She did not want their lands but she was happy to leave them without their queens. They would all die. The age of queens would end.
Anael had invited everyone to see the baby except her.
Anael had invited everyone to reassure them that she would not make an attempt on her throne, except Remiel, which could only mean one thing, Anael intended to give her daughter Remiel’s throne.
Anael was going to try and take Danev away from her.
No one would take Danev away from her, it belonged to her and she belonged to it.
It made her mind up for her, she raised her arm summoning the wet air of this place about her to change from what she wore, instead of the sleek black gown split to her hip along both legs that covered all her flesh she bared the silver skin of her shoulders, down to the rounded flesh of her breasts. However like a doll she had neither nipple or navel, none of her kind had that. If she bore a child it was born complete with no link to its mother and given to a scion to nurse. If she walked naked it was sure that she was perfect with no hair or blemish to mar her glassy grey skin that shone with health from the dreams that she had eaten. She let the air tumble down to her bare feet and from under her breasts came an apron of white cloud that covered the black gown and split down the front. She rouched the air about her breasts and shoulders to accentuate her silver skin, Her hair she untied all but for the smallest of the knots so it fell free down her back and with a wave she brought black to her eyelids to darken them as if with kohl and red to her lips. Only when she was perfect did she even attempt the steps to the palace on the cliff in the city of the Gorge by the Bay.
Anael waited for her at the gate with a smile so insincere it looked to Remiel as if she sneered. Her lilac coloured hair was gathered in a style similar to Remiel’s pulled away from her silvery skin but the dress she wore was of clouds fitted so close that there was barely room in the gown for breath had they needed to breathe. It showed the belly that was still round from the birth and when she saw Remiel she bowed, as to an equal as she rushed forward with traitors kisses which she planted on each of Remiel’s cheeks. Remiel not wanting, just as Anael did not, to give away her purpose kissed her back. "You look well, Anael, my sister." Remiel said in the formal manner, reminding Anael that even though their mothers were different that they were Sister-Queens.
"Remiel," Anael said linking arms with her though it had been centuries since they had seen each other last, "you should come more often, the halls of my home are empty without your wit. Come, I feared that you would not. Everyone was waiting" Remiel almost stopped in her tracks but could not alert Anael to what she planned. It was a trap. They had wanted her to come here. It made things easier. None could rival her power in Danev where she had invested so much of herself it was like a conductor for her power. Here she was merely one queen among many. There she was home. "You are the only left to see my Emiel." At that Remiel nearly stopped again. She had given the child a variant of her name, what more proof did she need that they had plotted against her to steal her throne. They had given the child her name. They would give her _her_ home. They intended to give the child Danev. It would take little effort for the blessing to become "Hail Emiel , beauty to Emiel , blessings on Emiel." Anael had taken her name; it would be a simple step to take her land. And almost dragging herself Remiel let Anael take her into the hall of queens.
They gathered to the left and right of the open hall with its monoliths and obelisks of stone to form walls. Over the sea, she could see a large and heavy black cloud a storm cloud though it was not even an impediment to her kind. The water never fell on them. It looked as if the age of queens would end in a rainstorm, Remiel found the irony of that enough to lift her lips in a smile. All of them, all nineteen queens living and one baby were in the hall with its stone floor and its monolith walls that were open to the elements. It was in the centre of Anael’s palace with its roofs and its cloisters, a square open place that looked out over the gorge and the sea. There, high above the monoliths even was Anael’s throne, as high as if in a tower and upon it she would sit in her ribbon dress of cloud and air and watched over her city of abomination.
The cloud was coming closer.
"Would you like to see the baby?" Anael asked the malice she planned kept so carefully from her voice, "or would you like to eat first?" Eating was an option it would make her stronger, more resilient to attack, but if she fed on a dying scion then she would be weakened. It was not safe to eat here. All nineteen queens had gathered in this place to attack her. She had walked into their trap; she would not spring it- not yet.
"I would like to see my namesake." She used the words carefully. She knew all of these queens though she had not left Danev in centuries. She knew them by name, by reputation. She had had them visit her in her high tower to tell her of their worlds, of what the other queens were doing. They admired her beauty and her mirror though they feared her; she knew that. They had all killed to take their thrones; each and every one had killed another queen to take her place- she had killed three. She had seared the sky with her power. She was a threat to them though they worked together to stop a powerful queen arise. They feared her and they would destroy her because they feared her.
"Of course," Anael said as she led her to the cradle, it was where an altar would be in a temple a small basket woven of reeds and lined with flax and the baby was small and pink, yet to come into her power and her strangeness. A normal appearing scion baby. Her skin would change as she grew older, taller than the other children, other things would come, and wings maybe, fur for some, a longer tongue. Something that would rebel against her scion blood before she took the silver skin and the hard metal eyes of adulthood. At this point she was very vulnerable, as vulnerable as a scion child, but the tips of the pink ears were pointed and she smelt of biscuits.
The cloud was coming closer.
"She has been blessed," Remiel said feeling the gifts of the other queens upon the child, the gift of beauty, of song, of dance, the gift of flight, and all the gifts that she and every queen in this hall had been given. The gift to curse; that would be what Remiel would give her. "May I lift her?"
Anael looked relieved when Remiel asked her as if she had wanted to drop the baby in Remiel’s arms and was not afraid that she would dash the baby against the floor. She trusted this woman she was about to betray with her baby. A thought flashed in Remiel’s head, this was a scion baby, not Anael’s. The child was safe away from here and they had blessed a scion baby to delude her. She would not fall for their trap. She could not afford to fall for their trap. She lifted the baby leaning in close as if to coo to the child, Remiel who had never had such a child, who never wanted such a child. The child was rich with the smell of queens and the smell of biscuits. It was Anael's child, or she had handled it enough that her scent was thick upon it. A scion male came forward and outstretched his arms to the queen and she reached down, towering over him as she did, to put the baby in his arms and he carried it away to be changed or fed, she did not know which. "I have brought my gift." She said and spreading her hands revealed her mirror.
It was as tall as any of the queens gathered with a frame that she herself had woven from her hair which turned to silver in her hands and she herself had stretched and boiled the sand to make the glass. The others had blessed her with gifts that they lost no love in the making of, song and dance and beauty and wit, Remiel had made this mirror with her own hands. She loved this mirror and she held it out with both hands. "This mirror has been everything to me, I made it with my hair from the sands of the deserts of my home," her voice was calm and Anael looked surprised at the gift. She had expected Remiel to follow the ritual to give the child the gift to curse. She would not give the child the ability her mother had given her, the ability to use her power to kill. She would not give the child the way to kill her. Never. She was not that foolish. She would not fall into this trap the other queens, who worked together to protect their lands, had laid for her. They would not give her throne to the infant that the scion had taken away.
The cloud was almost over them now.
She turned the mirror in her hands to reveal the symbol on the back, the saltyre pinned to the sword by the angel’s wings. They all reacted to that, there were none here that had not seen that mark before. They knew that symbol. It was the death curse. "You will not take my lands!" Remiel screamed as the symbol became lit with gold and silver light and began to expand. The other queens reacted sluggishly and Remiel rejoiced; they had not expected her attack. "None of you will live to see the new age!" She screamed feeling the weight of their power against her, the way they linked and poured their magic against her like a tide, "you have committed abomination!" She screamed. "The desert is mine, and mine alone." She whimpered.
The attack of the other queens was like a hammer blow. What could they do against her? The glass and the force of her death curse shielded her. A powerful death curse from the line who blessed them with the ability.
Then she saw what was happening, where her hands were against the glass she was sliding through, as if pushing through the sand or a film she was being sucked into the mirror where they were cold, cold and numb. "I meant no treachery against you," Anael said, "I just wanted to show you my baby." Then she outstretched her hands as Remiel tried to pull away from the mirror. She was held fast and being dragged deeper and deeper into the glass that she had made and fixed in place with her own hair. The very thing that shielded her was devouring her. "I just wanted to show you my baby," Anael said quietly as the light of her power came from her hands like from the sun, "but I can’t allow you to hurt her," she lowered her eyes which were sympathetic, "my sister."
"You will not die within the mirror," Meriel said from behind them, "but you will be alone, as you prefer to be."
"Sealed for eternity by your own curse." Erael added and the others murmured.
"You will not live to see that," Remiel screamed as she was dragged deeper and deeper into the mirror world as the black cloud above them crackled with thunder and bolts of light. The rain when it came would be heavy. "And I will be beautiful for eternity." She looked at Anael and tried to turn away from her gaze, she could not, or even cover her face to avoid the look in those eyes, her body beyond the glass was as numb as if made of stone, and she stared, unable to look away, at Anael’s eyes.
"Don’t look at me," she screamed, "Don’t look at me with those eyes." Then she was gone, sucked into the mirror that linked her to her desert home, a mirror made of glass and bound with her own hair, sealed into place by her own curse. The mirror fell heavily to the floor but did not break. It would never break. The last thing she heard was Rue’s prayer, far to the south east "Hail Remiel , beauty to Remiel , blessings on Remiel," then she passed into the cold silence of the mirror.
Anael lifted the glass. "Thank you, sister, for your gift for my daughter."
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