Arran slammed his hand flat against the mirror. "Come back!"
The mirror remained blank. A dense, gray fog filled its surface, just as out of reach as the door through which they were supposed to leave this room. Inna turned back to Zazi, looking for a clue in her yellow eyes. "Please tell me you know how to get out of here as well."
Zazi blinked. This trial was not designed for me.
Inna supposed it wasn't. Magic prickled the back of her neck; the entire room was imbued with it. An illusion, devised to trap them here. All of this was happening inside their heads, much like the Sphere of Truth's visions. Except that this time, they merely had their own wits to work with.
She suspected the solution was simple, if only they found it before they died of thirst or hunger. The carpet and duffel bag had not traveled to this place with them. Time still dragged on outside of this imaginary room, so their bodies would need sustenance sooner or later.
"Magi ilwah," Arran muttered, resting his forehead against the mirror. "This nightmare never ends."
Inna walked to the mirror with the door and traced its outline with her finger. The glass was cool and impassable. Not once did she catch a glimpse of her own reflection in it. She moved the flame in her hand this way and that, encircled the mirror's frame with it, but still the image didn't change.
It was as if the mirror bent the light in impossible ways, reflecting that which was invisible to the naked eye.
Her eyes widened. "Arran!"
"Habi Onshra, Inna, don't startle me like that." When she turned around, he met her gaze with wary eyes. "What is it? Don't tell me you've figured it out already."
"In fact, you should have," she countered, planting her hands on her hips. "Tell me, what's a mirror's most basic function?"
He scrunched his brow, as though he tried to determine whether she had gone insane. "To reflect."
"Reflect what?"
His frown deepened. "The light."
"And what is your main magical skill?" She bared her teeth into a wide, triumphant grin. "With that ability of yours, have you ever used a mirror to fool someone? A guard in one of the houses you robbed, or your mother with the rolling pin?"
He chuckled at those last words. "I can make myself invisible while still seeing my reflection in a mirror, if that's what you mean. I just don't understand how that's supposed to help us get to that door. I can't transport myself into that mirror without a reflection to guide me. And as you can see"—he waved a hand in front of the glass surface—"there's nothing."
She dismissed his protests with a gesture of her hand. "No, listen. That rune Zazi traced with her tail? It conjured an illusion to test us, which means it has been adapted to our abilities. I think the principle of these mirrors is the same as your magic: to bend light. If I'm right, you should be able to unravel the bends they made and undo them, so that we can reveal the location of this door inside this realm. Maybe the door is not inside the mirror, but we are. Do you understand?"
He raked his fingers through his dark hair. "I guess. It's worth a try."
He rubbed his hands together. Fascinated despite the urgency of their situation, she looked past the Vahja to track what he was doing. His aura moved around him in swirling orange and black, truly a tiger's motive now. He steered it toward the mirror, where it tapped the glass with prying tentacles, searching for the magical energy it harbored. Inna wasn't surprised to see that the mirror's energy was the twin of Arran's aura and that both forces of magic intertwined.
At once, a tiger-striped path was revealed which curled and danced around the room. Wherever it went, the light bounced off in a different direction, until it was caught in a knot so tight it was impossible to see where one tangle of energy stopped and the next began. However, Arran manipulated his magic on instinct, connected and melted it with the room's energy. He had lived with his ability since he had been a little child; it was as second nature to him as Inna's aptitude for violence and destruction was hers. She couldn't begin to understand how he bent the laws of physics to his will, how he used himself as a mirror of sorts, and she found herself yearning to learn, even though she would never reach the same level as him.
With regard to magic, she had always regarded herself as the teacher in their relationship to each other, yet she felt humbled by the realization that she might have made too quick a presumption about that.
As Arran untied the knot, the world around them changed: a torch appeared on each wall and a wooden chest materialized in one corner. He had just enough time to jump out of the way before iron spikes shot out of the wall, aiming to pin him next to the skeleton they already held. Inna stared at the spikes, wondering why they hadn't walked straight into them earlier. Together, they had paced every inch of the room. Maybe Arran wasn't just uncovering what was invisible, but he made the revealed objects tangible as well. After all, this was still an illusion, and everything was possible.
The door remained unseen until the entire knot had been unraveled. Arran slouched against a stone table when he had finished, his forehead glistening with sweat. Even if the curse didn't affect him in this twisted reality, the past few minutes had still put a strain on the endurance of his mind. She wanted to grab his hand and drag him along to the door, but a sense of foreboding rooted her feet to the ground.
Since they were both stuck in the same illusion, that meant the test had been designed to match both of their abilities, yet Arran was the only one who had used his powers so far. Surely Inna's sole purpose wasn't the speed with which she had solved the issue with the light bending; Arran was smart enough to have figured it out himself eventually. Their trial wasn't over yet.
"Stay back," she told Arran. "Something's waiting for us behind that door, and I think this one's meant for me."
He scoffed. "That's your ego talking, princess. You just can't stand it that I'm the one who got us out of here."
Turning to him, she scowled. "You had your time to shine, but this test isn't just about you."
Without speaking another word to him, she strode to the door, turned the knob and pulled it open. The salty scent which had had a vague presence in the air before now built up at a disturbing speed. A cool breeze hit her in the face and curled the tiny hairs around her ears. In a reflex, she threw up both arms and let her magic loose.
A sea rolled inside the room, or at least, it tried. Inna's arms trembled with the effort of holding back the water. The wooden door frame cracked and burst beneath the strength with which the waves slammed themselves against it, seconds away from yielding completely. Arran cursed loudly behind her.
"Zazi, come here!" he screamed. His voice was almost drowned out by the noise of the water.
"I can't ... hold it ... back," she groaned, her jaw set. A viscous, warm fluid dripped from her nose onto her upper lip. Her vision wavered; it was too soon after her attack on the sorcerers. If she had to continue this for much longer, she would fry her own brain.
Arran was behind her in a heartbeat. He had draped Zazi across his shoulders; the serpent looked rather content with her new ride. "Come on, princess," he breathed, slipping his hands around her waist to steady her. "Don't underestimate yourself. I've seen you move the desert and sway the sky."
At his words, a foreign tranquility seeped into her veins and set her frantic mind at ease. It was a soothing balm for the restless energy under her skin. Her magic grew subtler, fell into the regular rhythm of low tide instead of the violence of a flood. The water responded to the change and shrunk back until it sloshed around their feet, just when the door frame finally gave and crumpled into splinters and driftwood.
Inna collapsed against Arran's chest, grateful for the warm sturdiness of his body. She wiped the blood from her nose. "Thank you," she whispered. It had been clever of him to think of the ira ha suntsuk. Overwhelmed by relief and the last remnants of adrenaline, she turned her head and brushed her lips against the stubble on his jaw. When she pulled back, his face had taken on the color of the sienna desert outside.
His wobbly grin brought out the boy in him, much in contrast with the bitter man she had gotten to know over the past weeks. "We're in this together, remember?"
"Absolutely." She smiled.
Several seconds passed while they stood there, gaping at each other with a new kind of tension simmering between them. Inna felt dizzy, every nerve in her body alert. Yet, no matter how much she regretted it now, when they finally crossed that thin line of politeness between them, she didn't want it to be an illusion.
"Come on." She stuck out her hand. "Let's go find a grave."
Hand in hand, they stepped through the fractured door. A whirlwind of blurred colors spun around them, and then they were back in the room with the fountain. The silver ray of moonlight hadn't altered its angle in the oculus, as though no time had passed at all. However, the hollow feeling in her stomach was clear evidence that her magical outburst had been real.
Arran handed her a loaf of bread from the duffel bag, chewing on another one like a man nearly starved to death. She took a large bite herself and took a step back to examine the differences in the room.
The fresco depicting Afthar The Sane was still there, although the section where he held the Sphere of Truths in his hands had parted from the rest of the mural and swung inward like a door. A dark corridor lay beyond, the final paces to the Prophet's grave. To the truth.
With the scraps of magic she had left, she lit the flame slumbering beneath the palm of her hand. A mouse scurried away from the sudden light. Another doorway loomed at the other end of the corridor, alluring and mysterious. A feeling of eager anticipation tugged at her and drove her forward. Light-footed as a cat, Arran followed her, never far behind.
Inna sensed in her gut that she was close to some answers, about the Sphere, about Rabyatt and his plans, about her father's strange condition. Maybe she would even discover how the Sphere and the Amulet were connected. She longed to return to Primsharah, to quit running and face her enemies head-on. With every moment she spent away from home, she felt more of a traitor because she had left her city in the hands of an unstable ruler, instead of finally proving her worth as a leader herself. She was ready to meet her fate.
The room which they entered was pitch-black, yet Inna spotted a long trench filled with oil along the inner walls. A single spark was enough to ignite the oil, and soon the red fire encircled a large, round chamber, illuminating a raised platform at its center. On it stood a gray, stone sarcophagus, standing upright on its feet, its face turned to the doorway. The upper half of Afthar The Sane's chiseled face was covered by a mask in blue, white and gold hues. His beard was shorter than it had been on the portrait in the other room, and black as night, still untouched by gray.
However, Inna's attention had snapped to the sarcophagus's hands, cupped to hold a sphere the size of a man's head. She had expected them to be empty.
"Is that the Sphere of Truths?" Arran asked, bending his head to study the glass orb in the Prophet's stone hands from up close. No colorful mist swirled on the inside, yet the lack of energy surrounding the sphere caused her guts to churn.
"That's impossible," she answered breathlessly. "The Sphere is in Primsharah. I saw it with my own eyes, held it with my own hands ..."
She reached out with a tentative hand. The void that greeted her under the glass's cool touch was definite, but magic always left traces. The echo of a great power lingered just beneath the surface, like a vague memory. There was no denying it: this orb was the Sphere of Truths, or it had been once. Rabyatt had indeed found it at the Prophet's pyramid, but he had not moved it from its place.
She stumbled backward, her mind an incoherent mess of truths, lies and insecurities. If the Sphere was still here, then what kind of object was exerting its influence on her father? What had happened to the Sphere's magic?
He went in with a stone, and he came out with that same stone, though its essence had changed. The sphinx's final clue. Inna shoved a hand into her pocket and fished out the amber stone, turning it around and around between her fingers. Its rainbow energy, now streaked with scarlet red tendrils, pulsated like a heartbeat. A newly formed Haala bond, similar to the bond of Ownership Arran shared with the Amulet. When had this happened?
Closing her eyes, she listed the clues in chronological order in an attempt to make sense of them. A soulstone, a gift from Rabyatt which had latched itself onto her aura. Dreamlike visions, impossible in their persistence. Zazi's claim that the magic in this pyramid seemed familiar.
"Inna, what is it?"
She ignored Arran's question, her gaze fixed on a mural behind the sarcophagus, which spanned the entire back wall. It was the painting of a woman of unearthly beauty, with midnight blue hair that faded to emerald green and eyes that held the essence of the moon. No pupils. The woman's aura and her presence at this particular Prophet's grave left no doubt as to who she was.
Gasping, Inna stared at Ezahar's likeness and made the connection.