He slid around a curb and nearly fell over, splashing water everywhere. He tried to follow the path Adi had taken, but in his bitterness, he became lost in the winding roads. He couldn’t get his sense of direction but started off again, only to find he was going the wrong way. He just kept turning and turning in the rain, until he no longer had any idea where he was.
Chapter 23
The Face in the Mirrors
In the dark it was impossible to find his bearings to get home. Bran thought he saw a familiar street and started moving again, but when he ended up at Givvyng Park he knew he was too tired to continue on.
There was a tall brick building that served as rest rooms for the picnickers at the park, and as it had covering, Bran pulled his bike up to it. He hugged his knees for warmth and sat on the edge of the concrete, watching lightning flash across the sky and water gush from the corners of the roof. The storm was violent, but he hardly seemed to care anymore. He was much too far across town to start biking all the way back home in this weather; he knew he would just get lost again. His clothes were soaked and they clung to him, and he finally got up and went into the building, listening to the storm echo through the walls.
The bathrooms were abandoned, and he checked the place quickly for anybody who might be hiding. It was very dark and lit only by a single fluorescent bulb that flickered intermittently. There were five mirrors on the left wall, each above a sink, and dull, moist concrete floors. The place was not welcoming, but Bran had no choice but to stay.
He slowly gathered himself up and went to the sink, splashing cold water into his face. It helped to clear his senses but not the pain that still throbbed throughout him. Adi’s words were like one final blow from the mother he never knew—that not only would he carry on as her son, but also wield the same powers that had started everything and had led to her death.
He dried his face with the towel and then looked into the mirror above the sink. He could see his face clearly though the room was dim. He looked tired. Every inch of him seemed so tortured, as if with everything that had happened, he had grown into a different person.
As he stared at his own reflection, he looked deep into his own eyes, trying to read them and make sense of all that he knew. Did he even want to be a mage? Was it worth risking all that he would face the rest of his life, the powers that his mother had cursed him with?
I’ve still got a choice,
he told himself strongly, and in the mirror he saw his jaw tighten together, a determination that surprised even him as he thought of it. But what were his odds? He knew now that people were already searching the town for him, waiting to take him, probably afraid to make a move, he realized, because they knew his powers, waiting for the first time he slipped up and fell into their hands. Bran didn’t even know why they wanted him—would they force him to finish what his mother had begun?
He saw the edge of the black string of the necklace poking out from under his shirt, so he pulled it and took the necklace off. There was no moonlight so the letters remained plain, dull blue. He stared at the name on it again, the name he shared with his mother. Was it one he could be proud of anymore?
He looked back to the mirror, and his eyes locked with his reflection. It was at that moment he heard a sound, like the faintest of whispers, more like the wind going through the building than anything else, though he could hear it clearly over the rain outside. He didn’t move, his hands still clutching the edges of the sink, but he swept the room with his eyes. Nothing had moved. Not even a shadow.
Still, it was like a faint voice in the back of his head, speaking unintelligible words, whispering things he could not make out over his shoulder, first in one ear, then passing into the next. Bran clutched the edges tighter and stared at himself in the mirror, not daring to turn.
"Is someone there?" he said lowly, though the mirror revealed no one. He could almost feel breath on his neck, as if someone were standing right over his shoulder. He turned his head to the side, but the coldness shifted past. He looked back to the glass.
He suddenly noticed that there was something odd about his reflection. He could not tell what it was, but something was different. His face was paler; the features were the same, but his face appeared to be more sinister. Bran looked closer, and instantly his grip on the countertop tightened—for the reflection in the mirror had smiled.
It wasn’t a smile of happiness. It was one that had never before crossed Bran’s face, one that held such darkness and evil that it caused Bran’s eyes to go wide.
"Who are you, Bran?" the reflection asked. Bran had not moved.
"Who are you?" the lips said again, the eyes on the face narrowing on him, trying to provoke an answer, the words echoing around him from all directions.
"I don’t know," Bran said, involuntarily. He jerked from the mirror, going to the next sink to avoid what he was sure was his imagination.
"You know who you are," the reflection assured him, following him to the next mirror. "You are Emry Hambric’s son. Heir to her powers. Heir to finish what she had begun."
"No," Bran hissed, drawing away to the third mirror in the row. "Go away. I don’t want to hear you!"
"You cannot fight me for the rest of your life," his reflection said, meeting him there again. Bran gripped the edges of the sink, looking down, away from the haunting face. Slowly, it was as if the room around him started to fade, the light turning to a deep blackness.
"No, go away!" Bran seethed through his teeth, looking back up to the mirror only to see the face there yet again, not following his motions. He tried to turn, to pull away, but his hands were hardened to the sink.
"You cannot fight me," his face said again. "My very being is part of who you are."
"I don’t even know you," Bran said, struggling to break free.
"Though perhaps you do," the voice echoed, the tone never rising. "I’ve been closer to you than anyone else for most of your life. Bran Hambric,
you will bring me to life.
"
It instilled terror into his heart.
Those words.
He remembered them. The words from his dream, the same man in the white bed, the same man from Adi’s computer screen…
"Who are you?" Bran hissed, nearly out of breath, as the echoes of the voices began to grow stronger, beating him from the sides like gusts of wind. "Tell me who you are!"
The face in the mirror gave a laugh, horrible and chilling, and then the face began to change. It made Bran sick to see it, the skin stretching and contorting, his hair withering and falling out. It gave a shudder, and there was a great upheaval of magic in the room, so strong that a flash of light erupted from the mirror, blinding Bran, filling the air with intense whiteness. He tried to cover his face, but he couldn’t move his hands, the light surrounding him until he saw something new.
Suddenly in front of Bran was the man he’d seen before—in a black robe that covered his head and made him look dressed for burial. His face was solid white, his eyes the most striking against the skin: vivid and dark, like blue crystals that made him seem both old and young at the same time. He looked like someone who had not completely died, but was between life and death. The man smiled, and Bran was stricken with fear.
"No!" Bran gasped. "You’re dead!"
"My body, yes," the face of Baslyn said. "Though my spirit?" Baslyn smiled. "It lives on."
The echo of Baslyn’s words seemed to spin Bran around in the blinding whiteness, flowing from the mirror like walls around him, blocking all sight of the room. Bran fought the sounds, torturous magic coursing through him so that he gritted his teeth in pain.
"I’m imagining you!" Bran said, calling out though his words did nothing to spite Baslyn, who only laughed again and spread his arms.
"Am I not real before you?" Baslyn said. "Have you not seen me, leading you through the town, revealing to you secrets you should never have known?" He lifted his head. "You know because I have led you to see it. I see and feel all."
"No!" Bran shouted, but his voice seemed weak and stifled in the echoes and the rising noise around him. He struggled to break free, feeling wind against his face from the mirror.
"You have no choice, Bran Hambric," the image shouted. "You cannot resist what has been placed inside of you. What I have hidden within your own self."
Bran fought the hold on his hands, shouting as he did, closing his eyes. The room ceased to exist around him in the blinding light.
"What do you want from me?!" Bran hissed, trying to fight, to grasp anything to free himself.
"Bran Hambric:
you will bring me to life,
" Baslyn’s voice said again, and it surrounded Bran with the deepest of echoes, pushing him from one side to the other.
"No!" Bran shouted, and in an instant, as if the powers were breaking, one of his hands came free. It was in that same moment that Baslyn’s face became filled with a maddening rage, and he came toward Bran out of the glass.
"You have no choice!" the voice roared again, but Bran threw all his strength forward, slamming his hand toward the mirror. There came a great flash, crackling and filling the room, and all of a sudden Bran was thrown backward off his feet, the white exploding around him.
His back hit with the opposite wall, and suddenly, he was in the building again, and he heard glass falling and shattering on the floor. He rolled over, dazed, but threw his hand out with a force of the first magic that came to him.
"
Eclectri firinge!
" he said, the words coming out of him automatically and without thought, the same he had used in Adi’s house. Lancing from his fingers with the force of his unrestrained powers came a crackling burst of blue energy, slamming into the glass of the mirrors and shattering the remaining four at once. He immediately jerked his hand back, terrified of what might happen if he lost control of it, and the magic vanished, jagged shards of glass scattering across the concrete as he shielded his face.
The room went still.
He opened his eyes and saw he was clutching something tightly: in his fist was the necklace. In the darkness it did not glimmer, but somehow it seemed as if behind its surface, Bran could feel a power still pulsating, like a creature breathing hard with him after a fight.
"What do you want from me, Baslyn?" Bran seethed, wiping his forehead and looking back to the broken mirror shards that were spread across the floor. Where the mirrors had once been was plain concrete, a dark, heavy wall—and Baslyn was gone.
It was then that he heard someone calling his name from far outside the building.
"Rosie?" he said, jumping to his feet and hurrying to the entrance. When he stepped out, he saw the Schweezer parked a way off on the road, headlights slicing through the heavy rain. He could see Rosie in a red raincoat, holding a lantern and rushing toward where his bike was.
"Bran!" she gave a cry and dashed across the grass, the lantern lighting up her face.
"Oh, Bran, I was so worried!" she cried out, seizing him and pulling him close. He was all wet, but she didn’t care because she was soaked as well. She held him for a minute, not caring about the rain, not caring who might be watching; he held her as well, and she was warm.
"When you never got home, we looked everywhere, and then I saw your bike," she gasped. "I thought all sorts of things might have gotten you!"
He could feel that she was trembling with fright. Even under the raincoat her hair was damp, and he knew that she had been out looking for him for a long time.
"I—I got lost," he managed to stammer, not knowing what to say. He gestured toward the building, then toward the road, but nothing more would come out.
"You got
very
lost!" she said. "Bran, we’ve been all over this side of town, on every street…"
"Come on, you two!" the voice of Sewey erupted from the driver’s side window. "Get in, before we get washed away by this rainy rot!"
"Sewey came too?" Bran said. Rosie nodded quickly.
"All of them are in there," she said. "Nobody knew where you were…" Her voice trailed off, and she clutched him tightly. "I was just so worried," she said. "But now I’ve found you, and everything will be all right."
Water dripped from Bran’s hair, and she smiled at him reassuringly, but even as they walked toward the car, Bran was not sure how anything could ever be all right again.
Part III
Chapter 24
The Girl from the Alley
Nightmares struck bran all night, one after the other, and when he woke from each he was sweating and curled up in fear in his bed. One image permeated each nightmare: it was his own face, every time, mocking him, saying what Adi had told him before, repeating her words and telling him he wielded the same powers his mother had used to create the Farfield Curse. Then in the dream, his face would change to Baslyn’s, and the echoing voices would shatter the ground beneath him, and he fell into a blackness. Each time, he would wake up.
He awoke a final time early the next morning, and the house was so quiet that the echoes of his dream seemed to fade against the walls. There was a hint of morning light coming from the window. It was golden and bright, so much different than all had been the night before.
He got up and dressed, and when he passed his desk he saw the paper on which he had drawn the single letter B. Suddenly it seemed all alone and obvious, now that he knew what it stood for, and so he took his pencil again and finished the rest of Bartley’s name. It was a grim motion, almost a distraction from where he was headed that day.
There are only a few more pieces to this puzzle,
Bran thought. He had to meet Astara again; it was the only chance he had of finding out the truth.
He came down from the attic and crossed the hall, and he heard the television already on in the living room. Sewey and Mabel were up, and Bran heard Rosie in the kitchen, flipping up pancakes. The news was on, so Bran paused in the door.