1578, Stettin, Duchy of Pomerania
"Halt! State your business."
At mid-day, a lone figure walking unaccompanied through the front gate would have drawn suspicion anywhere in the world; a lone woman, dressed in an assortment of all-black fineries, even more so. The man at the gate held a spear with a long, wooden handle, but he held it loosely, clearly without intention to use it unless provoked. So, no reason to give him reason, in that case.
The lone woman removed her wide-brimmed hat, and held it at her side so the guard could get a good look at her face. Sharp, pointed features framed by short, pale pink hair greeted him, and equally sharp lime-coloured eyes stared back at him.
"I happen to be looking for someone," Sidonia said to the guard. "A woman, whom I have been led to believe resides, or once resided, here. Perhaps you can help me?"
Her hair was cut short, decidedly un-feminine, and her features more sharp than beautiful, but her words were like honey to the guard's ears. "Perhaps, ma'am, I could be of some assistance in helping you locate her, then," he said. "Could you tell me a bit more about her? What do you know? An address, perhaps?"
"None, I'm afraid," Sidonia replied. "I have a name, courtesy of letters exchanged between her and my father, but those letters give no indication of where in this city she lived." Before the guard could prompt her further, Sidonia had reached into one of the deep interior pockets of her dress, and produced a piece of parchment, neatly folded, but showing its age of many decades readily. "Nino Klossner is her name," she said. "I don't know what business my father had with her, but they appear to have been friends."
"Is that where your interest in finding her comes from?" the guard asked. "I've never heard the name myself, but then, I don't know the names of every person in Stettin. Perhaps one of my superiors might recall the name."
"While I would greatly appreciate the assistance your superiors could provide in helping me locate this woman, that isn't why I am looking for her," Sidonia said. "I was told by an associate of mine that she might once have had in her possession a rare book or two which I am interested in obtaining. It was only by happy coincidence that she turned out to be an old friend of my father's."
The guard, still spellbound by her words-like-honey, was compelled to obey. "Of course," he said, nodding his head. "I'll go find my superior right away."
Sidonia stood patiently, waiting as the spellbound guard raced off to find his superior. She kept her laughter to herself; had she ill intentions, she could have strode into the city through the now-abandoned gate without anyone to stop her. She did not, of course; she had not come here to cause trouble, least of all not for the poor guard who would certainly be punished for abandoning his post. But it was so easy to bend to her will those who could not do what she could.
The guard returned after a time, bearing with him his superior, a grizzled, older man with a roughly-aged face and an eyepatch over his right eye. With his one remaining eye, he stared down Sidonia, before turning to his junior and saying "No wonder she was looking for mad Nino Klossner; this girl's practically her spitting image."
The old guard's words piqued Sidonia's interest, until the guard shot down whatever she had been thinking to say "But, that doesn't make any sense. Lady Klossner's been dead for thirty years, but you don't look a day over twenty."
"I was unaware that she had died so many years ago," Sidonia said. "I take it by the… Rather unflattering epithet you've given her, that you knew the woman I'm after?"
"I was barely a young man when she died, but yes, I knew Lady Klossner," the old guard said. "Or rather, I knew of her, like most people did back then. She was a fairly secretive woman; we all knew of her, but she kept to herself and stayed outside the edge of town most of the time. The fact that you say your father was a friend of hers is a surprise. I was unaware she'd had any friends, let alone ones who could afford to dress their daughters so lavishly."
As the old guard finished sizing up Sidonia's wardrobe, he asked her "If you don't mind sating my curiosity, who is your father? What sort of man was he, to be friends with the mad old lady?"
"My father was Otto von Borchk zu Stramehl-Regenwald," Sidonia replied, curtseying for the old guard. "I am his youngest daughter, Sidonia."
An ill silence fell over the old guard, and he looked to his younger subordinate. "Get you gone," he said to the younger man. "Find some other gate to watch, or go to the barracks and take your break." Not even a "Sir, is something the matter?" in protest could change his mind. "The matter is beyond you. Go."
The younger guard fled, the act only piquing Sidonia's interest further. "There's a story here," she said to the old guard; "And something you aren't telling me. Just who was Nino Klossner, anyway?"
"That isn't a story whose responsibility is mine to tell," the old guard replied. "Suffice it to say, neither your father nor the mad Lady are who you think. I cannot take you to the Lady's residence, but I can tell you where you might find it." The old guard's arm was long as he pointed Sidonia over the walls of the city. "On the other side of the Oder, you'll find a wooded area just over a hill. The mad Lady's house is somewhere in those woods. Tell no one of what you see when you are inside, and do not linger for very long, assuming it even allows you to enter in the first place."
Night had fallen by the time Sidonia had made is across the city, across the Oder, and arrived at the wooded area just over the hill. Off in the distance, she could hear the faint howling of wolves. She scowled to herself, and proceeded to set alight two small flames at the tips of her fingers, holding them at arm's length to give herself some light. Not that she needed the light, that is to say, for even as she walked through the heavily-wooded area, it seemed to her that the forest itself was parting to allow the moonlight to shine through the canopy from above.
No, it didn't just seem that way. As Sidonia ran her hand up the length of a tree's trunk, she could feel a quite noticeable bend where it had parted, seemingly as if just for her sake. She turned her head back in the direction of Stettin, musing to herself "That old man's mind was tougher than I thought. Or else, whatever secrets he keeps are so closely guarded I would ill have pried them loose so casually."
"Now then, forest, tell me what secrets the old Lady Klossner has hidden within you…"
Another distant howl came over the hill, causing Sidonia to scowl again. She spun herself around, pointed her lighted hand towards the source. Nothing. Nothing but the sounds of cracking branches and fallen leaves as she stepped over them. No. Those weren't her footsteps she was hearing.
Again Sidonia turned, pointing her hand towards the source of the noise; and there she saw it. A black wolf, it was, or something else wearing a wolf-shape, for it was bigger than any wolf Sidonia had ever seen before: it had four glowing, red eyes, deep-set in a head whose fur was rough and stood like spikes. It stared at Sidonia, and she readied flame on the rest of her hand. If it was a fight this wolf wanted, she would oblige to its death.
But the wolf did not attack; did not pounce with its great jaws spread wide. It approached, slowly, keeping its eyes on Sidonia all the while, until stopping just in front of her face. It sniffed the air around her, and then stood down.
"Whatever you are, at least your owner trained you well," Sidonia said. "Your appearance now, after the warning the old guard gave to me, cannot be a coincidence. Surely, you know the way which I am bound?"
The wolf turned, wagging its short tail to ask Sidonia to follow it. For a brief moment, the thought that this might be a trap crossed Sidonia's mind, and she held her flames close as she followed the wolf. But no trap this wolf's guide proved to be, and in no time at all it had led Sidonia to the aged ruins of what once looked to have been a lavish retreat. Seated in the middle of a clearing ringed by the long-dead stumps of trees and decorated with a procession of strange images drawn in long-faded paints, the retreat's wooden sidings and roof had clearly seen better days, and at least from the angle at which Sidonia stood, part of the roof had caved in somewhere in the back.
But it was still standing, and as Sidonia pressed her hand against the siding to marvel at its construction – derelict as it was, the fact that it still stood after thirty years without maintenance was no small miracle – she whispered to its walls "Incredible…"
"Well, dog, you've done well to lead me here," Sidonia said. But when she turned her head, the wolf was gone, and in its place was a bundle of sticks in wolf-shape, held together by some black substance. Sidonia touched it, running the warm, black goop between her fingers, and scowling at the way it stained her fingertips, like the stains on the fingers of a habitual pipe-smoker. She brought it up to her nose to sniff at it, but found its smell to be unlike anything she had the words to describe.
Disappointed at finding no answer, Sidonia flicked the goop from her fingers, and took one final look at the exterior of the retreat before pressing onwards through the front door. "Lady Nino Klossner, your guest has arrived," Sidonia said to herself. "Presenting, in all her majesty, the witch of Stramehl, Sidonia von Borchk."
Sidonia took her time scouring the retreat, but in each room she looked, she found little; certainly not the books she had come for. "That would make sense," Sidonia mused, as she returned to the shelf a book which was not what she had come for. "The old man said that Lady Klossner died thirty years ago. There's no way she'd have a copy of Twardowski's Mirror, not unless Twardowski had given her a copy before becoming King Sigismund's courtier…"
She seethed through her teeth, saying "That bastard lied to me. When I get my hands on you, Zolgen I'll…"
Another room failed to give up its answers, and Sidonia continued, growing in frustration, until- "What's this?" Her hand stopped, hovering over a small metal pendant. She picked it up, studying it closely. "A ram's head?" she said to herself, turning the pendant over in her hand to examine the opposite side, only to find nothing but the mark of an upside-down "A" which matched the contours of the ram's head.
Her anger at being misled had not vanished, but a new curiosity had taken over Sidonia's mind. "Just what are you?" she asked, as though the pendant could offer up a response. A door, which Sidonia was sure had not been there before, stood before her, embedded in the wall right where she had reached to pick up the pendant. This was it, Sidonia knew, and she reached for the handle, twisting it and pushing open on the door.
A dark staircase led down into the yawning darkness, but with her fingers alight with fire, Sidonia made her descent, finding, as she reached the bottom, that she had just entered what was clearly the workshop of a fellow witch. A long table stretched along the far wall, and the side walls were rife with books upon shelves, the collection almost enough to rival her own, waiting for her back at the manor; and assuming Ulrich had not disposed of them during her prolonged absence over the past two years.
Ah, but if she could locate Twardowski's Mirror, then she would gladly pay the price of all her other books. That rarest of magical tomes, with scarcely more than a handful of copies in circulation, and the original seemingly vanished from the face of the earth with the disappearance of its author following the passing of King Sigismund II six years prior. It was worth more than the value of the entire von Borchk estate, the land, the manor, and all their holdings and possessions, combined.
But back to the task at hand. Sidonia marvelled at the collection that had been stored away in Lady Klossner's workshop, and her fingers danced from tome to tome as her eyes scoured their contents for anything that could make this trip worth her while.
Well, those certainly looked interesting.
Seated on the table at the far wall, Sidonia spied four effigies of unknown persons or figures. A man on horseback who wielded a spear; a man with a red face and a beard like fire; a woman wearing white and decorated with painted beads; and a seated figure playing a lyre whose head was the same ram's head that decorated the metal pendant. One by one, Sidonia picked the effigies up, studying them, reading to herself the names carved into their bases.
"Perun… Svarog… Marzanna… Veles…" Sidonia looked at the ram's head pendant she had picked up, comparing it to the head of the fourth effigy. "So, your name is Veles, is it?" she asked, as though either the pendant or the effigy could respond. "But that doesn't tell me much of anything. Who is Veles? Who is Veles?"
Sidonia set the effigy of Veles back down on the table, still holding the pendant in her hand. She didn't know why, but she found that she couldn't put it down. The pendant called to her. In fact, everything in this workshop called to Sidonia. It was as if she were meant to be here. She reached her hand out to a book on the nearest shelf, tugging at it and scanning her eyes across the hard leather cover.
"The Book of Veles" Sidonia read to herself. Her hands moved delicately as she opened the thick tome; the book appeared to be several hundreds of years old. "To Veles this book we devote…" Sidonia read the passage on the first page, gently flipping each page as her eyes skimmed the book's contents. By the time she reached the eleventh page, she was engrossed.
"It's a religious text," Sidonia said to herself, gently closing the book on the eleventh page and setting it aside on the long table. Her hand reached out for the effigy of Veles once again, feeling it call to her. "It's describing… The religion that was once practiced in this area before it was Christianised… These are…"
"These are the gods of my ancestors. The ones they worshipped before the Church came in and persecuted them until they converted… Back when magic was not seen as an evil thing…"
It was not Twardowski's Mirror, but Sidonia would take the book with her all the same. Something about it called to her, as if she were meant to have it. The pendant, too, Sidonia held in her hand. A mirror stood in the corner of the workshop, that had somehow avoided Sidonia's gaze until just now. She approached it, carefully, called to it by the same force that propelled her to stay for longer than the old guard had advised her to. "Tell me your secrets," she said to the mirror. "What message did you leave for me, Lady Klossner…?"
At first, Sidonia saw nothing; her reflection staring back at her. But, in her reflection, she did not see the workshop was it was now, ramshackle and rundown. Instead, she saw it as it might have been thirty years ago, well-kept and organised. At first confused, Sidonia turned her head, but saw in the flickering light of her flames the same rundown appearance as before.
When she returned her gaze to the mirror, she saw her reflection once again, as it busied itself going about its work; studying ancient tomes, perfecting spells, paying tribute to the effigies on the long table. Unconsciously, Sidonia touched her collar, when she saw that her reflection was wearing the pendant of Veles around its neck; but her fingers touched only bare fabric. The pendant was still in her other hand.
"is this… The future, then?" Sidonia wondered. It would make sense; if she cleaned up the place, she could see making herself at home here, away from her brother and his expectations. "No…" The words escaped Sidonia's mouth, as future became past, and Sidonia saw her father's reflection appear at her side. She had been only three years old when she lost him, but there he stood, unchanged from the lavish portrait her mother had kept in the main hall until her death.
"The past, then…? No… No, how could this be the past…?"
The image of her father was joined by that of her mother, until both vanished and Sidonia saw herself reflected in the mirror again. The clothes she wore melted away in flames of her own making, revealing a second set of clothes underneath which were starkly foreign to her, striking, unrecognisable, even scandalous – that is an unacceptable amount of skin for any decent woman to be showing, even to herself – save for the pendant of Veles her reflection still wore around its neck. "Blasted thing…" Sidonia said. "Just what are you trying to tell me? Do you want me to put this thing on? Is that what you want from me?"
As if to further taunt her, her own reflection nodded its head, and gestured to the real Sidonia with the hand that in reality still held the pendant of Veles. "Fine, then, if that's what you want from me," Sidonia said, unclasping the pendant from its metal chain and slipping it around her neck. "There? Are you happy now, Lady Klossner? I've got your pendant, your books, and your effigies. What else did you leave for me?"
At those words, a spiderweb of cracks spreading across the mirror surface splintered her reflection into a million pieces, and in that moment, it was as if the spell was broken. "Did you set all this up for me, Lady Klossner?" Sidonia asked. "Or was this all just a coincidence?" When no response came, Sidonia said "Very well. You've convinced me."
Sidonia could not take everything with her. There were too many books in the workshop, and she had the effigies to carry as well. She packed what she could into her travel case; the effigies, the Book of Veles, and several others which Sidonia judged to be the most important tomes; the ones that appeared the oldest, appeared to have the most useful or most valuable magical knowledge, or that, like the Book of Veles, described the religion and deities of the ancient Slavs of Pomerania. Miraculously, a total of seventeen books, plus the four effigies, were able to fit inside Sidonia's travel case before she could fit no more.
Hardly miraculous, Sidonia thought to herself. The work of Lady Klossner from beyond the grave, more like. She clearly wanted Sidonia to possess the wealth of knowledge that had once been hers.
Without another word, Sidonia closed up her travel case, paid one last, longing look at the aged workshop, and headed back up the stairs to make her exit from this place. She had not found what she had come here searching for, but she felt that she was leaving with something valuable – valuable to her, personally, if nothing else – all the same. As Sidonia stepped outside into the moonlit forest, she took one last look back at the old retreat.
But a wooded clearing was all that stood there now.
