Sohna - The Star Kingdom
The hallway, which was nothing more than an old mineshaft converted for use into office space, was not terribly well-lit. Nevertheless, Nicholas stopped them in it, beside a locked door. The dim glow from the lantern on the wall cast his features into strong, angular shadows. “What I’m about to show you hasn’t yet been announced,” he stated, “So I will need your personal guarantees that you will not speak of it to anyone until it has been made public knowledge.”
Virginia was about to ask what kind of guarantee he wanted - cash? Her drivers’ license? Wolf interrupted her thoughts by simply saying, “I give you my solemn wolf word.” The old dwarf nodded in acceptance and turned to her. Now feeling silly for expecting the kind of guarantee required in New York, she nodded, and told him she would not say anything.
Satisfied, Nicholas took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered them inside. They stopped and stared at the mirror set up within: It was a brand new traveling mirror, its glass a brilliant, shiny silver, frame gleaming gold with the carving distinctly defined. Seeing it, Virginia suddenly realized by comparison how extremely old the mirror in Wendell’s castle must be.
Nicholas cleared his throat.
“With only a single traveling mirror of the original three remaining,” he said, carefully not looking Virginia in the eye, “we thought it would be expedient to create a new one against the possibility that one was lost.” He did not need to add how certain the dwarves were that the mirror she and Wolf routinely used was about to need replacing. Her father, after all, had been responsible for the loss of one of the three mirrors and now had unlimited access to the surviving one. But Nicholas was continuing, “It was our thought to present this to the both of you as a gift should that happen, with the stipulation that the mirror could not be moved and must be used from this location, of course.”
Of course, she thought,so that Dad can’t get anywhere near it.
“We felt it was the least we could do after your noble actions which saved not only our dear friends in the Fourth Kingdom, but our own rulers as well. I’ve taken the liberty of showing the mirror to you now as it’s possible a critical piece of the one you use could be missing,” he concluded, then turned to the mirror. Still in lecture mode, he asked, “You’re familiar, of course, with the activation switch ...”
“The circular ornament, yes,” Virginia assured him.
He nodded.
“The switch must be in the off position in order to remove the key. This is a safety measure for the mirror itself, as it could be damaged if it were accidentally recalibrated while the portal was open.”
He reached up and pressed once on the center of the circular switch. A small sliver set into a groove in the design popped up. As Nicholas plucked it free, Virginia stared at it in awe; it was many times longer than the mirror was thick, nearly six inches long, though it was possibly only a quarter of an inch wide and less that in breadth.
“How ...” she couldn’t keep herself from murmuring.
“Oh, it extends back into the space occupied by the portal itself,” the dwarf replied in an offhand manner. “Anyhow, this is the key. Are you certain your mirror doesn’t have one?”
She looked at Wolf and he looked back at her with a shrug. It was really impossible to say without going back and examining it; the way the key fit into the design of the mirror made it impossible to tell with a casual glance whether it was inserted or not.
“I see you might simply have not known how to operate it,” Nicholas observed. “Allow me to show you. Let me see those coordinates I wrote down again.”
Virginia handed him the paper wordlessly. He set it down on a shelf where he could easily see it and toggled through the numbers and letters by tapping the distant end of the key with his index finger. It worked in much the same way as Virginia set her digital watch.
After the few moments it took for him to input the long string of digits, he inserted the key back into the mirror. Then he turned to them and sighed deeply.
“This will be the first time the mirror is used,” he announced reverently. “Usually we test our mirrors in private, but as the both of you are the intended owners, it seems only fitting that you should be here to witness this momentous event. No traveling mirror has been newly made in the last thousand years.”
With that, he bowed his head and gently slid the circle into the ‘on’ position. The face of the mirror sparkled, turned black, and then displayed a cityscape familiar to Wolf and Virginia - one with vertically layered traffic and impossibly high not-quite-art-deco spires.
“You’re kidding!” Virginia exclaimed, staring, her eyes round. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Virginia, look!” Wolf insisted. “It’s the Jedi Temple - and it’s not burned yet. We’re not too late!”
“Wolf ... what ... wait a minute!” she protested. “That can’t be real! I mean, Dad and I found Wilhelm Grimm’s name carved on a lintel in a cell in Wendell’s dungeon. That’s fine; I mean, I can buy that, it was a long time ago - I’m sure he used a mirror to get here, just like we did. But how did George Lucas do it? Especially how did he do it if it hasn’t all happened yet?”
“Huff puff,” Wolf fretted. “Maybe he came through the Nine Kingdoms, Virginia. Does it matter? We can go there and help them!”
“Well,” Nicholas began, clearly considering the problem, “He wouldn’t have had to come through here. He could have gone straight to Coruscant if magic mirrors exist there.”
“That’s right!”
“No, Wolf,” she said flatly, then elaborated for Nicholas’s benefit, “It just isn’t the same kind of place as here. I mean, they have a lot of sophisticated technology, yes, but really no more magic than we do in my world.”
“What about the Force?” Wolf asked.
“The Force isn’t magical, Wolf, it’s just a trait some people have, like a sixth sense or blue eyes.”
“Really gorgeous blue eyes,” he elaborated back to her, staring intently into hers.
“Well, actually most of the mirrors aren’t really magical in that sense either,” Nicholas interrupted them “They’re all called ‘magical’ because they seem to work ‘like magic’ but in reality they’re simply made possible by the material used in their construction - the extremely quicksilver. The differences in the mirrors’ use is determined by the specific recipe for the mirror type, not magic. Except in certain instances, of course, such as the talking mirror Wendell now possesses. That one required the assistance of a witch or warlock in its creation. But most, including the traveling mirrors, do not.”
He stopped, apparently surprised by the rapt attention they both gave him, and cleared his throat nervously before continuing, “Anyway, the point is that such a mirror could be created any place the material is available. None are in your world because extremely quicksilver presumably doesn’t exist there. We can make them here because it does. Coruscant – well, if you want my opinion (which you may not), Coruscant is quite likely to have a reasonable amount of extremely quicksilver at its disposal, simply because it is a part of a very large galactic civilization. So that even if none occurs on Coruscant itself, the odds are good that it would occur on at least one of the planets known to it.”
“Just because no mirrors were in the story doesn’t mean they don’t exist there, Virginia,” Wolf pointed out.
“That’s not what I meant, Wolf,” she replied. “It’s just that ... oh, never mind.” None of it really made sense to her, including the fact that she could apparently really visit the Star Wars universe. And if Star Wars then why not some other fictional location, such as ... No! Don’t go there! Don’t think about it! If she thought about it any more she was going to get a headache. She looked back at Nicholas, deciding to focus on the pure mechanics involved.
“You mentioned that we were taking a risk using our mirror with no key,” she reminded him. “What exactly can happen if it turns out the key really is missing?”
“Oh, it’s not the absence of the key from the frame that creates the risk,” he explained. “It’s just that if you don’t have the key, someone else could. If that person were to find the mirror’s location while you were using it, they could recalibrate it for a different destination, trapping you in the process.”
“Couldn’t they do that anyway?” she asked. “I mean, the key would be there in the frame. Or is there some failsafe which prevents it from being removed while the mirror is in use?”
The dwarf shook his shaggy white head.
“No, the mirror isn’t that intelligent. Once you’ve passed the portal it has no idea or concept of being in use. What you should be doing is taking the key with you. In addition to being safer, it would also give you more functionality, incidentally.”
He turned the mirror off, removed the key from it once again, and held it up.
“This end twists, like so,” he demonstrated, giving the near end a sharp crank. As he did so, the mirror’s switch turned by itself, and the skyline of Coruscant once more replaced their shadowy reflections. Then he turned it back, and the mirror shut itself off again. “It works from either side of the portal. Good for keeping animals, insects, and other undesirables from wandering back through from your destination. And, I won’t activate it here, but there’s also an emergency beacon - you hold in this end and twist three times - in case you’re unable to make it back on your own, so a rescue party can be sent in after you.”
He looked up as he said this, then continued, “Of course, that will only really be available once you travel from here. With the mirror in Wendell’s kingdom it would likely be too late before we could arrive to do you any good.”
Virginia nodded dutifully, trying to commit to memory the mechanisms Nicholas had just demonstrated. Wolf, however, had other ideas.
“Huff puff, could we just use this one now?” he asked bluntly.
Virginia glanced up at him in alarm, then hastily at Nicholas, an apology ready. By the look on the old dwarf’s face, however, none was necessary. In fact, it was quite obvious from his expression that he was relieved Wolf had brought the subject up.
“It wouldn’t have been my place to suggest your traveling from here,” he told them, “But I can’t deny that I’m happy about your decision. It would be safer, I believe, if you’re determined to make the trip.”
Something about the way he said it made the hair on Virginia’s neck stand up.
“Is there something you know about Coruscant that we don’t?” she asked.
“Well, not really,” he hedged. “However, the story you told about why you want to go there ... well, it may be nothing, but ...”
“But what?”
“It’s distinctly possible that they are using traveling mirrors,” he finally said. “And if they are, then it’s possible that they could visit here. If they do, it would be nice to be prepared for it.”
“So you want us to search for a magic mirror while we’re there?” she asked, bewildered. “I mean, I understand why it would be safer to go from here, but you’ve lost me on how this is going to prepare you for them.”
He sighed.
“No,” he said, “You wouldn’t need to seek a mirror out. If one exists, it will find you.”
“What?” she asked, alarmed.
“Yeah, what?” Wolf repeated.
The dwarf gestured at the scene the mirror was showing. The skyline of Coruscant shimmered in sunlight. After a moment, the view angle changed to a different vantage point. Virginia realized it had been doing that on a regular basis since being switched on, though it seemed there were a limited number of such vantage points since she’d seen the scene now being presented before.
“To fine-tune your destination, you can stop on any of the scenes shown. Your exit point will be a nearby location that won’t attract undue attention to your arrival. If there is no nearby traveling mirror, that is,” he explained. “If a traveling mirror is nearby, it will automatically take precedence as the exit point, and it does not need to be switched on to do this.”
“How near is nearby?” Wolf asked.
“That’s difficult to say,” was the response. “I can tell you what the radius is for one of our mirrors, but for one made by another maker, from a different extremely quicksilver deposit, I don’t know. It would have to be on the planet, I’m certain; I’d venture to say even the same city. In this instance, that would be a normal city-sized area, not the entire planet-covered metropolis.”
“So you want us to use this to see if we come out by a mirror instead of where we want to?” Virginia asked. “That seems rather far-fetched to me. I mean, if we didn’t find this mirror for you, that wouldn’t mean it didn’t exist.”
“True,” he admitted, “But the odds are more favorable than you think. You see, the part of the planet you intend to visit is the power center, is it not? I’d assumed so since you’re intent on warning a member of a wizard council and a senator against a ruler. They’re all roughly in the same location. And magic mirrors do tend to give their owners power. So it’s actually more likely that the mirror will be near to where you visit. If one exists on Coruscant at all, that is.”
He handed Virginia the key.
“Keep it in a safe place,” he advised. She stared at it, then dropped it into her coat pocket.
“Are you ready?” Wolf asked.
“What?” she asked, surprised. “You mean now, as in right now? Wolf, we can’t ...”
“Why not?” he asked reasonably. “They need our help.”
“But ... well ...” she searched for a reason to delay. “We don’t have the right clothes.”
“We don’t need special clothes,” he said reasonably. “There are beings from all over the galaxy, dressed in every way imaginable. Anything will fit right in. Come on. You said if I found a way there we could go.”
She had said so. And he had found a way. With great trepidation for everything she knew she must be forgetting to ask about or plan for first, she stepped up to the mirror.
And then they both stepped through.
