Mirror Regains Memories

Jodah paused for a moment, looking at the glimmering thing. Then he sat at the edge of the fountain and reached into the water. It was cool but not cold, and felt as thick as mercury as he snagged the glimmering object and pulled it to the surface.

It was a mirror, about the size of his hand, shiny on both sides. It felt heavy, solid, and real. Jodah turned it over in his hands and looked into it. It reflected his face, the face that was older than he remembered it being but younger than it had any right being.

There was a flicker in the mirror, another face seemed to loom over the reflection — Jodah’s shoulder. Immediately, he flinched and looked over his own shoulder, but there was nothing there. He was alone at the fountain in the central plaza, the shadows waiting for him at all the exits.

He looked back into the mirror and saw the secondary face was his own as well, seemingly a trick of the mirror, a flaw that caused it to reflect double. But the flawed reflection looked better — more sure of itself, wiser, more knowledgeable, more confident, and more understanding. As he watched, the second face slowly moved across the mirror’s surface, superimposing itself on his own face.

As the second face overlaid the first, Jodah felt something cool and relaxing settle on his own mind. It seemed to pass through his skull and into his body itself. It was invigorating. It was reassuring, and it was very, very familiar.

It was himself. He had locked away a part of himself in that mirror, to be retrieved when he needed it. He needed it now, and he felt his life and his sanity return to him.

His life. All two thousand, five hundred plus years of it. It all came to him, not in a sudden flood, as it had before, but in the slow percolation of water melting from a snow field. Slowly Jodah remembered who he was.

He had been a boy in the dark ages, in the time as the glaciers gathered. He had learned the basic skills of magic while fleeing from the intolerant Church, a faith now long-dead. He had honed those skills beneath the watchful eye of a false mentor, who sought him only as a tool for his own ends. In the end, he bested that false ally. (Mairsil! he remembered the name, and delighted at its bitter taste). He went on to learn more, in a community of magicians known then as the City of Shadows. Then he led those mages as the generations came and went, eventually becoming known as the Archmage Eternal, the Undying Wizard of the School of the Unseen.

(...)

The first time, Jodah almost went mad. Struck by the grief for those who had died. Struck by the remorse of words spoken or never spoken and feelings shared or never shared. Struck by regret for roads not taken. It was not the accumulated knowledge that was breaking him, but the accumulated emotion from several lifetimes of living. In the end, Jodah the Archmage (not Archmage Eternal yet) had to transform himself or go mad.

So he transformed himself, or rather, found the way for him to start over again. He could place all his knowledge within a device, within the mirror, then wipe that knowledge from his own mind. Then meditating on the mirror, he could regain that which he lost but without the emotional attachments. He could still feel the pain of losing a wife in his past, but it was distant, muffled, like thunder in the distance, and did not threaten him immediately.

This last time, something went wrong. No, a lot of things went wrong. He remembered up to the ritual that allowed him to cast his memories into the mirror, and beginning the spell to purge his own mind. After than, it was all in bits and pieces — Lim-Dûl and Jaya and Freyalise.

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The Eternal Ice, Chapter 9