Mirrorworld (25 page)

Oh yes,
he thought,
that was it.
As the memory blossomed in his mind, he felt the great, formless monster of his rage begin to stir behind his eyes once more.
No,
he thought, refusing to be led by it. It wasn’t easy; it was a grand, unfettered ire, an ill-tempered volcano that had been building steadily towards eruption ever since he’d looked into his crystal ball the night before, on an innocent errand, and unexpectedly discovered that everything he’d ever professed to know about life was a blatant, impossible, unfathomable lie. The anger had pulsed against the rhythm of his magic, yet the two had become inextricably woven together, powering each other, building to the beautiful chaos that he had unleashed on the Viaggiatori. If it hadn’t been for the wizards – it had to have been the wizards, because no other force could have stopped him – then he was sure that he would have killed everyone in the room, and slept all the better that night for having done so.
Ha!
he thought, as memory flowed through his mind. He remembered his tutors, always telling him that his inability to control his emotions was his great flaw, that if he didn’t keep them separate, they would threaten to overwhelm his magic, throw it out of his control, put him at risk of who knew what. Idiots. Emotion
was
magic. What else could it be?
He
was the most powerful wizard that the Mirrorworld had seen in centuries, and they dared to lecture
him
?

He grinned a rueful, ironic grin. Of course, in a silly way, they’d been right. If he hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in wrath, he might have remembered how wizards were generally trained to watch out for any of their number who might be going a bit potty, and take emergency measures to restrain them should such a scenario come about. Why else would they have followed him?

Hubris! That was the bugger. No one person was unstoppable, even if they were the Wizarding Tower’s golden boy, as powerful as it was even possible to be. It had to have been a combined assault from their powers – nothing else could have taken him down in mid-flow like that. A sneak attack as well! Very.. sneaky. But, well, it had done the job. Lesson learned. Next time, he would watch his back. And there would, he knew, be a next time, because the wizards were fools, and had failed. They’d known better than to try imprisoning him, of course – they had to have known that there were no walls, physical or magical, that could contain him indefinitely – but they hadn’t done what they
should
have done, which was to kill him. Admittedly, he thought, grinning again, that wouldn’t have done them much good either, because they’d have set off one of the nasty countermeasures that he’d weaved around himself to ensure that anyone who succeeded would regret it pretty sharpish, but, whatever the cost, it would’ve still been the best thing to do. He’d surely killed people this day; his life would’ve been a justifiable price to ask in exchange for that. But no, and he’d wager it was because they just couldn’t bring themselves to knock off the golden boy. Hubris!

He laughed again at the thought. Stood by the side of the rickety road that led back to Portruss, he threw his head back and roared. A lot of things had come to seem more amusing recently. Perhaps it was a sign of his growing insanity. His tutors had always expected him to go insane, he was sure. Always asking how he was, whether he was having a nice day or not.. they may have hidden their true intentions under a veil of innocence, but he’d figured out their game.

Oh well. What difference did sanity make, anyway? Everything had changed now. Before, he’d been adrift in the sea of his life, unsure who he was and what he should be doing; now, he knew exactly what the deal was. If the price of knowledge was madness, it was one he was happy to pay, because it had given him ambition and purpose like he’d never known. He could see it even now; his twin desires danced in his mind as clearly as they had the night before, when, full of anger, full of pain, he’d fallen into a dark, delirious sleep, and seen his future written in lights. A voice had broken free of his apathy then, a voice so light and sweet that he knew it would never lie to him, and it had told him. He would cross the Mirrorline. He would fulfil the destiny that he had seen. He would take up his rightful place; otherworldly benefactor, the prodigal, the prophet, seer of visions, architect of a new world on Earth. The Viaggiatori would stand in his way, if not for that then for his actions this day.. and he would destroy them, enact glorious revenge on them and anyone else who dared oppose him.

Except.. he turned to the south, where Portruss lay, smoking, resting, relaxed behind its walls. This was a bit of a problem. Exiled. No less the threatening for it, but somewhat bereft without his various magical artefacts, or indeed access to the Viaggiatori, whom he still needed if he was to reach Earth. What to do about that, then?

Keithus sat down, crossed his legs, and began to rock gently back and forth, thinking. No immediate brain activity produced any ideas, so he reached out to that little formless corner, the nugget of wisdom that had come alive in the wake of his dream, that core of creativity that it was probably really mentally unhealthy to keeping treating as an entirely independent entity living in his own head.

It seems we have suffered a setback
,
it told him.

I know,
Keithus thought.
Everything I need is on the other side of those walls.

Those are some big walls
.

Exactly. And even if I could get past them, I’d be arrested on sight.

So what? Blast your way in. Blast the walls and anyone who tries to stop you
.

They know I’m out here, though. There will be linked wizards everywhere.

So?

So, I’m not strong enough to stop them all. It’d take an army to get into Portruss.

Well, let’s do that then.

Build an army?

Why not? It’s not like we have any use for the city. Let’s burn them all.

Keithus smiled.
I have a lot of good ideas,
he thought to himself cheerfully. If he had to talk to himself for a while in order to tease them out, well, what the hell. That was fine.

And he set out to make his dreams come true.

Portruss, Marcus learned, had three different gates. There was one for each compass direction except west, where there was an ocean instead, and each one was specifically designed to reflect the nature of the lands that it pointed at. South Gate, the most common point of entry for diplomats visiting from Eurora and beyond, reflected this by being huge, ornate and foolishly breath-taking. There were pillars, gargoyles, murals, and towers all over the thing, spreading past the gate itself to deface the good solid city wall like a particularly visionary rash. The Artist’s Guild held a state-sponsored contest each year, where budding artists from across the Mirrorworld came together to design the newest addition to the dramatic fresco. This tradition, which had existed as long as anyone could remember, was the reason why the guards who patrolled the walls now found themselves marching past wire-frame models of themselves loading crossbows of a better quality than the ones they actually had. This glorified cauldron of artistic excess upended itself on South Gate once a year, justifying its existence in celebration of the arts and how it made the gate complex all the more terrifying, on account of how wherever a visitor looked, they’d see something they didn’t understand.

East Gate, by contrast, didn’t lead anywhere particularly exciting. Mainly used by tradesmen following their longboats down the Russ or city dwellers who had emigrated to the new suburbs, it therefore needed to be little more than a hole in the wall, and so was almost exactly that. Yet it, too, had artistic spirit; every year, Portruss’s resident graffiti artists would gather together to spurn the festival they weren’t allowed to be a part of, create a huge protest piece across the gate, then get themselves caught and volunteer to wash it off, because they didn’t trust anyone else to dispose of their work properly.

North Gate, however, had no such artistic inclinations. Though there were smaller cities and towns to the north of Portruss, they were all eventually swallowed by the cold, bleak, mountainous Northlands, which were famous only for their undesirable real estate and the primal, otherworldly races that called it, for want of a better word, home. Many a time in Portruss’s history, small armies of orcs and other abominations had dared venture far enough south to attack the city, and it was for this reason that North Gate was almost as grim as the Northlands themselves. A huge, towering monstrosity that cast a long shadow, counted within itself several mini-gates, and was regularly staffed by a full guard of hardened professional soldiers with nary a wire-frame in sight, North Gate was an unflinching monument to stoicism, a big fat middle finger
to anyone who dared challenge it.

Of course, these were civilised times. Long past were the days of war; in the modern world, the language of diplomacy had superseded the language of axes, and there hadn’t been a serious invasion attempt from the north for a long time. Indeed, more recent reports spoke optimistically of developments within the orc tribes, where the more intellectually inclined were now being favoured for leadership positions above the savages that had defined the race for so long. Folks had even begun to whisper, in all seriousness, that with the passing of another generation or two, the Northlands might well be on its way towards something that could pass for civilisation. But then Keithus had gone north, and sure enough, every conceivable beastie was uniting, alright – under him. It was for that reason that, despite the absence of an attack for over a century, on this day, North Gate was heavily guarded, and gripped by an inescapable sense of quiet unease.

Marcus could sense it in the air as he followed the rest of the Viaggiatori strike team down through the ramshackle Northgate district, reading from the guidebook that he had paid good money for and so was intent on milking for all its knowledge before it became redundant. Northgate, it told him, was where most of the city’s tradesmen made their home, and it was thanks to them that the district appeared as it did, a decrepit warren of buildings that leaned against each other for support, with walkways that ran on multiple levels, crisscrossing above the wider thoroughfares and generally holding the whole thing together; without the cunning artificers who had made this happen, the whole district would probably have been toppled by a particularly strong gust of wind decades ago. There was a sense of pride to the Northgaters, but it was the melancholy pride of those who adore what they have because it is all that they have, and it suffered from the awareness that this creaky district that they called home was first in the firing line of any attack that could breach North Gate. A sense of helpless doom thus shadowed the Northgaters, reaching for corporeal form through their forlorn wanderings of the streets and walkways, their empty glances, and the pained lethargy with which they conducted their necessary interactions. It was almost enough to make Marcus feel slightly better about his life, until he remembered where
he
was going.

The path towards his destiny was at that moment being drawn out before him by the Assassin, although Musk was so far on the man’s heels that they may as well have been sharing shoes. The Assassin, who had indeed turned out to be the man from the previous night, had somehow become the target of an unspoken grudge on Musk’s part: right from the off, when their unlikely group had assembled in the entrance hall of the House of Viaggiatori, their long-haired leader had been almost beside himself with apoplectic self-importance about how very much in charge he was. The Assassin himself didn’t seem to care very much either way, responding to Musk’s aggressive overtures with weary shrugs and half smiles that nonetheless inflamed the other man’s paranoia, feeding whatever strange insecurities were fuelling him and ensuring that the two were now locked in an epic tussle for leadership of the expedition, a cerebral battle that was at this moment unfolding in a geographical sense, where whoever was leading the party literally was leading it figuratively also.

Marcus was quite happy to trudge along behind everyone else.

A sudden absence of movement up ahead caught his attention, and he looked up from his book just in time to avoid bumping into Lucin. Instead he met the ferocious stare of the man’s raven, coming the other way; whether by accident or design, it had positioned itself so that if he hadn’t stopped, he would have walked his eye right into its beak. Watching it with suspicion, he stepped around Lucin to see what had bought their column to a halt, and a strange, hulking monolith that had been lurking at the edge of his vision for some time, too massive to comprehend but too big to fully dismiss, finally coalesced into order. He could now conceive of the great and terrible thing that rose up before him, a patchwork selection of stonework, arrow slits, portcullis and negative space that loomed in the morning murk, flanked by tall, utterly blank city walls that stretched off to the sides in an encapsulating, emasculating arc of ominous security: they had arrived at North Gate. The small square that lay before it, in which Marcus now stood, was to this mountain range of rubble as a feeble puddle is at the shore of a great ocean; light, depth and sense of scale were overwhelmed and swallowed by the all-encompassing presence of the great entryway, which stood there unconcerned, defiant, and, noticeably, shut.

Off to the side, Musk was trying to convince a guard to let them out. Apparently, there was a large group of refugees on the far side, ready to rush the gate should it show any sign of opening. Musk was currently finishing up an eloquent expression of sheer disbelief that the best solution that the minds involved had been able to come up with was to never ever open the gate ever again.

“Orders are orders,” the guard said wearily. He was staring into space, wearing the practised granite expression of someone who has a job to do, knows exactly how to do it, and is going to continue to do it in that way until circumstance instructs him otherwise, no matter what personal opinions he might harbour. “Orders are, don’t let them in. That’s all.”