Mirrorworld (55 page)

Death watched him for a moment longer, and Marcus wondered exactly how well Death knew him, and if the Reaper might be able to follow his thought processes..

“Deal,” Death said. “Congratulations, Marcus. You have defied Death.”

Marcus sighed with relief. Kneeling next to the Reaper, he held out the scythe ceremoniously, balanced on the palms of his hands. Death reached out, skeletal hand shaking with the effort, and his fingers closed around its length. Marcus closed his eyes as he felt a great weight, a sense of flickering, malevolent darkness, leave him, running down his arms and out of his fingertips, returning to the weapon from which it had come. But with it went also that sense of life that had danced in the back of his mind, that sheer thrill of existence that sang in his head. It told him of lives being led, of time yet to be filled, of futures yet to be written among the eager, patient buds of a Mirrorworld spring that had waited in this wizard’s winter for so long, not daring to bloom until this tale was told. For that part alone, Marcus almost wished it would not go, but he knew that he could not have the one without the other, and this was a fate he had refused to take. So he let it go, let the life and death drain from him until only his own
remained, and contented himself to know that while his time as Death was ending, the memory of light would remain.

Opposite him, Death grew taller and darker as his power returned to him, his cloak pulling itself back together where it had torn, flaring dramatically in the heavy wind as the Reaper stood once more.
YES
,
Death said, and his voice was heavier and more imposing that ever before.
WHOLE AGAIN. SWEET POWER, I HAD FORGOTTEN.
He threw his scythe down before Marcus, who had fallen backwards, reeling from the sensation of lightness and normality that now pervaded his mind.
THE SCYTHE IS YOURS, MARCUS, FOR THE FAVOUR YOU HAVE DONE ME. I HAVE ABSORBED ITS POWER. IT IS A MERE, NORMAL, HUMAN WEAPON NOW. I WILL CRAFT MYSELF ANOTHER, IN TIME. NOW GO, FIND YOUR WIZARD. I WILL BE THERE.
Death vanished in a whirl of darkness, and light returned to the world, the filter that had descended around them fading away, the strange silence being replaced with the sounds of fighting and
laughter once more.

Marcus found Kendra leaning back against a fallen pillar by the entrance, her head back, taking in the rain that was now falling all around. Orcs continued to fight each other nearby, the shattering of their common allegiances replaced by resurgent decades of tribal rivalries. The storm overhead was still building; for now, the rain was only light, but Marcus could feel that something was coming; a final blow for the Earth, perhaps. Maybe the Mirrorworld had already suffered one. No.. for now, everything was still hanging in there, and if he was quick enough, maybe this could end well after all.

“I can’t keep fighting,” Kendra said wearily as he crouched down next to her. “You have no idea how bad my side hurts. My ribs have been replaced with crocodiles eating me from the inside. How are you doing? How’s Death? He looked happy.”

“He’s fine.” Marcus said. “I need you, Kendra. One last push. If we can get to the wizard, we can end this. Death and I.. we came to an arrangement. He’s going to take Keithus, but he said I had to get there first. We have to get through this battleground. Where are the others?”

“Eira stayed back with Fervesce.. he’s exhausted too. She’s helping him hold the portal.”

“And I am here,” Eustace said, popping up from behind the pillar. “Observing.”

“Oh yes?” Marcus asked tiredly. “What have you observed so far?”

“That basically, we’re all doomed. I hope that this last ditch plan of yours works.”

“Me too,” Marcus said. “Will you help?”

“What can I do?” Eustace said with a shrug. “I’m just an old man.”

“What about everyone else who came through? The other Viaggiatori?”

Eustace laughed bitterly. “You may have missed this with your running off ahead of time, Marcus, but we don’t exactly have a large following. Most folks, even those who said they’d stay.. well, as soon as we’d entered the Mirrorline they must have turned tail and run, because there ain’t nobody else here outside of us and a few schmucks.”

“Not true, old man,” said a new voice, and a shadow fell across them. They looked up to see the silhouette of Musk, outlined dramatically against the collapsing sky as he struck a pose. “They just went to get some help. You thought you’d get to have a finale before I got here? Get ‘em, boys!”

At his command, a group of people charged past him, ascending the large steps and diving into the battle. The orcs reeled in surprise as this new party joined the fray, pushing them aside.

“Nice timing, Musk,” Marcus said, standing and shaking the man’s hand. “Who are these guys?”

“Mostly soldiers. We met them coming towards us on our way towards the river, pretty much everyone who was left in the barracks on the south side. Other than that there’s a bunch of Viaggiatori, and I guess a few people who just got swept up in the rush. Kimberlite wanted to come, and bring trolls, but I told her that would only make things worse, so she’s sulking back in Portruss.”

“I don’t believe this,” Eustace said. “Where the hell did you pop up from?”

“Came through the gate that Fervesce left open for us. Eira says ‘kill the bastard’, by the way. Now, Marcus, isn’t there something you should be doing, other than grinning like an idiot?”

“Oh yes,” Marcus said, turning back to the fight. Musk’s reinforcements had beaten clear a path through the centre of the fray, towards the temple steps where Keithus sat, observing what was happening around him with the detached air of the very much insane. Marcus took a step forward, then turned back to Musk. “Look after her,” he said, nodding at Kendra, who rolled her eyes.

“We’ll be fine,” Musk said, urgently. “Go!”

“Come back after, too,” Kendra added quietly.

“I will,” Marcus said meaningfully. “You still owe me a tour of Plumm’s flashy lights district.”

She blew him a kiss.

With that, Marcus turned back and ran through the crowd, dodging past the odd flailing blade or falling foe, and bound up the small staircase. He swung the scythe towards Keithus, and suddenly felt his body lock up as the wizard raised a palm in his direction. Damn magic! Damn Death, for turning the scythe into nothing more than a blade on a stick at the worst possible moment.

“I’m forced to conclude,” Keithus said, his voice brittle, “that you were right. Odd, really, how success gives such horrible clarity. I was expecting to feel
something,
when the old man died. Like it was the missing piece, the final move, that it would stop all this..” he gestured around, “
thisness.
But instead it’s just made me feel kind of loopy, and it’s all still happening.
I don’t understand!
”
he added suddenly, in a strangely different, high-pitched voice, and blinked. “No. I don’t. But I do.
Why has it not come good?
Be quiet!” He stood slowly, and turned to look straight at Marcus. Marcus saw the tempest of colour that was raging in the wizard’s unseeing eyes, and was terrified.

“It was all I wanted,” Keithus continued. “I saw it so perfectly, in my mind.
I showed it as it should have been!
Yes, I know! But look! They were right! This isn’t what I wanted!
This isn’t what I gave you! I have the power.. to make anything a reality.. but this.. why doesn’t it work?”
Keithus focused on Marcus properly, and asked again, in that strange, high voice,
“why doesn’t it work?”

Marcus couldn’t answer: he couldn’t move at all. But, he could see behind Keithus, where the dust was whirling again, and within a moment Death had stepped out from the space between worlds, and swung his sword straight through the wizard. Instead of the splatter of blood that Marcus had expected, the sword swung right through, and Keithus.. split. One moment he was there, and the next there were two of him, flickering side by side. The spell holding Marcus vanished, and he fell heavily to the ground, looking up in time to see the twin images drag themselves back into one.

“That tickled,”
Keithus said, but it definitely wasn’t his voice talking any more. He turned to Death, who appeared as surprised as Marcus by this turn of events.
“Why did you do that?”

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT
,
Death said.

“
You tried to kill me
,”
Keithus said, accusingly.
“Why would you do that?”

IN ENDEAVOUR TO SUCCEED, OF COURSE,
Death said.
BUT THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION.
He leant in close, matching the shadows of his supernovas against the coloured swirls of the wizard’s eyes.
YOU ARE NAUGHT BUT PART OF THIS MORTAL REALM, WIZARD. YOU ARE BOUND BY THE RULES OF FINITE EXISTENCE THAT I ENFORCE, YET HERE YOU STAND, AFTER MY BLADE. THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE, HERE. WHAT LIES INSIDE YOUR HEAD?

Keithus held Death’s gaze, and his mouth slowly quirked up into an unnatural smile.
“Mortal?”
Hijacked lips issued forth another dark giggle.
“Mortal, you say? Finite? What kinds of words are these? Hurtful. Is that all you see when you look at me? This little part of me, so tenuously connected to life, is just but the littlest part of me! Look at me! I am so big, grown so tall! I am not your slurs. I am.. ideas, and ideas go on forever! Power, in form, where all of my emotions and magic come together to create.. me. I
am
yet a wizard, but so much more!”
Ranting was interrupted briefly by uncontrollable laughter.
“I have become mighty, in this mind, grown strong enough to hear the call of so many voices, crying out for things that cannot be – well, now, they can! I can reach, out, and make spirits of the night come true! I am.. Dream!”

YOU NAME YOURSELF SO HIGHLY?
Death asked, while Marcus stared in bemused horror at the mania that wore Keithus’s body.
YOU ARE MAD INDEED, TO CLAIM SO WEIGHTY A TITLE.

“Oh, no,”
it said,
“no, no, no. The wizard, he is mad, oh yes. So mad, he thinks he is sane, that he was able to wrap up all the shadows that crept through his mind when he learned the truth of his origins, put them in a little box where they wouldn’t be heard.. silly boy. What must he have thought, when they answered back? He left me there, trapped in that little shard of infinity from which all his magic came, and thought I wouldn’t be able to come back, to slide in on those streams.. but when I did, he welcomed me, and spoke to me, for he is me. The dreamer. And we grew, together. I showed him what lay beyond the constraints of his world, his vision, and he repaid me with life, life enough that, in time, I could begin to reach out, to answer all those calls.”
Abruptly, the creature that named itself Dream broke away from Death’s stare, recoiling as if burnt.
“I could do anything! All of the dreams I touched came true! All! But.. not his own? Why? I did everything right! We are here as we wished.. but the world ends around us? Why? Why does it not work?!”

The creature turned to face the sky, and cried out wordlessly, answered only by the thundering rage of the storm that was now sounding around them. Lightning forked down all around, shattering the roof of the temple and blasting random fighters across the garden. In the forest beyond the mountain, tornados had formed, and were tearing up trees and throwing them across the sky. “What is
happening?!”
Marcus yelled, buffeting himself against the roaring wind.

MORE THAN WE WERE AWARE,
Death told him gravely.
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN, REALLY. DAMAGE ON THIS SCALE.. IT WAS TOO MUCH FOR ONE WIZARD AND A HANDFUL OF ORCS. THIS WIZARD’S MADNESS HAS COME ALIVE, FED BY THE SHARD OF THE MIRRORLINE THAT HE HAS LONG HELD IN HIS HEAD, AUGMENTED BY THE MAGIC THAT FLOWS FROM IT. HE THINKS HE IS DREAM, THE BEING THAT COMMANDS POSSIBILITY AS I COMMAND LIFE, AND I FEAR HE MAY NOT BE WRONG.. YES, PERHAPS IT WAS INEVITABLE. A BEING WITH POWER OVER IMAGINATION IMAGINES ITSELF A LIFE. DAMNED ARE ALL THOSE WHO HEAR VOICES IN THEIR HEAD, BUT DAMNED THE MOST ARE THOSE FOR WHOM THE VOICES ARE REAL.

“Yes,
that’s very poetic,” Marcus said, “but what happened to Keithus?!”

“He is here,”
Dream said, smiling wanly and tapping on Keithus’s head.
“The piece of him that isn’t quite me, the part that holds so tightly to humanity. I can hear him, screaming inside his own skull. He’s not happy that I’ve taken control. Neither am I, really.. but I can’t let him out, not now. Quiet guidance hasn’t been working.. I must fix this personally.. so that our dreams can come true.”

YOU CANNOT DO THIS, DREAM
, Death said.
YOU MUST STOP. LET ME TAKE YOU.

“
No!
”
Dream roared, leaping away from Death as the Reaper stretched out his hand. Instead of coming down, the being in Keithus’s body floated up, and away from them.
“Dreams of flight.. an idle fancy. But doable. I must make this work! Keep away!”
it shrieked, as Death swung his sword at it.
“I must hide! Return to the land of possibility, yes. Figure it out!”
With a cackle, Dream shot away, flying over the remnants of the battle, which seemed mostly settled in Musk’s men’s favour, and away down the temple’s steps.

“What do we do?” Marcus asked Death desperately.

HE IS GOING TO THE MIRRORLINE,
Death said.
CHASE HIM.

Marcus groaned, and turned and ran after Dream. Behind him, a crack opened up in the earth, and the battered remains of Rashalamn’s temple finally gave up and collapsed into it. The force of this architectural surrender was enough to break up what was left of the fighting and send everyone running for their lives, leaving Marcus to fight his way through them, reach the steps and take them three at a time. Descending around their natural curve, he saw no sign of Dream, but Eira and Fervesce were there, and the mirror portal was still open. Eira was holding her head in her hands, groaning.