Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  After the last stone was placed, they filed away one by one, leaving as quietly as they had arrived. Caleb watched the last one disappear into the oddly sharp horizon, and when he turned back, a wooden door had appeared at the base of the tower.

  He knew the deal.

  On the next pass, Caleb was flying like a spirit mage in outer space, somehow able to breathe, exploring the bounds of the universe. Marguerite was flying behind him, as was Yasmina. There was nothing weird about having the two women together. Yasmina was a friend to them both, just as Caleb would have wanted.

  The most beautiful scenery imaginable flashed by: planets and moons and suns, glowing nebulae and exploding supernovae so beautiful it brought tears to his eyes. He felt he had the power to go anywhere, explore any world, fulfill every desire.

  Yawn.

  As soon as Caleb saw an enormous black hole on the horizon, its spiral arm of kaleidoscopic gases the same shape as the staircase inside the Tower of Elarion, he veered right towards the center, shrugging off the screams and protests of Yasmina and Marguerite. He dove into the heart of the black hole, deeper and deeper, until the light was sucked away and Caleb found himself back in Freetown, just about to open the Coffer of Devla, right before the murder of Luca and Marguerite. Except it wasn’t him who was about to open the Coffer, but another version of himself. He stood just outside the pavilion, watching it happen again in real time.

  Now we’re talking. A scenario I can get into.

  Everything from that godforsaken night was the same: the high winds heralding a storm, the crowd of people gathered near the central fountain, glow orbs hanging in the corners of the open-air pavilion where the Coffer rested on a brick platform.

  The Other Caleb had just opened the Coffer and was holding up the cloak he had found inside. The same cloak that Real Caleb was wearing. Waves of heat lightning brightened the sky as Other Caleb examined the inside of the chest. Beside him, Marguerite held Luca by the hand, watching with a bemused expression. The boy looked gravely serious, as if he knew something of import was about to occur.

  “The Templar!” someone cried. “The prophecy is fulfilled! A true cleric has returned to the land!”

  The crowd grew excited. Will and Mala entered the pavilion.

  “Caleb?” Will said. “What happened?”

  A deafening clap of thunder interrupted Other Caleb’s response. Lightning ripped through the canvas roof of the pavilion. It burst into flame as the screams of bystanders pierced the air.

  “Lord Alistair sends greetings,” the wizard said calmly, right before he called down a wave of lightning to sweep through the four guards, filling the air with the stench of charred flesh filled the air.

  It was going to happen again. Whatever Caleb was supposed to do differently this time, he wouldn’t have time to stop the deaths of Luca and Marguerite. The electromancer was about to walk towards Other Caleb, and Marguerite was about to step in front of him, dooming her and Luca.

  In the background, outside the pavilion, Caleb roared in denial. No one could hear him above the high winds and the chaos. He could see Marguerite gripping Luca tightly by the hand, gathering herself to act. Caleb felt his throat constrict with panic. He had thought he could change the outcome, but instead he was forced to watch in helpless horror. No. God, no. I can’t go through this again.

  Some poor soul standing next to him was holding out a dagger, as if that would help against a wizard or a majitsu. Caleb knew what it meant. He ripped it out of the man’s hand, turned, and let the dagger fly as Marguerite had taught him. He was nowhere near as proficient as she was, but this time his aim was true. He hadn’t bothered to throw it at the attackers, because they would surely have magical defenses in place.

  Instead he threw it right at himself.

  It was the only way to stop the carnage. His aim was true, even better than he had hoped, and he caught Other Caleb right in the throat. His twin dropped and writhed on the ground as blood poured from the wound. Some final thing shriveled and died inside him as Caleb watched his own self gurgle his last few breaths, dead by his own hand. Marguerite and Luca bent over him, screaming their denial, as Caleb rushed into the pavilion to pull them out of harm’s way.

  He never made it that far. The electromancer called down a lightning bolt with a familiar spiral shape, sent it slamming into Caleb, and the world went black.

  When Caleb could see again, he found himself standing inside a tower with walls of pure ivory and an exquisite tile floor. The whisper of moonlight failed to penetrate the upper reaches of the tower. An array of weapons and heraldic shields hung on the walls. There were no doors or windows he could see.

  If there were no windows, where was the light coming from? Perhaps a window atop the tower was open, yet he saw no stars.

  From the general size and shape of the place, he got the sense he was back inside the Tower of Elarion. Had he traveled to the past? Was this a former incarnation?

  A voice startled Caleb. “When time and space and self are abolished, what remains?”

  “Who is that?” Caleb called out. “Who’s there?”

  No answer. The voice had sounded hollow, disembodied, gender neutral.

  All at once, the moonlight inside the tower began to swirl and take shape as if congealing into a physical substance. It picked up speed, starting at the edges of the room and moving inward, with Caleb as the focal point. Moans emanated from within the strange cloud, as if from ghosts or lost souls trapped within. Caleb had the sudden terrifying thought that these were past victims of the tower.

  The voice returned. “Are you the locust or the dream? The dream or the locust? Which is inside the other? Know thyself, traveler.”

  “I wish I did,” Caleb said.

  The churn of clotted moonlight took on a specific shape, an all too familiar spiral, and Caleb felt goose bumps rising on his arms. He stood very still in the center, afraid to let it touch him. It was all around him now, drawing closer. The voices grew louder and more desperate, wailing, eager. They wanted his warm blood and living essence, he could feel it. Wanted it as bad as he wanted to avenge Marguerite.

  No, he thought with a snarl. Not that bad.

  “Is there reality apart from self?” the voice intoned. “Or am I you as well as I?”

  The spiral arm of moonlight swirled faster and faster, then began to pour into the tiled floor at a specific spot. As Caleb stepped back, he realized the floor was also in the shape of a giant spiral, taking up the whole room, and that the moonlight was pouring right into the center of the helix. The silvery light collected and then rose, forming a human shape with no face, a corporeal ghost that shuddered into being and drifted towards Caleb. He dove to avoid its grasp, and felt a stir of air so cold he knew the thing would freeze his bones if it touched him.

  “What is reality?” the voice droned. “Is it the same for all beings?”

  “Marguerite and Luca are reality,” Caleb said. “Death is reality.”

  For a moment, the blink of an eye, the tower disappeared and all Caleb could see in the utter darkness was a mace hovering a foot above him, as if suspended inside an abyss. The mace had a black wooden handle and a diamond-shaped head formed of a crystalline substance. Before he could reach for it, the mace disappeared, and the ivory-walled tower returned. The ghost thing brushed against Caleb’s arm. He screamed at the searing pain and stumbled backwards, out of reach. His left forearm had blackened where the thing had touched him, as if stricken with frostbite. It went numb at once, and Caleb couldn’t lift it.

  The ghost was drifting towards him again. As Caleb dashed away in horror, seeking an escape, he thought of Marguerite and Luca with all his might, trying to get the mace to reappear. Nothing seemed to work. He grew frustrated as the ghost drew nearer, seeming to predict his movements in advance.

  If it had not been the thought of his loved ones, then what had caused the mace to materialize?

  “To expand thyself is to open the gates of the univer
se.”

  “Shut up!” Caleb screamed.

  He grabbed a sword off the wall and jabbed it at the spectral assailant. It passed right through. The thing opened its mouth in a soundless scream, as if releasing the throatless voices trapped inside, then flew faster at Caleb. He rolled beneath it and sprinted away. Desperate, he began circling the room, yanking weapons and shields off the wall, trying to hurt it with daggers, axes, and halberds, hoping to find a magical weapon of some sort.

  All were useless.

  As he fled, Caleb tried to parse the words of the disembodied voice, but they made no sense. Despite the fact that the ghost warrior wouldn’t let him concentrate, Caleb had never been much for philosophy. Clearly the maker of this twisted tower had some sort of agenda. For a while, during the journey, he thought he had it figured out—deny your desires, kill the self, blah blah blah—but this was something different. He had no idea what to do.

  Still, he had to try something. If that thing grabbed him even once, Caleb had the feeling he would never escape its embrace. As he thought about everything that had happened, the different challenges of the tower, the room disappeared and the mace reappeared, again for an instant, before the room returned.

  “What’s the trick?” he muttered.

  “The riddle of existence is a mirror within a mirror, with no beginning or end, wrapping inward upon itself.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Caleb said, reaching for the final weapon within reach: a two-handed broadsword with a bejeweled hilt that looked promising. As the ghost made another pass, Caleb jabbed straight into its chest, jumping to the side at the last moment, willing it to work.

  No effect whatsoever. He tossed the sword aside in disgust.

  “You know what I believe?” Caleb shouted. “I believe in the hand in front of my face.” He stared at his hand as he ran and, to his great shock, the mace reappeared in the center of the room. Caleb was running along one of the walls. He dashed towards the center, but the mace disappeared before he could reach it.

  Then he got it. He knew the nature of this final test, and he knew that it was his greatest weakness.

  Know thyself. To reach the mace, all he had to do was believe.

  Something he had never been able to do.

  Okay, okay. I can do this. As he used up the last of his reserves dodging the deadly touch of the apparition, he shouted, “I get it! I really do! There’s something out there running the show, and maybe you’re it!”

  Yet his words had no effect. Again he tried to think of his fallen loved ones, because if he believed in anything, it was in them. When that produced no results, he thought of his brothers and his parents. Still nothing.

  Am I supposed to believe in myself? He wondered. Is that the point? Am I the only reality? Or is there no reality?

  Know thyself

  All that nonsense philosophy was a distraction, he realized. Or at least not necessary to the solution. The inscription on the tower had told him what he had to do. He just had to figure out who he was, what he really believed in.

  Nothing, he whispered. I believe in nothing. That’s the truth.

  The mace flickered into existence.

  I believed in something, and I lost it. Someone took it away. So I guess I believe in suffering, and revenge, and that’s about it.

  This time, the mace stayed corporeal for an entire three seconds, but he wasn’t close enough to reach it.

  Caleb was almost spent. As the ghost flew at him again, he tried to feint to the left, but it cut him off. When Caleb dove to avoid it, the being’s fingers raked him across the back. Caleb screamed from the pain, stumbled, and fell.

  “None of this is real,” he shouted, scrambling away on his back. “Goddamnit, none of this real! None of it matters! This room isn’t real. This tile floor, these ivory walls, this fake tower, your stupid disembodied voice! Give me the mace, you bastard! The mace is my suffering. My loss. My tool of revenge. My soul. My reality. So give it to me!”

  As he screamed the last line at the top of his lungs, the room pulsed and then vanished, and the mace reappeared in midair, wrapped in darkness where it had always been.

  Yet the ghost was there, too.

  Caleb was still on his back, lying on a rough stone floor. The ghost was a foot away. As it reached down for him, fingers outstretched, Caleb rolled to the side as fast as he could, then jumped to his feet. He started for the mace, but knew he wasn’t going to make it. The ghost was about to cut him off. Caleb’s left arm hung limp at his side, dragging him down, and pain seared through his back with every step.

  The mace was ten feet away, dangling in the darkness like a piece of exotic fruit. Using every ounce of energy he had left, summoning an image of Luca’s smiling face, he burst towards the mace and launched into the air, grasping for it. The ghost met him halfway and flowed into him, causing the most intense pain Caleb had ever experienced, liquid fire shooting through his nerves. He screamed as his momentum carried him within reach of the weapon, and somehow he gathered the energy to wrap his fingers around the handle. The mace released from whatever force had suspended it, and Caleb clutched it as he crashed to the floor, losing his wind. Gasping like a fish out of water, blinking in and out of consciousness from the pain, he turned just in time to see the ghost reaching for him again. He knew he wouldn’t survive another pass. As the spectral being’s fingers reached for Caleb’s face, inches away, he jabbed upward with the mace, connecting just before it touched him.

  With a flash of light, both the ghost and the floor disappeared, leaving Caleb floating in darkness.

  -24-

  Mala shivered in the cool night air as she stood alone atop the burial mound, the wisps of moonlit fog indistinguishable from the fingers of Spanish moss hanging like shrouds off the oaks and willows.

  The burial mound rose a hundred feet out of the swampland, its flat earthen top wider than the central plaza of the Thieves Quarter. It was both sacred ground and energy vortex, with magical currents so strange the Congregation had stopped trying to catalogue it and attributed it to a quirk of nature.

  Earlier in the day, Dashi had listened to her plan, agreed to help, and even loaned her a powerful item: a wrist bracelet that would bind the dhampyr, or any other lycanthrope, to human form. Once entrapped, his men would attack the dhampyr en masse and paralyze him with a powerful poison.

  Getting the bracelet on Nagiro’s wrist, however, was Mala’s job. Dashi refused to risk his guild members in such a dangerous endeavor, and until the bracelet was applied, the dhampyr could simply change form and flee, then alert the Alazashin of their treachery.

  Or he might simply kill them all. Mala didn’t know how many people Dashi had brought along, but he could only bring people he could trust with such a politically risky mission. A handful at most.

  Not enough to best Nagiro.

  She took a deep breath, inhaling the perfume of gardenia and decaying vegetation. The spires of the Wizard District loomed between the trees on the distant horizon.

  The sun had just set. She expected the dhampyr to arrive soon, though Nagiro would expect a trick, and know she had exposed herself in such an isolated location for a reason. The questions were how long the Grandfather had given him to complete the mission, whether Nagiro chose to employ the darkness and mist to his advantage, and whether he knew Dashi’s men were nearby.

  A village lay half a mile to the west. After dinner, Mala had splurged on a flying carriage to take her to the settlement while daylight remained, reducing the risk of a surprise attack. Just before sunset, she had left the village and hiked quickly atop the mound, where she awaited the cover of darkness.

  The moon had fattened to a juicy silver orb. The hum of insects dulled her mind, and to keep herself sharp during the wait, Mala recounted what she knew about dhampyrs.

  The one foolproof way to spot one of the half-human, half-vampire hybrids was the wicked little spurs on their left wrists. Some said the dhampyr lacked a shadow, but
Mala knew this to be a myth. She had seen Nagiro and Ferala in daylight on many occasions, casting a silhouette like anyone else. Other sources claimed the dhampyr lacked bones, abhorred the smell of carrion, and lived a very short life.

  All legends.

  Just as she began to catalogue what she knew were true characteristics of the species, a shimmering in the air caused her to leap away, roll, and come up with her short sword and sash in hand. The shimmering continued until a man with wild dark hair, a flat face, and eyes as cold as the grave materialized out of the mist in front of her.

  He lowered the hood of his form-fitting white garment in disgust.

  “What strange magic of yours is this, disrupting my Mirror Cloak?”

  Mala knew the burial mound made compasses spin, spells go awry, and glow orbs malfunction. “No magic of mine,” she mocked, giving him nothing.

  “No matter. Nothing, not even Magelasher, will save you tonight.” Nagiro stalked towards her, drawing a platinum-colored sword that caused her to back away. “You know this, Mala. So why stand against me? Especially here, at night? You’re not one to think of the safety of innocents.”

  She loathed the offhand arrogance in his voice. “What choice do I have? Hide in plain sight and wait for the reaping? No. I will choose my battleground.” She started spinning her sash, deciding to change her earlier strategy. She would tell him why she was here and lull him into complacency. “The burial mound is an energy vortex.”

  “I gathered,” he said drily.

  “Without the Mirror Cloak, the odds are more even.”

  The dhampyr showed his teeth. “Are they?” Without warning, he closed the ground between them almost as fast as a majitsu, slicing downward with his blade. It was all she could manage to bring her own sword up in defense and spin away. “Impressive you are,” he said, continuing to stalk her with that infuriating grin. “For a mortal.”