Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  “Aye. But family ties are an unpredictable thing.”

  Tell me about it.

  Mala crossed her arms, peering up at the illusion. “My monocles of true seeing would have rendered this process much easier.”

  “What happened to them?” Will asked.

  “I sold them.”

  “Who sells a pair of monocles of true seeing? Sheesh.”

  “Those who bribe customs officials not to imprison them for an illegal transport of goods and coin.”

  By the time Dalen returned, the sun had still not risen above the water, though the sky had started to lighten. “We should hurry,” he said. “It took me some time to find the top of the wall, and I smacked into it a few times—I can hardly pierce the illusion while flying—but once I gained the ramparts I was able to see the keep from a better vantage point. It’s a simple design except for the minarets and I think he must have studied the Bavarians and added elements from Minoan tradition—”

  “Dalen,” Will interrupted. “Is there an entrance we can use?”

  “I found a courtyard with a large door that appears promising. Though I’ve no idea whether it’s locked.”

  “Can you take us to it?”

  “I’ll have to make two trips. I’m not strong enough to fly everyone.”

  “Okay, then.” He exhaled a long breath. “Let’s hope your uncle’s a late sleeper.”

  Dalen flew Will and Yasmina up first. They linked arms with Dalen in the middle and rose slowly in the air, circling the hill on a diagonal before climbing the sky on a vertical escalator. At first Will thought Dalen was taking it easy for them, but then he saw the exertion on his friend’s face and realized that only recently, during his time in Freetown, had Dalen perfected the art of flying.

  The sensation was amazing and Will wondered if Val had experienced it. Once they cleared the top of the hill, Dalen asked them to put out their hands and feel for the wall as he began slowly moving inward.

  “Here,” Will whispered, once he felt the invisible surface. He and Yasmina let their fingers trail against the wall as Dalen climbed higher. When it leveled out he set everyone down, then warped the moonlight to illuminate the keep.

  The top of a six-foot wide stone parapet emerged beneath their feet. The view from up close was magnificent; a forest of misty spires and ramparts with a watery consistency that made Will feel as if he were on the inside of a dream. Below them, Dalen pointed out a courtyard surrounded by sheer walls rising a hundred feet on each side. There were no visible entry points other than the outline of an arched doorway leading into the keep.

  “It’s the only entrance I could find,” Dalen said.

  Will looked down. Though it appeared as if he were standing on a cloud, giving the disconcerting impression that he might fall through at any moment, the surface felt solid enough. “You’re sure this is a real castle?” he asked Dalen.

  “Lucka, you’re not falling to your death, are you?”

  “It’s just weird.”

  “It will get even stranger when I leave to get the others and you’re standing in the middle of the sky. Would you rather wait here or down in the courtyard?”

  “Here,” Yasmina said, holding her staff as she peered into the ephemeral enclosure beneath them. “I can’t say why, but I think it’s better if we all go down together.”

  “I’ll trust your Spidey-sense,” Will said.

  “Don’t touch your sword to the illusion,” Dalen warned. “It might alert my uncle, if he’s not already watching.”

  “Okay. Try to hurry.”

  The illusionist nodded and took flight again. Once he did, the ghostly outline of the castle disappeared, leaving Will and Yasmina with the uneasy sensation of standing in midair a hundred feet above the hilltop, swathed in darkness. Yasmina linked an arm through his as they waited, peering around for signs of a disturbance. When Dalen returned with the others, he set them all down as the wall coalesced beneath their feet.

  “Ready?” Dalen asked, after giving Mateo and Mala a moment to digest the sight of the courtyard, the wraithlike spires and ramparts hovering all around.

  “Fascinating,” Mala said.

  Mateo bent to touch his metal hand to the surface of the wall. He rapped it lightly and stood. “It feels real enough.”

  Dalen had everyone link arms again, and tried lifting the entire group into the air to test the weight. “I can manage,” he said through clenched teeth. “Barely.”

  Will unsheathed Zariduke and held the sword in both hands. “Take us down.”

  After a laborious descent, the surface of the courtyard coalesced beneath their feet, a smooth obsidian surface that spread to encompass the entire floor and walls of the enclosure. The dark surface was so glassy it reflected the waning light of the moon like a mirror. Will noticed there were no visible breaks or seams on the architecture and knew he was looking at the work of an artisamancer. “Dalen, did you illuminate this?”

  The illusionist swallowed. “No.”

  “You think it was your uncle?”

  “Possibly. Or a spell triggered by our presence.”

  Only the door, a solid block of wood with a carved bull’s head in the center, had a different surface from the polished black stone of the courtyard. A large iron ring set into the bull’s nose served as the handle.

  Mala and Dalen inspected the entrance and declared there were no traps or illusions they could find. The smell of brine drifted off the sea, and the sky crept closer to dawn.

  “I guess we know what to do,” Will said, as he strode towards the door. Behind him, everyone clutched their weapons tight, poised for action. Moving as quietly as he could, Will reached for the iron ring and pulled.

  -31-

  The door to the keep didn’t budge when Will pulled on the iron ring. He tugged harder and got the same result.

  “It seems real enough,” Mateo said, stepping up and trying with his chainmail glove, still to no avail. “So why won’t it open?”

  “Everyone,” Yasmina said, with a catch in her voice, “needs to turn around.”

  Will spun to find the moonlight coagulating into six pillars in the center of the courtyard. As the party watched, unsure what to do, the pillars solidified and then transformed into humanoid shapes that quickly became recognizable.

  The faces, bodies, and even the weapons of the spectral gray forms were mirror images of Will and his friends.

  “Dalen?” Will said. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know,” the young mage said. “I . . . this is far beyond me.”

  The six simulacrums raised their weapons and stalked towards the party, each seeking out its counterpart. Will tried to back away but found he had no choice but to face off against himself, unless he wanted to lower his weapon and see if his pseudo self would harm him.

  A risk he wasn’t about to take.

  His opponent stabbed at Will’s heart with a sword of hardened moonlight, a weapon the exact size and length of Zariduke. Will lowered his shield to block it, relieved the shield held, and then raked the edge of his blade against the side of the creature. He was disappointed when the thing failed to dissolve. It’s something more than magic.

  His twin utilized the same feints, strikes, and fighting style as Will himself. After a furious bout of sparring, neither was able to gain the upper hand. At one point, they crossed blades, nicking each other on the arm. The light touch caused a searing pain to shoot from Will’s shoulder to his wrist, as if the blade had shot fire through a vein. “Their weapons are real!” he shouted. “And they hurt like hell!”

  His opponent did not react to the touch of Zariduke, nor did it seem to tire. How was he supposed to beat a better version of himself?

  A glance at his companions told him they were in a similar predicament. Mala was exchanging a dizzying series of blows with her opponent, an operatic ballet of skill and violence. Just as with Will, neither was able to penetrate the other’s defenses, nor did Mala’s fire beads have an
y effect when she tossed them into her twin’s eyes.

  Yasmina tripped and fell as she battled her opponent, barely reaching her feet in time to block a blow from her doppelganger’s staff. Mateo’s urumi sword cracked over and over on the obsidian floor as he fought like a cornered wolverine to gain an advantage. Will had never seen a fight with two urumi blades before and, if he wasn’t fighting for his life, would have been fascinated by the snapping blades.

  Dalen was locked in hand to combat with his opponent, trying to wrestle him to the ground, when a thought occurred to Will. “Dalen! Try flying us out of here!”

  In a burst of strength, the mage pushed away from his opponent and levitated to gain separation. To Will’s horror, the replica creature rose with him, drifting as easily as a moonbeam on the currents of air. It grabbed Dalen and pulled him down, causing the mage to land hard and twist his knee. Dalen shrieked and backed away as the thing pounced on him. Will roared and dashed to his side, driving Zariduke hard into the fake Dalen’s back. Zariduke cleaved through it as if carving a piece of clay, and the moonlight golem dissolved into gray motes of light at Will’s feet.

  I just hadn’t hit them hard enough.

  He turned just in time to ward off a blow from his twin. After sparring for a moment, he worked his way across the courtyard until he could turn and slice downward across the back of Yasmina’s pseudo-self. The thing evaded the blow at the last moment, and Will found himself in a new fight.

  As Will faced off, Yasmina struck her twin with her staff to no effect, as if she had struck a block of wood. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw his own twin approaching from the side. “Cut him off, Yaz! Use your reach!”

  She stepped between the two Wills, jabbing with her longer weapon. Yet he knew what he would do in that situation, how quickly his twin would pierce her defenses and run her through. He had moments to save her—so he had to beat the other Yasmina even faster.

  The moonlight staff swept downward. Will blocked the blow with his shield, spun inside, and jabbed upward. He caught the thing just under the chin, wincing as his blade drove straight through the head of the false Yasmina. It, too, disintegrated, though Will heard a scream as he whirled to his left.

  Yasmina was crumpled on the ground, shrinking to avoid a blow as the other Will loomed over her. Its sword was facing downward and about to descend.

  Will would never reach them in time. As Yasmina raised her hands to ward off the blow, a meaningless gesture, Will threw his sword like a spear as Mala had taught him to throw a dagger long ago, on the trek to Leonidus’s castle. The weight was different and the throw would not have won any javelin competitions, but the distance was not far, and his aim was true. Zariduke pierced his twin in the back just before it stabbed Yasmina. A shower of dispersing grey light rained down on her as Will ran to retrieve his sword. He whirled to find Mala and her opponent dashing and tumbling across the courtyard, and Mateo backing his opponent against a wall. They traded lashes until Mateo executed a sudden maneuver that resulted in an entanglement of the whip-like blades. Will’s cousin dropped his weapon and lunged with the speed of a boxer, jabbing with his left and throwing a straight right with his chainmail glove. His twin threw up an elbow to block the blow, but the ensorcelled glove blew right through it and smashed into its face. Mateo kept coming, trapping his twin against the wall and pummeling it over and over with the chainmail glove until it dissolved. Will’s eyebrows rose as Mateo’s final blow passed through the motes of light and shattered a portion of the obsidian wall behind him.

  One to go, but it’s the hardest of all.

  As Will and Mateo rushed to help Mala, her twin used its sash and short sword with ruthless efficiency to keep all three fighters at bay. It spun in a circle, unflagging as it pressed the attack as efficiently as Mala herself, patiently awaiting a crack in its opponents’ defenses. Every time Will or Mateo would try to slip closer, her twin would lash out with a blade or a well-timed kick while managing to fend off the attacks of the real Mala, whose exhaustion evened the fight.

  The fake Mala whipped two daggers out of its gray boot and threw them at Will. He barely got his shield up in time. After catching Mateo with a back heel that sent him sprawling across the slick surface of the courtyard, the final twin flipped to the side in an aerial cartwheel and pressed a furious attack that resulted in a long cut on Mala’s left forearm.

  Mala, he wanted to scream, why do you have to be such a badass!

  They just needed an opening for Will’s sword or Mateo’s gloved fist, but they couldn’t seem to get it. The moonlit simulacrum was too good. Mala had encountered the one opponent she couldn’t defeat in battle: herself.

  “Will.”

  The soft, wounded cry had come from behind him. Yasmina’s voice. He turned to find her limping to her feet, holding her left side as blood leaked through her fingers. She was pointing at the center of the courtyard, where four more pillars of moonlight were congealing, slowly taking shape once again.

  Oh my God. The ones we’ve killed are reforming.

  “It’s a deathtrap!” he shouted. “We have to get out of here!”

  Mala risked a glance to the side. “Find an exit, Will! I’ll hold her off!”

  With a renewed burst of energy, Mala redoubled the attack on her twin, keeping it occupied in the seconds before the other doppelgangers formed. Mateo stayed with her and managed to lash her twin with the urumi blade, though the weapon had no effect.

  During the fight, ever since his twin had disintegrated, Dalen had stood in front of the door and tried to find a way inside. By the frustration on his face, Will guessed he had run out of options.

  Think, Will.

  The surface of this courtyard, the floor and high walls, are obviously meant to reflect light of some kind. Is that how the magic works? It reflects moonlight and sunlight to form simulacrums from the presence of intruders? Shut up, Will. It doesn’t matter how it works. What do I know about Illusomancy? Nothing. But illusions . . . illusions rely on subterfuge, at least back on Earth. Sleight of hand. Deception. Maybe there’s some genius mathematical concept behind all this, a point of convergence of the mirrors that I don’t have time to decipher.

  Or maybe there’s a simple trick.

  “Dalen!” he shouted across the courtyard, as the pillars grew more corporeal. “Does an illusion require an observer?”

  “What?”

  “Do I have to look at it to be fooled?”

  “Yes, for the most part.”

  “Close your eyes and walk through the door.”

  Dalen started to respond, then raised his eyebrows as he understood the import of Will’s suggestion. He turned and led with his hands, walking straight towards the wooden door.

  And ran smack into it.

  “Hurry, cousin!” Mateo cried.

  Will glanced to his left. The moonlit warriors were almost complete.

  Dalen started speaking very fast. “There’s a school of practice in Kalaktos . . . a yin and yang sort of philosophy that balances spirit and body . . . my uncle studied the drosoulites for some time and concluded the refraction curve acted in inverse proportion to the magical—”

  “Dalen, what are you talking about!”

  “Walk through the wall on the other side, Will. Directly opposite the door.”

  “What?”

  “You were on to something. Close your eyes and walk right through it.”

  Left with no choice, Will swallowed his objections and did as Dalen asked, racing to the obsidian wall opposite the door and shoving against it. It was solid stone, its glassy surface reflecting the battle taking place behind it. Will closed his eyes, prayed to all the gods in the multiverse, didn’t bother raising his hands, and took a step of blind faith.

  There was no resistance. He took another step forward, and then another, and then opened his eyes and gawked at what he saw. He quickly closed them and backed away. When he opened them again he was back in the courtyard, watching the mirror image
s of his friends spring to life. “This way!” he roared. “Everyone to me!”

  He gave instructions as they rushed over, and everyone but Mala managed to slip through the illusory wall. The adventuress had almost backed her way to the wall, but couldn’t get free of her twin long enough to slip through. All of the other mirror images except Will’s own had dissipated, bolstering the theory that the presence of the mirror images was a response to their own. But his twin was about to close the gap and converge on Mala.

  “Step backwards towards the wall,” he shouted. “You’re almost there.”

  “Where? I don’t have eyes in the back of my head!”

  She was going to need his help. He could step up to defend her, but there was no guarantee he could hold her twin at bay, and his own twin was closing fast. “You have to trust me, Mala. Do exactly as I say.”

  She replied with a nod as she beat back another sword thrust. He gave her instructions to follow—three steps to the left and two steps back—until she was standing right in front of him. Either she trusted him fully or they were both about to die.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, right before he took her in his arms, shut his eyes, and fell backwards through the wall.

  “You can let go now,” Mala said, as she and Will opened their eyes on a shiny silver floor that reminded Will of aluminum, except the surface felt like stone.

  After disentangling from her embrace, Will glanced at Yasmina, who looked pale and ready to collapse from the wound she had received. Yet even she was craning her neck to absorb the sight of the vast hall spread before them, stretching for at least two hundred feet and soaring to a ceiling high overhead. The walls and ceiling were made of the same material as the floor, giving the impression that the surface of the entire gallery was a giant reflective shell.

  The contents of the grand hall were just as impressive. Mind-bending blown glass statues of varying shapes and colors dotted the room, impressionistic pieces that brought to mind the works of Dale Chihuly plastered all over museums on Earth, except these were larger and far more intricate, comprised of otherworldly patterns and swirls that exuded a hypnotic effect. Similar chandeliers hung from the ceiling, though the soft violet light illuminating the room derived from a different, unknown source. Also interspersed throughout the gallery, and arranged along the walls, were translucent crystal pillars bearing a single item on the inside, as if hoarding a secret egg: horns, rings, shields, weapons, decanters, staves, potions, scrolls, cloaks. The jagged tops and edges of the slender crystals, each of varying heights but some taller than Will, looked natural, as if plucked straight from a mine.