Destroyer of Worlds

by Larry Correia

  Karno ran over, only to see that the sleek form was bounding swiftly away, leaping across the darkened rooftops of Vadal City, heading straight for the walls of the great house. The Protector climbed out the window and gave chase.

  Chapter 35

  Rada was sitting in her room reading a book, as was her after-dinner custom, when all the shouting started.

  That was most unusual. The great house was usually rather peaceful after dark. Harta had no patience for frivolity. Even the soldiers, whom she imagined were as raucous as all young men tended to be, remained extremely polite and professional when their Thakoor was in residence. The house slaves were not given to outbursts either. So what was all that racket?

  She carefully marked her page with a bookmark so she wouldn’t lose her place then walked to the door to see what was going on out there. One of the Personal Guard was rushing up the hall. Surprisingly, his sword was in hand. It was rare to see steel drawn here. The last time had been when Harta had been about to execute that poor fellow Jagdish, and it had been months since she had saved his life.

  “What’s going on?”

  “An intruder’s been seen on the grounds. Stay in your quarters and lock the doors!”

  Rada quickly closed the door and threw the bolt.

  The warrior had seemed genuinely afraid. Even as paranoid as Harta was about assassins, there hadn’t been an alarm raised the entire time she’d been here. Below her balcony she heard more men running through the gardens. It had to be something serious to cause this much consternation.

  Then Rada realized that she could hear them so precisely because she’d left the balcony door open. The night breeze in Vadal lands was as refreshing and fragrant as all the books about the place had claimed, so she liked to leave it open. She was on the second floor, but Harta was worried about wizard assassins, and what was climbing an ivy-covered wall to a wizard?

  The silk curtains were drifting in the air. She brushed them aside, closed the balcony door, and locked it as well. That ought to do it.

  She turned around and bumped into the black-clad man who had been standing behind the curtain.

  Startled, she jumped back, but before she could even let out a shriek he struck her in the face.

  Rada had never been hit before. Not like that. The floor rushed up to meet her. The room was spinning. She could taste her own blood.

  Worst of all, she realized that he had broken her glasses. They were lying there, in pieces. And then he kicked her in the stomach hard enough to send her sliding across the floor.

  There was no air. She couldn’t breathe. Then her muscles unclenched enough to gasp for air. The man crouched next to her, smashed one hand against her mouth and ground her head against the rug. She tried to struggle but he was insanely strong.

  “Stop it, silly girl,” he hissed. “Make a sound and you die.”

  She could feel the hot indent of his knuckles on her cheek.

  “Where is the mirror? Do you have the mirror? Tell me. Now!”

  It was the witch hunter who had tried to take her in Apura. “What mirror? I—”

  He hit her. Then he hit her again. And again. In the face. In the chest. He put his knee on her pelvis and let his weight rest upon it. He jabbed one thumb under her jaw, into the bundle of nerves there, and pushed. She screamed, but it was uselessly muffled because his other hand was clamped over her mouth.

  It was the worst pain she’d ever felt. He could have killed her, easily. But he didn’t. He didn’t want her to die. He wanted her to suffer. “Where is the mirror, Librarian? Tell me, or I’ll beat you to death and then search for it myself. My orders are to take you alive if possible, but that’s secondary to reclaiming the mirror.” He took his hand away so she could answer, but then before she could, backhanded her across the eyes. “Where?”

  She was crying. She didn’t even mean to. The tears were just falling out. One eye was swollen shut. Her ears were ringing. “In the satchel. Hidden behind the wardrobe.”

  The brutal witch hunter stood up, dragged the piece of furniture out of the way, and retrieved her bag. He opened the flap, looked inside, and seeming satisfied, closed it. He threw the strap over one shoulder and went back for her. “Here’s how this is going to go, Librarian. My master wants you alive, but he wants this mirror more. I regret this unsubtle method, but your friend forced the issue. You’re coming with me. Cooperate, stay quiet, and you get to live. Cry for help, and I’ll kill you.” He grabbed her by the arm and roughly yanked her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  Rather than go to the hall, he tugged her toward the balcony and undid the latch she’d uselessly fixed. Once outside, he paused there, in the dark, scanning across the garden. There were lanterns moving about, but none near enough to see them. She didn’t know what he intended to do. She was in a dress. She could hardly climb—

  He wrapped one extremely firm arm around her waist. “Make a sound and I’ll slit your throat.” And then he vaulted over the edge with her.

  They hit the grass and rolled. The Inquisitor seemed fine. Rada was so shaken she could barely stand, but he dragged her back up again. They went around the corner of a sculpted hedge. “Don’t scream when you see what I’ve done here.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but then she tripped over something, and landed in a puddle that was hot and slick. With a shock she realized that she was on top of a mangled body. Before she could reflexively cry out, his hand was over her mouth again. It was one of the Personal Guard, and though it was hard to tell in the shadows, it looked like he had been ripped apart by a wild animal…By a tiger.

  “That’s right, Rada,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re just slowing me down. Inconvenience me too much and I will change form. Whenever I want to, I can just jump over the wall to escape, but the last thing I would do before that is eat your pretty face. Come on.”

  As he pulled her out of the blood puddle, her hand landed on something, hard and metallic. She nicked herself on the sharp edge before realizing what it was.

  Rada palmed the warrior’s knife. She kept the blade up along her forearm so it wouldn’t be seen.

  The witch hunter shoved her along ahead of him, as he kept looking back over his shoulder. Harta’s wizards would be on the prowl and he knew it. The guards were still shouting but their noise seemed to be getting farther away. The gardens were extensive and confusing in the dark, but the witch hunter seemed to know where he was going. She assumed they were heading for the back gate.

  If he got her out into the city, they would disappear. And then she would be taken to the dome. They’d either kill her for knowing too much, or they’d use her as a hostage to try and force Devedas to their will, but she knew such a man would never bend to evil men, no matter how much he loved her. So she was dead either way.

  Rada was no warrior. She’d seen bloodshed, several times now, but it wasn’t her way. She was first caste. They had people for that. She was terrified, in pain, and desperate, but she had nothing to lose. It made the choice to fight easy.

  She waited until they got closer to the back gate. There were bound to be guards there. They were in the deep shadows, but the smell told her they were getting close to the stables. The witch hunter paused, listening. There were voices ahead. She didn’t know what his plan was, but she doubted they were getting out without him murdering more members of the Personal Guard, and she’d become quite fond of a few of them.

  “He’s here…” the witch hunter murmured, though she didn’t know who he was worried about.

  The horses inside the stables whinnied and stamped nervously. Maybe they smelled the blood on her clothes, or maybe the witch hunter still had some tiger scent lingering on him—she didn’t know how such things worked—but they were afraid. Not as afraid as she was, obviously. But hopefully afraid enough their noise would attract a guard.

  Sure enough, she saw a lantern approaching. She caught a brief glimpse of the blue-gray and bronze uniform of House Vadal as the
light swung back and forth. The guard was heading their way. The witch hunter slowly reached for the sword on his hip. The Personal Guard were loyal to their master, but a few of them had gone out of their way to be kind to her, even keeping her company during her stressful stay. She would not have any more of their deaths on her hands. Not if she could help it.

  Once all his attention seemed to be upon the approaching guard, Rada turned the knife around in her hand. The handle was still sticky with its owner’s blood. She’d read many textbooks on anatomy, but strangely enough that didn’t translate to real life confidence as to where to stick a man.

  He was still holding onto her other arm, so he was close. Too close to miss.

  Rada drove the knife into his back.

  The Witch Hunter reacted immediately, far faster than she’d expected. He still had her arm, so he twisted it hard, then he drove it back into the socket. She had no choice, it was drop or break the bone. She went to her knees, and he side-kicked her in the ribs. Rada crashed hard against the wooden stable. Her head rebounded off a board, leaving her dazed.

  The satchel containing the mirror had fallen on the ground. Grimacing, the witch hunter reached back and found the handle still sticking out of him. As he plucked the knife from his body, he let out a wheezing hiss at the pain. “Library bitch!” Then he grabbed hold of something attached to his belt. The air seemed to shimmer with something far darker than the night, like a perfectly black cloud, and then a tiger stepped out.

  It padded toward her. Rada was still stunned from the impact. All she could understand was teeth. Razor-sharp teeth.

  Terrified, Rada tried to get to her feet, but the tiger pounced. Effortlessly knocking her back down and pinning her beneath. She could feel his hot breath on her neck.

  Right before the jaws closed around her throat, the tiger was gone.

  Someone had leapt from the top of the stable and tackled the beast. The two forms went rolling across the grass into the moonlight. It was a flash of furious movement, one orange, black, and white, the other in ragged, dirty clothing. The human being came up on top. For one brief moment Rada saw a hammer rise, and then pow! It came down on the tiger. The man hit it like that several times, beating it like the drum in a Capitol pageant, whaling on it as the tiger twisted and thrashed.

  But the tiger got his hind legs up onto the man’s chest, sunk the claws in deep, and then hurled him away.

  The tattered man hit the wall next to her. The horses inside were screaming in panic at the presence of the great cat. With a shock, Rada realized who it was.

  “Karno?”

  The tiger was injured. Its head seemed misshapen. One of its front legs was hanging, limp. Rather than try to finish her, he lunged for the satchel to snatch up the strap in his jaws.

  “The mirror!” Rada cried out.

  Karno flung his weapon. It spun through the air and clipped the tiger on the side of his head. The tiger lurched to the side. The satchel came open, and the mirror rolled out. It flopped over, the terrifying, reflective side up, right between the two foes.

  The tiger was stumbling, dizzy, but Karno was having a hard time getting up as well. Both of them were hurting. There was a lot of blood leaking from the toe-claw holes on his chest. It had slashed him wide open. She couldn’t lose him, get him back, and then lose him again.

  Only the tiger form had been broken. There was that black flash again, and the animal was gone, leaving only the witch hunter. Except now there was a jagged bone sticking out of his forearm and the side of his head was covered in his own blood. “Damn you, Librarian.” It was obvious he wanted nothing more than to end her, but he hadn’t been lying earlier. The mirror came first. “This isn’t over,” he said as he limped toward the treasure.

  The witch hunter reached down to grab the mirror. Rada’s head was pounding too much to stop him. Karno seemed to be meditating or something. However Protector magic worked, Karno’s was occupied with keeping him from bleeding to death.

  Except then the oddest thing happened. When the witch hunter went to scoop up the device, his fingers went through it. Just for a moment, as if it wasn’t a mirror at all, but rather a hole. To where, she didn’t know, and never wanted to find out.

  The witch hunter tugged. Only whatever lived in the mirror, whatever odd thing it was that she’d seen floating in the vastness of space when she’d first tested the device in Vikram’s basement, did not let go. It pulled back. Suddenly the witch hunter fell forward, his arm disappearing up to his elbow into the mirror. “What is this?” He pulled hard, trying to free himself.

  It was terrifying, watching a piece of black steel devouring a man, but also strangely fascinating, and Rada couldn’t look away.

  The quiet murderer may have been hard as nails, but he let out a bloodcurdling shriek as the mirror swallowed him up to his armpit. “Let go of me!”

  Karno had finished concentrating on whatever he’d been thinking about, because he got up, took hold of one of the boards of the stable fence, and wrenched it off. He went over to the trapped witch hunter, and then bashed him over the head with it. The board snapped in half, but so did the witch hunter’s skull.

  The body rolled off the Asura’s Mirror. The mirror looked exactly the same as before.

  “Where’d his arm go?” Karno asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She should have been frozen with terror, but remarkably her muscles still worked. Evil or not, that thing had been entrusted to her. It might have just eaten a man’s limb, but it was still her obligation. She had promised Vikram to keep it from the Inquisitors, so she grabbed her satchel, and used the leather to protect her hands as she maneuvered the mirror inside safely. Despite what she’d just seen, the Asura’s Mirror didn’t do anything odd to her. Once it was secure, she stumbled to Karno’s side.

  “I thought you were dead! Are you all right?”

  He looked down at the weeping lacerations across his torso. Somehow, the blood had slowed to a mere trickle. “I’ll be fine. You look awful.”

  She’d assumed as much. Her face felt like it was on fire. She could barely see, barely hear past the pounding headache, and couldn’t stand without wobbling. She didn’t know how warriors dealt with this sort of abusive nonsense all the time.

  “Don’t move!” someone snapped at them.

  She recognized the voice. “Luthra?” Rada turned and saw that he was the guard with the lantern. His sword was in his other hand and pointed directly at Karno. Luthra took in the dead witch hunter, and Rada, but he didn’t lower the weapon. Karno looked like he was in great pain, having just had his chest clawed to ribbons, but she knew the Protector would still easily defeat a regular soldier.

  “Luthra is a friend, Karno.”

  “Rada, what’s going on? Are you all right?” the guard demanded.

  “This wizard beat me, but I’m fine.” That was a lie. She very much wanted nothing more than to lie on the ground and sob but fighting to the death certainly caused a cascade of conflicting emotions.

  “We saw the tiger scale the walls and sounded the alarm. So the assassin was here for you, not Lord Harta. And this”—he looked up…and up—“must be the Protector Karno you talked so much about.”

  “He is,” she assured him. “He saved my life. Again. You’ll find the dead man is the Inquisitor we faced in Apura the night we first met.”

  “Let’s get you to the surgeon,” Luthra said.

  “Hold, Warrior,” Karno said as he put his big arm over Rada’s shoulder. She wasn’t sure if he was helping hold her up, or if she was helping prop him up. It could go either way. “The Inquisition will not rest now. Her only chance is to vanish. Your Thakoor thinks he can use her to bargain with, but it’s no longer safe for her here. Rada needs to be in Protector custody. Give her to me.”

  “My Thakoor doesn’t give a fish about the Protectors, certainly not here!” Luthra looked back and forth between them. He had always seemed to her a kind man, but also a smart and loyal
one. His obligation was to protect his house. He should have ordered her back to her room and had his men deal with Karno. Except Luthra didn’t shout for reinforcements. Instead he looked back toward the gate, and then toward the great house, obviously torn. “Oceans.”

  “Please, Luthra.” Her face was beginning to swell so much it was hard to talk. “Either they’ll murder me, or eventually Harta will sell me to the Inquisition. You know your master will as soon as they name the right price. Have mercy, please.”

  She and Luthra both knew that though Harta wasn’t exactly an evil man, he wasn’t a good one either. The Thakoor constantly talked about how the first caste needed to make the difficult decisions, spending lives like notes. Rada knew she was just another asset, to be used, and then liquidated when inconvenient.

  “I’m obligated to serve my house and the Law. This is one or the other! Protectors are the Law, but between the Law and Vadal, my heart belongs to Vadal…Only I don’t see how it benefits Vadal to have another innocent woman die on the dome. Oceans!” Luthra took pity on her and sheathed his sword. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Oh, thank you, Luthra, thank you.”

  “Luckily, for all of us, I never saw either of you. Most of us are congregating around the Thakoor’s quarters. There are only regular warriors manning the gate while my unit searches the grounds. I’ll call them over here when I find this body. That’s your chance to sneak out. Get her out of here, Protector.”

  “A wise choice, Warrior,” Karno said.

  The two of them started walking away. “Where will we go?” she whispered.

  “I’ll think of something,” Karno answered.

  “Wait,” Luthra called after them. “I know someone who would give you shelter. There’s a man of very high status who owes Rada his life.”

  There was only one person he could be talking about. Luthra had passed on his message of sincere gratitude to her, but she’d not thought about it much since. She’d simply been trying to do the right thing. “You can’t mean…”