The Crow Behind the Mirror_Book One of the Mirror Wars

by Sean M. Hogan

  ***

  Sharon jumped to her feet and ran, her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest. Cold sweat dripped down her clammy skin as a primal fear swelled inside her. As it did with the reekers.

  Behind her, the wolf pursued.

  Gabriel overtook Sharon, leaping over her and landing before her, blocking her path.

  She shielded herself with a reflexive wrap of her wings and dropped to the ground, bracing for the worst.

  “Please, don’t be afraid,” said Gabriel, in as a calming voice as he could manage. “I won’t hurt you.” He stood upright on his back legs and gestured with open paws. “Easy now… I just want to speak with you.”

  Sharon’s head peeked out from between her wings. “You... you can talk?”

  “Yes, as can you.” Gabriel smiled warmly.

  “You’re not a reeker then?”

  “Last time I checked, no.” He pointed to his head. “See—no antlers.”

  “So, you’re like Khaba then, but a wolf?” She asked, her heart still racing.

  “Yes, my name is Gabriel and I am the god of heaven. And, for better or worse, the king of the tree-sprites and the Sacred Forest.” He offered his hand. “You were lucky I got you out when I did. I don’t want to imagine what Baba was planning to do to you.”

  Sharon, with much reluctance, poked her hand through the gap between her wings. “Sharon Ashcraft, from Oak Drive. Pleased to meet you and thanks for saving my bacon.”

  Gabriel took her hand into his clawed gray-furred hand, dwarfing hers.

  After they shook, Sharon pulled her hand back as soon as he released.

  “Remarkable,” he said, studying her head to toe. “It’s really you. The girl from my dream—my walkabout.”

  “Not this again.” She sighed. “Khaba already gave me that crazy spiel.”

  “Khaba wasn’t lying. We all saw you in our walkabout. All three of us.”

  “Three?”

  “There’s no mistaking it,” he said, locking eyes with her. “You are the key to ending this war between the three kingdoms and restoring peace to Tuat after a thousand years of strife. Sharon—you are the only one who can save our world.”

  “I don’t understand.” She shook her head at the madness of his words. “I’m just a normal girl. There’s nothing special about me.”

  “You’re wrong, Sharon.”

  “Stop it,” She screamed furiously. “I’m nothing but a coward.” She rose to her feet, her body trembling and her breaths fuming out. “I’m shaking so bad I can barely breathe. Can’t you see I’m terrified?”

  Gabriel’s eyes saddened. “You are not a coward, Sharon. We are all scared. I am scared too. The future is always uncertain. But we must be brave, not because we want to be but because we have to be. And not just for our sake but for theirs.” He gestured to the small green creatures with yellow-skinned faces gathering all around them.

  The tree-sprites stepped forward into the light. They were not warriors, like the pig-runs, but a ragtag group of children and elders, husbands and wives... a tribe of families.

  Sharon glanced their way, observing their frightened expressions as her anger subsided. “I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I’m not the person you think I am. There is too much fear in me... I’m… I’m broken inside.” Once broken, always broken.

  “Then perhaps it’s time to mend the cracks and put back the pieces.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “I can help you if you’ll let me.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” She said, folding her arms and averting her gaze. “I said I’m too afraid to be brave for anyone’s sake… let alone mine.”

  “Courage is not the absence of fear but the act of pushing on in spite of it,” said Gabriel. “You said you didn’t understand. Come back to the camp with me and the others and I will tell you a story, my story. Then, perhaps, you will understand a little more.”

  “Fine, as long as it doesn’t involve ghosts.” She wiped her watery eyes. “I’ve had my fill of ghosts lately.”

  “No, it’s not a ghost story,” said Gabriel. “It is merely a tale of three kings, of three fools, of three monsters.”

  ***

  The colorful swirling wind parted.

  Khaba stared back—breathless—as the world changed before his eyes.

  Mud and clay huts lined themselves along a river, forming a miserable ghetto. The living quarters of slaves and the poor and sick and dying. The smell of vomit and piss overwhelmed Khaba’s senses, spoiling his stomach and staggering him backward. He tripped over a dried, naked, leathered skin corpse and into a puddle of feces. He stumbled back to his feet, spotting the shadows of men with swords and spears blanket the walls.

  The shrieks of women and children filled the air. White knights with pale skin and golden helmets raided the ghetto, slaying dark-skinned men and women and children at random. Screams and flames erupted from each hut they entered. And when they found the babies they hurled them over cliffs.

  “And so, the day of reckoning came to pass,” said the Cloaked Man, stepping to Khaba’s side, no longer an astral projection but flesh and bone. “The good wise King Solomon ordered the deaths of all the dark-skinned firstborn. To thin their numbers and keep the order of things—to preserve the peace.”

  “This is peace?” Khaba asked, his whole body shaking with the terror of Egypt the night the final plague descended.

  “The wicked know not the meaning,” replied the Cloaked Man

  A woman huddled under a ragged old blanket looked on, hidden in the shadows of an alley.

  Khaba averted his gaze to her, observing her with interest.

  She had copper skin and olive black hair that ran past her slender shoulders. She didn’t acknowledge his presence as he stepped her way. None of the panicked figures did as they shoved past him. To them, he was invisible, a mere spectating ghost.

  She was hiding something, clutching a bundle tightly, desperately in her arms.

  The thunderous gallop of hooves grabbed their attention. Together they spun, spotting a white knight with a golden face mask, woven pearl garments, and a lion coat-of-arms gracing his chest charge their way.

  “King Solomon,” Khaba gasped.

  The woman ran toward the river in a mad dash. She eluded King Solomon by cutting between the narrow alleyways.

  Khaba followed her, moving on pure instinct. The reasons obscure to him—he just needed to know her fate.

  She made it to the river and placed her bundle into a reed basket. A small arm poked out of the blanket. A baby. She kissed the fussing child on the forehead, a single tear falling from her cheek landed on its face. She covered the child with the blanket and pushed it down the stream with the currents of the river. As she watched her son disappear behind the tall grass a blade pierced her heart—King Solomon’s spear. She slumped down like a pillar of salt.

  Solomon’s frozen indifferent expression was molded on his golden mask. His cold eyes stared on with perfect absolute apathy.

  “Who is this woman?” asked Khaba, stepping to the woman’s lifeless body.

  “What?” asked the Cloaked Man, stalking over to him. “Don’t tell me you can’t even recognize your own mother.”

  “Mother...” The words slipped from Khaba’s mouth by their own fruition. He stood over her corpse and fell to his knee, his hands slipping through her as he tried to pick her up. He turned to face King Solomon.

  Solomon recovered his spear with a heartless yank—as if he had just speared a wild boar.

  Khaba charged with a roar, swinging his ax in a mad fury, hacking away at this ghost from the past. But his blade just passed through Solomon like he was battling smoke.

  “It’s not real,” said Khaba to himself. “None of this is real.”

  “Oh, but it was,” he said, pointing out for Khaba like a hooded phantom of tragedies yet to come.

  Khaba looked toward the river.

  The colored wind parted ways.

  Two striped pig-run
s rescued the drifting basket from the water, taking the small baby into their arms.

  “A baby abandoned in a basket and left to drift with the currents of the river,” said the Cloaked Man, placing his hand on Khaba’s shoulder. “Rescued and raised by pig-runs. You were the blessed child, a god reincarnated in human form. Khaba, the lizard king. It was your destiny to free your people from the bonds of slavery and oppression. To guide their exodus and lead them to the promised lands.”

  Khaba’s gaze rose to meet the Cloaked Man’s burning eyes.

  “But instead the man who you once called brother betrayed you.”

  The wind picked up and the scenery changed once more.

  ***

  “Tuat is a world devoid of justice,” said Gabriel. He stared into the fire as if he was searching for something more, something beyond reach and reason. “The three of us tried to change that and failed miserably.” He tossed a log into the fire. “No, worse than that, we made it cruel beyond measure.”

  Sharon studied Gabriel’s face through the fire’s light. The tree-sprites sat with her around the fire.

  Moki sat by her side. He glanced her way.

  She smiled in response. Her smile disappeared as her gaze turned back to Gabriel.

  “As you know, there are five gods of Tuat,” said Gabriel. “Of the two elder gods, the dragon and the unicorn, one has never left this plane of existence and the other... not in a very long time. The remaining three have been reincarnated throughout the ages. I am one of the three, the wolf. Khaba is the lizard and Simon the shark. Together we divided Tuat into three kingdoms and appointed ourselves their rulers. I chose the lands surrounding the Sacred Forest. And Simon chose the city by the sea and the surrounding deserts. Years ago, before your arrival to Tuat, Simon drove the pig-runs from the city—their homelands—and past the River of Crying into Khaba’s lands. Many lives were lost.”

  “It was nothing short of genocide,” said the elder tree-sprite as he spat into the fire.

  “So that’s why Khaba wanted me to help him kill Simon,” said Sharon.

  “Yes, ever since then the three kingdoms have been locked in a bloody war,” said Gabriel. “With both Simon and Khaba trying to overtake the other and our kingdom caught in the middle.”

  “As their borders expand—ours shrinks,” said the elder tree-sprite. “The Sacred Forest is our lifeblood. The tree-sprites cannot live anywhere else. There are so few of us left already. We’ve had no choice but to fight.”

  “Thorn, there is always a choice,” said Gabriel.

  “And what would you have us choose?” asked another younger tree-sprite with a scar slashed across half his face. “Death?”

  Thorn nodded as he smoothed out his white moss beard nervously. “The humans and pig-runs chop down our trees and burn down the rest to make room for farmlands to feed their armies. And the spreading ice continues to push them farther into our lands. Our tiny world is already at the breaking point. We must resist, we must take up arms, for our children’s sakes.”

  Gabriel sighed a heap of air. “The only change the sword can bring is the change of power between tyrants. No, old friend, whatever benefits violence brings is merely temporary, but the evil it does never heals.”

  “Our cause is just,” spouted the scarred tree-sprite as he stood atop a log in the gathering crowd around the campfire, thrusting his spear into the air. “They struck the first blow. We have every right to retaliate. It’s an eye for an eye.”

  “And thus, the world became blind,” said Gabriel. “No, Lagnarok, we cannot let ourselves slip into that kind of darkness and hate. We must learn to forgive those who trespass us and do us harm. We must learn to love our enemies and meet their anger with compassion. Or we will forever be trapped in this endless cycle of hate.”

  “You mean for us to be weak?” asked Lagnarok with a rising temper. “To roll over and die?”

  “No, forgiveness is not a trait of weakness. The weak can never forgive, for forgiveness is the hardest act one can perform in this world. Only the truly strong are capable of such a feat.”

  Many of the tree-sprites nodded in agreement but not all.

  “Bah!” Lagnarok spat into the fire before storming off into the night.

  Gabriel sighed as he turned back to Sharon. “It is a lesson I had to learn the hard way. A lesson we… I still struggle with.”

  “Forgive me for being blunt,” said Sharon. “But why don’t you just order them to stop. I mean, you are king, after all.”

  “I’m afraid in title only,” said Gabriel. “The tree-sprites govern themselves by majority rule. Each individual has a say or vote on the larger issues that affect the whole. I only chose to ‘rule’ these lands because I did not trust them in the hands of Khaba and Simon. And sadly, time has justified my fears. I can only hope to sway them and you with my words alone.”

  “Well, I’m listening.” She let a smile break free. “Sway away.”

  ***

  The desert sunset beat blood-red over the River of Crying. Hundreds of exhausted pig-runs marched along the edge of the river with nothing but weathered rags to combat the hellish heat. Human soldiers in golden Egyptian armor rode on horseback alongside the pig-runs, keeping them in line. Down below, hundreds of pig-run corpses floated with the currents of the river while soldiers at the riverbanks tossed more bodies in.

  Khaba’s fists rattled with all the wrath and hurt of a god whose people had forsaken him for a golden calf idol. “He stripped them of all their possessions. Their weapons, their land, their food, and their water. It was a death march of a hundred miles through the barren desert on the hottest day of the year.”

  Many of the pig-runs went mad, the heat too much to bear, their thirst overwhelming their reason. They plunged themselves into the river headfirst, drinking their fill in heaps and gulps.

  “A pity the River of Crying is a river of saltwater,” said the Cloaked Man. He averted his gaze to a figure in the distance.

  A man on horseback galloped toward them.

  “Ah, I don’t think you’ll have trouble remembering this face, Khaba.”

  A tall, muscular, young man with copper skin and long black olive hair rode up to Khaba’s side.

  “By Ordin,” said Khaba.

  “A familiar face, no?” asked the Cloaked Man.

  “Like looking into a mirror,” he answered.

  “Albeit a distorted one.”

  The young man dismounted and ran to the river.

  Khaba trailed after.

  The young man plunged into the river, swimming frantically to one corpse after another, turning them face up.

  “Stop it,” Khaba pleaded as he ran to the edge of the river. “Stop it!”

  “He can’t hear you,” said the Cloaked Man. “They are nothing but ghosts of the past, memories stored within your own dreaming eye.”

  Finally, the young man stopped. His gaze fell on two old striped pig-runs floating face-down. One male and one female. Both still holding hands even in death.

  “No...” said Khaba, his words came out in an involuntary whisper. “Knowing won’t do you any good. It will only make the pain worse.”

  The young man turned over the two elderly pig-runs. A shrieking wail followed as he scooped them into his arms. He sobbed uncontrollably, cradling the two bodies against his chest and compulsively rocking them back and forth.

  “Those markings,” said the Cloaked Man. “They’re the same two as before.” He turned to Khaba. “I can’t imagine the pain of losing your parents for the second time.”

  “Bastards,” the young human Khaba roared.

  A soldier from atop the riverbanks turned his sights on the young man. “You there, what are you—”

  The soldier had no time to act as the young Khaba charged, spooking the horse and ripping the soldier from the saddle. The young Khaba threw him into the water and wrapped his hands around his throat, plunging him deeper into the depths. It wasn’t long before the splashing su
bsided and the stillness returned. He released his grip and let the currents of the river take the lifeless soldier’s corpse along with the other nameless pig-runs. One more teardrop to add to the endless flow of the River of Crying.

  “If only you had become Pharaoh instead of Simon. All of this could have been avoided,” the Cloaked Man mused.

  The young Khaba fell to his knees in the wet, damp sand, helpless to stop the forced exodus, the impending march of death. He clawed at the sand as his face overflowed with grief and mad spite. The whites of his eyes turned yellow and red and his pupils shrunk to reptilian slits. “If this is what it means to be human then I will gladly toss it aside.” His skin turned green, hard, and scaly. His nails and fingers grew sharp and long. His tongue dyed black and split into a fork at the end. A lizard’s tail slithered out and a snout stretched from his face. And with one final roar, the transformation was complete and a god was reborn.

  “Only a just sword can lead,” said the Cloaked Man, standing between the two lizard kings. “Only a righteous heart can rule. You knew that better than anyone. Far better than—”

  “—Simon,” the two Khabas said bitterly together as one voice, vengeance filling their hearts and turning their blood cold.

  CHAPTER 22

  A Tale of Three Kings

  GABRIEL RETURNED SHARON’S SMILE across the campfire. “All right, I will tell you my story.”

  A troupe of tree-sprites emerged from the shadows, gathering around the fire as they jockeyed for the best seats. Moki scooted closer to Sharon, making room for more spritelings. One little female spriteling, with a crown full of stringy yellow grass instead of hair, even crawled onto her lap. Sharon gave her head a little pat.

  Gabriel bowed his wolf head, placed his claws together as if in prayer, and cleared his throat. “I was born with more luck than most in these unforgiving times. My family was of noble blood and our skin was as pale as the moon. We were wealthy and could afford books, fine linen, silk sheets, and, of course, slaves. I’m ashamed to say that it wasn’t until my twentieth birthday did my eyes open to the evils of slavery. When I witnessed a slave, a small boy, beaten to death in the streets by King Solomon himself for splashing mud on his royal robes. The boy’s skin, eyes, and hair were black, but his blood flowed as red as my own.”