The Mirrored City

by Michael J. Bode

  Nasara raised her arms and tensed her fingers, but nothing happened.

  “Last chance, Aunt. The Abyss awaits.”

  Nasara screamed and launched herself at Jessa, Thunderstone in hand. For an old woman, her aunt was surprisingly quick. Jessa drew her rapier and slashed at Nasara, but the older woman used her Thunderstone to parry the blows. She might have been a better fighter than Jessa or Satryn in terms of technique… in her youth.

  But she was old, and all she had was a crude piece of rock no longer than six inches. Jessa slashed hard and wild, driving Nasara back, blows chipping the shard of rock in her hand, cutting her vulnerable flanks.

  Tired of sparring, Jessa lunged to skewer her aunt’s heart. It was almost too easy. The old woman had left herself open. It didn’t occur to Jessa until too late that she had made herself vulnerable.

  All it took was a scratch.

  The Thunderstone in Nasara’s hand jammed just under Jessa’s ribcage, and she felt a riot of pain explode through her abdomen. Nasara fell to the floor, her heart pierced by Jessa’s rapier. Jessa fell beside her aunt.

  “Ow. Fuck that hurts! You fucking bitch!” Jessa rolled over on her side, hand pressed against the bloody wound. She gasped in pain but realized she was neither dead nor dying. Blood gushed from under her ribcage, and it felt like someone had slipped a hot coal under her skin, but she was alive.

  “Impossible,” Nasara gasped as the blood poured from her mouth.

  Jessa looked at the blood on her hand. “Perhaps these stones aren’t as powerful as we’ve been led to believe.”

  Jessa stood and walked over to Nasara, grabbing the stone from her hand. Looking her aunt in her eyes, Jessa brought the stone to Nasara’s neck. The older woman said nothing, but her eyes burned with impotent fury.

  Jessa slid the edge of the Thunderstone across Nasara’s skin, drawing blood.

  The old woman’s body convulsed for the briefest of moments as it dissolved into briny seawater. All that remained of Nasara was a wet silk dress. Jessa gasped, dropping the stone in surprise as she stepped away.

  Her own wound ached. Why didn’t the Thunderstone kill me? Was Nasara lying, or is there something more to it?

  The door to the chamber opened, and Nerrax strode in next to Pisclatet. Nerrax looked briefly at the pool that was his mother’s body and then addressed Jessa. “Are you all right, Tempest? Shall I call for the blood mages?”

  Jessa winced. “Please do.”

  “Fishman,” Nerrax commanded, “fetch a blood priest. Anyone should do—the wound doesn’t look that serious.”

  “Pisclatet shall fetch the most beautiful bandages in all of Thelassus!” Pisclatet scurried off into the Palace, probably to disappear for several hours to choose the appropriate colored silk.

  “You knew who I was,” she said.

  “It would be hard not to. You seemed a bit slow to take my hint,” he replied.

  “Why?”

  He grinned roguishly. “You killed your mother… and mine. What child of an insane Stormlord doesn’t pray for that?”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Reflections

  MADDOX

  Daniel,

  I don’t know if you’ll ever get this. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. The eggheads say it will be millions of years before it gets home, if it ever does. They think we’re located somewhere called RCS2319 and have pinpointed a section of the sky where we can beam a message.

  They say there are other initiatives beyond the portal, ones that would put people’s minds inside computers. In an infinite universe, everything possible must exist. I’m really starting to believe that.

  We’ve found so many amazing things here. We’ve made contact with beings unlike anything science can explain. I don’t know if they’re aliens or angels… we just call them Guides. We’re performing miracles every day. People hope that one day they’ll teach us how to come home. Maybe they’re there among you now, helping heal Earth like they’re helping us transform this planet into a home.

  I don’t know what happened or why we lost contact. I have to hold onto the idea that there was a reason I couldn’t be there to teach you to drive or shoot a gun or any of that. You’ll be an older man than I am if and when you read this, and I’ll most likely be dead. I guess I’d want you to know that I’ve had an interesting life out here.

  I love you,

  Dad

  —ENCODED MESSAGE, CURRENTLY IN TRANSIT

  MADDOX STEPPED INTO the storefront of his dad’s alchemy shop, Badlands’ Philters. It was supposed to say Baeland’s but the sign maker couldn’t read his father’s writing, and Dad was too cheap to have it fixed.

  The front of the house consisted of a small laboratory with cluttered shelves for reagents and rows upon rows of bottles. Most of the interesting-looking ones were colored water, stacked in front of the windows to give a stained glass effect as the morning sun poured in.

  A flask of foul-smelling blue liquid bubbled over a burner, filling the room with the cloying aroma of sweetgrass. It was the smell of his childhood.

  “I’ll be damned,” a voice called from the back of the shop. Hubert Baeland emerged from the back. He was disheveled, bearded, and balding with his blue alchemist robes open to reveal his round hairy belly. “If it ain’t my faggot son. How you doing, Junior?”

  “Fuck,” Maddox said, for lack of a better expression.

  The Dreaming regularly served up some twisted shit during his period of narcotic exploration—but it had never been deliberately cruel. The man who had beaten and berated him stood there in the flesh, reeking of chemicals and alcohol.

  “Fuck,” Hubert said, “is right. I thought you were too good to come down to Beaker Street with your fancy seals. You still scared of your old man, Junior?”

  “I go by Maddox now… Hubert,” Maddox said. He didn’t know why he bothered answering. His father was dead, and this was obviously some personal hell constructed by the Harrower.

  “You came out of my dick, so I’ll call you what I please.” Hubert pointed to the bubbling flask. “Now help me with the fucking distillation. You still know how to do that, right? Or did you forget?”

  “Unlike you, I’m actually good at my craft,” Maddox spat.

  “Oh yeah—the great ‘Archwizard’ Maddox. Big wizard you, with your two fucking seals, going up against a Harrower. I’ll let you in on a secret—”

  “I’m not just a wizard; I’m an Architect.”

  Hubert sniffed the potion. “Which means exactly shit. You have some vague power you can’t even begin to use. It’s like a priest with a twelve-inch cock. I’ll tell you what you are: you’re a Baeland. My dad was a piece of shit, and his dad was a piece of shit. You’re a foulmouthed drunken fuckup who likes it up the ass. You may be the biggest piece of shit our family ever crapped out.”

  Maddox clenched his fists. “And to think when I heard you had died I was a little bit conflicted about it.”

  “Yeah,” his dad grumbled to himself, “I’m dead because of you, you little piss stain. You could have stopped Riley. You lived with the asshole for fuck’s sake. That ‘brilliant mind’ of yours didn’t do shit for you, did it?”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Maddox said. “You tried to fucking drown me in the river.”

  “Discipline.” Hubert removed the potion from the burner and swirled it. “You were an ornery son of a bitch.”

  “What did I do, Hubert?”

  He paused and shrugged. “I’m sure I had a good reason.”

  “You were shitfaced?”

  “You killed the woman I loved when you came out of your mother’s belly. Vera was the only person who ever made me reconsider this shitty miserable life. And what did I get in exchange for her? I got you, a crying little faggot who never knew when to shut up. You were a disappointment from the start, and if I could go back, I’d make sure she never had that baby.” Hubert smiled and sniffed the blue potion again. The color was slowly deepen
ing to purple.

  Maddox wiped the corner of his eye. “Would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”

  “What’s done is done.” Hubert scratched his beard. “Even in the fucking afterlife I get you instead of her. Hells, maybe it’s what I deserve. Never put much faith in answering for my sins, you know? At least the shop is well stocked.”

  “You didn’t deserve me, you crapulent failure!” Maddox shouted. “You didn’t then, and you don’t now. This nightmare is my punishment, not yours. I would love to see my mother, hells I’d even take Jessa’s mother over you, and that woman was the very definition of evil. You aren’t just a terrible person, you’re terrible at being a person.”

  Hubert roared and charged at Maddox. Maddox raised his hands and hurled the full force of his seal—but nothing happened. His eyes registered panic for a second before his father grabbed Maddox’s hair and dragged him to the support beam next to the stairs.

  CRACK.

  It was like he was five years old again. Powerless. Sobbing. Hurting. He slid to the floor and curled into a ball. He could feel blood pouring down the side of his face.

  “You think you can face a Harrower with your little tattoo, Junior? Your hells are just starting.”

  Maddox felt rage well up within him. He jumped to his feet and readied himself to fight back, placing one foot behind him to give his punch momentum. He had picked up a little bit of hand-to-hand muscle memory from Sword.

  Hubert laughed.

  Maddox hit his father in his hairy stomach, knocking him back. The potion bottle slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.

  “Now look what you did!” Hubert glared at Maddox and backhanded him across the face, knocking him to the floor. He felt his father’s smelly foot press down on his cheek. Maddox struggled to stand, but the man shifted more and more weight until Maddox’s head throbbed with pain.

  “You’re never going to beat me, Junior.”

  “What do you want?” Maddox gritted his teeth.

  “Respect in my own house,” Hubert said. “You can start by cleaning up that mess and distilling another bottle. When you’re done with that, I’ll have other chores. It’s either that or beatings. Understand?”

  Tears were mixing with blood on Maddox’s face. He sniffled. “Yes. I understand.” Fuck the Harrower. I can’t do this, anything but this. But what choice do I have?

  Hubert removed his foot. “And clean those faggot tears off my floor. Well? Hurry the fuck up. You think I’m pissed now—wait till you see what happens if I don’t take my potion.”

  Maddox picked himself off the floor and brushed the blood off of his face. He said the words he thought he would never say: “I–I…forgive you.”

  Hubert’s eyes went wide. “The fuck?”

  “You’re here because I carry a part of you with me. The Harrower didn’t hand pick you to test me—I did. Look, when I was young, you hurt me and that was wrong. But I got away from you and grew up. And without you there to beat me up, I started doing it to myself. That’s why I wanted everyone to respect me.

  “I used to have so many daydreams about coming back here, showing how successful I was, yelling at you, beating you up—even killing you. I’m not saying I don’t have a right to be angry or want revenge. I do. But as long as I hold onto that I will always carry a part of you with me. And I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  Hubert said nothing. Maddox stared without expression, not moving. Every time he fought his father, he only grew stronger.

  “I’m letting you go, Hubert.”

  The old man stood motionless, like a statue.

  Maddox waved his hand, and the door to the shop opened.

  It wasn’t the revenge he wanted. The man was already dead, anyway. But letting go and walking away felt… good.

  The red room twenty-six of the Palace of Keys looked slightly different than Maddox remembered, with different marital aids mounted on wall hooks. Tied to the bed with abraevium chains was a humanoid mass of Protean worms, screeching and straining against the bonds. A rude approximation of a face showed sunken pits where the eyes and mouth were. It was the place they had tried to convert him.

  “Lyta?” Maddox asked, plugging his ears against the horrid wail.

  The noise stopped, mercifully. Her head nodded slowly.

  “Fuck,” he said. “This is your nightmare. I don’t know that much about you, but there is a way out of here. We just have to figure it out.” He tried to unfasten the manacles but found no mechanism, and predictably, his seal magic didn’t work.

  Maddox ran his hands through his hair. “Is this where you were… made into that?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Well, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck breaking through those chains.”

  She flexed her arms and strained against her bonds. As she did, the worms became tighter and longer, coming closer to her human shape. The abraevium filaments attached to the bonds stretched but did not give. That stuff was indestructible. She relaxed back into a looser mass of writhing parts.

  “Wait a minute.” Maddox paused. “You’re all worm right now. All you need to do is that thing Quillian did and flow out of your body.”

  She shook her head violently.

  “Is it because you can’t or because you don’t want to?”

  She nodded.

  “Poor phrasing. Have you tried doing that?”

  She looked down, shaking her head.

  “I get it. You think you’re disgusting, or you don’t want to be what you are. You’ve probably had to hide it all your life. I can sort of relate to that. But if you don’t wriggle free, you’re going to be stuck here forever.”

  The eye sockets closed, and her head tipped back. Her body broke apart and slithered onto the floor, like someone had opened a meat sluice over the bed. The floor was covered in worms, and Maddox tried to withhold his visceral disgust, to appreciate the fluid motions, like a school of fish or flock of starlings, as it reassembled in a ball on the floor.

  Gradually it resumed a crouched human form, and skin began to grow back over it, along with hair, jewelry, and clothing. Lyta stared up at him with brilliant blue eyes. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” Maddox said. “I’ve been to the Dreaming a lot. I know how this stuff works. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  They stepped through the red painted door.

  Maddox stepped into a musty depressing infirmary. Cramped dirty windows let in a trickle of overcast light, and the place smelled of medicinal salves and poultices. Second-rate alchemy, judging by the cloying stink. The rich used healers, the brave used blood mages, and the poor were stuck with herbal cures. He walked along a row of short empty cots with straw-stuffed mattresses. Tattered partitions afforded privacy between the beds.

  Soren was sitting in a bed with a notebook. He looked like a bag of bones, and one of his legs was bound in a rusty brace. He stared out a window.

  “Soren?”

  He turned, and smiled brightly. “Hey, Maddox.”

  “The fuck kind of nightmare is this?” Maddox glanced around at the ratty furniture, the sad uneven table by Soren’s bed, the chipped paint on the face of the Saint Lucian statuette.

  “It’s the infirmary from the Dessim Boy’s Orphanage. I was sick a lot.”

  Maddox’s eyebrow raised. “You’ve had a colossally shitty existence. This can’t be all there is to it.” He looked under the bed. Dust and a bed pan.

  Soren shook his head. “When I was in the orphanage, the other boys used to play jokes on me. I broke my knee during a game of stickball, and they liked to hide my crutches. Sometimes I’d have to wait up here for hours until the brothers realized I was gone. I would watch them play from this window. Once on Unification Day, I was here all night.”

  Maddox wrinkled his nose. “If those fucking assholes only knew what you really were…”

  Soren shrugged weakly. “Nobody knew. I don’t hate them. They’r
e only kids.”

  “You never fought back?” Maddox peered at Soren skeptically, seeing just how frail he was. Maddox had never been much bigger than Soren, but Maddox was at least mean and didn’t shy away from a bloody lip or a kick to the ribs. He had taught his tormenters more than a few lessons once he became proficient in magic. This was just heartbreaking.

  “I never saw the point.” Soren looked out the window. “Plus when they hid my crutches it gave me time alone. I liked to draw this tree in the playground. See?” He showed Maddox a sketchbook. A lone barren tree stood on the page in black charcoal.

  “I draw too,” Maddox said, craning his head studiously. “And that’s not total shit, but you need to resist the urge to smudge so much. You blur the details on your lines. We have to get out of here.”

  Soren shut the book and sighed. “I was hoping I could stay here and draw a little longer. Before I have to leave. You could show me how.”

  “That’s what it wants.” Maddox slid his arm under Soren’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. He grunted.

  “If this is your darkness, you’re too good for this world.”

  You poor, simple fuck.

  FORTY

  Scions of Patrea

  SHANNON

  Subservience is as much a part of our selves as our strength. Discipline is built on the foundation of obedience to orders. A soldier obeys, immediately and without hesitation, any order from his commander.

  As a Patrean, it is in our nature to comply with commands given by superiors and follow rules to the letter. Without structure we are restless, uncertain. It is a gift to know with absolute certainty one’s place. We awaken each day knowing what is required and rest easy each night knowing we have fulfilled our duty.

  Yet there will come a time when every soldier must think for himself. On the field of battle, decisions must be made swiftly and no one will be there to make them. An effective warrior knows how to think like a commander. A superior warrior knows when to think like a commander.

  —The Kan Wo, The Patrean Manual of War, Chapter 26