“That’s a bad thing?”
“I’d say so. You see, most of the progress we’ve made here has been the result of someone daring to go and do something crazy. Nearly thirty years ago now, one of our people sought leave to take a small group into the Mirrorline to try out some theories he had. The council told him no, but he went anyway, and the result of that is most of what we now know about fast-travel between the two worlds. We discovered that the solidity of our reality was strong enough to bolster a frame of Lams and create a portal that wouldn’t be undone by the Mirrorline’s kinetic chaos, allowing us to move between our worlds instantaneously if we needed to. It was a massive step forward, and if they’d listened to the council then it might never have happened.”
“You lost me a bit there,” Marcus admitted. “What happened to this guy, this rebel?”
“They tried to make him the Master,” Eira said with a dark laugh. “But he ran away. So they wrote him into the Storie, then tried to pretend that he’d never existed. The old guard – or what’s left of the old guard from his day, since I guess he’d be the old guard himself now – they still refuse to say his name. They remember. Such is the legacy of Rashalamn. Now I have to deal with the old bastards every day, and I’m fairly sure they see me as another Rash waiting to happen. It’s fun stuff.”
“It sounds it,” Marcus tried to say, but his voice was hijacked by another yawn halfway through. He could feel the fog thickening over his mind again. Just one proper sleep, and then maybe he could feel normal again.. “What’s the Storie?” he asked, soldiering on determinedly.
“Big book,” Eira said vaguely. “Our history. Greatest achievements, influential Viaggiatori, that sort of thing. Everybody wants to get a mention in there. Kind of pompous, really.”
“Do you want to get in there?”
“Of course. But it’s still pompous.”
There was quiet for a moment while Marcus digested this information. The Master closed her eyes and rested her head on bunched-up fists, swaying slightly to the faint tick-tock of the study’s clock. Fearing that she might fall asleep on him, Marcus picked up the conversation again. “The next one was of a place, Port-somewhere, melting. So Eustace said. I didn’t see it.”
“That’s simple,” Eira murmured. “Metaphor for the city’s current state of turmoil. This city is called Portruss, didn’t anybody mention that?”
“Maybe,” Marcus said. “There’s been a lot of other stuff going on. Like the next part, where the crazy dark thing descended from the sky amidst peals of manic laughter and blew us all to hell.”
“Ah,” Eira said, her head suddenly falling from its perch on her fists. “Yeah, that’s the big one.”
“The big one?”
“Yes.” She sat back in her chair, and looked straight at Marcus. “That crazy dark thing, Marcus, is the reason that you are here.”
Marcus blinked. “Was it Death, then?”
“What? No, no, far worse. That... was Keithus.”
Silence in the study again. Tick, tock.
“There’s something worse than Death, and its name is Keithus?”
“His name is Keithus.”
“And he’s what? Some kind of monster.. demon.. thing?”
“No no..” Eira ran a hand through her hair, where it promptly got stuck. “Remember, it was just a dream. It was mostly an exaggeration, but, well, in truth it was a fairly accurate representation of what he’s capable of, which is the complete and utter destruction of all things. But he is just a man.”
Marcus drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How can one man have the capability to destroy everything?”
“He’s a wizard,” Eira said simply. “Yeah, we have wizards. Wizards and magic. And I’m not talking about the kind of stuff we do, which is science. No, for wizards magic is dribbly candles and incantations and elemental spells and so on. Our craft can be learnt, but theirs.. you’re either born with it or you aren’t. The Wizarding Tower here in Portruss takes on those who are, and teaches them how to control it. Keithus was an apprentice there once, and now he’s an incredibly powerful wizard. Some say he’s the strongest there ever was, stronger even than the ancient mages whose magical duels reshaped half the world. The wizards worried about him, about all that power, but despite all that he was still their golden child.”
“Past tense?”
“Yes, because this is where the trouble starts. Up until a few months ago, Keithus was a renowned eccentric who more or less kept to himself. Then, one day, he came to us, and asked us to let him through the Mirrorline, to Earth.”
“Did you let him?” Marcus prompted, as Eira had closed her eyes again.
“No. How could we? Remember,” she added, imitating the orientation video’s marvellous baritone, “balance is key. We like to play with the Mirrorline, but our main thing as an organisation is preservation, not experimentation. That means making sure that things that are exclusive to one world or the other stay that way, which is bloody hard given that the Mirrorline is super volatile, all the time. Without us to manage it when it freaks out and swallows people or places and spits them out on the other side – or just straight up eats them – who knows what would happen? There is a balance, and though we barely understand it, our best reference tool being how happy the Mirrorline is on any given day, we try to maintain it. That’s why we couldn’t let an impossibly powerful wizard simply hop over to Earth for a day trip, or whatever. Where there’s a wizard, there’s magic.”
“I guess that would cause a bit of a mess,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “We don’t really have anything that could counter magic. Bombs and stuff, maybe. I wonder who would win in that fight.”
“Yaha,” Eira said, “that’s how it works. Your bombs and stuff are another example. And this.” She waved at her strange kettle, which was shaped like a large, crumpled hourglass. A bright flame danced endlessly in the lower bulb, gifting light unto the darkening study and casting flickering shadows across the walls around them as it heated the water that was poured into the upper bulb. “On Earth, you use electricity to boil your water, to power your appliances. Here, we bottle magic to the same purpose. Different paths to the same result. Balance.”
“Okay, no magic for us, then,” Marcus said, massaging his temples with his fingertips. “And no crossing for Keithus. But what about me?” he asked. “What do I have to do with all this?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Eira said. “You’re the key.”
“They key to what?”
“To Keithus. To stopping him, fixing him, balancing him, or something else.”
“Who told you that?” Marcus asked, amazed.
“The Mirrorline told me,” Eira said. “I went to ask it for advice, and it showed me you.”
Marcus stared. “Well,” he said after a moment, “that’s surprising.”
“Fortuitous is what it is,” Eira said, ignoring his tone, “because this is far from done. Keithus wasn’t happy when we told him no. He got angry and started breaking things, and people. Other wizards restrained him, robbed him of all his magical artefacts and kicked him out of the city.. It wasn’t the best of days. By all accounts Keithus left for the north, and now there’s an army gathering somewhere up in that cold wasteland, and the whispers on the wind carry the intent to raid Portruss.”
“Keithus’s army?” Marcus suddenly felt very on edge, as if the man might dive in through the window and blow them all to pieces at any moment. Eira leaned over to blow into a glass tube that extended from her kettle, and the flame brightened, bringing more light to the room and making him feel a little better.
“Very much Keithus’s army,” she said, adding water. “That whispers on the wind part was just me being poetic. He sent us an envoy. It essentially said ‘reconsider, or I’ll kill you all’. Now the whole city is at risk, which hasn’t made us very popular with everyone else who lives here, but what can we do? We are long past talking him down; he absolutel
y despises us for some reason. So we have to resist forcibly. In the end, one city is less important than the fate of two worlds. I’d much rather it not come to that,” she added, glancing meaningfully at Marcus, “but if it did, I’d throw every brick and stone that makes up Portruss into Keithus’s path if they could keep him away from the Mirrorline.”
“It’s certainly not an ideal situation,” Marcus said. “You’re being threatened by a wizard and an army that are more than prepared to mow their way through an entire populace just to get to you. I can definitely see how I’m going to be able to help with that situation.”
“You will help us,” Eira said, shaking her hair forward and peering at him studiously from beneath it. “I know you will. I saw it in the Mirrorline. Your connection with Keithus, it’s real. It’s big. It means something. Something about you is vitally important. I don’t suppose you know what it is?”
Marcus had no idea, nor even any desire to consider it. He’d come into this conversation with intent to see it through to the end, and now they were here he was wishing that he hadn’t. I was quite happy drinking my life away in perpetual misery, he wanted to say again. I didn’t ask for this. Somewhere along the line my life picked up meaning and purpose without even bothering to consult me first, and I don’t want it. I gave up on that long ago. All this happening now feels the world’s latest punchline to the world’s lamest joke. All of these thoughts bounced through his rapidly failing mind, and when he tried to turn them into words the only thing that came out of his mouth was another huge yawn.
Eira grinned again, in the midst of pouring herself another coffee. “Look,” she said, “it’s late, and your brain is probably overflowing from all the nonsense I just told you. Go get some sleep, leave thinking for the morning. After all, we’re not really in a rush. Keithus is a long way away, and if he starts moving we’ll hear about it long before he’s close enough to threaten us. So go rest, don’t get blown up, and we’ll pick this up again tomorrow. Sound good?”
Marcus thought that sounded excellent. “Where?” he asked, blinking tiredness away.
“Where you woke up last. It’s your room now, while you’re here with us. Think you can find it again?”
“I doubt it.”
“Alright, well, go bug that useless receptionist of mine. She’ll get you there.”
“Okay. Where’s my staff?”
“You left it over there. Sleep well, Marcus.”
Marcus grabbed the staff, and made to go bug the receptionist, noting as he left that Eira appeared to have no intentions of going to sleep herself anytime soon. The receptionist was about to leave as well, and grudgingly agreed to show Marcus the way back on the way to her own quarters. She complained endlessly, but he didn’t care. He zombie-walked his way through the corridors, fell face first into his bed, and slept evenly with barely remembered dreams of being watched from afar.
6
Marcus woke up the next morning feeling better than he had for a long time. His brain, it seemed, had moved past being able to only offer a slightly panicked bemusement in response to new experiences; his thoughts arrived now freely and in peace. No more long buried memories had slunk from their resting places to torment him in the night, and even the dark days from before the exploding jukebox had faded, their memory prompting nothing more than the shivered recollection of a bad dream.
Bolstered with rare cheer, Marcus thus extracted himself from the myriad folds of his bed, and made to explore the rest of his new suite. Opening a door that he hadn’t before led him to a bathroom, the centrepiece of which was an ancient, free-standing, claw-footed tub. Marcus tentatively turned a tap, and hot water instantly cascaded from it. Magic, he thought with a smile, and had a bath.
A little later on, a dressed and refreshed Marcus Chiallion wandered into his suite’s lounge, and found one of the men from yesterday had again gotten there ahead of him. In the absence of his muscular companion, the short, wiry man was fulfilling their collective quota for brooding over the board game. He sat studying the board with an intensity that would have unsettled a more sentient and socially aware block of varnished wood, even as Marcus moved over to sit opposite him.
“Morning,” the man said, not looking up. “Sleep well?”
“I did actually,” Marcus said, relaxing into his seat.
“Well that’s peachy,” the other man said, and that appeared to be the total sum of his thoughts on the matter. Marcus refused to let the sheer enthusiasm of this response dent his mood, and so consented to sit and wait for something else to happen. His companion maintained his focus on the game for a few moments longer, before sitting back with a sigh and an air of one coerced. He studied Marcus briefly, silent but for the drumming of his fingers along the arm of his chair, before glancing back down at the board. “Do you play chess at all, Marcus?” the man asked.
Marcus checked the board to ensure that this was the same chess he was familiar with. Either way, it didn’t affect his answer, which was “no”.
“Hrm,” the man said. “Well, that’s probably for the best. See, there are some who suggest that you can learn a lot about a person from the way they play a game like this, but I’m not sure I believe it. Imagine if we could just have at it for a couple of rounds and come away knowing everything there is to know about each other! Ha. Might as well ask you to lie back on the couch and talk about your father.” The man sighed again. “Anyway, that probably didn’t mean much to you, so I should go back and start from the top. We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Helm.”
“Marcus,” Marcus said, warily shaking the man’s limply-offered hand.
“Aye,” Helm said. “Well, I understand you’ve been bought up to speed somewhat on the nature of what this place is and how it’s connected to the world you came from, etcetera, which is good, because though I have been instructed to answer any questions you may have, that’s not really why I’m here and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t waste my time like that.”
“Why are you here?” Marcus asked, perhaps slightly more pointedly than was required.
“I’m here,” the man said, very deliberately sitting back and steepling his fingers, “because the Master called me into her office yesterday and informed me that she needed a full psychological profile for the person” – pointed fingers tilted towards Marcus – “that she was in the process of bringing in. It was news to me, I can tell you, and not the kind I was hoping for when I got her runner. But,” he added grudgingly, “she’s the boss, needs must, and so here we are.”
“The Master wants a psych profile of me?” Marcus asked. “What for?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Helm said wearily. “It’s standard procedure. Every would-be immigrant gets one, and if we don’t think they’d be able to function adequately in a different world, then they don’t get to cross the Mirrorline. Obviously we usually do this in advance, and obviously standard procedure is out of the window at this point because here you sit. But, since you’re apparently so important, the Master still wants it, and consequently, despite the fact that I could turn that mirror in the corner to a portal and be in the Mirrorline accumulating impossibilities in the time it’d take for you to remember how a knight moves… Instead, I am here, telling you this, an apt microcosm of the human resources fun-pit that my particular Talent dooms me to, wherein I shall chaperone newbies until I die.”
“Well alright then.” Marcus, who considered himself a curmudgeon of some repute, was so awed by the sheer amount of bitter sarcasm Helm had successfully compressed into a fairly short speech that he almost felt moved to applaud. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
“No problem,” Helm said darkly. “Here to help. You have been informed of this great and mystical importance that you’re apparently in possession of, yes?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard all about how awesome I am,” Marcus said cheerfully. Inwardly he was more than agreeable towards Helm’s scepticism, but the man was being so blatantly
antagonistic about it that Marcus felt moved to take the opposing stance, if only for the sake of being able to annoy him more efficiently. The man narrowed his eyes at this response, and Marcus fancied that he could almost hear gears grinding behind the man’s ill-concealed frown as he tried to calculate the extent to which he was being mocked. Silence stretched into awkwardness.
“Well, this was a fun talk,” Helm said eventually. “But it’s time to get moving.” He rose from his seat with the slow lethargy of one who was hoping that his legs would fall off and leave him able to lie down and quietly expire, instead of stubbornly remaining attached and so forcing him to go about his business. “We have an appointment down in the labs,” he revealed, “where with a bit of luck we’ll be able to find out all about exactly how awesome I sincerely hope that you are. Come on.”
Helm strode out without looking back, leaving Marcus to marvel at how much brighter the world seemed in the man’s absence. Chuckling at the thought of how refreshing it was to meet someone whose life seemed gloomier than his own, Marcus grabbed Death’s staff and set out after his new friend, to discover what the Mirrorworld had in store for him today.
It took almost ten minutes of walking to arrive at the entrance to the labs, ten minutes of strolling in pained, deliberate silence through corridors that seemed to be gently spiralling in on themselves. Marcus was fairly certain that Helm had taken every right turn they’d come across, and yet their path had somehow not led them around in a big circle yet. Instead, the corridors became darker and less elaborately decorated, until they culminated in a stone staircase that led down into a deep, foreboding gloom, lit only by the ceaselessly dancing light of various lamps and their captured flames. The air felt stale, and dust swirled in their wake where their footsteps disturbed its slumber. By the time they reached the bottom, where their way stood blocked by a large stone door with LAB carved into it, Marcus was starting to feel decidedly twitchy.
Mirrorworld Page 6