Mirrorworld (41 page)

The Assassin groaned softly to himself. Lucin actually smacked himself in the face, prompting a surprised squawk from his bird, which had been settled again on his head and now flew off to perch on the nearest boulder and stare at him reproachfully. Kendra giggled quietly to herself.

“Thank you Marcus,” Musk said, looking very relieved. “We’re agreed, then?”

“Assuming we don’t all end up as smears on the castle wall,” Lucin asked, with the manner of a horrified explorer set on plumbing the very depths of the heathen, haunted, death-trap-ridden tomb he found himself in, “what happens next?”

“We regroup,” Musk said. “We get a feel for where we are, see what’s around, find our way to Keithus and do our best to defeat him. Between us, we have magical resilience, strength, a means of incapacitation that can’t be countered, eyes everywhere.. more than enough assembled talent to take down one wizard. Look,” he continued, standing erect, his figure outlined dramatically against a background of activity below, “we’ve come a long way, and it’s not been easy, but I’ve seen the extent of our good and bad sides on this journey, and despite whatever flaws we might claim to have, I know that we are strong enough to triumph here, today. The idea of Keithus is scary, but we’ve been feeding this
idea
for too long – when it comes down to it, he’s just one man, and we
can
stop him.”

He paused. Everyone stared at him. Kendra applauded briefly. “Don’t get complacent, hero,” the Assassin murmured, just audibly.

“I’m just trying to make you all feel a little better,” Musk said irritably. “We probably aren’t going to get another chance for navel-gazing.”

“We’re fine,” Marcus said meaningfully. “Really, we are.”

“Pah. Fine. But don’t come crying to me later. Everyone got everything? Ready for this?”

“I am
never
going to be ready for this,” Lucin said to no-one in particular, his head in his hands, “but if we’re actually going to do this, go ahead, let’s get it over with. I’ll be right here, making peace with a god.”

“Which one?” Kendra inquired interestedly.

“What have you got?” Lucin asked bleakly.

Musk ignored him, turning instead to Fervesce. “Might we have a bubble, please?”

The old man blinked, coming out of his giant mirror-induced trance once again. “Yes, yes of course,” he said, and closed his eyes. After a moment, though nothing changed visibly, Marcus felt the difference in the air around him as the bubble sprung up, encapsulating them in pure psychic energy. It was a strange sensation even before you left the ground.

“Can I see it?” Musk asked. “I need to position myself.” Fervesce nodded, and after a moment, white lines began to draw themselves in the air all around them, spinning and knotting together into an intricate pattern that at first resembled a giant, spherical snowflake, before the patterns intensified, doubling back over the blank spots and whiting themselves out. With a few moments, the group was contained within an eerily translucent pale sphere. “Good,” Musk said to himself, moving over to the side of the bubble that faced towards the distant castle, and reaching out his fists to touch against it. His hands slipped right through, however, and so he addressed Fervesce again; “could you solidify it here, for me? Just so I have something to brace myself against?”

Fervesce nodded again, eyes now shut tightly and his fingers massaging his temples. The shape of the bubble flickered briefly, and Musk leant forward on the air, which shifted under his weight but otherwise held him up by his fists. Musk now also closed his eyes, concentrating, and his hands began to expand to a size far beyond any Marcus had previously seen.

“Kendra,” Musk called, “be ready. Alright, Fervesce, when you can. Let’s do this.”

Marcus looked around. Fervesce was stood in the very centre of the bubble, with Lucin and the Assassin on his far side. Lucin had closed his eyes, and for once probably didn’t have his vision in anyone else’s head, unless it was the head of someone far far away who wasn’t moving at all. The Assassin maintained his trademark cool, although his hand kept slipping to the hilt of his sword. Next to Marcus stood Kendra, whose eyes were alight with a terrified excitement. She caught his gaze, grinned nervously and slipped her hand into his, just as Fervesce exhaled deeply, and their small sphere lifted from the ground. They hovered there for a moment, half a metre removed from the ground level of their overlook, as Fervesce took several more deep breaths.

“Fast,” he murmured. “Has to be fast.” He opened his eyes, and looked around. “I recommend holding on to something,” he said, “although I’m aware that there isn’t much to hold on to.” He smiled crookedly. “Thank you for travelling Viaggiatori airways. Passengers should we aware that we are prone to departing without warning, and also that the duty free cart will be making its way to-“

Whoosh.

Marcus’s memory of the flight to Keithus’s castle was one that he would later compare to the sensation of being both on fire and on a terrifying roller coaster at the same time. The speed with which they shot across the canyon almost burned, and everyone fell into a heap at the same instant, excepting Fervesce, who stood steadfast at the centre of their bubble, and Musk, who unflinchingly held his position. Marcus experienced a terrible feeling of weightlessness as he fell towards the far-off ground and bounced off a see-through nothingness before getting very far, a feeling that was instantly replaced by nausea as he watched that same ground shoot past at ridiculous speed. And suddenly the castle was looming before them, and Musk was yelling for Kendra, who had barely managed to pull herself into a sitting position but was nonetheless humming away, and Fervesce was sagging, as if the effort was going to cause him to come undone before they could make it..

And then they arrived, with an unfathomably loud crash, and a blast of white light.

Marcus came to with a groan, and found himself lying in a prone position, with distant harpies screaming in his ears, miscellaneous shapes bouncing off his retinas, and a stonker of a headache gouging bass lines into his skull. He pulled himself upright, groping for his staff among the scattered shards of masonry that now lay about him, looming like icebergs in the faint fog of spiralling dust motes that the group’s explosive arrival had sent scattering from many years of restful slumber. Between clouds, the air was filled up by both the groaning of the others as they too came around, and the louder, more serious complaints of the castle as it angrily bemoaned the serious number they’d done on its structural integrity. Marcus made it to his feet, massaging his temples in time to the creaks, groans, and nearby sounds of further falling rubble, clawing free of the dust as his brain offered up half-formed lamentations for the newly wrecked state of his favourite jacket.

Around him, the others were all staggering upright as well. The momentum of their magic missile appeared to have taken them further than just the outer wall of the castle; they were spread across the sad corpse of a room that was once removed from the outer corridor, their passage through which was marked by a stream of destruction that led back to the big, ugly rend they’d torn in the castle’s side. Marcus staggered over to the great gap, picking his way past all the bits of castle that were lying around, and looked down; far below, figures were reacting to the sudden explosion, with a contingent of creatures already on its way up the path towards the castle’s main entrance. As Marcus appeared in the chasm, several figures fired arrows up at him that fell pathetically short.

“I think we may have used up our element of surprise,” he announced, stepping back into the room. The Assassin spun, sword drawn, only to relax when he saw who it was. Lucin and Kendra had picked themselves up and were brushing each other off, but Musk was crouched next to Fervesce, who lay still on the floor. Marcus felt his heart lurch at the sight of the old man, who looked broken and feeble, lying surrounded as he was by chaos of his own making.

“Can you stand?” Musk asked him, attempting to tug him up by the arm. Fervesce got as far as a sitting position before slumping against the other man with a groan. “No,” he said.

“Damnit,” Musk said, pounding his fist, which was visibly bruised, against the wall, which trembled. “We can’t leave you here. People will be heading for our position even now. We have to move you.”

“No you don’t,” Fervesce said sadly. “My work is done; I got you here. You can go on.”

“This is no time to be noble,” Musk growled. “I won’t leave a man behind!”

“I’m not being noble, Musk. I’m being realistic. I can barely stand, and I’ll be no use in a fight after that exertion. But you’re all here where you need to be, mostly safe. This is your only chance, and you don’t want me slowing you down. You don’t have a choice and you know it.”

“Orcs coming!” the Assassin called, from where he had moved forwards to watch the corridor.

Musk roared wordlessly, and pounded the wall again, dislodging more dust. “I won’t leave you, Fervesce. This would be a terrible place to die.”

“We all understood the risks when we agreed to this,” the old man said weakly, “I won’t begrudge my circumstance now. Listen, I’ve lived long enough to not be too fazed by the thought of death, especially when I know I did all I could. So really, I’m okay. But hey, get me a spare blade from that young man over there. You wouldn’t leave an old man unarmed, would you?”

“No,” Musk said with a sigh, and quickly negotiated the borrowing of a blade from the Assassin, who looked at him as if he’d gone mad before returning to his defensive pose, occasionally flipping his direction to guard the corridor from both directions. The sound of a large group of bodies moving rapidly in their direction echoed audibly as Musk handed the long knife to Fervesce, and stood regarding him sadly. “Good luck,” he said, and saluted.

“To you too,” Fervesce said, returning the salute. “I think you may need it more.”

The group backed slowly out of the broken room, joining the Assassin in the corridor. Lucin was the first to dive out, anxiously announcing that his eyes had informed him that the approaching antagonists were less than a minute away. Kendra lingered longer, crouching next to Fervesce and giving him a long hug, before slowly stepping away. For his part, Marcus gave the old man a nod, which he returned with a smile and a wink that could have meant anything.

“Which way do we go?” Kendra asked.

“They’re coming from that way,” Lucin said, pointing to the left. The Assassin, who had been facing the other way, instantly swung around with a curse. “We should go the other way.”

“No,” Musk said decisively. “I won’t leave them to pick off Fervesce. We’re all competent here; we go through them. Kendra, you can help us out, right?”

“What?!” Lucin gaped, as Kendra nodded.

“Listen,” Musk said, but further debate became pointless as their attackers came into view around the natural bend of the corridor; a brawling, formless mess of green-skinned, long-toothed, scruffily-armoured, blade-wielding monstrosities that came roaring towards them with an inhuman beastliness that they were quite entitled to, and hesitated as Kendra clapped her hands and blasted them with a shockwave of pure Talent. They didn’t topple like the humans of Tiski had, but they wavered long enough for the Assassin, Musk and Marcus to spring forward and quickly incapacitate the majority with quick raps to the head. The last of the group had just about recovered from the blast when Marcus reached them, and he found himself staring into a leering, grotesque face that sat atop a body that stretched at least a foot higher than his own, and had a blade to match. The monster fell upon him with a snarl, and Marcus smartly stepped to the side, spun and sliced the beast with his scythe, the blade of which cut easily through the beast’s armour and skin. The orc fell past Marcus, roaring and spurting blood all over him on the way to the floor, which it hit with a definitive
thud
.

Marcus fell back against the wall. Musk and the Assassin had incapacitated the rest of the group; the former leapt over the prone forms that lay between him and Marcus in order to come over and grab Marcus by the shoulder, asking if he’d been wounded.

“No, no,” Marcus said giddily. “It’s just.. I never encountered orcs before.”

“You think
we
have?” Musk asked.

“I have,” the Assassin said from behind him.

“Shut up,” Musk said. To Marcus, he said, “it’s overwhelming yes. It probably doesn’t help that it emptied its insides out all over you. But you got to deal with it. You’ve got a weapon and the means to use it and we’re going to need that if we want to reach Keithus. Which we do.”

“I know, I know,” Marcus said, standing up. “It was just a bit of a surprise, that’s all.”

“Yes, I wasn’t really prepared for it either,” Musk said with a half-smile.

“I was,” the Assassin said.

“Shut up,” Musk said, shooting the man a death glare. “Come on, let’s move!”

They ran up the corridor, which curved away from the outer wall of the castle, heading deeper into the structure and shortly opening up into a vast, multi-levelled hall, full of staircases winding their way upwards and, more urgently, another contingent of orcs, who for their part appeared very surprised to suddenly find themselves in company.

“Which way do we go?” Musk asked Lucin, who had been running with his eyes closed.

“Up,” the short man said, and winced. “Ouch. Aura found him.. but I lost the connection. Big hall, like this, near the top of the castle. Few floors up, deeper in. Oh, my head.. What did he do..?!”

“So which way do we go
right now?”
Musk asked, as the orcs ahead recovered their senses and charged. With a sigh, Marcus stood forward to meet the oncoming chaos, supported by another knee-knocking castigation from Kendra.

“Lucin! Answer me!” Musk roared, from amidst a whirlwind of flying fists somewhere to Marcus’s right.

“I don’t know!” the small man answered from behind. “No-one happens to be looking at a map of the castle right now!”