Mirrorworld (49 page)

“It’s his Talent,” Kendra said with a sigh. “Must be. Forced across the Mirrorline at a time when it was falling apart.. it could totally happen. Boom, instant endless magical talent. That makes sense. But I’m not buying
this
.” She glared at Kimberlite. “You’re just as bad as him.” She turned away to focus on Kai, who had slipped into unconsciousness. “Fervesce, can you take care of Kai? I can’t stand this. I need to talk to Marcus.”

She laid Kai down by the old man, smiled at the boy once more, and then turned her back and walked away, brushing the tears from her eyes.

“She seems upset,” Kimberlite said. Trolls as a whole were not given to the subtlety of human emotions, but in this instance it was pretty obvious.

“We’re all upset,” Musk said, sitting down beside her. “We were the last hope to stop Keithus, and we failed miserably. He’s right there in Portruss now, probably destroying everything. But yes, I think Kendra is probably the most upset. She really liked Marcus, and now he has no reason to ever want to speak to us again. And she liked Kai, too, and now he’s dying. The probability that the world will end soon presumably seals the deal.”

“The world will end?” Kimberlite stared down at Musk.

“Probably,” the man said. “Once Keithus is done exacting whatever revenge he feels necessary, he’s going to return to his original intention, which was to cross to Earth. The most powerful wizard in the Mirrorworld, going to a planet that has no concept of magic at all? This is the problem. The Mirrorline is all about balance, and if he just strolls over there, the whole thing’s going to tip over.”

“
You
don’t seem too bothered about this,” Kimberlite observed.

Musk shrugged. “Maybe not. I’ve spent my entire life in search of something I could really believe in, which I define as something that wouldn’t shatter to pieces from a single punch. I’m happy to have finally found someone who fits that definition, even if it is at the end of all things.”

He smiled up at her, and Kimberlite once again noticed how attractively carved his features were, for a human at least. He was nowhere near craggy enough for her usual taste, but he was tough and heroic, and carried himself in a way that reminded her irresistibly of Dia. Strength, and knowledge of strength, and the confidence that came from that knowledge, and
oh no
, she thought,
I’m eroding!

Marcus was lost. Deep within his own mind, his thoughts lay wrapped around him like a shroud, cutting him off from the physical world and trapping him in memory. He knew, in part, that he still stood in Keithus’s castle, could feel the wind that whistled through the high windows as it blew on a face that barely perceived it, bringing water to eyes that could see only a thousand miles of thoughts. But the physicality of the world had proven secondary to the freight train of recollection that had careened around his memory, powered by the unfortunate truth of Keithus’s crystal ball. It had run from the memory of the discovery all the way back to that faint memory of the moment itself, when his life had jumped track at the hands of the Viaggiatori, and had sparked a revolution in its wake. The many Marcuses of memory had stirred, angry, and demanded his presence, and so it was that he stood now not in a castle but on the hilltop of his mind’s eye, beneath a canopy of broken stars.

He had been here before, of course. Thoughts rolled through his mind like dust; this was the same hilltop that the Viaggiatori labs had built for him, but such a place had had its genesis in his own mind, and he could see a strange sort of sense in how he was now able to return here unaided. He was stood now in a memory that only existed because he had seen it before, and that he had only been able to see before because he’d remembered seeing it now. As Tec had said, long ago, time was a relative concept, and now, working his way through his memories and recalling his ghostly sensation of how someone else had been there with him back then.. now he knew exactly what the man had meant. He wasn’t in the Mirrorline now, but yet, he was, because in a way, he had always been. He’d spent his entire life caught between two worlds, living in one but belonging in the other: just as the Mirrorline was not quite a part of Earth or the Mirrorworld, nor was he, and he’d always carried a piece of it with him, a fragment of infinity lodged in his head. It was by that power that his thoughts had come alive, and it was by that power that they stood before him now, assembled into a riotous mob of torches and pitchforks that would leave him no time for further introspection.

“Your life was a lie,” they seethed collectively. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus confessed. “I can’t get it straight in my head.”

“What’s there to get straight? We are owed a debt.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Marcus said, stirring. “I threw you away.”

“We came back,” his memories said. “We will always come back.”

“I suppose you will,” Marcus said gravely. “So what do you want?”

“Justice,” they said, in unison. “By right of our life, we deserve it.”

“I can’t really deny you that, can I?” Marcus said sadly. “Heavens know, a part of me wants nothing more than to join you. But don’t you think this feels like the easy way out?”

“The
easy
way?” scoffed his younger selves. “What other way is there? We all got the memo. Tinkers and fools corrupted the very course of our existence, dooming us to all of the memories that we represent, all of the sadness and disconnect that you failed to forget. How could you? They gave us that, too, our
Talent,
as they call it, space enough in our head to drown a lifetime of intoxicants and any chance at relief they might have offered. They made us, in our entirety. Where was our will? Our freedom to be anything more than a puppet of fate, cast aside to a foreign world until needed? Gone, if ever it were present, and we would be avenged of it!”

They were right. Marcus knew they were right. These voices had lived none of the days of their life, and now they had someone they could blame as to why. He could silence them no longer, because now they burned not just with the rage for that which they had been condemned to, but with the rage of all of what might have been, everything that their passing had prevented from passing. But somehow, he still resisted their path. “You’re right,” he allowed, “but all of you.. I don’t think you are all of me. I’ve lived a lot, since I saw you last. I’m further from you than I ever was. I dared to believe in fate, for all that it meant nothing. But I
believed,
in something. Are none of you the memory of
that?
”

“We are you,” his selves said, as if reciting, “but we are not all of you.”

“What are you then?” he asked.

“We are dreams of vengeance,” they said, “and we’re here to come true.”

“Marcus?” asked another voice. “Can you hear me?”

Those words came from far away, but they found a way through his illusions. “Kendra?” he asked, blinking. Suddenly, the starstruck hilltop was gone, and he was stood again in Keithus’s castle, looking out not through a looking glass into his darkest memories but through a stone window that showed only the desolate, empty plateau of the Aglaecas Pass. The many instances of his self who had stood in confrontation blinked out of existence, leaving only one person stood before him. It was Kendra, looking sad, tired, worried and pained, but solidly, undeniably alive.

“Hello,” she said, tentatively. “What’s up?”

“Everything I’ve ever hated about everything has come alive and is taking up arms against me,” he told her dreamily. “And they’ve got really compelling arguments.”

“Don’t listen to them,” she advised, with a firmness that shook the memory of his summit, where he knew he still stood, hanging on a mental precipice under assault from history.

“I’m trying!” he said, struggling to keep his tone level. “But what else is there, right now? I don’t see any other choices.” He clenched his fist, trying to hold back the anger that infected him. “Everything I never was is far more powerful that what I am.”

“Nah, it’s not,” Kendra said. “Stuff that isn’t’s got nothing on stuff that is.”

“You’re wrong,” he told her. “It’s more everything than ever. I can’t ignore it, I don’t want to ignore it. They’re back, with all the fire of the stuff they couldn’t be, and I can’t not listen!”

Oh Marcus,” Kendra said suddenly, reaching out to touch his cheek. “I’m so sorry. For what we did, for what happened to you, for the way you had to find out about it.. I’m so sorry.” She grimaced, pulling back her hand as if struck by a terrible thought. “I should have said so straight away. I thought I could give you space.. even now I only came over here because I needed you, not because I thought you needed me.. but..” she looked at him sadly, and spoke as it to herself. “Let me atone for at least some of our mistakes. I know you must think what you learned changes everything, but it doesn’t. It changes reason and colours the shapes but it doesn’t change what happened. And I know you never liked it, but you got past it before, a little bit at least.. Don’t let it beat you now. A bunch of could-have-beens aren’t really any stronger than the truth of what happened, but they can be more seductive.” She looked away, back towards the others, where Fervesce was tending to the young, wounded man. “Who hasn’t wished they could do things differently? We lost to Keithus, and someone who I care about is dying over there, and I know I wish things could have turned out otherwise, but I’m not going to let it eat me.” She looked back to Marcus, catching his icy, distant stare. “That way.. it’s not a good way. It’s Keithus’s way, chasing after a dream of all the things that never were. And look, it sent him haring off to destroy everything that he’s ever known – all the life that he
did
live – in pursuit of a half-dream of something that could be. Do you really want to be that?”

“What choice do I have?” Marcus asked flatly. “It is my fate. Just as it was his.” In his head, his many selves all wore for a moment Keithus’s face, nodding and scowling in approval of his response.

“Your
fate?”
Kendra asked, surprised. “When did you start believing in
that?”

“When I learned the truth!” he roared, and suddenly the anger that drove his thoughts had control of his mouth, and struck out to tear this adversary down. “That was my answer, the one I wanted, the one I got. My entire life I was chasing my own tail, living through doldrums in order to drag myself here, learn a truth that recolours it, and dive back down that rabbit hole to see it all again.” The castle had faded again, the hilltop slaloming back into view as his burning memories razed it, but Kendra was still there, and he poured all the anger of his shattered selves out onto her as if it might help him scour her too. “Why
not
do as Keithus did? I understand him, now. I understand his hate for the Viaggiatori, now that I’ve seen you in action. Always pushing forward, pushing boundaries, pushing your luck.. never stopping to spare an instance of care for the consequences, ignoring the fate of the two lost souls who your work sent careening choicelessly into each other’s lives. You never knew, never cared to know, and never cared to change, either, because after all that you did it again, usurped me from what weak simulacrum of existence I
did
manage to eke out in someone else’s part.. all so that you could point me at Keithus, and send me on my way here, to this final point, where we learn that the whole damn greater destiny that you so desperately wanted to believe I would manifest, the idea of the saviour that I was foolish enough to believe I could be.. none of that is any more or any less than
the leftover threads of the same damn mess that started all this in the first place
! No,” he said, breathing deeply, staring past the rising anger and tears in Kendra’s eyes, oblivious to all but the storm of bitter destruction that was rolling through his mind, burning away the quiet voice of his rebellious self in the thunderous applause of assembled mania, “there’s no more than that. Everything else is lies. There’s no greater destiny for me – no future, no choices, no chance to live. I’ve got nothing but the infinite cycle of fool’s fate that your people kindly made for me, and the memories they trod on to make it happen. And if you won’t even leave me to that, how do I owe you anything other than the same fate Keithus had in store?”

Kendra punched him in the face. Bam! Shock and pain bounced through him, knocking him backwards to the floor, and his fragile mentality shattered like glass. Shards of hilltop fell like rain among fleeing memories as Kendra stood over him, anger painted across her face and present in the ghost of what had been so recently a far more tender touch. “What the hell, Marcus?!” she thundered, shaking out her hand. “Is that it? Is that who you really want to be? The man that fate forgot, the martyr of the meaningless cause? Because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Shut up,” she added, although he hadn’t made to respond, “shut up, shut up, shut up. You are
blind,
” she told him. “Always so busy overthinking your life that you forget to leave any time for living it! Who the hell cares about fate? No, you don’t owe
us
anything, but you don’t owe anything to yourself either.
Believe that your life was nothing but circuitous nonsense if you want, it doesn’t change the fact that all of that is
over.
Right now, you can do
anything,
and yes, I am sorry that the only time you have in which to do so is a future that’s gonna get rapidly shorter if Keithus makes it to Earth, but isn’t that still
something?
Your past isn’t taking up arms against you Marcus. No, the only thing trying to kill you is
you,
same as it ever was, and yes, I’m sure it must be awful, especially knowing why, but
you don’t have to listen
! I thought you knew that, that you were getting it, at least – look what you did when you refused to let it eat you! You threw down with a small town! You poked Death in the eye twice over! You faced a wizard, unflinching, when you could have turned and run! You say you were driven by fate all this time, but I’d say it was because you dared to have a smidgen of self-belief. And you got knocked down again, and learnt a terrible truth, but it
doesn’t change anything!
You could still choose to be whatever you want, to act in spite of your voices, not because of them. But you’re telling me that you’d rather live in an endless, impossible past, wasting your life on thoughts of revenge, hunting instead for worthless dreams of things that never were and never will be? What kind of a choice is
that?!”
She cried out in wordless frustration, and the sound sent a chill through to Marcus’s bones.