Beyond Redemption (21 page)

Erbrechen screamed at Gehirn, “Stop them! Burn them! Burn them all!”

Gehirn was a slave—to both Erbrechen and the fire. She heard the former's command and obeyed the latter's desire.

The city burned.

The fields burned.

The dead burned.

The world became a roaring tornado of ash and smoke.

Fire spread.

Gehirn screamed and laughed and sobbed and cackled.

Cyclonic pillars of ash, once human life, spun in the growing storm winds.

Burn the world.

Erbrechen's litter lurched and collapsed to the ground, crushing those unfortunate enough to be trapped below. The Hassebrand somehow remained standing. Erbrechen shouted himself hoarse commanding Gehirn to stop, but the damned woman was beyond all thought, lost to the pure sexual joy of fire.

Dawning terror broke over Erbrechen as he realized his soul stew had no effect on his pet Hassebrand. Sharing it had been a waste.

Using muscles unused in years, he dragged himself closer to Gehirn. When he got close enough he slammed the wailing woman in the back of the knees with a massive arm. Gehirn dropped like a stone, and Erbrechen, levering himself up with one shaking gelatinous arm, pummeled her face until the Hassebrand lost consciousness.

After, as Erbrechen's surviving followers busied themselves collecting supplies and rounding up those who had not burned in the city, he sat staring at the unconscious woman. She seemed at peace, the bright canines hidden. Rounder and much older than he liked, she still had something about her he found fascinating.

She's dangerous.

True, but there was something more. She not only loved him—as all must—she
wanted
to love him. Somehow that set her apart. He reached a hand toward her face and stopped just shy of touching her. Could she love him for who he really was?

No, she loves your need of love. Nothing more
. She loved because—like the others—she had no choice. No one knew just how lonely it was to live at the center.

Erbrechen withdrew his hand to dab at his cheek. Was that a tear? He snorted.
Self-pity ill becomes you.

Still, it would be nice to have someone at his side, someone who truly loved him.
Maybe I could love her in return. I could try
.

Getting rid of a truth makes us wiser than getting hold of a delusion.

—N
ICHT
L
UDWIG
B
ORNE

A
ufschlag arrived at the private chambers of Schwacher Sucher nervous and sweating heavily. He pressed flat the oily fringe of hair surrounding his bald dome and struggled to find composure. His heart thudded heavily in his chest, and the knife, tucked into the tightly cinched belt that kept him from looking any more like a tent than he already did, pressed into his back. Should he loosen the belt a notch? What if the knife fell out? A few calming breaths did nothing for his pounding heart. Could he go through with his plan? Even more important, would he?

“Yes,” he whispered.

A thought stayed Aufschlag's hand partway into reaching up to knock on the oak door.
What if the Geborene Mirrorist foresaw this?
Konig often complained of the young Mirrorist's limitations, but Konig complained about everyone's faults. Nothing
was ever good enough for the Geborene High Priest. Though the many corpses of Viele Sindein, Morgen's Mehrere bodyguard, had yet to be discovered, it was entirely possible Schwacher knew everything.

What if Konig waits within, already aware of my betrayal?

No. If Konig had advance knowledge of Aufschlag's plans, he would never have allowed Morgen to be stolen.

Aufschlag knocked gently and heard the immediate answer.

“Enter.”

Once inside, he stood facing Schwacher, who, in turn, stood staring at him. The Mirrorist, who looked to be still in his teens, displayed none of the self-mutilation common to the breed. After much research Aufschlag had postulated that the more grotesque the mutilation, the greater the Mirrorist's power.

Theory,
Aufschlag suddenly thought,
is all fine and good until it's faced with real life
. His gaze darted about the room, seeking the mirrors he knew must be present. He saw none. The room was spare, undecorated, and showing nothing of the young Mirrorist's personality. The small fireplace looked scrubbed and clean, with no hint it had ever been used. Aufschlag stared at the fireplace. Did the Mirrorist freeze in the winter, or was this the sign of some obsessive disorder? For some reason the cleanliness of the fireplace reminded him of Morgen.

“Yes?” asked the Mirrorist expectantly.

“Your mirrors . . .”

“I keep them elsewhere,” said Schwacher, his face boyish and innocent. “It's the only way to get a moment's peace.”

Aufschlag nodded understanding to cover his surprise.
Why must I always appear knowledgeable, even to people who will soon be dead?
“I need you to show me something. Some people. I need to see where they are going.”

Schwacher cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Who are we spying on?”

Aufschlag explained the when, where, and who, and the young Mirrorist led him into another room, where a single massive mirror hung in an ornate gilt frame. Together they watched the three brutal thieves kill Viele Sindein over and over. They watched the smallest thief, dressed unconvincingly as a Geborene Bishop, dart through the crowd of Vieles and kill the original. They saw the kidnappers take Morgen and flee the church, witnessed their flight west toward Neidrig.

“We have to—” began Schwacher.

“Wait.”

Schwacher frowned in confusion as the scene in the mirror wavered and changed to show Aufschlag, standing in the shadows, staring after the retreating kidnappers.

“You watched them leave,” he said, confused. “They took Morgen and—”

“Kill Schwacher,” Aufschlag's reflection whispered clearly. “Distract Konig long enough to give the boy's kidnappers a head start. Mislead him as to where they are going.” The reflection stared sadly down at his hands.

Aufschlag looked down at his hands and the sharp knife now clutched there. Movement in the mirror caught his eye and he watched the reflection of the Mirrorist back away, eyes wide with fear as Aufschlag's reflection advanced with the knife.

“I'm sorry,” Aufschlag's reflection said.

Schwacher's eyes widened with understanding and he backed away.

Aufschlag followed. “I'm sorry,” he said.

AFTER, WHEN SCHWACHER
lay bleeding out the last of his life, Aufschlag turned his attention to the mirror. There, at the very end, the Mirrorist glimpsed briefly into the near future. Yet his vision changed nothing and the two men reenacted the scene shown there step-by-step like marionettes in a well-rehearsed play.

Though Schwacher lay dead at Aufschlag's feet, the Mirrorist's reflection still stood within the mirror, watching the Chief Scientist as if waiting.

“Why?” Aufschlag asked. “Why do you look at me like that? Will you fade and die now that Schwacher is dead?” His scientific curiosity piqued, he examined the mirror and reflection.
Why does it remain?
“You aren't going to fade away, are you?” Aufschlag scratched at his greasy fringe of hair. “You aren't going to fade, and you'll still be here when the body is discovered.” The reflection watched him. “You'll still be here and you might be able to tell them who did this. Can you speak?”

Schwacher's reflection stared mutely, waiting.

“You might identify me as Schwacher's”—he paused to swallow—“murderer,” he finished.

The reflection didn't move or blink.

Aufschlag saw it. “Ah. You've seen the future and you know what will happen. You wait for me to figure it out.”

The reflection watched Aufschlag search the room until he found a heavy fire poker in the stand near the fireplace. He returned to the mirror and its waiting reflection; Aufschlag was nowhere to be seen within.

“Is this what I do, what I have to do, or something I might do?” Aufschlag asked the mirror.

Expressionless, Schwacher's reflection watched the Chief Scientist.

No surprise it doesn't answer,
Aufschlag thought.
I am no Mirrorist.

“I could walk away,” he told the mirror.

Schwacher's reflection tilted its head to the left and continued watching him. No matter how much Aufschlag told himself he had a choice, it seemed like no choice at all. If he chose not to break the mirror—simply to prove it was an option—the reflection might tell someone of his actions.
I can't chance it.

Aufschlag felt the solid weight of the iron poker hanging in his hand.
This is not murder. This is a lingering delusion, nothing more.

Aufschlag smashed the mirror and fled the room. The crunch of broken glass under his shoes felt like an accusation. Several yards down the hall he slowed to a more respectable walk. It wouldn't do to look suspicious here. A thought stopped him and he stood with a perplexed frown.

“Is breaking a mirror really bad luck?” he asked aloud of the empty hall. “Everyone believes it is.” No. That didn't sound quite right. “Everyone
believes
it is.” He leaned against the cool stone wall. Why hadn't he thought of this sooner? “Damn it!” What did bad luck really mean? Would he stub his toe or fall to his death?

Economics, now that's a delusion!

—W
OHLHABENDE
K
LEIN
, K
LEPTIC
E
CONOMIST

B
edeckt faded in and out of consciousness, only vaguely aware of the journey to the Leichtes Haus inn. Wichtig dragged him to the stables in the back, sat him down against the tavern wall, arse in a cold puddle, and left to prepare the horses. Bedeckt wanted to tell the Swordsman to get Launisch a few apples but couldn't summon the energy. Stehlen, looking like she'd eaten something sour, glared at him, said something about going to their rooms to fetch their belongings, and left.

Bedeckt coughed, spraying blood and snot. The kid—Morgen, Bedeckt reminded himself—squatted a foot away, eyes wide, arms crossed tight across his chest, careful to avoid the pooling blood, watching with intense interest.

“Dark,” coughed Bedeckt, squinting past the boy. The long and perfectly straight street looked deserted.

The boy watched, saying nothing. Maybe he didn't realize
Bedeckt had meant it as a question.
Is it night? Everything looks gray.

The rain hadn't let up. If anything, the storm was growing in strength. To the south the sky flickered a hell storm of flashing lightning and strange lights. He'd been thinking about the storm earlier, hadn't he? He couldn't remember.

The alley he sat in was a fast-moving, ankle-deep river. Bedeckt coughed again and hawked bright blood that swirled away in an instant. Water pooled around him, dark from the blood his body leaked and fading to a thin stream of light pink as it disappeared down the street.

The boy still stared at him.

“What?” Bedeckt growled.

“I've never been outside of the temple before. Is it always like this?”

Bedeckt coughed blood, spattering his chest. “Like what?”

“Dirty.”

“Yes.”

Morgen shuffled to one side to avoid a pinkish puddle spreading in his direction. He met Bedeckt's eyes. “You are dying, I think.”

“I don't care what—” Bedeckt stopped.
Shite
. He
did
care what the boy thought.

This was a child actively groomed for godhood. What could the beliefs of this child achieve? His chest tightened in an unfamiliar feeling. Fear? Mortality and death were simple facts of everyday life. He'd faced greater danger in the past. But still . . .
This boy can kill me just by thinking I will die
. What would it mean to have the unified and directed faith of a Theocracy like Selbsthass turned against him?

Did he feel weaker already? Was he bleeding faster?

“Not ready to die,” he whispered.

The boy cocked his head quizzically. “Why fear? You will awaken in the Afterdeath, unhurt and whole.”

Aside from keeping a few coins stashed in his right boot to ensure he wouldn't awaken on the other side completely broke, Bedeckt had never given the Afterdeath much thought. The looming proximity of death had a way of focusing the mind.

“Your dead await you,” said Morgen, sounding as if he meant it as comfort.

Bedeckt couldn't count the number of times he'd heard scarred old men and women repeating different versions of the Warrior's Credo. Most said the dead would serve. Some, more ominously, merely claimed the dead would be there. Waiting. Bedeckt's dead were beyond counting.

Bedeckt chuckled bloodily and the boy shuffled farther away. “I generally don't kill people I want to see again.” He saw Morgen's confused look. “Bit of an oversight, really. There was a whore in—” A fit of coughing interrupted him. “Can't remember. Too long ago. Like to see her again. Would have killed the wench if I'd thought of this sooner.” He watched the boy watching him. Somewhere in the distance he heard the muted sounds of combat, steel on steel. He didn't care. He couldn't stand, much less defend himself.

“What do you think?” he asked the boy.

Morgen examined his own hands, checking the fingernails. “I need to wash my hands.”

“Do our dead await us?” Bedeckt asked more loudly.

The boy glanced up. “I will be a god,” he said, as if that somehow answered Bedeckt's question. “I think there will be no Afterdeath for me. I will Ascend and be the god of the Geborene.” With a look of disgust he gestured at the blood pooling around Bedeckt and streaming away into the darkness. “Everything will be clean.” With the tip of his shoe he pushed three pebbles into
a line, frowned at them, adjusted one, and then nodded contentedly. “Everything will be neat. Tidy.” He gestured at the blood swirling in filthy water. “Not like this.”

Wichtig approached, leading the three horses. “Is there any blood left inside you?” Even soaked through in the rain, he looked every inch the hero. He ran a hand through his reddish-brown hair, slicking it back. “Where is Stehlen?”

Bedeckt coughed more blood.

The boy pointed at him with a small hand. “He's dying.”

Wichtig raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“And he's making a mess.”

“We can't have that, can we,” said Wichtig, shaking his head. “Bedeckt, in a moment, you're going to owe me another one.”

What's the fool talking about?

“You know, Morgen,” drawled Wichtig, “Bedeckt was hurt rescuing you.” He gave the boy a serious look, brows furrowed. “You owe him much. His death will stain your hands. Forever.”

The boy's gaze jerked to his hands. He looked like the thought would bring him to tears.

“Aufschlag says cleanliness is important,” said Morgen. “I need to wash my hands.” He glanced about desperately, but the only water nearby was stained with blood and filth from the street. “I can save him,” whispered Morgen. “Would that . . . pay the debt?”

“It would be a start,” answered Wichtig.

“A start?”

Bedeckt watched the boy examine him.

“He's covered in old scars,” said Morgen. “How much should I heal?” Bedeckt saw the boy notice the fingers missing on his left hand. “Should I heal everything?” Morgen asked. “Shall I give you back those fingers?”

Bedeckt tightened the ruined left hand into a fist. “No.”

Wichtig nudged Bedeckt's foot with his own. “I always knew you for a sentimental old goat.”

Bedeckt glared up from where he sat and Wichtig blew him a kiss. “Yeah, I know, you'll kill me later.”

Motion in the swirling puddles distracted Bedeckt. A familiar scene, though not from this vantage. He saw the battle at Sinnlos on the Auseinander border.

Bedeckt watched as the last two fingers of his left hand were cut away and fell, spinning, to the trampled mud of the battlefield. The gold wedding band glinted for a moment, reflecting distant fires. In those reflections he saw older, almost forgotten battles from much further in his savage past. He saw a comrade, retreating under the onslaught of several opponents, step on the fingers, driving them into the mud and smothering those reflections. Distantly he heard the victorious yell of his enemy and his own, much louder roar as he hewed into the man's skull. The vision guttered and died.

“The reflections don't lie,” said the boy. “But I can't always be sure of their meaning.”

“I remember that day,” said Bedeckt.

“Who would want to live with such ugly, scarred hands?” asked Morgen, sounding confused.

Bedeckt tried to answer but couldn't find the strength.

“At least now he'll be easier to deal with,” he heard Wichtig say. “You
can
heal him, right?”

If the boy answered, Bedeckt didn't hear it.

BEDECKT STOOD IN
the ruins of . . . a city . . . a battlefield? This was the site of a fight not long concluded. The stench of death remained. Ghostly memories of violence shivered the air with the metallic tang of spilled blood and sour terror. The city looked familiar. Sinnlos, maybe? The burned and smoking skeletal wrecks of houses lay scattered across streets. Siege weapons had done their work here. Perhaps this had once been a prosperous land, but now few buildings retained more than two standing walls.

Why does this look so familiar?
Bedeckt glanced down at the scarred remains of his left hand and then back to the street.

A crowd of men and women, warriors each and every one, stood gathered before him.

Were they there before?
Bedeckt thought not.

There were too many to count quickly. Dozens. Scores. All bore weapons, stained with use, hanging ready in scarred and muscled hands. Many looked familiar.

Bedeckt's hand reached for his ax. It wasn't in its customary place, hanging at his back. He took a deep breath, was surprised it didn't hurt, and crouched, readying himself for the attack. His knees creaked and groaned.

A voice muttered, “Some of us have been waiting a very long time.”

Bedeckt couldn't tell who said this and was distracted as a large man pushed through the crowd, working his way closer.

His father, the very first man he had ever killed.

Morgen hunched over Bedeckt's still body and thought about how the wounds would heal. From the corner of his eye he saw Wichtig, the Greatest Swordsman in the World and dashing hero, wave the thin and ugly woman over. She was covered in even more blood than before entering the tavern but wore several new colorful scarves and gaudy trinkets. He listened as Wichtig asked her what had taken so damned long and as she explained she'd had to kill everyone in the tavern to cover their tracks and foil pursuit. Morgen could tell Wichtig believed not a word of this. He watched the Swordsman's face grow sad as he recognized the scarves.

“You had to kill her too, did you?” Wichtig asked with angry sarcasm.

Stehlen flared nostrils and spat at the ground. “She could describe all of us. Your little sticker in particular.”

Morgen saw Wichtig's guilty glance in his direction.

“Fine. We'll talk about this later. Did you get much?”

“Not really.”

She lied, but Wichtig seemed unaware.

“Hells, we're almost broke. Morgen, you finished yet?”

“Yes,” said Morgen, backing away. He had stopped the worst of the bleeding. The rest would have to wait. The ugly old man would live. The scars and wounds of his past, both within and without, would remain with him to his final day. Morgen watched as the bloody water swirled, showing glimpses of the future. Bedeckt, whom he'd just pulled from the gates of the Afterdeath, would again lie dying in a few short days. Next time Morgen would not save him. Bedeckt would be without his friends. Morgen wondered at this. Would they abandon the big man? Betray him? Morgen couldn't imagine the dashing Wichtig leaving his friend. If Bedeckt died alone, then surely Wichtig was dead too.

Will they die protecting me?

Stehlen was something entirely different. She had no softness in her, all edges and sharp angles, twitchy like the rodents Morgen kept as pets and dangerous like the caged cats and snakes he hadn't been allowed near. The woman scared him. She wore her willingness to violence in every glance and the way her hands constantly roved around the many weapons stashed about her body, checking their positions and accessibility. There was no act of brutality she was not capable of.

Wichtig and Stehlen wrestled Bedeckt onto Launisch's back. The black war-horse eyed them with ill intent. Wichtig dodged its attempts to nip at him and laughed at it good-naturedly as he tied the semiconscious warrior into place. Frustrated, Launisch gave up and eyed Stehlen for a moment before snorting and looking away.
The horse knows better than to try and bite her,
thought Morgen.

Minutes later they were mounted and riding southwest.
Stehlen led the way on a gray gelding whose spirit had long ago been broken. Morgen sat before Wichtig, cradled and protected within the fortress of those strong arms. Bedeckt, slumped on the massive destrier tied to Wichtig's horse, faded in and out of consciousness, mumbling quietly and occasionally warding away unseen opponents with clawed hands. The sky to the south rumbled and cracked with violence.

Morgen watched the distant storm. He could smell the fetid odor of a wounded soul reaching its breaking point. Whoever held sway over that tempest wouldn't last much longer.

He looked back over his shoulder at Wichtig and pointed at the storm. “That's bad.”

Wichtig laughed. “A master of understatement. Just like Bedeckt. We're going to skirt the storm and ride for Neidrig. We”—he glanced at Stehlen—“know people there.”

Morgen wondered at the pause. “What kind of people?”

“The kind who can help us hide you from the bad people who want to hurt you.”

“Will Konig be there?”

“Probably not,” said Wichtig. “Konig knows he is being watched. He doesn't want to lead your enemies to you.”

“I have enemies?”

Stehlen looked back from the front, twisting around in the saddle to stare at Morgen with a nasty grin. “Everyone has enemies.”