The Mirror's Truth: A Novel of Manifest Delusions Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE MIRROR’S TRUTH

  Anthony Ryan, New York Times best selling author of the RAVEN’S SHADOW and DRACONIS MEMORIA series: “Michael R. Fletcher’s The Mirror’s Truth is a dark delight. Our trio of appalling but still somehow compelling protagonists - possibly sane aged warrior Bedeckt, kleptomaniac murder addict Stehlen and manically self-interested ‘greatest swordsman in the world’ Wichtig – return from the Afterdeath to find a world brought to the brink of all-out war by the mad boy-god Morgan. The pitch black humour, magically enhanced insanity and brutality that distinguished Beyond Redemption as a remarkable fantasy debut are present in full force, and often cranked up to eleven. Highly recommended, and not just because my evil reflection told me so.”

  Django Wexler, author of the SHADOW CAMPAIGNS series: “Michael Fletcher's MANIFEST DELUSIONS is the grimdarkest of grimdark, a filthy, rotting, fascinating world full of intriguing psychotics. It's the sort of wonderful horror you can't look away from, and there's nothing else in the genre quite like it.”

  Smash Dragons (www.smashdragons.blogspot.ca/): “The Mirror’s Truth is Grimdark at its finest. Dark, brutal, and totally uncompromising, it will cut you over and over again until you lie bloody and stricken on the floor.”

  Leona’s Blog of Shadows (www.leonahenry.wordpress.com/) “The Reflections show the reader yet another level of depth and the character development reaches mind-blowing levels.”

  Anna Smith-Spark, author of the grimdark fantasy epic, The Court of Broken Knives (Harper Voyager, 2017): “Dark, vile, funny, painfully human.... The best fantasy novel I've read this year.”

  The Bibliosanctum (www.bibliosanctum.com/): “The Mirror’s Truth is a sequel that builds upon everything that made the first book so great and all-consuming, featuring storylines and characters that are grittier, twistier, and even more insane. In other words, it’s even more fucked up than Beyond Redemption...and I loved it.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  THE MIRROR’S TRUTH Copyright © by Michael R. Fletcher. All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by John Anthony Di Giovanni

  Cover Typography by Shawn T. King

  Designed by Kristopher Neidecker

  ISBN 978-0995312234

  Also by Michael R. Fletcher

  Beyond Redemption

  Swarm and Steel (Talos Press, Aug 2017)

  For my loves,

  Emma and Charlotte

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a novel of manifest delusion. As such, the classifications of Geisteskranken (Delusionists) will probably mean little to you. At the end of the novel you’ll find a very short definition of each classification as well as a complete list of characters. Or, feel free to read and discover for yourself. Sometimes the difficult path is the most enjoyable.

  There is also more information to be found on the world of Manifest Delusions and the laws governing madness at: http://michaelrfletcher.com/beyondwiki

  Apologies to those who can actually speak German and/or Basque. I truly made a hash of your beautiful languages. The awesome Julia Kitvaria Sarene did her best to help me with fixing the German so it might be (less) painful to German readers. But in some cases, for whatever reasons, I chose to ignore her advice.

  MAP OF A MAD WORLD

  CHAPTER ONE

  The mirror ever lies.

  —Im Spiegel, Mirrorist

  A monstrous old man, hewn and scarred from a long life of battles won and lost, stepped through the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

  A huge double-bladed axe hung in one fist, the tattered remains of mismatched chain and leather armour draped loose in places and stretched tight in others. The left hand, missing the last two fingers, opened and closed with the wet pop of ageing knuckles.

  Three men looked up from the table at which they diced. They didn’t look surprised, which was bad. The old man swept his gaze across the room, taking in the clean but minimal furnishings, glancing at the single door. The men, all dressed in white, were in between him and the way out.

  “Boys,” said Bedeckt. “Are you three alive or dead?”

  As they stared, a young woman in her early twenties stepped from the mirror behind him. “Wütend. Geborene,” Zukunft said, glancing back at the mirror. “I can see it now.”

  “That would have been handy to know earlier,” said Bedeckt.

  The Mirrorist shrugged slim shoulders, apparently unconcerned.

  Hopefully that means I don’t die in the next few moments, thought Bedeckt.

  Zukunft saw something in the mirror and said, “Oh. Don’t break the—”

  Screaming insensate rage, the three men rose from the table, working themselves into a blood-lust frenzy. Bedeckt—himself never far from a killing rage—stepped close, hacking his axe through the nearest man’s shoulder and deep into his chest. Eyes, one moment lit by flames of fury, opened wide in stunned disbelief.

  No one ever thinks their time will come.

  Bedeckt kicked the corpse free of his axe. Wütend, shite. He hated these psychotic berserkers; they felt no pain, always fought to the death. If he killed them before they reached full-blown blood lust, he might walk out of this room in one piece and not missing more fingers or teeth.

  The second man, already frothing at the mouth, scrambled to climb the table. Lost to the madness, he dropped his weapon. Hurling himself at Bedeckt, he wrapped himself about the big warrior, biting and tearing at his armoured throat with gnashing teeth.

  Bedeckt staggered under the weight. If he went down, he was done. They’d tear him apart—and this close, his axe was useless against the man grappling him. Dropping the axe, he hooked an elbow under his opponent’s throat, struggling to create room. The third man caught sight of Zukunft and chased after her. She fled, racing to keep the table between them.

  Zukunft spun as she danced away from her pursuer, skirts flaring to show a long expanse of thigh Bedeckt didn’t have the time to be noticing. She laughed, taunting.

  She’s keeping him busy. If she remained calm while being chased by a blood-lusted Wütend, she was more dangerous than he thought. Or crazier. Neither was good.

  Clawing fingers pulled at his armour, fighting to open a gap for sharp teeth. Damned woman was a distraction. She’d get him killed. Bedeckt drew a knife with his half-hand and drove it into his assailant’s soft belly. He stabbed over and over until the clutching fingers and snapping teeth lost their urgency and became weak pawing. Bedeckt dropped the man, pristine white robes now splashed crimson, to the floor. Seeing Zukunft still alive, still laughing and dancing, Bedeckt stomped his opponent’s head.

  Back popping like a damp twig on a fire, he bent to retrieve his axe. He stood, arthritic knees creaking and grinding, broad chest heaving as he sucked breath. Movement caught his attention and he saw a twisted shape cavorting and applauding in the mirror, its attention fixed on Zukunft.

  Her Reflection? It looked nothing like her. Shorter, its hair was darker. The shape was all wrong; it had none of her woman’s curves.

  Glancing at the Mirrorist, he saw her cease her dance and stand transfixed, staring at the mirror. The remaining Wütend, flailing his sword like a club, rushed after Zukunft.

  Bedeckt had an instant to react and Zukunft stood between himself and the Wütend. If she died, his plan died.

  He hurled his axe through the mirror.

  Glass shattered and Zukunft blinked. The Wütend landed on
her, crushing her slight frame to the floor under his greater weight.

  Cursing, Bedeckt dove over the table, toppling it and landing atop the two. The air rushed from Zukunft’s lungs as his added weight crashed down upon her. She made a noise like that frog he stomped as a child, her mouth wide and gaping, incapable of drawing breath. The Wütend ignored Bedeckt like only someone manically fixated on murdering another can and head-butted her, his forehead crashing into her cheek and bouncing her skull off the floor. Rearing back, the man bared his teeth in a mad snarl. Bedeckt wrapped an arm around the Wütend’s neck and fought to keep him from leaning close enough to bite out the stunned girl’s throat. Snapping teeth cracked so loud Bedeckt thought they might shatter under the impact.

  The mad man, driven by psychosis-fuelled strength, leaned ever closer to the soft, exposed skin. Bedeckt couldn’t hold him back. Changing tactics, he threw his weight behind the Wütend, driving the man’s head down and redirecting it just enough to smash it into the floor beside Zukunft’s throat. Head met stone with a wet crunch. Lifting the man’s head, he heard the mad snapping of teeth. Damned Wütend never gave up. Fighting the man’s downward motion for a moment, he then once again added his weight to it. Half a dozen times Bedeckt smashed the man’s skull against the stone floor before the Wütend finally went limp. Dragging the corpse from Zukunft, he dropped it at her side. She stared at Bedeckt, numb with shock. Blood and bits of the Wütend’s shattered teeth spattered her face.

  With the killing done, Bedeckt knelt over Zukunft, uncomfortably aware of her proximity. He sucked wheezing breaths, waiting for his heart to slow. Gone was the day he could kill four times as many without being winded. He turned his grizzled head, a mass of scars, the left ear a misshapen lump, listening. He heard nothing but the drip of blood, and his own shuddering breathing. Squinting, he dipped a blunt finger into the blood pooling on the floor. Raising the finger to his face he stared at the bright stain and grinned.

  It was red. Real gutted-pig red. Not some faded grey red of the Afterdeath, but the deep red of sundered life.

  “Hells yes,” he whispered with fierce joy. “We did it.”

  Zukunft blinked up at him, eyes finally focussing. “By we you mean me,” she said. “I led you to Rückkehr, the one Mirrorist whose mirror joined the world of the living to the Afterdeath.”

  “I convinced him to send us back.”

  “You threatened to kill him,” she said, touching fingers to the bruise already appearing on her cheek.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Zukunft sat, straightening her shirt where it fell to expose the pale flesh of her shoulder. Her skirt, bunched around shapely hips, left her long legs bare.

  Bedeckt grunted and looked elsewhere.

  She laughed, soft breaths through her perfect little nose. “Been a while, old man?”

  Stehlen, the hideous Kleptic. In an alley. Rutting like drunken teens. Well, the drunk part was accurate at least.

  Bedeckt stood, nodding to the shattered mirror. “I saw a girl in there,” he said, as much to distract her as from real curiosity.

  “Yes,” she said, looking away.

  When she added nothing more he let it go. “Where are we?”

  “Selbsthass.”

  “Shite.” They were in Neidrig when they stepped into the mirror in the Afterdeath. He assumed they’d exit in Neidrig as well and sent Wichtig and Stehlen off to Selbsthass to give him a chance to escape. Why hadn’t Rückkehr mentioned this would happen? Had he not known? Damned Mirrorists. Another thought occurred to Bedeckt. “Why didn’t you warn me about the Wütend?”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “When we were in the Afterdeath, I could never see beyond the moment we crossed over.”

  “And now?”

  “She showed me a little of the future,” she said.

  She? Mirrorists were an odd bunch. “And?”

  “I only saw as far as the moment you threw your axe into the mirror.”

  Zukunft stood in one lithe movement, unbending like a cat. Bedeckt looked everywhere but at her. No matter what her body said, she was a damned child. Though his definition of child seemed to change the older he got. Wouldn’t be long until everyone under thirty seemed like a kid.

  “Were they waiting for us?” asked Bedeckt. “Does Morgen know?”

  “I’m hardly the only Mirrorist who glimpses the future.” Zukunft shrugged. She didn’t look worried. “Maybe Morgen’s own Reflections told him. Maybe he can see into the future. He is a god.”

  Bedeckt didn’t want to think about that. His whole plan relied on Zukunft’s admittedly limited ability to see into the future. Her delusion would keep him one step ahead of everyone else.

  I can undo the damage I did killing the boy.

  Too late, Bedeckt saw how broken the child was, how damaged by his experiences. Morgen, the Geborene godling, was dangerously insane.

  The boy thinks he can make the world perfect and clean. And he was willing to drown the world in war and blood to make it so.

  I played my part in making him what he is. He’d make it right.

  Morgen had his obsession with cleanliness before meeting Bedeckt. But Bedeckt and his group of deranged criminal friends taught the lad darker truths. They taught him lies and distrust. They showed him the effectiveness of violence. He witnessed their broken interaction and learned from it.

  We poisoned him.

  Now, Morgen’s perfect world had no place for Bedeckt, no place for his friends.

  And I…I killed him.

  He never should have strayed from his list of things he wouldn’t do. He remembered sliding Stehlen’s knife into Morgen’s chest. The boy had been tortured and burned and Bedeckt told himself it was a mercy, that he was killing the lad to free him from pain. But the truth was he planned on using the boy-god once in the Afterdeath. Knowing he too was dying, Bedeckt saw how the future would play out. He killed the boy for purely selfish reasons and damned himself to a hellish Afterdeath. Not everyone suffered the same fate—there were special Afterdeaths for people like him.

  Dying and existing in a flat world of grey death showed him the truth. His choices, all the vicious choices of his life, led him there.

  And new choices, different choices, would take him somewhere else. The first step was escaping his past, and Wichtig and Stehlen were a part of that. He left them behind. Madness and violence followed them everywhere.

  Maybe redemption lay beyond his reach, but if he undid the damage done in killing Morgen, in straying from his list, perhaps the next time he died he might find himself in another Afterdeath. He was an old man. Death was never far off.

  The Afterdeath, defined by the Warrior’s Credo—those whom you slay must serve—gave Bedeckt control over the boy. He couldn’t do it. Using and harming children was on his list and straying from that list got him killed. Straying from that list started everything. He wouldn’t do it again.

  In leaving the Afterdeath and returning to life, Bedeckt lost all control over the boy. There was nothing but Bedeckt’s mad plan to curb the lad’s obsession. If Morgen saw the future, all bets were off. If he knew Bedeckt returned to life intent on stopping his quest to remake the world, he would turn the might of the Geborene church against him.

  You give yourself too much credit.

  Even with the Mirrorist’s help, Bedeckt wasn’t sure if he could stop Morgen. Only Zukunft’s insistence she saw a future where the godling was defeated—and her promise her Reflection would lead him there—gave Bedeckt any hope.

  Bedeckt smacked himself in the forehead. I am such an idiot. “Shite.”

  “What?” Zukunft asked.

  “You just told me you couldn’t see past the moment we left the Afterdeath.”

  “So?”

  “In the Afterdeath you promised you’d show me how to stop Morgen.”

  “So?”

  “You lied. You have no idea—”

  “No.” Zukunft stared at the blood pooling on the f
loor, watching it spread toward her. “She told me she knows how.”

  She again. “But—”

  “I believe her.”

  A Mirrorist should know better than to trust Reflections. Just as the manifestations of a Doppelgangist or Mehrere inevitably turned on their creator in a bid to become real, a Mirrorist’s Reflections were equally dangerous.

  It was too damned late for second guessing. This girl and her delusion were his only chance.

  Bedeckt thought it over. If Morgen saw the future, he would have left more than three Wütend waiting for them. Mirrorists always said the future wasn’t fixed. Perhaps Morgen put these men here to cover one possible eventuality. I suppose we could have come through any large mirror. The boy-god probably had people stationed at mirrors all over the city. Why didn’t he break all the mirrors but one, thereby controlling where we appeared? Bedeckt couldn’t answer that. Were the Geborene priests nothing more than a coincidence? Maybe they lived here. Three Wütend living together? It seemed unlikely.

  Her legs no longer exposed, Bedeckt could once again look at Zukunft. In the Afterdeath, her eyes were lifeless and grey. Now green shot with shards of gold and rust, they peered at him through a curtain of dark hair. She watched him watching her. Heart shaped lips quirked in the slightest hint of a knowing smile.

  “Yes?” she asked, lifting a dark eyebrow.

  “Where should we go? How long before Morgen sends Stehlen and Wichtig after us?”

  “The plan,” she said, “and perhaps you’ve forgotten because you’re a senile old bastard, was for me to use that mirror to see the next couple of days.” She nodded at the broken frame and shattered glass littering the floor.

  “And?”

  “You broke the mirror, even after I told you not to.”

  Bedeckt stomped to the shattered mirror, stooped with a groan, and collected a shard. He straightened, rubbing his lower back, and held the fragment out in offering. “Use this.”