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

  Kurz stood, transfixed.

  “You never progressed beyond the patterns,” said Wichtig.

  Teeth gritted, Kurz stepped toward Wichtig, his remaining sword rising. Wichtig held his ground, praying the man would drop. He lifted an eyebrow in mock curiosity, like the approaching man was a passing interest and nothing more.

  “And you rely on skill,” said Wichtig, the last word dripping disgust. He tsked, shaking his head. “I am backed by the faith of the people. I am backed by my faith in myself. I am backed by the very god you worship. What is skill in the face of all this? Fool.”

  Kurz coughed a bubbling and bloody sigh and collapsed at Wichtig’s feet. Wichtig withdrew his blades as the body toppled, timing it so it looked as if the dead man simply returned them to their rightful owner.

  “I assume we are agreed that I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World?” Wichtig asked the gathered crowd.

  They nodded.

  “I think some applause is in order,” said Wichtig.

  They applauded.

  “Good. Spread the word.” He grinned, wiping his blades on Kurz’ corpse and sheathing them with a flourish. “I’m back.”

  After searching Kurz for what wealth the man carried Wichtig went in search of better clothes. He wasn’t dead and saw no reason to dress like the dead. Grey was a fine choice when everything looked grey anyway, but now he wanted something bright and colourful. Something highlighting the red in his hair and yet not distracting from his eyes. When he paid the clothier he was surprised to find his money pouch still full of Kurz’s coin.

  See what happens when you leave Stehlen behind? It was nice to not be robbed every time he had more than two coppers to rub together.

  Next he went looking for a horse. It would wipe out what coin remained, but that was fine. There would be other Swordsmen to kill. And he could always stoop to a little petty theft, should needs demand.

  Unwilling to ask for directions, he found the stables by following his nose.

  The stable-master paraded horse after horse before Wichtig and nodded in knowledgeable appreciation when the Swordsman selected a white stallion with an angry look in its eyes.

  “Strong horse,” said the stable-master. “Can run for hours.”

  Wichtig ignored the man. He chose the horse because he knew how good he looked riding the beast.

  “I’ll need everything else as well,” said Wichtig. “Saddle, everything. Long journey.”

  The stable-master grunted agreement, cast an appraising eye upon Wichtig, noting the new clothes, and disappeared into the stables. He reappeared with a gorgeous saddle and matched saddlebags, swirling designs worked into the black leather. It would look perfect on his white horse. Wichtig nodded and paid without haggling. The stable-master saddled the animal and filled one of the saddlebags with grain.

  The horse looked at Wichtig like it wanted to drag his guts free with its teeth and scatter them about the pristine cobbled road.

  “Good horsey,” said Wichtig, swinging easily onto the beast’s back.

  He rode through Selbsthass toward the southern gate, enjoying the easy roll of the horse’s shoulders beneath him. This, he decided, was a fine creature indeed. Judging from the way men and women watched him pass, he must look stunning.

  A breeze caught his hair just so.

  Wichtig reached forward to stroke the animal’s ears and snapped his hand back when it tried to remove his fingers.

  “Nice horsey,” he repeated. “I like you. You have fire.”

  He thought of Bedeckt’s monstrous black destrier. He couldn’t remember its name. The old man showered the horse with more love than he spared for his friends.

  Why does Bedeckt name his horses?

  It made no sense. Wichtig had owned so many horses he couldn’t possibly remember them all. Half the time they died in battle or fleeing a fight gone sour. Sometimes he lost them in bets, or sold them so he could eat or buy clothes. More than once he left them behind when abandoning one decaying city-state or another because, yet again, one of Bedeckt’s plans went to shite.

  It was strange how Bedeckt grew attached to beasts of burden but was an utter shite to his friends.

  I wonder what the old goat gets out of it? It must be something. Bedeckt was as mercenary a man as Wichtig ever met.

  “I’m going to name you,” Wichtig told his horse, curious to see if he’d get whatever Bedeckt got out of the strange deal. Would he become emotional about the beast, needing to feed it apples at every opportunity? He couldn’t imagine that happening. Maybe the horse would become more agreeable if Wichtig pretended he cared what happened to it.

  “I’ll call you Ärgerlich,” Wichtig said, naming the beast after a poet he knew back in Traurig.

  Ärgerlich ignored him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before the Menschheit Letzte Imperium there were thousands of gods. Every copse of trees had its own Ascended spirit jealously guarding its patch. Every pond held some mad demigod. It was a world of numen. When the Menschheit Letzte Imperium united mankind under one rule there was but one religion, the Wahnvorstellung. With the fall of the Imperium that religion changed and fragmented over the ensuing millennia. Three thousand years ago we had twenty gods and now we have hundreds. And the number is growing.

  How can this not signify our descent?

  —Geschichts Verdreher - Historian/Philosopher

  Stehlen sat in the Leichtes Haus, holding hands with Lebendig. Morgen disappeared and she knew immediately she was alive. She felt different, like somehow death removed many of life’s pressures. What was the point of worrying when you were already dead? Looking back, she couldn’t decide what really changed. When dead she still needed money and food. She still felt the night’s cold and the warmth of her lover. Sure everything may have been a bit faded, a little grey, but she couldn’t find much separating death from life.

  She glanced about the tavern. The dead—her dead—were gone. This Leichtes Haus was populated by happy people in bright and clean clothes. And too much sticking white. Stehlen felt drab and filthy in comparison, grey and grotty. She wanted to kill them, splash the tavern in her colours, the screaming sanguine of chaos and bloody violence.

  Really? What are you going to do, rush out and buy some bright clothing? That was the kind of mindless self-absorbed shite Wichtig did.

  Lebendig gave her hand a squeeze and Stehlen flashed a quick smile. Her lover’s skin felt warmer than it had in the Afterdeath.

  Stehlen’s smile died when she noted Lebendig’s look of confused uncertainty. Wanting to ask what was wrong but unable to frame the question in a way that didn’t sound desperately pathetic, Stehlen remained quiet.

  What are you afraid of? If anyone says anything, I’ll gut them on the spot. Escaping the Afterdeath changed nothing. Anyone mocking her happiness—anyone poking at her choices—would die. Painfully.

  Stehlen squeezed Lebendig’s hand in reassurance. The big woman was death with her swords and yet retained a softness Stehlen would forever love and never understand.

  Lebendig offered a distracted smile of her own.

  “I don’t see the World’s Greatest Moron anywhere,” said Stehlen, hoping this would move them back to safer ground. She flared her nostrils, tasting the air. The Afterdeath may have been a pale imitation of life, leached of colour and flavour, but life stank. “I thought we’d find him chatting up a barmaid.”

  “Morgen said time was different here,” pointed out Lebendig.

  Stehlen nodded. “I wonder how much of a head start he has.” She and Lebendig sat with Morgen moments after Wichtig’s departure.

  A pretty barmaid with blue eyes appeared at their table and Stehlen hated her. “Can I—”

  “Piss off,” said Stehlen.

  “Wait,” said Lebendig, reaching out to catch the girl’s arm.

  The barmaid, having no other option, stopped. “Yes?”

  “Was there a man here recently?” Lebendig asked. “You’d remembe
r him, he’s prettier even than you.” She released the barmaid’s arm.

  The girl blushed and Stehlen wanted to drain the blood from her rendering such pretty blushing impossible.

  “He was here yesterday,” said the barmaid. “Sitting right where you are.”

  Lebendig withdrew a coin from her pouch and rolled it deftly across the knuckles of her thick fingers. “Did he say anything?” she asked, catching the coin between thumb and forefinger and holding it aloft.

  The girl nodded, eyes locked on the coin. “Said he was the Greatest Swordsman in the World.”

  “Oh that shite again,” snarled Stehlen. The idiot would never give up his quest. Not even death would stop the fool.

  “He said he was going to Gottlos,” the barmaid added, turning her pert nose up at Stehlen. “He said he was going to hunt down the man who killed his friend.”

  “Killed his—” Stehlen laughed, a dank nasal honk. “Let me guess, he’s chasing an old man with lots of scars and maybe half an ear. If he hasn’t lost that too.”

  The girl nodded, licking her lips and eyeing the coin. “He left without paying and his meal and drinks came out of my pay.”

  “Typical,” snorted Stehlen.

  Lebendig merely watched the barmaid, waiting.

  The girl frowned a pretty frown not even wrinkling her forehead as she desperately searched her memory. “He went after Kurz Ehrfürchtig, the Greatest Swordsman in—”

  “Please tell me this Kurz killed the idiot,” said Stehlen.

  The girl shook her head, hair swishing about slim shoulders. Stehlen wanted to touch it, to bury her face in the soft curve of neck and breathe deep her warmth. Feeling her own face flush with warmth, she pushed the thought away with a sour pang of guilt. Noticing a pink scarf partially concealed beneath the girl’s collar, Stehlen knew a very different hunger. She avoided looking to see if Lebendig noticed.

  “He killed Kurz,” said the barmaid. “Everyone is talking about it.”

  “Shite,” swore Stehlen. “Anything else?”

  Small fists clenched, the barmaid’s eyes turned, pleading, to Lebendig. “He said he was Wichtig Lügner. I know that name. He used to be the Greatest—”

  “Yes, yes, we know,” said Stehlen. “Anything useful?”

  “Everyone is saying he is Wichtig, returned from the dead.”

  “That’s hardly—”

  Lebendig handed the barmaid the coin and sent her off with a nod.

  “What did you pay her for?” demanded Stehlen, still angry with herself.

  Lebendig shrugged. “She needed it more than we.”

  “What the hells does that have to do with anything?”

  Lebendig shrugged again and gave her that smile she saved for those moments when she thought Stehlen had done something cute.

  Pretty sticking rare smile, thought Stehlen. Still, it warmed her. Even if she didn’t understand it.

  Stehlen and Lebendig split up. The Swordswoman, with the money Stehlen somehow managed not to steal from her, going in search of horses and the Kleptic asking around to be sure Wichtig went south toward Gottlos. They agreed to meet at the southern gate.

  Following the Swordsman’s route through the city was easy. The idiot made a point of stopping often to brag and tell everyone who and what he was. The fop stood out in a crowd of fops. Bedeckt was more difficult to trace, but Stehlen wasn’t worried. Wichtig would lead her straight to the old man.

  Once she was sure Lebendig had left the Leichtes Haus, Stehlen returned. She relieved the pretty barmaid of her scarf and everything else, leaving the common room floor slick with blood. Half a dozen patrons and the bartender shared the girl’s fate. Best that no one lived to describe the two women or pass along their interest in Wichtig or what they learned of his destination.

  Morgen sent Wichtig to kill Bedeckt and herself to kill them both. She saw no reason to believe he wouldn’t send someone else after her. It’s what she’d do, were she the kind of pathetic worm who didn’t do her own killing.

  Noticing the monstrous wall this Selbsthass had—which the one in the Afterdeath lacked— Stehlen put it down to the difference in time. Here they had ten years to build the thing. That they spent the time doing just that spoke volumes of their insecurity.

  Stehlen made sure the pink scarf was tucked well out of sight before meeting Lebendig at the gate. The Swordswoman had an uncanny knack for noticing things Stehlen preferred hidden.

  The two women rode south. The Swordswoman—always laconic—even quieter than usual, answering Stehlen’s attempts at conversation in grunts and abrupt gestures.

  What the hells is wrong with her? Had she seen the scarf? Was she angry with Stehlen for killing everyone in the tavern? I did what had to be done. She wanted to explain but what if it was something entirely different bothering the big woman?

  Stehlen wanted to reach out and touch Lebendig, to hold her hand, but couldn’t bring herself to chance rejection. Instead she made one more attempt at conversation.

  “Bedeckt always named his damned horses. He had this big brooding brute of a war horse he called Launisch.” Stehlen laughed, a forced snort. “He always talked to it when he thought no one was listening. Idiot.”

  “Named mine Ross,” said Lebendig, stroking the animal’s neck.

  Stehlen watched Lebendig ignore her for half a mile, wondering what to make of that. The woman seemed neither angry nor tense, just distant, lost in thought.

  Gods, why do I always fall for the thoughtful types? In her experience, introspection led only to misery.

  Stehlen glared at the back of her own horse’s head and its ears twitched like it thought she was about to tear them off. It was an ornery and ill-tempered beast, always eyeing her with distrust. She had shite luck with horses. Hers were always irritable creatures, prone to violence and likely to make a dash for freedom if she didn’t tether them to something solid.

  Why would I name this stupid beast?

  She remembered Bedeckt asking her to fetch Launisch apples and make sure the horse was properly brushed and groomed. That alone was worth killing him for.

  He treated that damned horse better than he treated me and I— She couldn’t even think the word love, much less say it aloud.

  She added that hurt to the ever-growing list.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A thousand times the city-states came against us, and a thousand times we threw them back. They say this like it was our great victory. It was not. We now speak their harsh tongue, our own long forgotten. Our children run away, seeking adventure in stone cities. Where once we chose the sane to lead us, we now mimic the madness of the city-states. They won this war a thousand years ago.

  —Weisheit, War Chief of the GrasMeer Krähe tribe

  Erdbehüter, Geborene priestess and living embodiment of the will of the Mother Earth, sat at her fire, warming her hands. She watched Ungeist flail about with his tent. The incompetent tit still hadn’t managed to erect it. She preferred to sleep under the sky as the Earth Spirit intended.

  The moment they left the city walls Drache twisted into her dragon form and hadn’t been seen since. With any luck they’d never see her again. It bothered Erdbehüter that the dragon, soaring high above the clouds, was beyond her reach. Of course it was only a matter of time before the deranged bitch tipped over the Pinnacle, never to retake her human shape. She’d be an animal and Mother Earth had nothing but love for her many creatures. Even those born of madness. Humans, however, were a curse on the Mother’s flesh, a devouring rot.

  Erdbehüter tossed a few more branches on her fire. She examined Ungeist through the flames. Though short, he was a tight-wound bundle of muscle. They’d been together for a while, almost a year, before she realized how incompatible their desires were. Their similarities bound them together—they both loathed humanity—but their differences were too great to ignore. Ungeist had no love of the earth. He didn’t understand that while people might be infected with inner demons, they were themsel
ves an infection. But what really ended their dalliance was the way Ungeist acted like he owned her. And she went along with it, without noticing, for most of a year. It was an insidious type of slavery, happily abandoning one’s choices to another. Letting him decide everything was so easy.

  She thought back to her childhood on the north-eastern edge of the GrasMeer. Hexe, the old wise woman, wrinkled and collapsing in on herself like a plum left too long in the sun, selected Erdbehüter to be her successor. The tribe celebrated for a week, feeding and waiting on Erdbehüter’s every need. They told her that, when she came of age, she’d have her pick of the tribe’s young men. Tapfer’s broad shoulders and flowing black hair would be hers. She’d never hunt or butcher meat unless she wanted to. The tribe would pitch her tent every night, bringing her wood and lighting her fire. All the world’s wisdom would be passed to her from Hexe. She’d lead the tribe, settle all differences. Her word would be law.

  And then they stripped her naked and buried her up to her neck in the hard soil of the grass plains.

  She remembered Hexe crouching before her. The old woman stank of sweat and dirt and horses, her beady eyes sunk so far back in her wrinkled cheeks Erdbehüter had to assume they were actually there.

  “And now we must break you,” the crone said.

  “Why?” asked eleven year-old Erdbehüter.

  “You’re already cracked,” said Hexe. “I see it in your eyes. That’s why I chose you. But we must break you open.” She tapped a wizened finger against Erdbehüter’s forehead, between her eyes. “You’re trapped in here.”

  An ant crawled up Erdbehüter’s neck and she imagined snakes, long and dry, coiling about her limbs beneath the soil. “How long will it take?” She felt pride at how little her voice shook.