Sorn stepped over the giant man's corpse, casually flicking his cape—more red than yellow now—behind him. His eyes closed. His smile was exultant, rapturous, ecstatic. He breathed in shuddering breath and raised his arms heavenward as blood dripped down the curved edge of his blade, over the crosshilt, and across his knuckles, dripping to the ground as if he were squeezing a heart in his fist.
Sorn's eyes opened and fixed firmly on Mirek.
"Ah." It was a sigh of tremendous release, as if Sorn had finally found the meaning to his existence.
Mirek stared at the man, dumbfounded and aghast. Then angry. Then furious.
He couldn't wait for the watch to bring this man to justice. No, Mirek had to kill him. Now.
He spun on his heel and sprinted for the graveyard, grateful to hear the thumping of Sorn's boots behind him in time with his own strides.
* * *
The worm was heading for his sword, running with all his hate-filled, black energy. Sorn trotted after him, but then stopped. So what if he got it? Mirek was a tired, beaten old man. Sorn was younger, more virile, faster, stronger, better in every way possible. And as he was discovering that day, justice had a way of favoring the better man.
Let him get his little pig-sticker. It might make things a bit more interesting, and Sorn would spill his guts just the same.
He turned his attention to the dog-faced man lying insensate in the wheelbarrow. Sorn laughed as he walked over. He bent down next to Tharkrist's malformed ear, sucking in the scent of blood and smoke through his nostrils, and whispered, "Thank you for the gift. It was sublime. Thank you." He laughed again, bringing his face close enough to nuzzle against his matted fur. Which is just what he did. "You have pushed me to the limits of my being, shown me what I truly am. The least I could do for you is the same."
He seized the handles, lifted, and began running. The fires reflecting in his eyes shined ever brighter.
* * *
Mirek snatched the hilt of his blade and whirled with it extended in front of him, expecting to feel Sorn's blade crash into his own.
He was alone in the tall tundra grass.
And Tharkrist was alone with Sorn.
No no no!
Mirek raced back to the street just in time to see Sorn running, barrow in hand, straight towards the burning inn.
Sorn let go of the barrow, grinning with malicious delight.
Before Mirek could do anything to stop it, before he even had a chance to do anything, the wheelbarrow—and in it, the friend that Mirek had come to love—rolled through the front door of the inn, straight into the inferno. Right before Tharkrist passed out of sight, his black eyes flashed open wide. Then the screaming began.
Mirek couldn't go in there to save him, not without consigning himself to death. He felt as if a bit of his own soul was in that fire, dying in agony, screaming its lungs bloody. He wanted to go in there, do something. Perhaps that was a better fate than this, than living life having lost his only friend, but Tharkrist's earlier words came to mind.
Justice will only prevail if we are alive to tell about it.
Justice had its chance. Now was the time for vengeance.
With the rage of all the soldiers throughout time who had seen their brothers fall in battle; with the pain of all the husbands throughout time who have seen their wives raped and beaten, left to die in a dingy alley; with all the helpless hate of those who witnessed injustice and could do nothing; he let loose a cry that could split the heavens, that could shatter the crystal towers that withstood the ages, that could make the God himself flinch in terror.
How he had crossed the distance between them, Mirek didn't know, but all his rage, all his anguish, all his ferocity was bound into one single downward stroke, as if both the Lord and the Lady had funneled the power of all of history's armies together, fused them into muscle which was then turned to deadly action.
Sorn, eyes wide with astonishment, wasn't fast enough to bring his sword up to block a strike of such violence. He wasn't fast enough to dodge out of the way, either—but he tried.
Time slowed to an exquisite crawl, as if to allow Mirek the opportunity to savor his vengeance fully. As though the blade were an extension of his arm, he felt the parting of each thread of silk as a slight tremor, the popping of each mail link as if it were a knuckle in his own hand. He watched as flesh parted as easily as liquid. The shoulder joint beneath, though made of bone, yielded as quickly as a prostitute at the sight of gold.
Once the blade was through and Sorn's arm completely severed from his body, the world exploded back into motion.
The sword's edge cracked into the paving stones, sending a lightning bolt of pain up Mirek's arms. Numb and drained, he dropped the sword and tried to move around Sorn and into the alley, away from all this.
He ended up falling to his knees only a few paces away.
He turned and saw Sorn standing in the same spot, holding his sword in the hand still attached to his body. The man looked down at his other arm for a brief moment, and laughed.
Sorn turned to Mirek, the inn behind him blackened as if blanketed in darkest night, its windows gaping like the pits of gouged eyes.
* * *
Perfect. It was all so perfect.
Sorn had sinned, he knew. He had shown mercy when moral fortitude was necessary. And for that sin, he had paid with an arm.
Justice was a mystery to most men. But not to Sorn.
Not to the avatar of justice. Not to judgment made flesh.
What most men did not understand was that justice was the will of the world realized. What will be will be, and what will be is just.
And he with the most power determines what will be.
He couldn't feel any pain, even though blood pulsed from his shoulder. No, he felt utterly undiminished. He could feel his missing arm, hand, and fingers as if they were still there, muscles flexing and joints clenching, even though he knew they were not. Not even the destruction of his body could bend his will to that of another.
Feeling a flush of excitement, he turned his attention to Mirek, that wretched, sad little creature kneeling on the paving stones, eyes as wide as those of a puppy that knew it was about to get kicked. Mirek's will suddenly seemed to deflate, as if he knew that he had lost, and that Sorn—that justice—had finally triumphed.
Then Mirek's head jerked up and his eyes focused on something.
He mumbled something unintelligible.
The man was about to die. Sorn was feeling in an indulgent mood. Smiling, he said, "What did you say?"
Mirek shielded his eyes with one hand and pointed with the other. "Behind you."
* * *
Mirek hadn't understood, at first, why all the fires had gone out. It had been just one more insane thing in a day full of them.
He didn't understand until he saw Tharkrist, fur singed in places, skin blistered in others, crawling from the charred timbers and rubble on his elbows and knees, in his remaining hand holding a small sphere of light that blazed brighter than the noonday sun.
An entire inferno, bound into a single point.
Sorn, evidently concerned that something might be wrong, glanced over his shoulder and met Tharkrist's black eyes.
Liquid fire sprayed forth from that small sphere of light in a blinding torrent.
Mirek covered his face with his arms. The heat was overwhelming. The afterimage burned into his retinas was of a man consumed by the light of justice.
When the heat finally abated and Mirek could see again, he lowered his arms. All that was left of Sorn was the severed arm, twitching on the ground.
Without wasting a moment, Mirek climbed to his feet and raced over to where his friend had collapsed.
* * *
Mirek trudged forward through the city with Tharkrist on his back again. The burden now seemed... less. As if the sorcerer had lost even more of himself. He was completely dead weight, unable to make the slightest effort to stay on Mirek's back. Tharkrist's last bind
ing had taken all the strength the sorcerer had left, and he had had little enough to spare as it was. If it weren't for his slow but regular gurgling breaths, Mirek would have thought him dead for sure.
That couldn't happen. Mirek wouldn't let it.
Walking was all he could do, so that's what he did. He had no particular destination in mind. He merely wanted to walk, to get away from there. No matter where he went, each street seemed a tableau of bloody death and wanton destruction. The graceful, sweeping crystal spires which dominated Suridruun's skyline seemed to stare down at the carnage, aloof and untouched by its vulgarity. Mirek had never seen the effects of the sporebound in such numbers. In the past when the Dark Tree had come, the incidents had been sporadic. Now it looked as if the city had been visited by a plague of violence.
Of course, sporebound or not, Sorn had been infected by that plague. Perhaps had been infected the worst of all.
Mirek felt that all that was possible just then was forward motion. With every step he took, the Dark Tree loomed larger in his vision.
Whether he was willing to admit or not, he knew that the Tree was his journey's end.
"Mirek." Tharkrist's voice was weak, almost inaudible.
"Yes."
"Do you have any family?"
"No."
"Any friends?"
Mirek smiled as his eyes watered. His grip tightened, though Tharkrist was in no immediate danger of falling off. "Just one."
Tharkrist grunted and then went silent. The small sound of Mirek's bare feet padding across the quickly chilling paving stones echoed faintly.
"Our clans," Tharkrist whispered, "Tokkarint and Shannod. People think that we are enemies."
"Hush, friend. Don't say such things."
He continued as if Mirek hadn't spoken. "But we are not. Even though the clans of the Lord and the clans of the Lady are meant to fight, we are not enemies. No, the Lord and the Lady are not forces in opposition, but forces in balance."
His words had a strange ring of truth to them. "So what are you saying?"
"That perhaps you do not exist in opposition to the Dark Tree. That you, too, are a force for balance."
Mirek paused, glancing up briefly, and continued walking. He didn't know what to say to that.
"I've never loved Shannod lands. See this fur; I wasn't meant to live in a desert. No, I've come to love these frozen lands of yours. They are filled with an austere, crystalline beauty, the way the sun reflects off of snow-capped peaks in the distance, the sleeping glaciers that extend for miles, the frozen waterfalls that seem to shift from year to year, but not before your eyes. Only if you're watchful do you notice."
"Stop this. You're not going to die."
"Yes I am. Set me down."
Mirek gently laid him down on the paving stones. He tightly gripped Tharkrist's forearm in his hands.
"You have a power within you, Mirek, one that has lain dormant your whole life. It is a power that we all have, but some have it greater than others. Some call it soulbinding. Others call it love."
Weakly he took his arm from Mirek's grip and held it hovering near Mirek's heart. Mirek could almost feel the touch of that phantom hand. "Not many would give it to one such as me." Tharkrist's eyes held the traces of a smile. "My soul to yours, brother."
His arm fell.
Tears streamed down Mirek's cheeks and into his beard, but he didn't brush them away. He hoped that in the waning light of the day they might freeze to his skin, and might have one more instance of austere beauty to show his friend before night fell.
But Tharkrist's eyes were already closed in sleep.
* * *
Mirek stood before the Dark Tree.
He was close enough to touch it, yet even so the distance between them seemed impenetrable. He couldn't believe that after all these years hiding in terror of it that he would be standing here fearlessly gazing into the glassy striated surface of its trunk.
Tharkrist was right; Mirek knew that now. The facts were there. They always had been. He had just been unwilling to recognize them for what they were.
Mirek had been created unhappy and unfulfilled. He had been created as an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
So he raised his arms, closed his eyes, and opened his heart.
He could still see them through his eyelids: tiny points of light, the bits of souls not yet meant for this world. He had to take them into himself so that he could take them home.
The sky seemed to fill with vibrant streaks of light. He felt something building within him, building, building, building—
He opened his eyes. The tree was gone, as was the city. He didn't know where he was, yet it felt as if he were no longer in the Fourth World. All was darkness, yet he felt a sense of speed and motion—
He felt as if he was pulled inside out, mouth yanked into his stomach, eyes pulled out the back of his skull, knees bent outward and feet pulled up... and then he was himself again.
He was standing on something as white as purest snow, something gave off a faint white luminescence, curving in on itself before and behind him, stretching out to either side.
Another white object jutted out of it, extending out of it, and another and another, with more, countless more branching out of them into the infinite inky blackness beyond.
"Welcome to the Birthing Tree," came a man's voice behind him.
Mirek spun. There stood a man in a tunic and trousers that seemed to be of simple enough cut, but fit as if melded around him. He looked young, younger than Mirek anyway, his white hair and beard cropped short, with skin the same powder blue as Mirek's own. He was smiling as if he was the only one in on a joke.
"You... are a Tokkarintsman?"
The man chuckled. "Hardly." His hair darkened to a deep mahogany and his skin flushed to pink. Then his face blurred to something that seemed to have features even if Mirek couldn't exactly place what they were. Wyrric Clan. Faceless Clan.
"You're the Lord."
Finally his features returned to the blue and white Mirek first saw him wear. He smiled smugly and bowed. "At your service."
Mirek fell to his knees, bracing himself with his hands as he struggled to draw in air. His mind couldn't wrap around what was before him. Even the glowing white bark of the branch on which he knelt, and its rough texture beneath his touch, seemed almost like an elaborate hallucination. He looked around him in awe, seeing the various branches of the Tree splitting off into blackness in every direction. He couldn't see any leaves or any of the fruits from which souls were born, but he knew then in a visceral way that he was no longer in the Fourth World. Excluding divine beings like the Lord and Lady, he was perhaps the only man in all of the Berahmain's Creation to have seen what he was now seeing.
"I'm in the First World," he said, the words coming only after an effort of finding them. "This," he knocked against the wood he knelt upon, "is the Birthing Tree. And you." He glanced up. "You are the Lord of the Fourth World."
"Yes, we've been over this. Now get up."
Shakily, Mirek stood. "But... why?"
"You already figured out the answer." The Lord cocked an eyebrow at him. "Well, your friend did, anyway. I'd wager you'd have lived and died a hundred lives before figuring it out for yourself."
"And... where is the Lady?" He could think of nothing else to ask. Nothing sensible, anyway.
The Lord's eyes narrowed, flicking from branch to branch. "Up to no good, I'm sure." He seemed to suddenly remember Mirek standing there. "Anyway, thanks."
"Thanks?"
"Yeah. Without you, this whole place would have been a mess. The Big Guy," he said, pointing up with his thumb in a conspiratorial manner, "seemed to think it was all my fault, since the Tree Fragment ended up in the Fourth. So I took care of it. With your help, of course."
"Big Guy... you mean... Berahmain?"
"So, I'm giving you a choice. It's a choice no one gets, but you aren't really anybody, are you? Your soul wasn't born here." He gestured to the
Tree expansively. "You were created from one of the soul fragments that got loose in our world." He scanned Mirek from head to toe, appraising him. "You seemed to have a whole soul now, though."
"What... what do you mean?"
The Lord's face turned solemn. "Your friend. He gave you all he had. He's a part of you, now and forever."
Mirek turned away. He held a hand to his chest, to find if he could feel two heartbeats.
No. Only one. But it was strong.
"I understand. So what is my choice?"
The Lord shrugged. "You can go back to your old life and keep going as if you never left."
"Or?"
"Start over."
Mirek closed his eyes. He knew what that meant.
If ever a soul fails to succeed in the Challenge of a given world, it returned to the world prior to that one upon death. So if Mirek were to fail the Challenge of the Fourth World, his soul would have been transported to the Third for his next life. This can go on forever, Ascending to one world, Descending to the next, in a vicious cycle. Unless, of course, something gives.
One such point was for those who fail the Challenge of the Second World and returned to the First World, that of the Birthing Tree. Once a soul leaves here, it cannot come back and remain the same. If it did come back, it got absorbed into the Tree, changed into something else. Like a dead body absorbed into the earth, to then become the fodder of the creatures that dwell there.
The old soul dies, and a new one is born.
Many people claimed that such a cycling of souls was beautiful and profound. Deep in their hearts, however, Mirek knew that such a destruction of the self was viewed as the purist form of hell.
But what did he really have to go back to? His job? His ruined city? Everything he ever had that mattered was right here with him.
"I would ask one more boon from you," Mirek said.
The look on the Lord's was incredulous. "Really? You do realize that no one gets the chance I'm giving you. The chance to return from here."
"I know, but neither choice is truly satisfactory to me. And you owe me."
The Lord crossed his arms. "Fine. What is it?"
"I want to start over..." He knew he could do no less now; he was a different person now. "But let me keep my memories," Mirek said, meeting the Lord's eyes forcefully. "All of them."
"Is that it?"
Mirek hesitated. When does one get to make demands of the Lord like this? "Yes, that is all I want."