The Blood Mirror

“In.” He said it with no hesitation.

“Then start talking. What happened at the execution? What was that thing? Why haven’t I heard about any of this before?”

Karris hadn’t slept well since the execution. She didn’t know if she’d ever sleep well again. Seeing that monster tear out of that spy’s skin had been the single most frightening experience of her life. In all her battles, even hunting down wights—those she’d fought had been men at core. This was something else.

For the first time Karris had ever seen, Andross Guile looked somewhat daunted, as if he didn’t know what to say, or perhaps where to start. “Have you heard of the Thousand Worlds?”

I’m not interested in fairy stories, Karris wanted to say. But Andross Guile rarely went on tangents without good reason. “The premise that there are many worlds like ours?”

“Not exactly like ours,” Andross said. “The idea being that Orholam, being a creator, wouldn’t necessarily stop after making one world. Maybe he’d make twenty, or a thousand or a million. Who knows? I was ambivalent about the hypothesis. The unmasking of Nabiros has changed my thinking.”

“That thing. Delara Orange swore it wasn’t a will-casting or a hex.”

“I believe her. Nabiros was real.” He rested his piercing eyes on her. “The Chromeria and the Magisterium don’t actually teach some of the things that they believe, for fear that weaker souls will be led astray. Regardless, I’ve been piecing together truths and making leaps of intuition for many years, but this is the truth as well as I know. Will you cry heresy if I say things you don’t like?”

It wasn’t a real question. What it was, Karris saw, was a plea to have his efforts recognized. Doubtless Felia had always given him assurances of his genius. But the old man’s wife was gone now, and he wanted someone to appreciate his intellectual heavy lifting.

So instead of mocking him as her heart desired, Karris chose compassion: he’s lost his wife, for Orholam’s sake, be kind.

By the grace of Orholam alone, she painted rapt attention on her features. “Caveats accepted. What have you learned?”

He stared hard at her, looking for mockery, and here she saw him as human again. With weaknesses. Seeking approval and praise. Not venally, but simply as part of the normal human exchange—a person does something excellent and useful, and they wish it to be recognized.

But then he accepted her interest and took it as his due, the momentary chink in his arrogance covered again.

“It was told to me as a creation story, transcribed from an old Tiru wise man in the Parian highlands, but I’ve no gift for stories. Mine is a mind that tears things asunder and examines the pieces. What matters for us is that before time, Orholam created six hundred immortals—or possibly six hundred legions, but let’s not complicate things. Two hundred of those rejected him and sought his throne. They lost, are losing, will lose. In the meantime, they seek to ruin every joy Orholam might have of his creations, and taste every dark pleasure they may. If they may not rule all the celestial realms, they desire to rule a world. They will possess the bodies of the willing to taste what it is like to wear flesh. They will sire children. They will murder, steal, crush, and rape. They will defile any goodness they find. They will wage war and bring ruin wherever they can in their fury at losing the home that was free to them and is now forbidden forever. For rage burns hottest against a punishment deserved.”

This was nothing new, except for the specificity of the numbers. What was new was Andross’s treating it as real. Karris had to guess there was some spin into heresy coming soon.

“The salient fact, though, is that these immortals are neither omniscient nor omnipresent. Here.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out a number of short scrolls, one after the other. Karris could commiserate. They were both always getting reports, and always on scrolls of uniform size, which made them stack better, but also led to the waste of having entire sheets of lambskin with only the words ‘Arrived safely’ or something similarly concise on them. Many of the reports were deemed too sensitive for the parchments to be scraped and reused, too.

He unrolled half a dozen scrolls and laid them atop each other on Karris’s desk. “Imagine this scroll is the history of our world, beginning here to end over here. This one? Another world’s history. And another’s.”

Andross stacked the papers and drew his belt knife. He laid the point against the skin.

“We experience time like this.” He dragged the knife lightly forward.

“An immortal, on the other hand, may enter any world of its choosing.” He flipped a different scroll onto the top of the pile.

“It may enter at any location it desires. Any kingdom, satrapy, or city.” He moved the knife left and right.

“But once it enters, it moves in time as we do, until it leaves.” He stabbed the knife all the way through all of the scrolls. “They aren’t omnipresent, so if they choose to be in Ru all Sun Day, they may not ever be in Tyrea on the same day.” He grabbed a quill, dipped it, and crossed out everything to the left and right of the point where the knife had stabbed.

Then he cut forward. Then he lifted the knife out of the skins. “So if our immortal stays a year in Ru, say, being worshipped as the goddess Atirat, that is a year denied her elsewhere.” With the quill, he crossed out all the area left and right of his cut.

“But why the stack?” Karris asked.

“Because there are many worlds, but only one time.” He flipped a different scroll onto the top of the stack. He crossed out the entire area left and right of the cut there, too. “So Atirat is denied that time everywhere else. An immortal has all eternity, but they have only a finite number of chances to interact with us mortals. Thus, paradoxically, with all eternity available to them, a single day becomes incredibly precious to immortals. So, were I immortal, I would only visit when my presence would matter most. Perhaps on my holy days, or more likely in times of war, where I might claim or lose an entire world.”

Karris did not like where this was suddenly going. Tingles prickled along her skin. “An immortal like Nabiros?”

Andross looked at her and licked dry lips. She swore she saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. “We’ve entered a time that immortals find interesting enough to visit personally, and because of some fluke or perhaps some very carefully prescribed and maintained traditions that neither you nor I were aware of, we have just done exactly what we needed to do to kill one of them. I think it would be an insane level of optimism not to expect the full fury of their vengeance.”