The Diamond - J. Robert King [17]
She. There had been a name for her in the world of contingencies and consciousness, but here she had no name save Desire, or Heart's Desire, or Broken Heart, or just… Heart.
The sound of Heart in her hopelessness sent deep sorrow through Paladin. He turned toward the song. It came from there, high above.
He was facing the greatest tree of all, its massive gnarled bole as wide as a mountain. It was the tree, whose roots plunged down through the deeps and (somehow he knew this) beyond, into and out of and through a thousand worlds. It was the tree whose crown cracked the blue shell of arching sky and whose branches held aloft a great diamond as large as worlds. The world tree. A tree that bound worlds together and was worlds altogether. The call came from its crown.
He walked to the tree that loomed like a mountain. It took days. Dreams of otherwhere-dead bodies and cold cellars and crafters with hammers and measuring tapes-intruded. He drifted down into them, and surfaced again after not a blink of time. When at last he reached the tree, he climbed.
There were whole worlds in its bark, hidden in the brown terrain of ragged mountain ridges and deep valleys. Paladin climbed tirelessly and quickly. He clambered away from strange stinging and swarming creatures who dwelt in some of the valleys, and he learned to avoid their villages but otherwise pressed on as straight as he could.
He fell thrice, and died each time, surfacing again in the strange world of gold-gilded caskets and mourning men. But what is death to a dead man? Always he resurfaced to climb on.
The fourth time he fell, Paladin fell up the tree. Its diamond crown loomed, and Paladin plunged toward it, watching brown ridges race past. The crown grew ever larger. The bark of the tree became slick black skin, and the boughs branched into massive tentacles. Where once there had been leaves, now there were suction cups, broad and oozing, gripping the great diamond. Large as worlds, the gem glittered with the tiny gleams of pinprick stars and wandering moons.
This was no world tree, but something darker and deadlier. A world in itself, huge and alive, or-no, a creature that wished to be a world. Its thousand limbs in their dark and mighty magnificence clutched the glowing diamond.
He looked at that awesome stone. It drew him up. The lady hung unseen within it, crushed on all sides by titanic, yet balanced, forces. She sang out from its bright depths.
Paladin would save her.
He was suddenly there, beside the diamond, a cage within a cage. In it, entrapped, was Heart, who called to him.
Now he saw how the stone had held so powerful and beautiful a creature as Heart captive so long: the diamond was no clear crystal, but a hall of mirrors. Reflections, semblances, illusions; the most potent of magics in a world of truth. A labyrinth of lies and deceptions, receding into endless illusions that worked with eye and mind to betray body and soul.
Truth is, in the end, powerless against dazzle and shine.
The mournful throb of Heart came distantly from within.
Mirrors can be broken. Paladin drew steel. He would smash his way into the maze and carve a path inward to Heart.
The luminous mirror before him bore his own determined features. He shattered them and stepped into the slanted space beyond. Angled planes all around gave back his appearance.
The first few reflections showed Paladin as he was, only subtly reversed. His sword arm was switched, his forward knee had been traded for the trailing one. Others held images even farther from…
Paladin gritted his teeth and swung. A delicate magic can slay if it reverses thoughts until self and purpose are lost. Ten images of swordsmen struck in unison.
The world shattered. Another passage opened. Paladin stepped through.
The mirrors he now faced showed him the snout and tusks of a boar, black lashes and snakelike, slit-pupiled eyes, a blood-gorged cockscomb and wattle. He looked like a monster.