J. King: The Diamond

"No!" the Open Lord cried again, his voice raw. "No!"

Bleeding and glistening with slivers of glass, Madieron bore Piergeiron to the aisle floor and laid him down. "You're all right," the giant said awkwardly. "You're free. You're alive."

"But she's not," Piergeiron gasped, clutching Sunderstone's tunic. His eyelids strained at their stitches. "She's dead!"

Madieron glanced at Shaleen's glass-topped casket. "Who? Who's dead?"

"Eidola," replied the Open Lord. He coughed, blood spattering cracked lips. "I pursued her across Faerun, and beyond… through all of time. I pursued her through life, unto death."

Madieron looked up beseechingly to the Blackstaff. Khelben crouched beside the fallen lord of Waterdeep and said, "You've had a long sleep… a short death. You've dreamed."

Piergeiron shook his head, shards of glass and drops of blood raining to the stone floor. "No. I did not dream this. She's dead. Somewhere beneath our feet, she's died."

"Don't speak," urged the Blackstaff.

"I will speak," Piergeiron snarled. "I must speak, or it'll all fade and be forgotten like a dream. It wasn't a dream!"

He struggled to sit up in Madeiron's arms. "I was dead. I've traveled the places of the dead. I've walked other worlds, and journeyed through mirror mazes to find Eidola and bring her back. I've fought tanar'ri and climbed the world tree and plunged into Lethe's waters of forgetfulness; they still cling to me. If I don't tell what befell me now, I'll nevermore remember."

Khelben raised his head to glare at the armsmen, merchants, and nobles crowding around. "I need priests- now! — to heal this man. Are there any tailors or seamstresses here? Someone with a sure hand? The Open Lord needs the stitches out of his eyelids! The rest of you, back! Officers, see to it!"

The Lord Mage leaned back over Piergeiron, shielding the wounded man against any dart or hurled dagger that might forestall the return of the Open Lord to his throne. "Let them tend you, and tell all the stories you wish. Wherever you have been, welcome home, friend."

As folk in their finery scurried to obey Khelben's orders, Piergeiron Paladinson smiled and started to speak.

He surfaced in a deep wood, leaving behind cold, still water. But he was dry, and no water stood nearby, only damp leaf mold. Somewhere beneath it, perhaps, was the deep, eternal darkness he'd ascended through… limitless depths inhabited only by the souls of the dead.

I am dead, he told himself plainly. I am dead.

There were airy dreams of elsewhere: a palace perched above a restless sea, waves as white and loud as clashing swords. Their clamor mingled with bards' songs that wove truth out of thin air. He saw again masked lords and darting daggers, a thousand shadowed conspiracies, saw bright banners fluttering, and heard armsmen shouting a name in jubilant unison-a name also shaped by the hostile lips of those conspirators. A name that belonged to him. Piergeiron. It sounded like some sort of falcon.

Something more came back to him then, lone, shining, and beautiful… a soul that sang his name, high and pure.

What was her name? It was gone with her. She was gone.

He stood alone, in this wood. It was real; the rest were but fading tatters of forgetfulness. It all meant nothing now. The cloak of scars and sorrows, woven in life to encrust and mottle old souls, making them distinct from all others, was gone. He was PierHe was a falcon. Nay, he was a Paladin.

Paladin looked about.

This was a verdant place. Trees soared to join earth and endless sky. Vines spiraled across ancient bark, leaves catching scraps of light lancing down from above. Birds coursed in silent lines among the trees. The musk of growing things hung strong in the air. The forest quivered with the tremendous murmur of the world growing. Growing.

Then, slashing through all, came a round, mournful cry, a call long unanswered and despairing. Paladin felt the longing in its haunting wail.

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. He was a monster. Monsters must die.