DAS UNGLÜCK

German, "the sorrow; the misfortune; the calamity"

Progress just means bad things happen faster. -- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

The world has some laws that can never be broken. Bread will always land on the buttered side. The phone always rings at the most inconvenient moment. And no one is ever as conspicuous as when they try to make themselves inconspicuous.

Karandren's classmates generally tried to ignore his existence. They'd stopped outright bullying him after their ringleader died so mysteriously. After that they adopted a policy of pointedly turning their backs on him when he walked into a room. The students at the table closest to the door automatically began to turn away as soon as he entered the dining room. Then they stopped. Their heads swivelled round. Their eyes grew rounder and rounder until they were practically standing out on stalks.

Karandren barely even noticed their baffled stares. He was too busy concentrating on trying not to fall over. Being well over a foot shorter than he had been yesterday left him unable to properly control his legs. If his shoes had been magnets drawn towards the metal table-legs he could hardly have found it more difficult to navigate the room.

Conversations around him slowly died as more and more people noticed his extraordinary behaviour. When a student staggered around like a drunkard, nearly falling over chairs, tables, and uneven bits of the floor, it tended to attract attention. Karandren collapsed into the nearest empty seat without caring who else was sitting at the table. The students already there surreptitiously inched away from him. All of them eyed him dubiously and whispered to each other.

One of the teachers came up beside him. Frowning suspiciously, she said, "Are you ill?"

No, I'm just not used to being fourteen, Karandren thought. He looked up at the teacher with his best expression of wide-eyed innocence. "I put my shoes on the wrong feet."

She stared at him with the confusion of an adult who couldn't comprehend the way a teenager's mind worked. "Then put them on the right feet and stop making an exhibition of yourself."

He hummed noncommittally. Let her take from that whatever she wanted. He turned away and began to pile scrambled eggs onto his plate. Food at the academy was undeniably horrible. But it had been over fifty years since he'd lost the ability to taste anything at all. After so many years of food turning to ash in his mouth, it no longer matter how bad the food was as long as he could taste it. Karandren helped himself to the entire pot of simultaneously soggy and overcooked scrambled eggs. The other students stared at him as if he was a visitor from another planet.

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"Congratulations. You're dead. Again."

If anyone could hear her they would have scoffed and told her not to be so dramatic. Diarnlan wouldn't have listened. It would probably have ended in an argument. Or maybe they would have just assumed she'd lost her mind. Next thing she knew she'd be locked up in an asylum.

Diarnlan stared moodily down at her teacup and let her mind run wild. It conjured up increasingly ridiculous images of what might happen if anyone thought she was mad. Their very ridiculousness was somehow comforting. At least they were a temporary escape from reality. There was nothing comforting about the thought of facing what was really happening.

Her thoughts turned back to the situation in spite of her attempts to keep them away. She found herself dwelling on her death even as she tried to forget about it.

The strangest thing was how death felt so familiar. It was almost as if she'd died before. That was why she instinctively added "again" to her sarcastic summary of events. It startled her to find how natural that phrasing felt. Yesterday -- was it really yesterday when she didn't know what day this was, or if time existed any more? -- she would have scoffed at the mere idea of someone dying more than once. Now, sitting in her old kitchen, holding a cup that had been broken but was now intact again, the only thing she was sure of was that none of this made sense.

For the tenth time she pressed her fingers to her wrist. For the tenth time she felt her pulse just beneath the skin. As far as her physical body went, she was alive and perfectly healthy. Her mind and soul were another matter entirely.

I died once, she thought, trying to reason this out. I killed myself-- Wait, what? That's not right. That brute killed me.

He killed me twice, her mind whispered.

Diarnlan groaned and buried her head in her hands. How could she figure out what was happening now when she couldn't even remember what had happened before?

She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. It was only lukewarm. She threw the cup's contents into the sink and poured herself another cup. She drank it slowly, staring out the window at the beach.

The thin part of the veil was somewhere beyond those rocks. All of the monsters landed in that part of the water when they first came through. Diarnlan remembered only too well the time she and three other mages attempted to find and close the gap in the veil. They went out in a borrowed boat and cast every spell they could think of. After a full day they still hadn't found the gap. Apparently it could only be accessed from the other side. Eventually they gave up and rowed back to the shore. Just to make a bad day even worse, Diarnlan accidentally rowed onto a rock and had to pay for the damage to the boat.

She'd tried very hard to forget that humiliating experience. It had been years since she last thought of it. Yet now she found all the sting had gone out of it. In a way it was almost funny. What did any amount of humiliation matter when you were dead and quite possibly in hell?

That sent her thoughts back to the problem of just where she was and what was happening here. People did not come back from the dead. They just didn't. No amount of magic had ever managed to bring someone back to life. Time-travel was theoretically possible, but the only people who'd ever tried it had seen something that turned them into gibbering morons. No, it was simply impossible that she had somehow come back to life and been sent back in time. It was much more likely that this was some illusion created for some sinister purpose. Maybe Karandren had found a way to trap her in her own mind. It would be just like him.

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Diarnlan set down her cup and went to explore the rest of the house. She went over everything, searching for the slightest mistake that would unravel the whole illusion. Eventually she found it. But it wasn't at all the sort of thing she expected.

Saungrafn stood in the hall, propped against the coat-stand like an umbrella. For several minutes all Diarnlan could do was stand and gawk.

Why would he let me have a weapon?

It made no sense. Whoever had created this illusion could only want to trap her here for their own nefarious purposes. Giving her a weapon -- especially her soul-weapon -- was the last thing they should do. It was like a jailer handing a prisoner the means of escape.

It's a fake, Diarnlan thought. That was only the only possibility that made sense. It's just part of the illusion.

She held out her hand. Saungrafn obligingly flew out of its scabbard and into her hand. Diarnlan made a most undignified noise half-way between a squeak and a yell. The sword-hilt warmed in her hand. At the edge of her mind she felt the magic she'd imbued in her soul-weapon waiting to be called on. If it was possible for a sword, even a magical one, to be happy to see someone, she got the distinct impression that Saungrafn was happy to see her.

When she first started studying under Teivain-ríkhon-hrair, Diarnlan had heard rumours that soul-weapons became sentient if you used them often enough and gave them enough magic. Her teacher had certainly treated her soul-weapon -- a scythe, of all things -- as if it was a person. She talked to it as if she expected to get an answer. Diarnlan had even seen her set it in a chair out in the garden.

"That's so she can look around," Teivain-ríkhon-hrair said with a perfectly straight face. "I don't want her to get bored."

Diarnlan's dignity would have taken a fatal blow if she ever acted like that towards her own soul-weapon. When she created Saungrafn she flatly refused to talk to it, give it a chair of its own, or do anything so stupid. In its entire existence she'd never seen any indication it was sentient. Naturally she'd taken that to mean her teacher was just being her usual eccentric self. So what in the world was the meaning of this strange feeling of happiness coming from the sword?

Diarnlan firmly pushed the feeling to the back of her mind. Dimly she felt something that was oddly like hurt and disappointment take its place. She steadfastly refused to think about that. She picked up the scabbard, tied it around her waist, and put Saungrafn back in it. This situation was bizarre enough as it was. The last thing she needed was to start thinking her sword was sentient.

Knock-knock-knock.

The noise sounded like an explosion in the silence of the house. Diarnlan jumped. Her hand tightened around Saungrafn's hilt.

Knock-knock-knock.

Once the shock wore off she realised what it was. Someone -- or something -- was at the back door.

All the colour drained from Diarnlan's face. What could be outside? What sort of creatures lived in this place that looked so much like the real world but couldn't possibly be it?

"Diarnlan! Hellooooooo!"

If the thing outside had spoken in an eldritch language that drove its hearers to madness, it would have frightened Diarnlan less than that did. That was her sister's voice. She hadn't had much contact with her family since becoming a mage, but she knew Jahanvard was still alive and well at the time of her death.

Her first thought was to cast an exorcism spell. She got as far as preparing the spell before she had second thoughts. Anything could be out there. Exorcism spells probably wouldn't work on it. For all she knew they might even be dangerous. No, the best way out of this was to avoid drawing its attention entirely.

She was already only a short distance from the front door. Carefully she tiptoed over to it. She kept her right hand on Saungrafn's hilt just in case she needed to draw it at a moment's notice.

At the back of her mind Diarnlan got the strangest feeling that Saungrafn was watching her actions with bemusement. She ignored that feeling like she'd ignored all the others.

She unlocked the front door and turned the handle. The door wouldn't open.

Diarnlan panicked. She twisted the handle back and forth. It still refused to open. In desperation she yanked at the door. It rattled far too loudly for comfort. At the other side of the house the thing outside continued knocking the back door. It still used her sister's voice. Diarnlan did her best to ignore it.

After a minute of fruitlessly tugging at the doorknob she finally bothered to look at the bolt. Immediately she saw what the problem was. The door was still bolted. She slid it back and finally opened the door. As quietly as possible she tiptoed out of the house, across the front garden, and out the garden gate. Only then did she risk looking back. No sign of anyone or anything following her.

In fact there was nothing out of place about what she saw at all. The house and its surroundings looked exactly as they had when she was still alive, on all the occasions she'd glanced back before leaving for some reason. How very strange. Even the best illusions weren't perfect. There was always some tiny detail that was wrong. Yet she couldn't see anything wrong here, just like she hadn't seen anything wrong in the house itself.

She ran along the path towards the village. In the distance she saw the roofs of the farms on its outskirts. The wind tossed her hair and tugged at her clothes. The smell of the sea filled the air. As she continued further along the path it gradually became mixed with the smell of grass and wildflowers. Long grass at the side of the path brushed against her legs.

This was by far the most realistic illusion she'd ever heard of. She felt more and more uneasy with each minute that passed without its disintegration. What if it was real after all? What if, impossible though it seemed, she had somehow come back to life?

Does it count as coming back to life if I've just travelled back in time? she wondered as she climbed over the stile by the old mill.

If she had travelled back in time then the thing at her door might be her sister after all. Diarnlan grimaced. On second thoughts, she might prefer some monstrous denizen of the afterlife.

There was one way to confirm or deny this hypothesis. She had woken up back in her old house. Nowhere had she seen any sign the pests -- er, students -- were expected. Therefore she had probably arrived before the first skrýszel crawled out of the Óhreinnjǫrð.

In hindsight that was when all her troubles had started. If she never killed the skrýszel, she would never become famous. Her teacher would probably still come up with that hare-brained idea of bringing the pests to annoy her, but none of them would have any wish for her to teach them. They wouldn't even know who she was. She would never have to see Karandren again. If he was banished and came back from Miavain in a hundred years to get his revenge, he'd have no reason to come after her. She could avoid repeating her first life.

(Third life, a voice whispered in her head. She ignored it.)

All she had to do was not kill the skrýszel. That should be easy. She just had to go on an extended trip until she heard of its attack and that someone else had killed it. In fact it would be best if she left the country. Byuryan was lovely this time of year, and was separated from Avallot by the Sauðárdalur Ocean. And if that wasn't far enough away, there were plenty of countries beyond it. She could even go on a journey all the way to the ends of the earth if necessary.

But what if Karandren has time-travelled too? That pesky little voice just had to get its tuppence-worth in.

Don't be ridiculous, Diarnlan thought scornfully. Time-travel is impossible. She paused, reconsidered that, and amended it to, Time-travel is highly improbable. What are the chances of both him and me waking up in the past?

You both died.

Clearly that voice wasn't going to give in without a fight. Diarnlan was having a very stressful time, but she wasn't yet at the point of arguing with her own mind. So she did the next best thing and ignored it.