Nightlord: Shadows (105 page)

That’s what I was thinking. How’d you get so smart?

Just naturally sharp, Boss.

Ouch.

Glad to see you got the point.

Double ouch.

Too many cutting remarks?

You can stop now.

Hey, I was in that case for a long time. I’ve got to draw blood somehow!

I ignored this.

I left orders to carry on as before, minus the raiding, and to await further instructions from Bob.

“Any questions?”

Sometimes, that’s the wrong thing to say. They wanted to know what to do with all the sickening people. Around a thousand troops were suffering terribly from some malady. It had not escaped their notice that everyone with this condition had been on the wall or rode out toward me not long ago.

I gestured the three lieutenants closer, almost into a huddle.

“Those who oppose me,” I said, almost whispering, “deserve to suffer before they die. Let them.”

They thought they could manage that.

In the meantime, they would make sure the change of command went smoothly—on pain of getting the same horrible disease that was slowly killing so many others. With that sort of visual aid, I figured things would be pretty seamless.

With that sorted out, I walked out the Eastgate. It was actually kind of entertaining, watching everyone who came into line of sight go face-down until I passed. I sternly reminded myself that I was only playing the role of Dread Lord. But it sure can be fun when I’m in the right mood.

Boss?

“Yeah?”

Thanks.

“You already said that, Firebrand.”

Yeah, but I mean it. Thank you.

“Forget it. I go to great lengths for my friends. I’m just sorry I didn’t do this sooner. I thought you were down in the mountains hacking off heads and setting fire to rebels.”

I was. It was great! Then Keria put me in a box. About the time you woke up, I think—I heard you, then something cut us off. I’m not sure, but that’s what I’m guessing.

“As long as you’re guessing, guess about this. Was that too easy?”

Huh?

“I just waltzed in there and became Emperor of the Eastrange. Admittedly, I had to kill the former ruler, but everyone just sort of fell in line after that. It seems too easy.”

Boss, I hate to tell you this, especially since you just did me a huge favor, but…

“Go ahead,” I encouraged. Firebrand seemed to be thinking about a way to be tactful—possibly a first for it.

Did it ever occur to you just how frightening you are?

“Well, yeah. Sometimes. I usually have to work at it.”

Work at—? Boss, I’ve heard these things thinking about you. They’re gut-wrenchingly afraid of you. Keria was a scary person and you’re her
father
. They sometimes confuse you with that other thing, the Father of Darkness. Remember him? And it’s no wonder! Did you see
any of the guys who are dying? The ones too weak to crawl, with their skin coming off, and bleeding from every hole?

I tried not to think about the pictures I’ve seen of acute radiation poisoning.

“No, I didn’t.”

You have a reputation. It scares people even when you’re not around. You brought a metal statue to
life
, Boss—not like a normal golem, but you made a living thing. You ate a dragon—and coughed a lot of it back up again, I admit—conquered Eastgate, brought down a church, held off a demon invasion, made a mountain
walk
, killed two of Keria’s magicians in magical combat, and cursed a thousand troops with a disease no one has ever seen and no one ever wants to see again. Then you not only killed Keria, the Empress of the Undermountains, but destroyed her with some sort of unholy black fire. You’ve even got a cult under the Eastrange that worships you as some sort of deathgod.

These people don’t know what you do for a living, Boss, but they’re certain they want to be on your good side—if you have one! If you’d tried to ride up and force the issue of who was in charge, yeah, that would have been a problem; I don’t think Keria was intimidated by you, but I couldn’t read her very well. As it was, you made it past everyone and everything to the palace proper, right?

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

I hear things. My point is, I think Keria thought you were after her, not me, and she couldn’t depend on anybody to help her once you made it past the walls. And, once you killed her—getting into a fight on top of a tower, in full view of the gods and everyone, then destroying her in a screaming ball of black fire—

“I didn’t do that,” I interrupted.

Does it matter? People who saw it will think you did. Anyone in line of sight was going to bow down on the spot. After her magician bolted and her lieutenants wet themselves in terror, that was the end of it; the old power structure was wrecked. You may have a lot of work ahead of you in cementing your hold on the Undermountains, but
Vathula
is as much yours as your underwear. Anyone smart enough to breathe is smart enough to
not argue
.

“Huh,” was my brilliant reply. I thought about it. “Maybe you’re right. I’m still getting used to the sudden switch. Most coups don’t go that smoothly.”

Most coups don’t involve a legendary supernatural creature that provokes religious fear, mortal dread, and immortal awe in people,
Firebrand countered. I had to admit, it had a point.

“You have a point,” I admitted. “It still feels… I don’t know. Too simple. I mean, Keria shouldn’t have come up that tower to kill me. She should have worked with her magician—”

Rakal.

“—her magician, Rakal, to at least get some defensive spells, or conjure a dozen demons, or something.”

Well, nobody said she was all that rational, Boss. Her head’s been all cracks and shards ever since she died as a mortal. It just got worse over time. I’ve heard her arguing with herself inside her head; that’s not fun to overhear, by the way. She was like two people, and neither of them nice.

Besides, who would bother to summon a demon or thirty to try and kill you? You killed over a thousand of them in a single fight at the Edge. People
know
that won’t work.

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Live and learn. Well, exist and learn, in your case, Boss.

I walked along, still thinking. Firebrand might be right about everything. Keria did have that red glow in her eyes and a shrieking fit of temper. Maybe vampires get… I don’t know… less rational, more animalistic, instinctive, if they die during the day. When all that’s left is darkness, do we lose touch with living? Do we just give in to being things that go chomp in the night?

Bronze thundered up to us, alone. She greeted Firebrand by breathing fire on it, much to Firebrand’s delight. I mounted and we went back to Karvalen.

Tort had already taken Bob in hand. She saw to it that he ate as much as he could hold, then put him to bed with healing spells to encourage his body to recover. When I got there, he was sleeping comfortably. I let him stay that way and got the wizard on night duty—Kelvin has some schedule for the watches and guard rotations; I don’t know it, I don’t need to know it, and I don’t really care. I trust him to handle it—to make sure I was notified the moment Bob woke up.

Firebrand went into the forge. The shop was in full swing; Kavel has enough guys and enough projects that it runs constantly. Firebrand was immensely happy, so I left it there; sunrise wasn’t far off.

I hurried to have a brief conversation with the mountain. I wanted to be clear on the stairs in the walls of the deeper canal areas, and I wanted to give it the basic idea for adding four more entry points to the undercity. I could have just given it instructions in a spell, but I also wanted its feedback on the idea. It got the plan and felt that it could do everything without much rearranging. I was pleased, let it know, and hurriedly dashed to my chambers.

After my waterfall, I got a call from Amber. I went down to the communications room and sat down in front of the mirror. She smiled at me and told me about a dozen big, boxy wagons that pulled into Mochara just before dawn. The occupants wanted to talk to me.

“Did they say why?” I asked. I have a lot of people, now, acting as filters. Most injuries don’t make it to me; most civic duties don’t either. There are very few things that actually
require
my attention, mainly because they can get solved or fixed by people whose job it is to do so. This lets me get on with my own stuff.

“Yes,” she told me. “They claim you have a deal with them.”

“Who are they?”

“I’m not sure what tribe or family or whatever they are, but they’re a bunch of
gata
.”

“Ah. Well, then, yes, I probably do have a deal with them.”

“You
do
?” Amber seemed surprised.

“The
gata
have an old tradition of… hmm. They don’t fear nightlords like most people do. They’ve had a long history with them, stretching back into ancient tradition. They were once families of servants to the Lords of Night, highly regarded and favored. This caused them to be ostracized when others started a campaign against the Lords of Night…” I trailed off. I hadn’t known that. Or, rather, I knew it, but I hadn’t known I knew it until the digested memory was triggered. At least it didn’t give me a headache.

“I see,” Amber said, faintly. “What should I do with them?”

“Feed them, please, then send them on to Karvalen,” I said. “It’ll take them a couple of days, but that’s not a bad thing; I’ve got things to chase down and kill.”

“Oh?”

I related to her what happened in Vathula. She didn’t seem surprised.

“So, now you control both of the passages through the Eastrange?”

“Looks like. As soon as I give Bob a hand or two, I intend to put him in charge of the place. Unless you’d rather have it?”

“No. I’m absolutely fine right here,” she said. “But I thank you for the offer,” she added.

“Somehow, I didn’t think you’d want to move. But you’re welcome.”

“What do you intend to do now?”

“Fix Bob as quickly as is elvishly possible. Pay a call on the princes of Tolcaren, Formia, and whatever that other place was called. Depending on how that goes, I may also have to talk to the sea-people and see if my technique for punishing one or more of those cities is going to cause them problems.”

“Sea-people?”

“The merfolk. The fish-bodied people that live in the ocean?”

“I thought they didn’t come near the shore?”

“They don’t, as far as I know. They generally live in the deeps. But I need to make sure.”

I could see her thinking-frown. She couldn’t see how that had anything to do with punishing a city or three.

“All right,” she agreed. “Now, on the subject of that civic center. I’ve talked to everyone in the area you wanted; there are a lot of empty places, so moving the ones who are still there wasn’t hard. Anytime you want, you can start on it.”

“That’s quick,” I said, nodding. “Okay. Get the stonemasons and quarrymen to bring in loads of rock. Just have them pile it in heaps along the edges of the area. I’ll take care of it from there. And hire some people to tear down anything in the area that isn’t made of stone.”

“Certainly. Anything else?”

“Yes. How’s Tianna?”

“She’s fine,” Amber said, smiling. “She wants to know when you’ll be by again.”

“Soon. And I may bring Bob, just so you know.”

“Oh?” Amber asked, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“Because he needs to know who you are and recognize you. He’s a vassal, not a member of the Royal Family. And he needs to know that if he allows anything under his control to upset either of you, I will be three times as upset with him.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “That makes sense.”

“It does? I must be getting better at this.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Dad.”

“If I do, you’ll let me know, Daughter.”

“See you soon?”

“Of course.”

We signed off; I turned the mirror back over to the wizard on watch, and went to breakfast.

“So, we’re expecting refugees from Vathula, as well as some unknown number of
gata
?” T’yl asked.

“Yep,” I told him. “I already sent a couple of guys with a canal boat to meet the mercenaries escorting them.”

“Are we keeping the mercenaries, too?” Kelvin asked.

“Only the ones who want to quit the mercenary business. Anyone else we’ll pay off and send on their way.”

“Do you intend to make any of them knights?”

“No. I suppose it’s possible a few of them may eventually prove themselves worthy.” I shrugged. “I don’t have a magical hammer for them to lift as a test. Really, I had more in mind just gaining them as soldiers. If they want to join the City Guard on their way to being part of the military, I’m all for it.”

“They can’t be trusted,” Rendal said, flatly. “Men who will kill for gold are not men who value loyalty.”

“In principle, I agree. However, I think that a year of service in the City Guard will weed out anybody who doesn’t measure up to our standards. Under your keen and watchful eye, Rendal, I have no doubt they’ll reveal their true colors.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgement of the compliment and the order.

After breakfast, I helped sort out some power problems with a waterwheel-powered sawmill, marked off the areas where new undercity gates were forming, and heard a complaint from what I can only call a groundskeeper. He was lying down with a bandage on his arm.

“So, you’re tending the gardens of the upper slopes, is that it?” I asked.

“Aye, Majesty, me and half a dozen more. Lady Tort put us on it, as its growin’ wild, Majesty.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Got a lot of
thashrak
nests up there, Majesty.” He tapped the bandage around his arm. “Got bit, see?”

Thashrak
are small, reptilian, and venomous. They resemble snakes with leathery wings and can grow to be up to eighteen inches long. Their mouths have lots of teeth, however, in addition to a pair of fangs. They normally feed on fruits and berries, sucking the juices out of them, or on small animals, usually rodents. Generally, they avoid larger animals and people. The bite of a
thashrak
is poisonous, but it isn’t usually fatal to something the size of a man. It usually causes temporary paralysis and sometimes causes permanent blindness. They prefer high places, like mountains.

They aren’t usually a problem in the Eastrange; their normal habitat is farther south, across the Circle Sea. However, the mountain’s heat keeps the upper slopes warmer than one might expect, especially near the exhaust vents, and the vegetation is almost exclusively fruit trees and berry bushes. An ideal habitat, really.

“Did you do anything to antagonize it?” I asked.

“Not so’s I noticed, Majesty. I was just trimmin’ stuff to make pathways clear.”

“Okay. You rest. I’ll see what needs to be done.”

“As you say, Majesty.”

So I trudged up the inner wall of the courtyard, wandered around for a bit, and finally found a
thashrak
nest by the southeastern chimney stack. I approached it carefully. They lay eggs, so the mother reared up, flapped her wings, and hissed at me.

I’ve used translation spells before. Some of them work by simply trading vocabulary; others are more idea-based. I went for the second type, hoping to find enough brains in the reptile skull to reason with it.

“Hello.”

Go away
.

Not in so many words, of course, but the meaning was pretty clear. Surprisingly so. The things might be more intelligent than a typical lizard. I backed off a step.

“Is that better?”

Better. But go away.

“Look, I just want to talk to you. I’m not going to hurt you or your eggs.”

I don’t believe you.

“All right,” I said. “You don’t have to believe me. I just want you to not hurt any people.”

Stay away
, it—she—advised.

“Okay. I’ll make you a deal.”

Deal?

“I give you, you give me.”

Stay away.

“I will. We all will. But you have to warn us away, like now. If you hide your nest, we don’t know we’re too close.”

She drew her wings in a bit, her head wobbling from side to side. This was something new to her experience, obviously, and she was having trouble processing it.

Rear up? Hiss? Flap?

“Exactly. That’s how you warn us. Do that and we’ll leave your nest alone. We’ll go around it, maybe near it, but we won’t touch it.”

I defend the nest.

“I get that. But we don’t want your nest. We don’t care.”

No?

“Not at all.”

This seemed to confuse her.

“You just think about it. Give it a try. You’ll see that you can ignore us; we’re safe.”

Defend the nest.

“Fine, fine.”

I went back down, muttering about one-track minds. The gardeners weren’t too happy about the infestation, as they thought of it, but I told them to leave the things alone. We’ll try being neighborly, first. If we can have a couple of generations of the things thinking that we’re not a problem, we should be fine. If not, I’ll have to treat them like vermin and exterminate them.

It would be nice if we could work out a deal. There are going to be other vermin in the mountain, someday—I don’t like rats and mice; they get into things. If we can teach the local lizards to handle that for us, I’ll get behind the idea.

That afternoon, I finished my preliminary work on the Crystal of the Warrior Spirit. He was a smallish-looking fellow with broad shoulders, a chiseled jaw, and a bald head. He wore black umanori pants and an expression of utter serenity. The thighs of the umanori had the impaled dragon of my banner on them, which I had not envisioned. This raised questions about my personality fragment I was unable to answer.

There was a fight to get him out of the basement without letting a lot of unpleasantness out with him. Fortunately, fighting is something he’s very good at; he held the head of the stairs while I jumped up and down on the trapdoor to close it.

The remains of subconscious Things sank through the floor and vanished, leaving behind only stains.

I don’t like that basement. It may have been a mistake.

Eventually, I’ll get around to having a training session with my combat aspect, possibly bringing along some other people, just to see how it goes. For now, though, busy, busy, busy.

Bob woke up while I was inside the crystal. I set it aside and went to see him. He was eating again—well, being fed—which was a very good sign. He already looked a little heavier and his color was excellent.

“Good afternoon,” I offered. He started to get out of bed to kneel; I pushed him back. “Stay. You need to recover your strength and grow new hands. Do nothing to exert yourself that doesn’t involve either of those.”

“Yes,
Na’irethed zarad’na
,” he agreed. The lady feeding him glanced at me. I shrugged.

The phrase he used started with
na’irethed
, which meant, roughly, “master of the darkness.” It was more complicated than that, since
irethed
was, more literally, “without light.” Maybe a better translation would be “Lord of the shadows.” They have another word for darkness,
vahaa
, which is treated as an object or substance, rather than just a lack of illumination.
Zarad’na,
on the other hand, had the
na
as a suffix, making it a possessive form of
zarad,
or, literally, “owner,” in the sense that someone who has mastered a skill can “own” it. So the whole thing was, roughly, “Master of the Lords of Shadow.”

I hate translating. It never comes across quite right.

“So,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “I understand things didn’t go so well for you when I woke up.”

“When Keria the Usurper discovered you were abroad again, she confined me immediately, knowing that my loyalty is entirely yours, Dread Lord.”

“Tell me everything you know about Keria’s takeover and her involvement with Byrne.”

And he did.

Keria’s mortal life ended sometime before she came to Vathula. This annoyed her greatly, since she was once a magician. Her conclusion was that you need to be at least partly mortal to be a magic-worker. That fact was not something I mentioned to her during the creation process; it seemed to offend her that she wasn’t given full information.

If I’d known, I’d have told her. I didn’t see why she was so upset; she wanted to be immortal and she got it.

Still, it annoyed her enough that she quietly found a few magicians who were interested in researching the potential for immortality. The power of her oath prevented her from just making them into nightlords, but it didn’t say anything about examining her blood. In return, the magicians she found were willing to help her, sort of being on her staff, as she worked with Bob to nail down the Empire of the Eastrange.