Nightlord: Shadows (20 page)

“Mochara is ruled by the Princess. You have looked at Mochara. It is a thriving town. But Karvalen is a city—a grand city, worthy to be the capitol of an empire. Ruling from here will place you in an awkward position. Ruling from Karvalen leaves no doubt about who is the King of Karvalen and who is merely a princess.”

“Hmm. You know her better than I do. Is that really going to be an issue?”

“I do not know if your daughter will feel so,” Tort replied, the corners of her mouth moving downward, “but I have no doubt the goddess that speaks through her mouth will.”

“Ah. Well, what about my other kid?”

Tort bit her lip and looked away. I didn’t like it.

“Tort?”

“You should ask your daughter,” she said, “or, better still, the—the goddess that speaks through her.”

I had a very bad feeling about this.

“All right. I believe I will.”

“What, now?”

“No, no. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow night. I have a long day of running and working planned for tomorrow. I think I have people who want to be knights showing up in the morning.”

“Ah. I shall be ready for them, then.”

“Good. Tonight, I think I’ll sit here in your workroom and look over T’yl, if that’s all right with you, then take a brief trip to the mountain and back.”

“I am perfectly content with that, my angel. Will you not go to bed?”

“I don’t really sleep,” I pointed out.

“Oh,” she said. She seemed disappointed. “Very well. Shall I see you at breakfast?”

“Probably. Oh! I just remembered. I need to run an errand at the mountain, but that shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours. I should still be back well before dawn.”

“Then I shall bid you a good night.”

“Goodnight, Tort.”

She floated her chair over to me and rose slightly, kissed my cheek, and then breezed out of the room. I studied T’yl’s crystal for a while.

Bronze was utterly pleased to be running somewhere. We had a little pause at the town’s northern gate while I explained to the guards that I was going out. They tried to give me passwords; Bronze snorted fire. Suddenly, that seemed a completely adequate form of identification, thank you, Your Majesty, please have a good trip.

On the road, rocketing northward, I leaned close and asked, “You enjoy doing that to people, don’t you?”

She flicked her ears and tossed her head:
Only the stupid ones
.

I laughed and she ran faster.

My errand to the mountain was to see if it could do some mining for me. I was already pretty sure it produced enough gold leaf to coat the ceiling of the throne room/great hall/entry cavern/whatever. Could it produce
lumps
of gold? Or silver? A single nugget of gold, even once a month, would certainly help, at least from a personal finance standpoint.

I could probably charge for my services, but, like it or not, these people see me as the King. That’s just Not Done. Unless it’s a form of taxes…

Bronze waited with the patience of a statue while I sat down on the dragon throne and dropped into ultra-slow speed. I was in kind of a hurry, but you can’t hurry a geological feature. I did try to keep my request as brief as possible, though: pure metals. Can you do that? Yes? Great! Please put them in a room—oh, yes, that room? Good, good. Thanks!

And speeding up to normal again. How long? Half an hour for just that conversation? An hour?

There’s got to be a better way. Either speed up the mountain even more, or find a way to give it messages at super-slow speeds. Something. Maybe some silicon processors, to help it think faster? They wouldn’t even need to be all that small. A few hundred thousand chips, scattered through the whole of the mountain, buried in the stone itself? They would need power, but maybe a piezoelectric setup could provide current… would that work? Rather, would that help in any way? I don’t suppose it could hurt. Mental note: next time I’m at the store, bring back a bag of computer chips and some piezoelectric dip.

Bronze and I whirled around and down through the streets again, then south to Mochara. There was no nonsense at the gate, either; they saw the fire-breathing golem approaching and opened up. We only slowed down to cut down on the noise and to give any late-night pedestrians a chance at survival.

With Bronze back in her stable, crunching combustibles, I went upstairs and studied T’yl’s magic crystal some more.

Friday, April 23
rd

I’m not a magician. On the other hand, I am rather clever, and I certainly don’t think about magic in the same way as the locals. My cultural upbringing is fundamentally different.

T’yl’s crystal is, I think, a matrix for holding a soul. There are a lot of energy centers in a body where the soul is supposed to connect, but the soul inside the crystal seems to be looped back on itself in some complex way. It’s just sitting there, unchanging.

How do I get it out of there and into something else? Now that’s a good question. I have some ideas; I’ve never really had the opportunity to study a soul independent of a body, before. Well, ghosts, yes, but they’re a different type of free-roaming soul. They usually degrade over time. A soul in some sort of stasis, on the other hand, that doesn’t seem to be going bad… that’s very interesting and instructive.

Maybe I should go to Arondael, the city of magicians, and study at the Academy. I might learn an awful lot. Then again, I might also get kidnapped for my blood again.

Slightly after dawn, at breakfast, Tort came in wearing a much more elaborate gown, rather than the typical working robes of a magician; I thought she looked quite nice. She was very pleased to report that her shin was growing on toward ankle, and that her appetite was ravenous. I double-checked the spells involved and throttled them back just a hair, simply because I’m cautious. My warriors three watched with interest, curiosity, or fascination, depending on which one you looked at.

Kammen was eyeballing Tort in a less than professional fashion. Well, Tort is rather pretty and he’s a teenager. I felt slightly annoyed and quashed the feeling.

“Your Majesty?” Kammen asked.

“We’re in private,” I told him. “You can call me by name. Or by nickname. You can call me ‘Hey, you,’ if you like. As a member of my personal guard, you have that privilege.” I noticed the look on his face and added, “If you can’t manage that, you can call me ‘Sire’.”

“Uh. All right. Um. So. We’re gonna be training again today?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Not a bit, Sire. I just wonder if we’re gonna get to see our families or… anybody. You know.”

“Ah. Yes, of course. Well, today we’re going to really get exhausted,” I told them, “but we’ll probably cut back a bit tomorrow. You should get time to yourselves in the afternoons and evenings.”

Torvil and Kammen grinned at Seldar; Seldar blushed. I had no idea why.

Pilea came in and whispered in Tort’s ear while I was speaking. Tort pursed her lips, nodded.

“Send in the man with the appointment. Tell the rest that he should be out in a stripe or two.”

That’s right. They don’t tell time with clocks; they use small, flat candles, kind of like tea lights. They stack them so they burn through into the next candle. With alternate colors, time is measured in bands or stripes.

The maid disappeared. Tort turned to me. “I trust you have enjoyed breakfast?”

“Very much,” I lied. The flavors were good and the hole in my midsection was filled, but I can’t honestly enjoy food anymore.

Sadly, the only flavor I can still fully enjoy is blood. Undead problems. Ah, well.

“Good. You have a man who was supposed to see you this morning about a cure?”

“Oh, yes. A follow-up to the cure from last night. It was tricky.”

“He is here.”

“That’s good. Okay. Excuse me.”

“Go be an angel,” she said, smiling, using
arhia
. She looked at Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar; they were getting ready to get up. “You three, finish eating.”

“But—” Torvil started.

“Don’t argue with the King’s Magician,” I told them. “She has seniority, and it’s her house.” Tort smiled indulgently at them, maybe mixed with a trifle of smugness.

“Yes, Sire,” they chorused.

“Plus,” I added, “it’s going to be a long day. She knows what she’s talking about. You need to eat.” They needed no more urging, but started shoveling.

I visited with my patient in the living room and examined him magically. I didn’t find anything particularly wrong, but there were signs that something might be going wrong. The tumor I’d killed was now a large, dead mass, and his body was having trouble with a big, dead lump. Well, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.

I called for Tort and explained that this was going to require a little surgery. She looked interested and my patient—Wallin, his name was—looked a little terrified.

“You are in the finest hands in the world,” she assured him. “It may sting, but you have nothing to worry about. I promise.” He seemed somewhat reassured.

“Tort, could I invite you into my mental study for a bit? I need to have some discussion and planning, and I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“Of course, my angel.” We sat down. As far as Wallin was concerned, we closed our eyes for a minute, then opened them again and got to work.

What really happened was that Tort and I connected our mental study areas—those imaginary constructs where we can go “inside” to think and remember and practice—and I opened the door to let her into mine.

She came in, walking perfectly on her mental image of her own two feet. She paused to look at the décor, the neat stacks of paper, the stairs leading down, the butler…

Her eyes widened and she pointed a finger as though about to shoot him with it.

“What the hell is that!?” she demanded.

“It’s my assistant!” I snapped, and put my hand in front of her finger, thinking,
She’s a magician; it might be loaded
. “He’s fine! No blasting in my study!”

The butler looked at her, unperturbed. He had on a white apron and his sleeves were rolled up. He had appropriated a shelf on one of the bookcases and had a dozen stacks of paper neatly arranged along it. A pile of paper rested in the crook of his left arm; his right hand still held the upper portion of the papers open at the place where he was interrupted in his sorting.

“Am I unwelcome?” he asked. “I will, of course, be happy to be not-present if the two of you—”

“Silence, thing!” she snapped. He blinked, surprised, but kept quiet. Tort turned to me. “That is not supposed to be here! You are not supposed to be more than one person!”

“I’m also supposed to be alive
or
dead,” I replied, “not sometimes a little of each!”

That didn’t exactly calm her down, but it did force her to rethink.

“Now,” I added, “if you’d like to explain why you think this is so awful, I’ll listen. In the meantime, you can watch and see if it really is as awful as you think.” I waved at the butler and he went back to sorting. Tort watched him through narrowed eyes.

“Everyone who has tried to be in two places at once has gone mad,” she said. “That is you, is it not?”

“Well… technically, yes.”

“Then dismiss the spell that has created it, I beg of you, before your mind breaks!”

“Sit down,” I said, nodding toward the now-visible couch. She pointed at the butler again and was about to say something, but I gently put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sit. Down.” I added, “Please.”

She lowered her finger, slowly, and sat down on the couch. I sat down with her and held her hands while I explained the problem of trying to digest a few hundred thousand ghosts.

“See, it’s not that I’m going crazy,” I said, “it’s that I’m still trying to work through an overwhelmingly large meal. I’ve been at it for decades, apparently. While I may have the soul-stuff dealt with, the bits and pieces of memory they left behind are a problem. In the normal course of things, one or two or a dozen people, that’s okay; it gets integrated pretty quickly and easily. But this,” I waved at the piles of paper, “was a sea of loose pages, scattered everywhere. Impossible to make any sort of sense about.

“Now, that,” I nodded to the butler, “is a mental construct. It’s an embodiment, a personification, of a part of my personality. I’m not saying that you’re wrong. If I let it go long enough, maybe I will go crazy. But going a little crazy now is better than going completely crazy later.” I paused for a moment while she thought that one over.

“These other people,” I asked, “when they tried it, were they doing it just inside, or really trying to do bilocation?”

“It started with creating two selves inside the mental study.”

“How long did it take before they started to make grinding noises in the mental gearbox?”

“Excuse me?”

“How long before they started to go mad?”

“I am uncertain,” she admitted. “A day? A week?”

“Hey, butler!”

“Yes, sir?” he asked, suddenly standing by my arm of the couch. “How may I be of service?”

“Are you a separated consciousness, or are you still part of my regular thinking processes?”

“I—if I may use the pronoun, sir—believe that I am one facet of your consciousness, currently focused on the task in hand, sir.”

“So, you’re a manifestation of my thinking. This pile of paperwork is the problem, and it’s constantly on my mind, even while I’m doing something else. You’re the personification, here, of that focus.”

“In my opinion—or, in this case, yours, sir—that is correct. This sorting problem is taking place here, but the processes that operate to do so are not conscious processes. It is something that is, quite literally, on your mind even when you are not actually devoting any mental attention to it.”

“Thank you. Please continue.” He returned to his sorting and filing. I turned back to Tort.

“Is that better?”

“I… am not sure,” she replied. “You do not seem to suffer.”

“Well, keep an eye on me.”

“I shall, my angel. And if I detect what I believe may be madness?”

“You probably ought to let me know,” I said. She nodded enthusiastically.

“Was this what you wished to show me?”

“Oh. No. This is just a side issue,” I said. I would have let go of her hand, but she kept mine. I didn’t mind. “I have a couple of things, actually. First, the surgery. Second, preparing the mountain for immigrants. Third, some equipment and tools…”

I explained what I wanted in each case. She listened and asked questions. For the surgery, we made sure she was prepared to assist me. For the rest, we discussed how to accomplish goals and nailed down some processes. I built imaginary versions of the tools I wanted so she could see exactly what I meant. It took a while, but, unlike communing with a mountain, talking in one’s headspace happens at the speed of thought. Human thought, not rock thought.

Once Tort and I were sure we understood each other, I showed her out through the new door that connected to her headspace, watched it vanish, and exited through my own door.

I opened my eyes and stood up.

“Okay, I need to check a couple of things,” I told Wallin. “Lie down. This is going to sting, like she says, but that should go away after a bit and turn numb. All right?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He lay down and I put a hand over the area I was going to affect. All the nerve impulses under my hand slowed to a crawl, sort of a local anesthetic. I poked him with a fingernail and he didn’t flinch. Good enough.

My flesh-welding spell makes it possible to treat flesh more like clay. In this case, it pushed the flesh out of the way without tearing it. I did this until I had a tiny hole into his body, all the way to the dead tumor. A little pull, and the dead flesh flowed outward through the hole, drawing the open space it occupied—in the middle of his liver, I think it was—closed behind it, until it was entirely out of his body. I closed the last of the open space, sealed up the hole from the interior to the surface of his body, and added a fairly standard spell to encourage his body to heal any residual damage.

I lifted the numbing spell without breaking it, kept it ready to slap it back on if he screamed. He blinked at me as sensation returned, looked down at the mess on the floor beside him.

“That was inside me?”

“Yep. Aren’t you glad it’s out?”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

“Good. Take it easy for today, please. You might want to stop by again sometime tomorrow, just to make sure we got it all.”

“I’ll do that, Your Majesty!”

“Tort? Can he rest here for a bit, until he can make it home on his own?”

“I will see him safely to his home,” Tort offered.

“There you go,” I told him. “I think you’re going to be fine.”

“And now,” Tort said, “you have kept your knights waiting.”

“Are they done with breakfast already?”

“Those three are, yes. It is the rest of them that still await you, out front.”

“Oh, them. Right.” I wasn’t filled with enthusiasm. “Well, I guess I’ll get on that.” I checked with my three, gathered them up, and went outside.

Upwards of three hundred, possibly as many as five hundred men were waiting for us. A lot of them were in armor. Some wore swords, more wore sashes, either red or grey. Most of the rest wore plain clothes of varying cut and quality. A few wore what can only be described as rags.