Nightlord: Shadows (31 page)

“You wished to speak with Me,” said a voice I recognized. It was Amber’s voice, but the timbre, inflections, accent… it was someone—someThing—speaking with her mouth. This did nothing to diminish my belligerent feeling.

“Yes. I’ll cut straight to the chase. I had a son and a daughter by Tamara. I’m very pleased that Amber is alive and well, but I want to know what became of my son.”

“He served Me well.”

“A religious career is no bad thing,” I allowed, keeping my voice level. “I understand he’s dead. When did it happen? How did it happen? Where?”

“He died on your mountain, shortly after his birth.”

I waited, staring into the eyes of flame. I repressed the feeling that Sparky was trying to annoy me. I doubted she would bother. On the other hand, she
was
being annoying.

“Go on,” I said, finally.

“That is all,” she said. I took a deep breath, let it out. It wasn’t a biological requirement; just an emotional one. I was still not in the best of moods, and I was trying to keep a lid on my temper. But the lid was leaking.

“If you insist,” I said, “I will go straight to the mountain and command the stones to speak. Or you can just tell me. But
you
are evading the question. You’re trying to not tell me something. What is it that you don’t want me to know? Or do you just want me to work for it and find out somewhere else?”

“You are insolent.”

“Audacious, maybe,” I admitted, snappishly. “I haven’t been disrespectful, just not too terribly respectful; I found out what you did to Zirafel. Likewise, you haven’t been too terribly helpful, cooperative, or reasonable, so my attitude isn’t the only factor, here.”

“I disagree.”

“And I’m not getting sidetracked,” I said, refocusing on the whole point of the conversation. “My son, remember? When, where, how, and why? Give me details.” Then I added, “Please.”

“I will not be questioned.”

“You already have been. You refuse to answer. Why is that? Or should I just assume whatever I want?” I think I managed to sound curious, rather than demanding. I may be wrong.

“That will be enough from you!”

“And not enough from you,” I noted. My mouth continued, before I could stop it, “Are you afraid to tell me?”

Amber—well, her body—gestured. A wall of flame like an incendiary shockwave blasted toward me and I raised my arms in a reflexive defensive gesture. The rudimentary magical shield I raised may have done some good, but I couldn’t tell for sure. The blast flash-fried my forearms and hurled me back against the door. The impact didn’t bother me, although it bothered the door; my forearms stung like hell as the skin flaked away into ash. Ruined the sleeves, too.

Odd. The door was on fire, but all that happened to me involved a little cooking of the forearms. I looked down at myself. Not a scorch mark to be seen anywhere else.

Why am I not dead? Or, rather, why am I not a bunch of ashes drifting slowly to the floor?

“Ow,” I said, lowering my arms. My forearms itched as the skin regenerated.

Amber’s face looked amazed. Flaming eyes wide, mouth open, hand still hovering where it had completed the gesture. The Thing operating her was as much taken aback as I was.

“That,” I said, “was uncalled-for.”

She did it again, harder, and held it as a continuous stream instead of a single blast. I sensed it coming and braced for it again. The first one hurt. The second one burned my arms down to the bone; it was agony. But it was still just my forearms. The majority of the rocket exhaust splashed in front of me, opened up like some incandescent flower, roared around me. It burned completely through the door in seconds, but I stood there, leaning into the fire’s roar, and screamed right back into the flames until they subsided.

I lost my temper a little bit.

Well… maybe more than just a little.

Okay, maybe I lost my temper the way you sometimes lose your keys: an hour of solid searching doesn’t turn them up. I don’t think I was unjustified.

I stood there in the doorway while my arm bones shed their ashen outer layer; muscle, skin, and tendons itched abominably as they grew new layers. I can’t grind my teeth; they lock together, these days. I can clench my jaw with the best, however, and I know my eyes narrowed. I’m not sure what my expression was, but the look on Amber’s face was one of slack-jawed, wide-eyed horror.

With my tendrils, dark lines of power drawn from whatever force that moves me, I reached out; they erupted forward, a volcano of darkness, a flood of emptiness, shooting back along the same path the flames had, like fires in reverse. I speared, not Amber, but through her, past her,
beyond
her, along the conduit the led to the Thing that manipulated her body like a puppet.

This was no thin line of magical force drawn by some magician a thousand miles away. This was a pipeline, a direct connection to something not on this plane of existence. A doorway. A gateway. A hole in the universe leading to somewhere else. In the greater Scheme of Things, it was a small hole, just large enough for a spiritual hand and arm, perhaps, to manipulate a puppet. To me, in my scale, it was a tunnel for a six-lane highway.

Metaphorically, I grabbed that arm and pulled. Then I reached farther back, clawing along it with wave after wave of black, hungry lines of power, like a thousand jellyfish strands, all writhing farther and farther, stabbing and stinging, drinking and draining, shredding their way along, clamping on, spearing in, and clawing their way up toward the shoulder, toward the torso, toward the heart and the throat.

I don’t see much of a difference between the Things that live beyond the Edge of the World and the Things that claim to be the gods of this world. About the only difference is that the ones claiming to be gods
taste better
.

This Thing was bright and shining, a star from the firmament drawn close, and I drank from it. I attacked it. I seized it and yanked, pulling it hard to keep it from getting away, sinking spiritual fangs into it to drink everything from it that I could tolerate. Tendrils seethed with power, sizzled with it, but a million burning, screaming throats still swallowed the life-stuff of a so-called goddess.

Sparky screamed and it was good. My soul rejoiced with a terrible satisfaction to know that I made her scream in pain. Better, scream in pain and
fear.
She was surprised, startled, amazed, shocked… and, best of all, hurt. This filled me with a terrible elation, a joy like blood and fire. I twisted and yanked on the metaphorical arm even as my tendrils stabbed and writhed up over the shoulder, reaching deeper, reaching for what passed for her heart and soul.

We wrestled on a spiritual level, Sparky and I. She writhed and pulled, trying to free herself, her arm now trapped in the spiritual hole she had created. I held on like a bulldog and sucked away the essence of her being, kept her trapped while she bled soul-stuff.

It reminded me of dragon-soul, fiery, hot, intense, but more singular, refined—it lacked the subtle variations and differences—or the subtleties were a bit
too
subtle for me to taste. This was something elemental and raw, not like a living thing as I understood it. This was not a mortal being, however long-lived. It was not flesh and blood, but an accumulation of living energy, primal, naked, never to be contained by anything so crass as mere matter.

My tendrils bit into it, ate it, swallowed it down. It coursed through me and I welcomed it, made it part of my strength, and used that strength to take even more.

We struggled forever—perhaps whole seconds. She couldn’t pull away, and I wouldn’t let go. So she did what she had to do to escape; she dragged her metaphysical/spiritual/metaphorical arm through the net of blades that was the writhing cloud of my hungry tendrils. This ripped her arm to tatters, sliced it to the bone, spilled the power of her essence, like blood, over and through the dark lines of my spirit, spattered raw power everywhere, splashed it all through the flesh-puppet that was my daughter.

But she drew her bloodied, mangled limb back from this plane of existence. She slammed shut the portal the instant she was free, as though afraid I would pursue her, and I might have.

Darkness. Silence.

My body was the wrong size; it shrank in the wash. My soul was gigantic, Titan-like.

I was afraid to move. If I did, sparks would fly off me and shatter walls. Or maybe I would move too much. I felt like a puppet on rubber strings, not really in control. It was as though I was driving my body instead of wearing it, if that makes any sense. I felt I could step outside my flesh very easily; if I moved, I would have to remember to bring it along.

If I left my body, could I get inside it again? It seemed too tight a fit.

I opened my eyes, though I didn’t remember closing them. Amber was half-collapsed on the floor, holding herself up with her arms, gasping for breath, eyes wide and human again. Her eyes were no longer blue, but a yellowish—perhaps amber-colored?—hue. I felt sad about that; she had her father’s eyes, and I would miss them.

She stared at me as though I was still on fire. She seemed to be on fire herself; her whole body glowed with an unearthly light, as though she had inhaled a small star. Her hair glowed, as well, but no longer had the firefall effect going. I might have been glowing, myself, and just not noticed.

With all the caution I could muster, I sat up—how did I wind up on the floor? Gravity must have mugged me while I was distracted—and leaned against the immaterial ghost of the stone wall. I managed not to shatter it. I’m sure it wasn’t really in danger, but I felt as though it was. Someone could have hit me in the neck with an axe and I wouldn’t have regarded it as dangerous. I was so high that I would have had to stoop to examine stars.

“Well,” I whispered, trying not to deafen Mochara. I didn’t know what to add to that.

“Well,” Amber agreed, breathlessly. I realized, then, that I wasn’t really seeing her physical body; I was seeing her spirit. She glowed with an unearthly light, bright as a morning sun.

Of course
, I realized.
Sparky’s arm was in bloody tatters while it was inside the human puppet. That spiritual blood soaked into the puppet… Maybe she does still have blue eyes…

“Mom?” Tianna asked. She peered around the edge of the door. Of course, she felt the forces playing out here.

“It’s okay,” I said, “just a little disagreement between the Mother of Flame and your grandfather. Amber is okay.” I looked at Amber. “You are okay, right?”

“I… yes,” she said, sitting up. Tianna hurried over to her and hugged her. Amber patted her back, leaving trails of cometary light with every movement. I wasn’t sure if mortal eyes would see that or not.

“See? All fine,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go finish our argument outside. She can manifest in the statue, I take it?”

“She never has,” Amber said.

“Damn. How am I going to get answers out of her?”

“What… what did you do?”

“I sank mystical teeth into her, but she escaped.” I climbed to my feet, carefully, so as not to leap through the ceiling by accident. “This isn’t over. I plan to make her tell me what happened to my son.”

Tianna looked back and forth between us during the conversation.

“What son?” she asked.

“Hush,” Amber said.

“That would be my uncle,” Tianna pointed out.

“Later,” Amber said. It echoed. Amber put a hand over her own mouth, startled at her own voice. Tianna’s eyes widened and she held her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” I told Amber. “This should have been between me and her; you got caught in the middle. I won’t ask you to do that again.”

“I won’t,” she assured me, extremely quietly. “You two don’t get along.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“And so am I. I don’t want to… I don’t think She should have done that,” she finished. I felt my eyebrows—possibly regenerated eyebrows; that last rocket blast might have removed the originals—go up.

“I agree. Do you know why she’s being such a bi—” I checked myself; Tianna was in the room. “Do you know why she doesn’t want me to know?”

“You’re already angry. It will only make you more angry.”

“So you do know.” I held up a hand at her expression, being careful not to rip a hole in space when I moved. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me. You have your duty to her, and she doesn’t want you to say, I’m sure. I said I’d find out, and I will, but I won’t ask you to give away the secret.”

Amber cocked her head at me, obviously surprised.

“Why not?”

“I’m your father,” I told her. “You shouldn’t have to suffer because your stepmother and I are having a bit of a domestic disagreement.”

I stepped outside, carefully. Every movement seemed to require immense concentration and control. Bronze was standing right there, waiting.

“Halar!”

“Yes, Amber?”

“I’m…” she began. She stepped up to me and put her hand on my arm; I made a conscious effort not to accidentally ground out through her touch. She took a breath, then looked me in the eyes.