Nightlord: Shadows (88 page)

However, Amber
did
make a good, solid effort to think like a princess. She didn’t have a lot of mental handholds on how to do that—let’s face it, I don’t have mental handholds on being a king, either; I just fake it—but she almost visibly started to think like a ruler, rather than a reverend.

We haven’t got it all sorted out, yet, but some of the basics for citizenship in Karvalen include:

First, you swear fealty to your King. Me.

That didn’t occur to me, actually; Amber brought that up as something she considered self-evident. What does that say about the world she grew up in? What does it say about me?

Second, you have to
live
here, not just phone it in from some other city. Buy a house, build one, prove a farm, even rent a room, something. We didn’t nail down a time in residence requirement—what about a merchant captain? He can’t stay in Mochara for long without losing money. We did decide that having a residence was at least required, though—for tax purposes, if nothing else.

Third, some sort of trade or skill, while desirable in an immigrant, wasn’t necessarily required. Unskilled labor wasn’t overabundant; the Crown could always use more hands. But, regardless of the skills or trades involved, it was decided that to become a citizen, the immigrant would work for the Crown for a year and a day, much like being in the army. That, at least, made you a
subject
.

Fourth, and closely related, everyone who wanted actual citizenship would also serve at least a year in military service. They could learn some valuable combat skills, maybe even some discipline. Amber thought that a very fine thing, indeed. I agreed, but with a caveat: anyone who didn’t want to serve in the army didn’t have to. Nobody should be required to be a citizen; they can be subjects and treated so.

Amber doesn’t really get the difference, but
I
do. By midnight, she had an inkling of the difference, and finally settled on a practical definition: I would feel positively disposed toward citizens and not really care a whole lot about subjects. That seemed to suit her thinking.

I hugged her goodnight and went outside to Bronze. She seemed in very good spirits.

“Feeling better?” I asked. She was. Whatever Tianna did, combined with a trencher of charcoal, seemed to have done the trick.

“Good. Let’s go home.”

We did. I headed for my workroom, pausing to kiss a sleepy Tort. She wanted to get out of bed and help, but I insisted that she sleep. She didn’t put up much of a fight.

In my workroom, I looked at my collection of artifacts. I didn’t know much, if anything, about them.

That was going to change.

Rakal kicked the demon and it opened its eyes.

“Speak,” he commanded.

“Master,” it replied, voice like a wind through a glass flute, “there is no one to speak to.”

“Then shout!”

The demon sat quietly, unblinking, and Rakal waited. Eventually, the demon spoke again, this time in a voice almost human.

“Well, what is it?” it demanded, sounding very much like Parrin. The glassy tone and echo persisted, as though Parrin’s voice traveled through a glass tube.

“My King?”

“Yes. Who else would talk to this damned thing?”

“Yes, my King.”

“What is it?” the demon repeated.

“The Dragonsword has attempted to escape, as you instructed. We have recovered it, and my eyes tell me that our adversary rode at great speed in an attempt to rescue it.”

“And he failed?”

“As you commanded, we did not allow it to venture far.” Rakal refrained from mentioning that the rescue attempt came much closer to success than even his worst estimate.

“Good, good. He should be coming back shortly, possibly even tonight. Make ready.”

“My King…”

“Speak.”

“I am still unclear on exactly why we are antagonizing him. I understand that you want him to attack Vathula, but if he does so alone, is this not the perfect opportunity to take him?”

At the other end of the demonic connection, Prince Parrin rubbed his forehead and tried to get a grip on his temper. It was harder, these days, to keep calm. The constant pains and encroaching weakness were enough to push his limited self-control right up to the breaking point. Add a henchman who couldn’t resist asking stupid questions and it started to crack.

Parrin addressed the demon, knowing his words would be relayed to Rakal.

“First of all, you need to remember that I’m the only one who can successfully take him alive, because I’m the one dying. If you meet him face-to-face, you’ll be lunch. If you aren’t lunch—if you win—you’ll have to kill him to capture him, and nobody wants that. We need him alive. Remember the problems of using Keria’s blood after she died? Worse, what happened after you put a demon into her?”

“I remember,” the demon in front of Parrin said, in a voice almost like Rakal’s. It even managed to convey the revolted tone.

“Good. Keep that in mind. He
must
be persuaded to come after me, personally. It does us no good if he brings an army; he has to make it a man-to-man affair. Then I will have him, his sword, his horse, his city—everything that he possesses will then be
mine
.”

“He hasn’t, though,” Rakal pointed out. “He still resides in his kingdom and makes no move against us.”

“You think I don’t know that!” Parrin barked, then took as deep a breath as his failing body could manage. “I’ll be starting a war, soon,” he continued, more calmly. “He can’t resist meddling when people are dying—and I’ll see to it that some of them beg him for help. He must already be sure the assassins are my doing; this has to push him into movement.”

“And what if your next assassin kills him?” Rakal asked. Parrin snorted.

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“As you say, my lord,” Rakal agreed, and told the demon to go back to sleep.

I don’t know him like you do
, Rakal thought,
and it bothers me that you know him so well.

I completely forgot about Velina and the injured in Baret, at least until Amber pointed out the ones in Mochara. I meant to call Velina about the ones in Baret, but she beat me to it. She contacted me via magic mirror this morning and I apologized for my mistake. I don’t think she’s used to the nobility apologizing to her for anything.

She was very gracious about accepting my apology and even more pleased to hear that I’d drop by as soon as I could. She was somewhat less gracious, or even composed, when I told her why I was delayed.

“So, you see, I may have to smite Vathula. Do you have any way to get in touch with the principalities that border their territory?”

Blinkblink.

“Yes… I can get a message to Philemon, Tegron, and Verthyn. It may take a day or two.”

“Fine, fine. Keria deserves a chance to save herself, so I won’t be smiting the city today. Do let people know that if they have business in Vathula, they should finish it and
get out
. I won’t be held responsible for fatalities or damage.”

“Of course. Of course,” she agreed. “I am honored to be of service.”

I thanked her and signed off. I had some calibration experiments to run, measurements to make, and so forth. Smiting is a delicate business. The window between “kill” and “overkill” is pretty broad, but I wanted to hit it dead center.

More important, I wanted to fire some warning shots, first. I’d like to have a nuke-free existence if at all possible. If I could convince her that I
could
smite her city, I wouldn’t have to.

That would take my personal attention and some time, though. I decided to start with something that would be a process, something I could kick off and let run while I did other things. Accordingly, I dragged my guys off to an empty room and turned it into a workroom. I laid out the super-high-tech suit of armor and explained.

“This is a suit of armor. Yes, I know; it’s black, it’s not at all shiny, and it looks kind of sinister. Before you get bent out of shape about that, consider who you work for. Maybe this is kind of appropriate?”

They had to agree that it was. Torvil even suggested that it was kind of stylish. I think he meant it. Seldar looked concerned but willing; Kammen just shrugged.

“So, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to grow a suit of armor almost exactly like this for each of you, so it’s sized right.”

“Grow?” Torvil asked.

“Well, assemble. The individual pieces will be too small to see, so it will look as though it’s growing.”

“So, it’s not… alive?”

“Oh. No, it’s not.”

“Just checking, Sire.”

“No problem. Now, this process is going to require that you hold still for quite a while, though, aside from turning over now and again. What I want to know is, who goes first, who stays with him to monitor things, and who accompanies me? Sort it out.”

They conferred. Seldar would go with me; Kammen would watch the process, along with the twins—it was his turn to be shadowed—and Torvil would hold still for armor growth.

I sent them off to collect materials while I started drawing a chalk outline on the floor. By the time I was done, it looked as though someone was murdered by an occult graffiti artist.

Lucky for me, polymers, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and other such materials are fairly easy to replicate. Like diamond crystals, these substances are patterns, usually simple ones, repeated over and over. Like a brick wall, small, simple building blocks go together to form a larger, complex structure. The “bricks” are easy to copy, and with a pattern to follow, they easily turn into a wall.

The tricky part was getting several patterns to run at once. To replicate a diamond is easy; it’s one crystal, and I don’t much care which direction it grows as long as it does grow. To replicate a suit of high-tech, composite, multi-ply, laminate armor was an exercise in persistence. I had to mark the original suit with navigation points, mostly around the joints, and then start spell after spell after spell, each one copying a layer of the armor’s structure—one for the inside surface of the armor, another for the layer of material backing it, a third for yet another layer after that, and so on until a final spell grew the outermost shell.

There was no point in duplicating the defunct portions of the armor—what I presumed was communications gear, maybe even a heads-up display, and other electronics. I edited those portions out, leaving just layers of armor in the final product.

I might have managed to duplicate all the foam padding, too, but after all that work, I wasn’t feeling up to that fight. We can make quilted padding; that will do just fine. We’re talking about professional soldiers, not professional athletes. They expect to take hits that they can feel even through armor and keep on fighting.

Although, if I can figure out a way to adapt that impact-absorbing spell—no, no; that’s something for later.

Once everything was going well, I actually went with Seldar. He seemed very pleased to be on guard duty, but something was clearly on his mind. I suspected it was his role as dispenser of magical steroids, so I asked him about it.

“No, Imperious One,” he denied. “I am well-pleased to be of service, and it is progressing well,” he told me. I couldn’t think of anything else that might be bothering him.

“Then what’s wrong? When you’re not smiling, you look like you ate something that disagreed with you.”

“If Your Prying Majesty pleases,” he said, “I would rather not discuss it just yet.”

“Okay. I trust you. If you need my help for anything, just say the word.”

For some reason, that looked like it hurt him, but he agreed.

We found ourselves a deep cavern, well below the inhabited regions of the undermountain. I shut doors behind us as we ventured farther down. Overcautious? Maybe.

Despite my comment about trusting Seldar, I had him stand guard outside the cavern I picked. While I do trust him, I also don’t want to burden him with state secrets. I walked around the room, chalking barrier spells on all the walls, guarding against scrying spells of all sorts.

Once sealed in, I played with dangerous spells and what I would classify as forbidden magic. At least, I consider spells that can crack the planet—well, in this case, the
plate
—as forbidden. I worked out a spell to define a volume of space and set it to a very tiny level. Microscopically small, actually. I had to work with some lensing spells to build a magical microscope before I was content with it. I wanted to start
very
small and get a sort of calibration run.

What I did was use the matter-conversion spell to reduce all the air inside that microscopic volume into electromagnetic wavelengths—unzip the matter bonds and release it all as energy. I recalled that, at normal air pressure, dry air was about one-point-two grams per liter. I made sure to purge my little test area of water; having a water droplet coincidentally intersecting my test area could drastically raise the total yield.

So, with the volume affected being somewhere in the neighborhood of a picoliter, the mass should be about 1.2 x 10
-11
grams… or about a thousand Joules of energy.

I put a frequency-shifter over the wall with the door; I didn’t want any hard radiation going through the stone. I’m a physicist; we think about that stuff. Then I stepped outside with Seldar. He looked at me questioningly.

“Just testing something,” I told him, and triggered the spell.

If that was a thousand Joules, I’m a frog prince, complete with warts.

Let me put this in perspective; a thousand Joules is enough power to lift a big man about one meter. Turned into a lot of heat and light, I would expect a loud bang and flash, but nothing more.

The pivot-door cracked. The ground leaped up to strike our feet. Dust came out of nowhere. There was a peculiar ringing sound that hung around for a bit. My ears recovered fairly quickly, but Seldar had trouble hearing for what must have been ten minutes.

I’m glad I did a test run. I’m even more glad I was out of the room.

No more of that
, I assured myself,
until after dark and my survival chances improve. Maybe not then, either!

Still, while the mountain pulled the door back together and rebalanced it, I couldn’t help but wonder what went wrong. Air density varies a little bit with altitude and therefore pressure. We were well down inside the mountain, but only a little way below the normal ground level. Did I get something else in the micro-space? A bacterium, perhaps? Or a grain of dust? It was unlikely, but possible. Maybe, when I was mentally gridding off a magnified piece of space, I misjudged the size and got something much larger than a picoliter? I’d have to find a way to measure it more accurately.

Maybe, if I used something solid, like a literal grain of sand, I could target only a specific type of atom? Only the silicon, for example, or, no—dust motes might be silicon-based. A metal, then? Not a lot of aluminum dust in the air. Say, a miniscule sample of aluminum, and only the aluminum. That should solve the problem…

“Your Dangerous Majesty?”

“Yes, Seldar?” I replied, speaking loudly and exaggerating my mouth movements to help him see what I was saying.

“What was that?”

“I’m practicing smiting things,” I told him, honestly. “I don’t want to smite too hard when I decide to smite.”

“So, that was a little one?” he asked.

“Yeah. I really do need to develop more fine control,” I admitted.

“Yes, Sire,” he agreed.

“That’s enough practice for now,” I added. “I don’t want to overdo it, after all.”

“Just as you say, Master of Understatement.”

We went back up to my real workroom. There were other, more immediate ways of smiting that I wanted to try—something more appropriate to a warning shot.

I already looked over the magical elven shots, the ones that stored impacts until it was time to let it all loose at once. Now I examined one more thoroughly. As with a lot of magical stuff, the method used to make it was not on hand; no scribbles, diagrams, or handwaving, just the spell they called into being. Reverse-engineering it was usually problematic. This time, however, I had a good idea about what it did and how. I didn’t need to duplicate their spell, or whatever it’s called when an elf crafts magic in an object. I just needed to duplicate the effect.

I did, and I think I improved on it. Their version was like a tank of compressed air. Every time someone hit it, it pumped more air into the tank. When it finally ruptured, it exploded. The drawback was that if you put too much in it, it would go off right there. They wasted a lot of potential for safety; they stopped hammering on it well before reaching the limit.

My version was more like a coiled spring. Every hit would tighten it, but, as you got closer and closer to its maximum capacity, the less it could absorb with each hit. The result is that you could haul off and pound the hell out of it at first, but once the object started to dent or deform, you knew to stop beating it so hard.

That was the basic safety version. I kept working on it until after lunch—Seldar sent someone to bring food up to the workroom for us. The end result was much the same, but, instead of allowing you to bash the object into a lump, it emitted excess force as a glow. So, when you walloped it while it was near capacity, it glowed, warning you to stop. Over time, the light it radiated would bleed the excess energy from the final hit and the glow would stop.

Safety first. I’m feeling very cautious today.

Hmm. I can build a light source that requires you to whack it to make it work. Kind of like a flashlight with a loose connection, you have to thump it a few times before it lights. Would that work for a sort of doorbell? You knock on the pivot-stone of someone’s door and the inside of the door lights up? Would that work? I don’t see why not. It was certainly something to think about.

Once I had the spell worked out, I went down to see Kavel. He was enjoying himself immensely; the forge was, to him, a miracle beyond belief. He was also pleased beyond description to not have to worry about buying anything—no fuel, no metal, none of those concerns. The King wanted stuff made, and the kingdom was providing everything. Oh, yes; he couldn’t have been happier if you hired professionals to tickle him.

I waved his assistants back to their tasks. Over the resumed clanking and banging, I asked about arrowheads. He dug up a half-dozen and put them in my hand. I looked them over and gave them back.

“Majesty?” he asked. “Not good enough?”

“They’re perfect,” I told him. “They probably go through plate at close range.”

“That they do, Majesty. Fine steel, these, the best.”

“Do we have any broadheads?”

“Broadheads?”

“Larger, triangular arrowheads? Things that you might use on something other than an armored target?”

“Oh, hunter’s heads.” He pulled out a box and opened it, fished out a few leaf-shaped bits of steel. “These aren’t sharpened yet,” he cautioned. “They’ll take a fine edge, though.”

“Good stuff,” I agreed, examining them. They were broad, flat, and would probably do quite nicely. “Do we have a fletcher?”

“I’m sure we do,” he agreed. “Someone keeps taking arrowheads off me.”

“Fair enough; I’ll find him. Anything else you need or want while I’m here?”

“Yes, please, Your Majesty.”

“Name it.”

“I don’t want to be the Mastersmith of Karvalen, please, Your Majesty,” he said, looking down and fidgeting.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, surprised.

“I don’t want the job, Majesty,” he said, very seriously, looking worried. “I’ve got too much to do. Can you please make someone else do it? Please? I just don’t have time for all the talking-to-people stuff; I’ve got stuff to make.”

“You’d rather get your hands dirty?”

“Yes, please, Your Majesty!”

“Okay, I agree, but on one condition.
You
have to find someone for the job.”