Nightlord: Sunset (35 page)

“Probably best,” she murmured.

I belted on Firebrand.  “Excuse me?”

“Oh, nothing.  I’d hate to keep you from your duties.”

“I’ve enjoyed this chat.  I just hope nothing has crawled into my workroom while I was out.”

“Perhaps you should hurry.  You say that you are hard to find?”

“I have a spell,” I agreed.  “Makes me hard to spot with magic.”

Tamara caught her lower lip between her teeth and hesitated, as though about to say something.  She didn’t, though, and I rose to open the door.  Bronze was still standing outside, waiting.

“Halar?”

I paused in the doorway, turned.  “Yes?”

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“Of course.  I have good reasons to be.”

“All right.  Where are we having lunch?”

I snapped my fingers.  “Ah!  I have no idea.  Do you know a good spot?”

“Oh, just meet me at the circle,” she said, smiling.  “I’ll show you from there.”

“Brilliant.  I’ll do that.”

She took my arm and kissed my cheek.  “Good night, Halar.”

I noticed how good she smells.  I kept that as a warm and happy thought as I mounted up and started for home. 

I glanced back as I rode away.  She stood in the doorway and watched me until I was out of sight.

My workroom was undisturbed; no fresh entities crawled in the window.  Shada was in bed, asleep, and I was careful not to wake her.  I paused for a few minutes, leaning on the doorjamb, just looking at her.  She looked different, somehow, when she was asleep.  Maybe she wasn’t trying to put on a false front—while she slept, she looked more like herself.  I think that’s it.  It took me a while, staring at her, to figure it out.

I shut the door quietly and went into the library.  There was a three-foot lens on my worktable, along with its smaller counterpart and the mirror.

Yes!  The glassblower must have finished them while I was napping in a field.

After I set up a candle, I started fiddling with it, adjusting it to a more precise focus. It took a while and involved a lot of very finicky adjustments of the glass.  I may be able to manipulate matter very finely, but it takes work and patience to get optics at any level of precision.  Just ask the guys who made the Hubble reflector.  Plus, I only had the length of the room to work with when testing it.  If I’d had better mirrors, I could have multiplied the length of my test beam… but the usual mirror around here was visibly imperfect.  I have
one
good mirror—a signal mirror from my backpack.

How does one make a flat sheet of glass?  With a roller?  Something to look into.

I finally wound up shooting the one-candlepower beam into the mirror and reflecting it out into the living area.  It was a pinprick of light that burned to the touch; I was a happy man.

Now if only the carpenter were done with the cradle!  Patience, patience…

I shuttered the window and waited out the dawn.

The baron regarded the contraption with some interest.  Peldar simply ignored it and me, choosing instead to regard the raft out in the water.

“So this is the weapon you were telling me of?” the baron asked.

“Indeed.”

“How does it work?”

“The light of the sun feels warm on your skin, does it not?”

“Yes.”

“These lenses take that warmth and focus it down to a point on objects far distant.”

The baron regarded the lenses mounted in the wooden frame.  “But the heat of the sun does not harm me,” he observed.

“True enough, lord.  But if I strike you in your armor with a practice sword, the force of the blow does not harm you; it is spread out over all your armor.  If I strike with a war-hammer, all the force of the blow strikes a tiny point—and penetrates.”

Peldar snorted.  “Nonsense.  It is the weight of the head that adds force to the blow.”

“My lord, if you would, hold out your hand,” I said, smiling. He did so, and I placed mine, palm down, on his palm.  “Feel the pressure of my hand,” I said, pushing down.  He pushed back up, supporting the weight.

“I do.”

I lifted my hand and then pushed down with one finger, keeping it rigid, but pushing just as hard.

“It is not painful, my lord, but it is much more annoying, not so?”

He nodded as I withdrew my hand.  “That it is.  But an annoyance will not stop an army.”

“May I trouble you for your dagger, my lord?”

He hesitated, then handed it over.  I held it, point-down, in my fist.

“Now extend your hand again, my lord, and I will apply the same pressure through the tiny point of the dagger.  We will see if it is still just an ‘annoyance’.”

The baron chuckled.  Peldar flushed.  I handed back the dagger and he glared.

“The same thing,” I continued, “applies to the heat of the sun.  Admittedly, on a cloudy day there may not be much use to it.  But today looks good for these purposes.”

Peldar kept his dagger out and toyed with it, eyeing me.  “Then when shall we see this miracle, wizard?”

I pulled the cover off the upper, large lens and rotated the cradle to align the lenses toward the sun.  The beam shot off the mirror into the sky.  With a bit of adjustment, I sent it out over the water.

“Observe; we reflect the light so…” and I tilted the mirror down to let the beam strike water.  There was a sudden hissing and boiling. Steam poured up into the air.  I panned the beam over to the raft.  Wood charred and crackled; rope twanged as it parted. 

“The steam marks the place where the light strikes, and it is a simple matter to turn the mirror so the light plays over rigging, sails, hull, masts, or crew.  The light is so hot it will set fire to a man or melt a hole in armor.  Best of all, if you can see it, you can hit it; the range is as far as the eye can see.”

There was an appreciative silence.

The baron stepped up to the device and regarded it.  “Let me.”

I stepped aside.  “Have a care of the light as it comes from the lower lens; keep your hands clear of it or you will lose whatever the light touches.”

He nodded and gingerly took the rods that adjusted the mirror.  Pieces of raft began to flame.  Turning, he swung the beam to the east, playing it over the seaward face of the Eastrange.  Shading my eyes, I could see sections of rock smoking and steaming.  He held the beam steady on a projecting rock and waited; after a while, it began to smoke, then crack.

The baron returned the mirror to an upward-angled beam.

“And you say that there is no wizardry in this?” he asked, regarding the glass suspiciously.

“None that is required to
use
it.  There is some magic in the glass and the mirror, to keep them from melting, of course.”

The baron nodded.  Peldar was still regarding the east, shading his eyes to look at the heated stone; distantly, the sound of cracking was still audible.

“Well done,” the baron said.  “I shall have a tower constructed to take full advantage of it.”

“Then I will construct three more, that they may be easily used in any direction.”

“Very good.”

“What about night?” Peldar demanded.

I turned to him.  “At night they are useless, my lord.”

“I thought as much.”

“But, now that you bring it up, I am sure I can modify them to throw a wider beam of powerful moonlight, or perhaps lantern light, to illuminate targets for archers.  Thank you for the thought; your wisdom in warfare is even greater than I had believed."

“Peldar,” the baron said, warningly.  Peldar kept his mouth shut.  The baron turned to me.  “And you will stop baiting him, Halar.”

I bowed.  “As my lord commands.”  I suppressed a grin; I could feel my fangs wanting to come out.  I don’t much like Peldar.

“Now, get back to the manor; Davad has missed beating you,” the baron said.  Peldar didn’t even
try
to hide his grin.

I winced.  “As my lord commands.”

Davad was a vicious—well, he was vicious today.  He wasn’t holding back on his tricks and techniques; he was feinting, punching, circling, sweeping, disarming, and generally just kicking my sorry kiester all over the courtyard.

During a brief rest, I asked, “Did I do something to piss you off?”

“No.”

Nice, simple, monosyllable.

“Then why are you just beating the hell out of me?”

“Because.”

Great.  Before all was said and done, I was glad I had troubled myself to study those healing spells.  I applied a couple of them during rest breaks; the world can look blurry after a good clout on the noggin.

Finally, Davad called it quits; he had worked up quite a sweat.

“If it comforts you,” he said, words clipped, “I see that you have grown much better in our time together.”

“Thanks.  A few days ago I’d never have parried you once.”

“True.  It is a difficult art to master.”

“I guess it is.  Yes.”

Davad handed the practice weapon to the squire that was collecting them.  “It is always a pity when a master swordsman, who has spent a lifetime learning his craft, dies from a blast of sorcery.  Years of training and work, and some upstart with a power kills him at a hundred paces.  Infuriating.  Would you not agree?”

He turned his back on me and walked away without waiting for an answer.

I’m thinking he’s upset about the Archimedes Ray.  It isn’t a fair way to fight, I admit.  But who said war was supposed to be fair?  Or life itself, for that matter?

He’s got a point, though.  I feel a little guilty about that.  Mostly, I just feel in pain.

Tamara was waiting when I rode up.  Her outfit was much like the one from yesterday, but her skirt was a light grey and her hair was bound back with a white ribbon.  She took one look at me and immediately demanded I get off the horse.

“What?” I asked.

“Get down this instant!  Are the others dead?  Where did you hide the bodies?”  She half-pulled me from Bronze’s back.  I gave up and got down, moving slowly to favor aching muscles and bones.

“Nobody died,” I said.  “It was swordwork this morning.  I built a new weapon for defending the town from sea raiders and Davad isn’t happy with it.  I think because there’s no good way to defend against it.”

Tamara muttered something and her hair started to glow.

“Uh,” I said, “what are you doing?”

“I’m healing you.  Now be quiet.”

“I, uh… your goddess may like me,” I began, “but are you sure it’s all right to, um… do that when I’m not part of your faith?”

“Yes.  And you are.  Now hush.”

I hushed.

Maybe fire isn’t the best way to describe what the energy is like.  It acts like fire, and the way Tamara’s hair changes makes one think of fire, but it isn’t.  She cupped her hands and they slowly filled with what certainly
looked
like fire.  She tilted her hands forward and let the glowing stuff pour over me.

No, it definitely wasn’t fire.  It was warmth.

How cold have you ever been?  So cold you were wondering if your lips were blue?  Freezing or frozen, and realizing there are icicles in your hair?  So cold you can’t even sniffle?  Imagine the feeling of standing under a hot shower at that point.  Of warming up.  Of coming alive again.  Of numb places growing warm with feeling where you didn’t even remember you had
places. 
It was like the first warm day of Spring melting away the snow of a long, nasty winter.

But better.

When she was done pouring fire on/into me, she folded her hands together in a small explosion and her hair went back to normal.  I just stood there and flexed muscles, checking for pain.  Not a thing.  Not even an ache.

“Can I get a bottle of that?” I asked, half-jesting.

“No.  It cannot stay in any container that does not live.”

“I’ve got to find a way to let you know when I’m kidding,” I observed.  “Thank you.  Thank you a lot.  My healing spells were going to take all day to do that.”  I did not add they wouldn’t have to keep working once the Sun went down.  On their own, the healing spells would take closer to seventy-two hours.

She smiled at me and kissed me quickly but firmly.  “You are welcome.  Now help me up on your horse.”

I did so, and she hooked a knee around the pommel to ride sidesaddle.  I necessarily rode behind her, holding on.  We rode off in the direction Tamara indicated.  On foot, or even horseback, it would have been a lengthy trip.  But Bronze is not precisely a horse.

The glade she’d picked was surrounded by thick forest.  Once upon a time, it had been a clear area, well to the west of Baret, but was taken over by the woods.  It contained great menhirs, standing stones, now covered in ivy and lichen.  It reminded me of Stonehenge, but seemed smaller and had no lintel-stones.  One menhir lay on its back, inside the ring, much like a table.  It looked like it had been placed there; the ring wasn’t missing a stone.