Nightlord: Sunset (38 page)

The baron broke the conversational silence.

“Where is your wife, Halar?  I had hoped she would join us.”

“I am not certain, my lord.  I’ve been out all day and didn’t see her in my chambers.  Shall I hunt her up?”

“No.  No matter.  I was merely curious.”

Lothen asked, “You are married, wizard?”  There was that tone again, when I was feeling punchy and tired.

“Yes I am,
priest.
”

Lothen smiled again, almost smirked.  I wanted to hit him.  With a brick.

“You may address me as ‘prelate,’ wizard.”

“Thank you,” I snapped.  “
You
may address me as ‘Master wizard’ after asking permission to speak.”

The baron turned to look at me; so did the rest of the table.  If I’d dropped a knife it would have sounded like a girder.

Lothen
tsk
ed.  “Such disrespectful behavior.  I am surprised that you tolerate it, baron.”

I cut the baron off before he could answer.  “I show respect to those worthy of it,
priest
.  So far, you have been a poor guest—both pushy and rude to your host.”  I turned my head and addressed the baron.  “Such a discourteous guest!  I am surprised you tolerate it, my lord.”

The baron had the interesting look of a man severely torn.  I had just put him in the unpleasant position of having to decide which side to stand on; he was really on the spot.

I shouldn’t have done it.  Lothen just rubbed me the wrong way.  Have you ever met someone you disliked the instant you set eyes on them?  And then learned to hate as your association continued?  Lothen was like that; I disliked him instantly and it just kept getting worse.  I had a vague thought there might be magic involved, but there was no easy way to tell; someone inside a mind-altering spell effect has a lot of trouble spotting it even if they can work magic.  It was only a vague notion; I think Lothen probably just had a personality that grated on my nerves.

The baron reached out, sipped at his wine, and continued eating.

Well, after all, we hadn’t asked a question.  If he wanted to just ignore the byplay and our comments, that was his privilege.  I went back to eating.

Lothen, however, did not.

“Baron, I must insist that your wizard tender an apology.”

“Why?”

“Because he has publicly insulted the dignity of the Church!”

“I think he has insulted
you
, Lothen,” the baron replied.  “If you have an issue with it, take it up with him.  You are both commoners, after all.”

Lothen went white.  I thought he was going to hit someone.  He got a grip, though, and settled down.

“As you say,” he said, softly.  “I was born a commoner.  But now I am a prelate of the Church, and as such I demand that your wizard apologize for his insults.”

The baron glanced at me.  I just looked at him.

“Will you apologize?”

“If you ask me to, my lord.”

“Please do.”

I looked at Lothen and got out a bucket of sarcasm.  “I
apologize
for pricking your vanity and telling the truth to your face.”

Lothen frowned thunderously.  “That is an apology?”

“It’s the best you’re going to get unless it’s at the point of a sword.  How much honor do you have…
priest?
”

The baron burst out laughing.  We both looked at him.

“Well said, Halar!  Well, Lothen?  You are neither of you noble, nor knighted, but I give you my permission to settle this affair with honor.”

“Works for me,” I said.  “He can pick his weapons.”

Lothen looked ill.

“Well, Lothen?” the baron demanded.

“It is hardly befitting the dignity of a prelate—”

“—of the Church, yes, and so on,” the baron interrupted, waving a hand.  “Are you saying that a wizard is more proficient at arms?  Or are you afraid that you are in the wrong and that you will lose?  Where is your faith that the right will prevail, prelate Lothen?”

Ooo!  Double-teamed into a fight.  I should have realized the baron would be willing to push the man into combat.  In the back of my mind I was wondering at my own eagerness to beat him senseless.  I don’t like getting into real fights.  Power going to my head, maybe?  Or all those spirits of combative people and things that left behind their traces?  Or is my neurochemistry and hormone balance all out of whack from my transformation?  Are all vampires this willing to fight, night or day?

“To first blood?” Lothen asked.

“To the yield,” I replied.

The baron nodded.  “I accept the idea of fighting until one yields.  Weapons, Lothen?”

“I—I do not know.  I must think about it.”

“Very well.  Noon, tomorrow, in
Market Plaza.  I will send a page to fetch you, Lothen.”

Lothen rose from the table and bowed.  He looked quite pale and perhaps a bit ill.  “Of course, baron.  With your permission, I will be at the temple, praying.”

“I imagine you will.  You may go.”

Lothen went.

There was quite a bit of hubbub once he left. 

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3
RD

T
hat evening I was in the baron’s chambers.  Very nice.  Tapestries on the walls depicting martial scenes, along with a large fireplace.  The furniture was old, solid stuff; it looked comfortable, but I didn’t get to try any of it.

“Halar,” he said, leaning back in a heavy, high-backed chair and holding a goblet in both hands, “why are you fighting one of the Church’s inquisitors?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know,” I admitted.  “I couldn’t seem to help it.  He just… I don’t know.”

“There are many such as he in the world, Halar.”

“I know.  But this one was in my face.  It’s not like—” I broke off.  I had almost said,
It’s not like I go hunting for them,
but I couldn’t say that honestly.

The baron sighed.  “There is a time and a place for everything.  It is not good to antagonize the Church overmuch; they have power, too much of it.  My people make pious mouthings to the Church—and each man worships as it pleases him.  Even so, some follow the Lord of Light with great faith.  I am certain that there will be repercussions from this.  These will be easier to weather if Lothen is not publicly humiliated.”

I thought about that.

“You’re asking me to lose?”

“No.  I am merely,” he rolled the goblet between his hands, “explaining consequences.”

I sighed in frustration.  “Which is tantamount to asking me to lose.  That rankles, my lord.”

“That I would imply you should throw the fight?”

“Losing to something like Lothen.”

He chuckled.  “I agree.  I do not care overmuch for him, myself.  He puts men to the question and takes their wealth for the Church.  It is said he takes their wives for his own pleasure—but it is said very quietly; I know not the truth of it.  He is a cruel man living behind a mask of faith.  He deserves anything he gets.  But…”

“But he can be trouble for you.”

“For my
barony
, Halar,” he corrected.  “I have no desire to be the first baron the Church puts to the question.”

“I get the point.  Okay.  I’ll lose.”

He rose and put a hand on my shoulder.  “I know how you feel.  It’s always hard to let something like this go.  But sometimes you have to let the enemy win a battle so that you can win the war.”

You have no idea how right you may really be,
I thought.

“I’ll manage it.  It’s to the yield.  I’ll yield.”

“Good man.”

“But I do have a question, if my lord will permit?”

The baron shrugged.

“Why did you push him into accepting my challenge?” I asked.  “I had only implied a willingness, not actually flung a gauntlet.”

He chuckled.  “Because of several things.  Partly because I do not like him.  Partly because you started it.  But mainly…” he trailed off, smiling.

“Yes, lord?”

“Mainly because I would love to beat him myself, Halar.  I know him well, for he is a son of my father on a housemaid, and he is a disgrace to my father’s blood.  While my head would counsel prudence in this matter, my heart wishes Lothen nothing but a beating.  You may go, Halar.”

I went back to my chambers, distracted and thoughtful.  The baron really doesn’t like Lothen at all.

I spent a lot of the night fiddling in the workshop.  Little things, really—well, little things to me.  Playing around with gravity and magnetism.  This planet has all the magnetic field of a typical brick.  No wonder my compass doesn’t work.

Eventually, I lay down, put my hands behind my head, and thought.  I thought about everything that had happened since a certain drinking binge.  It was a chaotic, disjointed swirl of thought, really, and one that went on for a while.  I wondered where Shada was.  Maybe she was pretending to have an affair with one of the locals.  Not that I could blame her, since I was never really “home”—and when I was, I was working.

Hell, she’s not even married to me.  Why should I care?  I shouldn’t, probably, but I do.  Why do I care?  I shouldn’t.  Really.  She’s not even my wife.  I barely know her.

Such were my thoughts as I lay there, staring at the not-darkness.  And, contrary to everything I had believed possible or likely, I fell asleep.

I dreamed.

My hands shook as they clasped before me; sleeves of dark red, like old blood, spilled back down my forearms to reveal pale flesh.  The shimmer of the silk was bright in the light of the candles as I sank to my knees.  My hands rested on the sharp edge of the marble block, my forehead pressed to my thumbs.  I shivered, I shook, I moaned softly in fear.

How long I remained so, I do not know.  People came and went, voices dimly echoed, but there was silence in my heart—a darkness unending, an emptiness, a void.  The Voice of God was silent in the halls of my soul.

With no power to fill that emptiness, I rose and turned my back upon the bright altar.  I walked away, and I felt the weight about my neck, the dragging of the chain.  I clutched at the pendant—a key—through the silken robe.  It was cold, even though it lay against my flesh.

I knew the answer.  It came to me in a whisper of thought: Evil consumes all things, even itself.

I opened the hidden door with the enchanted key of brass and iron, locked it behind me.  I went down the dark and ancient steps.  Deep into the earth did they descend, sightless and timeless in the stony bowels of the world.  Far down, where the sun never goes and where Men and Dwarves should never have delved, there went I.

The stairs ended in a chamber hewn out of the bones of the world.  It was illuminated with a wan wyrdlight.  Torches burned, cold and pale, at either side of the Door.

Black iron, blacker than the ancient grease that coated it, blacker than the darkness through which I had descended.  Worked with symbols lost to the knowledge of Man—and rightly!—and massive.  The Door stood as a portal between my own time and an elder age.  A vault door, containing the wickedness and malice of evils long restrained. Restrained, contained, imprisoned—and the responsibility of the Hand.

These evils had been found, found and conquered.  They can be found, they can be conquered again.  But they would
serve
first.  They must, for the keys to the lesser gate were stolen, and a Lord of Night had come to open the shadow gate for its brethren.

I brushed at the lock plate, removing the caked grease that sealed it.  I inserted the key and felt the shock of icy cold shoot up my arm and through all my body.  I spoke the Word that would loose the wards.  I turned the key.  I gave myself up to damnation for the salvation of the world.

The Door swung toward me, soundlessly.

A single great hall met my eyes.  Mine were the first to see it in a thousand years.  Yet there was no dust, nor spiders, nor cobweb.  No signs of age at all that my eyes could detect in the sourceless, pale glow..  This place had been sealed against the worst ravages that Time could deliver unto it and sealed well.

An aisle ran down the center of the hall.  I walked it, as a man might walk a tightrope, keeping my robe wrapped about me in a futile gesture, hoping to ward off some of the unearthly, netherworldly chill.  To the right and the left were things.  Here a simple, two-tined fork of red metal upon a pedestal, a legend affixed below.  Here a sword, the blade made of dark iron.  There a knife, obsidian and gleaming.  A ring of tarnished silver that could never be polished clean.  A cloak of utter darkness, like piece of the sky between the stars ripped free.  And more.  Much, much more.  Things that no power wielded by mortals could destroy; things that mortal men might only imprison.

And this great hall ended in another door.

This door was man-sized.  It bore no runes, no markings, no symbols… save one.

The Hand of Light.

I touched it, placing my hand upon the Hand.  A darkness came over my vision and my head swam.  I had surrendered to the knowledge that my damnation was assured.  What worse fate could befall me?  Now there was nothing more to lose.  The door swung toward me slowly and I entered the inner chamber.

Six spheres of onyx flashed their inner fires at me, cold and hard and smooth as glass..  They each rested upon a pedestal, nestled into a velvet depression.  Each was a foot in diameter—a priceless gem.  Each pedestal was surrounded by diagrams of containment, the forms filled with poured gold.  And before each pedestal was a smaller stand, holding a book; each book made of brass, the pages brass plates, inscribed with words in the First Tongue of Men.

I read the covers of the six books and so learned the names of those bound within those spheres.

I opened each book with the key of brass and iron, read of each of the Six—the demons that could not be banished, could not be destroyed.

This one the Devourer.

This the Destroyer.

That one was Terror.

That one Greed.

And Lust.

And Rage.

All six, bound here for eternity.  But now known, now held, now to be used. Those were not their names, not their true Names, but adjectives, descriptors, handles by which one might speak of them.  Their natures were deeper things, not fully known by those feeble words.  They encompassed more, so much more, even as a book holds so much more than the title.

I laid my hand upon the pages of the one called Devourer.  One Devourer to consume another… fitting, fitting…

I spoke the words and the sphere of onyx cleared.  I looked into the eyes of the Devourer.

We spoke for a long time, It and I.  When I demanded, It refused.  When I cajoled, It laughed.  When I offered It prey, It accepted.  It told me the words to speak, the rite to perform.  It gave me power over Its kin.  I sealed the sphere again and departed that place, locking all things behind me as I went.

Up, up, up… the long and winding stair led from the depths of the earth to the surface, and I emerged in the frigid air of the night.  Yet the cold bit only my flesh, not my spirit, for I was chilled within as mortal man has never known.

Still I went up, floor by floor, and reached at last the roof.  I looked out over the walls, observing the sleeping city—my city.  My city to protect from all the darkness of the worlds.  What matters my own life if I can spend it to shield my flock from evil?

If only there was another way!  If only I could trust the magicians!  If only I could
find
the returned Lord of Night and slay it!

But there was no other way.  The magicians failed me, keep failing me; they sought it again and again with magician’s crystal and magician’s glass, yet still they could find only hints, only traces, never the thing itself!  Liars, fools—to trust in magic when the only true power is in the Light.

And for my foolish trust in them, I could hear no more the Voice.  Now I must redeem so many for our lack of faith, wash away the stain that has crept back into the clean lands, even thought it means the offering of my soul to Darkness.

I spoke the words, and the devourers came, appearing out of darkness and smoke.

I commanded them, and they bowed before me, departing to seek the last of the dark kings—the one that slipped through the door of shadow and returned to a world we had cleansed.

I woke, feeling cold and very alone.  The dream, once vivid and clear, is faded now.  I do not recall the true Names of the Things in the spheres, if ever I did; I do not know the name of the man responsible.  But I do know that there was a rooftop full of devourers. 
Dozens
of them.

Where is Shada?

Morning was not a happy thing.  Davad spent a good portion of it with me on the quarterstaff instead of the sword.  He’s just as good with a staff as he is with a sword, or he’s so much better than me at both of them I can’t tell the difference.

Using a quarterstaff is hard.  It’s very hard.  I think I hate it.  I think I may hate him, too.  But the baron called for a break early, today; I had to arrive at my real fight on time.  Which, fortunately, gave me a chance to pull myself together a bit so I didn’t
look
like I’d lost a fight already.

Eriador plaza, the market
square of Baret.  Yesterday I had been healing people here; there was quite a crowd today, as well.  People were on walls, hanging out windows, on top of carts.  I couldn’t tell for sure if most of them were rooting for me, against me, or just eager to watch a fight.  I think most of them were rooting for me.  Me they like.  Ander they like.  The Church’s secret police they’re not so fond of.

Lothen was pale and somewhat green.  From the circles under his eyes, I guessed he hadn’t slept.  I noticed he was carrying a quarterstaff, and I silently forgave Davad for working me over.  Now that I actually used my brain, it seemed a likely choice of weapons.  No sharp bits to get accidentally impaled upon.  Good thinking on Lothen’s part.

Maybe someone suggested it to him.  I eyed the Baron and saw Davad beside him; they were talking quietly.  I wondered if the suggestion of a staff was to keep Lothen alive or to make it easy for me to lose.