by M. C. Planck
“You should go adventuring,” D’Kan suggested. “You could put your fire sticks to good purpose. Instead you sit around waiting for old people to die.”
“You forget yourself, Ser,” Cannan said seriously. “Curb your tongue.”
D’Kan shook his head disapprovingly at the red knight. “You should have counseled him to finish the ant queen. That alone would have bought his next rank.”
“I’m not really interested in your opinion of my foreign policy,” Christopher said, starting to get angry himself.
“I know,” the Ranger said. “More’s the pity. Well, I tried.”
Cannan, frowning thunderclouds, stepped forward to chastise the Ranger.
The boy spat in the big man’s face.
Christopher’s heart leapt in his chest. Such an act could only be followed by violence. He was pretty sure the Ranger was about to die. At the same time, alarm bells were booming in the back of his head, belated and hurried as if the monks responsible for the noonday ringing had slept through lunch.
D’Kan flicked his hand and numerous arcane bolts leapt forward, sparkling like bottle rockets. The missiles pierced the cavalryman, killing all of them instantly.
Cannan had not moved, standing as still as a statue.
Christopher did the only thing he could. He cast a spell on himself, a simple blessing, the first and fastest spell he could think of.
His armor sagged at his shoulders as the null-stone triggered. He did not notice because he was watching D’Kan’s face come apart.
Without magic, the disguise was not at all convincing. The mass of tentacles carefully folded and camouflaged was barely identifiable as a human face, let alone as D’Kan. The parts that made up the lips writhed; sound came out, shaped into hissing words.
“I suspected as much. My thanks for delivering the artifact; it is not the sort of thing I care to leave lying around.”
Christopher drew his sword.
The hjerne-spica appeared to laugh. The sight was horrific, a bowl of snakes with the tremors. “I cannot decide whether this is wisdom or madness. While it is true your magic is worth nothing against me, magic was your only possibility of retreat.”
Only a few years ago, Christopher had fought his first duel. A reasonable and peaceful person from a civilized society, it had never occurred to him that he would one day stand before a man who wanted to kill him. He had been terrified, his tongue as heavy as lead and as dry as sand.
Since then he had fought against fanged man-beasts, creatures of rotting flesh, mindless hordes, shadows of darkness, trolls, dragons, and giant ants. All of them had been his enemies, intent on his death and destruction. None of them had gazed at him with such heart-stopping malice. He had forgotten how savagely fear could bite.
And yet. “I’m not . . . retreating.”
“How so? Surely you must understand I am displeased. I set you to a task that any simpleton can see you will never achieve. You take too few risks and offer too many mercies. Your mortal frame will crumble and fail long before you gain the rank you need. Now I must consume you, and regret the time I wasted on your career. A bad bet; a seed that will never flower.”
The creature approached, walking around the paralyzed form of Cannan, its hands spread amicably. “In my defense, you seemed so promising in the beginning. What went wrong?”
“Nothing.” It was hard for Christopher to speak in the face of nightmare. He felt like a child again, accosted by a bully in the skin of a hulking adult. “This was my plan.” He raised his blade high.
The malevolent yellow eyes stared at him, calculating, then dismissive. It had mapped all the possibilities and found them unthreatening. One tentacle lashed out, absurdly long and thin, and struck him across the cheek.
The familiar fire, the poisoned agony. He stood stock-still.
“Failure is always a bad plan,” the hjerne-spica said, and stepped closer, thick tentacles reaching out for his face.
Christopher hit it. His blade sliced into the creature’s face, shedding flopping bits of tentacle.
“The only plan you would not see through,” he grunted, because he wanted it to know he had outsmarted it.
The hjerne-spica sprang back, hissing, drawing D’Kan’s twin swords. Christopher followed, striking down again, only narrowly turned aside by the short blades.
“Clever,” it taunted as they lunged and struck at each other. The sound of steel rang in the air, punctuated by the wet squelch of blades cutting flesh. “At first I assumed you foolishly expected the favor of your patron to spare you paralysis. Of course it cannot reach into the null-sphere, and you would have been laughingly dismayed. Tell me, how did you become immune? Or were you always thus; has the race of man departed from its seed-line so much in all these years?”
Christopher was wholly focused on the fight, so much so he didn’t have the energy to lie. “Ants,” he mumbled, sweeping low. The creature’s block did not reach; Christopher opened up a gash on D’Kan’s calf. The wound splashed blood and then stopped, sealed by tael.
The blades might be mundane, but the combatants were not. They still had the unnatural vitality of their tael, even inside the anti-magic zone. It was an interesting conundrum, one of many Christopher did not have time to consider. Spinning under his last strike, the hjerne-spica passed through his guard and stabbed him under the arm its way past, neatly avoiding his armor. This would have killed a mortal man. It made Christopher take note. The ploy would not work again.
“I should have known,” the creature complained. It almost sounded like a whine. “I should have been informed.” Dimly Christopher noted that he was winning the fight. His armor and vitality seemed to be a match for the light frame of the Ranger. He was slowly pulling ahead on points, and points counted here.
“Maybe,” Christopher said, his mind seeking any opening into its defenses, any thrust that would strike home, “maybe they didn’t want to tell you.”
It pounced in a hissing spray, tentacles and short swords weaving in hypnotic patterns. All of the training Christopher had done in this world paid for itself now. He ignored the threat and leaned into his own blow.
The blades stabbed into his face. One pierced his left eye and stuck. The other skittered across his skull, shaving off hair in its wake. Either blow should have been fatal. Instead he stepped back, drawing his long blade in a cut, and severed the creature from its body at the neck.
It flopped across the ground with startling speed. He sprung after it; to let it outside the range of the null-stone would be fatal. A lucky thrust pinned it to the ground. He reached up with one hand and pulled the shortsword out of his eye, although he still could not see out of it. Kneeling over the squid-like body, he grabbed handfuls of tentacles and sawed at them with the shortsword. The creature flailed and lashed, trying to blind his other eye. He turned his face left and right to avoid the attacks but did not retreat. He did not need to see to finish the job.
Eventually, he realized the thing had stopped moving. It was hard to tell because his hands were on fire where he had touched it. He could barely distinguish his fingers, and his face felt like a frying pan.
Doggedly, he gathered up the remains and cut each tentacle in half again. There did not seem to be anything to the creature other than tentacles. Even the eyes were on the end of suckered, slimy ropes. Both were gray and lifeless now. In the midst of the mess, he found three more eyes, much smaller, like unopened flower buds.
Something grated against the sword, notching it. A gnarled, hollow spike of dull purple metal. It looked organically grown rather than machined or forged. He held it, wondering what its purpose was, afraid he already knew.
The null-field vanished.
His heart paused for a few beats. Behind him a horse whinnied. Royal, for once held in abeyance by fear. Nothing else happened; the hjerne-spica remained in pieces on the ground.
He placed the spike in the middle of the butchered calamari and cast a simple orison. Tael began to col
lect on top of it. The ball grew and grew and grew. It did not stop until it was the size of a cantaloupe.
He looked up into Cannan’s eyes. The man was still paralyzed, but the message was unmistakable. Christopher sat back and began to shove the tael into his mouth a handful at a time.
After he was finished, he staggered to his feet. The horses shied away from him, frightened by the hjerne-spica’s smell. Christopher realized he dared not touch anything with his poisoned hands.
He had magic again, however. He burned through three healing spells restoring his tael before he realized they weren’t quenching the fire. It was hard to concentrate through the pain. Through sheer force of will, he brought Gregor’s face to mind.
“I’m at the birch-wood south of the city. Send help. Bring a washbasin.”
13
GHOSTS
Success cured all ailments. When the long-dead started walking out of his mausoleum, the tongues of discontent were stilled. The act of generosity bought the loyalty of the common; the display of power cowed the noble.
The hjerne-spica had elevated him to his thirteenth rank and halfway to the next one. It was the single most profitable act he had ever committed. Another dozen bowls of calamari, and he could go home.
The next ones would not be so easy, however. They would surely know what happened and take measures. The trick would not work a second time. However, he did not particularly worry that they would murder him in his sleep. After all, he was back on track. The project looked feasible again.
He had been unimpressed with the various additional ways to kill people that his last rank had brought. As usual, half the spells from this new rank were also dedicated to killing things, but these were starting to get seriously frightening. He had just gained the ability to raise the dead from a fingernail, and with it came a spell that would obliterate a foe fingernails and all. He could regenerate the men with crippled faces and missing limbs; he could kill a small crowd with a word. But only if they were Team Evil. A bomb designed for the righteous, it only killed enemies.
And the ability to control the weather. He had already known the weather system was unnatural. Now he could get his hands on the controls. Praying for rain had become a legitimate agricultural policy. There would be no more droughts as long as he had time to work magic across his realm.
He had also gained in wisdom, although this was probably less a result of rank and more a product of experience. This time he asked before bringing the Ranger back from the dead. Standing in the castle’s dungeon, where King Treywan had kept victims and Christopher kept bodies he couldn’t revive yet, he cast the spell that summoned the shade of the deceased.
“There is still time for me to return you to the High Druid,” Christopher told him. “Or I can bring you back again.”
“From this?” the ghost said, looking down at his headless corpse. “Has your power grown so great that you can revive even the despoiled? Does my sister now walk the plane again?”
“Not so much,” Christopher, wishing he could lie. “I still need a component.” Niona’s corpse had been reduced to ash. Not by a spell but effective all the same.
Beside him, a glistening track crawled down Cannan’s face. Christopher ignored it because there was nothing else to do.
“Then . . . no.” The ghost of the Ranger sighed, looking so much older and wiser than he had as a living man. “My mother’s heart is already torn. To let you snatch me again from the judgment of our faith would shred it.”
The High Druid would return D’Kan to life. Just not in a human body. It seemed a cruel fate for a handsome young man.
“We don’t have to tell them,” Christopher suggested.
“How your morality flexes when burdened with the weight of your sins.” The ghost shook its head. “Should I be flattered that you would lie on my behalf?”
“Well. No.” Christopher was hemmed in, brought up short by the judgment of his own faith. He could keep silent, but he could not lie when asked directly. That path had proved its weakness with Helga.
“Nor could I lie when facing the families of the rest of my party. The creature ambushed us on our adventure, when we had barely started. I watched my friends devoured alive by the monster, one after another. It released their paralysis only when they could no longer fight or flee, solely so that they could give voice to their pain. They are gone now because they chose to be my companions. I brought them to death because I chose to be yours. That I alone should live again seems a burden too great to bear.”
“Can we find them?” Christopher knew it was stupid as soon as he asked.
“Of course not. Its spell-craft is at least as competent as Cannan’s. It left nothing for the High Druid to work with and taunted us as it did so.”
“I could . . .”
It cut him off. “You could carve up my mind and my memories as you did Cannan’s? No, I think not. He can sacrifice his soul to bring my sister back. I have done enough; do not ask this of me.”
The ghost folded its hands together and faded out of existence.
“He is not wrong,” Cannan said quietly. “The druids are riven; their faith hangs by a thread. Niona may well lose her druidic powers when you bring her back. Such a fate would be torture for her.”
“We’ll fix it,” Christopher assured him. “Kalani came back as an owl. It doesn’t seem to be a problem for druids. If we have to kill Niona and reincarnate her to keep her profession, then we’ll do it. That will be the easy part.”
Cannan shook his head gently and sadly. “You always think you can talk everybody into anything. I know this, and then I let you do it to me anyway.”
Christopher shrugged. “Talking is my only weapon. Rifles just kill people, and all of my foes have better magic than I do. All I have to bring to the game is a different perspective.”
“Don’t tell Lala,” Cannan said. “You know how she feels about theologians.”
Talking, however, was risky. There were secrets too dangerous to speak out loud. Christopher was going a little crazy with the constant sense of being watched at every turn. When he started planning a trip to visit the ant queen, solely so he could sit inside her protected nest for a few hours, he realized he had to do something.
Fae knelt before him, dressed in formal wear that was barely more chaste than her lingerie. “You summoned me, my lord?”
This time they were in the throne room, although once again it was empty save for his sword-bearing shadow and Lalania.
“I need a private place to talk. Lala says that’s a thing wizards can do.”
“It is, my lord, but I regret it is beyond my power. I would require many more ranks to obey your command.”
He wasn’t going to spend that much. “Can the Wizard of Carrhill do it?”
“Yes,” Fae said, unable to mask her disapproval. “If you trust him to cast the spell.”
“I don’t,” Christopher agreed. “But Lala says you could do it if he prepared the materials.”
“That is an expensive way to achieve your result. And it carries a risk of failure, with the possibility of doom for myself.”
“Do you want try?”
She glared. “Of course I do. To work such magic is the purpose of my life.”
Lalania had also said that Fae would not have the skill to compromise the spell in any hidden way, as the Wizard might. He hadn’t planned on bringing that up. Now it looked like he wouldn’t have to. Fae clearly understood she was being used and didn’t care. She would do it anyway.
A week later, he stood in the castle vault. The room contained only a large table and a dozen chairs. He didn’t have any treasure to store. His gold was spent faster than it came in, and he usually wore the two magical artifacts he owned, his armor and the bullet-proof cloak. The lyre had spent years under a dusty cover; now it was always with Lalania. He suspected she kept it under the covers with her when she slept. It had always been a crime that Treywan had left magic items unused. Christopher didn’t know h
ow much of a crime because he didn’t know what most of those items were. They had all disappeared with the Gold Apostle, who himself had been disappeared by the hjerne-spica. which had already demonstrated its appetite for magic. Somewhere at the end of the chain, there should be quite a pile of the stuff.
So far they had only taken things into the vault, so the allegiance of the guardian gargoyles had not been tested. Lalania assured him they were magical constructs, not real creatures, and only activated when someone tried to leave with something they hadn’t brought in with them. They would not spy on him. Thus, the vault seemed an appropriate choice for a private conference. It was immune to mundane surveillance, the right size for the spell, and information was the only thing of value he produced. So now he watched Fae marking off the boundary of the room with mystic powders. Eventually, she was satisfied she had done it right and bowed before him.
“I am ready at your command, my lord.”
He had already cleared his schedule for the day. This posturing by her was merely to remind him that failure was on his head, not hers. “Go ahead,” he said, trying not to be annoyed.
She unrolled a scroll purchased from the Wizard of Carrhill for a small fortune. Christopher could have brought two men back from the dead for its price. It was a lot to pay for a single day of privacy. There was also a one in three chance that Fae would miscast the spell, thus wasting the scroll, although Lalania assured him that the chance of anyone dying was small.
As she read from the parchment, the words burst into flames. By the time she dropped the flaming scraps, they were so small they were consumed before hitting the floor. The dust scattered around the room sparkled briefly and then disappeared.
“Did it work?” he asked.
Fae smiled like a well-fed cat. “Of course, my lord.”
Lalania pointed to the guards standing outside the open door. The men had horrified looks on their contorted faces. Christopher realized they were shouting, but he couldn’t hear them.
“Hey,” he ordered, “calm down.”