by M. C. Planck
Lalania waited a moment for Christopher to say something. When he didn’t, she did. “Do not denigrate yourself, Mistress. This is no ordinary task. Varelous himself would blanch at what our lord asks. Or likely refuse. I have recently reviewed our legends of the plane of Hel, and none of them contains a successful attempt.” Lalania had taken Alaine’s words to heart and now suspected that what she used to think of as merely tales and songs were in fact coded truths about all manner of obscure things, such as demi-planes under the surface. “Indeed, the Mouth is generally presented as an intelligence test. As in, anyone intelligent runs away before they are consumed.”
“You could revive the Wizard,” the Witch said.
“No,” Christopher grunted.
Lalania looked at him with concern before explaining to the Witch. “None of us trusts the man that far. He would turn on our lord in the heat of battle and make a deal with death itself for a promotion.”
Still trying, the Witch offered another name. “You could revive Varleous?”
“No,” Lalania sighed. “He lived a full life. He is beyond the reach of any magic now.”
“I need smart,” Christopher said, thinking out loud. “Not rank.” He had a fistful of tael from the demon, enough to make an Arch-mage out of an onion if he wanted to.
“We can search the kingdom for native talent,” Lalania suggested. “It will take time, but surely an adventure of this magnitude should not be hurried. We can reach out beyond our borders; there must be other human realms, and I suspect Alaine knows where they are.”
Christopher shrugged. “If we’re just looking for the smartest man in the world, I already know his name.”
He stood up and walked out of the room, oblivious to the niceties of court decorum. Lalania dismissed the gathering behind him, mending fences without actually making apologies. She caught up to him just as he was about to close the door to his suite.
“Christopher, you are worrying people. Including me. Please do not do this alone.”
Indifferent, he let her in, shutting the door behind her and invoking his spell, chanting out a name dredged from memory. The doorway now looked into yet another Earth-bound bedroom. Christopher was mystified why everyone seemed to be asleep when he called.
The target in this case was not strictly speaking in bed, nor asleep. A thin and wasted form sat in an electric wheelchair, reading from a tiny screen. The man was middle-aged, although he looked ancient, prematurely aged by the degenerative disease that he had famously battled for twenty years. His eyes raised to Christopher and Lalania. There was shock, of course, and skepticism, and concern. There was also a spark when his gaze fell on the pretty blonde bard, as there would be from most men. Christopher grimaced in satisfaction. He would use that, because he would use everything now.
The man moved two fingers, the only part of his body beneath his eyes still under his conscious control. He tapped at a small pad. After a moment, speech issued from a computer speaker on the wheelchair, ironically in a Southern California dialect.
“If she is a Valkyrie, then you must be Odin.”
“I’m not a god,” Christopher said. “But from your perspective, there isn’t much difference. I cannot cross the threshold, so you need to wheel yourself over here.”
More tapping. Everyone waited patiently. “You want me to participate in my own kidnapping?”
“I want you to participate in something far worse. You’ll probably die. I’ll probably die. But I was told I needed the smartest man in the world. If you are interested in playing chess with a god and winning, get over here before the door closes.”
The man tapped hesitantly, thinking furiously even while he composed a response. Christopher could almost see the gears turning in the man’s head, thanks to his supernatural perception of people’s emotional state.
“I would like a change. Dice is not a particularly satisfying game.”
The wheelchair lurched into motion. Christopher felt a smile crawl onto his face. It was remarkably easy to convince people to do impossibly dangerous things. All it required was a challenge to their pride, a pretty girl, and the complete lack of any other options. Richard Falconer was dying, had been dying for his entire adulthood. It had not stopped him from publishing ground-breaking physics papers or winning Nobel prizes. Now it would not stop him from recklessly rolling into an adventure he could not possibly understand.
Once Falconer crossed the threshold, Christopher knew he had won. There was no need to spell out the terms of their bargain. He strode forward, grabbed Richard’s hand, and pulled him out of the chair. “You won’t need that anymore,” he said, casting the regeneration spell.
Choking, coughing, and trembling, Richard bent double before standing up and spitting something into his hands.
“I didn’t know the British did fillings,” Christopher confessed while he cast the translation spell on Richard. “I thought you people had bad dentistry.”
“Madness, dream, drug-induced hallucination; whatever this is, I didn’t come here for nasty stereotypes.” Richard brushed Christopher’s hands away and turned to Lalania, making a little half-bow. “Richard Falconer, my lady. Tell me how I can be of service.”
Lalania flushed slightly under the force of that gaze. Falconer was a notoriously determined personality. Doctors had written him off as dead a decade ago, but he had hung on through sheer willpower just to prove them wrong.
“You may call me Lalania,” she answered. “You will soon enough have rank of your own, and it shall be I who must bow and call you lord. If you meet my lord’s requirements, that is.”
“Direct and to the point,” Richard said with satisfaction. “Skip on a bit, if you would,” he told Christopher. “It’s been a while, if you know what I mean.”
Christopher backhanded him across the face, hard enough to draw blood from a split lip.
Richard’s eyes flashed with fire. This was not a man who was used to be being abused, wheelchair or no. To his credit, and as Christopher expected, his intellectual curiosity trumped his emotional response.
“Explain.”
“It’s not a dream,” Christopher said. “Sooner or later everybody has to bleed to understand that. I don’t have time to waste waiting for you to figure it out on your own.”
“And if I hit you back?”
“Go ahead,” Christopher shrugged.
Richard did, instantly, and he put his back into it. Christopher did not bleed, of course; his tael saw to that. It hurt, but nothing like the nightly poison Lalania had administered, and in any case no pain could penetrate the shell around his heart. He remained unmoved and watched Richard nurse his bruised knuckles.
“If you want to hit me with a chair, you can,” he told Richard. “I am a Saint; you cannot kill me without considerably more effort than that. I can use magic, like the spell that brought you here and the one that healed you. I am going to make you a wizard. You won’t be as hard to kill as I am, or have as much magic, but you will be capable of falling out of a seven-story window and walking away from it. You will also be able to blow things up, fly, turn invisible, call demons, and make sandals.” Christopher rattled off the things he had seen wizards do without really thinking through the whole list first.
“You expect me to accept all of this on the strength of a bloody lip,” Richard said with completely understandable skepticism.
“I don’t care if you accept it. I care that you do what I need. We are going to Hel, and you have a part to play. Lalania will explain. Once you understand, you will be fed tael, a mystical substance that grants supernatural powers. Fae will teach you the basics of wizardry, although I expect you to surpass her quickly. If you can’t, then you are of no use to me.”
Richard crooked his head. “And if I am of no use to you?”
“Then I’ll find somebody else.”
23
PARTY OF FOUR
One by one, Christopher called his subjects to this throne. One by one, they found wa
ys to decline the honor he sought to bestow. Once upon a time, people had flocked to his side, hoping to join his retinue. Now that he was going to Hel, people shuffled and made excuses.
Lalania helped them. “There is no point in taking another priest. If divine magic will matter, you have as much of it as can be asked for. This is a traditional quest, or at least it must appear traditional at the outset, lest it fail immediately.” He had told her everything Marcius had said. He was done with secrets. “Thus, you must form a traditional adventuring party.”
He waited for her to continue. She looked a little sad at the loss of their usual banter. He could see that. He just couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it.
“You need a rogue and a warrior. One to open doors and the other to fight what is behind those doors. You already have the priest to heal the warrior and the wizard to deal with the things that can’t be killed with a sword.”
“Richard is working out?” It had been a week since he had last seen the man, who it must be said took to the study of magic with a monomaniacal focus appropriate to the world’s greatest theoretical physicist. Richard had read every book on magic in the entire kingdom in two days, without stopping to sleep, and was now at the stage of conducting experiments while his rank manifested. Christopher realized that Fae must be made miserable by the comparison, but again he couldn’t seem to care enough to act.
“You could say that,” Lalania said while looking at the wall. “Fae and I have kept him in hand, though, and his studies progress at a prodigal rate. He cracked the Wizard of Carrhill’s personal spell-book code because it was faster than reading it with a spell.”
“Where can I get a rogue?” He’d had a professional assassin once, but again, he’d had to kill her. “Does the Invisible Guild even exist anymore?” In the early days of his reign, he had hung quite a number of them.
“I assume so, but those of a rank to interest you must have already taken their chances in the Wild. However, all is not lost. There is another profession with similar skills, and they are already loyal.”
He stared at her, wishing she would stop trying to be clever. Or expect him to be.
“The College,” she said, exasperated. “I am talking about bards. You should promote me to a sufficient rank and take me with you.”
There was a time he would have objected. There was a time he would have pointed out that he was probably marching to his death, and he didn’t want to take anyone else with him.
He sat silently instead.
She took it as a positive sign. “Two more ranks would make me half again as hardy. I could finally withstand those ubiquitous barring spells. Ants and goblins would no longer require my pretense to be able to accompany you.”
“And the warrior?” he asked.
Lalania considered. “Cannan is the obvious choice. He has a sword fit for a king, and he owes you more than his life. He will need more ranks, though.”
“No.” Christopher discovered that his despair had limits. Cannan had just been reunited with his wife. Destroying that was a price too high to pay.
She shook her head but not in surprise. “He will be crushed. He has waited for you to call him, secure in the knowledge that no one else has the courage to follow you to the gates of Hel. He thought you were merely magnifying his loyalty by calling him last and giving everyone else a chance to decline. He gloried in watching those of higher rank mumble and back away.”
“No,” Christopher said again.
Lord Einar had declined, asserting that his tracking skills did not extend to the Underworld. Lord Istvar had suggested Christopher revive Duke Nordland and ask him, which just sounded like an expensive way to get insulted to his face. Torme and Gregor were priests or half-priests, and thus superfluous. That didn’t leave a lot of choices.
“One of those elves,” he said, thinking of the silver-clad warriors.
“What possible inducement could you offer?” Lalania asked skeptically.
“A job well done.” The god of death was breaking the rules. It seemed like something the elves should be offended by.
A page crept into the otherwise empty throne room to announce a petitioner. Christopher nodded absently. He had forgotten who else was due to appear and present a reason to avoid going on a suicide mission.
The person who walked into his hall was the last one he had expected. Alaine strolled up and tipped her head in nominal deference to his status as king. He was more powerful than she was now—Lalania and he had estimated her rank somewhere around ninth or tenth—but he still found her intimidating. She knew too many secrets and too many dragons to be taken lightly.
“I understand you are planning another adventure,” Alaine said. “So soon after the last one?”
Christopher growled at the elf. On this subject, he would berate gods.
“Such is often the case,” she said, not in the least concerned with his anger. “We reach for our most cherished dream, only to find it hollow once off the high shelf.”
“The situation is rather different,” Lalania said sharply. “Saint Christopher was satisfied with his dreams. Other parties intervened.”
“I was not speaking only on Christopher’s behalf,” she answered. “Yet it is true that the law, such as it is, appears to have been violated.”
“If you’re here to do something about it, say so,” Christopher said. “If you’re here to tell me you can’t do anything, I already know that.”
“I am not here to tell you I cannot do anything,” she said, sending an electric thrum of promise through Christopher’s spine. “I am here to tell you what I can do. This is my domain, and as such, I take it personally when someone else trespasses on it. Also, we elves have no cause to love Hordur, and no desire to see you fail where so many others have. Thus, I must tell you: your wizard is not ready. He will lose.”
“And?” Lalania said in challenge. Christopher held his breath, hoping for the best.
“And I have come to make him ready. Understand we do this for our own purposes; but at this juncture they coincide with your own.”
“Will you give us a warrior too?” Christopher asked. “Apparently we need a warrior.”
Alaine bowed her head in genuine humility this time. “I have been farther across the face of Prime than many, and to more planes than most. Yet I would add to my travels. If you will have me, I will accompany you.”
Christopher found himself begging for scraps to raise the tael for Lalania’s promotion. Richard had consumed all of the demon’s tael. He had lost all patience, however, and his requests for charity came out as demands. Only the fact that everyone expected him to never return from this adventure kept them from rebelling.
Krellyan was widely viewed as the soon-to-be occupant of the throne. Christopher found he did not care, either for or against. Not that it mattered because no one asked his opinion. In general, people avoided him as much as possible.
Even Cannan was gone, off to Niona’s homeland. He had not left without making a statement, however. Alaine returned to court wearing his sword on top of her own silvered mail.
“It is a good sword,” the elf acknowledged. The thing seemed too large for her, but that did not fool Christopher.
She brought Richard with her. The man looked different, tanned and worn into his new skin, at ease in his elven leathers. He also spoke the local language fluently.
“I understand the Lady Alaine will accompany us? And the bard as well? So it’s a double date.” He was too polished to leer, but the look he gave Lalania could not be mistaken.
She muttered under her breath, an aside for Christopher. “The man is insatiable. I wonder how Alaine fared.”
“It was only a week,” Christopher whispered back. The memory of Kalani’s extremely casual approach to the topic made him squirm. He did not need to know more details.
Alaine apparently could still hear them. “A week for you and I. Not for Master Richard.”
“Say what?” Christopher bl
urted.
“Time dilation.” Richard stared at him with alarming directness. “The gate spell necessarily reaches through time as well as space. You reached twenty-five thousand years into the past to bring me here. All you have to do is stumble a bit on the return trip and Bob’s your uncle. You’re back just after you left, no matter how long you were gone.”
Christopher narrowed his eyes, wondering if the man was making fun of him. “I don’t understand.”
Alaine smiled. “Now you have some measure of how the rest of us feel. Yet in this case, I can interpret. What he is trying to say is that Argeous took him to a plane where time passes differently. He has been gone for three years from his point of view.”
“Oh. Sorry?” Christopher wasn’t sure what he was supposed to make of this news.
“You needn’t be,” Richard said. “It gave me a chance to make a proper study of magic. Not that I don’t still have questions. I imagine you must as well.”
“He learns quickly,” Alaine said, and her words carried a hint of warning. “The Directorate was impressed. In sheer point of fact, he surpassed their standards and won their respect.”
“What she is trying to say,” Richard said, “Is that I am now of equal rank to you. They promoted me because they thought I deserved it.”
Christopher raised his eyebrows in surprise. That was incredible generosity, especially for a creature that would soon fade from the long war the elves waged.
“Also because any less would result in failure,” Alaine explained. “The Directorate was willing to make this investment because they think you have a chance to hurt our common foe significantly.”
“They?” Lalania asked pointedly.
Alaine smiled at the barb. “It is true that I concur with the Directorate in this regard.”
Richard rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “The Directorate also provided me access to their library. Which I must say is quite considerable for a people who do not practice wizardry. These elves are like squirrels, caching all sorts of nuts against future need. Not quite what literature primed me to expect.”