Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  Why this works is beyond me. Empirically, it does work, and that’s good enough. As for the theory behind it, I’m at a loss. It doesn’t match anything I recognize. My hypothesis is the core emits the base signal (since it’s also run through the psychic attunement process) which is then amplified, somehow, as it emanates through the charged magical wire. This amplification works because of some sort of harmonic in the coils, already attuned in some fashion by passing (and being partly consumed) through the core portion.

  Again, why it works… I dunno. I feel a little like Faraday when he was messing around with electricity. But it does work, and I wish I knew why.

  Got me, said my altar ego. I’m a little fuzzy on the interface between matter and energy, myself.

  “You sound stronger.”

  I am, but mostly because I’ve been taking things easy. On the plus side, I can tell you your unit is definitely working. I’d like to place an order for several million, please.

  “And here I thought they had a respectable output in the celestial spectrum.”

  They do. I just know a good thing when I see it. I’ll settle for a few hundred, if that’s not too much to ask.

  “Good to know. Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “Let’s start hammering these things out. We’ll call this a production model and run with it.”

  “Immediately, Professor.”

  “And get me a magical containment matrix, please, around the room. And we should test them in parallel as well as in series.”

  “I will prepare circuitry for both so you can evaluate the output.”

  “Good thinking. How are we doing on mundane power production?”

  “Power priorities are for the probe gate facilities, the space elevator construction, and the primary manufacturing center. Other areas and activities are at peak productivity on a solar cycle. They operate at full capacity during daylight, then fall back to battery mode at night. Nighttime production should improve markedly when the new fusion plant comes on-line.”

  “I’ll check the orbital panels,” I promised. “When they get fully into position, it should take some of the load off the magical production.”

  “Almost thirty percent of all reactor power is used in electromagical transformers,” Diogenes informed me. “Deprioritizing magical production will increase productivity everywhere else.”

  “Do the probe gates take that much power?”

  “Yes. All probe gates attempt to lock on to any available opening as a gate terminus, making them second-order interuniversal connections. First-order connections are what you refer to as ‘brute force’ gates, those with no defining locus at one end. A further inefficiency is the targeting method. It is not efficient to open gates using specific symbols. The working hypothesis is human or near-human brains are more adaptable and tune the magical field more precisely to the conditions at the destination, making the gate targeting less power intensive.”

  “Maybe, but brains tend to think in terms of things we already know. The whole point is to dial randomly and get new places.”

  “Yes, Professor, and this is ongoing. You asked about the power consumption, not about objectives.”

  “So I did, and thank you for pointing it out. I was confusing myself. Hey! We’re putting a containment matrix around the holy generator room. Have you installed the new magical containment fields at the probe gate facilities?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “Thank you. I don’t remember if I already mentioned it.”

  “You have a protein brain,” Diogenes consoled. “You cannot be expected to remember everything.”

  “Thank you so much. Your sarcasm algorithms are working wonderfully.”

  “Thank you, Professor.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to chat with my psychic clone.”

  “So I surmised.”

  I headed back to the shift-booth and the residence silo.

  “How’s it going up there?”

  Better. I’m doing okay on the answering prayers end of things since most of those are on holy ground. No miracles, as such, but the priests use spells for most of it and the Regeneration Slab isn’t, technically, miraculous. People seem happy enough with my performance. On the Olympian front, there’s no hiding the fact I’m not up to par, but I only have a couple of significant enemies. For example, the Plague King doesn’t like what I’m doing with the healing in the Temples, and the Lord of Murder is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, there’s a lot of killing, but there’s also a lot of saving lives going on.

  “Plague King? Lord of Murder?”

  Ancillary deities to the Father of Darkness, he clarified. The Plague King is one of the lesser, specialized demigods. He deals with plagues and disease. The Lord of Murder has his own schtick, which you can probably guess.

  “Are we talking about Bhaal?”

  That’s the Forgotten Realms. This Lord of Murder isn’t the same thing, and he doesn’t have a name. We’re the gods. We only have titles. Lord of Shadow, Mother of Flame, Lady of Reason, The Hunter, and so on.

  “What about Ssthich? That’s a name.”

  Literally, in the language of the fish-men, it’s “Shark King.”

  “Oh.”

  Can we get back to the situation?

  “Sorry. I don’t completely understand what goes on up there.”

  I am telling you, am I not? Most of the gods of Karvalen at least view me in something of a positive light, but Sparky, Ssthich, the Hunter, and Reason seem to actively like me. My general goodwill and my allies are enough to dissuade any overt action against me up here. I’m relying on my friends a bit while I save up energy and rest, hoping nothing too difficult comes along.

  Speaking of which, he added, if I run into a situation where I need a miracle and the clergy aren’t going to cut it, can I get you to show up and fix it? I hate to put you in avatar shoes—I know you don’t like it—but…

  “Glad to help. By the way, answer me something.”

  If I can.

  “What constitutes ‘holy ground’ for you?”

  Well, in Karvalen there’s a ceremony to attune a location. It slaps my imprint all over the place, attuning the space to me. For projecting power into a material plane, it’s a little like having two gates. I have one up here and I can brute-force a manifestation—such as this conversation—but it’s easier and cheaper when there’s another gate at the material end. Maybe it’s more along the lines of holy ground being set up as a receiver, sort of, so I can transmit to it more easily.

  Come to think of it, he went on, maybe it’s more like a tympani. If I send a signal toward you, most of it just blows on by. If the whole area picks it up and resonates with it, you can hear it more clearly.

  “How would I go about setting something up here?”

  You’d need a space for it you don’t use for anything, uh… I hate to say “profane,” but any non-psychic-religious-attuned things going on there tend to degrade the imprint. That’s why you have temples of holy ground, not whole cities.

  “Got it. So, a little prayer closet, for example?” I asked, heading down a tunnel toward my Apocalyptica study.

  Small, but doable. I don’t think you have to worry about it, though. You’ve got a room full of holy power generators—or we will, in the near future. If that doesn’t mark the space as my territory, we can chant at it for a bit. What you’re setting up should be plenty.

  “Remind me to double-check, later.”

  I’ll keep an eye on it and let you know if there’s a problem.

  “Oh? Thanks. One less thing to keep track of…”

  Speaking of reminders, you wanted to know about the Dragonspine Range, the Mountains of the Sun, the Forbidden Mountains, the Southern Edge of the World, and the Curséd Wall of the Southlands, right?

  “That’s a mouthful of names,” I observed, closing a hatch. I scooted my chair toward my desk and called up a digital notepad on it. “They all mean t
he mountains in the middle of the world, right?”

  Yep! The sun appears in the east, rolls up along the Firmament, roughly over the mountain range, descends on the western end, and vanishes for the night. Pretty much everybody assumes they’re the southern edge of the world and exist to keep things from falling off. Those mountains.

  “That’s them. Tell me about them and this Sunspire or whatever it is.”

  The mountains aren’t too exceptional and they’re almost devoid of life. The environment is fairly hostile to anything that doesn’t thrive in burning deserts. During the day, it regularly hits a hundred and sixty Fahrenheit, often even more. There’s also a moderate amount of ionizing radiation during the day. Well, I say moderate—maybe half a Sievert per hour.

  “’Moderate’?” I echoed. “That’s comparable to standing on the Moon during a solar flare! One day of that works out to about six Sieverts—pretty much fatal!”

  Yeah, but it falls off as you get farther away and it varies with the seasons.

  “I’m gonna need lead underwear,” I muttered.

  Radiation is the least of your worries. You’re not going during the day, are you?

  “Unlikely,” I agreed.

  Good. The secondary radiation from the ground is much less, on the order of half a Sievert per day. A quarter of a Sievert for one night, basically. Unpleasant for humans, long-term, but doable for brief stints.

  The real problem is the magical environment. You know how living things are resistors, rather than conductors?

  “I’ve done some experimenting along those lines. The only reason people can use magic is because it interacts with them, rather than simply passing through them.”

  Yeah, well, when you put enough power through a resistor, it heats up, like an electric heater or an old-fashioned filament light bulb. Walking into those mountains is like walking into a furnace of magic. It keeps getting more intense the closer you get to the middle, and generally fries anyone who makes it past the Burning Desert. From what I hear up here, long-term exposure to magical overload isn’t necessarily lethal, but it is… unpredictable, and statistically unpleasant.

  “Important safety tip.”

  The magical field rises pretty steeply once you hit the Burning Desert at the base of the range. Try not to cast any spells. They may sting a bit and work a little too well. As you get closer, the gradient increases. Set foot on bare rock anywhere in the range and you risk—take note, you risk—being fried inside your skin. Mortal spellcasters risk their souls catching fire just by standing there. It’s not so bad for the magically incompetent, since they don’t interact with the stuff as much.

  “Well, that’s troublesome.”

  Agreed, but I’m sure you’ll work something out. So, assuming you work out a way to get to the Sunspire, be advised there is a parking lot all around it.

  “Um. Parking lot?”

  Yes. The Heru came from all over to participate in this little board game, and they parked their mounts outside.

  “Mounts? Shouldn’t the magical field have fried them?”

  First off, Heru. These are the things that grabbed the stuff of primal chaos and shaped it to their will. Second, they rode things capable of ignoring insane amounts of magical flux: Dragons.

  “Oh.”

  Yeah. “Oh.” Big suckers, too—the Heru didn’t do things by halves. And we’re talking about dozens of the things. I couldn’t see too well. The magical field is intense and I’ve been sick. I’m not going in there without at least a riot shield. Looking down and eyeballing things, though, I saw the Spire surrounded by the parking lot.

  The Spire, itself, is just a tall, narrow cone, kind of like an obelisk, only a bigger and with all the edges rounded off. It’s maybe a mile high, maybe a hundred meters wide at the base. Here and there are little window-like things, sort of like arrow slits, but the Spire looks glossy, even glassy smooth. I don’t know what it’s made of and I didn’t see a door. It’s hard to see the base, though, because every angle I could get on it was usually blocked by mountains or a sleeping dragon.

  “Are you sure the dragons are asleep, rather than dead?” I pressed, still taking notes.

  No. Which is why I assume they’re sleeping. I don’t want to give you any rude surprises.

  “For which I thank you.”

  Can I ask a dumb question?

  “Is there a good way to stop you?”

  Point taken. Do you absolutely need to turn loose the Heru to fix the sun?

  I finished writing my notes about the Sunspire and sat back, thinking.

  “You know, I haven’t given it much thought. I mean, I don’t know I can’t, but I know the Heru can. It seems to me if they’re going to build a world, they should take responsibility for building a shoddy one.”

  I guess that’s fair, but have you considered the genie and the bottle?

  “Getting the genie back into the bottle is a lot harder than letting it out. Yes. What I understand—or think I understand—is the Heru built the world as a playground, a boardgame. They turned their creations loose on it to see which ones would be supreme. Looks to me like it’s a draw between at least three, maybe more.”

  And how are they going to react to that?

  “I have no idea. My main concern, though, is avoiding a solar impact event.” I sighed. “There’s a phrase you don’t hear too often. Got any ideas?”

  Umm… no. Not at the moment, anyway.

  “Think about it. You and the others are the gods of Karvalen, now, not the Heru. How about you give some thought to saving the world?”

  Have I mentioned we’re not gods, I know we’re not gods, and I’m not certain any of us are in any way qualified to be a god?

  “And I’m not a king. Meditate on that for a while.”

  Man, I hate it when you get all deeply philosophical on me.

  “So do I.”

  “Professor?”

  “Yes, Diogenes?”

  “Mary has returned from Flintridge. I have also completed the gene therapy injections you requested.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’ll go focus on Karvalen, but let me add one thing: From where I sit, I don’t see a way for the not-gods—the energy-state beings—to rewrite the orbital characteristics of the sun. The underlying reality-structure of the world… well, it looks as to me as though it was never meant to last forever, just several thousand years. There’s no… no knobs or sliders for adjusting the parameters. It’s like a pocketwatch with no way to adjust the time.

  “That’s disturbing in another way.”

  How so?

  “If the Heru only intended the thing to last a relatively—to them—short time, why haven’t they come out? Are they just waiting for the world’s timer to run down? Do they intend to watch the place burn? Or are they even alive in there at all?”

  Excellent questions!

  “And?”

  No idea.

  “Didn’t think so. I suspect I’m going to have to go look.”

  Better you than me.

  “Ah. Irony.”

  Yep! Let me know if you need anything.

  “Could you check on the whole upcoming war thing?”

  I’m not up on the politics of the kingdom. That’s Beltar’s job. I’ll look around for you. Anything specific?

  “I’m interested in the spreading horrors of pleasure addiction to the Church of Light.”

  Ah. Right. I’ll see what I can see.

  “Thanks.”

  He signed off and I put my notes away.

  “Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “Let Mary know I had to take a slight detour, but I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Yes, Professor. Shall I deliver the gene therapy injections to you here or to the Karvalen shift-booth?”

  “You’re several thousand smart computers, Diogenes.”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  I popped over to Karvalen, administered three injections—one f
or the kid, one for each parent—and gave instructions regarding the care and feeding of our guests over the next week. According to Diogenes, dunking someone in a growth tank and treating them is both quicker and safer when administering gene therapy. A self-replicating virus to edit someone’s genes is somewhat more risky. Sometimes there are unforeseen side effects. Simple enough to deal with when the patient is in a tank, more problematic on an outpatient basis.

  If it goes wrong, they’ll call me. Diogenes has three tanks on standby, but he tells me the odds are eight to one that we’ll need any of them.

  Back in Apocalyptica, Mary was in the residential area already, whistling cheerily while she bustled about the kitchen. She doesn’t usually cook, but sometimes the mood strikes her. I’m not a bad cook, exactly, but my skills lean more toward either unwrapping and microwaving, or roasting a piece of meat over a fire. Mary has a cultural advantage that way. My food is edible, if you have a loose-enough definition of “edible.” She may not have a huge variety of dishes in her list, but anything she makes tastes good.

  I slid up to the kitchen counter and onto one of the stools. She threw a smile at me and I returned it.

  “Good day?” I asked, once it was clear I wasn’t going to interrupt her concentration.

  “It was a good night.”

  “Should I ask?”

  “Depends on how strong your stomach is.”

  “Pretty strong,” I admitted.

  “I had a lovely, long, intimate talk with Salvatore. He bared his heart to me shortly before he bared his soul.”

  I noticed she was stirring a mix. I suspected there would be a celebratory cake in the near future. She certainly sounded pleased enough for a party.

  “I’m going to guess…” I trailed off, pausing for effect. “…you’re not being metaphorical.”

  “Nope!” she replied, cheerily.

  “So, are you in a good mood because you exacted horrible-but-just retribution for his betrayal of your trust or because he told you everything?”