by Garon Whited
“Sorry. So, does this work for you? Is it adequate to keep you from being… I don’t know how to put it. Keep you alive? Keep you from being eaten easily? All I remember is the Olympian setting and the fountains. I don’t know about the jungle or anything beyond my one visit and my internalized perception of the plane.”
“The jungle is a metaphor, and not a visualized, actual jungle,” he corrected. “Surviving up here is merely like being dumped in a jungle in some ways. Also, it’s not one plane. Every physical world—I presume every physical world—has a corresponding higher plane of energy-states…” he trailed off. A startled expression crossed his face.
“What?”
“Now I’m wondering if there are energy-state planes higher than the one I’m on. And if there are lower energy states.”
“How do you mean?”
“Let’s take the Earth timelines for a second,” he explained. “They branch and re-branch all across a page. You can draw an ever-dividing tree of the things, right?”
“Right.”
“Above the page, there’s another page, as in a book. This one shares the branching timelines, but instead of using ink, use copper. It’s alive with electricity. The whole page is full of energy. That’s where I am. With me so far?”
“Sure.”
“There could be another page, even above that, with silver instead of copper—silver is a better conductor, so it handles more energy.”
“Got it. And above that, a page with a superconductor film, and above that, a photonic thread, and so on.”
“You’ve got it,” he agreed. “And below the first page—the material realm page—there may be a… hmm. The metaphor breaks down a bit, here, but hang on with me. Suppose under that page we have a… a chalk slate, like they used to use in schoolrooms. Under that, there’s a wooden tablet with a layer of wax to scratch into. And below that, just plain wood to carve on. And stone under that, to chisel into. Follow?”
“I think so. What would these… alternate energy-state planes be like?”
“I have no idea, but, as we’ve noticed, you have no idea what my energy-state plane is like and you’ve been here.”
“I wasn’t expecting answers, just speculation,” I soothed. “Take a breath. Take a drink.”
“When we have the juice for it, I want to find out.”
“I’m game, but I have things I need to do, too.”
“When we have the juice for it, I said. No miracles from me for a while, no miracles from you. I’m not being pushy.”
“Thank you.”
“Still, if I might be a little pushy?”
“More dynamos?” I guessed. He nodded.
“Yes, please. I’m not ungrateful for your efforts already. I appreciate your work. It may mean the difference when it comes to my survival up here. But giving me a magic lunchbox that refills itself once a week, well… it won’t sustain me by itself. See what I mean?”
“More is better,” I agreed. “Okay. I don’t have anything planned for tonight, anyway. I’ll conduct some more time slippage experiments—that is, I’ll get a larger statistical universe—and do you some good in the process. Then I want to check on my own troubles. Fair?”
“More than fair,” he agreed. “I owe you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“We are not going to have such a relationship. There is no keeping score. I don’t owe you, you don’t owe me. We work together.”
“Huh. I… maybe I’ve been associating with other energy-state beings for too long,” he mused. “The whole deity-to-worshipper relationship is kind of central to my existence and theirs. I haven’t been in the habit of thinking in terms of partnerships, only exchanges and quid pro quo. I—” he broke off, turning sharply, eyes widening. “Gotta go!”
The sand collapsed into the table. I wondered what the problem was. Hopefully he wasn’t about to be eaten by something. If so, I didn’t see what I could do about it.
Or, on the other hand, maybe I did.
I prepared a couple of additional spells and—as far as anyone else was concerned— some “enchanted items,” before I co-opted a couple of warriors to stand guard over my gate. I explained carefully how they should put the crystal in the hole if the ticking thing stopped ticking or if anyone tried to interfere. I went to some effort to make their part as simple as possible. Now, if something goes wrong with the automated micro-gate, at least I’ll have a connection and an alert. I feel better.
Bronze and I vanished into Zombie World again. Once there, my Ring of Spying started ticking again.
Dang. I need two. One for keeping track of elapsed time and one for actual spying. Well, I have some time. I think I can set up my Ring of Spying to have two separate gate openings in it. I think I should alter it, though. I’m thinking a ring of steel with a pair of tiny iridium circles mounted on it. I can enchant these as micro-gates without risking the enchantment integrity of a single ring. Maybe I should have several tiny, iridium-lined holes in an orichalcum ring? I could have several potential micro-gates running at once—or potential micro-gate targets if I want to keep track of several timelines? Or who knows what reason? More is better, right?
I started work on an upgraded ring. I appear to have some time.
My altar ego should be much happier. I’ve spent close to three months swiping osmium, manufacturing orichalcum, and setting up dynamo farms in alternate worlds. Most of them are in some version of Arizona or the Australian Outback or some other inhospitable part of the world. For now, it seems most practical to use post-apocalyptic worlds. There’s no one—or almost no one—around to bother my stuff. Add to this the fact many houses in the desert are off the grid and have their own power source and we have nice places to stash these things.
I would have got more done, but I spent a fair amount of power fetching food. There came a point I tried to choke down another packet and gagged, nearly throwing up what I already forced down. That was it. That was the final straw. I have taken the remaining chili-with-beans and burned the damned things. If I never eat chili-with-beans again, it will be too soon.
Nevertheless, despite this diversion, there are a dozen worlds with twenty or thirty dynamos apiece. They’re all tuned, hidden, protected, et cetera. I know they’re not exactly a fire hose of power, but hopefully they’ve upgraded his metaphorical water supply from a steady drip to a thin, constant stream.
I also did some small-scale experiments in Zombie World with my transmutation setup. The good news is I have a proof of concept. I can turn lead into gold, if I want—in reeeeeally small quantities, if I do it by hand. The drawback is exactly what I thought it was. It takes enormous amounts of energy to do so in any quantity. It also, according to my stolen equipment, produces a fair amount of ionizing radiation. Still, it’s a process I don’t have to stand anywhere near. It may be a practical source of elemental metals, provided I either have a lot of time or the time differential is favorable. Much like my modified repair spell for altering the shape of things, I could set this up and let it run. It doesn’t need to use a lot of power per second if I let it run for a whole lot of seconds. I’ll have to experiment further.
I came back shortly before dawn in Tauta. Everything worked perfectly. The guards didn’t need to do anything while I was gone for those few hours. I wrote up my data, logged it in my mental study, and headed into the tower for a shower.
It was a good night.
Tauta, 28th Day of Milaskir
It was not a good morning. Oh, the transformation went the way it always does, but the shower helped. I felt much better as a mortal than I did the day before. Well, months before. The day before in Tauta, anyway. I also enjoyed hearing the twang of crossbows as I latched on armor, as well as the usual whacking and clanking from the early-morning drills. All I was missing were the smells of breakfast cooking. Pity about the rations.
I headed to the bedroom to see if Leisel was awake. She wasn’t in the bedroom, whi
ch made me wonder. When was the last time I saw her…? One of the downsides to variable time worlds is the mental disorientation involved. The last time I saw her was close to four months ago! Here in the keep, it was only… one day? Or so? I saw her when we were in the “throne room,” if that’s what it is, and we went to the bedroom. Late that afternoon, we parted company. Did she ever go to bed to sleep?
I tried her mirror. It connected, but it was in a pocket or pouch. No one answered, and I felt a surge of stubborn mixed with a small dollop of concern. Leisel wouldn’t ignore my call without a good reason. I went to my workroom, fired up the main mirror, and tried tracking the call.
The dedicated connection between the communications mirrors worked perfectly. My scrying attempt, on the other hand, failed. The sensor was unable to form at the other end of the connection. The enchantment on the small mirror worked fine, but the main mirror’s sensor isn’t part of an enchanted object at the far end. It has to manifest. Very few things would stop one but not the other. A scry-shield leaped immediately to mind, but before I started tracking down a location, someone cut the connection with the communications mirror. I tried to reestablish it, but they weren’t having it. I fired up my new Ring of Spying and told a gate to look for Leisel. I know her intimately enough to target her, specifically. Still, no soap. She was either radically different from my memory of her—read, “dead”—or shielded. I tried again assuming she was a corpse, then assumed she was dismembered and hunted specifically for her right index finger. Still nothing, so she was probably shielded.
In a way, shielded was good. It was highly likely someone wanted her for something, so they were hiding. It was possible they were hiding her corpse, but I doubted anyone in Tauta would go to such efforts. They don’t know me well enough to anticipate how unpleasant things would get if I found her corpse.
The question remained, who had her? A bunch of wizards who wanted information on me? Or wizards hired by the Temple? It had to be wizards. No one else was sneaking through the valley, the keep, and the dungeon. Unless the locals have a special caste, equivalent to ninjas… Does the Temple have ninja wizards on the payroll? Or as some secret sub-sect of the Temple? Is there a God of Stealth that no one has ever heard of because he’s too clever at being sneaky?
Frowning, I went downstairs and started asking questions about Leisel’s whereabouts. The last time anyone saw her, she was on her way down to interrogate the Sauvignon Assassin. Did she make it that far? Or did someone snatch her elsewhere? Was my assassin still in her cell or was she gone, too?
Come to think of it, don’t these people take issue with assassination? Or is that only during vendettas? Or does it not apply to the Temples? When is assassination acceptable to the locals? Maybe it never is, but the Temples don’t care? Kind of like some government agencies, I suppose. Which, when it comes right down to it, might not be such a bad comparison. There’s a civil government, but the Temple seems to be adjudicating quite a bit. Was the local culture always like this, turning to the priests on the assumption they would be impartial, or did the priests deliberately try to gain more worldly powers? Come to that, did the locals even start with priests, or did they just revere their ancestors? Did reincarnation start before or after the ancestor worship? On a more modern front, if the Temple decides—or intercedes with the gods for—the type of life you get next time around, how much power does that give them? Add to that an ever-growing wealth from tithes, sacrifices, and just plain bribes…
How much of Sarashda is owned by the Temple?
In this frame of mind, I went grumpily down through the main basement room and opened the door to the cell. This set off the electrical discharge.
One of the drawbacks to having a keep is the false feeling of security it provides. I don’t check for traps every time I go through a door. It’s impractical. If I’m hurrying to the bathroom, I’m not interested in a careful examination of the doorknob or checking for tripwires. It’s my bathroom. I expect any booby-traps on it to be my booby-traps and to know exactly how to avoid setting them off. It’s disconcerting when someone else’s booby-trap appears on an interior door.
Several billion volts erupted from the door and filled the room with lightning. I lay down rather suddenly and involuntarily, smoking somewhat while several muscles—i.e. all of them—quivered and vibrated in reaction. My armor is a good electrical insulator, but magical lightning spells have to have a fairly sophisticated guidance and targeting subroutine. If you release a lot of electrical energy and don’t direct it somewhere, it’s liable to ground out through you. This is not something you do twice.
I hit the ground, hard, and bounced my head off the floor. I had time to wish I’d worn my helmet instead of leaving it upstairs before I blacked out.
A moment later—it had to be only a moment; the smells of charred meat and ozone were overwhelming—I snapped back to consciousness. Many of my day-shift emergency spells went off, including my pacemaker and a healing spell, but I clearly need something to make sure I’m breathing, too. I arched, lying there on the floor, manually sucking in a huge breath, forcing my body to inhale. At a guess, my armor’s insulation made me a poor grounding channel, but I still got enough of a jolt to stop my heart or at least send it into fibrillations. One side of my face hurt like hell, even with my spells to numb it. My fingertips were also numb and I wasn’t sure my feet were still attached. My legs didn’t want to move, but I found I could force them.
No one else was so fortunate. The prisoners were embedded in a wall and made excellent grounding rods. The guards were standing around encased in steel. Since nothing else followed the lightning, I heaved myself onto my face and struggled upright-ish. I half-staggered to the guards and examined them. Their armor took the brunt of the burns, but there was still charred flesh and stopped hearts to worry about. I did my best to focus, but I had to resort to more handwaving and magical chanting than I usually do. Pacemaker spells would keep their hearts going. Healing spells would encourage their bodies to focus on damage control. At least they got artificial respiration spells right up front. I had no idea if they would live or not, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.
That done, I sat quietly for a couple of minutes and did what I could to sort myself out by hand. If I didn’t have my amulet, I would probably be undergoing brain death from a stopped heart and lack of breathing. As it was, I was alive, but whether that would continue without magical aids was still a delicate question.
Someday, I should probably go back to school for a medical degree. If I’m going to cast spells on biology, I should understand biology better.
When I felt a bit more stable, I staggered to the charred cell door and looked around. The cell was empty. Of course.
There are any number of magical ways to pull off the stunt. Folding space is energy-intensive and generally only good for shorter distances. Phasing through solid matter might also work, if they had an invisibility spell to go with it. There are teleportation spells of various sorts and wildly varying requirements. And, of course, my personal favorite, gate spells. None of these spells were still present, but I might be able to determine which it was. If I was lucky, I might even be able to get a line on where it went from the distortions it left behind.
Later.
Realizing someone managed to stealth their way into the keep and abscond with a captive assassin and possibly Leisel, I took a quick tour—okay, a slow, shuffling step—around the central basement room, looking through the other doors. The treasury, if that’s what we’re calling it, wasn’t touched. I suspect they targeted the cell with the assassin—or, rather, the assassin herself—and were happy to get what they came for. This didn’t prove who was behind it, Sarcana or the Temple, but I’d think Sarcana would want their money back, or at least to play turnabout and steal mine. With the assassin as the target, I’d guess the Temple hired some wizards.
At least it wasn’t a miracle. I don’t think the gods would leave behind an elect
rical-discharge trap spell on the door.
I slid to the floor and rested. Being electrocuted really takes it out of you, and my face was starting to hurt even more, despite the numbing spell. I took out my mirror and regarded myself. It was almost a shame to regenerate it. It looked pretty bad, all up and down the side of my face, but it would make a cool scar.
I activated the mirror and called for help. In moments, I had a dozen concerned amazons in the basement, all ready to kill something. I explained to Velina and she took over, barking orders. The wounded guards were taken upstairs, gently, and someone brought me water.
“Do you want to move, sir?”
“Not if I can possibly avoid it.”
“What shall we do?”
“Nothing.”
“I didn’t mean about you, sir.”
“Oh. Still nothing.”
“Still?”
“I want to recover a bit before I make any decisions. However, I do want to do two things for certain.”
“Sir.”
“First—no, I just remembered. Didn’t I kidnap some kustoni a while ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are they doing?”
“They’ve been briefed and forced to observe how civilized people live. Neither has been damaged.”
“Good. Take them out through the tunnel and send them on their way. They’re a complication we don’t need.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now that that’s off my mind, I’m either going to have a conversation with Naskarl or I’m going to destroy his roadblock. Possibly both. That’s second and/or third. First thing, I’m going to feel better.”
“Yes, sir. What do you want done about Leisel?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Sir?”
“Someone,” I told her, “is going to share my pain.”
“Yes, sir!”
A billion volts isn’t much of a problem, provided it’s all behind one electron. Volts are just a measure of how much pressure is behind the electrons. Amperage is how many electrons are involved. One or the other isn’t a problem. When you get both, then you have real problems. The voltage we took was extremely high, but the amperage was fairly low. There’s only so much power the caster could put in his trap spell. It’s a typical issue for electrical spells. You have a maximum value for power, which you then have to split between how far you want it to go and how much damage you want it to do. If it’s going to get everyone in the room, it might not kill anyone. If you want it to kill whoever touches it—my version, on my mine-shaft door—it’ll fry them like a hot dog fallen into a campfire, only faster. So while we were somewhat fried, the primary lethality was the secondary effects, not direct vaporization. The burns weren’t life-threatening in themselves.