by Garon Whited
“It is?”
“This is their one shot. If they don’t succeed, there won’t be anything left to worry about.” Velina looked at the troops again. I zoomed out to put the whole line of them on the table. “’Course, they might succeed.”
“It’s possible. But you don’t think it’s the Temple?”
“Never heard of the Temple sounding a call to war,” she explained. “I’m not sure it can.”
“I’m sure,” I replied, darkly, looking at the different House colors on the sand table. “Tell me about the magic you’ve seen on the battlefield.”
“Mostly it’s wizards behind the lines. Putting out fires, some healing spells, maybe some repairs on magic stuff. A lot of wizard stuff is spying and preventing spying. There’s a lot of sneaky, too.”
“And when the wizards go on the offensive?”
“I’ve never seen it,” she admitted. “I’ve heard of it, but it was back in the early days, when cities fought cities instead of all being one Empire.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, they might want to burn our drawbridge to clear the way. If the warriors start it, the wizards will see to it we can’t put it out. The flames won’t die.”
That sounds familiar, Firebrand whispered to me.
Pity you can’t put them out, I replied. It would be interesting to see who would win.
I can tell you where the fire magic is coming from, Boss. If we set the wizard on fire, they won’t be able to put him out, either.
Good point.
“What else?” I asked, aloud.
“They can walk through walls and make people appear and disappear. I don’t know exactly.”
“Good for infiltrating sappers and saboteurs,” I agreed. “Guards will be in groups of three, not single sentries.”
“Yessir.”
“Also, find whoever had the wand I…” I trailed off, considering what to say. “Screw it. I made a wand to zap spying spells. Whoever has it, get it out to Bridgefort and make sure it gets used.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And think about what you want to do with your troops—Commander.”
“Sir…” Velina answered, grimacing. “I don’t… I’m not so much a commander. It’s not where I’m best.”
“I need you there,” I said, simply. “You have to defend the valley while I go get Leisel.”
“Sir?”
I waved a hand at the sand table.
“Sarcana can’t afford that. Sarcana might have managed, barely, before I hit their money supply, but it would be an all-out, ultimate effort on their part. Therefore, someone is bankrolling them.”
“Bankrolling?”
Damned language problems.
“Someone is supplying money,” I clarified. “Since Sarcana was egged on into this vendetta by the Temple, guess who I think is giving them cash?”
“The Temple.”
“It’s called a Socratic question, I think. If the Temple has never sounded a call to war, I think they’re pushing Sarcana into doing it, as well as letting the other Houses know it would meet with the approval of the gods if they participated. This helps the Temple try to crush us, but it also gauges the Houses’ willingness to respond to such a request, helping pave the way to the day when the Temple calls a crusade against heretics and everyone thinks it’s their duty to respond.”
Velina frowned down at the sand table, thinking.
“I don’t like it.”
“Me, either.”
Velina cocked her head, regarding the road full of troops, and crouched a little to look intently at them. I brought up the area she regarded, zooming in so she could see better.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Some of them have the seven-colored shield,” she replied, frowning.
“The what?”
“The shield. The round shield with the red rim and smaller circles in from there, to the purple center. The shield of the faithful.”
“The Temple has its own troops? Or, no, I think I’ve seen these colors. Didn’t the guards on the triskarte have shields? I didn’t get a good look at them. And aren’t guards of this sort usually hanging around the Temple, looking polished and professional? Ornamental guards.”
“Guardians of the Temple, yes. I didn’t expect…”
“You seem upset.”
“I’m a little afraid, sir.”
“Of losing? Or of your fate?”
“A bit of both.”
“Well, good news on both fronts. First, we’re not going to lose. Second, you’re a warrior. I’m telling you to fight, so you fight. The gods won’t hold it against you. It’s what you’re supposed to do, aren’t you?”
“You should have been a priest, sir.”
“I’ve had a lengthy career in religion. In the meantime, you get things sorted out here. I’ll be in Sarashda, taking advantage of the shortage of Temple manpower.”
“Yes, sir!”
The first thing I did was a thorough reconnoiter of the Temple and grounds. The army would take another two or three days to reach the bridge, and with Velina kicking the defenses into gear, it didn’t need my immediate attention. The Temple, on the other hand, I hoped to sort out before the army arrived.
The buildings were, as always, highly ornamented with carvings, reliefs, mosaics, and sculpture. What they needed were more windows. I can look in a window from a distance. I saw no sign of Leisel, but I did notice two of the auxiliary buildings were more heavily guarded than the others. Private jails for heretics? Treasure vaults? Residential areas for high-ranking clergy? I doubted the last. Other buildings fit the bill better.
I wondered if the quality of incineration was strained, or if it would rain down on me if I set foot in the Temple precincts at night. With that thought in mind, I connected everything and called dial-a-god.
“Hello again,” he said.
“Hi. Got a problem.”
“Don’t you always?”
“And you don’t?”
“What can I do for you?” he hedged.
“Recon. I need to know a couple of things. Just some quick looks.”
“I’m still not sure where the power is going,” he cautioned. “It seems to be generally eastward from where you are, with a bit of north. I’m working on it, but I said it would take time.”
“And take your time. Go ahead. But I have another thing.”
“Oh. Sorry. What is it?”
“I’m pretty sure Leisel is in the Temple district in Sarashda. I thought she might possibly be imprisoned by Sarcana, but I think the Temple is the mover and shaker in this, so there’s where I’m putting my bet.”
“And you want me to do the old astral wandering to look and see?”
“If you please.”
“What else?”
“Are the Temple grounds charged? I haven’t been there at night, so I don’t know.”
“Of course not. Well,” he self-corrected, “maybe. I wouldn’t think so, but I guess it’s possible. While I’m there, I’ll check.”
“Thank you. And, while you’re at it, can you tell me why I have vampire-hunting clergy trying to kill me everywhere I go?”
“Oh, that’s easy.”
“It is?”
“Easy to answer, I mean.”
“I’m still startled and eager to hear it.”
“There are two reasons. The first is obvious. Fangs. Blood-drinking. All that stuff. Most religious groups are going to react with pitchforks and torches.”
“I knew that.”
“The second reason,” he went on, “is the one you’ve got here in some nameless valley—”
“La Mancha,” I corrected. He rolled his eyes.
“Seriously?”
“It seemed to fit.”
“Wacko.”
“See? Told you it fit. And we have neither giants nor windmills!”
“As I was saying,” he continued, squashing that line of conversation, “they’re probably after y
ou for your valley.”
“How so?”
“I don’t think they know you’re a vampire. I’m not sure they know what a vampire is—you’d be more likely to know if they have legends about the things than I would. I’d bet they only have generalized demons. Dragon? Lizard demon. Vampire? Blood-drinking demon. Werewolves? Wolf-demons. You know how it is. Think about it for a minute. You’ve digested a lot of the language by now. Do they have a word for ‘vampire’?”
I thought about it. The closest thing I could think of was a krisnakah, a sort of six-legged, catlike monster that killed children by stealing their breath and drinking their blood. Even that was a “cat-demon.” I couldn’t think of anything resembling the traditional humanoid vampire.
“They don’t seem to,” I agreed. “So, if they don’t know what a vampire is, much less that I am one, why are they on me like a cheap suit?”
“You’re worse than a vampire. You challenge their social order.”
“Oh? And what makes you say that, energy-state person?”
“I know you.”
He does, Boss.
You stay out of this!
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“You’re not native to this culture and you’re not likely to fit in it. Since you’re a square peg in a round hole—and a titanium square peg in a tofu round hole, at that—you’re probably forcing people around you to move outside their cultural comfort zone.”
I thought about the valley and how it might not be entirely following the Empire’s norms.
“Maybe.”
“If you’re challenging the social order, the Temple won’t like you. Religion—real or manufactured—is all about maintaining the status quo. Gods need to eat, after all. So do priests. Neither has anything to gain by change. If a change occurs, they adapt to it, and then resist any other change. You’re an agent of change. I’m not sure it has anything to do with being a creature infused with the raw power of chaos, either. It’s just you being you, made worse by having the power to cause change.”
“I don’t want to found a reformation! I’m a vampire, not Martin Luther!”
“I think reforming a religion requires you to be a member, first, but I’m not entirely sure. You’re an outsider demonstrating how things could be better for people if the Church didn’t say they couldn’t.”
“Like Galileo?”
“Possibly. More like Copernicus. At least you’re making some effort not to annoy them.”
“Yeah, well, I’m done with that.”
“Oh? Oh. Uh-oh. That bad?”
“Please look in on the Temple,” I suggested.
“Ah. Hold the line. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I sat quietly and waited while the sand table hissed quietly with the sound of a cloud of particles churning at random. I twiddled my thumbs, just for practice, and succeeded in not cutting myself with my thumbnails.
My altar ego’s face re-formed.
“Good news, bad news.”
“Good news?”
“Leisel is definitely on the premises.”
“And the bad news.”
“The mandala on the floor, acting like a people-based prayer wheel? It helps feed the proto-gods up here—quite clever, actually—but it also leaks. I wouldn’t say the Temple is holy ground in the sense the proto-gods have invested it with divine force, but the presence of that long walk-line the worshippers go through accidentally serves much the same purpose. As long as it’s intact, you’re going to have a tough time anywhere near it.”
“How tough?”
“Wear thick-soled shoes or I’m not going to be able to save you.”
“We really need to work up a holy ground insulation enchantment for my boots.”
“Agreed.”
“But they definitely have Leisel in there?” I pressed.
“Yes. She has no life-threatening injuries.”
“I’m not going to ask about her non-life-threatening ones because my temper has been too damn short for a while, now.”
“Fair. Very fair. What else can I do for you?”
“Make me a more stable and patient person?”
“There’s only one person who can do that,” he told me. “Anything else would take a miracle.”
“Incentive to make more dynamos,” I decided. “Okay. I’ll need to think about how to get Leisel out.”
“Good luck.”
“You, too.”
The sand fell to the table and I brought it up again, this time as the Temple grounds.
Tauta, 32nd Day of Milaskir
For the past couple of days, I’ve been pondering the Temple and how to breach it. Fortunately, the route march for the army has been slower than I expected. They’re either in no hurry because they think there’s nothing we can do to stop them, or they’re simply not willing to be rushed.
These people have a lot to learn about going to war.
At any rate, if they keep to their current pace, we anticipate their arrival in another two days. My initial estimate of their travel was based on an army marching to war. They’re a mob. The new ETA also allows for a quicker pace when they pass Spogeyzer and hit my roads. If it was one of the mountain’s roads, they would discover how awful a road can be. As it was, there were dozens of spells between Spogeyzer and the bridge. Manipulating the stuff of the road wasn’t really an option. Oh, I could have tweaked every one of the spells and made things a little more difficult, but they wouldn’t have cared too much. The spells take longer to do their work, take power I needed elsewhere, and require more effort in reconfiguring them.
I miss my pet rock.
My primary thought has been bent on the Temple. I simply don’t see a way to break Leisel out of it. If I go in at night, I can kill everyone in the whole Temple complex… or I could, if the radiation from the prayer path didn’t fry me. If I go in during the day, I can kill a lot of people, but then they have one major advantage. I have life functions. I can take any one, maybe any two or three of the Temple Guard, but what about a dozen, all at once? And then there’s the question of the hostage. If I’m there, they can hold a knife to her throat and scream for me to stop. How do I deal with that?
All I know is, I don’t negotiate with terrorists.
I’m wondering, though, why they still have Leisel. They haven’t executed her. They haven’t sent me any demands. Are they trying to interrogate her? Are they trying to persuade her to turn against me? Are they using her as bait to lure me away from the valley? I have no idea.
I sat at my sand table and brooded over the images, both real-time and recorded. Between the scryshields and the guards, I simply didn’t see any way to get into her building, get her, and get out again. I considered calling the Temple, or sending a message, to ask what they wanted in exchange, but if my altar ego is right, what they want is me gone—and everybody who ever met me, too.
Is it worth it to pick up my marbles and go away?
There are a couple of different scenarios for “go away,” of course. I can drop everything and disappear in ten seconds, leaving behind anything and everything I don’t carry. Or am carried by. Whoosh, I’m gone. Another possibility is to grab a small core of people, find a spot no one is using, and go there to start completely over. I don’t want to leave this world if I can avoid it, since the whole point of being in a non-Earth world is to settle down and do some serious data gathering on how the Earth worlds work, looking at them from the outside, as it were. My third idea is to find a good spot and gradually shuffle people in a mass exodus. If we’re a couple thousand miles away, the Temples may take an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude, assuming they concern themselves with us at all.
Yes, I could nuke the problem. I don’t think I will.
There are problems with each of these ideas. Me disappearing leaves a lot of people in a difficult position. I lured them out here and turned them into targets, so I feel a bit responsible. It also means I have to start over completely from scra
tch. The good news is I might do better, but I probably won’t. I’ll still need to find people, and I haven’t explored any other cultures on this world, aside from a cursory once-over on the kustoni. Bringing a small group from the valley with me has problems, too. They might be happy to escape the Temples, but they’ll have issues with abandoning everyone. They’ll also have issues with whatever culture we encounter, amplifying my own stumbles. And the last idea, taking everyone with me, would require not only someplace definite to go, but immense logistical resources. Feeding them is difficult enough here, in a high-magic world and with a solar power roof over the whole valley. I don’t have the magical budget to open up a gate and grab half a cow often enough to keep everyone fed. Once or twice a day is about my limit, especially with the other demands on my power supply.
The chief problem with all these potential bug-out options is Leisel. They don’t get her back. She deserves to be rescued.
So, no, I’m not leaving. With this established, how do I go about seeing her returned? Nuking the place is right out. Not only does it destroy the one thing I want, it’s a methodology I don’t want to rely on. There may be a time and a place for weapons of mass destruction, granted. This is not one of them. And I fear the day when I turn to nukes as the simplest, easiest solution to all my problems.
At least I’m not dealing with a religious organization with a patron. I’m not sure they can hold up a holy symbol and keep me at bay, but they might. On the other hand, if my altar ego is correct, I don’t have to worry about an avatar, divine wrath, or even a heavenly bolt of smiting. On yet another hand, they have sufficient celestial energy to empower the grounds of the local Temple. They may have quite a bit of power—in my scale, at least—but no higher-order entity to direct it.
Then again, there is a potential demigod currently on the planet. He’s got my divinity dynamos, too. How aware is he of my activities? Does he know? Does he care? Or is his only concern with rising from a material plane to a higher one?
Maybe we should talk to the God of Wizards before I do any smiting of my own. Who knows? Maybe he’s willing to cut me some slack, what with us both being wizards and quasi-deities.
I’ll also have someone forge me a nice, iron spear. As a method of message delivery, it really gets my point across. There’s nothing quite like a bolt from the heavens to make an impression.