Mobius

by Garon Whited

  I’m not sure what part of my statement disturbed them, but I’m guessing it was my latter two points.

  “I am also required,” he went on, “to ask if you wish to settle this matter in a challenge of champions.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” I admitted. “I’m partial to single combat. Which way do you think you stand a better chance?”

  Berenor looked me up and down as he hooked his thumbs behind his belt. He took his time about answering.

  “I’ve seen you fight.”

  “So you have.”

  “We’ll begin our attack in the morning,” he decided. I bowed from the neck, acknowledging the compliment.

  “Very well. We’ll be ready for you in a moment.”

  “I would expect no less,” he agreed, and started to turn away.

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you choose to surrender, I’ll stop the slaughter. I don’t promise everyone will survive, but anyone who surrenders we will try to treat with honor and kindness. Until then, you’re all only moving meat to be killed. I just wanted to get that out there.”

  “I understand,” he said, and the entourage followed him back along the bridge. I watched them march back, their musicians still playing a happy, martial tune. Despite this, I heard men laughing and arguing over who would have the honor of commanding the first assault.

  “No,” I said, softly, “I don’t think you do.”

  I went back over the drawbridge and spoke with Leisel at length. Then she sent me back to my tower.

  I’ll give them this, they were true to their word. The crusaders kept working, making their preparations, but they didn’t mount an attack. They spent the night exactly where they were. Rather civilized of them, I thought.

  On the other end of the scale, there were barbarian hordes massing in the west. It would be a while until they got their act together, true, but instead of generically killing everyone, I had a better idea. Okay, I thought it was a better idea. It might be.

  I spent a good portion of my afternoon holding an infant—at less than a week old, they aren’t much for conversation, but they do like something to hold on to—while I did some magical scouting. It wasn’t too hard to find the leaders of the mobs gathering in the west. Generally, it’s the biggest in the bunch, but there were some led by men with a balance between big and clever. I also did a lot of looking around in the monolithic city of stone, hunting for people with a religious or political bent. Shamans were easiest to find, but men with a ceremonial chain or medallion or some such were almost as easy. I don’t know how their power structure is arranged, but it doesn’t seem too tightly bolted together. Still, if I hit enough of them, it ought to work.

  The tricky bit—and the key to the whole thing—was Firebrand.

  I dunno how I feel about this, Boss.

  “You’re going to be shouting at people instead of slicing them. It’s almost as good.”

  Yeah… no. I mean, I get what you’re trying to do. I don’t think I’m going to like it.

  “You want me to get a volunteer so we can try your yelling spell?”

  It’s not my yelling spell! This is your hare-brained idea!

  “I accept responsibility. This is the safest way I can think of to do the communication.”

  How about giving them idols? Put spells on those!

  “It’ll take too long. Besides, you’re innately telepathic. When they all have dreams about the Lord of Fire and Shadow, the Master of Night and Keeper of Secrets, it’ll inspire them. When they find out they all shared the same dream, they’ll have to acknowledge it’s a sign from a god and get the band together. Don’t you want to be a prophet?”

  Not really, no. I want to burn things, not tell them to get religion. How about we find some heretics and burn those?

  “Them. ‘Those’ references things, not people.”

  You say tomayto, I say tomahto. You say people, I say lunchmeat. All the things collapse in a heap when you set them on fire.

  “I would think they scream and run or stop, drop, and roll.”

  If they’re able to scream, you’ve only set fire to what they’re wearing, not their flesh.

  “Point taken, but I’m not getting distracted.”

  Boss. Please. I really don’t want to do this.

  “Really?”

  Really.

  “Can I ask why?”

  I’m not sure I can explain. I don’t mind your spells to improve burning, but messing with my thinking… I’ve already had something like that happen, remember?

  “Oh, I definitely remember.”

  Now you want to pipe a nightmare—

  “Prophetic vision.”

  —prophetic vision through me into how many heads? Dozens? Add in the multiple gates involved and the fact we haven’t done anything like this before and I’m uncomfortable.

  “I’m not sure I can actually get a volunteer to test it.”

  I’m not asking. I don’t want to do it at all.

  “I don’t know enough about this whole psychic thing to do it by myself.”

  So ask the other one.

  “Bronze doesn’t communicate well with anyone else.”

  Not her. The other you.

  “That… huh. If he has enough energy for it, it might be a good idea.”

  I think it’s a fantastic idea. Please, Boss?

  I dialed up god on the sand table. He grinned at me and raised his eyebrows at the snoozing bundle.

  “Still got it?”

  “Still got it. It’s hard to find a sitter when everyone thinks she should be abandoned on a mountainside.”

  “I imagine so. What’s on your mind?”

  “How are your miracles these days?”

  “Virtually nonexistent. Why?”

  “I want to send a prophetic vision to a number of barbarian brains, giving them dreams of the god of fire and so forth. Firebrand has suggested I’m not qualified to do telepathic sendings, but also pointed out you’ve done it. What do you think?”

  “You have a good idea and I’m all for it,” he agreed, “but I lack the force necessary to pull it off.”

  “But can I help you do it, or you help me do it? I have a tiny gate—it takes power, but not so much I can’t use it all night. I can brute-force it near sleeping leaders, toss through a pre-recorded dream spell, and move on to the next. My trouble is, I need help with the psychic matrix of a dream.”

  “Dream-sendings are trickier than you’d think.”

  “I know! I can send off a psychic thought, but building a whole immersive dream experience—one that won’t wake up the dreamer!—is a bit outside my experience.”

  “Oh, you can include a sleep spell subroutine,” he replied, thoughtfully. “They won’t wake up for anything short of someone setting the bed on fire. But I can see how you’re having trouble with the dream, itself. That’s more my bag.”

  “Hence my supplication and prayer unto thee, O Lord of Shadows and Mysteries.”

  He was silent for a bit, eyes unfocused, thinking. I wondered if I looked the same way when I was chasing down an idea.

  “Look, here’s the thing,” he said, finally. “What we really need—what I really need—is some sort of focus for these jokers. One dream is going to be weird, but a recurring dream—or one that keeps changing and updating—is harder to argue with. If we could give them a statuette or something, a material object with my resonance imprint in it, not only could they pray to it, but I can use it as a channel to give them dreams. Not all at once, maybe,” he continued, “but even a few at a time would be enough.”

  “I was planning on doing all this later tonight,” I complained. “There’s a war in the morning.”

  “Has your micro-gate timer broken down?”

  “Huh?”

  “Go into another world and leave your micro-gate here ticking over individual seconds. Order a hundred or more statuettes and come back. Wait a few seconds. Go back, collect them,
take them someplace with a dynamo and use my crystal as an attunement device. You know this drill. Then we can work to imprint the initial dream in them. You bring them all back and use spatial gates instead of interuniversal ones—much cheaper—to drop them off, one by one, next to sleeping people. They get a prophetic dream and a small idol mysteriously appears. We can include it in the dream. How’s that?”

  “That… that’s disturbingly brilliant,” I agreed. “Any ideas on what the statuette should look like?”

  “You’re in a hurry, so how about you set up a couple of micro-gates to keep from losing time? Pop over to an Earth and we’ll mull it over. Pick one with a good industrial base and you can even get some diapers.”

  He didn’t have to suggest it twice. My only question was whether or not to take the baby. I was going to be gone for seconds, possibly minutes.

  I tried putting her down, still wrapped in the Baby Blanket of Darkness. She didn’t wake up. I hurried down to the barn and Bronze while I had the chance.

  Two minutes and nineteen seconds later, I started trudging back up, carrying my first load of figurines. They weren’t all that heavy, but the boxes were bulky. I was proud of them. I spent a good while rigging my pocket mirror to link with my Ring of Spying and the sigil-crystal so we could continue our conversation, since the sand table was a bit much to lug around.

  Normally, I take off my Ring of Spying and put it in a receptacle on my sand table. For the mirror, since I was going to hold the mirror in that hand, I didn’t bother. This was a mistake. Opening a micro-gate into a celestial energy realm while the ring is still on my finger was, to say the least, painful. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, though. A celestial entity isn’t as bad as sunlight, but it’s plenty bad enough. The light—or more generalized energy—from an energy plane is even less damaging. The three might be viewed as solar blowtorch—potentially finger-removing—a pocket mini-torch—potentially finger-disabling—and a standard lighter—immensely painful, but not instantly catastrophic. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to go there as a vampire, though.

  Now there’s an internal gate structure in the mirror’s frame and I’ve dunked my hand in a bucket of blood. All is now well.

  We worked out what sort of icon he wanted and how to make it palatable to the kustoni savages. I spent even longer finding an artist, a sculptor, and a small company willing to manufacture them in quantity.

  I put the crate down, quietly, checked on the sleeping baby, and went down for the rest of the boxes. With everything up in the workroom, I fired up the sand table again.

  “Ordinarily,” I began, as the face formed, “I’m not comfortable with the idea of time travel.”

  “Me, either.”

  “On the other hand, this idea is too useful for words.”

  “I’ve noticed. Did you get a good read on the time differential?”

  “We were in four different universes, counting Zombie World and the Lair to get all the charged crystals, so it’s not helpful at this stage of my data collection. But we got what we wanted. That’s what counts.”

  “So, we’re good to go?”

  “Oh, you better believe it.”

  I wound a loop of orichalcum and iridium wire into a small gate and did the preliminary enchantment work. I laid out my charged crystal collection and drew my wand. It was going to be a busy night.

  A sleeping shaman snored. In his hut of stacked menhirs, an opening in space appeared. A hand reached forth, set a plastic statuette next to him, and withdrew. The opening disappeared and the shaman muttered in his sleep.

  The statuette was only about a foot tall, but it was intricate and detailed. An armored man stood with a large brazier at his feet. In one hand, he held a large sword, point-down by one foot, his hand lightly holding the hilt like an instrument of music. In his other hand, he held a rolled scroll. The whole figure was made of a black, polysialate plastic, hiding a small crystal at the statue’s heart. The brazier was a functional oil candle, however, for throwing the statue’s shadow up and onto the wall behind.

  Originally, we were going to attune the whole statue as a religious icon, but the crystal was a much better focus. It retained an imprint for much longer and, with regular use, would have the imprint reinforced enough to last indefinitely. The imprint on the plastic would degrade rather more quickly, requiring daily devotions to maintain. We weren’t sure we could get daily devotions out of these guys, at least not quickly enough.

  The dream unfolded in the mind of the shaman, given form and substance by a spell, but infused throughout with the presence of a being less human even than I. The black field of night all around, a tiny island of earth and light in the emptiness, and a titan figure of darkness, wings as wide as the universe, descending, shrinking, taking on a form almost human—an armored man with a sword, and a cloak of darkness that moved without wind. The message, delivered by the Lord of Shadows and Keeper of Sacred Mysteries to those who were deserving of them.

  Even as it began, several miles away another opening appeared, another statue deposited, another dream started. Again and again and again…

  I started around midnight, since I wanted everyone asleep for this, and finished closer to dawn than I liked. Still, tiring as it was to work so repetitively, I didn’t have any complaints. Maybe it would deter barbarian wars in the future. I doubted it would stop the upcoming raid, or attack, or whatever it was, but I could deal with those as a separate issue.

  I prepared a bottle—advanced nutrient formula from an advanced timeline—and almost had it ready before the little one woke up. Someone else was on the ball with my own meal, however, knocking, delivering a large tray, and departing without ever making eye contact.

  They heard about you facing the commander of the army and his retinue all by yourself, Firebrand informed me.

  “They did?” I adjusted the baby and bottle so she wouldn’t swallow air. “What of it?”

  Well, you went out alone and faced them all down.

  “That is not how it went!”

  That’s how the rumor goes.

  “I’m torn between being pleased I’m being misrepresented as a better person and being upset I’m being misrepresented as way cooler than I can possibly be.”

  Could be worse. They could think you’re a bloodsucking monster out to devour their souls.

  “We’ll try and keep that a secret, shall we?”

  The little one ate voraciously while I transformed. I put her on the bed and held the bottle for her while icky substances crawled away from her along my skin. We both cleaned up and I put her in a onesie. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but she didn’t complain. I rang the mirror to watch the war while I ate. I also blew on the sand table to stir it to life, showing me the overall view of the battle. The little one decided watching all the movement was interesting. I wasn’t sure she could focus on anything farther away than a couple of feet, yet, but as long as it kept her amused, she was content to sit on my lap and take it all in.

  Dawn wasn’t the actual attack time, obviously. Everyone woke up, had their breakfast, got themselves ready, set their gear, and so forth. When they finally got themselves sorted out and ready to roll, it was at least an hour past sunup. Anticipating missile fire, I would have made use of the early-morning dim, but I learned my warfare in a harder school, I suspect.

  They locked four wagons together with braces and crossbeams, supporting a large, swinging log—a ram. They’d brought a steel pyramid for a head and affixed it to the forward end. It was magical in some form or other. Metal plates protected the apparatus’ forward half from assaults from above, while a pair of wooden doors protected it from frontal attack. As it ground slowly forward around the bend, pushed from behind, squads of four men flowed forward around it. Each squad carried a log, cut flat on one side and notched on the other. The first squad to cross the bridge reached the open space for the drawbridge, set down their log so the notches matched up with the stone braces, and ran back.


  The second squad never made it to the braces. Crossbow bolts volleyed, once, and stopped them in their tracks, dead or wounded. While the third squad hurried past them, thinking they had time enough while archers prepared another volley, the crossbow drills bore lethal fruit. The second volley killed or stopped them, as well. Next squad, next volley, each dying before they placed their piece of the roadway to the drawbridge. The roadway was littered with dead or wounded and scattered timbers.

  The people pushing the ram ground to a halt, wondering what to do. They could roll over the bodies, maybe, but not the timbers. Besides, the timbers needed to be placed to get the ram to the raised drawbridge. After a bit, they sent some people forward to collect the dead and wounded. Nobody fired at them, so I presume there’s some sort of civilized code of warfare involved. Either that, or Leisel was hoping to encourage the ram to come closer.

  The second try involved a turtle of men, all with raised and overlapping shields, advancing to the abandoned timbers. Despite the unfamiliarity of the maneuver, it worked, sort of. They placed two more timbers before falling back. Crossbow bolts protruded from several of them where their shields didn’t quite cover perfectly, and more were no doubt sidelined while someone pulled out the brand-new nails fastening shields to arms.

  It’s good to have a shield that tries to deflect blows and projectiles, but it doesn’t help a lot when it just diverts it into another man. Given the attack angle, it was usually the man behind. It’s more of an individual combat enchantment than an army one.

  Nevertheless, they persisted. The turtle worked, after a fashion, so they kept doing it, building their wooden road over the abyss. The ram rolled up as men kicked timbers out of the way. It provided a forward base to hide behind while assembling squads to move the timbers into place.

  Eventually, despite the casualties from crossbow fire, the wood was in place, the men were hiding behind the ram’s armor, and everyone pushed forward.