by Garon Whited
“In Mochara, probably.”
I sighed.
“Okay, look,” I began. “I’ve been having a bit of a nap for the past while. My geography isn’t up to speed.” I glanced toward the Eastrange and the gap of the missing mountain. “In the sense that I’m not familiar with how a map ought to look,” I added. “What is Mochara and where is it?”
They looked at each other again, questioning. Seldar spoke up again.
“Mochara is the city on the coast. Follow the south canal and it will take you straight there.”
“Is that where you three are from?”
They nodded.
“Okay. About how far is it?”
“It can take three days, on foot. One day, if you take a boat and take turns poling,” Seldar said.
“If there are any boats to take,” Torvil observed.
“It is an additional reference,” Seldar replied, “not a suggestion. He may have resources we know not of.”
“Think so?” Kammen asked.
While they chattered, I closed my eyes, folded a bit of power into the equivalent of a paper airplane, and embedded the thought of Bronze. I tossed it away to let it seek her out and tell her I was awake. It hit some sort of magical barrier around me. The barrier flashed as my magical message spell disintegrated.
What the…?
I felt around me. Yes, there was a spell on me. It’s hard to tell when you’re already inside a spell. You have to look for it.
It was surprisingly powerful, in fact; both subtle and old. It took me a minute to figure out what it did. It seemed to absorb whatever magical energy it encountered, whether it was a spell or just ambient magic, and keep it contained and concentrated inside. This kept me in a bubble of constantly increasing intensity of magical energy. I could still cast spells—probably some extraordinarily powerful ones!—but I couldn’t affect anything outside the bubble without the bubble shattering the spell and absorbing the power again. My effective range was about four feet, for all the good that did me.
I didn’t like that spell. It seemed to violate the Laws of Thermodynamics—for me, that’s a problem magic has, just in general. Or so it seems. Maybe magic, by definition, can’t be reconciled with normal physics. Or maybe it requires quantum physics and the willingness to go insane to understand the insanity. Or maybe I just don’t understand the nature of magic well enough to have an opinion. Whatever the case, the spell was there and working.
I wondered why I was wearing it, who put it there, and what it was for. Among other things.
It resembled a spell used in the Rite of Ascension, sort of a final exam for a magician’s doctorate. Normally, it was a twenty-four-hour ordeal where the would-be magician proved his ability to channel power through himself by enduring the rising energy levels without setting his soul on fire.
Don’t ask me how I know that. I didn’t know I knew it until I remembered it. I suspected that swallowing a city of ghosts might have something to do with it. I do retain a miniscule bit of everyone I consume, after all. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands…
The trio was still staring at me. They probably didn’t know what to make of me. That was fair; I didn’t know what to make of me, or of my situation, and I was living it.
“I don’t suppose any of you three are wizards?” I asked. They all nodded, then Kammen and Torvil looked at Seldar. “Good! Can you see the spell I’m wearing?”
“Yes,” Seldar admitted. The other two also nodded.
“Do you have any idea how to take it down?”
“Um.” They looked at me intently, with that semi-unfocused look that wizards get when we’re examining the stuff of our trade. “It’s old,” Seldar said.
“Yeah,” Torvil agreed. “It was well-made, too.”
“I believe it to be an Ascension Sphere,” Seldar offered.
See? Close enough.
“I’ve never seen one, but it could be,” Torvil agreed.
“But it’s old. They don’t last more’n a day,” Kammen replied
Seldar’s eyes focused on me. “How is it that you are still alive?”
“Technically…” I started to say, then changed my mind. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, instead.
“This power has been building for a long time. It should have set your soul on fire and turned your flesh to ashes before the first week.”
Again with that “soul on fire” metaphor. Maybe it wasn’t a metaphor. I’d have to think about that when I wasn’t in the middle of it. I don’t really want to know how horrible my situation is if I can get out of it without finding out. It would only promote panic and worry, and they’re on my list of things to give up for Lent.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied. “How do we turn it off?”
They glanced at each other again.
“Well…” Kammen started. “I think… I dunno for sure; I’m no magician. But I think… don’t the initiate sorta soak up all the power?”
“Hmm,” Torvil and Seldar replied.
“I think so,” Torvil added. “I don’t remember.”
“Nor I,” Seldar said. “My talents lie in the healing magics, not the higher. I’m not slated to become a magician.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “If this is the thing we think it is, if I just gather up all the power inside it and tuck it away in some other spell, the main spell should just quit?”
“If it is the spell we think it is,” Seldar agreed. I took another look at the spell structure. Maybe. It certainly looked like an amplifying feedback loop was involved. If the interior power level dropped below a critical threshold, it would probably stop working.
The trouble was, there was a lot of power tied up in the thing. I didn’t want to mess with it right then. Given a choice, not ever. Then again, if the choice is between being immensely powerful within arm’s length or back to normal at any distance, I’ll go with the second.
“Look, I’m just trying to get a message to my horse. My plan is to call my horse, ride down to breakfast, and then decide where to go from there. I’d really like to get all that done before the sun sets and I start to get really hungry. Can I get you three to help with that?”
Torvil nodded at the cart.
“How about you just eat the goat?”
I looked at the goat. It looked back. It had no idea what we were discussing. At least, it didn’t chomp through the rope and run like hell.
“I thought that was for your sacrifice?”
“Does it matter how we give it to you?” Torvil asked.
“Oh.” I refrained from asking why they were sacrificing a goat to me, more than half afraid of the answer. “Well, I’m feeling really hungry. One goat isn’t going to do it once the sun goes down.”
“Oh,” he replied, in a very small voice. The three shared a communal glance. “We should probably help you summon your horse.”
I nicked a finger and smeared some blood on the wick of an unlit candle. I backed away as they each lit their own candles, stood around the unlit one, and concentrated. Together, they extended their candles and lit the one in the center, causing it to give off a small cloud of grey smoke. This formed into the shape of a horse and seemed to gallop off to the south, dissipating as it went.
“Good job,” I observed. “That was very well done.” And it was. I couldn’t help them from inside my magical barrier, so they had to do all the heavy lifting. They also had to supply the mental focus on Bronze; I only supplied a drop of blood to provide some helpful correspondence for the magical resonance, and to help Bronze recognize a legitimate message.
They seemed unreasonably pleased at the praise. I wondered if anyone ever complimented them on their work before. They also seemed quite tired. Well, it was a long climb up the circling road to the upper courtyard and an unfamiliar spell; each is exhausting in its own way.
“Come on in,” I told them. “We’ll find someplace to sit down, out of the sun, and maybe find a way to cook that goat of yours.”
They followed me in, Torvil and Kammen pushing the cart like a wheelbarrow while Seldar talked.
“The goat is actually for you,” he told me. My stomach-knot tightened again at the idea of roasted goat. It’s really amazingly good. Then again, almost anything is when I’m hungry.
“How did you know I’d be hungry? No, scratch that. How did you know I’d be awake?”
“We did not. But our families always send boys to Karvalen for their coming of age.”
One sentence, lots of mental associations. My brain kicked around a bunch of information.
Karvalen, in the Rethvan language, translates pretty much to “kingdom of the living stone.” Khar was the original word for stone or rock in the language of Zirafel, along with vael, or life. Eyn, used as a suffix, denoted an Imperial property—in this case, royal property. So, with a bit of grammatical and pronunciation evolution, vael-khar’Eyn in the old tongue became Karvalen in Rethven.
I thought that rather appropriate, given that the mountain is self-aware. Very slow, but self-aware.
I also found it interesting to realize that Rethven was derived from Rhiatha, a province of the Imperium. Over time Rhiatha’Eyn evolved into Rethven. Don’t I sound linguistic and knowledgeable?
At the same time, half a dozen rites of passage from different cultures danced through my head. Four out of six—five out of seven, counting this one—involved some sort of religious ceremony, as well as a test of either courage or endurance or both. These kids were here for something like that and I wondered just how difficult it was supposed to be. Was this a real test of manhood, or just an unsupervised field trip?
“And what happens during this coming of age ceremony?” I asked, rubbing one temple. I suddenly had a minor headache. Is that a sign of vampiric indigestion?
“We make the journey,” Seldar replied, “make sacrifice, stand vigil, and endure any visions or hauntings that might present themselves. If we are brave and true, like our fathers before us, we might emerge from the mountain as men, with stories to tell and enchantments on our blades.”
I wondered about the visions and hauntings, but I suspected there might be undigested ghosts involved. If so, I didn’t want to know. I’d deal with that when and if they presented themselves, probably by chewing more thoroughly.
“What sort of enchantments?” I asked, instead.
“My father’s sword needs never be sharpened.”
“The edge on my father’s sword never chips,” Torvil offered. “He’s parried axes that should have broken it, but it’s still whole. And my elder brother’s is very good at thrusting through armor.”
“My father killed a were-beast with his, and it died like the blade were silver,” Kammen said.
“Sounds like good stuff,” I observed, while thinking that I wasn’t going to ask what sort of were-beast was involved. “Well, if I manage to get fed sometime in the near future, we’ll see if I can come up with something appropriate for you three.”
They traded that look with each other again. Kammen was the one who spoke.
“Are we going to, you know, have to, well, deal with any of the, the ghosts?”
“I haven’t seen one since I woke up, but I’m certain you’ll manage just fine. Meanwhile, let’s see if we can get a firepit going. Anyone know how to slaughter and roast a goat?”
The boys/men knew how. They gathered firewood from the overgrown area at the peak; the courtyard’s inner wall went straight up for thirty feet or so, then turned into a wilderness on top. They went up the steps of the inner courtyard wall and came back with a lot of deadwood. Some basic woodcraft later, they had a spit and braces, with pieces of goat-meat searing over a fire. Seldar even went so far as to catch the goat’s blood in a bowl when they slaughtered it. Torvil gathered more wood and Kammen cooked.
I resisted the urge to drink the blood. Blood cravings during the day were new. Normally, I just want something mundane to eat. Fortunately, Kammen had a few slices of meat ready fairly quickly. I inhaled them and waited patiently for more. The four of us started spitting meat and roasting it as quickly as the fire allowed.
To give credit where credit is due, they didn’t react too badly the first time I snapped a piece of meat right off a stick with my teeth. They were merely startled. Nobody screamed, but I think it was a close thing. They seemed determined to be unruffled if I did anything odd. I was surprised, but I tried to keep myself in better check after that.
I ate everything edible, right down to the marrow in the bones. I felt a little better, and the appeal of a bowl of fresh goat blood was considerably lessened. Maybe it was just exceptional hunger.
About then I heard the ringing, like the bells on an old-style, wind-up alarm clock, but much deeper.
“Thank you very much for breakfast, gentlemen,” I said, rising. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my horse is here.”
“Lord?” Kammen asked. They all treated me with a good deal more respect and deference. Whether that was because they regarded me as a monster or a king, I’m not sure.
“What’s on your mind, Kammen?”
“Will you be back… later?”
I nodded.
“I will. My plans are to, first, go find a dazhu and eat it. Then, after sundown, I’ll go back to the herd and eat the rest of them. Probably.” I frowned. On the other hand, if I was as hungry as I expected to be, I might not have that much presence of mind. Well, we could put a bowl of blood outside and they could hide in the room with my statue. And maybe Bronze could sort of encourage me to go chase dazhu.
Outside, the alarm-bell clangor had grown considerably louder. Bronze, looking very much like a massive draft horse, galloped across the bridge, around the mountain, and started the spiral up. The main thoroughfares ascended at a shallow angle, leading up and around. Other streets ran in counter-spirals, making a sort of grid, but Bronze didn’t bother to slow down for the switchback turns that would require. For my part, I hurried out the northern door, around to the far side of the courtyard and was at the south-facing outer gate by the time she skidded through it, hooves trailing comet tails of blue-green lightning. The metal-on-stone screech must have been audible for miles.
Bronze. My horse. At slightly over seven feet at the shoulder, she’s markedly larger than any horse I’ve ever seen. She was definitely more heavily built than I recalled, with thicker legs and a deeper chest. She seemed more of a golden color than I recalled, but there’s no telling what she’s been eating.
She kept her head up for a moment, blowing fire and smoke for several seconds, then lowered her head to apply her forehead to my chest, almost knocking me from my feet. Then she put her head over my shoulder and I threw my arms around her neck despite the scorching. For a long moment, we just stood there. She had missed me the way I might miss one of my arms. And I realized that I missed her, somehow, even though it seemed only a short while since last I saw her. She wasn’t just Bronze. She was, on some deep level that I may never understand, a part of me.
When I let go and stepped back, I took note of the horsecollar with broken bits of chain hanging from it.
“Were you busy?”
She tossed her head dismissively, as if to say, Not with anything important.
“I trust you didn’t run over anybody?”
She merely twitched an ear, Not anyone important.
I looked at her sternly, or tried to. She whickered and shook her mane, making the wires tinkle and chime like laughter. She snorted hot smoke all over me and I knew she was joking.
My horse has a sense of humor. It’s a lot like my sense of humor, and that’s a shame.
“It’s good to see you, too,” I told her. “I feel hungry. How about we go down there, kill a large piece of meat, you torch it, I eat it, and then we come back here for the sunset?”
She pawed at the ground, making blue-green sparks and a metal-on-stone screeching noise that could wake the dead. I mounted up and we thundered down into the plains like an avalanche o
f bronze and steel.
Kammen is a better cook than Bronze. But raw, rare, medium, and well-done are all acceptable when it’s just a matter of stuffing down fuel. And we did. I didn’t have time to eat an entire dazhu, but we gave it a really good try. I hacked off a chunk, Bronze breathed fire over it, and I ate the outer layer while holding up another chunk for her to toast.
Where I put all that meat was a mystery. Doubtless, a magical metabolism had something to do with it. I didn’t think that applied during the day, though. My nighttime metabolism is magical—I’m dead, after all—but during the day… shouldn’t I have to stop eating at some point? If I hadn’t been so focused on eating enough to save three young men’s lives, I would have let it worry me.
We went back up the mountain a little before sunset and halted in the throne room. The young gentlemen went down to the statue room and I put the bowl of blood outside the main door. I shut the door to the outside and waited for the sunset to start. Bronze had instructions about keeping me from going any farther into the mountain, and I concentrated on the smell of the blood just outside the door. I couldn’t actually smell it, yet, but I would. I would.
Sunset crawled all over me like a layer of ants. Like a blanket of steel wool set on fire, it burned and itched and prickled, drawing out of me a foul mixture of sweat and filth that might have had its origins in one of the lower infernal pits.
But I didn’t care. Amidst the shivering, stinging, crawling, itching, trembling, and prickling, now I could smell the blood.
My heart stopped; I barely noticed. There was blood close at hand, and that was all that mattered. I was denied that blood, because the sunset was not yet finished, but it was there, waiting for me, waiting for the moment when the last arc of the burning daystar slipped below the rim of the world.
I hoped I could wait that long. That’s the last thing I remember.
I have no clear memory of what happened after the sunset passed a certain point. It was as though a curtain of night fell across my waking mind, leaving everything in dreams. Dreams of hunger, blood, and death.