by Garon Whited
“A good description. And do you know the one that links the lives of the healthy to the life of a wounded person?”
“I know of it, but I am not so skilled as to perform it safely.” He paused. “It is dangerous if done improperly.”
“It can be, but I have a talent for it,” I said, and winked. “I’m going to cast a healing spell on you three, and on me. You’re going to work, and work hard, at using your muscles and building them. The spell will help with that, because your bodies will realize that they are supposed to be getting stronger. And you’ll also have me helping, because you’ll have some of my life energy supporting and powering you as we work. Got it?”
Whatever their personal opinions, they stood up straight and agreed. Full marks for guts, these three.
So I worked my spells over them and through them, telling their muscles to grow long fibers, short fibers; thicken and reinforce the tendons mounting muscle to bone; cardiac muscle fiber, too, because it’s different from normal muscles; tell the rest of their bodies to wake up and get moving on helping with that.
I also tied their lives together with mine so that we would share each other’s energies, allowing us all to draw strength from the others as we exerted ourselves. It’s really a refinement of a healing spell that drains vitality from a healthy creature to improve the rate of healing in a wounded one. In the version I used on us, energy could flow both ways.
If I set it up with a magical diode—a one-way power transfer—could I do this at night? What would be the effect on a living, breathing mortal to get vitality from an undead creature? That was something to find out much, much later, with some test animals and maybe a volunteer.
“All right, everyone into the canal.” We jumped in, stood up. Yes, the water was shallow enough to stand in, about four feet deep; my misgivings about drowning were completely unfounded. The walls of the canal varied in height with the terrain; they were always at least a foot higher than the water, more when the canal cut through a rise. Over dips in the ground, the canal resembled a bridge of solid stone. Here, the water was about two feet below the lip. If I jumped, I could see over; otherwise, we were in a long, water-filled hallway.
“Now, follow me!” I headed upstream, toward the mountain, slogging through the water. They fanned out and followed, not asking questions. It’s good exercise, I give it that. I can plow through water fairly easily, but then I’m unreasonably heavy and even by day, I’m shockingly strong. They slogged gamely after me, determined to keep up, and I let them.
I suppose it would have been more efficient to walk alongside the canal, saving my energies for them to draw on. They could have gone on longer, then. Purely from a mathematical standpoint, that was the right thing to do. Keep working, keep building strength, and do it longer and harder. Objectively, rationally, that’s the right way.
But not from my standpoint. I wasn’t going to walk alongside the canal while they struggled. I was going to be in the water, right there with them, leading the way. Not standing above them and yelling at them to try harder. If I wanted them to try harder, I’d go faster, and they would try to keep pace.
And they did. Seldar was having rough going, being the shortest of them, but he dug in with his toes, made swimming motions with his arms, and powered on at his best speed. All three of them made me proud. They didn’t ask questions, they didn’t hesitate, and they didn’t let up for an instant. They just followed me. What could I do with a hundred like them? What couldn’t I do?
They also frightened me. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t hesitate. They went all in, just on my say-so, because I went in. I’m going to have to work on their judgment, I think. They need to know that it’s okay to ask questions when I’m having a private chat with them. They already have the part about jumping straight into it when they’re given an order. Right now, I have fanatical children following me like baby ducks, all in a line.
One more reason I think I’d like to go home. If I stay, they’ll expect me to king, and I’m not comfortable with that.
We struggled up the canal as fast as we could go. I started calling an old cadence, chanting it while we planted a foot on every other beat.
“Come on, I chant it out, you chant it back!
“I don’t know but I’ve been told!”
“I don’t know but I’ve been told!”
“If you don’t slow down you don’t grow old.”
“If you don’t slow down you don’t grow old!”
“The sun is bright but I’m still cold.”
“The sun is bright but I’m still cold!”
And so on. Apparently, a singing canal is unusual; people occasionally came over to watch us run/swim slowly by. We ignored them. Well, I ignored them. My ducklings were more than a little self-conscious, but they plowed on.
I’m used to feeling the flow of life energies within me; I know when I’m running out. Unlike human beings, I practically have a fuel gauge. There came a point where, if I was a car, I was about to have a little light come on a computer voice scold me for not filling up the tank. Since we were sharing energies, they had to be about the same level of exhausted.
I called a halt, boosted each of them out of the canal, and they combined their efforts to help haul me out of the water. I probably didn’t need the help; even with the armor, I could have jumped it. But doing things as a team is also important. We flopped on the road and dripped there for a while, breathing heavily and resting. It took a bit, but eventually we all sat up.
“Good run,” I told them. “Now we get back in and walk back.”
“It’s a long walk,” Kammen noted.
“It is. But this time, you can swim.”
“Will you?”
“No. I can’t swim.”
They traded a look.
“We could teach you,” Torvil offered.
“You don’t understand. I can’t. Boom. Straight to the bottom. Here, the three of you—lift me.”
I lay down and waited. Kammen is the strong one; he got my ankles. Seldar and Torvil each got an arm. They lifted—and I didn’t move. They changed grips, moved around, and I tried to make it as easy as possible. Grunting, they got me off the ground, then put me down. I sat up.
“See the problem? Even without the armor, I’m—what? Two or three times what I should weigh? I float about as well as Bronze. I’ll walk back, but I’ll take my time, and you three can swim after me.”
They agreed immediately. Again, no questions. That bothers me. I’m going to have to get these three into a classroom and force them to be confused, just so they’ll get used to the idea of asking me things.
We got into the water and I started marching. I kept us at a pace that was tiring enough that we didn’t feel any better as time went on, but slow enough that we weren’t wearing ourselves out, either. Pushing along at a level that kept us at “tired,” bordering on “exhausted” was the endurance portion of the exercise. It also gave the other spells more of a chance to see what needed more work—muscle fibers, mainly, but also the circulatory and lymphatic systems, to prevent the buildup of fatigue toxins.
It took a while to get back to Mochara, and it was well after lunchtime. Judging by the way we felt, it was also overdue. We dripped mostly dry by the time we half-walked, half-staggered back to Tort’s house. I ran a quick cleaning spell over us when we reached the front door, just to be polite.
Tort was expecting us. Pilea was already piling food on the table. We sat down and ate.
“Did you have a premonition, or did you see this coming?” I asked, careful to do so without food in my mouth.
“I helped you build that defensive spell,” she said. “I know a seeking cannot find you, but I knew where you were. I kept you in view. Thus, I did not need to locate you.”
“Huh. Well, that works. I can live with that. But how is it I didn’t see the other end of the spell?”
“I kept putting them in windows around town to look down on the roads. They were alw
ays on the second floor, and you do not look up.”
Dammit. I thought I broke myself of that habit. Mental note for the future.
“You followed me with a scrying spell by looking down at me?”
“No, I followed you with a succession of scrying spells along the length of the canal. The terminus of a scrying spell does not move.”
“Ah. You’re either more clever or better trained than I am. I’m guessing both,” I told her. She blushed and looked down. I took it as an opportunity to stuff my face. While I might not benefit from a physical workout…
Hmm. Do I? During the day, I’m alive. I eat, I breathe, I bleed, all that stuff. Admittedly, my metabolism and biology are weird, but does that mean I can’t benefit from jogging, weightlifting, or yoga? How would that affect my nighttime metabolism? Will I regenerate back into my “normal” state, or will I keep any gains I make? And, if I increase, say, muscle mass, will that change how strong I am at night, or is that purely a function of the magical metabolism of semi-dead people? If my living lift goes up by a pound, does that mean my dead lift (no pun intended) goes up by five? Or ten? Or whatever the ratio is? Come to that, what is the ratio? How much stronger am I at night?
It’s so depressing to have no lab rats.
Hmm, again. Can I make vampire mice?
On second thought, whether I can or not, I should not. Skip that idea. The thought that vampire mice might escape and get loose in the world isn’t worrying, it’s downright frightening. Also comic, in some ways. I can visualize a white mouse with a black opera cape and glowing pink eyes; he’s ordering around legions of rats… No. No, no, and no.
So, best case, we’re all getting better. At worst, I’m ruining my workout, but giving them the energy to have a truly impressive one. Does that make me supernatural steroids? I can live with that.
“By the way,” I said, after a helping of something resembling salmon vanished down-gullet.
“Yes, my angel?”
“How’s the foot doing?”
“It aches, but I have been monitoring it closely all day. I have made a few minor adjustments to the spell, but nothing of real note. The principle is working, and I am very pleased with the progress.”
“Good. I’ll want to look at it again, tonight.”
“I will be very pleased, my angel.”
Seldar cleared his throat. I looked at him and nodded.
“My lord?”
“Yes?”
“Why does the Lady Tort call you her angel?”
The word she was using was arhela, not arhia, as she used to call me. Arhia means something like spirit in the service of light. Arhela, one the other hand, is more like an elemental force, like a storm or tidal wave. If there’s an angel of songs or an angel of poetry, it would be arhia. The angels of hurricanes and meteor strikes would be arhela. They don’t serve light or darkness, as such; they’re just there, impartial and generally unstoppable.
Apparently, she promoted me during my nap.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask her,” I told him. I glanced at Tort. “If you want to explain, I don’t mind.” I didn’t add that I’d like to hear the explanation, myself.
“I will consider it,” she promised. Seldar took that as a cue to shut up and eat. I changed the subject.
“Another thing. I’m trying to get a smith to make us some special armor. I think I can arrange to lay hands on something close to cash—I’ll look into it tonight, while all of you get some sleep—but he says he’s got other projects that he has ahead of mine. Is there any way we can speed that up?”
“I will see to it,” Tort promised. She looked smug.
“Hold it. By ‘speed that up,’ I mean ‘help him move along at high speed.’ I do not mean, ‘string him up by the ankles and beat him until he agrees,’ or anything of the sort.”
“You would prefer that he be persuaded, rather than coerced.”
“If at all possible, yes. That’s it, exactly.”
“I remember. As I said, I will see to it,” she assured me. I decided that, First, I trusted her implicitly, and that there wasn’t a Second.
“I look forward to seeing the result. Thank you.”
“It is entirely my pleasure, my angel. May I inquire as to your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Is there a slaughterhouse in town? Or someplace where they are likely to be killing and/or butchering animals?”
“Yes. May I ask why, so that I may aid you in your endeavors?”
“I plan to double-check my enchantment work on the swords for the three swordsmen,” I answered, nodding at the three in question.
“Ah!” Tort nodded, understanding immediately. She already had some idea of the power in those blades. It’s a form of nosiness to peek at other people’s enchantments. It’s like looking at the title of a book someone else is reading. We can’t help it.
“If they work the way I think they do, we’ll continue to work at an insanely high level until nearly sunset. Then these three will need to eat again, and I’ll need to, um, go out for dinner.”
“I have already made plans for that, my angel.”
I paused with a spoonful of something halfway to my mouth. After a second, I put it down.
“I trust you implicitly,” I told her, “but you’ll understand that I just woke up a couple of days ago and I’m still a little uncertain about the lay of the land, so to speak, in Mochara. Your plans aren’t going to cause unpleasant repercussions, are they?”
“I think not.”
“Then I look forward to seeing what you’ve got.”
“A pleasure to be of service. Now, finish eating. I have errands to run this afternoon.”
“Yes, dear.”
We found a woodcutter on the west side of town and made his day. He would go into the forests at the foot of the Eastrange, cut trees, hitch them to a pair of domesticated dazhu, and drag them back to town for cutting and splitting. Between us, we split his whole stock of firewood. When that wasn’t enough to keep us busy, I took a couple of unsplit logs, cut off a two-foot chunk from the ends, and started playing catch with them. They were much more awkward than a medicine ball, but that’s a good thing; if it’s easy, it isn’t good for you. I also took a few long pieces of wood and did some whittling, making big sword-sticks for later.
During a break to talk with the woodcutter—Timon—I asked about some makeshift training equipment. Nothing fancy; some logs, cut to length. Things to lift, things to carry, things to walk on or walk over, things to balance on, that sort of thing. Timon agreed that he had a few trees left—I told the guys to stop cutting things to pieces and save them—and would be happy to have them delivered.
I also asked him about his lumber imports. He cut trees down and dragged them back; I described a pair of two-wheeled little carts, drew a little in the dirt, and explained how he could drag back more in one go if he strapped these on to the logs.
“But,” I cautioned him, “bear in mind that I’ve spoken with dryads before. You do pay attention to them, right?”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered, not meeting my eyes. He seemed uncertain what to make of people coming to his place of business and making his life easy. “When they says anything to me, anyways. I just avoids ’em.”
“And you do still plant trees, right? I recall making an edict about that.”
“I always planted trees, lord. Got the wife potting ’em upstairs. Cut two, plant three, that’s the law.” He twisted his hands together and apart, nervously. “That’s right, innit? I’m not in trouble?”
“No, no, not at all. You’re doing just right.”
“I asks ’cause I also take windfall trees, and I don’t plant none for those.”
“I don’t think you need to. Has anyone—or anything—ever asked you to?”
“No, Lord.”
“Then don’t worry about it. If a dryad ever gives you trouble about that, you tell her I’ll take care of it, then make sure someone tells me. Okay?”<
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“I’ll do my best, lord.”
“Good man.”
We cut logs, split wood, threw around a couple of heavy chunks, and basically worked ourselves into the ground. We lined up, thanked Timon, shook his hand, and went back to Tort’s. I glanced back and saw him staring at a month’s worth of work, all neatly stacked.
Tort saw us coming; I deliberately looked up to see if I could spot her spying on us. It wasn’t that hard to do with my nonhuman eyes; the ripple-effect distortion of the scrying window seems obvious when I think to actually look for it. I know she kept an eye on us; she met us in the little stable-yard behind the house and watched.
The three boys and I squared off with lengths of wood instead of real swords. I wanted to see what they had already learned, as well as see what I could remember from my banquet in Zirafel.
Turns out, the warriors three were pretty good. Torvil was the best of the three, Kammen a close second, and Seldar trailed the field. Seldar tended to pay more attention to his footing and positioning, though; the other two were more offense.
I drilled them on defense for a while. My own reflexes being what they were, I wasn’t too worried about my own defense. I also knew my reflexes remembered things I hadn’t drilled on and wanted to avoid sudden surprises. It did me good to practice with moves and maneuvers I’d never learned. It did them good, too, I think, albeit only a little. We would practice more regularly in the future; I felt kind of responsible for them, now.
It was late in the day when we halted. Tort performed her version of a cleaning spell—I made a note to study it; it was much quicker than the kludged-together spell I invented—and saw to it we were fed.
Once we had a chance to sit back and burp a bit, I disconnected myself from the life-linking spell. Sunset wasn’t too far off, and I didn’t want to find out what might happen to living people if they were still connected to me.