Nightlord: Shadows

by Garon Whited

  “Then stop.”

  “I’m cursed with curiosity.”

  “Not my problem,” she said, shrugging.

  “I don’t suppose you would just explain yourself?”

  “That’s hard to do. I’m a complex person.”

  “And a rather literal one, when you choose to be.”

  “Yep.” She smiled again.

  “Okay. Why are you out here for your father?”

  “He asked.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Speculate,” I told her. Her eyes narrowed at me.

  “Well, it’s possible that he wants to hear about the doings of the King of Karvalen.”

  “Why send you?”

  “For one thing, he’s blind.”

  “For another?”

  “I think he wants me to practice.”

  “Practice what?”

  “Observing and reporting,” she said. “I’m already better than him at composing music.” She couldn’t help sounding pleased with herself.

  “So, you’re an apprentice minstrel, out here gathering information for your blind minstrel father. Have I got that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any particular reason you couldn’t just tell me that?”

  “No.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  I turned my back on her and walked away. I heard her take a breath, as though about to call out, but she held the impulse and let me go. I went back over to where Amber was working on someone who had managed to get his elbow twisted.

  “Thanks for coming out,” I told Amber. She shrugged.

  “I heard you had wounded.”

  “I’m really sorry about this morning, in the House—”

  “Let us not speak of that now.”

  “Okay. Can I apologize again for my side trip to the mountain?”

  “Yes.” She paused and I realized she was waiting.

  “Um. I’m sorry?”

  “Not a very impressive apology,” she said, then smiled a little. “I forgive you. I’m just a bit out or sorts with the thing tonight, and some of the administrative details of Mochara.”

  “I’m not sure I can imagine, but I believe you. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Are you going to leave Mochara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you can’t—wait, what?” she asked. “You are?”

  “Of course. The mountain is a whole city, the capitol of Karvalen. Someone has to be there. I’ll be moving out to it over the next few weeks, maybe months, depending. Might take a bit to get it going—it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere—but rest assured I’ll relocate.”

  “Oh,” she said, softly. She looked away from me and seemed lost in thought. We watched the ongoing mayhem for a while and occasionally helped Seldar with a fresh injury. Bronze completed a slow lap and came up beside us again.

  “Look, Mom! I’m riding a horse!” Well, she wasn’t wrong. Tianna was lying on her belly along the back of Bronze’s neck. Bronze’s mane was wrapped around her whole body. Tianna held on to Bronze’s ears like handlebars while looking over them.

  “I see that,” Amber said. “Well done. Now get down; we’re going inside.”

  “Aw, Mom!”

  “Now, dear.”

  Tianna grumbled under her breath as Bronze’s mane unrolled her to one side and down into my arms. I set her down. They walked back into Mochara, holding hands. Tianna waved from the gate as they went in.

  I shook my head. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t around to be a father; I might not have any talent for it. And I might have spoiled Amber absolutely rotten. I certainly had that impulse with Tianna, which makes me a fantastic grandfather.

  “Seldar, have you got this?” I asked, indicating the assault.

  “Yes, O Ruthless One.”

  “I’m going to go talk to Tort. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Of course, Your Augustness.”

  “I told you to cut that out,” I reminded him. He just grinned at me.

  Bronze and I went back to Tort’s house at a trot. People cleared the street and bowed as we went by. Either that’s good sense about not being run over, or respect for the King. Hopefully, good sense.

  Once Bronze settled in, I went inside. I wanted a bath and something to eat.

  “Ah, there you are,” Tort said, sitting in her floating chair. “Done with Thomen and the guild already?”

  “With…? Oh. No, I completely forgot about it. I’ll be right back.”

  “Take your time.”

  Bronze flicked an ear at me when I mounted. Neither of us knew where the wizards’ guildhall was, so I had to ask around. We alternated between a canter and a walk, partly because I had to follow directions, partly because it was daytime and there were a lot of people in the street. Eventually, we found the place. I dismounted and went inside.

  My old mentor, Jon, once explained to me why the life of a traveling wizard—and any wizard without a noble patron was going to be a traveling wizard—was so difficult. Not so the life of a citizen of Mochara! Here, wizardry was a respected profession, with or without a patron. It was possible to live pretty well with an endorsement by the guild. The guild decided if you passed muster as a wizard, much like any guild with its members. They also endorsed you for things you were especially good at, such as levitation, magical fires, summoning sailing winds, making it rain, and so on.

  The guildhall was a very nice place, mostly mortared stone on the first floor with a timber upper storey. Beyond the front door was an entryway that sucked the mud and dirt from your boots; beyond that, the room had a stone floor covered in rugs. A pair of pretty girls waited until I was out of the entryway and then bowed.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” one of them said, eyeing my sword.

  “Good afternoon. Is Thomen available?”

  “May we ask the nature of your business with the Master of the Guild?” the other asked.

  “He asked to see me.”

  “Right this way, sir,” the first one said, leading me farther back into the building.

  The room was some sort of examination room. Thomen and two other wizards were inspecting a fourth. She was on a sort of couch or divan, or just a padded table; furniture isn’t my strong point. She was probably about five-nine, blonde, with a wide mouth and light grey eyes. Only one of her eyes was light grey; the other eye was shimmering with a sort of opalescent sheen.

  “Your Majesty,” Thomen said, stiffly. I waved at the rest to not bother. “I am sorry to have you here for this, but Seretta has a problem.”

  “Good afternoon, Seretta,” I said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Her left eye, Your Majesty,” said one of the examining wizards. “She was working with a different sort of scrying spell when a magical surge hit it. Now she’s seeing something through that eye and it’s scaring her.”

  I blinked at the guy.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Brunin, Your Majesty.”

  “Is she too scared to talk?”

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Good.” I turned to Seretta. “Good afternoon, Seretta. What seems to be the trouble?”

  She explained, much as Brunin did, but with a few more details. The scrying spell was supposed to not need a basin or mirror or other external focus. It seemed to work, but something ruined it; there was a massive magical surge as, somewhere, a spell shattered. This did something to her spell and now she was seeing something that was probably outside the normal world. She reported on things that were obviously Things, but which, apparently and fortunately, did not also see her.

  What got me was the time. She did this experiment about the same time I broke a magician’s attempted escape spell. Oops, again.

  One drawback to a highly-magical society is similar to having a highly-armed society. Even with the best of intentions, people will miss, and then you have random bullets flying around. I’m not again
st gun control, but, to me, gun control means hitting your target.

  Is there a way to cut down on magical misfires, though? Aside from doing all your magic inside a special containment room? I’ll have to look into it.

  For the moment, though, I looked at her eye. Yes, there was a spell on it. Or, rather, in it. It didn’t look like a classically-designed spell; it was too sloppy and not at all well-put-together. But then, if it started out as a spell and this was the result after being in the car wreck… Yes, it did something, but obviously not quite what it said on the label.

  “Have we tried just draining it of power?” I asked.

  “We are concerned that her eye might be wherever the point of view is,” Thomen replied. “If we drain the power, it may simply stay there.”

  “Ouch. Hmm. Yes, that’s tricky. There does seem to be some doubt about its physical location. We could try unwrapping the spell, surely?”

  “We’re not sure where it starts or ends, now,” he pointed out. “The… the wreckage is a tangle, not a spell.”

  “Good point. You seem to have covered the bases, here. Why am I here, again?” I asked.

  “We intend to drain the spell.”

  “And risk her eye.”

  “Yes. You are here to grow her a new one, if it ceases to exist here.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said, nodding. “I thought you wanted this solved, not just fixed. Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Wait,” Seretta said, holding up a hand. “Could you get rid of the spell without costing me an eye?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only been looking at it for about a minute—I mean, a few flickers.”

  “I would really rather not lose an eye,” she said, softly.

  “All right. I’ll see what I can do.” I examined the spell-wreckage in some detail, then turned to Thomen. “Is there someplace I can sit down?”

  He showed me to a large, heavy chair—the largest and heaviest in the building, I felt sure. I settled into it and stepped into my headspace.

  In the lab, I reconstructed the wreckage and let the glowing lines of power to float in the middle of the room. I put together a scrying spell, then a basic gateway spell, and left those next to the wreckage.

  Yes, there were signs and similarities in each. The magician’s gate destructed, but bits of spell-structure obviously were still intact as it let go. That’s an important thing to know. When a really complicated spell goes kaboom, bits and pieces could act like magical shrapnel on other spells.

  I fiddled with the three, trying to fit bits and pieces together. If there was a way to intersect the gate spell with the scrying spell and produce something similar to the wreckage, which part of the gate spell was embedded might give me a clue how to un-embed it, which would be safer for the eyeball.

  It was a good thing that headspace work goes a lot faster than normal. I spent hours inside, turning, twisting, prodding, poking. But I got an idea.

  Outside again, I rejoined the consultation in the examination room. Seretta seemed pleased to see me; Thomen remained stiffly polite.

  “Got an idea,” I said. “I think it’ll work.” I explained my idea to the four wizards. Thomen nodded thoughtfully. The two consultants, Brunin and the other guy, were dubious. Seretta was all for it.

  We put on the magical version of surgical masks and got to work. It was different from casting a spell, mainly in that we weren’t able to use the usual tools of the trade—symbols, lines, diagrams, and so on. We had to do this the hard way: direct energy manipulation. That’s always tiring.

  Peeling back line after line of spell structure, snipping off loose ends, dissipating sparks and random charges as they pulsed through the structure… it wasn’t quite like defusing a bomb. It was more like playing a child’s game with sticks, where you want to remove as many sticks as possible from a structure before it comes apart. If we could get all the gate components out of the wreckage without destroying the integrity of the wreckage, the eyeball would have to be in her head, rather than Somewhere Else.

  I didn’t manage that. Thomen did. I kept pruning away gate components until we were stuck. Thomen, on the other hand, had the brilliant idea of putting new lines of force into the wreckage. Those supports and bindings could hold it together while I finished taking out the bits of gate.

  Clever. I liked it. We went with it. And, as it turns out, when we finished taking apart the wreckage, there was an eyeball, right where it belonged.

  Unfortunately, I was now running late. I only had time for a good handshake with the three doctors and a hug for/from the patient and I was off again to see Tort.

  Tort was right where I left her, apparently as patient as Buddha. I sat down and Parva—apparently Pilea had the night off—put a tray of food in front of me. I didn’t object, but started in on some delicious mush.

  “I have the results of the interrogation for you,” Tort said, apparently amused at something.

  “The—oh! The assassins. Right.” I had a terrible moment of realization. I’m so used to people trying to kill me that I forgot all about it in the press of events. What does that say about me? Stupid? Overconfident? Poor prioritization? Or just busy with more important things? None of these struck me as good.

  “Would you like to hear it from them, or shall I simply tell you?” Tort asked.

  “Go for it. I’m in too good a mood to listen to them.”

  “They worked for the man I struck with lightning,” she said, and looked embarrassed. “I am still so sorry about that.”

  “You reacted correctly, if a little too quickly,” I told her. “As a general rule, quick-kill assassins; subdue them only if convenient. So don’t sweat it. Go on.”

  “The name he used was Korbel, a magician of Arondael, but they think he was lying. Not that it mattered to them; they were paid to do, not to ask questions. They are uncertain who he worked for, but they each, independently, believed him to have been hired by Prince Parrin of Byrne. Their pay was also in Byrne currency.”

  “Where’s Byrne?”

  “It is a city in the northeast of the former kingdom of Rethven.”

  “Former?” I asked, surprised. “What happened to it?”

  “Oh… Yes. It has been some time.” She paused for thought. I suppose summarizing eighty-odd years of history takes a minute.

  “First, there was the end of the kingdom. The death of the King of Rethven, without a clear male heir, brought chaos. The self-styled Church of the Light had a major upset in its leadership shortly before this, and the revelation of corruption by dark forces did much to destabilize it and weaken its influence. When the Dukes of Rethven started to argue over the succession, the Church lacked the power to keep them peaceful; wars for the throne began.

  “It was… let me think… fifteen? Seventeen? Quite a few years before any real peace settled over the land again. By then, cities had declared themselves princedoms, with attendant lands, towns, and villages surrounding them. It has remained so—except for a few smaller, individual wars and border disputes—until six or seven years ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  “One of the cities began to produce powerful engines of destruction. I have not seen one, but they are described as great bronze rams of potent magic; they vomit forth thunder, fire, and iron. They can smash down walls and destroy gates, or so it is said.”

  “The city of Byrne?” I guessed.

  “Indeed, my angel. It has been expanding its holdings in recent years and has considerable territory. It may manage to become the center of a new kingdom.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, and thought back. During that dream-duel, Hagus had said… what? “One of the people who tried to kill me mentioned that he had a special dispensation from the King of Rethven. Would that be the ruler of Byrne? Or the current ruler of the old capitol, Carrillon?” She shrugged and looked apologetic.

  “I am not privy to all the details. I have paid little enough attention to these matters, save as they applied to the prin
ces of Baret and Vathula. In general, we are safe enough here from such things.” She smiled in memory. “Coastal cities have occasionally sent ships and men to test us.”

  Tort chuckled, a vicious, evil sound. I couldn’t have done better.

  “They do not like landing here,” she said. “Their big ships must put out smaller boats to let soldiers row ashore. Sailing farther east, where the cliff diminishes to something easy to scale, will allow them to land unopposed. They have tried this, but during their march overland they have encountered difficulties with the grassmen.”

  “Grassmen?”

  “The people of the plains. The men of the grasslands. They are quite fond of attacking invaders for metal and other gear. Anything they capture and cannot use, we always buy from them. They do not defend us, as such, but we encourage them to be… a natural hazard, shall we say?”

  “Fair enough. Okay. So, probably-Byrne hired a magician to come here and stick me with magical bolts. What was the spell, anyway?”

  “Rather clever,” Tort said. “There is a healing spell that will stop bleeding by causing the blood to dry and clot quickly. You know it?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is a much more powerful version. At a guess, it would dry and clot the blood within your body very suddenly, possibly weakening you and causing you to become stiff. At night,” she added. “I do not know what it would do to a living man.”

  “Get a pig and try it,” I suggested, cutting a bite out of something unidentifiable. “Tonight, after my appointment, we can try it on me in controlled conditions. I think I better be prepared for this; someone else may decide to use it.” Tort nodded.

  “I will see to it.”

  “What other magical crap did he have on him?”

  “Several minor implements of no major import—boots that repel water, a cloak that warms or cools, a ring for the storing of power—things most real magicians regard as mundane. Professional wizards, even, might have them.

  “The unusual things—or unusual thing; they are a set—would be the bracelets.” Tort smiled and pulled back her sleeve to reveal one. “These are quite the prize.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Several things. You know how difficult it is to perform a gate spell?”