by Garon Whited
“Yes.” I remembered a small herd of cattle and a whirling pool of blood. “The power requirements are ridiculous. And the spell isn’t easy, either.”
“Quite so. These help in many ways. One of its functions is at least partially like an enchantment; it draws in magic. It does not do anything with it, however. Instead, it simply stores it in the gems for later use.”
“Seems like an obvious way to build up power,” I said.
“It is not,” Tort assured me. “To draw power into a magical function is one thing; to simply draw it in and store it is quite another. The technique is unbelievably subtle and usually results in many failures before such a device is created. With your permission, I will be studying it for months.”
“Go ahead. What else does it do?”
“Another enchantment forms a local gate. Not both ends of a portal, obviously, but it forms a temporary locus for a gate spell, making the actual spell immeasurably easier—something that a magician with sufficient energy reserves might actually be able to use.”
“Aha. Sort of a portable archway for the gate spell to lock on to and use as a terminal point?”
“Yes.”
“Any way to tell where he was trying to go?” I asked. “Even some idea of how far, if we can’t tell where or which direction?”
“I am afraid not. The bracers constantly draw in power to build up a charge; this disrupts the more subtle traces of spells cast on or through them.”
“I can’t always count on my enemies making things easy,” I mused, around a mouthful of probably-not-chicken. “Oh, well. Anything else?”
“One more. The third function seems to encourage the bending of the world. When active, it tries to distort the fabric of the world ahead of the user, making it easier to use the League Step spell. It would also, of course, make a gate spell easier, since the effective distance between the two points would be lessened. At least, I think it would. About gates, I am but a novice compared to the masters of the old Empire.”
The League Step wasn’t exactly teleportation, but it was close. I recalled a magician who used it to meet me… how long ago? The spell was like a warp drive, compressing space itself in front of the user, making each step forward cover much greater distance. It was tricky to use, since starting and stopping needed to be done in an area of fixed, non-stretched space, but it could multiply the apparent speed of the traveler. Very similar to the legends, back home, of the seven-league boots. One of the big drawbacks, though, was the need to be cautious around anything that might be considered an obstacle…
“And these bracelets were on some guy that the prince of probably-Byrne sends to ambush me in the streets at night? Was this magician rich and stupid? Or just stupidly overconfident? Or maybe just fatally ignorant?”
Tort held up a wrist and looked at the bright jewelry.
“These may be new,” she said, thinking aloud. “I have never seen such work, nor heard of it, save in legends. He may have been testing them in the field, to determine their weaknesses. If not new—if he or his employer found a cache of ancient devices—these may still have been out to be tested. Or, as you say, he may have been overconfident with his devices.” She paused, obviously startled at her own thought. “Or… my angel, were you observed while this attempt on your life took place?”
“I… hmm. I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t see any scrying distortions, but I could have missed one in the rain.”
“Perhaps this attempt was not a test of these,” she shook one wrist, “but a test of you, as well.”
“Great. Just great. The last thing I need is competent assassins sizing me up!” I sighed. “Any ideas why the Prince of Byrne might want me dead?”
“I am sorry, my angel, but the hirelings did not know. They did not even know who they were to kill, much less why.” Tort shrugged. “They were concerned only with being paid.”
“We probably need to find out more about Byrne. Come to that, we probably need to find out more about all the cities in Rethven. As much as I hate the idea of being a politician…”
“I shall see to it,” Tort assured me, smiling warmly. “My angel has such terrible problems.”
“I think so,” I countered, smiling back. “But about the hired muscle. Did they know anything else?”
“I am sure they do, but they do not realize it.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I feel certain that they know far more, but they are thugs, bullies. They have heard and seen things that they do not know are significant, because they are significant to us, but not to them.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Not so, my angel, if you will allow me to draw forth their memories.”
Hmm. I remembered this from nowhere in particular—again. The process would replay their memories like playing back a virtual reality program, but the spellcaster would live through it exactly as if experiencing it. In so doing, it would wipe that chunk of memory from their minds. The process was also rather painful, and, occasionally, killed the subject.
On the one hand, I don’t like torturing people. On the other hand, they did try to kill me. I was planning to kill them anyway.
“Do it.”
I spent what was left of the early evening making a pest of myself with the shipwrights. They were used to making fishing boats for trips out on the Circle Sea. Applying the same requirements to a canal boat was silly. It doesn’t need to handle waves. It doesn’t need to use a sail—although, as I thought about it, there might be times a sail would actually be helpful. All it really needed to do was be hydrodynamic, have a good cargo deck and hitching point, and wheels along both sides—can’t have it rubbing against the side of the canal, after all.
There was much headscratching and more than a little muttering, but by the time I was done they were well on their way to building a canal barge. All I did was encourage them, really, and check on their progress. It helped that the woodcutter I’d met, Timon, had a half-dozen laborers helping him, thanks to my program for the rehabilitation and employment of the city’s homeless.
It’s almost a New Deal.
I also breezed through the smithy to meet Kavel and his family, at least briefly. My main purpose was to double-check and reinforce the spells on his forge and to order some parts made. Having given some thought to the bellows system, I decided to have a drum-based intake fan built. Rather than use a back-and-forth movement to pump a pair of bellows, a hollow cylinder with intake blades—rather like a jet engine—could be cranked at high speed to produce airflow.
Kavel and his sons got the idea without any trouble. They went right to work on it. I was impressed.
The wagonwrights, on the other hand, were still struggling with the plow design. It wasn’t really all that difficult, at least to me. I wanted, basically, a chariot. Attached to the back end of it, a row of plowshares would carve four (at least, in the prototype version) furrows at once. This would let the ploughman sit up front and steer the horses, while a pedal-lever would let him lift or lower the plowing portion on the turns.
They had some trouble with the idea of a wagon that low to the ground. Apparently, they had never heard of a chariot before. Worse, if it didn’t have an axle running under the thing, how would it stay up? And if you make the wheels tiny enough to let the axle run under the wagon, it won’t roll through fields; it will just mire itself. Madness! Utter madness!
(“I told Orville and I told Wilbur and now I’m telling you: That contraption will never work!”)
I refrained from pointing out I’d built more complicated things with Legos.
Instead, I did a lot of drawing on the wall with charcoal, carved a little, and reinvented medieval suspension systems. They were suitably impressed. It’s easy when you already know how.
All this kept my mind off my appointment with Tamara.
I hid from the sunset in Tort’s house. It seemed a good place to be if anything went wrong after my transformation. I’m not usually concern
ed, but a lot of weirdness happened the night before. As it was, nothing unusual happened. My heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing, and my flesh started to cool to room temperature. If anything, my transformation byproducts were lighter than expected; I only felt filthy, not completely disgusting.
Finally, something goes right.
After my transformation, I cleaned up with spells, sharpened my fingernails, shaved, and got ready for some flaming experimentation. It might be important in the very near future; Sparky might be in a fighting mood by now, and Amber would be at Tamara’s upcoming… funeral? Demise? Passing? Departure?
I need a word for it.
A candle burned my finger several times and I came to some conclusions. Fire burns me just fine. Even when I’m paying attention and concentrating on not being burned, even a candle can be painful. Bronze’s flames were equally unaffected. Hers aren’t magical in themselves; they’re perfectly normal fires generated by magical means.
A magical fire, on the other hand, burns me just as well as normal flames. I can’t seem to do my fire-deflecting trick with either kind.
Well, nuts.
I see only two real options. First, it may be that I’m just not trying hard enough. When I see impending incineration about to hit me, it’s possible I tap into reserves of power that I cannot consciously access—or, at least, that I haven’t figured out how to consciously access.
Second, it’s possible that I’m doing everything right, but I’m only resistant to divine fire. That, too, makes a sort of sense. Gods aren’t supposed to smite other gods, but anything the lower orders do to you is your problem.
I’m not sure which of these options I like better. They both have terrible implications.
I don’t even have a crown, and already my head is uneasy. Great.
To be on time for my appointment, I magically put a glossy polish on my black armor, added the fanciest cloak I could find, and made sure I was looking as close to regal as inhumanly possible. Then I went to the Temple of the Grey Lady.
The place was mobbed. Well, crowded, anyway. I wasn’t sure if Tamara knew the place was surrounded, or if she cared, so I didn’t try to disperse the crowd. Instead, Bronze paced forward, slowly, giving people plenty of time to make way. They were surprisingly quick about it. I’m not sure if that was for my benefit, or if they were just familiar with Bronze.
I dismounted at the doorway and Bronze occupied it. Tamara and Amber were waiting for me just inside. Tianna was nowhere in sight. Tamara wore a silver gown, Amber an orange-and-red one.
“Good evening,” I offered. Tamara smiled at me and held out her bony old hands. Amber merely nodded, expression unreadable. I couldn’t even tell what she was feeling when I looked through her flesh; her spirit was just a bright thing, shining. Her eyes seemed to glow, slightly. Was that from someone using her as a window? Possibly. I doubted one goddess would actively manifest in the house of another.
I took Tamara’s hands and kissed them.
“Are you ready?” Tamara asked.
“Am I ready?” I echoed. “How about you?”
“I have been for some years, dear one. I have only waited so long for you,” she told me. I nodded and turned to Amber.
“Are you okay with this?”
“It isn’t my decision,” she replied, coldly. I was impressed. Fire-witches aren’t known for their command of ice. I still couldn’t tell if she was angry at me, at Tamara, or at mortality in general.
“Maybe a better question to ask is if you want to be here for this. I’m okay with it,” I added, hurriedly, “but you aren’t required to observe, and I respect that you may not want to.”
“Tianna insisted on saying goodbye to her grandmother,” Amber said. “We’ll stay.”
“Where is she?”
“Chamber pot.”
“Ah. We’ll wait, then. Tamara? Do you want everyone else in here?”
“No, but thank you for asking.”
We moved to the altar while Bronze stayed in the doorway. Underneath the softly-smiling gaze of the statue, I wondered if the Grey Lady was actually paying attention. I suspected that She was.
Tianna came pelting back into the temple, trailing yellow flutters from her dress and ribbons of it in her hair.
“Sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorry.”
I smiled at her and beckoned her over. Amber held out her hand and Tianna took it.
“Remember,” Amber told her, “this is not ours to do. What he does now is the transition beyond the borders of our authority. Your grandmother has to go back around to the beginning.”
“I remember,” Tianna said, with a tone that said that she was both tired of hearing it and annoyed about the fact itself.
I sat down with Tamara on the stone bench in front of the statue. No blood grooves in this one, I noticed. People seldom die on a convenient schedule, so this was a more symbolic altar than a practical one.
Tamara took my hands in hers.
“Tort always called you her angel,” she said, softly, using the word arhia.
“Yes, I know.”
“I never thought you were an angel,” she said. “I never thought of you as a man, either. Not really. I could not shake the idea that you were a monster, no matter what the Mother wanted.”
“I have trouble with that myself. It’s okay.”
“Really?”
I grinned at her, showing teeth.
“I woke up and had these,” I told her. “Little things keep changing. So, yes, I keep thinking of myself as a monster. I’m also a man, though. Sometimes, that’s hard to reconcile, even for me, and I live in this skin! How much harder is it be for you, just looking from the outside?”
“Were you always this understanding?” she asked, head cocked to one side.
“Probably not. I don’t know. I’m a terrible judge of myself.”
“You always were.”
“Oh, thank you so much.”
Tamara laughed, a sound that might have come from her throat a hundred years ago.
“You are who you are,” she said, “and you have your purpose. My purpose here is done, and I am tired. Shall I rest now?”
That question hurt me more than I can say.
A few weeks ago—remember, I’ve been asleep for eighty-seven years; it seems like a few weeks ago to me—Tamara was young, beautiful, and about to have my children. Sure, we had some religious issues, but it was like living with an interfering mother-in-law. We would work it out. We were a couple, at the very least, and I felt we were more than that…
Weeks, and not many of them. I could easily measure it in days, if I cared to. That’s only enough time to wound my heart, not heal it; not even enough time to let it scab over, much less scar. I drink the blood of others. Who drinks from wounds in the heart? The gods? Demons? Or does it just drip unregarded and unwanted?
Now, my lovely Tamara, it’s time to die. And I get to be the one who kills you. Or, let’s be kind. I’m the one who is meant to take your soul from your body and escort you to the realm of the dead.
Murderer of my beloved? Or psychopomp for her? Can I convince myself that I’m doing her a favor? Or am I actually doing her a favor, and I just don’t realize it? What does happen to the soul of an excommunicated fire-witch when she dies?
Whatever happens to it, I decided that Sparky wasn’t going to get any say in the matter.
“Yes,” I said, softly. “Come with me.”
She put her arms around me and I hugged her close. She put her head on my shoulder.
“Tort’s angel,” she said, softly, “and my monster. We both love you. Amber and Tianna do, too. Amber will learn to show it.”
“She gets that problem from me, I think.”
“I am certain she does. You will be there for both of them, even so?”
“I’ll do my best to watch over them,” I assured her. She nodded into my neck.
“I am ready, my monster… and my angel.”
I gently extended my p
sychic tendrils to either side, like unfolding wings. The room seemed to turn grey as they spread wider and wider, thickening, darkening. I enfolded her like dark fog rolling over a meadow, engulfing her entirely in the incoming tide of black. A bright spark of white in a vast expanse of night, gleaming brilliantly, the painful pinprick of light left after a sun burns down to the core. Streamers of radiance swam out from it, spinning off like an accretion disk in reverse, shrinking it further, but making it burn brighter, ever brighter.
My teeth touched her skin, my tongue slid across the flesh, and blood gently flowed. I bit deeper, slowly, and the blood seemed to flee her body, hurrying into me.
Everything went away.
We were in the blackness together. I held her in my arms like a bride being carried over a threshold. She looked young again; her hair was a bright flame and her face unlined, more beautiful than I remembered. She laughed as the color slowly faded from her, glowing like the sky at sunset and fading to night.
The old woman stood in front of me, holding out her hand. She smiled at me.
“I knew this moment would come,” she said. “Well-met, Halar, one of the Lords of Night.”
Tamara and I both looked at her.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“That is the Grey Lady,” Tamara said, softly. The elderly figure nodded, still smiling. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember where I’d seen her before. In a great, gilded temple, I thought.
“And you’re going to take Tamara wherever it is she’s supposed to go?” I asked.
“I must do as I am meant to. We each have our purpose and function.”
Tamara’s colors faded slowly, turning her into a monochrome figure, all black and white and shades of grey. I set her on her feet and she held my hand.
“Maybe so,” I allowed, “but, if you would be so kind, explain the purposes and functions involved here.”
“Are you planning to be difficult about this mortal?” asked the Grey Lady.
“I’m not planning to be, but I want to know what she’s getting into,” I told her. “I’m not going to blindly turn her immortal soul over to someone I’ve never met without some assurances.”