by Garon Whited
“Halar,” Tamara whispered, “this is the Grey Lady.” As if that meant anything to me, and as if I should care. I ignored her.
“So,” I went on, “if you would be so kind as to explain a bit, I’ll do my best to be cooperative.”
“Why should I? She is here.”
“But so am I, and she’s mine.”
“Oh, really?” asked the Grey Lady. “You interest me strangely, godling. Do you think you can keep her from me?”
“Nope. But you might wonder if it was worth the fight.”
That stopped her for a moment, and it shocked Tamara.
“You know you will lose, but you will challenge me anyway?” she asked.
“I don’t want to challenge you. I just want a couple of questions answered. Which one sounds like more work?”
The Grey Lady looked at me, unsmiling and thoughtful.
“You are clever,” she said, finally, “and bolder than I thought. What is it that you wish to know?”
“Tamara, here, is about to die. What happens? How are you involved? How am I involved? What’s supposed to be the ‘natural order’ of things?”
The Grey Lady folded her arms together and pressed a finger to her lips in thought. Tamara squeezed my hand, looking scared. I squeezed her hand as well, hoping to reassure her. She didn’t seem reassured, but I suppose I can’t blame her for that.
“All you want,” said the Grey Lady, “is to know the truth about the mystery of death for the race of men.”
“If I’m involved in sending people there, or through, or whatever, shouldn’t I know what I’m doing?”
“It is true that you are no longer a mortal man,” she mused. “Yes… yes, I choose to tell you.”
“Thank you. Please do.”
“When the Lords of Night came to this world with men, they consumed the power of men’s blood and souls. The blood fueled their bodies and the souls fueled their powers—or so it was believed. The soul merely passes through a Lord of Night. What your kind truly fed upon were their lives, their experiences, not their souls. You constantly… emit? Yes, you emit the soul-stuff from yourself, purged of all experience and life, so that it may rejoin the great ocean of light, refined and purified, to be reborn.
“Without the Lords of Night to aid them—whether through such feeding, or in the manner you have chosen for this one—their living souls must journey to the underworld, there to travel in darkness and cold, reliving their lives piece by piece, leaving each moment in glittering crystals, frozen behind them. There, the things that live beyond the edge of the world devour the frozen crystals of memory and hunger for more.
“My purpose is to see to it that souls given into my care reach the underworld without incident. They do not wander the lands of light to haunt the living, nor are they captured and used by magicians or sorcerers. They arrive safely and quickly, there to be refined and returned to the great soul sea, the ocean of light, and be reborn.”
I looked at Tamara, a black-and-white image of youth and beauty. She smiled sadly and nodded.
“I will miss you,” she said.
“And I, you.” I turned to the Grey Lady. “So, if I consume her soul, it’s quicker?”
“It is. It is also painful. If you will take my advice, do not do it.”
“Why?”
“You are still full of soul-stuff. It emerges from you, like your breath set aflame. It will take some time before you are done with Zirafel and the Golden Temple.” The Grey Lady smiled and held out her hand. “Please, let me take care of her. She has been a good priestess, both kind and gentle to those who come to my care. I promise, she will not suffer more than any other soul, and less than most.”
A Goddess just asked nicely. She even said, “Please.” And She didn’t have to.
I looked at Tamara. She looked at me. She seemed unable to speak. We stayed like that for some time, recognizing the last time for what it was. It was hard, extremely hard, but I let go of her hand.
“Goodbye,” I whispered.
Lights. Taste. Touch. The Temple of the Grey Lady. The body in my arms.
I licked at the wounds, just to be neat, and laid her pale, pale body down on the altar. I folded her shrunken hands together and adjusted her gown and hair. I stepped back.
A tiny hand insinuated itself into mine. I looked down at Tianna. She looked up at me.
“Why are you sad, Grandpa?”
“Because I’m selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“I’m going to miss her.”
“Oh. But you’ll still be here when she comes back,” she pointed out.
That caught me by surprise. Clever girl. I hadn’t thought of that.
“True, but she won’t know me.”
Amber moved up to the other side of Tianna and took her hand.
“Come along. We’re done here.”
“No,” I said. Amber and Tianna both looked at me. “You’re not done. I want her cremated.”
“We can do that tomorrow,” Amber said, and I held up my free hand.
“We’re not doing it at dawn or sunset. The Mother was pis—was angry with her, so we’re not going to do this where she can be offended by having to watch. You can do it right now, in front of the Grey Lady and me, or I will.”
Amber looked at me with an unreadable expression. Not neutral, but an expression I simply couldn’t read. Even watching her spiritual interior didn’t help; it was still all bright white and yellow, like looking into a star. Did her eyes give off a fiery glint?
Tianna, on the other hand, didn’t have her mother’s sense of hesitation. I saw the bright flare of spiritual light between Amber and I, and Amber’s expression turned to one of surprise.
Tianna’s hair blazed.
Amber wanted to say something, but she checked herself and watched, eyes narrowed as she observed Tianna’s actions carefully.
Fire bloomed on the altar, first orange, then yellow, then white, blazing higher and higher until I wondered if the beams of the roof were going to have problems. They did.
I raised my free hand and started working. Immaterial tendrils shot up, untouched by the flames, to shake and pry at the shakes and shingles of the roof. I gestured with a very basic spell, punching the roof, as well. A hole opened as a chunk of roof gave way, debris flying up or deflected to the sides; dozens of tiles slid down the pitch of the roof outside.
I hurried around the altar, hands upraised, to wrap it in a makeshift circle of power, extended upward in a cylinder, through the roof. This containment reflected heat, raising the interior temperature further while shielding the structure of the building itself. Now the flames could roar up unimpeded. I stirred the column of air inside the containment spell, making the flames spin, whirling as they shot skyward.
The heat didn’t seem to bother me. Interesting. Tianna doesn’t generate mundane flames, apparently.
Bronze stepped back out through the doorway as wind started to whistle in, swirling madly around the room. Ashes stirred and flaked away in the center of the flames, dancing in the air, spinning in a vortex up through the roof and into the sky. A column of fire, a whirlwind of flame and ash, rose toward the stars.
In minutes, Tianna burned the body to ash and the wind sucked it up, scattering it into the sky. Tianna let out a huge breath and the flames died. I let go the whirlwind spell and the wind died with it. Amber relaxed her vigilance; I think she was worried about Tianna losing control or losing focus.
I knelt beside Tianna. She was covered in sweat everywhere but in her hair; that was perfectly dry once it was extinguished.
“Thank you very much, Tianna. That was very well done. Even Firebrand couldn’t have done better,” I told her. She looked pleased at the praise.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. She sounded tired. I stood up again.
“Thank you both. I appreciate you being here. I know Tamara was glad to have you here, too.”
“I would not miss the opportunity to say farewell
to my mother,” Amber said, “and Tianna, her grandmother.”
“Shall I see you both back to your home?”
“Yes!” Tianna said, just as Amber said, “No, we’ll be fine.”
“But Mom! I want to ride!”
“It’s no trouble,” I added, “and Tianna seems tired.”
“Oh… all right,” Amber gave in. We stepped outside.
The crowd had spread out to get a look at the fire-fountain coming through the roof. I made a mental note to have the hole fixed. When the crowd saw us, everyone knelt. A wave of descent spread out from us like dominos toppling. Amber barely blinked. Tianna stood still and stared. I don’t think anyone ever knelt to her before.
I was very pleased to notice that people went to one knee, not both. I was less pleased and more confused at the gesture. Some used both hands, fingers interlaced, thumbs back along the temples, as though shielding their eyes from wind or rain. Others used only one hand, placing it like the brim of a baseball cap. Either way, they looked down, hiding their eyes from us. I’d seen Parva do it, and a few others. I wondered whether it was meant for me or for Amber.
I helped Tianna up onto Bronze, bounced up behind her, and swung Amber into place behind me. Amber wrapped her arms around my chest, pressed her face to my back, and squeezed. Tianna kicked her heels and jerked on Bronze’s mane.
Bronze humored her by rearing up, pawing at the air, blowing fire, and galloping off. She was very good about not stepping on anything soft, but headed through the thinnest section of the crowd—the people got out of her way, and she went slowly enough to let them. Once free of the crowd, we circled around much more swiftly to get back to the Temple of Flame. Tianna, of course, screamed the equivalent of “Whee!” the whole way. Amber kept quiet and hung on as though her life depended on it. I don’t think she likes to ride.
We sat on Bronze for a bit just outside the house. I chatted with Tianna for a moment while her mother pulled herself together. When Amber slid down Bronze’s side, I dismounted and helped Tianna down. We said our good-nights and the two of them went inside, Tianna talking a mile a minute while Amber pretended to listen.
Outside, the wind was picking up and smelled like rain. I stroked Bronze’s nose. She seemed amused, then nuzzled me when she caught my mood. A tongue like a hot metal file stroked the side of my face just in front of my ear.
“Thanks.”
She turned sideways to me so I could mount. I bounced up onto her back and she set out at a walk. If I wanted to talk about it, she would be happy to listen.
“It’s more than one thing,” I told her. “It’s that I’ll miss Tamara, sure. That’s a big thing. For me, it’s like we were just settling in about a month ago. Now she’s aged, died, and left behind a grown daughter and a granddaughter. I’m not adjusted to that yet, and the thing with Amber is just awkward and weird.”
Bronze understood. Chalk it up to being a piece of me on four legs.
“Then there’s my conversation with the Grey Lady.”
That was news to her. She perked up her ears to tell me to go on.
“The implications are staggering. She as much as told me that I was doing my job. My job as a Lord of Night.”
That was very interesting, of course.
“Now, I’m wondering. Why am I here? The place is getting on fine without me. Sure, maybe I can help, but they don’t need me, not like a boatload of emigrants did when I took them out of Rethven. I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, I really should go home.”
Whatever I wanted to do would be fine with her. But wasn’t this place home?
“I don’t know. With Tamara gone… with almost everybody I knew gone… it doesn’t feel like home. I mean, it’s fun to redesign a city and improve the local technology and play with assassins—sort of—but I miss being able to send out for pizza, call friends up on the phone, surf the internet, order things online, all that stuff. Medieval is nice, in a retro sort of way, but I also miss my technological society.”
Of course, Bronze had never encountered a technological society, but if I liked it, it had to be good.
“I just came here to get a bunch of unpleasant jerks off my back, avenge Sasha, stop the repeated attempts on my life, that sort of thing. And I have, I guess. At least, I don’t think anyone here will come after me across dimensional barriers, so if I go home, that should end it.”
That was for me to judge, but Bronze would happily test it with me, if I wanted.
“I just… I don’t know. Maybe I should look into a way to go back.”
If I wanted to, that was what we would do.
“But I still think I could do some good here.”
That’s true. I could do that and go back when I was done.
“Plus, I did promise to be as good a king as I can manage.”
She agreed that keeping one’s word is important, yes.
“I didn’t promise to stay, though. I could just get things on a good track and let them all just carry on, couldn’t I?”
If that was what I wanted, Bronze was behind me all the way.
“Maybe I will. I’ll think about it.”
I went on for a while and she walked us all over town while I did, avoiding people as she did so. She’s an excellent listener, but not much of a talker.
“No real advice for me, hmm?”
Naturally not, but she would happily listen to my troubles and stomp, kick, or torch anything that would make my life easier for being stomped, kicked, or torched.
Oddly enough, that did make me feel better.
Back at Tort’s, the place was quiet. Tort had gone to bed, the servants were asleep, and my three knights were passed out in exhaustion.
I clucked to myself at their state and made sure their spells were fresh and running well. I could see the flowing life inside them and the ways their bodies were changing. It all looked pretty good…
I had an idea. If I can copy-and-paste a mirror image of Tort’s foot for her body to grow a new one, can I copy-and-paste the pattern of my muscle fibers into someone else for their body to grow into?
Maybe. If their own cells are growing it, there’s no rejection issue, as with a transplant…
I’m not doing that until I can explain it to someone and get their informed consent. I suspect I’ll get volunteers for any project I want to try, though. Still, I want to experiment a little before potentially risking someone’s disfigurement or death with my wild idea.
Instead, I made a few minor adjustments for bone and muscle density, tendon strength and mountings, and some improved lung function. Added to it, a little encouragement to develop their voluntary nervous systems could add a bit of speed to their reflexes, maybe even their rate of learning for physical skills. They were coming along nicely.
Tort left out for me a rather awful map and a number of handwritten notes.
Maps around here aren’t artistic things with accurate representations of features in scale; they’re lines on parchment that are more like directions done in icons rather than words. I mean, a line for your route of travel, a few triangles for mountains, some curves for hills, a square for a town, and some wavy lines for the river you have to cross—maybe with a couple of lines parallel to the road for a bridge—and absolutely no idea of how long it will take to go that far. That’s not what I call a map.
Is the lack of any sort of compass partly to blame for the lack of cartographic art? They can navigate by the stars, but without a compass to provide a steady bearing, does that change how they perceive—or fail to perceive—the geography? North is vaguely that direction, west is toward the sunset… if they don’t have a way, or don’t have a desire, to nail down directions more precisely, can they make accurate maps?
The map I looked at implied they couldn’t.
I flipped through the notes, reading. One note told me Wallin came by and Tort checked him over; he was doing well. My cancer patient’s worst complaint was about his sinuses. I’m going to call that a win and feel
good about it.
I also read a bit about the trade between Mochara, Baret, and a couple of the other coastal cities. Baret was the one we traded with the most, since it was easily the closest. Our boats could make port there without much travel and with no customs troubles. Other cities occasionally had merchants come to us when those cities weren’t trying to do something militaristic and unpleasant to us.
Our main exports are food, magic, and education, all of which generally required other people to come here to make a deal. Our other exports were varied. One of our crops was a flax-type plant, and we made a lot of linen cloth; we make good underwear, apparently. Dazhu furs were also very popular, but we bartered for the majority of those from the plains tribes, which raised the export price. A spicy pepper plant grew on this side of the Eastrange, but very sparsely; the ground-up powder was amazingly popular. We also produced the highest quality steel available, even if it wasn’t in any great quantity. We also have an excellent dark beer. To my surprise, we didn’t export much of the beer. It went bad rather quickly, so shipping it was a problem. I recalled something about bottled beer being pasteurized, or something, and resolved to check my memory banks for more details.
To my surprise, we did not have a deal with the magicians’ academy in Arondael. They didn’t like the idea of a bunch of tinkering madmen being “educated” to pull at loose threads in the fabric of reality, much less such people being sent to study with them. Magicians memorize highly efficient, carefully-worked-out spells that will do exactly what they want and nothing else. Wizards make things up as they go along, hopefully remember how they did it, and occasionally get unexpected side effects.
Magicians think that’s dangerous, and I certainly see their point. It’s particularly dangerous, in fact, with the power levels at which magicians can operate. Explosions aren’t so bad; that at least eliminates the idiot responsible. Blowing holes in the barrier between the world and the Things that live in the darkness outside the world… well, that also eliminates the idiot responsible, but it has some rather more far-reaching effects.