by Garon Whited
Then the walls thickened, millimeter by millimeter. Corridors shrank as the walls closed in. Rooms grew smaller as the stone around them closed in, sealing them tight.
And then we stopped. Twelve thousand or so troops, scattered and divided inside the mountain, trapped in squads and platoons, sometimes just ones and twos, all locked in cells without doors. Let them crawl down a two-inch ventilation hole if they wanted out. Let them stab and hack and hammer at the walls; the stone would grow back more quickly than they struck it.
The ogres in the great hall did have those rams, though. Those could bash their way out through the main door. That was why I left four firepits smoldering and one burning. With the ventilation in the great hall sealed completely shut, the fires and the ogres used up their air rather quickly.
Ogres aren’t renowned for their intelligence. They are generally about as smart as a genius-level potato, possibly even a really intelligent fern. They make up this lack with brute strength and savagery, qualities most useful when given direction by someone else’s intelligence. With simple orders—“Keep that door shut and kill that guy if you see him,” for example—they don’t need much supervision.
Until something goes wrong, as it most certainly did.
A few troops were still in the outer city when I climbed out, but it was a minor tingle on the skin of the mountain. Maybe a hundred? Certainly no more than that. There was nothing above the top level of the city proper—no one on the road to the courtyard, nor anywhere above it.
Tomorrow, the mountain and I are going to have a long, long talk about redefining the defenses.
Today, however, I planned to take it relatively easy. There was a clear route from the shrine to the great hall. It twisted a lot to avoid pockets of captives, but it would do. The mountain was already unsealing the doors in the great hall and restoring normal air flow through it.
First, however, a cleaning spell. I reeked. It was almost as bad as the first time I woke up in that drawer. I’m no withering violet to demand hot showers and shampoo, but given the opportunity to not smell like a week-old corpse…
Once I had that sorted out, I burned the filth and directed the smoke and stench up through the exhaust air vent. This lightened my mood considerably.
Next, the elf. He was still alive and likely to remain that way. I checked him over with some care and disconnected him from the mountain. Since it was daytime, I used a spell to see his life; the force of it immediately started to rise. I connected him to the mountain again and let his vital force drain into the stone. It would keep him unconscious and out of trouble.
I walked up to the great hall. Sure enough, the hall was still full of smoke and noxious fumes. Huge bodies lay clustered by the outer door. As I said, ogres aren’t smart. They did notice that they were choking and tried to get out; several of their clubs were shattered into splinters where they tried to beat through the wall. Only one of the rams looked used, but the impacts were too far to the left; they were trying to beat through several yards of mountainside, not the door. The mountain had already healed the cracks and gouges they made.
I dragged huge bodies, one by one, away from the outer door, regretting my hand deficiency; I could have dragged two at a time. I tried to be patient as I cleared the door. A good shove opened it and even more fresh air poured in.
It was a beautiful afternoon. Having survived a full-on assault by an army might have enhanced my appreciation of it.
Still, it had rained sometime that morning, lending a clean smell to the air. The sun was out, the skies had a couple of bits of white fluff, the blue backdrop was vivid, and the plains stretched away in greenish-gold splendor. It was well worth the labyrinthine walk up from the shrine.
Perhaps even more delightful, there was no one waiting to kill me. Not so much as a single orku or galgar. Of course, they might just be hiding in the city; they hate bright light. But I didn’t see any, and no one was actually trying make me shuffle off my semi-mortal coil.
No matter. I took a pleasant walk up the stairs to the upper slopes, poked around a bit for berries and fruits—not much to be had, unfortunately, but every little bit helps—and wandered back down again to go back inside, munching all the way.
I didn’t bother to save anything for my elf-sausage. It might be a nice day outside, but I was still plenty pissed off about last night.
In the metals room, Bronze was doing very well. One foreleg looked welded to the wall where copper oozed out. Upon consideration, it looked more as though the mountain had trapped her leg in a fissure. But as the copper came out, it formed more leg, as though she was pulling her leg slowly from a crack in the wall. At that rate, she should have two whole legs—one rear, one front—before nightfall. Admittedly, it might be a while before the copper leg became truly bronze again—or truly Bronze again—but it was a start. Heating her up to the softening point and a lot of running would probably help.
Would it be helpful to give her actual joints? Hinges, for example, for her knees. Or would that work? A hinge involves separate pieces of metal. Bronze is a single, contiguous piece. Then again, that suit of armor T’yl enchanted is multiple pieces… and it’s a different order of golem—a robotic golem, rather than piece of living metal. Hmm. A living being has a knee joint that connects two bones, but the whole thing is still part of the overall system…
We’ll look into it later. Messing with her anatomy while she’s pulling herself together isn’t a good idea.
I spent some time petting her and explaining how pleased I was with her work. She was entirely satisfied to have helped. She was also more than a trifle annoyed with the weapons used against us, though. I assured her that some strategic intelligence was high on my list of things to do, and that someone was going to die horribly. She was content with that.
I also fed her whatever she wanted from the other metal piles. She didn’t really like eating large quantities of metal, but she forced it down because it was good for her. I presume there was a lot of tin, but she ate quite a lot from more than one pile, including the gold and silver. She even drank a very little bit of mercury.
Obviously, she’s a peculiar alloy of bronze. I’m not certain I can even call it bronze. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
While she continued to pull a copper leg out of the mountain, I went back down to the shrine. No changes, no problems. I checked the city’s spell to prevent scrying; that was also in good shape.
Looking at the elf-sausage, I had an idea. I looked at the globe of light floating near the ceiling. It was one of the enchanted lights the wizards guild had produced, so I wasn’t intimately familiar with it. I summoned it down to me and examined it. I didn’t exactly take it apart, but I unfolded the magical matrix and poked around with it for a while.
Any enchantment draws in ambient magic uses that power to perform its function. In this case, magic gets converted to electromagnetic radiation in the visible range. That’s not how a local magic-worker would explain it, but, fundamentally, that’s what a typical light spell does. It doesn’t take a lot of magical power; the actual energy content of typical illumination is pretty low. But the magical power it takes in—the enchantment sections of the magical construct—doesn’t have to be shunted through the magic-energy-to-light-energy converter section. With a couple of magical leads, the power it takes in can be rerouted to another spell.
I’m talking about it in wiring terms. Translating that into magical terms—magical symbols, a mandala, the proper words and gestures—was a bit more complicated. I had one big advantage: I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
I kludged something together and tested it on a fresh lighting spell; it appeared to work.
I then wired it up to my anti-scrying spell and watched it run for a bit. Yes, it was a small trickle of power, especially given the size of the spell in question. Still, it was a steady stream of power flowing into the spell, and that was a good thing.
Eventually, someone would probably come up to the city an
d try to break the spell; sadly, spells are relatively easy to ruin. In the meantime, this would make it even harder to overtax it with repeated scrying attempts. Every time someone tried to look through the barrier, it would expend power to send a bright, fiery image back to the source point; this would help recharge it between attempts.
Then again, the power level in my scrying defenses looked the same as when I first cast the spell. Was it more efficient than I thought? Or had no one even tried, yet? Come to that, did the guy who was spying on me in the great hall manage to survive? Or did his boss—assuming he had a boss—demand a report and discover a corpse? Or did the smoke coming from his laboratory make someone wonder what was going on?
Given what I tried with the last spy, it was possible no one has even tried to see inside the mountain yet.
I really wish I knew if I’d fried him rare, well-done, or extra crispy. If he was alive, he might be arguing against trying again. That would be a good thing. On the other hand, his charred corpse might also make a good argument against trying again.
Still, I remembered him from somewhere. He did look familiar… maybe a family resemblance to someone I knew? Possibly. Likely, even.
Okay, so I could take an enchantment’s energy-gathering components—let’s be inaccurate but simple: a magical power generator—and connect it to a spell. The generator was much too small for the spell, but, kind of like wiring up solar panels for the house, it was a little bit extra that just kept coming in, decreasing the overall bill. It really needed a much bigger power source.
On the other hand, I had an elf-sausage. I tried running his vitality through another of my kludged-together conversion spells and feeding it into the scry-shield. It worked. I had to fiddle with it to avoid sucking the life completely out of him, but it worked.
Seemed fair.
With that sorted out, I went back to the metals room and Bronze.
Bronze is an enchanted statue, not just a spell, so she draws in ambient magical power on her own. On the other hand, that enchantment is, fundamentally, a containment structure for living, vital force. The enchantment is what makes her magical; the vital force is what makes her alive.
I’m not going to get into whether or not she has a soul. I’m both ignorant and apathetic about that: I don’t know, and I don’t care.
She regenerates that vital essence over time in some fashion I don’t understand, much like a biologically-living being does. I started the process going by pouring the lives of several horses and a bit of mine into her during her creation. I didn’t really understand what I was doing when I made her, and I’m not sure I could do it again.
Today, I added more from my own storehouse of physical vitality.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t want me to go to the trouble.
I don’t often tell her to shut up and do as she’s told. Actually, I can’t think of a single occasion I ever have, until now.
“You’re wounded,” I told her. “I’m fixing you. Yes, I know you’re fixing yourself, but I’m going to help, because I want to help, and you’re going to let me, because I want to help. Don’t argue with me. Just suck it up and get better as quickly as is metallically possible. Got it?”
Can a horse look sheepish? Yes.
I settled down next to Bronze and drew circles, symbols, and lines on the floor. I would transfuse some of my living force into her while I rested. It meant I wouldn’t really rest; it was like working at a constant level, just enough to keep me feeling tired. Kind of like pedaling one of those generator-bikes at a pace that keeps your heart rate up, but isn’t exhausting.
I had a nap while Bronze regenerated.
Sunset woke me early on in the process, still alive. I sat up slowly, tired and still hungry. I disconnected my transfusion spell to Bronze and stretched. Most of my physical needs would self-correct in a bit, but it was an ugly sunset. Hot needles stabbed through me and especially through my nonexistent hand. As darkness fell outside, black tendrils of spiritual force extended from the end of my arm, writhing into the shape of bones, blood vessels, nerves, muscles. They formed a nightmare hand of writhing, tight-knit tendrils, quivering at the end of my arm. I flexed it, opening and closing it, almost fascinated enough to ignore the sunset.
The sunset felt like a thousand electric sparks crawling over my flesh, making it twitch and ripple. I didn’t quite convulse, but I did tremble and shiver violently throughout the process. Oozing, gooey sweat formed a yellow-grey layer over my skin.
The sunset finished. All my miseries diminished with the last arc of the sun on the horizon, faded as it crept lower, and vanished when darkness fell.
Slowly, everything settled into the normal silence of a nightlord’s corpse. My tendril-hand unraveled, withdrew. I wondered for a moment if I could have used it like a hand if I hadn’t been so distracted. Was that my body’s way of marking out everything that needed to be fixed? Did that happen every night, internally, as my regeneration took stock of how I didn’t match what I was supposed to be? Or was this just a reaction to actual missing pieces?
I got up, careful not to breathe, and cleaned myself thoroughly. I didn’t bother with my disguise spells; it was going to be that kind of night.
Bronze had two functioning legs. The other front leg was already partly recovered, leaving only that and one rear leg to finish. I was very pleased. It was obvious from the color where the legs were repairs instead of originals, but she was certain that would fix itself. A number of dents and dings had also filled in. She was still missing an ear, but the damage no longer looked like a fatal head wound.
I stroked her nose and cheek.
“Are you going to be okay here while I go kill everything?” She nodded. She didn’t like me going alone, but she, too, wanted them dead. Hers was a simple desire to make them dead; my emotion had cooled from a roaring fire to bright coals. I tried not to let that interfere with my thinking.
“I’ll bring you back anything they have that isn’t iron,” I promised. Some bronze belt buckles or copper coins, possibly; those would be fine. She likes crunchy bits with her combustibles, the way most humans like condiments on their food.
I made a mental note to get her something flammable to munch on, too.
I wrapped a set of requests in a spell, pushed it into the mountain, and left it to its work while I went to get my sword out of the canal.
When I opened one of the outer door, there was a lot of clanking and scuffling. I stuck my head out to see what was waiting for me and found about half my knights in the upper courtyard. They had an impressive collection of captured weaponry, all of it pointing at me. I stepped outside and they shifted from attack stances to salutes. I beckoned to Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar. They approached and did the one-knee, fist-to-floor thing.
“Get up. Didn’t I tell you to get everyone back to Mochara?”
They traded a glance. Torvil answered.
“Sire, you ordered us to see to the safety of the people.”
“By taking them to Mochara,” I added.
“No, Sire. You only said to see them to safety. Once they were safely away from the enemy…”
“Yes?”
“Well… it was pointed out that we were leaving you to do battle alone.”
“Really.”
“Yes, Sire. Those with horses chose to return; most of the rest continued to escort the people down the canal.”
“Hmm. And what have you been doing since you got back here?”
“Killing the enemies of our King.” There was murmured agreement from everyone.
Actually, I thought that might be a good thing, but I didn’t want to encourage them. Still, how many of the opposition might have been outside when I locked the mountain down? A hundred? Two hundred?
“How many did you find?” I asked.
“One hundred and sixty-two, by our count,” Torvil said. “We have not lost anyone, but a few are still sorely wounded.”
“I see you managed to get hold of some re
al weapons.”
“We saw a number of dead orku along the western canal,” Torvil told me. “We salvaged much from them, then went hunting for smaller patrols. We overwhelmed each of them and took their weapons, as well, rather than attempt an attack in force.”
“And we kicked their balls up between their ears!” Kammen added. There was enthusiastic agreement from the rest and a few blades waved in the air; I half-expected a oo-rah! from someone. To be fair, it was a little bit impressive. I might be dismayed that they went into battle before they were ready—well, before I thought they were ready; I was obviously mistaken—but they did a good job. A damn fine job, in fact.
“Fine,” I sighed, pretending to an unwilling agreement. “All right, you can make yourselves useful. Torvil, send someone down to the western bridge and search the canal for my sword; it’s probably between the bridge and the mountain. Also, look around for some iron shot. If you find any with magic in them, bring them here, but be careful; the magic is very fragile and instantly deadly if it fails.” I held up my shortened left arm. “You’ll be careful, right?”
“Yes, Sire!” he assured me, staring at the injury.
“Good. Also, send someone else down to the main gate to collect any of the square-ish things—the magical ones. While you’re at it, if you find any pieces of my horse down by the main gate, I want those brought up, too. Any questions?”
“No, Sire,” he lied. He had a lot of questions, just none he was willing to ask.
“Go.” He went. “Kammen, do we have any prisoners?”
“Nope, Sire. Sorry. They didn’t care to be captured. And, ah, nobody really wanted to, I guess, Sire.”