by Garon Whited
Sir Sedrick didn’t know what to make of the place. He kept looking around as though expecting a roast baby to be served, or a human sacrifice brought before me in chains. Possibly even a sudden rush to grab him and drag him up to me for my dessert.
I already had a quiet word with my cadets to explain my Hero problem and what I wanted them to do. During the explanation, they started out irate at Sir Sedrick, but rapidly came around to vastly amused. I had to exact a promise from Kammen that he would not laugh, but do his best to actually help. He promised, but his huge grin gave me reservations about his ability. Seldar promised to step on his toes when needful. I get the feeling Seldar does that kind of thing a lot.
Poor Sir Sedrick. All through dinner, people came up to him and asked if he had a plan. Everyone offered him some advice or gave him their opinion. Nobody offered any criticism of his goal; if he wanted to try and kill the King, that was his business. And had he given any thought to what he was actually going to say? Something as momentous as this deserved some proper oratory. Maybe a minstrel could help compose a good speech, or even an epic poem? And do you have a banner? Banners look good. We could conjure a wind for you, to make sure it’s displayed properly. Would you like some retainers, temporarily? We can turn out in armor and stand there behind you to help you look impressive. Or, we could form an honor guard! You could march down a lane between us. Wouldn’t that look great?
Flabbergasted. That’s the word. He graciously equivocated, not accepting or refusing, but promised to consider all the offers. I felt sorry for him.
Tianna also got her share of attention. Quite a few people came up to the high table to bow and introduce themselves. She warmed up to the role of princess pretty well. I got the impression that most of the people present didn’t spend much time in Sparky’s temple. Tianna wasn’t sure what to do—well, I’m not an expert on etiquette, either. I have the advantage of being King; if I do it, it must be right. I encouraged her to greet people politely; I also told her not to worry about remembering them. They would introduce themselves again if need be. She seemed relieved. I’m not sure she’s met that many people in her life, much less at one dinner.
The dinner was marred by only one real incident. A young lady, serving at the tables, bumped into another one and spilled half a pitcher of watered wine down the back of a cadet’s neck. He yelped in surprise and turned, angrily, to strike her across the face with the back of his hand.
I stood up, drew my sword, and slapped the flat of it down on the table with a ringing whack! The music died a strangled death and everyone turned to me. I pointed my sword at the former cadet, a guy named Terrel.
“You! Come here. And you,” I added, to the girl, as she started to rise from where the blow had landed her. They both came up to the table. Terrel did the kneeling thing and rose; the girl curtseyed. I remained standing and looked down the length of my blade at him, keeping it pointed at his eyes.
“Tell me why you, who once hoped to be a knight in my service, struck a defenseless girl,” I ordered Terrel. He gulped and paled; his knees wobbled. He already knew he was in trouble; I think he realized then just how much trouble he was in.
“She, she, poured a pitcher of wine down my back, Your Majesty.” Oh, yes, he was nervous.
“Did you do this thing?” I asked her.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, stuck halfway between crying and screaming. “It was an accident! I swear it!”
“I know. Terrel, what damage has been done to you?”
“Eh? None, I suppose, Your Majesty.”
“Girl. Show me your cheek.” It was a lovely shade of crimson and was probably going to turn an even prettier shade of purple.
“Look at her, Terrel,” I told him. “There’s your handiwork for—what? Being wet? Do you think a blow like that is the right response to being damp? Do you think she’s earned that mark?”
When your angry-sounding King asks you a question like that, there’s only one right answer. Terrel wasn’t an idiot, so he gave it.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said, and hung his head.
“Very well. What is your name, girl?”
“Battae, Your Majesty,” she said, thoroughly scared.
“Battae, from now until sunset tomorrow, Terrel is at your service.” I eyed Terrel. “He will be delighted to help you with any and all of your duties, chores, or tasks. You will find him happy, even eager to be of service to you in all your daily doings. You have only to tell him what you are to do, and he will spring into action to assist you, starting right now with helping you serve all our guests.
“Isn’t that right, Terrel?”
Again, there was only one right answer.
“I am honored to be of service to the lady,” he replied, sounding incredibly sincere. I sheathed my sword and sat down.
“Go,” I told him, and he rose to offer Battae his arm, as though she were a noblewoman. I gestured at the musicians in the middle of the hall, and they resumed their performance.
“Grandpa?” Tianna asked, under the music.
“Hmm?”
“Why didn’t you hit him like he hit her?”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked, surprised.
“Wouldn’t that be fair?” she asked. “You’re an angel of justice, too, aren’t you?” The word she used was arhela. “That’s what I heard. Don’t you at least hit people who displease you?
“Well, sometimes, yes,” I admitted, “but hitting him won’t help Battae. Terrel has to… hmm. He’s the one who incurred a debt to her; he’s the one who has to pay it. He hit her, which cost her some small bit of life as she heals it. He should spend at least as much to make up for what he did.”
“I could just fix her cheek,” Tianna offered. “So could you.”
“I know. It’s about fifty-fifty that Battae or Terrel can do it, too. But fixing it isn’t what I had in mind. I want him to see that mark and remember what he did, all day, and why he’s being made to do things that he probably regards as beneath him. Maybe he’ll have a little more respect for people he thinks are below him, now; at the very least, he’ll treat them better. And it also shows everyone else who thinks they might be a knight, someday, that they need to be…” I paused, thinking, trying to find the word. “Gallant. Courteous. Even noble, in the sense of holding themselves to a higher moral standard.”
Tianna looked troubled.
“I don’t think I understand.”
“I want them all to be nice to people, unless the person deserves to be thrashed.”
“Oh!” she said. “Okay, I think I understand what you want.”
“That’ll do for now,” I assured her. I glanced at Sir Sedrick. The poor man was having a terrible time reconciling his mission with his observations. I returned to my dinner.
Tort let me get through another plate before she leaned close to get my attention.
“My angel?”
“Yes?”
“I am not certain why T’yl is not awake. To the best of my knowledge, he should be. When night falls, may I ask that you look in on him as your first order of business?”
“I’ll do that. Anything else of note going on?”
“I have looked at the mammoth shield you have erected,” she said, sounding more than a little impressed. “It is ingenious, as well as huge. It has also been the subject of many scrying attempts since it was erected. I believe it to be entirely efficacious, at least for now.”
“For now?” I repeated.
“When someone finally discovers the way it functions, it can be counteracted, eventually.”
“Well, that’s to be expected. I’ll come up with something different when that happens.”
“You say that casually, my angel.”
“Am I not also an angel of invention?” I offered, jokingly.
“Oh. I had not thought of it.” She looked thoughtful for several seconds. “Indeed you are,” she agreed, seriously, and went back to her food.
I silently cursed
myself for adding yet another thing to the list.
Dinner went through sunset, which was hard on Tianna. Sundown is the usual bedtime for people; the adults were going to be up late, tonight, but she had to go to bed. I would have let her stay up late, but this was her first time getting to visit and I wanted her mother to allow another one. We excused ourselves to much rising and bowing and curtseying.
This was not met with an overabundance of enthusiasm on Tianna’s part. Bedtime in the middle of a party is never welcome. She restrained any pyrotechnic disappointment, however. She’s a surprisingly responsible little girl. Maybe growing up knowing that you can incinerate people teaches responsibility; I don’t know.
We went to my chambers where I promptly headed for the bathroom—sunset just started. After soaking in a hot tub for the change, I dressed in my new, freshly-repaired armor. It fit nicely; I couldn’t find anything that needed adjusting. I also noticed that someone had stitched slits for my talons in the fingertips of the gauntlets. Someone was due some points for initiative, there.
That same someone—Tort, I believe—had also furnished my chambers. I hadn’t really thought about it in advance of inviting Tianna to stay over. I was just going to improvise. Camping isn’t a bad call for someone her age, for example. Still, I was just as glad to put her in what passed for a real bed: a bed-sized niche in the wall.
Why Tort bothered to put bedding on that stone shelf, I don’t know. It’s not like I sleep. Well, not often. I suppose it’s better to have it and not need it…
All of the furniture was obviously imported—there wasn’t time to make all of it at that level of refinement in Karvalen. There were two wardrobes—one of them for armor, the other for softer garments—and a rack for swords and daggers. The rack had a spot for my current sword and a spot for something considerably larger and heavier. That was a nice touch.
There was also a desk and a sort of filing cabinet. The cabinet was a set of drawers, six wide and six high, each drawer about a foot across and four inches high. It might be useful if the paper mill ever got going; I already had them collecting old rags for making the paper pulp. I just needed a waterwheel to power the pulping machine…
The receiving room had a few rugs thrown about, another heavy chair for me, and a pair of couch-like things—padded benches with backs. Pews, perhaps.
My terrace also had a couple of fragile-looking metal chairs and one hefty wooden one, set around a wire-mesh table. I wondered how Tort got the door open. Probably just a polite request; she’s good at that. I also wondered who she got to make the metal furniture; I didn’t think anyone had time for that sort of thing. Or did she just buy it off someone?
I decided that Mochara needed some help when it came to furniture-making. It all looked durable, but I had doubts about its comfort. Tianna didn’t have any complaints about the bed, though. I wondered what her room looked like. Did she even have a room of her own?
All this was a quick once-over as I put her to bed. She insisted on a lullaby, though, so I sat beside her on the bed and did my best. She likes “Molly Malone” and “The Gypsy Rover,” despite the fact I didn’t have time to translate them. When she was satisfied with my attempt, I kissed her forehead and hurried down to see T’yl.
The elf-body lay on a slab someone padded with blankets as a makeshift bed. Several ropes and an armed guard were also involved. It was probably T’yl in there, but if he was having identity issues with an elven brain, we didn’t want him wandering about.
I sat down next to the bed and dismissed the guard to the hallway. Then I looked him over. The body was functioning perfectly, aside from being hungry. As for the internal connections, T’yl’s soul was definitely in there. The patterns and movement of his soul were also running, although I did notice that everything was rather sluggish. Maybe being contained in a crystal, in stasis, took a while to shake off? Was he just having trouble getting up to operating speeds? Or was he going through a hard reboot and still doing his POST?
Before I tried jump-starting him with extra energy, I decided to reexamine all the connections. That took a while, especially since I was going over the seams of each connection with some attention to detail. He wasn’t leaking anywhere that I could discover. The connections seemed to have merged nicely into the flesh. Everything seemed in order. I was encouraged by the number of minor connections that had found their own anchor points; he was obviously settling in well and making himself at home. It was just happening very slowly—much more slowly than I expected from my previous experiments.
Very gently, I nudged him with a little bit of vitality, on the order of a cup of coffee. I accompanied this with a message: Hey, T’yl. Wake up.
There was a definite uptick in the movement of his energy patterns, but no response. It occurred to me that he might also be pretty depleted from being held in stasis; most forms of energy have some sort of movement to them. If he was diminished enough so that the crystal only held his pattern, rather than the full power of his soul, he might be in the spiritual equivalent of a coma, but maybe one I could deal with.
Hmm, thought I.
I could see two good ways to deal with the problem, if that really was the problem. First, I could just ask Tianna to push vital energy into him until he woke up. The only trouble with that was that Tianna might not quite have the hang of dealing with the difference between vitality, spiritual energy, and the stuff of souls. She’s human, and that doesn’t seem to be something humans deal with at all readily.
The other option was to get one of my galgar prisoners, rip the soul out of him, shred it until the patterns were obliterated, and then pour the pureed remains into T’yl’s energy system. If I shredded it thoroughly enough, it shouldn’t have any galgar remnants to interfere with T’yl’s self. As a bonus, it pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t pour too much energy into his system and accidentally overload it. That should be hard to do with any magician—that Rite of Ascension really gives them a workout—but I don’t have any concrete numbers to go by.
I’m going to fix that, someday.
I called in the guard, wandered down to prisoner storage, shredded T’yl’s breakfast, gathered it up in tendrils much like gathering up handfuls of sugar, and strolled back up to T’yl’s room. I let my tendrils loosen a bit, dribbling soul-stuff into one of the lesser connections that hadn’t quite found a spot, yet. Very slowly—which was exactly what I wanted—the energy dripped into his pattern. I watched it drip in, spread throughout, and brighten it. When I was done, I found a good attachment point for that connection and bound it into the body as well.
T’yl. It’s me. Are you in there?
Something stirred in answer. It wasn’t a coherent answer, more like a formless grunt rather than words. But it was clearly a response, which encouraged me enormously.
I tried getting him familiar with his new body for a bit. I moved him through his range of motion, bent all his joints, from fingertips to knees and hips, rolled him over a few times, sat him up, laid him back down, even pried open his eyelids, and let him look at me.
He started to respond. Once he was strong enough to be aware, he just needed to figure out how everything worked. I was quite pleased when he sat up on his own. He tried talking, but it was nothing but gurgles and gibberish.
“It’s a new body,” I told him. “You’re learning to drive it. It’ll take a while to get used to it.” I hesitated, watching him roll his head around on his shoulders. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Reach out and take my hand if you understand.”
He waved his hand toward me, thumping my hand with his. Close enough. I took his hand and held on to it.
“Okay. Squeeze if your name is T’yl.”
Squeeze.
“Squeeze twice if you know who I am.”
Squeeze. Squeeze.
“How many is three minus two?”
Squeeze.
“Okay, you’re in there. Here’s what happened.”
I explained about my
goof with the dazhu herd and apologized. I went on to explain how I’d got him an elf body; I also gave him the short version of how I put him in it.
He took it well. At least, he didn’t scream. He just nodded and kept practicing at moving and talking.
“Hungry?”
“Hngkhhee,” he agreed. I thought that was excellent progress for an hour-old newborn. I stuck my head out into the hall and sent the guard off for food. T’yl tried to stand up, wobbled a lot, and sat back down.
Together, we managed to get him on his feet so he could practice putting one foot in front of the other. It was more than a little weird. I’d told this elf that I was going to interrogate him, then did so. Now this was my friend and I was helping him learn to walk. Of course, now it was T’yl inside, but it still felt weird.
When the food arrived, I helped him by sitting behind him and holding his hands, going through the motions. He dribbled a lot; his mouth wasn’t something I could really work for him. He learned the proper hand and arm motions very quickly; the chewing and swallowing took more time as he learned by trial and error. I put a spell on his tongue to help it heal quickly. It wasn’t actually damaged, but it must have hurt.
He finished eating and I waved a cleaning spell over him. Then we got down to talking. I started with the vowels, saying them and holding them, drawing them out: “Aaaaaaaaaa,” and he’d work through the variations of sounds until he hit on the one that sounded like the one I was using. Then we practiced other phonetics, since they’re the building blocks of words.
By midnight, he was talking reasonably well, but I’d hate to ask him to sing.
“What has been goink on sinz I was in the cryssal?” he asked, enunciating carefully.
“Going.”
“Goinkh.”
“Going.
“Going.”
“Good work. Now, ‘crystal’.”
“Cryssal?”