Nightlord: Shadows

by Garon Whited

  At major moments in one’s life, there is usually a pinch, a sharp narrowing of your Ribbon. It’s a time when events will be uncertain in some fundamental way. It’s a cusp where your future can make a drastic change—or not—based on how things go at that critical moment. Nothing beyond that point is fixed, or even predictable.

  Normally, you’re not going to just up and decide to completely change your life; it goes on largely as before. But at a pinch, things may force you to decisions—or things may occur—that fundamentally affect your future. It doesn’t mean you’re going to die, but sometimes it’s a possibility. It does mean that there may be some serious changes, depending on how you handle it.

  As I understand it, Kammen’s mother was a wizard and wanted him to be one, too, while his father wanted him to be a warrior. When his mother died, he kept up his practice of what she taught him—mostly the Ribbon, because it could have provided warning about her life-cusp—but his father refused to let him join the Wizards’ Guild.

  And he’s fast at it, too. The few times I tried looking at the Ribbon of Fate (or the Ribbon of Time, or whatever), it took me an hour or more to get into the proper state of mind. Kammen does it in minutes. I doubt the Guild would have him; he’s kind of a one-trick pony. But the one thing he does well, he does exceedingly well!

  How does one get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

  “I looked at the thing yesterday,” he said, “and I thought there might be cusp coming, so I checked again this morning. Now I’m sure; there’s one coming soon, maybe today. Looked like your thread, Sire, with Torvil and Seldar, too.”

  “Any ideas what it might be about?” I asked.

  “Nope. Didn’t see anyone else I recognized.”

  “And it’s today?”

  “I think so, yeah. Maybe in the morning.”

  “Torvil? Seldar?”

  “Sire?” “Yes?”

  “If you can look at your Ribbons, please do; we can at least see if you share that pivot-point.”

  They nodded agreement and left immediately; it takes a while to get into the trance-state required for precognition.

  “Can you tell us anything else?” I asked Kammen.

  “I don’t like it. I look at the thing a lot and I never seen it pinch like this. I don’t see nothing after it, not even the shadows you sometimes get of maybe futures.”

  “All right. What do you want to do about it?”

  “I’m thinking I’ll just sort of hang around with you, if that’s okay. Your thread’s pretty much straight-on into the pinch, so it means you’re big in it.”

  “Are you sure that it’s my thread?” I asked. Kammen gave me a look that spoke volumes, none of it complimentary or even polite. I let it drop and went on.

  “But we don’t know if it’s something you’ll have to do, or I will. My thread running through your pinch. We’re just both involved, somehow.”

  “Yeah. Sire. And maybe Torvil and Seldar. Could be others, too, but I dunno who they are; I don’t recognize the threads.”

  “Got it. All right. Anything else? Good. I’ll be down in the communications room. Thomen, if you would be so kind, get together a pack of supplies like you were going to stay in a cave for a day or two. I’ll need it for my next gate trip. Tort, please help him with that.”

  I stood up before she or Thomen could say anything.

  “Thank you all. Kammen, with me.”

  We went down to the room with the mirrors and the sand table. Kammen looked puzzled as we went. I refrained from asking until we were in the room and the door was shut.

  “What’s with the puzzled expression?” I asked.

  “I just don’t get what’s wrong with those two.”

  “Tort and Thomen?”

  “Yeah. Sire.”

  “What do you think?” I asked. He snorted.

  “I think they need to crawl back into bed together and not come out until the moaning and thumping stops and they’re talking to each other again.”

  “Ah. I take it that everyone knows?”

  “They’ve been like that for years. Leastways ’til you showed up again. No offense, Sire.”

  “None taken. How many years?” I asked. Kammen thought about it.

  “Six?” he guessed. “Might not be six, but about six.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I suspect you’re right.”

  “About what? Sire.”

  “About me waking up. I’m just not sure if Tort was passing the time with Thomen, or if she was really interested in him and her sense of obligation to me is overruling that interest.”

  “Could go either way. Sire. ’Course, she could want the both of you.”

  “Huh. I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. Kammen shrugged.

  “If Thomen’s good with having nights while you get days, it could work. Sire. If legends are right.” His eyebrows went up, plainly asking without asking whether or not I was capable of performing at night.

  “It’ll need to be sorted out,” I said, not answering the unasked question. “I’ll work on it. Tort’s happiness is important to me.”

  “I could say something to one or both, but I guess I should keep my mouth shut?”

  “You can talk to either of them, if you like. Pick the one less likely to turn you into something.”

  “Got it, Sire.”

  While Kammen stood guard, I walked around the sand table, picking up my work. I still wanted to get that third sensor aligned and calibrated in the spell matrix, but it was being difficult. I think the problem is that the spell designers have binocular vision. Having only two eyes, it isn’t all that easy to learn to see through three. Admittedly, we usually use only one sensor, but it’s still buried in the design that we only have two. It’s kind of like trying to do math in hexadecimal. We only have ten fingers, so our usual math is in base ten. We can do any base lower than ten just by ignoring fingers, but for hexadecimal, we need extra fingers.

  On the other hand, I can already put the sensors in a triangular formation and focus them all in. That’s built-in, a part of the spell itself. You cast it, you get three sensors. But if it can only use two at a time, I can change the angle at which I seem to view something.

  Now, if I set up a module of my spell to switch between sets of two—A and B, then B and C, then C and A, then A and B again—around and around the triangle… that could work, if the switching is fast enough. A human eye usually has a visual fusion effect starting around sixteen hertz, but movies usually use at least forty-eight hertz. If I can get the spell to make a full cycle around fifty times a second, it should produce a sand-sculpture image that appears to be perfectly synchronized.

  The switching module was relatively easy; coordinating it with the image-producing portion of the sand table was not. The trouble was that the table would have to take snapshots instead of a continuous feed, which meant that sand particles would tend to fall when not part of the current viewpoint. That required a little tweaking, too.

  I was almost done with that when Torvil and Seldar came in, Malana and Malena in tow. Kammen greeted them and they spoke together for a bit. I paid no attention, being occupied with a stick of chalk under the table, like a mechanic under a car. Or, maybe a plumber under a sink is a better description; if I just dropped what I was doing, everything would leak out.

  They waited until I finished tacking everything back together and slid out from under the table.

  “Okay,” I said, sitting up, “what’s the story?”

  The three visions agreed; something was coming up in the very near future, possibly in minutes, possibly in hours. It was, potentially, a major point of decision in their lives—something that could alter the course of their future in a major and fundamental way. A cusp where a decision could alter destinies.

  And my thread ran straight through each of them.

  “I think,” Seldar said, “that Your Vulnerable Majesty should wear armor, today.” The other two nodded.

  Well, they�
��re my personal guard. I should listen to them. It’s not like they were asking me to hide in a bunker and point a gun at the door. Armor wasn’t too much trouble. Hell, it’s usually a toss-up whether I wear it one day or the other.

  “Okay. Let’s head up to my chambers. Then we’ll see about lunch.”

  They agreed and pushed open the door again. Torvil and Kammen went out and stood to either side of the opening. Seldar accompanied me, while the twins stood behind him, watching. Good guys. They take that whole guardians of the king’s person rather seriously, especially when there’s a prophecy of doom in the air. I don’t, but that’s probably because I tend to think of myself as immortal.

  To be fair, I am. Just not invulnerable.

  My assumption is that, upon hearing about the armor, the assassin decided things would just get more difficult from there. The whisk of a knife being drawn wasn’t enough warning for me or for anyone else. I got stabbed near the left shoulderblade, neatly between the ribs—a lucky shot, I think. If it hit a rib, I’m not sure it would have gone any farther. I don’t know what my bones are made of, but they aren’t any sort of normal bone. The weapon was a long, thrusting blade, and he stuck it deep, too; I felt the point lodge on the inner face of a front rib. I felt my heart trying to beat around the thing.

  I reacted by grunting and falling to my knees. It seemed the thing to do. The difference between immortal and invulnerable, you know.

  Seldar was staring at me and shouting something; Torvil and Kammen, swords out, occupied the doorway into the hall. The twins flickered and had weapons drawn. I looked around for my assassin, but didn’t see anyone.

  Right. Invisible. I should have guessed that from the knife in my back. It had to come from somewhere, after all. Only, invisibility is a really tough spell to do. It’s complicated to get it right and requires real masterclass artistry to do without a telltale shimmer or ripple or some other obvious visual distortion.

  Seldar took a blow across the face that almost knocked him down. The twins instantly whisked razor-sharp blades back and forth around Seldar, themselves, and me; we weren’t attacked again. Torvil and Kammen, still holding the doorway, started it swinging closed while they whirled their blades in complex patterns, keeping anything invisible at bay. Whatever it was, it wasn’t likely to risk approaching anybody until a lot of arms got tired.

  I wondered if there was anything I could do to help. At the moment, I had a hard enough time staying upright, so I doubted it. There was also a nasty feeling of weakness in all my limbs.

  Aha. That would be shock.

  On the other hand, I felt it was my responsibility to do something. I waited until the door was closed, then told the sand table to eject the sand; I could always get more sand. The sand exploded outward into a choking cloud, filling the room, scattering everywhere. It blinded everyone for a moment—including the invisible assassin—and left a smooth, even layer of sand all over the place.

  When people could see again, it was just a matter of finding unoccupied footprints. Oh, he tried hopping up on the table, but Seldar thought of that before the assassin did. Seldar took off one of his legs with a blurringly-fast forehand and backhand double stroke. The first one whiffed; the second one connected and blood fountained.

  As far as the would-be assassin was concerned, things then went from awful to catastrophic. With the door closed and no new footprints of invisible people—just a body-shape and a lot of spurting blood—Kammen and Torvil closed in with Seldar. They looked angry.

  The twins, much to their credit, stayed next to me, swords out, watching for new footprints and weaving a razor-steel net around and over me.

  I didn’t watch the whole thing. I decided that falling forward might be a good idea. As a result, I lay facedown in the sand as gently as I could and thought hard about keeping my heart beating. I recall hearing a brief series of meaty chopping noises, then felt a sense of being surrounded. My ears were starting to ring, so I didn’t make out what they were saying.

  Nobody tried to move me. I don’t know how long I lay there, but it seemed like quite a while before other people started to impress themselves on my awareness, gathering around me.

  Someone started pulling the knife out, very slowly. I agreed, in principle, with the idea; unfortunately, it hurt one hell of a lot more coming out than it did going in.

  Mom was right again: just do it fast so it hurts less.

  However, since it was hurting a lot, I decided to step into my headspace.

  I walked into my mental study and shut the door. Things improved markedly once I was slightly out of touch with my body. The lights in my mental study were dimmed, almost reduced to mood lighting, but that’s only to be expected. Reduced blood flow to the brain and all that. My lights weren’t out, but I wasn’t really up to full consciousness.

  The rules are different in here.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t really feel my body, either. How badly was I hurt? What was being done to fix it? Offhand, I didn’t know. I looked around for ideas on how to find out.

  The wall behind my desk drew my eye. Normally, it looks like a very nice, wood-panel job, done in something dark with a fine grain. After throwing a bit more light on it, I could see it was decorated with a number of differently-colored sticky notes. I took a moment to read a few of the notes:

  “I’m so tired.”

  “I’ll never finish this in time.”

  “Please watch over my son.”

  “Find my Dad.”

  “Don’t work me so hard.”

  “Come get me; I’m ready to go.”

  “Could I please have a mother?”

  “Hurray for the King!”

  I wondered what they were and why they were here. Manifestations of my psychicness? Messages from people, directed at me, but only registering below my conscious level? Or would I notice these messages if I bothered to pause and listen?

  Still, leaving me a note is a good way to be sure I’ll get the message. If you aren’t in a hurry.

  Sadly, I was in a bit of a hurry, myself. I needed to figure out what was going on with my wound and if there was anything I could do about it.

  Time for visualization exercises.

  I looked at the top of my desk and concentrated. The glass top lit up like a screen, showing a large map of my upper torso. Yes, there was the foreign body. It was a good shot, right through the heart. It was a blade with a triangular cross-section, not really edged at all; it was a thrusting weapon designed for maximum penetration. Maybe he thought he would need to get through mail or something.

  Then again, with a weapon like that, you want to jerk it right back out as quickly as possible, not leave it in. Leaving it in makes it a blockage, like a cork, reducing blood loss. Yanking it out causes only minimal damage, but it opens the wound channel and allows blood to flow.

  He should have removed it. It should have been a quick in-out movement, not a single thrust.

  It was still in the process of being removed. Someone had paid close attention to my lecture on flesh welding, it seemed. Several spells were active around the area; most of them were types of scrying spells, presumably to get a look at the injury. Only one was a flesh welding spell, and someone was using a minor manipulation spell—call it a low-powered telekinesis spell—to seal thin layers of tissue around the point of the weapon.

  Hmm. Half a dozen other manipulation spells are running. What are they… oh, I see. The blade tapers to a point. As it gets drawn back, it creates a gap between itself and the surrounding flesh. They’re holding the heart muscle closed around the blade to reduce blood loss.

  It’s causing problems though, as it restricts the heart movement. It’s times like these I could really stand to have a secondary heart. I may have to look into that, not only for me, but possibly for my knights, too. Their battlefield survivability would improve, and I’m all for having zero fatalities on my side.

  Still, blood is flowing through me, albeit slower than normal. I m
anipulated the map on my desk like a giant touch-screen, zooming out to look at my whole body. There’s the reason: someone was working on my femoral artery, slowly pulsing along it to move blood through it, like squeezing water through a hose. As I watched, someone started doing the same thing with the other femoral artery. It was a slow, alternating, rhythmic pulse, and a gentle one, for which I was duly grateful. They didn’t need to shred the arteries and make things even worse.

  I felt the pangs, distantly, as they continued to work on my heart, so I zoomed in again. Yes, my heart was stopped, but that was okay; they had reached the point of sealing up the holes in it.

  Have I ever mentioned how important it is to avoid air bubbles? I’m pretty sure I did. Well, here’s where we discover if they learned that lesson.

  Once they patched the layers of my heart, they pulled the blade the rest of the way out. A bit of lung, a bit of skin, some cartilage—nothing major, at least by comparison. Then a healing spell… good. And a connection, then another, and another… people piling on, joining in with a wound-sharing spell. There’s a point of diminishing returns with those things, but I suspect that’s not even on the list of things they care about.

  My heart beat, once. It hurt, but it did it. Then it stopped again.

  I frowned. That should be doing better.

  Well, I was inside my own head, really. I ought to be able to consciously control some of my autonomic functions… if I can just find the proper metaphor.

  I looked at the map for a long moment, considering my heart. Then I touched the map of my torso and reached into it, my hand sliding through the surface of the desk as through the surface of a liquid. I wrapped fingers around my heart and squeezed, gently, rhythmically. Beat. Beat. Beat.

  It got the message and started, haltingly, to do it on its own. The healing spell and the flood of vitality from everyone else also encouraged it. It hurt less with each beat, it seemed.