by Garon Whited
With Grigor and Prellin—the soldier—lying next to each other, I went through the copy process, twice. Once for each of Grigor’s legs, but each of them running at half speed. As usual, I cautioned him that it would take a while, possibly a long while, before he could walk again, and that he would be hungry all the time.
“That might be a problem, my lord,” he admitted. “I’m always hungry, anyway.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m a beggar,” he said, stiffly.
“I meant, what did you do before you were injured?”
“I was a horse archer for Harkin.”
“Harkin?”
“Prince Harkin, Duke of Carrillon and rightful King of Rethven, or so he says.”
“I see. Do you intend to go back to Carrillon and return to his service?” I asked. He spat. I held myself answered. “In that case,” I continued, “would you like a job?”
Velina and I made arrangements for him to be fed, clothed, and transported to Mochara. Velina even made sure I wasn’t charged anything for it; the city of Baret was pleased to do all that simply as a courtesy.
Once we had all that sorted out, Velina brought up another matter.
“If you aren’t tired,” she said, “I have some messages for Your Majesty.”
“It’s night,” I noted. “You can just assume I don’t get tired.”
“Of course. Naturally. I’ll remember.” She paused, awkwardly, then regained her original train of thought. “There are a number of messages about other infirmities, asking for you to attend them. I’ve spoken with the Princess of Mochara and she tells me that it is unlikely that anyone can summon the King of Karvalen without truly desperate reason. A few of these may meet with your approval in that regard. Will you see them?”
“The messages? Sure.”
There were a number of them, most of which were simply requests for house calls. While I agree, in principle, with the idea of being attended by a physician in your own bed, I also recognize that it’s probably more practical to group the wounded and sick together wherever the doctor happens to be. It’s a question of limited supply. Doctors are hard to come by; wounded appear seemingly out of nowhere.
I grouped them into two piles: House calls, and cries for help. The house calls were people who didn’t feel like traveling; the cries for help were people who couldn’t travel. By that standard, there were about twenty house calls. There were two cries for help.
The first cry for help was from Prince Jorgen of Hagan—or, rather, from his wife, Taisa. While he was apparently quite capable of coming to me on his own, she was restricted in her ability to travel without his permission, and their daughter was not fit to travel. According to the message, she suffered a fall and a head injury; they included a list of symptoms.
The second cry for help was from Prince Raman of Tolcaren. His eldest son was badly burned a couple of years ago, in a fire aboard ship. It caused the loss of sight in one eye, difficulty in both breathing and walking, massive scarring, and constant pain—any long trip, even in a carriage, would be torture for him.
I decided to pay a call on Prince Jorgen. Prince Raman’s son had survived for two years; he would survive another week. A girl with a cracked skull might be dying.
Once I finished going through the paperwork, I shoved the pile of house calls off on Velina.
“If you could find a scribe, would you be so kind as to send these back?” I asked. “Invite them to come to Mochara, if they like, but the King of Karvalen cannot be casually summoned. Diplomatically and tactfully, of course.”
“I will see to it immediately, Your Majesty.”
“Wait until morning,” I advised. “Scribes need to sleep. So do you.”
“Indeed. I will be happy to wait upon Your Majesty’s pleasure, however.”
“Hit the bed. I’m going to use the mirror, check on the canal, that sort of thing. If I leave before dawn, I’ll be sure to leave a message.”
Velina gratefully went to bed. Well, it was awfully late.
Come to think of it, it was probably rude to call people at this hour, anyway. I decided to inspect the canal works, first, then call home after sunrise. I also decided that we needed people to take shifts in the mirror room, just in case an urgent call came in.
The canal was coming along well. They were digging a wide trench about twenty feet from the western wall of Baret. This dislocated a lot of the low-rent district outside the city proper. Someday, Baret was going to need to build a new wall, farther out. The place kept growing.
Both ends of the soon-to-be-canal were blocked off, both the river end and the sea end. It would be a while before they installed gates; these were just dams so the canal wouldn’t flood while they worked on it. There were already several wagonloads of stone near at hand, some worked into blocks, but most still in the raw, fresh-quarried state. Someday, when the canal was deep enough, they would face the walls and floor with stone, then install the gates.
I was going to do some digging, mainly because I had some time to kill, but I had one of those pesky psychic feelings, again. I sighed inwardly, since I wasn’t breathing, and went to hunt it down.
Them. Hunt them down.
The rest of my late night/early morning was spent with a number of very old people and their immediate families. Every time, I had to explain who I was and what I was, and most especially why I was there.
Back home, if someone showed up at four in the morning to talk to a family about how Great Grandpa George was ready to die, there would be shotguns involved and a real mess in the yard. Around here, they routinely accept that magical beings exist, that there is an afterlife you can practically touch, and that people have a Destined Moment to Die.
One legend or myth says that there are two old women, sisters, who sit somewhere and weave the Ribbon that wizards see; others say that the Ribbon is just a bit of the greater weaving. Whatever, these two sisters weave the threads of the world together to make a great tapestry of life.
One of them is fairly clumsy, so she has a lot of spiders to help her with the fine details, and that’s how we get all those little, insignificant moments in our lives, good and bad alike—spiders are good weavers, but they don’t really care about people, and the sister in charge can’t keep an eye on all of them all the time.
The other sister is very dexterous, so she weaves by hand, making sure all our ultimate destinies fit into the grand design. Born here, lived there, died on such-and-such a date, that sort of thing. She handles the big stuff, and she’s basically a good person. She tries to keep things nice for everybody, but sometimes the spiders get into her weaving and she has to shake them out, which can really mess up her pattern and cause misery.
I think it’s a story to explain why nobody much cares for spiders.
My point, though, is that when a clearly-supernatural creature showed up on their doorsteps and said, gently, that it was time to let Great Grandpa George take a trip with the Grey Lady, people were surprisingly agreeable. No, they didn’t like it, but they accepted it as… Maybe not a good thing, but… right? Proper? Inevitable?
Maybe that’s the word I want. They agreed to go along with the inevitable.
And, strangely enough, I think I enjoyed myself. I can’t say that I had a good time; I didn’t. On the other hand, I did do a lot of good in those few hours. Back home, people could argue about euthanasia and assisted suicide and suchlike; over here, the debate is moot. There is definitely something that comes after. Dying is just getting to go do it.
I’m the travel agent.
Friday, June 18th
I made it back to the Baron’s—excuse me, Prince’s—palace a little before dawn, had a bath drawn for me, and lounged in the tub while the transformation ran its course. I still needed a cleaning spell; the water was filthy when I stepped out. I felt better for toweling off, though. A man should always know where his towel is.
Through the mirror, I talked to Tort and Kelvin. Things were
going well, there, and the new squires were coming along nicely. Kelvin’s idea was to have them work in the kitchens for a while, for the humility exercise, and to see if any of them would try to run home. As servants, they would also have to learn their way around inside the mountain, a complicated process. It was a part-time thing; they spent mornings as servants and afternoons as squires.
We discussed, briefly, the advisability of posting signs at corridor junctions. Maps were no good; the mountain is always in drift a little bit. Plus, I had yet to ask it about additional doors… Soon, though. I had an idea on that.
Tort reported on my arrowheads. People had been hammering on them in shifts until a little before dawn; now they were starting to glow, so they stopped. I thought that a very good idea.
Tort also arranged a schedule for watches over the mirrors. I made it a point to have her talk to Thomen about it. The mirrors don’t require the user to have any facility with magic, but a wizard can spot oddities and anomalies a mundane person can’t. I wanted a wizard on duty, too, just to make sure no one was using a mirror for some unintended purpose. We can’t have the Court Magician intruding on the Court Wizard’s prerogatives, now can we? She agreed immediately, even cheerfully. Having permission to cuddle the unholy monster seems to have improved her mood tremendously.
I also explained that I wanted an arrow shaft enchanted, or at least enspelled; she agreed that it could be done, if I could show her the spell. Fair enough.
Neither of them seemed too pleased I was going into Rethven to track down a city named Hagan, but they didn’t actually say anything. I could tell from their faces that they didn’t like it, but also figured it would be pointless to argue.
I signed off and had an audience with Banler. He was at breakfast, which reminded me of my own early-morning meetings. He had his family at breakfast, but no one else. Apparently, agreeing to see me at that hour was unusual, as was the suggestion that I eat with them.
“How do you manage to have a morning meal without a dozen people bothering you?” I asked, accepting a plate and spooning something bland onto it. Fortunately, morning food around Baret is generally either bland or sweet, a fact for which I was duly grateful.
“Easy,” he said, grinning. “I wanted family time, and I declared it off-limits to underlings. Then I beheaded anyone who interrupted without a real emergency.”
“Ah.” Brutal, perhaps, but certainly effective. His city; his rules. I wasn’t going to argue. Besides, he might be kidding me. “Thank you for not beheading me,” I added.
“You’re not an underling; you’re a visiting king. Anything you want is, kinda by definition, an emergency.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Good.”
We ate for a bit, and I got to meet the rest of Banler’s children; three daughters, all by his second wife, aged thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen.
I got the feeling everyone was watching me, even when they were talking to each other. Well, a guest at breakfast was unusual.
As I was getting into a third helping of a mashed fish and dumpling dish, Banler cleared his throat. I looked up from the bowl with a questioning look.
“Pardon me, but you said you wanted to talk to me?”
I glanced at his family, then decided it might not matter. I also realized that he might be slightly offended, so having them there might be a good thing.
“Yes, I did. I wanted you to be aware that I, ah… how to say this? You know that, in addition to being a king, I have certain other functions?”
“You’re a nightlord,” Danler said, and shut himself up at his father’s look.
“Yes,” Banler said. “It’s well-known.”
“Do you also know that the purpose of a nightlord is to conduct the souls of the dying into the realms beyond?”
“I’ve heard that. Hard to reconcile with the bloodthirsty monsters of legend, though.”
“I am hurt,” I said, with mock sadness.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” he added.
“Oh. Okay. Anyway, whenever you have a nightlord near someone who is dying—or even their ghost, if they’ve already died—the nightlord is going to have to help them.”
Banler nodded, seeing where this was going.
“You killed someone.”
“If you want to put it that way. There were some souls calling out to me that they were ready to go. I had to answer,” I told him. “I didn’t sneak into anybody’s house, if that’s what you’re thinking. I knocked, explained why I was there, and people showed me in.”
Banler visibly relaxed.
“I’m going to hear about this, right?”
“Rumors of it, yeah.” I told him about my nocturnal activities and added, “If you hear of any other deaths in the night, I give you my word it wasn’t me.”
“Is there any way you can… not do that?”
“I can try. If I have to help someone along, would it help to have someone assigned to go with me and be a witness?”
“Hmm. Probably. You wouldn’t mind having a guard posted on you?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Huh. Really.”
“Really.”
“I’d hate to be watched like that, myself.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” I told him. “I only mind it when people spy on me, not when I’ve invited someone to come along. Just try to give me someone who won’t panic and doesn’t mind riding second seat on Bronze, all right?”
“I’m sure we can do that,” he said, then paused for thought. “I’m pretty sure.”
We finished breakfast and I bid the whole family farewell. Danler and Brenna managed to make their manners, while the middle daughters were almost flirtatious. I complimented the first quality and ignored the second.
Thank goodness I also got directions to Hagan.
We stopped in several towns and villages to get better directions to Hagan. I tried to be polite, but people tended to duck into buildings and hide. I’m not sure why. Bronze wasn’t blowing that much fire. Still, I had to be insistent, on occasion. Most of the time all I got was someone pointing me down the road.
The roads in Rethven are dirt tracks cut through forest, up hill and down dale. The only thing about them that’s decent is the bridges; those are generally stonework and as solid as one could hope for. The rest of the roads are rutted flat spots or rivers of mud.
Now I know why Rethven isn’t a kingdom; no one can get anywhere. How can you have a kingdom if you can’t even cross it?
Rethven roads weren’t always this awful. I distinctly remember better roads. But in the intervening years, people scavenged stone from them for other purposes. Some were doubtless in the houses and walls of the villages and towns I passed. Others, for all I knew, had been lobbed into enemy cities by catapult.
I am amazingly glad that Bronze is four-hoof drive. She handles muddy tracks the same way she handles rutted dirt: she stops it flat and keeps going. Places that bog down wagons and risk breaking regular horses’ legs just slow her down.
We finally found Hagan. It took most of the day, but we got here. It’s a fairly typical city. Curtain wall, some towers, big gates, some low-rent districts outside the actual wall, farms out beyond that. It didn’t have a moat, but it did have a ditch with stakes. All in all, it wasn’t much different from Baret, just inland.
I was pleased to find that someone had preserved the two or three miles of paved road nearest the city. It wasn’t in the best of shape, but it was far better than muddy tracks through the wilderness.
Nobody challenged me when I rode in through the nearest gates. I guess they didn’t feel threatened by one roaming knight. I can’t say I disagree; stopping everyone who went through would have caused some serious traffic problems. They paid more attention to the wagons in front and behind; each wagon handed over a silver coin at the gate. I can only assume Hagan does a lot of trading within its walls, and the gate fee is their merchant tax.
(I found out later that
I was right about that. They taxed the merchants at the gate, coming and going, one silver coin per wagon. People who were there just to buy things weren’t taxed; anyone there to sell things, was. The merchants, of course, just passed along the cost to the customer.)
Bronze and I did excite some comment and a lot of staring as we went through the streets. We stayed on the wider streets—usually paved or cobbled, but with some truly awful gutters—and she was very good about not stepping on anyone. It helped that people seem to naturally try to stay out of a horse’s way in order to preserve their toes. There were still some close calls, though, as children have no respect for traffic flow or right-of-way. One daring young man went under Bronze and disappeared into the crowd.
Bronze didn’t seem to mind. Other horses would not have taken it as well.
After some further directions—people pointing thataway—we found ourselves at another wall. Obviously, the original and richer portion of the city. This wall was in worse shape than the outer one. Ivy clambered up the ancient stones in places, and I could see obvious repairs here and there. It wasn’t really expected to do defensive duty.
It made a good fence, though, to keep out the riffraff. The guards on the gates were also more attentive and picky. The portcullis and the gates themselves were in very good working order.
“Name?”
“Halar.”
“Business?”
I handed him the message from the Prince’s wife. He looked at it, frowned, handed it to his partner. His partner ran off with it.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Captain.”
“Ah.” It occurred to me that they might not be able to read. Bronze and I waited while the guard leaned on his spear and tried to look bored. I don’t think he knew what to do about a gigantic metal horse; she didn’t make him comfortable. Bronze, for her part, simply stood like a statue and waited.
The other guard came back with a man in much more shiny armor. He also had a helmet with that thing I think of as a horse-tail plume, dyed a bright red.