Nightlord: Sunset

by Garon Whited

  A lot of the magic I chose to study was focused on divinations. It included a lot of exercises for expanding the native powers of the dayblood and increasing the sensitivity of the tendrils. With practice, a dayblood with any talent for it could learn to dimly see, sometimes even hear, whatever the tendrils touched. But these astral tentacles made the direction and focusing of some spells simplicity itself.

  For example, casting a scrying spell—a spell to see a distant place—has as its main difficulty adequately specifying an exact location. The trouble isn’t to see that far away; the trouble is to see only the place you want! See too much at once and your mind refuses to process it all. It’s hard to block out most of the universe and still see just the little bit you want—rather like trying to see the Sun’s corona around the edge of a coin.

  But reach out to the place with a tendril—or hold on to something there and walk away from it, letting the tendril unreel behind you—and you can send a spell back down along it, almost perfectly directed. As a result, it becomes child’s play for a competent magician to pull off a sight-and-vision spell.

  Not that I was a competent magician, but I was working on it. Sasha commented on it one evening at dinner.

  We’d taken to calling our normal meals by their proper names—breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner—and our evening meal, if we chose to have one, as either a “liquid lunch” or a “midnight snack.” It was still surprising to me that a dayblood should require food and blood… but I suppose it shouldn’t. We have the advantages of both mortals and immortals; I guess it’s only fair we have some of the disadvantages of both.

  I had just drawn the salt across the table, without really thinking about it. She arched an eyebrow.

  “Practicing, my lord?”

  “Practicing what?”

  She nodded at the saltshaker. “That.”

  I probably blushed. “Oh. Yes, I suppose. I wasn’t really paying attention.” I can handle small objects with naked grey matter. It’s a talent that’s been growing rapidly. My capacity isn’t all that high, but I handle small things with nary a problem, now. Maybe it’s that whole turning-into-a-vampire thing. I still haven’t managed any of the larger spells for moving things around, personal levitation, or the like. Someday, someday…

  “Do, please, pay attention when you are out in public.”

  “Of course.”

  We ate for a while in silence before she spoke again.

  “You seem distracted, my love. What troubles you?”

  “Oh… nothing, really.”

  She smiled and came around the table to stand behind me. She placed her hands on my shoulders and stroked them.

  “You were not so tense some weeks ago. Did you think I had not noticed?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “And I love you for it, but now you must share, for I have brought it forth.”

  I nodded and put one of my hands on hers.

  “Dear, we have what some people might call a strategically disadvantageous position.”

  “I do not understand. We occupy a position of strength.”

  “True enough. But while we are as secure as I can make us within the bounds of the law—or mostly within the law—I have a major misgiving. We don’t have anyone to strike back at.”

  “The Fist—” she began.

  “—is a nebulous thing,” I answered, gently. “Where do we go to hit them? Who do we ask? How do we find them?”

  “Is that what you have sought so in the library?”

  I nodded. “Some sort of spell to seek them, certainly. I haven’t found what I need, yet; I don’t even know enough to be able to find out more.”

  “I am sorry. I do not know enough of them to aid you.”

  “It’s okay. It’s a problem I’m working on. There’s a spell for making a mirror show you random things you need to see—sometimes the future, sometimes the past, sometimes the present. It’s unpredictable, and hard to do. I’ve been hesitating to do it; it requires a lot of energy.”

  “Long ago, my lord, you spoke of sacrifices as being more practical for some magical operations? I do not recall exactly…”

  I nodded, then leaned my head forward and let her work on my neck.

  “According to the notes, it’s more efficient to cut out the middleman—me—when shoving power into a spell. If I eat it first, I can’t get all of it back. If I kill something as a sacrificial victim for the spell, it all goes straight into the spell. See, our personal energies are used to gather up magical power—it’s around us all the time. We just expend our personal energy to manipulate the magical field. That magic is then formed into the structure of a spell. But we can also pour raw energy—life energy, the stuff we usually consume—into the spell directly. If the ‘magical energy field’ of the planet were stronger, it might be more worthwhile to feed and then grab more of the surrounding magical energy, but there should be a point of diminishing returns—”

  “Then must we find someone for this task?” she interrupted, cutting off my incipient lecture. Her fingers moved down my neck and shoulders to help me loosen up.

  “No, but I’m going to need a cow, I think. If I really knew what I was doing, it might not need something that big, but it’s a worry I don’t want on a new spell.”

  “Aye. I will see to it that you have one.”

  “Thank you.” I rolled my head back and forth while she worked on my shoulders. “That’s nice, by the way.”

  “I should hope so; you always liked it.”

  I chuckled. There were times, sitting in her little shrine-like room, I wondered if she could be right. He did look a lot like me. Or I him. Or we. Oh, hell, you know what I mean.

  One of the things I hadn’t done yet was pick up that sword. I wanted to; my hands itched to hold it. It looked like a beautiful piece of work—rainbow tones in the wavy Damascus striations along the length of it convinced me that someone had lavished a lot of care into it.

  Sasha told me it was also somewhat magical; he once cast spells on it, and she had seen it on fire before. I could sense something in the metal when I tried. It was something buried deep within the steel, almost like it was asleep. Something named “Firebrand,” or so the nameplate on the shelf implied.

  I wasn’t afraid of it, exactly, or not entirely. I was intensely curious! But I was also… cautious. I was learning there were a lot of magical things in the world, and I had a healthy respect for the possible dangers, thanks to my prior life. Many of these things wouldn’t kill me… but there are worse things than dying.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10TH

  I had things set up in the rock garden well before the sun went down. The reflecting pool would be the mirror for this, and there was even a good rock next to it for the cow.

  All day long, I’d drawn symbols with great care on the stone, scratching lines around it and the pool, rearranging rocks around the whole thing—the theoretical Japanese gardener would have been scandalized. I had Sasha holding a tape measure and using a protractor; she occasionally helped me with some of the larger stones. Colored candles were arranged around the pool and at tactical points around the diagram. The whole reflecting pool and makeshift altar would’ve looked really good on a movie set. I was proud of it.

  I was shooting for overkill this time. Forget snow; I was aiming to shove a scrying spell so far up the Fist’s nether portion I would see daylight coming in their ears.

  The cow, of course, was content to hang around, chew cud, and watch everything. Not a clue.

  After the sun went down, we both went out to give this a try. Sasha was playing the part of my assistant; she didn’t need talent to help. She would hand me things—the knife and the bowl—and sprinkle incense in the brazier, chant with me, and the like. Maybe you don’t think that’s too important, but you try keeping a complicated chant going in perfect time while hunting for your sacrificial knife… and where did you put that baggie of incense?

  Maybe the surgeon doesn�
�t need a nurse to hand him instruments like that—but he’s glad she’s there.

  This wasn’t a finesse operation. I was stacking the deck with elaborate preparations so it didn’t need to be. If it had required finesse, I’d have been up a creek. Power I could provide. Skill? No, I was lacking that. Maybe in another hundred years; magic is subtle and complicated. I wasn’t a surgeon using a scalpel; I was a headsman with an axe. Either way, the amputation is a success. That’s all I cared about.

  We went out back wearing long robes. Lucky for me it was nearly a full moon—a good time for scrying, as the moon illuminated hidden night-things. I led the cow over next to the stone and we took our places. We chanted, I hit the cow above and between the eyes, then we hefted it onto the rock, head at the lower end, nearer the pool. I took the knife, spoke the chant louder and stronger, contributed some of my own power to form the framework of the spell, and cut the animal’s throat. Blood poured out and power flared along the diagrams I had drawn.

  The blood trickled into the pool and the waters roiled, turned red. They began to spin and churn, rapidly becoming a whirlpool. The whirlpool deepened. I could see it reached down far below where the bottom of the pool used to be. This did not seem right for a mirror-like scrying spell, but maybe the waters would open to show me things. The notes weren’t too specific on the results, just the process.

  I didn’t move, but continued the chant as the last of the life flowed into the spell. It wasn’t done yet; it needed more. I expended some more of my own power, drawing more ambient magic into the spell. It was like I upped the current in an electromagnet and sucked more power toward my spell. I raised my hands higher, even as I raised the tempo of the chant.

  The whirlpool touched bottom.

  Suddenly, there was just a ring of red water whirling madly in a circle. In the center, there was an opening, as though it were a window in the wall of a room. Down was suddenly across. It gave me a powerful sense of vertigo, but I braced myself against the sacrificial stone and remained standing, watching.

  Through the opening, I saw several men in the process of taking places, facing me. They were wearing dark fatigues and holding assault rifles; they were muffled up completely, much like the trio that had tried to torch Sasha and I on the front porch. The floor was inlaid with gold and silver in an intricate mosaic of some arcane nature. The whole room was done in Early Medieval stonework with heavy roofing beams visible. Aside from the troops, there were three men, one older, two younger, and they were dressed in fancy robes. They had their hands upraised, and I could hear them chanting faintly.

  Everyone got very quiet and stared at me.

  I gaped. The scrying spell was only supposed to work one way… but… no, I could feel some other spell, interacting with mine. It felt… it felt as though they had each reached across a great gulf and met in the middle, and this was a compromise.

  The gunmen charged forward, screaming, firing from the hip.

  Bad move. While the viewpoint told me I was looking out through a wall, they obviously hadn’t realized they would be fighting upward through a pool of spinning water. They piled up like a freeway accident in a fog.

  I clapped my hands and dispersed my spell, closing the odd gateway. There were screams—strange screams that seemed not so much as to cut off, but to fade away into the distance.

  I jumped down into the bloody water and snatched at an assault rifle, jerked it from the grip of the top man—now the only man. He choked and coughed as the reflecting pool became a churning pool of water and blood again. He went for another weapon. I stomped his forearm, then his other forearm; my boots took the sting out of touching him. He struggled backward with his legs and I let him. I even let him get to the edge of the pool and push himself out as he backed away from me. Once out of the water, he gasped and coughed, then lifted his head and said something to me in a language I did not understand.

  It hurt. I felt like someone had just dialed up my personal body temperature. I felt feverish and hot. Then my blood felt like it was beginning to boil and I screamed, going to my knees in the water.

  Sasha hit him on the head with a rock, not too hard, and he collapsed.

  I slowly got up and climbed out of the pool. He groaned and rolled over, trying to get up.

  “Shall I kill him, my lord?”

  “No,” I gasped, still feeling the burning pain slowly subside. “I have a use for him.”

  She hit him again, this time on the other side of the head, and he decided to take a nap. I fell down next to the pool and wished I could pass out comfortably. There are drawbacks to being dead.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 11TH

  Morning dawned very bright and annoyingly clear. I struggled through my morning ordeal, clutching Sasha for comfort as I shuddered and sweated and hurt. Being blasted by someone’s faith really takes it out of you.

  Then we both cleaned up and headed down to the basement.

  Our prisoner was restrained by the simple expedient of drilling some holes in a big picnic table and feeding ropes through to tie him down. I could’ve just hog-tied him, but I wanted him to be spread out on the table, feeling vulnerable. He was shorter than I, with dark, curly hair and a wiry hardness to him that spoke to me of a professional soldier.

  “Morning,” I said, cheerfully. I was pretty sure he had a concussion, but I hadn’t been able to check; I’d barely been able to use a long knife and tongs to strip him. His clothes actually protected me somewhat from whatever force emanated from his body. Now that the sun was up, though…

  I peeled back an eyelid, and he spat at me. Since he missed, I ignored it and checked his pupils. They were the same size, but he still seemed disoriented.

  “Feeling better? Hungry? Thirsty?”

  He was silent.

  “First lesson. Always answer questions.”

  I held out a hand. Sasha put a pencil-torch in it. I took the torch and ignited it, adjusted it for a clean, blue flame. He stared at it with a sort of stoic fascination. I brought it slowly toward his feet, closer and closer, waiting for him to answer… and I sighed inwardly when it became obvious he was either calling my bluff or truly unwilling to talk.

  I hated it. I had to make a decision: kill him now or force him to talk. The only way I could reasonably let him go was if I could get information I needed… or give him information I wanted him to have…

  I gritted my teeth, tried to think of it as saving his life, and applied the flame to his little toe. It raised instant blisters. He screamed and I jerked the flame away. I tried not to breathe; the smell of cooked meat made me queasy.

  “Now, feeling better?” I asked, forcing a light tone. “Hungry? Thirsty?”

  “NO!”

  “Good job on answering. You’ve learned, I hope,” and I closed down the torch.

  He cursed us and reviled us in both broken English and a language I’d never heard. I had a tape recorder going under the table, so I wasn’t worried about it much right then. I let him go on at length. A good sample might make it possible to identify the language. We’ve got good linguists at the University.

  When he wound down, I just looked at him. He looked back.

  “So where do you come from, friend?” I asked

  “I will not tell you.”

  “Why not? Is that where all your murderers hide?”

  “We are not murderers! You are!”

  “How do you mean?”

  He snarled at me. “You are murdering evil creature, drinking blood of innocent!”

  “Oh. Who says?”

  “The First of Cardinals of Telen saw vision from God, and Fist have fight your kind ever since. You will die, marivel. Today, tomorrow, or next—matters not, but you will die. We never break faith, and we kill you, for God is with us!”

  “So I’ve noted,” I replied, wondering what a marivel was. Was that an insult or just his word for my kind?

  “You mock God?” he demanded.

  “Of course not! I’ve felt the power of fa
ith and it stings like nothing else I’ve ever known.”

  He looked at me with a keen gaze, then nodded, satisfied.

  I nodded to Sasha, and she walked back upstairs to listen in through the intercom and surf the Web for references. For someone who never used a computer for the first few hundred years of her life, she was getting quite good at it.

  I sat down on the edge of the table.

  “Look, I don’t want to kill you. Okay?”

  “You lie, marivel. I tell you nothing.”

  I didn’t contradict him. If that’s what he wanted to believe, who was I to shatter his illusion?

  “Okay, don’t tell me anything. But listen to this. I am going to let you go. You can go wherever you please, as long as you don’t stay here. If you stay here, or anywhere nearby, I will hunt you down and kill you without hesitation.

  “Now, I’m pretty dangerous,” I went on. “So dangerous, in fact, I think I can take your best assault squad. So here’s the deal I’m offering. If your bosses want to send a dozen of their best men, armed however they want to meet me, I’ll take them on. If I win, you guys give me a bye. I’m off-limits. You leave me alone. If I lose, problem solved and you can do what you like.”

  “I will have no part in vile bargain—”

  “Shut up,” I interrupted. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. I’ve got a spot all picked out. There’s a place in Death Valley—I’ll give you a map—and I’ll be there in four weeks, on Thursday night, September eighth. I’ll arrive at midnight. We can talk over the deal, shake on it, and square off like civilized enemies. If your side will go for it, wonderful. If not, fine. We’ll work something else out.

  “But you do not make these decisions. You have superiors, right?”

  He looked stubborn. He said, “Yes. But—”

  “Just tell them the proposal. If they like it, great. If they don’t, I expect them to not show up. Fair?”

  He looked at me like I was insane.

  “No,” I sighed, “don’t bother to answer. You think I’m crazy. Maybe. But that’s me.”