Nightlord: Sunset

by Garon Whited

  I grinned back at him. “Okay, that’s funny. I didn’t mean it to be, but it is.”

  Travis sighed, calming, but still smiling. “Yep. Let’s go punch some cattle.”

  Sunset was the usual; it tingled and shivered and prickled me from head to toe—skin and bones and organs, all—which left me with the distinct feeling that darkness was a friend, yes, absolutely, and a faint curiosity about what happens to a dayblood in the dawn.

  We got busy.

  First off, I got dressed. Three pistols. A submachine gun. Extra ammunition. The latest in bulletproof vests. A small backpack. Field boots and camouflage field uniform. Black-and-green face paint. I looked like an extra on a war-movie set.

  Travis suggested a small backpack of other supplies—typical short-term survival stuff, mainly, along with a cell phone and a pocket shortwave radio receiver, just in case. Since weight wasn’t really much of an issue, we strapped gear on with an eye to getting weapons quickly and let it go at that. One thing I was adamant about was the sword. I was bringing it; I’d put too much effort into practice for it to go to waste. Besides, a sword doesn’t jam or run out of ammo—and one never knows when a magical sword might come in handy.

  The roped-together cattle were strung out, hobbled and blindfolded; we kept them upwind from what was about to happen. I didn’t want them panicking.

  Then again, they were used to the smell of blood; Sasha had once told me that, when hungry, nothing beats drinking straight from the throat. Apparently, they were fed on in that fashion more than once, so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. This was not a time to take chances, though.

  I started the spell. This one varied slightly from the first I’d cast into the pool. Instead of a steady chant, it was a litany, pause, repeat. It was a longer, more drawn-out ritual, partly original, and gave me gaps in which to fit other activities. Travis and I did a brief walkthrough—a three-cow walkthrough, if you would, without the actual cows—to get the rhythm down.

  If I ever need an apprentice, I’ll keep him in mind. He managed this without anything more than minor bobbles, and that was because neither of us handles cattle for a living. I had to whack a couple when they spooked, but aside from that, it went smoothly.

  He led a cow over to the rock and up the homemade ramp, on to the rock. I clubbed it with a sledge and it dropped. I recited the litany I had worked out—referring to my cheat sheet, taped to my forearm, as needed; it was a long litany—while cutting its throat and letting the blood run down into the empty pool. After the sacrifice, I shoved it off the far side. It slid down the greased boards and then down the oily hillside.

  It wasn’t a fast process, but speed wasn’t necessary. In fact, had it been faster, we would probably have screwed it up. As it was, it was a slow, rhythmic thing. I could almost hear the low thunder of power flowing through the diagrams. It reminded me of the circuits on a printed board—or the circulation of a living thing, with me as the heart.

  I painted symbols of opening and movement on the floor of the empty pool before we started. Being melodramatic at times, I decided that using my own blood for paint would be a nice touch. The blood from the cattle covered the floor of the pool, but the designs were still visible beneath the first few millimeters as disturbed places; there was a shivering in the shape of the symbols on the surface of the bloody film. As it grew deeper, the whole bloody mess began to swirl. I took that as a good sign.

  It was nearly four in the morning when the pool started to deepen unnaturally. By that point we had a good whirlpool formed, but now it was deeper than the floor of the pool. I kept the tempo, and Travis kept the cattle coming. This must have been around forty or forty-five; I didn’t keep count—I was preoccupied. Travis kept looking into the pool, but also kept moving.

  It was getting close. I could feel it. It was like a sneeze, or an orgasm; it was about to happen—all it needed was one last breath, the lightest of touches…

  When Travis brought another one, I knew it would be the last one; after this, it would open.

  It did.

  The whirlpool of blood deepened suddenly, then widened; a ring of foaming, swirling fluid surrounded an opening into the same stone room I recalled—now empty.

  I don’t suppose I hesitated for more than an instant. I must have changed my mind two or three dozen times while my body stepped forward. I toppled over the side of the pool, falling into it as though to do a bellywhopper right in the center.

  On the way down, I thought a thousand crazy things.

  Maybe I should have hired some soldiers-of-fortune. Maybe I should have tossed a grenade in first. Maybe I should have brought a grenade or two. Will I make it back? Where, exactly, is this place I’m going? I should have brought more ammunition. A rifle might be a good idea. Arabesque would be helpful, if I could get outside. Nice image, anyway; a motorcycle might be more practical. Where is Arabesque? And Silly Girl, Ladybird, and Flower Child? And the dogs—where are Caesar, Khan,, and Larry? I haven’t seen any of them since the night Sasha died. There ought to be bodies. A rocket launcher—yes, I should have brought one. No telling when I’ll need to go through a wall. Or dynamite. I forgot the dynamite! It’s hard to blow up buildings without dynamite! I’ll have to hope they have a lot of gasoline. Maybe I can set fire to their armory—or steal it…

  I flew out of a doorway and halfway across the room. I landed on my feet, lost my balance, fell and rolled until I fetched up against the far wall. I picked myself up and looked around. Through the doorway—no, it was an archway; the opening was arch-shaped, but my spell was an indistinct circle, rippling redly within it—I could see Travis looking through at me. He waved. It wasn’t nearly as dizzying to be looking across and up instead of down and across.

  Then the ring of blood closed in a red wave, leaving only an archway set against the wall. Nothing but smooth, unmarked stone occupied it. Not even a bloodstain.

  There was one other door to the room. The place was largish, with an intricate diagram inlaid in the floor; very good work. There were also six metal keys, finely crafted, each about four inches long, heavy, and radiating powerful, highly complex magic. The diagram had places obviously intended for them, complete with eight intricate-looking locks set flush in the floor—two of the locks were empty. I wondered what they were all for, aside from the obvious: they controlled the archway. The locks were also magical, but not nearly as powerful or complex as the keys.

  Well, then. I took the keys and loaded them into my pack. I thought it would take a while to replace them. In the meantime, it would be tough to use the magic door.

  There were also a pair of tables and some bookshelves off to one side. I looked through them quickly but did not recognize the language. I did recognize a lot of stellar charts, illustrations of the sky—that is, I recognized them as such; the constellations were unfamiliar to me.

  Then I wondered… what time was it? How long until dawn? What time zone was I in? I knew it was night—my heart wasn’t beating—but nothing else. Since it was night, I was probably somewhere in North America, maybe on a Pacific island…

  The window was narrow and high, more of a crossletted arrow-slit; definitely not a way out. It told me the night was still in full force; there was no lightening of the sky in that direction.

  Was that direction east? I checked my survival knife; there’s a compass in the hilt. I tried to get a line on north and south, but the thing was broken. It wouldn’t steady down; it just spun at random and wouldn’t settle in the same direction twice. Nuts.

  I looked down and saw a courtyard. There were horse-drawn wagons and a stable. Farther off, I could see pennons hanging from the tops of towers, but there was no wind to reveal their devices. Then I crouched down to look up at a slice of sky. I’m not all that terribly good at stellar navigation, but I can find most of the major constellations. The North Star. Orion. The Dippers. I didn’t see a single familiar star. Worse, I’m certain there is no constellation with three bright stars in a perfec
t triangle with a single very bright star dead center.

  That’s when I started to wonder if the sun would even rise in the east.

  First things first, however; figure out how to get out of here. Always know which direction to run. That’s my thinking. Originally, I had considered just hacking my way through any opposition (and running for the hills to hide if things got really sticky). I was beginning to have my doubts about that.

  Nice timing on my part. I resolved not to let my heart do all the thinking.

  I tried the door. It opened easily under my hand. The hallway outside was mostly dark—a good thing for me, since that meant I could see, but no one else. I slithered like a shadow through the building, looking the place over. I sent out feelers—a moving web of tendrils that probed around corners and through doors as though I were feeling my way with insubstantial fingers. I encountered no one for several minutes.

  As I started to descend a staircase, I felt a guard on the landing below. I withdrew my tendril instantly; it stung a little to touch him with it. I quickly checked downward, feelers crawling over wood and stone, avoiding him. Yes, the stairs went all the way to the ground floor… and there was another guard on each landing. Out of curiosity, I checked upward; yes, two more floors—a total of five—and a guard for each. Each of them protected, somehow, from my life-draining touch. It felt very similar to the blast of repulsion I felt from the bodies of the assault squad, but much less intense. I didn’t know if it would keep them from being drained, but it would certainly hurt me if I tried.

  Fine.

  I sneaked a look down the stairs; there was light below. The guard stood under a hanging lantern, in shadow. He seemed rather bored; which I expected—guard duty being one of the most boring jobs in the world.

  I regretted I had not brought a silencer. Well, I hadn’t anticipated being able to be stealthy. I thought they’d guard the gate, at least. I’d expected someone to sound an alarm as soon as I showed my face. But as long as I could be quiet…

  I reluctantly drew the sword; if I could nail him in the throat he wouldn’t shout. Maybe it would be better to go for an eye, then support him as he collapsed? He might not make much noise. But, damn it, he was just doing his job! He wasn’t doing anything to me.

  Then I had a thought. Why not check the entirety of this floor first to see if there were any windows I could squeeze through? Three floors of drop would be nothing to me—and with a small spell to cancel out some of the effects of gravity I might even manage to clear the courtyard and the outer wall in a single leap, without even touching the ground.

  It was worth a try. I kept the sword out as I crept around the third floor. Every door I came to was locked. I fiddled with the locks—rather primitive things—by running tendrils into them to feel around, then using my telekinetic trick to open them. Most rooms looked to be residential—at least, the snoring people seemed to give them that air. Windows were in short supply.

  After about three dozen rooms, some occupied, some not, I found quarters somewhat larger than the rest; these quarters had a window, a real window, along with heavy shutters of brass or bronze. The man I sensed on the bed was also somewhat older than most of the rest of the people I’d seen; he also had a room to himself. Probably a man of some importance. I didn’t see him, just felt his presence; the bed had heavy curtains.

  I considered waking him and asking him a few searching questions. But I kept having momentary flashes of a wakeful fellow screaming… or of a burning in my hands as I held him… or even a ball of fire coming at my face. I thought it likely he might be the one who led the little ritual that wound up in my reflecting pool.

  Decisions, decisions. If he was the man in charge, then quizzing him would be good. If not, then things could be more difficult. I didn’t think he was. The guy in charge would have better quarters. This was just the room at the end of the castle hallway. Besides, I didn’t sense any unpleasantly religious objects in the room. Definitely not the Cardinal of Telen.

  I decided not to risk waking him. If I could get out undetected, I could figure out where I was, hire help, and bomb the spit out the building. I left him alone and went to the window.

  Simple latch. Heavy shutters. Complicated spell.

  Hmm.

  I looked the spell over carefully. I’d never had to deal with anyone else’s spells before and this one was very instructive. It was a warning spell; it looked like it was tied to the sleeping fellow. I doubted it would make any actual sound—the “colors” of the magical construct were wrong for a physical result—but it was certain to wake him. I didn’t think I could disarm it without setting it off in the process. But that appeared to be all it did, just wake him.

  I sighed quietly. Not only is life not simple, but undead ain’t too easy either.

  So I quietly moved some of the furniture around by picking it up and setting it down, rearranging to make it hard to come bounding out of the bed without tripping. In the days when I had been blind in the dark, I had tripped over my share of unexpected objects in the blackness of a nighttime bedroom.

  I quietly enfolded myself with twisting strands of power, shielding myself to a degree from the effects of gravity. I could hear him stir as I did so; apparently he was at least as sensitive as I to magical operations. That confirmed my suspicion he was at least a wizard. Some rare humans can learn to use spells, but it takes a lifetime to master. If he wasn’t one of the guys I’d seen opening the gate, he was at least someone involved.

  I cut the magical strands that connected him to his window alarm spell. The noise from the bed, or, rather, the sudden cessation of all noise, told me he woke instantly. I stifled a naughty word and flipped open the latch of the shutters and hauled them wide, revealing a window of fine glass. He shouted something, an interrogative, and I ignored it, sliding the window open carefully; I did not wish to damage it.

  He came out of the bed over the footboard, apparently fearful of assassins to either side. The open chest at the foot of the bed caught him as he planted his feet in it and tried to run. He went tumbling, cursing in a language I recalled an assassin used. The tumble looked like it hurt; he was an older man, blond-ish hair gone mostly gray, face lined with age, beard thinning and heavily silvered. I hoped he hadn’t broken anything in the fall—that chest had to have been bad for his shins.

  “Just leaving. Please go back to bed,” I said. The look on his face told me he understood English; it also told me he was shocked, surprised, and afraid.

  I climbed out onto the windowsill, aimed for the outer wall of the courtyard, and leaped.

  Unfortunately, I discovered that tampering with gravity throws off all your reflexes. I sailed up and over and away in a leap that would have made certain superheroes green with envy. I cleared the wall and several buildings before I came to a landing in a clay chimney. Not “on top of.” My momentum was undiminished—I had shoved off with considerable force—and I broke through the chimney, the wooden shingles, and the roof, in that order.

  Ignoring the startled and somewhat panicked expressions of the couple I had woken, I immediately departed through the nearest wall; it was only plaster and wood, nothing worth stopping for. Out in the street, I took to the rooftops with a bound and continued in like fashion away from the castle complex I had just quitted, sailing in the peculiar shallow, slow arc of a man in lowered gravity.

  I took a few chances with high bounds on my way out of town, just to get the lay of the land. The castle complex was dominated by a central keep about a hundred feet high, I’d say. A high-altitude breeze showed me a silvery banner with an open, yellow hand in the center; the lower pennons were still hanging limp. Weird, that; metal on metal wasn’t a combination normal to any heraldry I ever heard of. Then again, heraldry was never my strong subject.

  The keep complex had several outbuildings as well, mostly of stone. Three curtain walls divided the complex into an inner, middle, and outer area. It seemed likely the central keep had been the first structu
re, added to in later years, and then added to again. That central keep was the building I had just departed.

  While the keep seemed to be a fortification, it wasn’t the only major structure. Next door, still inside the inner wall, was an equally large building, quite obviously a temple or cathedral. You don’t put big, fancy windows in a structure you mean to be a fort. Kids throw rocks through normal windows; bigger kids with catapults tend to lob really large rocks through weak points like that.

  The surrounding city was that; a city. It was slightly different from what I expected. Instead of paved roads, there were cobbled streets. Buildings were wood, with occasional half-stone or brick construction. Roofs were either wood, slate, or thatch. I saw horses and carts by candlelight and lantern. The lanterns, hung from poles along the larger streets, glowed with a pale blue flame. At first I thought it was either gas or some odd oil. I looked more closely while I paused on a nearby roof; they were enchanted lanterns!

  Nowhere on Earth do they use sorcerous streetlights. At least, not to my knowledge.

  As I moved away I heard the ringing of a great bell, then sounds of other bells, spreading through the city. The alarm was up, it seemed. Fine. I kept to the rooftops, leaping more quickly, and covered a lot of ground.

  Eventually I had to hit dirt; the wood and slate roofs were grouped closer to the center of town. As I got farther away, the rooftops became thatch, and that won’t hold me, especially not for a landing. Thatch would hold my present, spell-altered weight, but my inertia was undiminished. I’d crash through on landing like a cannonball into a clump of weeds.

  On the ground, I still kept jumping, coming down a lot farther away each time; it would make tracking me all the much more difficult. There appeared to be no outer wall to the city; not too surprising, considering its size. There was a wall around the inner city—obviously, the older section and upscale district—but the outlying areas were open. I was unmolested as I moved off into the night and into the surrounding farmland.