by Garon Whited
“Look at me. Through my arts I have taken the years of this body and divided it among a dozen people. I am once again young and beautiful, as once I was.” She let her hair cascade over her shoulders and seated herself again. “Yet those years come creeping back, quicker than Time. In the beginning, a year might pass in the stream of Time, bearing with it one more year that was my due. The denied years return more quickly now, so that every month, my body gains again a year of its total. My flesh is all of eighteen; in a year, it will bear the signs of a woman of thirty. In two years, more than forty.”
Her eyes were touched with fear as she looked at me. “That is why we agreed to hunt your kind.”
“You didn’t tell the Hand this,” I said.
“No. Of course not. In our declining years, we claimed to have seen the light. We came to the Hand on our own. Tobias welcomed us, for he needed our power in the Hand’s quest through the Mage’s Door.”
“But why did the Hand bother? The nightlords were gone.”
She sniffed disdainfully. “Gone, but not forgotten. They were hunted to extinction, save for the very few who escaped. What fool would allow a persecuted people to flee and recover, to grow strong and return? Especially when they need but bite, and bite, and bite, multiplying like a plague.”
I shook my head. It made sense from that viewpoint. How were they to have known the nightlords of my world just wanted to be left alone? Come to that, who says they even got the right world? There could be an infinite number of them.
“All right. What does this have to do with Melloch?”
“Melloch was the leader of our cabal. It was he who suggested we allow a nightlord through the Door and into the world.”
“Wait a second. Why not just use the Door yourselves? Go through, mug some poor bloke like you did me, and drag him back?”
“The magic of your world is thin and weak. We were not sure we could do it. More important, there was no Door on your side. It would have to be held open for far too long—it cannot be held, without a Door at the destination, for more than a few moments.
“Thus, we worked to empower the Door with special keys. These aided the working of the Door, providing it power. We could open a portal between the Academy and Telen with nothing more than a twist of a key; by turning the others, we could hold the Doors open to each other for hours. For contact with your world, they were immensely useful; instead of ten magicians working in tandem, it required but one—although we often used three. The work was exhausting.”
She sighed and looked down at her hands. “Each key Melloch made was more powerful than the last. Eventually, we would have had enough to hold the Door open even to your world. We would have Called through it and summoned one such as yourself to a place of our power.”
A lot of thoughts went through my head. I didn’t recall that the magic of my world was thin and weak. Then again, I’d just been learning the arts. I never really saw magic, as such, until I got here and Jon showed me how. I recalled the keys that were sitting in a pouch on my belt. I wondered what they were worth, and to whom. Still, these were just background thoughts. I was more focused on the events Keria described.
“I came through too soon,” I observed. “You didn’t expect that.”
Keria nodded. “That upset all our plans. No more expeditions to other worlds, now; only the work in seeking you.” She smiled slightly. “You were hard to find.”
“Good. So, on with Melloch’s story.”
“He became obsessed with finding you. This earned considerable favor from Tobias, true, but it also led Melloch down pathways to power that no sane man should ever take.”
“Such as?” I prompted.
“Human sacrifice. Negotiations with dark forces.”
“The two aren’t the same?”
She sighed. “You are abysmally ignorant. No. Dealing with the darkness is dangerous, but it does not eat away at you in the sense that human sacrifice does. A demonic being will trick you, tempt you, and deceive you… if it cannot simply kill and eat you. Contrariwise, a living sacrifice to empower spells uses that creature’s life essence, but a bit of your own also gets caught up in it. That eats away at your soul.”
I nodded. “Got it. So Melloch killed someone and called up the Hunt.”
“That, too. He also used the power of others’ lives to send out seeking spells the like of which have been seldom seen. It took its toll on him.”
“I imagine it did.”
Keria clasped her hands and took a deep breath. “I understand he found you once before, early on, but lost you again when you took more precautions. We had to track you down indirectly, by sending out proxy creatures to search for you. When we did find you, all of us used our most stealthy abilities to attack you by surprise, in unison. When you eventually escaped us, he turned to Tobias for aid.”
“Hold it. How can Tobias aid a master magician?”
“Tobias is the Cardinal of the Hand. The Hand holds the Vault of Night.”
I looked inquisitive and said nothing, waiting.
Keria pursed her lips and elaborated. “The Vault is a storehouse of earlier days. A place where things that could not be destroyed were contained, that they might do no one harm.”
“I see. And they are things of great power?”
“Yes.”
“I have a feeling I know the answer, but what did Tobias say to Melloch’s request?”
“I believe Tobias agreed.”
“’Believe’?”
“Melloch…” she began, then looked away. “After you slew those you could reach, we dared not attempt to recapture you. We were too few, and too weak to face your power. Melloch made his deal with Tobias, the black-hearted priest of the light, and slew the rest of us.”
“Except for you.”
She nodded, still not looking at me. I could see the pain and shame in her aura, but she controlled her voice as she spoke.
“I was in communication with Dessier—another of our cabal—when I felt Melloch’s spell take him. I was warned of Melloch’s treachery by the dying cry of Dessier’s mind. Melloch found a way to take Dessier’s being and consume it, adding that power and force to his own.”
I thought about that.
“So, Melloch has a half-dozen other magicians’ powers instead of just one?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like a dangerous man. He knows where Sh— where Utai is?”
“And I know where Melloch is. Yes.”
I paced for a bit, thinking.
“What’s to keep me from cracking your skull and jerking the knowledge from your mind?” I asked. I wouldn’t do it—I knew that, but she didn’t—and I was interested in what she’d say about it.
She stiffened. “I do not doubt that you are capable of such a feat. Yet, were you to do so, it would set in motion certain preparations that would warn both Melloch and Tobias.”
“Preparations?”
“I am not so much a fool as to give you the tools to circumvent my countermeasures. I will say nothing of them. But know this: you cannot take from me what you must have without destroying it.”
Nice. Neat.
I thought about it some more. What would it mean to turn her loose as a living vampire? True, she could then make more; we could have an epidemic on our hands in short order. Aside from that, what was the downside?
“What would you do if I agreed?”
“Live,” she said. Here eyes met mine and her voice was husky. “I would cease to fear the creeping of the years, the slow decay of my body. I would enjoy the strength and health that comes with the power of a nightlord. You who have never felt the frost of age in your hair or the creaking of your bones, you cannot know the terrors that lurk within your own body. I would live, Sir Halar.”
I couldn’t argue with that. When it comes right down to it, what would I have chosen in her place? She was right; I don’t know what it is to be old. I think about it, I imagine it, but I can’t know it or feel it or l
ive it. I still have that youthful sense of immortality, the inner certainty I’ll go on forever. I haven’t felt the cold wind of age and mortality. I know I can be killed, sure. But I’ll never feel the slow decline, feel old and decrepit and feeble.
The idea gives me shivers.
“You know that there are… difficulties in being a nightlord?” I asked.
“Avoid the dawn and dusk. Drink blood. What else?”
“You will never bear a child again.”
She shrugged. “It has been threescore years and ten since last I gave that any thought. I have outlived my children, and my grandchildren grow feeble with age. My family is large, nightlord, and will satisfy.”
“That’s another thing,” I added. “Your family. I will want your oath that you will do your best to keep from making more nightlords. No matter how they beg, no matter how terrible it seems, nobody gets transformed. You will avoid that at any and all costs.”
She cocked her head and smiled. “As you are avoiding it?” she asked, too sweetly.
I snorted. “I’m hunted by a powerful faction of the Church, an insane magician that consumes the power of other magicians, and I’m a target for demonic assaults. The only way to get to the heart of the matter—and preserve my life, as well as the lives of those I care for—is one dangerous old woman who will settle for nothing else.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t sound trivial to me.”
She nodded, soberly. “I see. Yes. This oath is a condition of the bargain?”
“Yes. There’s nothing else to stop you from turning loose a plague of nightlords on the world, except, perhaps, self-interest. A lot of nightlords could cause a reaction, such as a rise in the power of the Church to hunt us down. Anyone you create, even if it’s just one, has the potential to cause such a disaster.”
“You do appeal to my self-interest,” she remarked, dryly.
“Good. I hoped to.”
She folded her hands together and thought for a moment. “Have you any other conditions?”
I gritted my teeth, thinking. I’ve never turned loose such a potential for disaster—but I was about to.
“No. Those are my conditions.”
“You have a bargain,” she answered, quietly. Then she swore the oath, weaving magic through it as she spoke. I hadn’t thought that could be done; I was hoping just to get her word, for whatever it was worth. But an oath-spell is worth seeing.
Once sworn, she turned away, still seated on the edge of the bed. She tilted her head and exposed her neck.
I moved up behind her, sat on the bed. I bit my own wrist, driving the fangs deep into the flesh. A wound from my own bite would take a minute or two to heal—enough time to let her get some blood. I uncoiled dark tendrils, filling the room with hovering, hungry darkness. I put one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders; I placed the bloody wrist against her lips.
“Drink,” I said. Her mouth opened and she sucked at my wrist as I bit her neck. Her whole body stiffened, rigid as metal, and I could feel the powerful, almost convulsive draw of her mouth against my skin. Blood flowed, from me to her and from her to me, constantly, in a never-ending circuit. I touched her with tendrils, drawing on her lightly, drinking lightly of her energies.
It was different from the matched set of Sasha and I. There, we were both vampires, feeding on and feeding each other. This was a consumption, a devouring, a conversion. Her blood flowed into me; her spirit flowed, almost dripped from her. It left her hungry, empty, void. To fill this nothingness, she drew in what I offered. Dark blood to flow into the cracks of her body, dark energies to draw shadows in the bright valleys of her soul. Life leeched away, replaced by a kind of death, yet I was not diminished.
I tasted her spirit, felt the outer, most volatile layers depleted—the energy of living, the stuff people use to feel perked up or pooped out—and tapped more deeply, touching the nature of who she was. I stopped there, drawing back the tendrils that worked so insidiously, so deeply into her. Before I pulled my mouth away, I bit my own tongue and forced some of my own blood into the bite in her neck. If that didn’t turn the trick, I didn’t know what would.
She slumped against me, chest heaving as she gasped for breath. I took my wrist from her mouth and held her carefully. Her eyes were wide and glassy. Her skin was almost white. I wondered if I had looked like that.
I moved, laying her down on the bed, then half-emptied a wardrobe for clothes to put under her feet and legs to elevate them. She was unresisting, seeming only semi-conscious.
I sat down next to the bed and waited, watching.
Sunrise.
I made sure the windows were shut and then hid in the wardrobe I’d ransacked. It wasn’t a good morning, but it was a lot better than, say, digging myself out of a beach. I can’t complain.
Afterward, Keria looked much better. Her color was better and she appeared to be sleeping normally. Her pulse was strong and her breathing regular. I had no idea this would take so long. I was tempted to slap her a few times, wake her up, and demand answers… but…
I stuck my head out in the hall. A semi-dressed young lady was escorting a well-dressed gentleman toward the stairs.
“Miss?” I called. “Any chance of getting breakfast brought up?”
“Keria can fetch it for you, m’lord,” she replied.
“No, we’re not quite done in here. Probably not for another few hours, at least.” I grinned, almost leered. “So be a dear and tell the kitchen, would you?”
She stared at me—well, they both stared at me—and she nodded. “As you wish.”
I ducked back inside and bolted the door. It wasn’t that long a wait; someone knocked and I opened the door enough to let him in. He was a big guy, heavily muscled, and had a scar along the side of his face and up into his hair. I pressed a finger to my lips as he came in. He looked at Keria as he set the tray down, looked at me, and frowned.
I reached into a pouch and tipped him a silver coin. He accepted it, looked at Keria again, and then shrugged. I closed the door behind him.
Keria woke as I was looking over breakfast. Eggs, toast, some sort of jam, suspicious-looking sausages—then again, that’s sausage for you—and a carafe of juice.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” I offered. “How do you feel?”
She tried to sit up, gave up, and lay there blinking at the ceiling.
“My head…” she whispered. “Am I dying?”
“Not completely,” I told her. “At least, you shouldn’t. Here, try some juice. Get something into you; it’ll help.”
I held a cup for her and she sipped at it. It took a while, but she managed to get it down. Once it was down, she seemed to feel stronger. She sat up, carefully, slowly, and rolled her shoulders.
“Every portion of me aches,” she said.
“Yep. That’ll go on for a few hours, but you can cut it down if you eat something. Trust me, I had it worse. I went through this with a hangover.” I put the tray on the bed next to her and kept some of the toast for myself. I don’t know what the jam was, but it was sweet and tasty.
She regarded the tray like it was a stain on the coverlet.
“Go on,” I urged. “Try. You’ll waste away fast if you don’t.”
She tried a piece of dry toast, managed it, then some egg. Soon she was devouring everything. Fortunately, she stopped when she got to the plate. I wasn’t sure she would.
“I… I am still hungry,” she said, amazed.
“You’ll be hungry all day for the next three or so. The transformation process takes some time.”
“It does?” She seemed startled. “I had thought… I had thought it was simply a magical curse, transmitted by the bite of your kind.”
“Oh, no! It doesn’t happen at all, except by a lot of deliberate effort—as you’ve seen. Just biting someone doesn’t change them.”
“I see that now. What else must I know?”
I opened my mouth, paused, and closed it.
“I think it’s more a ques
tion of what I should know, don’t you?”
Keria folded her hands together in her lap and nodded. “As you say. You have fulfilled your part of our bargain. Yet I am concerned that you will kill me once I have given you that knowledge, for I am yet too weak to resist you.”
“Lady, even if I were willing to wait three or four days while you got fully into the swing of things, you would still be too weak to resist me. I’ve been a nightlord for a while. Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll be on my way. Places to go, people to rescue.”
She worried her lower lip between her teeth, hesitant. Finally, she nodded.
“As you will. I will trust you. Melloch is in Telen.”
“Why?” I didn’t like it a bit that he was supposedly in the Hand’s headquarters city.
“I do not know.”
“Fair enough. Did he take anybody with him?”
She shook her head. “Yes. He departed with Tobias and your woman on the very night you declared yourself before half the nobility of the kingdom. He traveled with them upon a magic carpet. A dangerous business, as such things are only meant to carry one.”
“Hmm. How do you know where Melloch is, anyway?”
She smiled. “I am young and beautiful, and I work in this place. I hear things. Having heard so much, I know what questions to ask—and I am also a magician of great experience and skill.”
“Oh.” I cracked my knuckles and loosened Firebrand in its scabbard. “Is there anything else you need or want before I go gallivanting off?”
She laid a hand on my forearm. “Yes. Please. Tell me more of this transformation. What must I do?”
So I explained about the heavy eating, the physical changes, and the need for blood. It was a sketchy explanation, but it would do. It’s not that hard to go through. After all, I managed it—how hard can it be?
When I finished, her expression was intense and thoughtful.
“If you survive this encounter,” she said, “will you return and teach me? I would know more of my new strengths and weaknesses.”
“Perhaps,” I said, and thought, I don’t know how Tamara is going to take this—and I’d really rather not give her any cause to wonder about you. I only thought it. I didn’t say a word of it. Instead, I went on with, “If I don’t survive, I’ll expect you to carry on with killing Tobias.”