by Garon Whited
When I looked up, the knights were still standing there, unmoved. Teselo’s relatives prostrated themselves, faces down on the floor, hands clasped and extended toward me. The crowd was pressed back against the far wall as though trying to push through it. I wondered if anyone could breathe, they were packed so tightly.
On impulse, I looked behind me. The light in the great hall is from the firepits and some magical lights up near the reflective, gold-leaf ceiling. The light was too ambient, too scattered, to make real shadows. My shadow, like any shadows in the room, should have been a dim, indistinct thing on the floor.
Mine stood behind me like an inky cloth, stretched over throne and wall, towering twenty feet high. It had wings, outspread, but drew them in as it shrank down toward normalcy again.
As soon as I figure out how, it and I are going to have a talk.
I laid Teselo’s empty body on his stretcher and beckoned his family to take it away. I had to tell them aloud; none of them were willing to look at me. Eventually, they did approach—skittishly, I’d say. It helped when I moved back onto the throne, away from the body. Once they started walking away, the musicians picked up again, and the next person’s pallbearers started in. There was a minor traffic jam as people squeezed aside, clearing the way, but it was only a delay. Nobody dropped anyone.
It occurred to me to wonder, just then, what they did with the bodies. I remember having to bury Jon, then dig him up again for the fire-worshipper cremation ceremony. What do people do with the bodies around here? What do the plainsmen do? The viksagi? What do they do in Carrillon? I’m usually only involved in events leading up to the funeral, not the actual funeral.
Fourteen people came up to me, and fourteen times I got to feel both elated at helping and sad at a leavetaking. It’s an intimate, personal thing, escorting someone out of their flesh. It’s very different, that willing departure, from killing someone who tries to kill me. It’s almost like saying goodbye to a friend, except whoever it is doesn’t really leave. These people become a part of me in some way, a different way. I’m not sure how, but it feels more… I don’t know.
And, every single time, the throne-end of the great hall was engulfed in shadow—my shadow—as they left their bodies behind. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know why blood crawls over to me or why my eyes are black or the precise mechanism by which I misplaced my nighttime reflection. Of all the things I know little about, me, myself, and I top the list. At least the people in the hall stopped compressing at the far end. After the fourth or fifth time, they started to realize it was a harmless manifestation… well, harmless to them. Probably. At least it didn’t harm them. They grew accustomed to it and that was good enough.
I sat down on the nose of the dragon throne while the last of the departures was taken down the steps. I felt elated and sad, energized and weary. It was a feeling of great intensity and grand contradictions. I sat there as the crowd flowed away, like water draining from the hall. The knights on duty closed doors behind people and shut the place up. One guy in plain, steel armor worked with them.
When they were done, they came and knelt before me.
“Who is this?” I asked, indicating the steel-clad gentleman.
“My lord,” Dantos said, kneeling and doing the fist-on-floor thing. “He is Lanval. During the wars of reunification, he acquitted himself with courage, honor, and skill on the field. He is one of many knighted by the Demon King into the Order of the Sword, but we believe him to be a worthy addition to the Order of Shadow.”
“Do the rest of you say so?” I asked, looking at the kneeling knights.
One by one, they unbuckled swords and laid them on the lowest step of the dais.
“We do,” they said, more or less in unison.
Clearly, they meant it. Whoever this Lanval guy was, he impressed them, and anyone who can do that impresses me.
I descended to the black-clad knight on my left and picked up his sheathed sword.
“What is your oath?” I asked. He recited it again. I nodded and moved on to the next, on down the line, picking up swords as I went. When I came to Lanval, I had a dozen swords cradled in one arm, kind of like the flowers of a particularly dangerous beauty pageant winner. I held out my hand and he placed his sword in it.
Everyone held their breath. Sometimes I like to be dramatic. It was night, so I took the opportunity to search his heart, see what kind of man he was. He convinced a dozen good men he was someone they wanted to serve with—men I trusted, men with ideals, men with honor—but if I can fool people into thinking I’m a king, people are easily fooled. The colors of your soul never lie.
Surprisingly, I agreed with their assessment. I don’t know what he did on the field or what his skills were, but he was a good man. That was enough.
“What is your oath?” I asked him, and the world breathed again. He recited it and I couldn’t help but see the blaze of his spirit as he did so.
Then I recited my oath as I walked back down the line and handed back each sword.
I dismissed them. They bowed and departed, all but Dantos. I gestured for him to wait and he did. I climbed back on the throne and hurried to ask my mountain some questions. Yes, there were ways under the mountains. The southern road and the road through the pass were both wide, easy roads to travel, but they were also thick stone over buried tunnels. Down the length and breadth of the kingdom, everywhere there was a road of stone, the Kingsroad, there was a tunnel through the solid rock beneath it. Well, once you grow a road, extending it down, thickening it, really isn’t much of a trick.
A secret highway for the Demon King, perhaps? A way to get around without being seen? He could travel through a tunnel, pop out through a secret door in any city, and spy, scare, or kill anyone he pleased.
On the other hand, there was an accessway connected to the palace in Karvalen. I could walk into the palace in Carrillon and never see the sky. I could walk to Crag Keep and never get mud on my boots. If I cared to let the world know about my secret highway network, I could march an army from Karvalen to Vathula, or Carrillon, or even to far-distant Lyraneyn and no one would see it coming until men were pouring into the city streets.
I didn’t care to use it. It strikes me as a handy thing to have, but only useful as long as it’s a closely-held secret.
I speeded up to a more human timescale and stepped down from the throne. Dantos was still with me, waiting patiently while I appeared to nap. He moved to kneel and fist-on-floor before me.
“Get up. And stop doing that when we’re alone.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. First thing: You did a fantastic job putting all this together. Well done.”
“I thank Your Majesty,” he said, and added something in the language of the plains tribes.
“What was that?” I asked. “I didn’t have a translation spell running.”
“It is hard to put in Rethven, Sire. ‘When the darkness is content, the night is swift?’ ‘When the darkness does not hunger, the hours of the night flow by quickly and without worry?’”
“‘When the dark doesn’t eat you, it’s a good night’?” I asked. He flashed a rare smile.
“Yes, my lord.”
“I like the first one better,” I told him. “Now, what time is it?”
“The moon will reach midheaven in less than a band of the candle.”
“Thanks. I don’t see anyone else around. Are you on bodyguard detail?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Right. To the gate-cave, Robin!”
“Robin?”
“I’ll try the joke again for Mary. She’ll get it. Come on.”
We went to the new, upstairs gate room the mountain made for me—I really need to relocate and consolidate my gate rooms. I have the new one with my makeshift gate, but the old gate room is still down there. Maybe I should have a gate room for guests and one for my personal use. Although, now that I think of it, I suppose I do.
As I entered, I noticed a chang
e in the walls. They were still where I left them—which, all things considered, isn’t the most certain thing in the universe. They were developing lines, crystalline veins of some sort. The lines formed a radial pattern around the gate. The gate itself wasn’t part of the wall, of course; the mountain doesn’t like having bits of itself enchanted. But the glittering lines in the wall centered on an area the size of the gate and radiated outward from the edge of it.
Quartz? Something crystalline, certainly. Did the mountain pick up on the fact I needed crystals to store power for my temporary gate? Was it that sensitive and responsive? The fact it could produce veins of crystals wasn’t too surprising. It regularly supplies all sorts of subterranean and mineral substances, from water to coal to gold. It’s even given me diamonds.
Were those veins of crystal projecting from the wall a bit, as though being squeezed out of the stone? I thought they might be. Upon close examination, it seemed several dozen individual crystals were growing, but maybe these were projections of one giant crystal instead of lots of little ones.
Which gave me an idea. I put some instructions in a spell and slid it into the rock. Soon, we should have a big crystal in the center and a constellation of smaller ones around it. One crystal can house more than one spell, but it’s complicated to do and the spells have to be simple. But you crack a crystal and you ruin everything in it. If we’re going to use these to power a gate, having multiple batteries is better than one big battery. Less efficient, yes, but much more failure-tolerant.
Pleased as I was to have a much longer-lasting gate, this interfered with my idea to move it down to the old gate room. The mountain would have to start over. Would it be easier to get people to move all the miscellaneous stuff to another room and call it my workroom or laboratory, instead? Probably. Upper gate room, lower gate room and a more mundane magical workroom… okay. I mentioned it to Dantos and he assured me it would be taken care of. I immediately felt more organized.
I wonder how long that will last.
I went through the whole where-are-you routine to hunt down Tianna on the mirror next to the gate. Once I had a lock, I regarded her handiwork. She found two trees fairly close together, trimmed away some lower limbs, and bent branches toward each other. It wasn’t exactly an archway, but it was roughly the right shape and right size. I connected to her mirror and her face swam into focus.
“Grandfather?”
“Yep. Ready to come home?”
“Yes, I think so. Have you looked at my construction?”
“I have. I think it should work beautifully. Just get on Bronze and hang on for dear life. She’s going to make a sudden leap forward when the gate opens. Got it?”
“Whenever you are ready.”
She hung up, but I watched through the magic mirror, centering the point of view inside the makeshift archway. The mirror connection should act as a guide for the gate spell, making it certain to establish the connection in the right spot. Who knows? It might even make it less power-intensive. I’ve done that sort of thing before, but I wasn’t in a position to get a good gauge of power consumption.
Bronze kicked divots in the ground for starting-blocks; I knew she was ready. Since this was only a spell-enhanced archway—not an enchanted Gate, merely an archway with a spell on it—I pushed some personal energy into it to save as much of the gem-charge as possible. The image flushed and swirled away in the mirror, as though I looked down into a whirlpool of silver light. The whirling image faded as I watched and the archway filled with a long tunnel of whirling brightness, reaching for the destination. The idea struck me that maybe I should have the mirror on the wall behind the gate.
The far-distant image of a wooded area, huge horse, red-haired rider—all of it snapped forward, leaving only a doorway from one place to another. I expected it. Dantos backed away quickly, pressing against a wall. Not a bad idea, really, considering what happened next.
Bronze sprang through the now-stable opening. I couldn’t hear her hooves, thanks to her enchanted bracelets, but I felt the rapid-fire thunder in the floor. She didn’t skid a bit, either. I’m proud of those enchantments.
On the other hand, like Dantos, I was suddenly rather pleased to be standing to one side. There are advantages to having the mirror beside the gate, rather than behind it. If I put it behind the gate, I’ll wind up blocking the door every time I open it. Bronze wouldn’t run me over, but it would take more time, and time is power. Ask any Gallifreyan.
The instant Bronze was through, I cut the power to the active portions of the spell. The view through the gate shredded, disintegrated, vanished. Not bad from a power consumption standpoint. Since the spell’s power wasn’t fully expended, it could be used again. With the existing charge in the archway’s embedded crystals, we could do that several times more before burning up the existing spell. Mirror connections do help. I resolved to make sure the archway’s crystals stayed charged, at least until I could get around to putting in a permanent enchantment to replace the spell.
Tianna dismounted and handed me Firebrand. We all exchanged greetings—Firebrand telepathically, Tianna by hugging me, and Bronze by lowering her head to be hugged. I skritched Bronze with my talons since she was the only one who could enjoy it.
“Grandfather,” Tianna began, “we have a problem.”
“Another one?”
“I’m serious!”
“So am I. Go ahead, tell me about it.”
“Thomen is doing something to the Queen. I think he’s controlling her.”
“This is not news to me.”
I told her that, Firebrand said. I told her I told you, but—
“You didn’t tell him what we found out,” Tianna countered.
Well, no, but—
“Hold it. I’m on a schedule, here. What’s the story with Thomen and the Queen?”
“What I’ve been able to find out—”
What we found out, Firebrand insisted.
“Shut up,” Tianna advised, and Firebrand did. Impressive. “What we have been able to find out is this. During the reign of the Demon King, Lissette had a number of miscarriages, but most people don’t know it. They think she’s had perfectly normal pregnancies, aside from the demon-spawn rumors. What they don’t know is Thomen, in his office as the Queen’s Physician, killed the unborn children.”
I think I managed to restrain myself rather well. I doubt there was anything more than a twitch around one eye, really. Oh, and my fangs didn’t want to retract. Other than that, I don’t think I showed any sign of my instant desire to murder Thomen by drowning him in scorpions.
“Before I get all bent out of shape,” I said, carefully, “did you determine if this was Lissette’s idea or Thomen’s? If he did it without Lissette’s approval, that’s one thing. If he obeyed the orders of his Queen, that’s quite another.”
“Surely, that doesn’t matter? He murdered the unborn!”
“I’m not going to get into an abortion debate with you. I want to figure out who to have the debate with. Do I need to find Thomen and explain to him why what he did to the Queen and her unborn children was wrong? Or do I need to acknowledge he was doing as he was ordered and have my discussion with the Queen, herself?”
“Oh,” Tianna replied. “I hadn’t thought of it in that light.” She thought for several seconds. “I have to say it’s not exactly clear. What is clear is the children she’s had since then.”
“The ones after Liam?”
“That’s right. They’re all Thomen’s children!”
“Okay.”
There was a long silence.
“Grandfather?”
“Yes, Tianna?”
“I just told you your wife has several children by another man.”
“Again, was it her idea?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Now I’m interested. Tell me more.”
“Firebrand?” she said, encouraging it.
I spent a lot of time on the Demon King’s hip,
Boss. I didn’t spend a lot of time around Lissette or Thomen while this was going on. I have, now. I know you don’t much like how I hear what people are thinking, but it’s the only way I can talk to them. I hear stuff because people’s minds are always muttering to themselves. Okay?
“I understand. It’s how you are. I’m used to it.”
Okay. With that out of the way, I’ve been listening a lot while Tianna does the talking. People pay a lot of attention to what they’re saying when she asks searching questions. They pay less attention to governing their thoughts. Usually, they think about a lot of things—what to say, what not to say, how to say it, and so on. That’s how I know Lissette isn’t altogether there. Pieces of her thinking are… walled off? Closed. It’s like someone decided what things she can think about, or… no, it’s more like there are things she’s not allowed to think about.
“What’s the difference?”
I’m not sure how to explain it. If I told you to only think about eating, sleeping, and raiding villages for gold, you couldn’t think about mating, right? But if I told you not to think about attacking a magician’s tower, you could think about anything else—even the tower, or the magician, just not about attacking the tower.
“It’s an exclusion set, rather than an inclusive one. Got it.”
Uh, sure. Whatever you say, Boss. But the person doing it—
“Thomen.”
Only one I can see doing it, Boss. His own think-parts are harder to sort out, what with being a professional wizard and all. He knows he’s doing something wrong and it scares him, but he’s doing it anyway. What I think happened is he told Lissette about her demon-spawn and somehow convinced her to get rid of them. Then, since a complete lack of any children would be suspicious to the Demon King, he also convinced her to substitute his kids for the Demon King’s.