by Garon Whited
“Look,” I said, aloud, “you, of all people, should know how I feel about this sort of thing.”
I should have thought of it. I’m sorry. I apologize. I wasn’t thinking about it. I was focused on the project.
“Do not. Do that. Again.”
You’re upset. You have a right to be upset. I goofed, and I admit it, and I’m sorry. I apologize. I abase myself in contrition. Okay? What do you want? Sackcloth and ashes?
He sounded exactly like me when I’ve made a mistake, realize it, acknowledge it, and apologize. Then again, he would, wouldn’t he?
“Okay,” I agreed. I sounded huffy, even to me. I tried to calm down.
On the plus side, you did great work. I really appreciate it. And I did give you back all the energy you expended in making the thing.
“Is that why I’m not exhausted by doing the fast-and-dirty enchantment?”
Yep! Trying to be helpful. And, since you’ve done me a favor—and I’m trying to apologize for being thoughtless—I’ll see about getting you a present to prove I mean it. I really am sorry.
“I… okay. I accept your apology.”
Thank you. I was worried I might never forgive myself.
“Your sense of humor is…” I trailed off.
I know. Any ideas on what you’d like as a symbol of divine thanks?
“Uh… no?”
You sure?
“God says, ‘Hey, you get a wish! What will it be?’ and you want a snap answer?”
Oh. Yes, I see your point. Well, if I come up with something you don’t like, you can always return it. I’ll keep track of the receipt. But you only get store credit.
“That’s… surprisingly fair,” I admitted. “For starters, how about we not do the body-snatching thing again?”
From now on, he promised, you have to actually say it’s okay, and I’ll assume a default answer of “No.” How’s that?
“I think I can agree to that. Thanks. Now try the thing and see if it works.”
It hasn’t had a chance to charge and the coals are mostly dead. It’s a magical widget, not a divine manifestation. We need to refuel the thing, then we need something to make smoke.
“Hmm.” I looked around and found a supply of charcoal in a compartment under the altar. The acolyte doing the cleaning ignored the way I talked to myself, but he looked puzzled and slightly worried when I refueled the brazier.
“Ah… Great Lord? This unworthy one craves the gentle attention of the Master of Shadows.” I assumed he spoke to me. He faced me, but his eyes couldn’t have been more firmly fixed on the floor if he nailed them there.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked, not unkindly.
“The consecrated fuel is only for use during actual services.”
“Thank you. Now run along, Nivell. I’m trying to talk to myself.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something further—ask a question, argue, I don’t know—but he closed his mouth, gathered up his implements, and hurried past Bronze as he left the sanctuary area. Firebrand ignited the charcoal, rapid-roasted it, and very quickly we had a lot of reddish-orange glow.
“Wait a second. Did I just call him by name?” I asked.
Of course. Nivell’s a nice kid. He has no interest in being a fighter, though. He still trains hard because he wants to be a Banner. He’ll be more of an academic priest than a warrior priest.
“That’s not my point!”
Ooo, right, right. Yes, you know his name. I thought I heard a psychic sigh. Look, you’re standing—literally! —in the center of our worship in Karvalen. This is your Vatican, your Mecca, your Holy of Holies, your High Temple of Temples. I’m trying to isolate you as much as I can, but there’s a point of diminishing returns on these things. You’re going to get religious weirdness seeping through no matter what we do. Get used to it or get over it. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. All right?
I muttered something I won’t repeat. I guess he/I/we took it as agreement, if not acceptance.
I used Firebrand’s edge to draw a shallow line along the back of my left hand, carefully, making sure to get only skin, not a tendon. Since it was daytime, the cut bled nicely and I flicked blood onto the coals before working a little healing magic. Steamy smoke sizzled up. A face formed in the smoke, solidified into a definite image, seemed almost to come alive. It blinked, looked around the room, licked its lips. It looked exactly like me, just bigger, slightly translucent, monochrome, and decapitated. It was a ten-foot ghost of a head. My head. Eerie.
Now I know how Dorothy felt the first time she met the Wizard. It’s a good trick, and an impressive one. I had to step back a bit to look at it comfortably.
“Well, this is weird,” it said, blinking and looking at me. Sounded like me, too.
“You’re telling me?” I asked.
“It’s… a different perspective. I’m not used to looking at the world from a physical viewpoint. I’ll get used to it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Anytime you need a favor, you let me know. And give some thought to what sort of present you’d like, would you? I’m hard to buy for.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I assured him. “Come to think of it, I don’t suppose you know where T’yl or Tort are?”
“Sure. T’yl’s in Arondael being examined by magicians who want to figure out how to put their souls into elf-bodies so they can live forever. Tort’s in Kashmanir, the easternmost province of Kamshasa, hiding from the hit-squads the Demon King earmarked for her in the event of his demise. He arranged for a lot of people to die if he turned up dead or missing, but you put a stop to it when you told Bob to call it off. Elven assassins are sneaky devils.”
There was a long silence. His expression grew concerned. I wondered what my expression was like. Unhappy, at the very least.
“Something wrong?” my smoke-face asked.
“How long have you known all this?” I asked, calmly. I’m pretty sure I sounded calm. I didn’t hear my voice echo, so at least I was quiet.
“Oh, I keep track of them. They’re my friends. You ought to know that.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me!?” I heard my scream echo around the room. Great acoustics. I gathered what I could of my scattered wits and took a moment to calm down.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking concerned. “It didn’t occur to me you didn’t know. I mean, they’re your friends too, right? I guess I thought, you know, you kept track of them like I did.”
I can’t really gnash my teeth; they fit together too well. I can clench my teeth perfectly, though. If I’d had a hat, I would have thrown it to the ground and stomped on it. I know I growled. I might have snarled a little. I was glad Nivell wasn’t around to be terrified of god having a tantrum.
“All this time,” I gritted, through clenched teeth, “I’ve had Sir Sedrick hunting for T’yl so we could get clues to where to find Tort. I’ve sent out mammoth sensory pulses to echo around the firmament of the world, trying to find her! I built a magical spy satellite network looking for clues to where she might be! Even though I didn’t know for certain she was alive, I chose to believe she was so I could look for her. How did you not know this?”
“Hey, calm down,” he said, sounding both apologetic and annoyed. “What was I supposed to do? Read your mind?” he asked. “Well, okay, strike that last—I could have, but I also know how we feel about it! Or did you forget I’m not exactly triple-omni? You have to tell me what you’re thinking—and tell me what you want. Just say the word and I’ll deliver answers with blazing lights from above, wingéd messengers, horns and hallelujahs. But is it fair to blame me for not telling you stuff when you don’t even bother to talk to me? They’ve got all these weird rules up here—like the thing where I’m generally not allowed to talk to you unless you call me first. How was I supposed to know why you were doing anything, much less guess you actually wanted my help?”
That only
made me angrier. Not because he didn’t have a point, but because he did. He was right. If I’d swallowed my aversion to the whole god-complex thing and asked…
My first impulse was to shout, “God damn it!” but I was talking to one and he might actually do it.
“What else do you know?” I demanded.
“Huh? Well, lots of stuff.”
“Tell me.”
“Look, think about what you’re asking, okay?”
“How so?”
“You’re asking… Hmm. How to put this? Do you know anything about science?”
“Obviously. What’s that got—”
“I’m making a point. You know stuff about science. What do you know? Go on, explain everything you know about science to me, but make it quick. No, let’s narrow that down. Tell me about Earth. Explain to me what you know about Earth. Let me make it easier. Just tell me about human culture. I’ll narrow it down even more: Only modern human culture. Skip the rest of the universes, and all the history, ecology, geology, and strictly planet-related things. Keep your answer short and to the point.”
“All right. I’m asking a broad question, and possibly a silly one.” I took a couple of deep breaths and sat down on the altar to think.
“Isn’t that a little sacrilegious?” my smoke-self observed.
“Whose altar is it?”
“I instinctively want to object, but maybe you’re right. Forget I mentioned it.”
“Okay. How about this? What can you tell me about Tort, T’yl, the Church of Light, and Lissette? And Johann, while I’m asking.”
“Not much on Johann. I can barely look into his world,” he said, promptly. “I think it’s because I don’t have any worshippers there. I think I can only see into it at all because you were there and a lot of people remember you—it’s not faith, or worship, or whatever you want to call it. If I’m right, that consciousness of you gives me a minimal something to work with.
“Lissette is getting better and will probably be okay, but she’s not going to be fond of you for a while. She didn’t like the Demon King right from the beginning and it only got worse from there. Thomen wasn’t helping her, by the way. He was aiming at being on the throne. If I’d had a temple in Carrillon, I’d have inspired someone to deal with him—I like Lissette, too, you know. But, while I’m not certain of exactly how he was doing it, I’m pretty sure she’ll be all right. If she needs it, I’ll do everything in my power to fix whatever’s wrong with her.”
“I find that oddly reassuring.”
“She’s a good person and we like her.”
“Fair point. Thank you. What else?”
“The Church of Light has the Lord of Light as their deity and he’s a bit of a snob. Nobody up here really likes him; he tends to be aloof and holier-than-thou, if you’ll excuse the phrase. He wants it all and he’s powerful—more powerful than anyone. But he’s not more powerful than everyone, so he’s not taking over anytime soon. He keeps encouraging his minions to work on it, though. I get the impression from the others that he’s a bit different from the rest of us.”
“How so?”
“Waaaay back when, when the Devourer ate its way into the Church of Light, it found a way to subsume the Lord of Light—he was, I’m told, much like the rest of us, which made everyone nervous about the Devourer’s ability to take on aspects of the local godhood. Now, though, the Lord of Light is back, large and in charge, and apparently much more ruthless and conniving than he used to be. Or so I’m told.”
“Could he be like you? A re-formed entity made of the psychic imprint left behind? The original Lord of Light with a leavening of Devourer?”
“Possibly. But I don’t think so,” he admitted. “There’s something about him that seems out of place to me. I may have a weird perspective on it, compared to the rest of the locals. He seems to have reserves, resources, most of us don’t. I can’t prove it, but my hypothesis is he’s kind of like the Devourer.”
“How so?”
“The Devourer wormed its way into the Lord of Light’s power supply—his worshippers, his church, all that. Once they were feeding the Devourer, the Lord of Light withered away. I’m thinking the present Lord of Light is someone who was similar enough to step into the empty space left behind when the Devourer… ah, was no longer available.”
“So the original Lord of Light didn’t re-form because someone jumped in and took his place?”
“I suspect so. It’s true, he could be a composite of the original Lord of Light and the Devourer—two different viewpoints of worshippers, both being pumped into this plane of existence. My only reason to doubt it is the way he seems to have fingers in other worlds. I don’t. I can only detect the power input from them, not access it. Which makes me think he’s a multi-universal opportunist wearing the original’s shoes.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know energy-state beings could do that.”
“I didn’t either, until I heard about it from the others. There’s a lot of not-liking him going on, but, well, there are all these rules… and as long as he’s willing to abide by them, the rules protect him from us as much as protect us from him.”
“I see. All right. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to help, but keep me posted if anything new develops.”
“Roger that.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“Not much on the Lord of Light or his church. T’yl, however, doesn’t want to be in Arondael; he’s being forcibly—but politely—studied by some friends of his. I think he was hiding out at the Academy from the elven death squads of the Demon King, but I’m not sure. I believe he was discovered by some of his fellow magicians and suckered into helping them whether he liked the idea or not. On the bright side, his odds of survival and freedom are almost certain. They only want the technique of gaining elf-body immortality. He’s cooperating with them—mainly, I think, to hurry the process along so they’ll let him go. He’s still worried about a hit-elf showing up. He doesn’t know you’ve called them off.”
“Hold it,” I interrupted. “You’re not omniscient, so how do you know I called them off?”
“I hear prayers from sea-folk, plains-people, orku, galgar, humans all over the place, and from the occasional elf. It’s not omniscience, but it’s an extensive gossip network.”
“Ah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt.”
“De nada. Tort’s escape from the exorcism, by the way, was masterful and clever. She managed to slip away without alerting T’yl, which took some doing, let me tell you. She already had arrangements for travel and retirement—the mountain gave her a big pile of gems because she asked and because it knows you like her. She made her way to Kashmanir. She’s got a very nice house, a lot of servants, and is taking things easy in her declining years. She seems content, as far as I can tell, but it’s not like we talk.”
“To paraphrase Hamlet and a ton of other literary figures, I wish I’d known all this sooner.”
My other self did not reply. He looked sympathetic. I rubbed my temples and tried to be calm.
What I wanted to do was punch someone in the face. Possibly me, for being an idiot, but if I started doing that I would lose teeth faster than I could regenerate them.
“Before I get too far ahead of myself,” I said, and stopped. We looked at each other. “Let me rephrase that. Before I start making too many plans, O Lord of the Lesser Darkness—”
“Good one. I like that.”
“I heard Seldar use it at me, once. —let me ask a couple of questions.”
“I know a lot of things, but not everything. Remember how I’m not a triple-omni deity-thing? I’m just a poor little energy-state entity with a foothold on one single world.”
“I remember. If you don’t know, I’m okay with it. Just help me out where you can, all right?”
“You know me, always happy to help.”
“It’s more than a little unnerving to hear me say that,” I told me. Him. The other guy.
“Yeah, b
ut it’s still a good thing, right?”
“Jury’s out. So, here’s the deal. I have a lot of stuff I need to do. I have a city to stabilize, a council to form, a queen to crown, elves to clone, a T’yl to rescue, and a Tort to talk to—that last one may generate a lot of other issues—and then, once I’ve got things moderately stable here, I have a Johann to kill in a slow, painful, hideous fashion that takes as long as humanly possible. Then I have a Redundantly Evil Orb of Evil I need to find and neutralize—destroy it or more fully contain it, whatever.”
“I understand.”
“Now, the Johann and Orb things come last—I’d like to handle them first, but they go together and carry a higher possibility of fatality. How can I get the rest of this done as quickly as possible so I can do the Tort thing, then go do the Johann thing? Any gems of wisdom, divine inspiration, ineffable guidance, or something? At this point, I’d settle for good advice.”
The smoke-solid face paused for a moment's reflection.
“Tricky,” he said finally.
“But can you do it?”
Again, a significant pause.
“Yes, I can do it.”
“Will it take seven and a half million years for you to think about it?”
“You’re in luck. You’re asking narrower questions, now, not generalized stuff about life, the universe, and everything.”
“Thank god for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I’d suggest—and this is only off the top of my head; no deeply-insightful revelations, okay? —we start with figuring out how to make Johann hurt. Google ‘How to cause pain’ or something. That shouldn’t take long. Then clean up the city problem. That should be pretty quick, too.
“As for unlocking the crowning achievement with Lissette, though—that could take a while. You’ll have to wait for nobles to show up at a grand conclave or some such thing. They won’t want to put their butts in the same room as the Demon King—yes, it’s a perception thing, but hear me out. You can start the process, but you may want to hit Tort while you wait. At least you can see her and see for yourself how she’s doing.”