by Garon Whited
“Thank you. Now, on another subject…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“What do you want regarding our family?”
“Whatever you want,” I told her.
“I don’t think I follow.”
“Tell me what you want,” I elaborated. “I have some things to do, obviously, but assuming I live through them, I’ll handle this however you want it handled. I’ll move in and be Dad. I’ll stay away and never be seen again. I’ll live over on this side of the Eastrange and occasionally send presents, visit on birthdays, however you want it done. It is entirely up to you, and I am at your service.”
Lissette looked at me, searching what little she could see of my face. She leaned back in her chair, still watching my eyes.
“I’ll need to think about it,” she said, softly.
“Take your time. Like I said, I still have things that need doing. They may take a while, and it’s always possible I won’t come back.”
“All right. We’ll talk again, soon?”
“You may summon me at your whim, Your Majesty.”
“I doubt that.”
“All right. You may call me whenever you wish, my lady.”
“That sounds more like you. Thank you.”
“Happy to help.”
She hung up. I rearranged my sash on the way to the CIC. I went there to use the sand table, checking on the progress of nobles visiting the King’s Court. A few of them were dragging feet, so I gave them some signs and wonders as encouragement. For example, there are a number of liquids able to float on water and burn. Use one of the smaller ring-sized gates to add some, say, alcohol to the reflecting pool in the courtyard and light it. Suddenly you have a pool of burning water. Add a spell to shape the flames and you have a fiery coach and horses galloping along, all made of fire.
I like to think it’s a subtle encouragement. It’s more subtle than blowing the doors off the stable and blasting a path out through the courtyard gate, anyway.
Which made me realize having a couple of enchanted gates—little ones, not only the big one in the basement—might be useful. They would take a lot less effort to use if they were real magical items instead of merely material foci for spells… But later. Two of the nobles deserved personal calls, not signs and wonders.
The mirror rippled and shifted, revealing a typical communications room. Is it the custom in Reth—in Karvalen—for nobles to have a room devoted to their magic mirror? It certainly seemed so.
The young lady in front of the mirror looked at me and managed not to scream. Good.
“Good afternoon!” I said, cheerily. Is Count Jorgen or the Countess available?”
“I’ll… I’ll… I’ll…”
“Run along and see,” I agreed, nodding and waving her off. She scrambled out of the chair and disappeared. I waited, trying to think what the Demon King might have done to irk Jorgen. Aside from denying him the promised Dukedom—he was only a Count—what might it be? Something to do with Taisa? Or his daughter, Nina? But I couldn’t even imagine what he could have done.
Well, I suppose I could, if I wanted to consult my inner demons. But I didn’t.
Jorgen arrived and seated himself. He looked older, but I’m getting used to it. He looked at me for several seconds before speaking.
“Your Majesty,” he said, coldly. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“Actually, I was hoping you would help me.”
“Help you?” he scoffed. “Why, of course, Your Majesty. The Count of Hagan is at your service.”
“Good, good. Are you aware of the Demon King’s nature and involvement with the matters of the last nine years or so?”
“I have heard the story.”
“And are you aware he has been dealt with? I’m me again.”
“I have had reports, Your Majesty.”
“Good! That saves me a lot of trouble,” I enthused, settling back. “I realize you might not fully believe what’s happened, but I assure you I’m back to my old self. So, can you tell me what the Demon King did to earn your ire? I’d like to fix it, if I can. I don’t want you to harbor any ill-will toward the Crown. What can I do to make it right, whatever it was?”
Jorgen looked me over with the air of someone considering how best to scrape farmyard goo off his boot.
“The Demon King had little enough to do with Hagan, Your Majesty. It is your treachery which has earned my anger.”
Okay, totally did not see that coming.
“I’m sorry?”
“Save your apologies!” he snapped.
“No! No, no, no! That’s not what I meant. I meant, what did I do? I don’t recall any treachery!”
“Do you have the gall, the sheer effrontery, to sit there and deny what you did to my daughter?”
“Yes! I mean, no! I deny doing anything treacherous or even unkind! All I did was save her life—I did save her life, didn’t I? She’s alive?”
“Oh, yes,” Jorgen sneered. “She’s alive.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“She’s alive, but she is possessed by demons. You brought her back to us, but left her a hollow shell to be inhabited by monsters that abuse her body, torture her, wrack her with pains and convulsions. You gave us her life, yes, if one may call it that, but you stole from us our daughter!”
“Wait right there,” I ordered, and hung up on him.
From mirror room to gate room is a fairly short walk. My bodyguards had a hard time keeping up, though; I was in a hurry.
Two minutes after hanging up, I had the gate-mirror connected to Jorgen’s mirror again.
“Still there?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
“Good. Look at the door.”
As he turned to look at the door to his mirror room, I moved the viewpoint in the scrying mirror from his mirror to the doorway. A quick click from mirror to arch, and a pair of grey sashes stepped around the sides while I went straight through. The gateway shredded into emptiness behind me, leaving only a normal door.
“Now, take me to your daughter. I didn’t intend to have her anything less than perfect. If I can fix this, I will. Right now, Jorgen. Get up. Show me to her.”
In his surprise at being suddenly in the same room as the King, he got up and led us through his palace. Nina was in her room—it was a very nice room, even though it was in the dungeons. The walls were covered in tapestries and hanging cloths, presumably to deaden the sounds of shrieking, and every stick of furniture in the room was padded in thick quilting. Her bed was also equipped with quite a lot of restraints. Nina was about fourteen, I think, with short blonde hair and a wild look in her eye, the one trying to look at me. The other one was looking somewhere else. She thrashed on the bed, twisting unnaturally and biting into the gag.
I pulled over a chair and sat down next to her bed. There are a lot of things I can’t do during the day, but at night I have a whole other toolbox of mystical abilities. I’ve found applications for vampire powers beyond the simple feed-and-kill routine. Even during the day, I have spells based on principles no one else in the world understands. I looked into her with my daytime repertoire, examined her with every spell I knew and with some I made up on the spot.
No demons. It was daytime, so I didn’t see how there could be, but I don’t know as much about demons as I should.
What I did find was an exceptional amount of electrical activity in her brain. After a bit of searching in my headspace, I found her file—the memories of what was wrong with her and how I fixed it—and I compared the brain in front of me to the brain I remembered. Yes, the damage done to her was in the same section as the present problem. A side effect of the bleed in her brain? Something I failed to fix? Quite possibly. I’m no doctor; I just play one on TV. I’m a rocket scientist, not a brain surgeon!
“No demons,” I reported. Jorgen replied with a rather earthy word. “None of that, either,” I replied. “I see she’s calmed down. Her problem comes and goes, does
it?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
“I’m not sure I can fix it, but I can try. Do you have a girl about her age around the palace, somewhere? I need to borrow her.”
“What for?” he demanded. One of the grey sashes on guard detail didn’t like his tone; the gauntleted hand went to the sword hilt. He didn’t draw, though, and Jorgen seemed surprised when I waved at the knight to stand down.
“As a pattern,” I answered, politely. “I intend to use spells to look inside her and compare her to Nina. Nina isn’t possessed. She’s ill. I’m hoping I can cure her illness, but I need to know how she’s supposed to work before I can make her well. If I can.”
Jorgen just stared at me, hope and hate warring on his features.
“Please help me to help Nina. Go get me a girl. Please.”
He turned and left. I went back to examining the inside of Nina’s head. The problem seemed concentrated on the upper portion of her brain, about halfway back, in the same place as the original injury. How did I screw it up? Or is the brain trickier to fix than a muscle or bone?
Stupid question.
Obviously, my earlier success with Geva was at least partly due to luck—assuming she didn’t wind up with similar problems after I left. I didn’t exactly do any follow-ups on my patients. Could magical alterations to the structure of the brain always result in seizure disorders? Or is it just a byproduct of my unskilled poking around in a brain? Or maybe I should read up on what the various parts of the brain do. It could help to know what I’m fooling with. I mean, what is a hippocampus—not the mythological creature—and what does it do? I have no idea.
Where can I download an Emergency Medical Hologram program?
I watched Nina’s brain as it settled into more regular patterns. The seizure-storm had passed; now she was unconscious.
Jorgen returned with a teenaged girl and a dozen guardsmen. After a bit of body-language argument with the grey sashes, his guards stayed out in the hall while Jorgen and the girl came into the room. I suspected we might have to fight our way out if I didn’t fix Nina. My grey sashes took station beside the closed door, thinking the same thing. They didn’t say anything, but I they were much more alert than before.
Jorgen introduced Laria to me. She knelt and clasped her hands. I dispensed with the formalities, laid her down next to the bed, and told her to close her eyes, keep quiet, and hold still. A moment later, I also told her she was allowed to breathe.
I cheated. I cast a sleep spell on Laria when I started. With both brains cycling through sleep patterns, it was easier to compare them. I spent quite a while at it, not wanting to start fiddling with anything until—and if—I felt I could do more good than harm.
It was also a head start on the more fundamental examination following the sunset. Once I had tendrils writhing through both brains, I could use them and my spells to swim through the flesh and spirit, watch the sparks of thought, hear the gasp of neurotransmitters, trace the lines of light and energy…
Laria was a big help. I don’t know for certain what those areas of the brain are for, but hers worked quite differently from Nina’s. With her as a working model, it was possible to see how Nina’s brain was not quite right. Close, yes, but I’m told even minor changes to a brain can cause massive problems—all depending on where it is. Why didn’t I pay more attention in those elective classes in Anatomy? Because I never thought I’d need them! I was more concerned with keeping my thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine.
On the other hand, no two brains are exactly alike, either. My usual method of mapping a healthy example and transposing it onto a damaged patient didn’t seem like a good idea, here.
On yet another hand, that spell was a direct, physical representation of the flesh. If I added a layer of abstraction to it, this might still be doable. Instead of copying the physical layout, maybe I could tell it to map the functions. Instead of duplicating the flesh, could I have it operate on a more spiritual level, telling the damaged portion what it needed to do, rather than simply reconfiguring the physical structure? Sort of like a software patch to bypass a damaged processor and isolate it from a cluster without shutting down the whole machine. Or, better yet, copy the functions of the healthy section of brain so the seizure-storm doesn’t send the girl into twisting convulsions?
Now, if I can do that, can I also link it to a healing spell? If I can make the software patch act like a prosthetic by assuming the functions of the damaged section, could a healing spell work in conjunction with it to let the damaged section of brain “learn” what it was supposed to be doing? It’s a brain. It’s supposed to learn, isn’t it?
Maybe a surge suppressor, too, while I’m at it, to make sure we’re isolating and arresting the seizure activity…
I finished up somewhat after midnight. Everything seemed to be working, but everything seemed to be working the last time I tried to help, too.
“Jorgen?”
“Yes?” He was still there, sitting a chair on the other side of the bed, wide awake and waiting. At least he had the good sense not to bother me while I was working. The wait had taken its toll on him, though. He was tired and tense. I didn’t envy him the headache pulsing in the veins of his forehead.
“This was a lot more complicated than I thought, all those years ago, and I apologize for missing it. I should have spent more time on it, but, in my arrogance, I thought I repaired everything. I was wrong.”
“Did you cast out the demons?”
“There were no demons,” I corrected.
“I know what I saw!” he insisted, leaning forward.
“And I know demons better than you do,” I snarled back. He blinked at me and sat back again while I took a deep breath and took control of my tone. “This was entirely due to the damage done to her all those years ago,” I continued. “And of course, to my own failure to follow up afterward and check on how she was recovering.”
“Very well. Have you finally healed her?”
Ouch.
“It’s not that simple. I think so, but there’s more to it.” I explained about the spell in her head to stop the seizures and to take over for the damaged portion. “It’s like a muscle. If I graft a magical rope into your body to take the place of a muscle, it works. Wonderful. You can go on using it like a muscle. Meanwhile, another spell is growing a new muscle to take the place of the magic rope, teaching it how to grow, how to be a muscle. Kind of.”
“What do I do? Is there anything I can do?”
“You’ve done a fine job already,” I informed him, “by caring for her so thoroughly and so well. You’ve done magnificently—I couldn’t have done any better in your position. For now, though, watch her, see how she feels. You can talk to her between fits, right?”
“Yes, when she is not weeping. Sometimes she… when she speaks, the words are jumbled or nonsensical.”
“I understand. Yes, do talk to her. Ask her how she feels. Keep track if anything she says is odd, or any strange feelings she has. And if she has another seizure—a fit—call me at the Palace or the Temple of Shadow. I’ve never fixed this kind of problem before, so there may be some trouble about it. Oh, and we’re done with Laria. She can go back to whatever she usually does.”
“But Nina will be well?”
“I can’t tell you she will be. I can tell you she might be—which is far better than ‘she won’t’.”
“We shall see,” he replied, bleakly, and held Nina’s hand. Nobody tried to stop us, nor said anything when I and my two shadows went back up to the mirror room and called for someone to open the doorway home.
Having, hopefully, handled the Jorgen and Nina situation, I didn’t feel like tackling Raman. Still, I never actually met him or his boy; they only sent me messages. Rather than pay a house call, I sent them a message saying they were welcome to stop by Karvalen—the city—and to visit the Temple of Shadow. I’m certain Beltar and his buddies can handle old injuries; they still have the bed of regeneration, somewher
e. Is it unreasonable to ask someone to come to the hospital, rather than pay a house call? I don’t think so. Hopefully, they wouldn’t, either.
Saturday, March 6th
Everybody invited to the party is headed for Carrillon. Seems my messages got through—all of them.
I, on the other hand, was invited to a party here, in Karvalen. Tianna insisted and practically dragged me out of my cave.
It’s a Karvalen-Mochara holiday. They celebrate it every year. I had no idea. When I said so, Tianna explained that today is the anniversary of the day a wagon train of wet, tired refugees made it out of the Eastgate Pass and into the Sea of Grass. Their leader declared it was a holiday, and so a holiday it was, and a holiday it remained. I’m not sure my personal calendar has the right day for it, but it is the right time of the year…
I have too many alternate time streams to keep track of this stuff. I took her word for it.
My granddaughter, Seldar, and Beltar have a lot to answer for. I spent most of the morning dressed in armor, riding Bronze at a slow walk through the city streets, while people shouted and waved and pelted me with flowers. It was a parade, in point of fact. Why do I have to have parades? Why do I have to do any of this? Can’t I stay quietly in the palace and rule from afar?
Bronze enjoyed it. I feel so betrayed.
Seldar obviously worked hand-in-hand with Beltar on the Royal Security. Apparently, the idea is to not bother me with anything they can handle—normally a policy I encourage. So they made all the parade preparations without troubling me with any of it. At least, until I was actually necessary as a figurehead.
At least they were well-prepared. Before we set out on our little tour, he and half a dozen wizards worked all sorts of defensive spells around me, especially around my head—my helmet was going to hang from the horn of Bronze’s saddle so people could see me. Seldar, Beltar, and I agreed my head was moderately important. I thought so because it’s where I keep my thinking. They probably thought of it as a place to keep the crown.
Speaking of which, I wore the new crown. It struck me as a good experience for future kings and queens.