by Garon Whited
No doubt I would get a ransom demand of some sort. Tianna might be knocked over the head and unconscious, but they were going to keep her alive at all costs.
They’d better.
However, there was a chance they might not. It already takes a special kind of idiot to kidnap a woman whose mother is an embodied elemental of divine fire and whose grandfather is a soul-devouring monster.
In the meantime, as long as I was looking around, I thought I should do a flyover of the city. From what I could see, they took the northeast and southeast gates, spread toward each other to consolidate a big chunk of wall, and started expanding from there. They didn’t seem to be fortifying and taking territory so much as they were killing anyone who wasn’t fast enough to be driven before them. The alarm spread faster than they did, but the tactic let them cover a lot of city before we could respond. They had a good third of the city to themselves and were still spreading.
Resistance outside their captured ground coalesced in small pockets, generally from city guards augmented by citizens with weapons. They were now doing a fair job of slowing the invaders, but they had to keep falling back to avoid being flanked, surrounded, and pulverized. Stopping them wasn’t even a possibility. There simply weren’t enough people to put in their way.
As I watched and thought, it became clear this was a much more highly-coordinated attack than before. They didn’t attack the gates at dawn and start fighting. They trickled in over time, then moved through the city before sunrise to attack several places at once. They attacked the Temples of Shadow and Flame, they attacked the undercity… Judging by the numbers of troops loose in the overcity, they must have taken the gates at or just before dawn to let in reinforcements, which meant either hiding them from the sentries on the walls, or subverting the sentries (or simply killing them and pretending to be sentries) and overpowering the gate guards.
Yeah, someone put a lot of planning into a well-coordinated attack.
I wonder if is this how Johann felt.
The attack at dawn was only to be expected, of course. It would be hours before I was in full monster mode and ready to kill anything shining with a religious light. But what did they have in store? Surely, they thought of something. Did they have some ancient, anti-nightlord magic from the old days, when they actively hunted vampires? Or were they depending on the traditional priest, prayer, and piety method? Or maybe they intended to shield a lot of troops from my soul-sucking powers and hope they could bring me down? Or were they going to use Tianna as their vampire-repellent? Or as vampire bait?
It could be important to find out.
I dismissed my scrying to answer a call. Amber flickered into view.
“Tianna is alive and in the hands of the Church of Light,” she said.
“Yes, I thought so. I think I found the building she’s in. It’s the only one shielded from scrying I’ve found so far.”
“Good. But Tianna does not respond to my call through the fire. She must be unconscious.”
“What if there isn’t a fire nearby?”
“Father,” Amber said, looking severe. “She is a Priestess of the Flame.”
“Ah. Of course. An important detail. I suspect they’ll be using her as a bargaining chip.”
“This is unacceptable.”
“I agree, but it’s daytime. I’m not really at my worst right now.”
“Can you open a gate for me? I would dearly love to bring my daughter home.”
“I’m all for it, but I worry they may have some sort of magic to harm you. Even a simple disruption spell, if powerful enough, could prove fatal. You’re not the flesh and blood you once were.”
“No,” Amber admitted, “but I am an embodiment of an angry goddess. I acknowledge Karvalen as your property, however, and ask to walk its streets.”
I didn’t see that coming.
“How sure are you you’ll survive the worst they can throw at you?”
“I am not sure at all,” she admitted, “but what better way can I give my life than in saving that of my daughter?”
“You’re telling this to the guy who ran into a pillar of divine fire for his own daughter.”
“True.”
“All right, but I have some conditions, assuming my idea even works.”
“Conditions? Idea?”
“I’ll explain when I come visit—and I’ll bring Sheena. She needs more help than I can give at the moment.”
I’m standing in a Temple of Fire working magic on a fire elemental who happens to be the soul of my daughter bound into divine flames, while my pet rock and personal knights are struggling to fight off an invasion by the evil Lord of Light. How did things come to this? It’s not the situation—This seems like a bad day, not total insanity—but the journey. When did this sort of thing become… I don’t know. Not normal, certainly, but maybe ‘not unexpected’?
I’m pretty sure there was a day when my biggest problem was explaining to a student the difference between momentum and kinetic energy. That version of me is someone I hardly recognize, yet I can trace my path, point by point, moment by moment, until I reach the now. Would the me of then recognize the me of now? Would he approve of the changes? Come to that, do I?
I don’t know. All I know is I am who and what I am. I don’t have to like it, but I do have to accept responsibility for it.
Amber held still for me, as much as she was able, while I worked on a burning brazier.
“This would be a lot easier at night,” I muttered.
“You work with the stuff of life more easily then,” she agreed, “but you are still a wizard without peer. I believe in you, Father.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t. I’m not sure this will work.”
“Yet you do it anyway?”
“If you’re jumping out of a plane, you bring a parachute, regardless of who packed it,” I replied. She looked at me with a puzzled expression. “If you fall off a cliff, you hope your magic ring of flight works, no matter who made it.”
“Ah. And you want me to stand in the brazier?”
“Yes. Where are those goofballs with the mirrors?”
“It takes time, Father, to obey even the Demon King.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Is it not who you pretend to be?”
“Yes, but I would rather you didn’t call me that.”
“What shall I call you? Father?”
“I’m much more comfortable with that, Daughter. I’d settle for Pops, Dad, or Halar, though.”
“As you wish. When this business is concluded, will you come visit me?”
“Do you want me to?” I asked, surprised. “I always had the impression it was… awkward. Weird. It was a nightlord in a house of fire, a dark thing in a house of light.”
“It is,” she admitted, softly. “Yet… you are my father, and I… I never really knew you, only legends. I would like to know you as you are.”
“You might not like what you see.”
“Perhaps. What I have seen of you—not the Demon King—makes me wonder.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.”
Once I finished her brazier, I started in on the mirrors. None of them needed an enchantment, but each needed at least a spell. In the case of the brazier, a spell capable of handling massive surges of power. Amber helped; she fed me—carefully! —a controlled stream of vital energy, maintaining and enhancing my personal stores of vitality. With the ability to work at my utmost effort, constantly, without tiring, I was done by noon.
Is this what it feels like to channel powers greater than oneself? Is this… I don’t know… shamanism of some sort? Being a medium through which power flows? It’s an interesting sensation, and I must admit it produces results.
“All right. Get the priestesses and worshippers together. You may need all the help you can get.”
“I have already done so.”
“Then let’s get this show on the road.”
&nb
sp; Amber moved from her burning bed to the brazier, shrinking down to doll-size. I picked up the brazier by the handles and carried it out to the domed pavilion. We walked through the crowd as it sank to its knees around us, a collapsing wave of people. I set Amber down in front of Sparky’s idol.
Tamara stood before a fire-goddess statue with my son. Now I stood here with my daughter. Irony? Possibly.
The assembled congregation remained on their knees. Two ladies with brown hair—and reddish highlights—took over for me. They fed incense and aromatic wood chips to Amber.
“You know what to do?”
“Work my way along the line of battle to halt their advance. They will seek to stop me, hopefully by declaring Tianna a hostage. If they contact me, you will be watching, and you will then know who to target. If they contact you, I am to continue until I cannot, or they have nothing further to fight with. If they come to kill me, you will give instructions.”
“Yep, you’ve got it. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she replied, and her color shifted up from reddish to orange, shading into yellow. “You should go.”
I hurried inside the stone structure that served as her home and as the indoor portion of the temple. With a doorway and a call to Sir Raxan, I was back in my gate room in moments, carrying three large mirrors under one arm and a bucket of kerosene in my free hand.
“How is the priestess?” Raxan asked, as I propped mirrors up against the walls.
“I don’t know. They’re taking care of her, so she should be fine. Right now, I have to keep my daughter and granddaughter alive.” I started in on my mirrors again, watching over the city. There were a number of things burning—wagons, furniture, market stalls, you name it—but no widespread fires. The city’s made of stone. Things in it will burn, but there are no thatched roofs or wooden structures. You can start fires in Karvalen, even burn out a house, but you can’t actually burn the city. You might as well set fire to a concrete wall.
But one of the larger fires grew remarkably well. It roared, sucking in air and blazing high. It towered, yellow-white with a few rogue flickers of bloody red. It twisted, turned, began to spin like a tornado. People nearby stared in wonder for far too long. By the time they realized they should have scattered, it was too late.
The whirling vortex of fire spun down the street at three times the speed of a running man. It wavered and wobbled, scorching the road from side to side, scooping up anything flammable as it roared and smoked along the avenues.
It swept up a side-street, roared between buildings, flowed over an active battle between the Church of Light and those fighting the invaders. It burned through the back of the Church of Light forces, setting cloaks, clothes, and hair on fire. Skin crisped and blackened. Men screamed, but the flames never touched a defender. Then it whirled on, chasing fleeing men up the street.
The two unburned warriors of the Church of Light were taken without much trouble. The burned and dying were killed quickly. None of them tried to surrender.
The whirlwind of flame seared a path all along the streets of the northern battle line. It touched those wearing the colors of the Church, blackened and blistered them without killing, and roared to the next squad. It stayed far away from the nominal headquarters, attacking only front-line troops and their reinforcements.
I watched, sickened and grimly satisfied. I don’t much care for burning someone almost to death, much less for doing it wholesale. I’d much rather kill someone outright. But Amber was running this show and it was her choice. I can’t say I blame her, really. She gets her temper from both sides of the family, which is more than a little frightening, now that I think about it.
The headquarters area dispatched a trouble squad. It assembled in the open-air market square, the one with all the pavilion tents. I thought those tents were for reserves, and I was right. The planners obviously decided not to house anything important to the battle inside a stone structure. Prisoners, on the other hand—if I locked up the building where they kept Tianna, her guards would still kill her. And if she got loose in there, she wouldn’t instantly burn everyone in command. Smart.
The squad they sent to deal with the vortex of fire was on horseback, traveling fast, and there was at least one man in robes accompanying each man in armor. Maybe this sort of thing was what they reserved their wizard firepower for.
“Raxan. Watch these guys. Tell me if they stop or suddenly change direction.”
“Yes, my lord.”
I kept an eye on the pavilion tents through one mirror and struck another mirror with a fingernail. Amber’s brazier rippled into view. It was white-hot, blazing like a star, and people were on their faces all around it, praying as though the end of the world was nigh.
“You’re headed east, along the northern arc of the church-held area,” I told her. “The trouble squad should arrive in about two minutes. Shift to the south side.”
The brazier dimmed slightly, cooling a bit, and one of the priestesses poured some sort of oil on it. Amber’s fiery figure stood outlined in the flames for a moment, hands clasped tightly and pressed to her chest, hair whipping wildly about, like flames in a hurricane. Okay, so they were flames, just like the rest of her. To me, it was still an impressive visual.
In another mirror, the whirlwind of fire latched on to a pile of trash, shrank down, and became a burning heap.
On the south side of the Church-occupied area, a small whirlwind of fire sprang up from a burning market stall. It consumed the stall in seconds, growing huge, and began a blazing rampage along the southern edge, ripping and burning through screaming men. After several minutes, Raxan reported.
“My lord, the men you set me to watch have arrived at the edge of the fighting. They are falling back quickly, since our forces are unopposed.”
“Keep watching them. Figure out where they’re going.”
“They appear to be returning to the market of tents.”
“Good. Don’t lose them.”
I let Amber do her fiery thing and called Beltar on my pocket mirror. The headache from maintaining at least a minimal focus on multiple scrying spells started to take root behind my eyes. This is another reason I built the sand table… which the Church destroyed. Grr.
“My lord!”
“Beltar, are you ready to start a counterattack?”
“We are still bottled by the forces of the Lord of Light,” he replied. “There are at least a thousand of them, both within and without the Temple.”
“So many?”
“We are the Temple of Shadow,” he replied, simply.
“I see your point. Wait for my signal, then attack.”
“What signal?”
“You won’t miss it.”
I signed off and went back to watching the fire vortex and the pavilion tents. The trouble squad returned to their headquarters and were immediately dispatched again. They changed horses and galloped off toward Amber’s new manifestation.
“Still got the trouble squad?” I asked Raxan.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tell me when they’re two streets away.”
“Yes, my lord.”
I dropped the connection to the tents and the vortex, focusing instead on the area outside the Temple of Shadow. Where, oh where is a good spot? Does someone have a handy bucket? No? What about—no, wait, there we go. A cart with barrels and buckets, bringing water to the troops.
I locked in one of the buckets in my scrying mirror, cast my gate spell on the bucket I brought, and dumped the lamp oil out of one bucket into another. I stuck Firebrand through the bottom of my bucket, it burped a blast of white-hot fire, and the resulting whoosh of flame blasted through the gate, through the oil, and out the bottom of the other bucket. A spray of burning oil coated everything nearby.
With the gate closed—and my own burning bucket kicked aside—I rang Amber’s mirror again.
“Get ready to switch to the Temple of Shadow,” I told her. “There’s a nice fire going on outsi
de.”
“My lord,” Raxan warned, “your trouble squad approaches.”
“Finally, some good timing. Amber, go!”
I fired up my scrying spell again and found the vortex; it already latched on to a wooden door and burned there. In moments, it was just a burning door, so I switched immediately to the entryway of the Temple of Shadow.
Men were beating at flames with cloaks. Someone had cut the horse free of the cart and someone else hacked a hole in a barrel to get water. They were on the verge of getting the upper hand on the flames.
Then the flames fought back. The color shifted to yellow-white and the heat multiplied. Steam rose in a cloud, jetting skyward with the fire. The wagon burned brightly as the flames engulfed it fully. Men sprang back, shielding their eyes and faces from the heat and light.
The whirling brightness started as the whole of the wagon came apart in burning fragments. The vortex swept forward, cutting a line of charred, screaming flesh across the entrance of the Temple. It circled the men holding it, laying down a carpet of yelling, smoking men all around, spiraling in to set fire to everyone, everything. A few men escaped, running without regard for stomping their burned, dying fellows. Amber let them go, focusing only on the thickest clusters of men.
With the whole of the besieging force burned and smoking, screaming like some preview of Hell, the vortex of fire spun outside the entrance to the Temple of Shadow. It stood there, straight and tall, unmoving.
I rang Amber’s mirror again. She was still in her brazier, still concentrating, but nothing happened. The pillar of whirling fire stayed stopped at the door.
“Hey!” I shouted. Sir Raxan snapped to attention. “Not you.”
I hear you, answered the other me. What’s up?
“Can we let Amber do her whirlwind of fire thing inside the Temple of Shadow?”
Uh… no.
“Why not?”
Rules, remember? We’re not allowed to do divine manifestations on someone else’s holy ground.
“Seriously? Not even if you give permission?”
It’s a stupid rule, he agreed. Nobody asked me when they were making them.