by Garon Whited
I sat in the dark, in my bedroom, thinking about what to do. Trying to think about what to do. I kept coming back to the big empty place inside, circling it like a toy boat helplessly circling the drain.
Caris came to visit again. It made me wonder why they let her in when most people would rather stick their arm in a badger’s den than bother me. Do they not care? Or do they think children have a special immunity? Probably the latter…
It was a strange visit, because she brought two and a fraction friends. The other two were a boy and a girl. The girl was a little older. The boy was Tallin, Seldar’s son, toddling along with Caris and holding her hand. The fraction wasn’t actually there, being a ghost. I recognized him immediately. He was the boy she played with, the one who was cut down during the invasion. Mikkel, that was his name. She held his invisible hand and led him in. He didn’t seem to mind.
The four-ish of them came into my bedroom—Caris and Tallin boldly, the rest less so—and lined up.
“What is it?” I sighed, sitting up and swinging my legs over the edge.
Tallin unwrapped a cloth. He had a wooden horse. He didn’t say anything, just held it out to me. It was a good carving and well-worn from handling. No doubt it was a favorite toy.
“Thank you,” I said, finally. I accepted the toy. It was about the size of my open hand. “That’s very kind of you.”
Caris came up to me, hugged my knee and put her head on my leg. Tort did something like that, once. I stroked her hair.
“Sire?” asked the other girl.
“Hmm?”
“Caris says we can’t see her friend because he’s a ghost, Sire.”
“Probably.”
“Can you help, Sire?”
“You want to see him?”
“Yes, Sire. If you please, Sire.”
I regarded the ghostly Mikkel. He looked back at me. He didn’t seem to be losing cohesion. He was only a faint figure to me, of course—it was daytime, but the room was quite dark. He seemed relatively stable.
“Did you see a nice lady in grey?” I asked. He nodded. “Did she want you to go with her?” He nodded again. “And why didn’t you?” He shook his head and didn’t answer.
I’m not clear on the rules, if spirits have the option to stay or go, but I’m not exactly an expert on the Grey Lady, either. She doesn’t seem the type to insist if you’re adamant about staying.
“All right. Come here and let me have a look at you.”
His structure—from a magical perspective—was somewhat tangled. Fairly typical for a ghost, I suppose. Some of the tangles were more like actual knots, tying off loose ends which would have caused him to dissipate. A close examination showed no leakage at all. Someone tied off his magical structure. It was more a tourniquet than stitches, but it worked.
“Caris?” I asked. She looked up at me. “Did you help your friend?” She nodded and put her head back down on my leg, squeezing my knee harder.
Well. Everyone has a talent, I suppose. Caris the Necromancer, Maker of Ghosts, Lady of Spirits, and Madam of Manifestations. It could be a career. If nothing else, she could get a job at the Temple of the Grey Lady in nothing flat. I made a mental note to suggest apprenticing to what’s-his-name, the necromancer magician-friend of T’yl’s. Norad? Or was the other guy the necromancer? I forget.
“Caris. Watch what I do. Okay?”
Caris watched intently—not letting go of my knee—while I carefully untangled some of the ghost’s life-strands, tied them off properly, and ran them around to each other. I was hampered by the need to do it with spells, rather than with my tendrils, but at least I knew what I was doing. If we compare spiritual energy to blood, at least he wasn’t bleeding.
Okay, maybe I’m not too lousy a necromancer.
I also wove a spell around him and tied it into some of his lesser soul-strands. It was a passive thing, partly based on an Ascension Sphere. It would absorb some energies to power itself, but also convert a little to vitality, replenishing the gradual loss that comes from simply existing. He was still radiating energy simply by being, much like a person burns calories whether he’s awake, asleep, or comatose. Left unchecked, it would deplete him, so he needed to eat something to restore himself. The hybrid spell-enchantment would take care of it.
How do regular ghosts cope? They need to eat something, obviously. Do they draw power from something—a physical object, or a location? Or do they learn to consume other energies? I may look into it, someday, but I don’t want to try quizzing a hungry ghost. It doesn’t seem polite.
“There you go,” I told them. “Caris? Did you see what I did?”
She nodded again and took the ghost’s hand. She obviously saw him just fine. If the light was better, I doubted I could see him without effort. Of course, at night he would be a glowing figure to my eyes.
“We can’t see him, Sire,” the girl reminded me. She was trying to be as polite as possible, calling me “Sire” constantly. She wasn’t doing too badly for a seven-year-old.
“Give him time. He hasn’t been a ghost for long,” I assured her.
“Oh.”
“Now run along, please.”
They scampered out. As they left, Mary came in. She sat on the edge of the bed as I lay down again.
“How are you feeling?”
“Amputated and pissed off.”
“So, about the same?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about your bedmate,” she said, examining the stuffed doll.
“Caris gave him to me.”
“He’s cute.”
“He’s better at it than I am,” I agreed.
“I know you’re in mourning, but I was wondering if you could help with a problem.”
“Another one?” I sighed.
“This doesn’t involve granddaughters.”
“All right, as long as I don’t have to go anywhere.”
“Could be tricky, since it involves going somewhere.”
I sighed again and she handed me the doll. I regarded it for a moment. It didn’t have any wisdom to impart. It seemed pretty happy with its lot in life. Maybe that was the advice. Let go of my anger and pain and simply learn to be happy. Childlike. Innocent.
Yeah. Not going to happen. Maybe I should find an esoteric monastery and learn to meditate on inner peace. And maybe I’ll learn to walk on water while I’m at it.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, either Mary or the doll or both.
“You’re the King, like it or not. But you’ve turned over all the governing to Lissette, right?”
“Essentially, yes. I hope so.”
“You only came back to stomp a major threat, she’s hopefully learned something from it, and you can go on about your business, right?”
“That sounds right.”
“I know you miss Bronze—I’m going to miss her too, but not like you, I know—but do you need to stay here? Do you have anything else to do here?”
“I’d really like to kill all the priests of the Lord of Light,” I admitted, “but I don’t have a good way to do it. My personal gate room is drained, so routinely popping back and forth to temples to kill people is problematic, and I don’t have the raw magical power to send death-spells hunting after them all—and I do mean ‘all.’ If I send only a few, they’ll figure out what’s happening and defend against it. I’d like to say I’m thinking about new ways to commit… it’s not ‘genocide,’ I think, but I don’t know a word for killing a religion. I’m not really thinking well right now.”
“Because you’re unhappy, sad, depressed, angry, frustrated…”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you want to stay?” Mary asked, quietly.
“The Church of Light is here.”
“Yes, but it’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be a big, fat target in ten or a hundred years. You will be in better shape to do nasty things to it by then. And,” she added, “staying here undermines Lissette as the Queen. If they know where the King is, y
our subjects will want to bother you directly.”
“I don’t want you to have a point, but you do.”
“So, do we have to stay?”
“I’m not interested in staying or going,” I admitted. “I’m not interested overmuch in anything, at the moment. Why? Do you have anywhere you want to go?”
“Well—and this is just off the top of my head, you understand—we could go to Apocalyptica, explore the world, help Diogenes rebuild large chunks of it. Or we could explore the world you found when you missed a gate connection—the one with the ancient library. You could work out a spell to un-fragile a document, maybe. Or we could go back to my world and finish doing whatever you were doing with the underwater nexus-plural, maybe even find your missing Orb of Evil. Or we could continue with your idea, the one about finding a new world where you can goof off without any responsibilities whatsoever, and maybe we can work a bank robbery into all that, somewhere.”
I had to admit, it all sounded better than my total lack of plans. Maybe I’m just not feeling up to anything. I hear the loss of a loved one carries with it some major psychological issues, and I’m having a hard time caring about anything at all—unless it’s pissing me off at that exact moment.
If anybody needs me—really needs me—they know how to get hold of me. Did it matter if I was in the mountain or worlds away? I wasn’t a good person to ask. For me, nothing mattered much. Why not assume Mary had things to do that mattered—at least, to her—and go along for the ride? I’ve heard worse ideas.
“All right,” I agreed. “Pick what you want to do and drag me along. But first, I have to check on Tianna.”
“Of course! Can we go see her now?”
“Right now?”
“You’ll just lie here in the dark and brood like an emo vampire if you don’t move.”
She’s right, Boss.
“Ganging up on me, are you? All right.” I heaved myself up and Mary took me by the hand.
We picked up a four-man escort just outside my chambers.
I wondered again how Caris and her friends got in to see me. Did the guards not bother to stop children? Or was Dantos’ daughter an exception? Could go either way, I suppose. On the other hand, maybe no one but Caris was brave enough to walk into the darkened lair of an unhappy monster. No, that wasn’t it; her friends came with her without being dragged. Maybe children don’t understand I’m a dangerous beast. To them, I may have teeth, but so does a kitten. A sad kitten, perhaps, but still a kitten.
Wow. I really am pathetic.
“Hmm?” Mary asked.
“Nothing.”
“I thought you said something.”
“Muttering to myself.”
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“I’m a pathetic monster kitten.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Now where’s my penny?”
“I’ll find someone named Penny and bring her over.”
“You’re not funny, Sheldon.”
“Yes, I am,” Mary countered, “but you’re in no mood to appreciate my delightful wit.”
“Huh. I acknowledge the possibility you may be right.”
“Good. Do it more often, since I usually am. By the way, did I tell you about the Apocalyptica magic?”
“No.”
“I helped Diogenes with some tests on the oricalium-whatever metal—you still haven’t enchanted magical eyes for him—by watching as he did some experiments. You know,” she added, “it’s creepy to talk to him through a bunch of robots. It’s like having a conversation with something with a hundred heads.”
“I suppose it could be,” I agreed, and muttered, “Hail Hydra” under my breath.
“Anyway, he fiddled with the proportions on your metal alloy a bit and used the magic transformer to provide a magical current—at least, he was pretty sure he did, working solely by theory. I looked at it and confirmed it for him.”
“Thank you. I should have gotten around to it before now… there are a lot of things I should be doing, really. Messes to clean up.”
“You’re doing what you should be doing: taking care of your business. And thank you, I hasten to add, for humoring me. I’m imposing on your period of mourning, I know.”
“It’s good for me,” I told her. I didn’t add, I think. Firebrand snickered and I ignored it.
“So, Diogenes had me rate the magical conductivity coefficient—his words—in the various alloys.”
“How did you do that?”
“He made a long, thin wire, connected one end to the transformer core, and asked me to rate how much power came out the other end. I put them in order from highest to lowest for him and he started humming something while he worked.”
“Yes, I suppose that would work. What was he humming?”
“I think it was the lollipop guild song, from ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”
“Seems reasonable. So, what were the experimental wires for?”
“I asked. He said he was working out an empirical hypothesis of enhanced magical conductivity. Then I asked him to translate that. He’s trying to figure out the ideal alloy composition.”
“That’s darn nice of him.”
“He likes you, and he’s trying to be helpful. There are a lot of organic types like that, too.”
“I know, I know. And I’m letting them all down by being a grumpy monster.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’re not a grumpy monster. You’re just sad, and that’s to be expected.”
“It’s still not fair to everyone around me. They expect better. They deserve better.”
“Lissette has things well in hand, so don’t bother adding guilt to sadness.”
“Yes, dear.”
We walked out the underground front door of the Palace, through the undercity, along some surface streets, and went to visit the Temple of Flame.
The open-air dome was a pile of rubble. I couldn’t even see any pieces of the statue in the pile. The enclosed building where Tianna lived and held indoor services was mostly intact, though. It had solid walls, not simple pillars to be knocked down. We went inside and were greeted by a lesser priestess I didn’t recognize.
“Good morning,” she offered, and bowed, spreading her arms in a graceful gesture. “The day greets the night. We are honored to have you, my lord.”
“I don’t think we’ve met.”
“We have seen each other in the Temple in Mochara, but we have not been introduced. I am Liara.”
“Pleased to meet you. Is my granddaughter in?”
“She is, but she has not risen for the day. She is still weary with the recovery from her wound.”
“How is she?”
“Her recovery proceeds quickly. Her voice is restored and the scar fades almost by the hour. Her body is weak and she tires easily, however.”
“Okay. Does she need anything?”
“Time for the… ah, time and rest, I am told.”
“Good. Do you have any idea when she’ll be up?”
“She wakes when she wakes,” Liara said, apologetically. “I was instructed to let her sleep.”
“Fair enough,” I admitted, and had an idea. “I’ll wait outside. When she wakes, if she feels up to having a visitor, please let me know.”
“As you wish,” she agreed, bowing with her arms outspread again. I went outside with Mary.
“We’re going to hang around until she wakes up?”
“Well, I had in mind to play jigsaw puzzle with the broken dome, but basically, yes.”
Mary regarded the tumbled pile of broken stone and cocked her head.
“I’m pretty good with puzzles,” she admitted.
“The mountain can join broken pieces if we fit them together.”
“We should sort out the pieces first.”
So we did. It helps to be stronger than mortal men. We spread out the piles of rocks into pillar-pieces, dome-pieces, and so on. Then we re-sorted them, laying out pillar-pieces i
n straight lines, as though the pillars simply fell over, and the dome-pieces in circles, as though something had crushed it straight down. I was more than a little surprised the stones hadn’t started sinking into the ground for recycling, actually. The mountain usually does that with rubble, pebbles, dirt, and so on. It would take a while to grow a new dome, of course, but it should have at least started. Was the mountain so thoroughly occupied with other projects? Or was the religious nature of the consecrated stones an issue?
When we stacked the pieces of pillars, though, they merged with the lower stones, sticking together and forming single pieces. The mountain was helping, at least when I told it where to focus. If we were still here after nightfall, I would link in with it and find out what the problem was.
We had most of the pillars intact—minus the smaller bits, like chips, dings, and splinters—when Tianna came out. Liara helped her, which Tianna clearly felt she didn’t need. They approached down the short path and Tianna shook Liara off long enough to hug her grandfather.
I don’t know what part of me needed that, but it was a big part. It was a big, cold, nasty part and it melted. It was like I could breathe again. It was like I could see again.
I don’t have such a drastic change in perspective when the sun rises.
“You are not alone,” Tianna’s mouth said, whispering in my ear. I recognized the voice, of course, but I didn’t give a damn. Tianna was alive and well and capable of channeling such a voice. That’s what counted. Whatever Sparky wanted was secondary.
And, if I recall correctly, the so-called goddess likes my hugs.
When Tianna let go of me, she looked up at me and smiled. Her eyes were normal, so Sparky probably wasn’t playing finger-puppets with Tianna’s body. She turned to smile at Mary, as well.
“Hello, Mary. It’s good to see you.” Tianna’s voice was normal, too. It’s one thing to be told her sliced throat is healing nicely, another thing to see and hear it. Her color was still rather pale, but she was probably still producing regular blood to replace the artificial stuff in her system. I considered it adequate progress.
“Good to see you up and around,” Mary agreed. “Sorry about the—”
“Yes. I know you tried to rescue me without harm. I forgive you, if you need it.”