by Garon Whited
“Yes. You know how healing spells work?”
“Welding? Or focusing?”
“Focusing.”
“They tell the body about the problem and encourage it to devote resources to that specific problem. They also usually supply more energy and some help in enhancing the body’s response to the problem. The ones you’ve shown me also give it better instructions than ‘fill in the gap with scar tissue.’ Right?”
“Pretty much. There are other spells to do similar things. The physical enhancement spells I told you about—the ones where I helped the fledgling knights grow bigger and stronger?”
“The steroid spells,” she agreed. “They exercised and the spells made their body overreact, sort of, growing more muscle than you would expect, and faster.”
“Close enough. They are kind of like drugs, now that you mention it. Those sorts of spells work until they run out, then the body goes back to working normally. In the case of muscle mass, you still have to maintain it with exercise and suchlike; your body still thinks it’s supposed to be smaller.”
“Okay.”
“It’s also possible to put a spell on someone that lasts a really long time. Kind of like a fairy-tale curse that runs forever, you can condemn someone to forever grow muscle at an accelerated rate. They’ll have to really couch-potato it, or starve themselves, before they’ll lose muscle mass. I did something like it with another baby—it had a heart valve problem. I… well, ‘cursed’ it doesn’t sound right. I put a tiny, but long-lasting spell on it to gently remind the body about how it was supposed to be shaped. That way, when it grew up, it wouldn’t develop the same problem again.”
“More like a permanent pacemaker than a drug?”
“Not exactly, but a good way to think of it.”
“And that’s what we’re doing here?”
“No, I’m going one step farther. What I hope to do is effect a permanent change. I’m going to tell the body what it’s supposed to do. That way, she isn’t alive only because she wears a spell. The goal is a fundamental alteration, not an ongoing spell.”
“Surgery, instead of drug therapy?” she asked, dubiously.
“Hmm. I’m not sure that’s exactly right, but it’s close. This is a fundamental alteration of how her body works. It’s not like a corrective surgery that might need some touch-up later in life.”
“Genetic therapy?”
“That’s the one. I don’t know if it will affect any offspring, though.”
“And you’re not a genetic engineer?”
“That’s right.”
“So, you’re doing something fearsomely complicated without any idea about how to do it?”
“I’m going to try. You’re not helping my confidence.”
“Sorry.”
“What I was trying to get across in this particular lesson,” I continued, “is you can use a basic framework of a spell, combined with an act of will and massive amounts of power, to alter reality. The bigger the area and the larger the change, the more power you require.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “This is not the way I usually work,” I added.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Sarcasm,” I observed.
“Apprentice privilege.”
“If you say so. Pay close attention, because I’m only going to do this once. This isn’t something you’re likely to ever see again.”
I considered the baby in the conjuring circle. She looked right back at me, impatient but still waiting.
So, you need to be healthy, I thought. You need to be able to eat and to grow strong on what you eat. Whatever you eat, you need to break down, absorb, and utilize. Whatever you can’t use, you need to harmlessly excrete. Your body needs to detect and recognize the differences and deal with each according to its nature.
I laid my will on the power in the chamber and shaped a general guide from it. Only then did I trigger the four massive gemstone reserves, backing it all with grim will and iron determination. Power surged into the conjuring circle and the area inside began to ripple, as in a heat wave. The baby stopped looking impatient; she seemed fascinated by the swirling distortions all around her and through her.
I felt myself trying to fall forward, as though the power were sucking me in. I braced a foot against the floor and leaned back, spreading my hands. The surging whirl began to eat into the inner edge of the conjuring circle, an effect I’d never seen before. It’s really not supposed to do that. It’s really not supposed to be able to do that.
I gestured with both hands, eyes narrow, and gripped with my mind the whirling vortex.
This body will function perfectly.
The quasi-visible whirlwind of power began to funnel into her. I kept my focus on the power, on the result, on the desire it had to fulfill. The rippling distortions narrowed, quickened, whirling in a pillar centered on the baby. It shrank, sinking into her, making her ripple with it, until the rippling quickened to vibrating, then to invisibility.
For less than a flickering instant, in a sliver of time wedged between one moment and the next, I was in the empty place between worlds. Before me was a small, bright dot of light. Beyond it, a somber figure. I recognized the Grey Lady. Silver-haired, kind smile, but with her hands folded together rather than extended in welcome.
“You are changing the destiny of the child,” She warned, nodding at the bright point floating in the formlessness between us.
“I’m trying,” I agreed.
“If neither you nor I take her beyond the world, you must return her to the Lady of the Loom. Her thread will run through the tapestry of the world, touching lives in ways you cannot predict.”
“Chaos theory would tend to agree.”
“She may choose paths you do not approve.”
“She’s a child. She deserves a chance to grow up and make those choices. That’s called living.”
“Indeed it is. You cannot know the consequences of your actions, yet you choose to risk them?”
“Does that make me different from anyone else?” I asked. The Grey Lady shook her head, eyes twinkling.
“And if I say no?” She asked.
“I’ll ask nicely?”
The Grey Lady’s smile widened.
“And if I still say no?”
“I bit a goddess, once. I don’t want to do it again. I’d rather resort to saying please and pretty please before getting all uncivilized. Please?”
“You choose to defend the child’s life even at the risk of your own?”
“Some things we choose long before the choice is presented to us.”
“You are more right than you can possibly know.”
“I’m not sure I’m glad to hear it. So… Pretty please?”
The Grey Lady laughed and opened her hands, gesturing toward me. The bright dot drifted toward me. I caught it in my cupped hands.
“Very well,” she said, still chuckling. “I agree. She is yours.”
And the power was gone, expended. One small mountain moved, one small ocean parted, one smiting of the firstborn averted… one sudden realization I wasn’t tired—dead people don’t feel tired—but I felt drained.
I felt hungry.
Oh, dear.
The baby started to cry. I broke the conjurer’s circle and stepped out, my guts writhing and twisting inside me. I didn’t expect to be so depleted. The vast majority of the energies used weren’t mine. All I did was guide the accumulated power reserves. My efforts were more along the order of holding a firehose rather than pumping the water. On the other hand, holding a sufficiently large firehose at full blast can be exhausting.
Once I adjusted to the undead equivalent of tummy rumbles, I picked her up and patted her back, making soothing sounds. She calmed down quickly. Whatever sensations she felt as the spell affected her, they were gone. The power surge had swamped her translation spell, so I didn’t understand what she was saying. Well, it was hardly surprising, given the forces involved. I took a moment to check and realized all my
personal spells were down, too. I considered myself lucky my enchanted items survived. Mental note for the future—not that I plan on doing this again!
“What now?” Mary asked. She was still standing in her circle, carefully not stepping out of it.
“To the kitchens.”
“It’s safe?” she asked, indicating the circle she still occupied.
“Should be,” I agreed. She stepped out, gingerly, then nodded.
“You’re hungry for food? At this hour?”
“No, it’s not for me. I’ll eat before the night is over, that’s for sure. Right now, I want to see if the little one likes shredded carrots.”
“Want me to get her mother?”
“Let her sleep. I’d rather test the results before she wakes up and starts to hope again.”
“Good thought. Are you always this generous and kindly?”
“Bite your tongue, woman.”
“I’d rather you did it.”
“Later, maybe.”
The kid loved shredded carrots. Along with boiled lyos—much like an avocado, with a hint of pumpkin smell to it—and half a dozen other fruits and vegetables. She also enjoyed the shredded dazhu and chicken paste. She didn’t mind a bit that the only shredder I had was a set of teeth. She actually found it hilarious when I pretended to eat something, then fed it to her on a spoon, or tried to. She kept grabbing the squishy food and stuffing it in her mouth, no spoon needed.
I resolved not to tell her mother about this.
Two things—no, three things—pleased me.
First, she ate with good appetite and didn’t fight me about any of it. In fact, she kept kicking and bouncing, threatening to come right off the table in eagerness. Lacking a highchair, I had to sit in front of her as a safety net.
Second, her vitality visibly increased as she ate. Whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t wrong anymore. At least, not for now.
Third, I had enough strength left to feel like casting a cleaning spell on us both. She was a sloppy trencherman. There was no excuse for getting food paste in her hair, let alone mine, but she managed it, even against my reflexes. Take your eyes off a kid for one second…
With a busy day behind her and full stomach, the kid didn’t want to take a nap. She didn’t have much of a choice, though. She fought it with crying and wailing, but eventually surrendered. I carried her back to the great hall and her mother. Looking at them, I realized I couldn’t very well send them back on Bronze with her mother unconscious. I also didn’t want to wake the mother and deal with questions. Or crying. Mostly the crying. The kid provided enough crying for one night. Moreover, if her kid really was cured, as I suspected, there would be crying—probably even sobbing—and it was likely to be on me while I was still awfully hungry.
Safety tip: Never put your head on the shoulder of a hungry vampire. Intentional or not, it presents your neck.
“Help me with the mother, please.” I picked up the kid again while Mary picked up mom.
“Could you please not throw her over your shoulder like that?” I asked. Mary rolled her eyes but shifted mom around to a cradle-carry. We went down to the lower doors and placed them in the circular entry chamber.
“What’s the plan?” Mary inquired.
“We’re going leave the two of them in the lower entryway and I’ll give mom enough vitality to wake her up so they can leave. After that, I’m going to sneak out another way, find a double dozen dazhu, and do my best to eat, drink, and not kill an entire herd of the things. That was a big honkin’ spell and way more draining than I expected. I find I’m more than a little hungry.”
So we did.
Mary came along for the feasting portion of the evening. She still finds it shocking, if not frightening, how I grab the vitality of everything in an area and suck it all into me. She does her soul-sucking retail; mine works wholesale. On the other hand, she seems to like it when I frighten her; it excites her. I don’t get it, but I suppose I don’t have to.
We went out into the boxed-in portion of the plains, between the southern canals and the Eastrange. There we found a small herd of dazhu. Probably a semi-domesticated herd that belonged to someone, but I didn’t plan to kill any of them. I drained enough vitality to encourage them to lie down and stay down. We walked among them. I grabbed one at a time with sharp-nailed fingers and let my skin suck blood out of the holes for a little bit—a pint? A quart?—and moved to another one. It’s all about knowing where to open the skin, really, so they bleed enough to be worth it, but not so much they won’t heal up easily when you take the talons out.
“Why not bite them?” Mary asked, watching me as I pulled my bloodsucking version of Mork from Ork.
“First, that’s a big wound; I’m trying to avoid damaging them too much. Second, the fangs are penetrating wounds and more prone to infection. Third, and most important, did you ever bite a buffalo?”
“No.”
“Dusty. Dirty. Bad-tasting. And the fur gets between your teeth. Think of being a cat with a hairball. Trust me on this. It’s awful. I know.”
“I’ll stick to people,” Mary decided.
“Probably best.” I made a face appropriate to hacking up a dazhu hairball. I remember it vividly and wish I didn’t.
“Speaking of people. Were you really going to kill the kid?”
“If I hadn’t had an idea? Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Okay, look,” I began, moving to another dazhu. “Before I figured out a third and fourth option, the kid had two. Option one: Starve to death in misery over the next few days, followed by a long, difficult journey to the underworld—not something the soul of a child is well-equipped to do. Option two: Die peacefully and quietly in her sleep, right then and there, and also avoid the long-drawn-out journey. Either way, the kid was dead no matter what, but the second way was much less ugly and unpleasant.”
“But if you—if we—consume souls, how do they wind up in the underworld?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a lousy deathgod, you know that?”
“True. I like to think I do pretty well as an angel of death, though. There’s a major difference between a courier of souls and Lord of the Underworld. I can’t even run a kingdom. Heck, I need help to run a charity stand.”
“At least you’re more a psychopomp than psycho-pompous. I’d still like to know how the whole theological thing works.”
“Me, too—I think.” I shrugged. “Lacking a definite answer, I can make some wild guesses. Maybe there’s something more to the soul we can’t actually sense. What you and I think of as the soul may only be a consciousness. The actual soul, in the sense of an eternal, energy-based something, may not be visible to us. Or maybe we do take the soul and process it through us by taking out all the modulation of memories and experiences and letting the normalized waveform propagate right on through to a new, formative nervous system.” I shrugged again and moved to another dazhu. “I have no idea. Next time I accidentally become a deity, I’ll ask.”
Mary didn’t have a witty rejoinder for that. Probably a good thing. Instead, she changed the subject.
“You said you came up with a third and fourth option.”
“Right. Option three was the BFMI approach we used. Option four was to—”
“BFMI?”
“Brute Force and Massive Ignorance,” I explained. Mary burst out laughing. Dazhu snorted around her.
“Is that what you call it?” she asked, still giggling.
“It’s apt.”
“I suppose it is,” she replied, suppressing giggles. I moved to another dazhu. “Option four?”
“Put the kid into a slow-speed hibernation to conserve resources. Build a gate and go find a suitably technological world. Find a doctor and get the kid treated. At the very least, we could get the kid diagnosed. If they can’t fix it, explaining to me exactly what the problem is, or was, would make it more likely I could kludge together a spell for it. Combining magic and sci
ence produces results—profound results. It’s enough to make people without access to one or the other think you’re godlike.”
“I’ve noticed. And the kid is going to be okay, now?” she asked, following me to the next entrée.
“As far as I can tell. It wasn’t what I really think of as a spell; it was a spell-like pattern, a guide, and we dumped a massive working—or a small miracle, depending on where you’re standing—of power through it. I think the effect will cause her to be exceptionally healthy and long-lived. I could be badly off on my estimate.”
“Off how?”
“She might need to be treated again next year, but I doubt it. Or she might be functionally immortal, which I also doubt. It’s probably somewhere in between. Let’s wait a hundred years and see. All I know for sure is she’s okay… for now.” I sighed and moved to another dazhu. “That’s the trouble with… with… with wishing like that. The results are unpredictable. It’s wasteful and sloppy and can go horribly, horribly wrong. That offends my sensibilities.”
“Poor undead master of the dark arts. People are such trouble, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are! And quit picking on me. It’s not easy being a deposed undead king.”
“So I’ve noticed. You have to live in a high mountaintop and make the pathway to your door dangerous. Otherwise, you might be swamped with people asking for your help. How does it feel to be the legendary wise man on the mountain?”
“Oh, my god,” I swore, softly.
“What?”
“I realized right this second.”
“What!?”
“I’m a cliché!”
“Huh,” Mary replied, thoughtfully. “I’d say you’re more of a trope, really. Kind of from the opposite side, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“The trope is about the Plucky Hero trying to get to the Hermit Guru to get some minimally-helpful advice or an obscure magic item before going on a quest. You’re at the other end—you’re the grumpy wizard in the hard-to-reach place and other people are the Plucky Heroes.”
“Maybe I should start handing out impossible quests and minimally-helpful advice, instead.”