by Garon Whited
“And if talking to everyone else helps you find them?”
I muttered something and she cupped a hand behind her ear.
“I said I didn’t used to need someone to do my thinking for me!”
“That’s fair. You used to sleep, too.” She kissed my nose and turned. “Scrub my back, please.” While I did so, she added, “By the way, this Dantos guy?”
“Yes?”
“He’s your knight?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re his king?”
“Yes.”
“So, you’ve given up on the idea of being a retired king?”
I said something profane.
“Too late. The sun is going down,” she replied, turning around under the water. “But, about being a retired king?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You slipped and fell and accidentally knighted him?”
“That’s not what I mean!”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s… he’s… the thing is,” I tried. “Okay, look. He’s a plainsman. They have a sort of religious awe of me. He immediately threw himself onto my side of the line by reporting his boss for suspected treason. He assumed I was his king and kind of screwed himself over by being… you know. Loyal. Upright. Noble and worthy and stuff.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t… He was trying to do the right thing and I… it’s hard to explain.”
“Kittens.”
I blinked at her. She smiled and switched with me so I had more of the waterfall. I rinsed and she explained.
“Kittens,” she repeated. “If a kitten crawls into your lap, what do you do with it?”
“In theory, you feed it and keep it warm and find a home for it.”
“In theory?”
“I haven’t seen a cat in decades. I don’t think cats like me.”
“Strange. But all right. Once a kitten climbs into your lap—if you can’t find a home for it—what happens?”
“I guess you’re stuck with a lunatic claw machine.”
“I’m guessing you don’t like cats?” she asked, eyeing me suspiciously. I resisted the urge to back away from her. Besides, there was a wall behind me.
“I’ve got nothing against them, in principle. I’m not fond of shredded furniture and litterboxes. Every sort of pet has drawbacks—cats, dogs, dolphins, smartass swords—”
Hey!
“—they all have their good points and bad points.”
“Hmm. But you don’t actually dislike cats?”
“How about we say I tolerate them as well as they tolerate me. If they’re nice, I’m nice.”
“That’s fair, I suppose. All right. I guess I’ll still keep you.”
About that bit about swords…
“My point,” Mary insisted, firmly, “was if you pick up a kitten and care for it, you’re stuck with it. Right?”
“I suppose so.”
Unless they’re tasty, Firebrand interjected. Mary silenced it with a dirty look before she replied.
“Now, elder vampire wizard king, what did you do with the human, Dantos?”
“I picked it up?”
“Yes. We talked about pets, remember? And now it’s yours.”
“I guess.”
Mary shook her head and started wringing out her hair.
“You don’t know how to not have pets, do you?”
“Apparently not. But he is a decent sort, and it’s nice to have someone else around the place. If you’re not here, I don’t have to drop everything to answer the door. Laisa is helpful, too.”
“And the little girl is adorable?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I lied.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Come on. Let’s dry and dress. You have some calls to make, a lesson in magic to give, and then some spells of your own to work on. I’m going to try and resist being bored with watching you work, too.”
Is one of the cornerstones of wisdom knowing when to nod, smile, and say nothing?
Naturally, it didn’t go as smoothly as that. Bronze, in her guise as the Dark Horse, brought up two customers for the quick route to reincarnation. This made me consider her hoof-silencing spells again, along with her disguise spells. So we went off on a magical tangent. Mary’s lesson for the evening was on enchanting objects and the differences between a spell, a self-sustaining spell, and an enchantment.
If those seem like imprecise categories, I agree. The lines between spell and enchantment used to be pretty clear. I keep blurring them. You could argue I take the whole world out of focus.
Bronze, despite being a magical construct, is a living being. After conducting a few tests, we discovered adding an enchantment to her would be painful. Doing it painlessly would involve taking her magical matrix apart and integrating the new functions. I can’t just bolt on an added effect. Moreover, I don’t like the idea of fiddling with her basic structure when I don’t understand it. She has complete faith in me, but agrees I shouldn’t do it if I’m not comfortable with it.
As a result, Bronze, with the aid of Firebrand, contributed five strands of wire from her tail. Once separated, I enchanted each of them. It was surprisingly easy to do, possibly because it already came from a massively-enchanted creature. The first four strands were for silence. The actual damping spell would reduce or eliminate physical vibrations in the air—sound waves—in a small area around her hooves.
I’m a cautious sort. I also added variations on anti-detection magic. Each strand had a silencing spell, but each also included one more effect. The first one had a spoofing spell to report she was a normal horse, a straight-up blocking spell on the next, a detection scrambler—like static—on another, and the fourth to sound an alert if the others were penetrated. I suppose I could add some more effects, but the more you cram into a single item, the more difficult it is. It’s like an electronic gadget. If it does one thing, it’s pretty straightforward and reliable. If it does a dozen unrelated things, it’s a nightmare.
After the enchantment process, it was simply a matter of winding one through the thick feathering around each pastern, right above her hooves, and spot-welding the enchanted wire to keep it in place.
The fifth strand had a permanent Dark Horse disguise enchantment on it—or would have, if Mary hadn’t intervened. She wanted to know if it could be enchanted to give Bronze whatever color scheme she wanted.
Come to think of it, why haven’t I got something like that? I cast disguise spells or put on makeup every night. Wouldn’t it be simpler? It would be quicker, certainly, than casting a new spell every night. It would also be less trouble, at least in the long run.
So, instead of a Tail-Bracelet of Darker Colors, Bronze has a magical Tail-Bracelet of Variable Color Schemes. She can pick her illusory appearance and change it to suit herself. I’ll get around to something for myself, eventually.
It’s eerie to watch her thunder around with nothing more than the feel of the silent thud in the floor and a faint, metallic clinking—her mane and tail are outside the silence field. Tons of giant horse ghosting along to an ethereal tinkling sound raises goosebumps, or would if I wasn’t dead when I first saw it.
On the plus side, Mary and I both had dinner, she got her magic lesson, and Bronze is now a stealth horse.
On the down side, I haven’t really gotten anywhere with my Sand Table of Searching or my phone calls. Now that the sunrise brought everything back to life, people should be awake. I’ll see if they’re taking calls this early.
Tuesday, February 3rd
Seldar answered from aboard a ship, sailing somewhere. He wasn’t much help on where Tort or T’yl might be. The last time he heard from them, Tort was in residence with the King in Carrillon and T’yl was living in the palace in the Fortress of the East—Karvalen. Of course, Tort’s last known movement was to Karvalen. Where she went from there was unknown. T’yl remained in Karvalen; until I started asking questions, Seldar thought T’yl was still there. T
ypically, they didn’t talk much. There is no email, telephone, or even regular mail service. Most people don’t talk to anyone outside their own town or village. Some people go their whole lives without ever seeing a strange face.
That’s almost incomprehensible to me, but I’m not from around here.
Seldar had more information on the career of my evil twin. As one might expect, the Demon King was not a nice man. Most of his actual atrocities were on the battlefield, or immediately afterward, during the conquest of the city-states. He didn’t invent the concept of terror tactics, but he made extensive use of them. I recognized some of them from Earth history. Killing defiant nobles by pouring molten silver in their eyes and mouths was a thing attributed to the Mongols, for example. The Demon King used lead, but the principle was the same.
These techniques did not go over well with my personal knights—the Order of Shadow. They expected more mercy and less brutality. On the other hand, there was a war on. They were grumpy about it, but didn’t actually try to stop it. They protested, of course; they argued for mercy every time. And, every time, they were overruled. To be fair, people did start to get the message. The conquest of old Rethven did seem to pick up speed after the first four or five “examples.”
The larger, although less-elite order of knighthood—the Order of the Sword—was the place for anyone who might be enough of a fighter to merit it, but without the ridiculous standards of the Order of Shadow, the King’s personal guard. Mostly, it was for the knights of conquered princes or elite mercenaries. Once you conquer a place, you levy troops, supplies, and money, consolidate everything, then march on to the next place. The Order of the Sword didn’t have as much to do with the King, directly, and certainly didn’t know much about me. For the most part, they were only too happy to dish out to someone else what they had served to them.
Interestingly, Lissette was left in charge of domestic policies, kind of by default. Apparently, my other self didn’t care much for politics, either. That was good, as far as I was concerned. His laziness meant people were accustomed to the Queen’s authority actually meaning something. Given the chauvinistic, patriarchal attitudes of most of Rethven, it was a huge help to her maintaining the monarchy when the King disappeared. Of course, the Queen also had her personal guards and personal cabinet—Thomen was her right-hand man, grand vizier, chief advisor, et al and et cetera. Her cabinet included half a dozen nobles in charge of various government functions, such as taxes, military, internal affairs, secret police, those sorts of things.
Once the wars were over—all of the old Rethven cities turned into modern Karvalen subjects, the viksagi beaten back and punished, and the western border claimed (although not consolidated) all the way to the Western Ocean—my darker self turned its attention to other ways to amuse itself. That’s when he started “inviting” ladies to attend him during the day. Technically, as King, he was within his rights. Morally, he was more than a little off. I’m not sure he would have gotten away with it if Rethven regarded women more highly. As it was, there were several men who objected to having their property “borrowed.”
He sent the widows home, I’m told. Eventually.
Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar did their best to mitigate the King’s appetites. Their theory was if he was going to do this sort of thing, they should try to lessen the impact.
For example, they volunteered to go out and fetch back whatever he wanted. This kept him from going out and snatching someone off the street, himself. As a result, rather than literally grabbing the first pretty girl he found, the three of them made arrangements for him—or assigned people to make arrangements. No doubt a number of modern political figures have similar arrangements built into their budgets. Most of his temporary paramours were professionals and were well-paid for their work. Most of the rest were volunteers.
I found the idea of volunteers hard to believe. Seldar reminded me we were talking about the King, after all. Ever seen a beautiful girl hanging on the arm of a wealthy or powerful man? I had to admit he had a point.
Seldar still had some strong feelings about a few he selected himself, however. Not all of those were unreservedly enthusiastic. “Resigned” or “fatalistic” might be a better descriptor, and it bothered him, even years later. Personally, I agreed with him that it should. It shows my knights have consciences. That’s important.
I really do need to find that black ball. And a hydrogen bomb.
As for the King’s evening activities, the Big Three did their best to moderate that, as well. Most of the kingdom’s jails and dungeons wound up sending their criminals to the capitol. The new roads helped enormously. Seldar did most of the work in sorting the potential victims out. Some were assigned to labor, others fined, or an appropriate penalty was assessed. He was a big fan of making petty criminals do hard labor.
Murderers, rapists, child molesters, and other such went to holding cells under the palace. I have to give Seldar credit there. If someone was going to be dumped into a monster’s playroom to die a slow, agonized, gruesome death, Seldar did his best to make sure it was only someone who deserved it. Moreover, he knew my feelings on the male-female social inequality and lumped rapists under the same heading as murderers. They used to be regarded as no worse than thieves, and for similar reasons. Not anymore.
Not much of a silver lining, but I’ll take whatever I can get.
In some ways, Seldar’s report was a relief. I had vague, half-formed fears of my other self riding through cities, towns, and villages, ordering all the women to stand outside their homes to be viewed, selecting one or more who caught his eye, and having these brought back for his amusement. Or a whole wing of the palace filled with “amusements” of all ages to keep himself occupied. Or a separate pleasure-palace for his “collection.”
None of his activities filled me with anything but revulsion, but… it appeared as though things could have been much, much worse. I’m sure it would have been, but the Big Three, by being decent people, moderated even that disaster. As long as the creature had a hooker for the day and a criminal for the evening, he seemed relatively content. It’s pricey to pay a demon’s ransom every day, but they got a bargain rate.
If all he hit were lust, wrath, and sloth, all I can say is I’m glad he didn’t go in for gluttony. During the war, a resisting city could have been depopulated in a single night. Not only of people, but of every living thing, right down to the cockroaches, fleas, and bacteria.
My knights—the Order of Shadow, and especially Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar—did a fantastic job of keeping a demon in check without even knowing what it was. Maybe someone raised them right.
When Seldar signed off, I sat back and reflected. It might have been one of the least-pleasant conversations I’ve ever had. The high point of it was “he wasn’t as bad as he could have been.” Talk about damning with faint praise. It’s like saying, “He didn’t kill all the prisoners,” or “They only nuked one continent,” or “The virus only killed half the people on the planet.”
Perhaps worst of all was my own guilt. If I weren’t an idiot, none of this would have happened. Or, to be fair, would not have happened so easily. My dark half was obviously out to get me; he might have managed it later rather than sooner. Or maybe not. What might have been is of no real consequence. What did happen is all that matters.
The Kingsway gate interrupted my unpleasant musings with a vision of a man in steel scale-and-plate leading a pair of horses—one obviously war-trained, the other carrying baggage. I was in the mood for a distraction. Mary and Dantos also saw it; they met me in the great hall. I sat on the throne and they took up positions in the corners, left and right of the main door.
When the door to the great hall opened, the visitor stayed where he was, sword in one hand, shield on the other arm, visor down. I could see a couple of poles, weighted with sandbags, supporting a pair of banners. I stayed where I was, as well, semi-reclined on the dragonshead throne at the other end of the hall.
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��Behold your doom, creature of evil!” he shouted, echoing. “Halar the Undying, Demon King of Rethven! Come forth! Stand for your crimes and meet your just fate at the hands of a Hero!”
I recognized the voice.
Slowly, I got up from the throne and walked across the floor, applauding as I approached.
“Well done!” I complimented him. “It was short, to the point, and had the ring of conviction. The banners are a nice touch, too. Ever considered a squire or a page to blow a horn? The only other thing I’d suggest is adding who you are. Make it personal, rather than generic. Something like, ‘meet your end at the hands of Sir Sedrick, the Hero of…’ and include someplace you’ve performed a grand deed.”
He lowered his sword and raised his visor as I stopped at the door. He was smiling.
“I’m glad you like the banners. I remember you mentioned them, so I had these made. Squires and pages, though, get underfoot, get taken captive, and generally get in the way. Give me a good, well-trained mount and maybe a war hound,” he told me. “But adding my name… you think so? Does not that sound conceited?”
“You’re a Hero, Sir Sedrick. You’re expected to be a little conceited. It’s almost a requirement for the job, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he disagreed, and sheathed the weapon. “It seems to me pride leads to arrogance, and arrogance leads to overconfidence. That can be fatal.”
“You have a point. Come in, come in. Have you had breakfast?”
“Before dawn. I do not enter battle on a full stomach. It slows the reflexes.”
“I’ve had first breakfast, but you’re welcome to share second breakfast.”
“As you say,” he agreed, and clanked in to follow me. I led him out of the great hall and down to a sitting room while I spoke with Mary and Dantos through Firebrand. Dantos volunteered to tend to the horse. Mary had some sarcasm to deliver. Sedrick and I found seats around a table and we both laid our sheathed swords on it. He hung his shield on the back of his chair and put his helm on the table.