by M. C. Planck
Their newly hatched guide led them unerringly up through the same tunnels they had come down. Halfway out the null-stone field disappeared. The device had a limited number of uses, but there was no way to tell how many remained. There wasn’t even a way to be sure it would work the next time. It was activated by magic cast at it or its wearer; trying to detect magic on it would just trigger the effect.
With its absence, the rest of their spells came back. The magic swords resumed their glow, and Christopher’s armor got a lot less burdensome.
The entrance had been collapsed and hastily restored since they had used it. The ant picked its way through the rubble. At the edge of the warding effect, it sidled to the side and waved cheerily at them as they walked past.
The squad of soldiers crouching behind earthen fortifications outside the tunnel mouth lowered their rifles. Christopher looked out over the cannon barrels still pointed in his direction.
“My lord Saint?” asked the sergeant, standing up in confusion. “Are you victorious?”
“Sure,” Christopher said. “Let’s go with that.”
8
PLAYING DOCTOR
His soldiers were disciplined. They did as they were told, withdrawing their blockades of ant tunnels back into the camp. Nonetheless, they communicated their confusion and disappointment. The army had suffered serious losses, a dozen men Christopher could not revive because acid had ruined their corpses. He added them to the growing stock of soldiers who would require the more expensive revival, the one that worked from as little as a fingernail.
This spell was still denied to him. Although he was now the same rank as Saint Krellyan had been, he served a different patron. The priests and priestesses of the Bright Lady were better at healing but worse at everything else. As a priest of Marcius, a lesser aspect from her pantheon, Christopher could cast a few spells that Krellyan had never seen. And he could throw around columns of fire like nobody’s business. At the moment, he would have traded it all for a way to hide from the faces of his men.
Istvar was worse. He talked. “You could have gained a rank from this. Yet you march home with nothing to show for the sacrifices of your soldiers. If you think the army is dismayed, wait until you face the families of your mausoleum. They have been waiting two years or more for the resurrection of their husbands and fathers.”
“Two years in which you have drained the realm just to reach this rank,” Einar added. “How much longer do you expect the nobility to let you sequester every scrap of tael? If you are not going to exert yourself to climb the ranks, why should they hold you on their shoulders?”
It wasn’t a total loss. Cannan’s sword had brought out a healthy chunk of tael. To anyone else, it would represent promotion through multiple ranks. To Christopher, it was barely a drop in the bucket.
The price of rank doubled with every step; the distance from twelve to thirteen was as great as the distance from commoner to Saint. He had only reached twelve after devastating three nations: the ulvenmen, the goblins, and arguably the human kingdom itself. Absent the slaughter of civil war, tael only accumulated when people died of old age. And the spread of his policies and his promotions of healing priests had actually slowed the natural death rate. He had made up for this by denying the nobility their share, promoting only lower ranked priests from the White and the Blue, and consuming the rest of the tael himself.
He had avoided the immediate and obvious rebellion by pointing to a destination. When he achieved sufficient rank, he could open a gate to Earth and bring over all sorts of wonderful toys. This would make the common folk happy. It would not particularly make the nobles happy, as they were already diminished by the effect of guns and cannons. Better guns and bigger cannons would only lower them further. Unfortunately, some of them were starting to figure this out. The fiction was that once he achieved his goal, he would return the tax rate to the normal arrangement. He had never actually said this because he wasn’t allowed to lie. But to anyone with half a brain not hidebound by tradition, it should have been obvious that empowering the commoners even more would not be the pivot at which the nobility regained their privilege. Luckily for him, half the brains of the kingdom were concentrated in the College of Troubadours, and they were on his side.
There still remained one mathematical detail. He would need to achieve five more ranks to command magic potent enough to travel to Earth and return. Late at night, he had done calculations on scraps of paper and burned them when he didn’t like the results. At the current rate of production, he would die of old age long before he reached his goal.
Destroying the ant nation, eating every one of their souls, would have gained him at best a rank or two. Even if it had raised him four ranks, it would not have mattered. The final rank alone represented the death of a million sentient beings. If he murdered every living thing within a thousand miles, he would still fall short. Not to mention the inevitable descent into madness.
Paradoxically, the impossibility of the task freed him. He could not achieve his goals by conventional means. Hence, he must seek another path. Now if only he could find it.
To be sure, that path included murder. One way or another, he would have to kill. But there were creatures he wouldn’t mind killing. The hjerne-spica were at the top of that list. Conveniently, as creatures of immense power, they yielded as much tael as whole civilizations. All he had to do was decapitate a fistful of the most fearsome monsters to escape anyone’s nightmare.
He looked over the two nobles, past them to the men tearing down tents and packing wagons, and said nothing. There were few places he could speak openly and fewer people he could speak to. Ironically, the ant queen had been one of them. He already missed her.
Lalania spoke for him. “Our lord does as he must. Surely we all have learned that by now. He has always marched to a different drummer, yet success speaks for itself.”
“The unmarked path is always more profitable, until it isn’t,” Einar said. “Disaster can lay around the next corner as easily as treasure.”
“It is not us you must convince,” Istvar said. “I have already committed my lot, however much I may regret that from time to time. There are many Green lords who still sit on thrones. To date they have not tried to subvert your rule. That may change if you appear to weaken.”
“Perhaps they should not sit then,” Einar suggested. “If Christopher lays claim to the tael of the kingdom, he still takes only the traditional portion from the hunt. Let them adventure in the Wild and bring home their profits.”
Lalania wrinkled her nose. “And when they trespass on some other realm? Such as the very one we now march away from? Shall Christopher answer for every raider and brigand we export?”
“If he answered traditionally he would be drowning in tael.” Istvar shrugged. “Perhaps the Rangers can find us a target acceptable to Christopher’s sensibilities. Such as another ulvenman nation.”
“Those things don’t grow on trees,” Einar said. “For the record, we have no known neighboring states. Well, other than this one, apparently.”
“They are out there,” Cannan stated. He was standing next to Christopher, as always, as close as a shadow. “You just have to travel far enough. As Niona and I did.”
The Ranger’s face was hard when he finally answered. “Had you come to us with your report, we might have made you one of us. But you did not.”
“Had I done so, a great many things might be different. I do not need you to tell me that.” Challenging words, said without a hint of challenge. Cannan was already back to scanning the perimeter for threats, his part of the conversation finished.
“I’m not sure it matters,” Istvar said. “I know you have reinvented the humble wagon, Christopher, but there is still a limit to how far we can project force. Soldiers must be fed, and we need their hands to harvest the crop.”
He was trying to build a steam engine, but the things weren’t as simple as they sounded. A railroad across the kingdom would surely be g
ood for the economy. One deep into the wilderness might let him send an army against some distant target. True, the idea of laying rails on the march might sound counterintuitive, but he had Lalania and the lyre. He imagined her astride a railroad engine, the white mist out in front laying tracks as fast as the train ran. It made a nice cartoon.
He laughed.
“My lord?” Istvar said politely, although with the Duke even politeness carried a backing of steel.
“Sorry,” Christopher said. “I was thinking of something else.”
“As we should be,” Lalania said. “We have our marching orders, Sers. Mine are no less onerous than yours. Yet our lord requires it, so it shall be done.”
Without further comment, the noblemen walked away. Lalania turned to him and lowered her voice. “Perhaps you were thinking of the results of our latest endeavor. I confess I have questions myself, although humor was not the affect I would have chosen.”
“Come to my tent tonight,” Christopher said. “I think I can answer them.”
Lalania stepped warily through his tent, like a cat on shredded paper. He had sent Cannan away on an errand and waited for her alone, lying in his cot, already out of his armor. From any other, it would be an invitation. He wondered whether she were frightened that it was or disappointed that it would not be. His own feelings on the subject were not to be trusted, so he didn’t.
“I need your special skills.” He winced at the flash in her eyes, so quickly buried by thespian discipline. “Not those,” he said, his tongue clumsy. “I mean . . .” Unable to figure out how to extricate himself, he just skipped to the end. “You know what to do with this,” handing her the clay vial.
“Who do you want me to kill?” she said, her voice forced into lightness.
“Nobody,” he answered, striving to match her tone. “It’s for me.”
Her eyebrows went up in appreciation. “You understand what you are signing up for?”
“Not really.” Finally something he could be honest about. “I know it will hurt. But if I don’t go through with it, the ant adventure really was a failure.”
“I cannot heal. Let us wait until we are in the presence of the Cardinal, at least.”
“No. It won’t kill me, if you start low enough. I don’t need a doctor. I need someone who understands poison. That means a bard. I need someone I can trust to keep a secret. That means you.”
“You are also trusting the ant queen. To a vast extent.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
She smiled at him. “The first time you ask for my advice, and you already know the answer. I shall consider it the success of my tutelage.”
“Then let’s get started. I don’t know how long it will take to recover, and I’d rather not try to explain why I can’t get out of bed in the morning.”
Her smile gradually faded as she concentrated on her task. She opened the vial with the delicacy of a jewel heist and studied it. Eventually, she removed a pin from her hair and briefly touched it to the contents.
With her other hand, she pulled off the leather band that held her hair in a ponytail.
“Bite this,” she instructed. “You can’t regenerate teeth yet.”
When he was ready, she smiled at him apologetically and put the pin against his bare neck.
For a moment he was back in the inn, poisoned, paralyzed, and surrounded by fire. Except this time he was on fire. The pain bloomed from his neck, engulfing his entire body in searing heat. He tried to scream, but his jaws were locked shut. Every muscle in his body activated all at once, fighting each other to a stalemate.
Above him Lalania’s eyes were wide with horror and fear. In the back of his head, he could hear the voice of the animated suit of armor that served as avatar to his god. It offered him release from the paralysis; he could, by divine favor, move for a few minutes if he wanted to.
It would not be release from the pain, though. In his current state, being paralyzed was the best defense of dignity. He had once been tortured to death, and yet now that experience seemed pale in comparison. If he could move, he would only shriek, weep, and soil himself. Or worse, he would cast a healing spell and completely undo the entire point of the exercise.
He clung to the idea that he could end the pain at will, a life raft in a sea of red mist. Gradually, the mist faded to black.
Light flooded the tent. Karl stood in the open doorway, staring down at him with disapproval. “Why are you still abed?”
Christopher croaked something unintelligible.
Karl frowned and walked away, letting the tent door drop.
He struggled to sit up. It took several tries before he could force out the words of the healing spell. Afterward the soreness was gone, although he still felt like he’d been run over by a truck. One of the big ones, with eighteen wheels.
Cannan watched carefully, sitting on the edge of his own cot. The big man said nothing; presumably Lalania had informed him of the night’s activities.
When Christopher finally left the tent, he was careful to disguise how badly he felt. Soldiers began stripping it down as soon as he stepped outside. The rest of the camp was already gone, packed into wagons for the journey home.
“How do you feel, my lord?” Lalania asked him as she handed him a bowl of cold porridge.
“I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted.
“Not usually what I hear after I leave a man’s tent,” she muttered.
“Careful with that kind of talk.”
She glared at the rebuke but said nothing. The army believed that his chastity was the source of his power. He was pretty sure that was absurd; none of the various supernatural entities he had dealt with had ever inquired about his romantic activities. However, the proposition remained untested as Lalania was the only woman on this planet who interested him in that way, and she had come to respect his devotion to his wife. If that bond weakened, he feared he would lose the heart necessary for the impossible task ahead of him. Like healing the poison would only invalidate the exercise, falling for Lalania would end his current pain at the expense of making a mockery of everything he had suffered so far.
In a way, then, the army was right. He went to take his place at the head of the column, passing men who looked the other way rather than let him see their disappointment. Royal was waiting for him. The huge warhorse snuffled at him, its affection undiminished by the events of the last day and night.
9
GAME THEORY
Over the next weeks, they developed a routine. Lalania would come to his room in the castle every few nights and dose him. The pain never lessened, but in time he learned to deal with it. The paralytic effect began to slowly diminish. When he could move again after only an hour, she would nod in approval and the next time increase the dose.
The change in protocol did not go unnoticed. Christopher saw the way common soldiers looked at Lalania behind her back. She had long been a favorite of the men, generous as she was with her magic, her songs, and sometimes her affections. At the same time, she had always been their greatest fear. If Christopher took to enjoying the company of harlots, he would cease to be the transformative figure to whom they had pledged. As just another ruler, a conventional king, he would still be a thousand times better than the last one, but the commoners did not care. They dreamed of freedom, not merely the absence of tyranny. The hopes of the long dispossessed could not be bounded by pragmatism.
She responded by becoming almost prim. Her hemlines got longer, and her hair was tamed into a matronly bun. This stilled the soldiers somewhat, but he could still feel their attitude reflected in his interactions with the nobility, ripples spreading across a pond. He had made his career out of being utterly unconventional, and now the merest hint of conventionality made people pause and reassess. Could he be toppled? Could his holy quest be diverted, delayed, or canceled altogether? Was there room at the margins of his absolute law to still seek profit and promotion?
So far it was only calculating looks and oc
casional inappropriate conversational pauses. The White Church, still under Cardinal Faren’s iron hand, served him as loyally as they had served Saint Krellyan. The worst of the Dark lords were systematically being replaced with Bright vicars. Invariably, the disposed lords chose to take their chances in the Wild, marching off with a handful of loyal retainers in search of adventure and therefore treasure. Realistically, any one of them could stumble across some ridiculous long-lost artifact and return to destroy him, but he had to let them go. There were some traditions he dared not defy. Besides, he could never bring himself to murder people for nothing more than profit, even as much as he ached at watching the tael in their heads wandering off to vanish in the great dark forest.
Then one day, Lalania reported an unusual fact. The last lord to depart had left behind a fair amount of property in the hands of some of his retainers instead of selling it all off for portable wealth. This was the sort of thing one might do if one expected to return within a few years. Christopher’s reign had apparently acquired an expiration date.
“What should I do about it?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Traditional tactics suggest you allow a plot to develop against you—encourage one even—so that you can ferret out the ringleaders, whom you then hang as an example to the rest.”
“I can’t do that,” he said, but she already knew that.
“In which case you must simply prepare for trouble. Unless you can hasten your final goal.”
“I can’t do that either,” he said glumly.
“We should step up our security protocols. Your castle is shockingly open to infiltration. There are still poisons you should fear. Or possibly spells whose trigger must be delivered manually.”
Neither of those seemed likely to him. By now the assassins of the kingdom should have learned to stop expecting poison to work, and the only two spell-casters of note were the Wizard and the Witch, both of whom knew he controlled an artifact that blocked magic. Or rather Lalania did.
