by Garon Whited
My language is not something I wish to repeat here. I’m not proud of it.
“—the damned Church of Light!” I finished.
I understand and I’m totally with you on this.
“If the Church of Light gets to use assassins so casually, I ought to have an assassin corps, myself!”
I bet the Knights of Shadow would be only too willing. Those guys are killing machines.
“Yes, but they stand out. Even out of their armor, they’re huge.”
That does present a problem, he mused. Well, you could always ask Bob. I bet the elves would do a fantastic job.
“The idea makes my skin crawl.”
If I had skin, mine would, too. Let’s table that thought. I have bigger issues for you to consider.
“Bigger?” I repeated. “The Boojum targeted everyone I give much of a damn about! He went after people on the basis of whether or not it would hurt me! Even the random kids you mentioned—I may not know any of them, but they’re still my kids, in a weird sort of way. That’s the only reason they were singled out for murder!”
And the current Lord of Light is arguing that since he can’t fully commune with his followers, he can’t call off the assassins. This is all the humans’ idea, not his. I want to punch him in his glowing, smug face. It’s like he planned all of this for the sanctions. If I stop arguing to continue the sanctions and let him loose on the world again, he can call off the assassins and the crusade and whatnot.
“Keep blocking him. The last thing I need is another god active in the field. I’ll deal with his humans.”
It scares me when you use that tone with the word “humans.”
“It shouldn’t. You’re not one.”
Okay, I’m scared for them. Is that better?
“You should be. Now I’ve got to put you on hold. I want to makes some calls.”
I spent a few minutes on the mirror with Lissette, being reassured of the health and well-being of both her and her children. Nobody tried for the other kids in the Royal Family—only Liam. It’s like they weren’t interested in anyone not directly descended from me, the bastards.
“As long as everyone is okay, or going to be,” I decided. “Still got that iron crown with the rubies in it?”
“Yes,” she agreed. The implication hit her like a brick. Her eyes widened and her face went white. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. All options are on the table. I am angry, Lissette. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I can’t sit still for this. It’s not that I won’t. I can’t. Someone, something, is going to suffer my wrath, and I’m not sure what it’s going to cost.”
“Can I help you?”
“With the wrath?”
“No. Can I help you?”
“I’m not sure. In a couple of hours, the sun will go down. I’m hoping I calm down by then because anything alive within a hundred yards of me might not be safe. I want you right where you are, far away from me, because I won’t risk you being anywhere near what might be an awful fit of temper.”
“I… I understand, Your Majesty.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry… husband.”
I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. Rage and fear and fury… now a sharp current of nostalgia and longing and wistfulness…
“Thank you,” I replied. I blew her a kiss because that’s the sort of thing you do in moments like that. I cut the connection and called Seldar.
“Sire!”
“How fares Zhoka?”
“Poorly. We have ceased the bombardment for now. Theizar, the general currently in charge, has offered to parley and negotiate terms. As a sign of his sincerity, he has delivered fourteen captive priests to us.”
“Good. Treat the general respectfully and kindly—the priests, less so. This may be the last city to get the option of surrendering. I’m not sure what I want to do and I have some thinking ahead of me.”
“As you say, Sire. May I ask what called you back so suddenly to the city? Vios?”
“Yes, it’s Vios, now, in the Kingdom of Karvalen. The Church of Light has sent a dozen or more agents to assassinate anyone they think is important to me.”
“Ah,” he agreed, nodding. “This must be what the messages from Master Direnias, prophates of the Lord of Light, meant by the wrath of his god.”
“Probably. I don’t think he understands the true meaning of the word ‘wrath,’ though.”
“Do you wish me to return?”
“No. You guys see to the cleansing of Zhoka. That should take a day or two. By then I’ll have a decision.”
“May I ask what you contemplate?”
“No.”
Seldar blinked at me for a moment. It’s seldom, if ever, I simply give him a short, sharp answer. He eventually bowed his head in acceptance.
“What else may I do for you, my King?”
“Send a messenger to me with my bow. And some arrows. Send him to my scrying room. Other than that, no. That will be all. I do not wish to be disturbed. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
“Is it permitted for him to take the Kingsway?”
“Yes.”
“Then I shall dispatch our swiftest rider,” he assured me.
I closed the mirror connection and thought for a while. Okay, I seethed for a while. When they killed Bronze, it took half the heart out of me. I didn’t have enough left to be as… as… Well, let’s say they were lucky I didn’t have the capacity to fully feel my rage. This was different. I was angry. Bronze was angry. Firebrand was a little miffed, at least. I’m pretty sure my cloak was a least annoyed. And my altar ego, of course, was as upset as only a celestial being can be.
I pulled out my phone.
“Diogenes?”
“Yes, Professor?”
“Please bring up a map on the sand table. I want the whole of the Church-dominated lands in view. Best fit, please.”
Sand as fine as dust danced like mad for several seconds. When it settled into its final configuration, there was a lovely replica of some of the southern parts of the outer continent. I touched various places on the map, highlighting them with an aura of red dust, counting as I went.
Forty-three cities and towns, including the capitols, Salacia and Iyner. Seven major cities, six regular cities, and thirty towns, large and small. There were far more villages, but I didn’t care about those. Total population in the highlighted urban centers, well over a million, possibly as much as two million.
Boss?
“What is it?”
What are you thinking?
“Can’t you tell?”
No.
“No?”
It’s too dark in there.
“Then you don’t want to know.”
...okay.
I sat there, alone with my thoughts, not yet ready to feel. I’ve had a piece of wood driven through my heart. This felt much the same, only colder. The coldness was a part of me, like Arctic brine in my blood, chilling it down to a frozen stillness. Yet, at the same time, my blood was hot in my veins, trying to boil out through my skin, setting my head and hands on fire.
I fished around in my pockets and took out the iridium circle I used as an assassination tool. I turned it over and over in my hands, considering it.
I wanted to kill something.
I really wanted to kill something.
I held up the ring and regarded forty-three circles on the map through it. Bronze snorted a brief flicker of flame and stomped a smoking hoofprint into the stone floor. Whatever I decided, she would back me up on it and not give it a second thought. However, if there was a vote, hers was for stomping things.
There are millions of people languishing under the rule of the Church of Light, I reflected. If my knights invade, one way or the other, there is going to be mass slaughter and death. Unless…
I dug out my pocket mirror and called Seldar. He answered immediately. Torvil and Kammen
weren’t in view, but I wasn’t fooled. Seldar was inside a pavilion tent and the light from the open tent flap threw their massive shadows into view. No doubt they were in consultation when I called.
“Sire,” he said, and bowed.
“Do you have a way to rescue a million people from their forced addiction to the Church of Light?”
“No, Your Majesty. I do not.”
“Do you have a way to rescue one?”
“It is with deep regret, Master of Wrath, that I admit I have not yet gained such knowledge.”
I disconnected the call. I turned my pocket mirror over and over in my hands, thinking, and finally put it aside. I toyed with the enchanted frame, looking through it at the sand table again, still thinking.
They say death cures everything. I don’t know who says it, but they have a point.
If my knights press on into more and more devoted territory, we’re going to encounter more and more difficult defenses, larger masses of human waves, more stubborn—or addicted—noblemen, and more influential clergy. H’zhad’Eyn is the tutorial, the ride with training wheels. We’re going to start rapidly losing men. I’m pleasantly surprised we didn’t have any fatalities in the cleansing of Zhoka, in fact, but things can only get worse.
What should I do? Should I be leading the army? Should I leave it to Seldar? Should I call up the forces of the Eastrange and send them to join the Knights of Shadow?
The forces of shadow and darkness fighting the light, yeah, that has its appeal, but these men are good men, honorable men. I’m sure they’re willing to die for a cause—please tell me they’re not willing to die for me—and they will eagerly stand against tyranny, resist oppression, and adhere to all the chivalric do-goodery that goes with it.
I could preserve their lives by taking more direct action, though.
But at what cost?
Would I be helping them? Would I be stopping the spread of evil? Would I be defending the world against this plague that steals the free will right out of a person’s head?
Or would it be my rage and revenge? Because, hot and cold as I am, I want my revenge. I want the moving force behind the assassins—a prophates, a deveas, possibly a whole council of high-ranking clergy—to suffer. But I can settle for killing them.
My motives are not pure. It might not seem as though motive matters, but it does. At least, inside my head and heart, where the tiny, blackened, stained and tarnished thing I laughingly call my soul resides.
How much of me is the Demon King? I don’t know. All he was, I am, but I am more than him. Nonetheless, all I can think of at this moment is an arrowhead weighs somewhere around an ounce. Call it thirty grams, give or take a couple grams on a per-arrow basis. Suitably converted, thirty grams turns into several terajoules… or, in common units, somewhat over six hundred kilotons.
As I sit here and stare at forty-three potential targets of mass destruction, I wonder if I’m going to destroy them.
I bounce back and forth in my reflections on destruction. I wonder if I dare, then I wonder if I care. I wonder, because I am already a monster. I know it. I’ve accepted it. I acknowledge it. But if I do this, what will this make me? What is worse than a monster? Or are there only different degrees of monster? How far down the scale of monstrosity can I go? How far down will I go?
Forty-three steps, perhaps.
What am I going to do?
Meditation
The pieces are all in place. The stage is set. I look back on myself, knowing what I will decide. Will another course be better? If I choose once and it ends in disaster, who is to say another way will not be worse?
I seldom look back and meditate on the past. It is over; it is done. There is nothing but the now—what is and what is yet to come. I am not who I was. I am not yet who I will be. It is not the changes already wrought within my soul that make me tremble.
Fear of the future has always been with me.
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Nightlord: VOID
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Garon Whited
Other books:
Dragonhunters
LUNA
Nightlord, Book One: Sunset
Nightlord, Book Two: Shadows
Nightlord, Book Three: Orb
Nightlord, Book Four: Knightfall
Short Stories:
An Arabian Night: Nazin’s Dream
Clockwork
Dragonhunt
Ship’s Log: Vacuum Cleaver
The Power
The Ways of Cats
www.garonwhited.com
