by Garon Whited
“I think I was leading up to something. I believe you. When you say the survivors will run away. You say it like you don’t think there will be many.”
“If it comes to cases, I’ll try not to kill them all. But I won’t promise about how many I kick over the wall and into the gorge.”
“Now you sound like you’ve done this before.”
“There’s a lot I’ve done before and I’m hoping not to do again,” I told her, darkly.
“But… an army?”
“Velina, I’m good at a lot of things, terrible at even more. I’m a great wizard, a mediocre god, an indifferent king, an absent father, and a lousy human being. The one thing I do exceptionally well, above and beyond anything else, is kill things. People, generally. I’m not exactly proud of the fact, but there it is. I’m not a solider, not a captain, not a general. I’m a killer. And when it comes right down to it, you win a war if everyone on the other side is killed. It may not be the best way to win the argument, but it permits no refutation.
Huzzah!
Shut UP, Firebrand.
“Now,” I finished, changing the subject, “what else is there?”
Velina, I was happy to see, accepted the change of subject.
“Renata’s not happy.”
“Why?”
“She’s not allowed to fight.”
“Well, that’s hardly surprising is it?”
“No, sir. That far along, she’s stuck. She still wants to contribute.”
“How would she feel about assembling crossbow bolts?”
“I’ll suggest it, but she really wants the kid out.”
“Tell her the first and foremost duty she has is to finish making a child. She’s almost done anyway, so all she needs is a little more patience. When she’s done, then we can decide what to do with it—and with her. I’ve gone to enormous trouble to allow her to keep the kid and I’m not having all that effort wasted at this late stage. I’ll allow her to do other duties if they don’t interfere with her current one.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“And have her assigned to duty in the keep. I know you’ve posted guards and reserves at the villages, but I want her inside the fortification against the chance some mountaineers sneak in to cause trouble. She’ll be released when she’s no longer carrying a spare person into combat.”
“Yes, sir.”
I dialed up god and quizzed him.
“You’re welcome,” he said, sarcastically, when I asked about underground caverns.
“For?”
“Help with the proto-deity, remember?”
“I remember. Sorry. Press of events. Thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Thing is, I haven’t had much force left over. I haven’t had a chance to go looking.”
“I’m sorry for pushing you.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he assured me. “How goes the war?”
“The army won’t be here until day after tomorrow, at the absolute earliest. It will probably be even longer, what with the rain.”
“Glad to hear it. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”
“It’s okay. I’ll figure something out or just forego the simulated earthquake.”
“Would it be worthwhile to try and grease the fault lines?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, thoughtfully, “there are mountain ranges around here. Sarashda sits between one big range and a smaller branch of it. At a guess, there’s at least two crustal plates involved, maybe three. Would it be worthwhile to do your stone-shaping spell to loosen or smooth out the boundary between the plates, effectively lubricating them and encouraging them to move?”
“Possibly. With a self-replicating spell, appropriate condition operators, and enough time, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Trouble is, there are reasons I don’t want to do it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“It’ll take more time than I have, I think. It’ll also be unpredictable. It could be huge, or it might be only a tremor. I can’t decide when it happens, either, or exactly where. It could fold up the valley I’m in like slapping shut a book. And, most important, I don’t know enough about geology, earthquakes, crustal plates and faults, or anything else involved to set up the spell properly.”
“All good points,” he agreed.
“Whereas setting off big, underground explosions means I can control the force, minimize the casualties, and time it with some precision.”
“I’m sold, I’m sold. Do it your way. You’re closer to the ground than I am.”
“No kidding. How are things on the upper planes?”
“Exhausting. I’m still recovering from our encounter with the proto-god of wizards. It’ll be a few days. I’m glad I have my shelter built and some defenses up. Speaking of which, how did the discussion go?”
I filled him in on the conversation and he looked thoughtful.
“I could try talking to him,” he offered. “He’s halfway attuned to the energies involved. It might even help him get a better feel for the eventual change. Assuming he wants to ascend.”
“Save your efforts,” I advised. “He wants to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh for a while, yet. Besides, I may need you sharp soon. No doubt I’ll need heavenly advice when the army shows up.”
“I’ll be here.”
“I hope I will.” I signed off and turned my attention to my mirror. I had another call to make, but the mirror was already active. One of Leisel’s subordinates looked out at me. She had both hands over her mouth as though to prevent any noise. Her eyes were wide enough to show whites all around.
“Yes?” I prompted. She shivered. “Whatever you saw or heard, I forgive you. Take a breath. Now, you called me on the mirror for a reason. State it!”
“My lord, Renata is about to be delivered of her child.”
“Good!” I told her, smiling in the friendliest fashion I knew. “See? That wasn’t so bad. Tell Renata I wish I could attend. I have things coming together I can’t put off. Thank you for keeping me apprised.”
“Sir!”
I signed off and took a few minutes to set up a ringer and answer mode. No more random calls connecting automatically. I fired it up to make a call of my own. Hazir’s features rippled into clarity.
“My friend! I had all but given up hope my message might reach you in time!”
“What message?”
“Is not your call about the forces marching from Sarashda?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. What message?”
“I attempted to reach you and spoke to one of your servants, warning you of the gathering of forces by the Temple.”
“When was this?”
“The twenty-ninth, I believe.”
“Aha. I was out, incognito, and didn’t have my mirror on me. I would have thought someone would have given me the message when I got back, though.”
“Alas, not all servants are as dependable as one wishes.”
“Speaking of dependable…”
“Yes?”
“I hope I can depend on you, not as a servant, but a friend with mutual interests.”
“I would be only too happy to lead a force against the flanks of your enemies, but there is no such force available. You have dispersed those who might have taken your coin and served you in this matter.”
“Yes, I know. And the Temple has hired everyone else. The Temple’s army isn’t what I’m worried about.”
“You are not?” he asked, surprised.
“No, I can deal with those idiots. It’s the idiots inside the Temple I have a problem with.”
“Speak on, for you interest me strangely.”
“An old friend of mine, a professional singer and musician and storyteller by the name of Linnaeus, taught me that events are often not significant in themselves, but significant by what people say of them.”
“Rumor is a wild beast, ridden only by the lucky and brave—and, as often, tramples even those underfoot.”
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“Yes. In this case, however, maybe we can have rumor stomp on some priestly toes even if I’m not riding it.”
“How so?”
“Earlier today, a warning was flung down from the heavens and into the Temple of Sarashda. Heard of it?”
“There was some disturbance, but I have not heard specifics.”
“It was me. It’s a spear of iron with burning letters, descended through the Temple roof in a clap of thunder, ordering the priests of surrender Leisel. It’s the subtle warning. Tonight, they’ll get an unsubtle warning when letters of heavenly fire appear in the sky, still ordering Leisel’s surrender. If they ignore both warnings, the wrath of the gods will make itself apparent.”
Hazir gave me a peculiar expression.
“My friend, as you know, my religious leanings are, perhaps, not entirely congruent with the norm. I must question whether it is wise to mock the gods. Mortals—mortals not priests,” he corrected, “do not presume to the wrath of the gods.”
“The priests targeted me with an assassin, used the assassin as a targeting point for their hired wizard and so kidnapped Leisel, encouraged Naskarl to attack me, used me as a decoy to manipulate the less-faithful to reveal themselves, and declared a Temple vendetta against my House. If they’ve killed Leisel, I’ll give everyone two days to get as far away from Sarashda as possible before it sinks into a lake of fire. Any questions?”
Hazir blinked for several seconds, marshalling his thoughts.
“What is it you wish me to do?”
“It occurs to me it’s likely to storm tonight. Most people don’t stand around in the rain, admiring the letters of fire in the sky. Someone should notice them, bring it to the attention of others, and suggest the gods want this Leisel person, whoever she is, released from whatever custody she’s in.”
“I believe someone might arrange for this.”
“Need anything from me?”
“I hesitate to ask for money, but it would be of great help if I could more easily hire individuals—”
“Hold on. And get a sack or a box or something.”
While he found a container, I popped down to the treasury and found a double handful of gold coins. At my instruction, he held the mirror over the mouth of the sack. I opened a gate between the two, funneled gold through, and returned it to scrying mode.
“Will that cover it?”
“This will be more than required.”
“Keep the rest. Let me know if you need more. Right now, I have many things to do.”
“And I have a busy day ahead of me. Farewell.”
We signed off and I went up to my workroom to do some cross-universal thievery. You never know when you’re going to need enough explosives to knock down a Temple. Well, almost never. It only took one gate. Apparently, there are places where one can find an entire demolitions kit—explosives, detonators, the works—in one handy-to-grab package. Granted, it’s not a lot of explosive, but judging from the olive drab color of the case, I’m guessing it’s meant as a way to take down a bridge or blow up materiel to keep it out of enemy hands. Something of that nature.
Then it was time to crank up the Ring of Spying and send it out looking for underground locations for huge explosions.
The trouble with my search for underground locations wasn’t the locations, themselves. Any open space would do. Inside a geode. The hollow under a rock. Even a water channel would do. Anywhere I could manifest a small gate and push through a micro-nuke. No, the trouble was finding them in relation to other points. First, it had to be a mile or more from Sarashda for the shockwave to have a suitable earthquake-like feel to it. Second, it had to be at least deep enough to contain the explosion—an uncertain depth, since I wasn’t sure how big the explosions would need to be. And, third, it had to be parked under nothing inhabited. I didn’t want to turn a farmstead into a radioactive sinkhole if I had any choice.
After a while, I connected my Ring of Spying to my sand table again and used it to map out hollow spaces in the earth all around Sarashda. The ground level rose to accommodate the new view and various tiny dots appeared, hovering in three dimensions, everywhere my ring’s gate made a hit. There were a surprising number of hollow spots, at least to me. I suppose being in between two mountain ranges accounted for a lot of them. With a catalogue to choose from, I could place rings around Sarashda, rings around other populated areas, and mark off a minimum depth. Anything outside all the exclusion zones was fair game.
Which, of course, put all the available detonation points out of bounds. Oh, sure, I could make up for it with bigger charges, but I would have to increase the size of the safety margin…
I can’t even use nuclear weapons to intimidate. There must be something wrong with me. I would think being a nuclear power—the only one in the world!—would at least let me scare the locals, but no, I can’t even do that right.
Well, if all else fails, I might manage something more pedestrian. I have gravity-shifting spells. If I put three of them at the points of a triangle around the Temple, I can shift randomly between the three of them and it will be like the ground keeps tilting. It won’t be as pronounced as when Bronze and I use them—it’s a much larger area to be affected—but even five or six degrees of see-sawing in various ways is enough to make people panic. And that’s what I’m after: Priestly panic!
Next up was my Ring of Spying’s many gates. When I redesigned it, I thickened it, making it a hefty, man-sized ring. All around the circumference, there are tiny holes, running parallel to my finger. If I held it up, I could look through the ring and through the twenty or so iridium-lined holes I would use as gates. And I had a terrible thought.
What would happen if I had an incoming gate and it locked on to one of my rings? Judging by experience, I’d lose a finger! Of course, most people aren’t sending ring-sized gates in my direction, but I use a lot of gate spells of small-to-tiny sizes. What if I make a mistake? It’s not likely, but the longer I go, the more likely it is I’ll have an accident. So I rigged the mini-gates around the ring to have priority. Anything coming my way would redirect to the ring, which could then either forward the connection to another magical device—say, the iridium-lined ring in my mirror’s frame—or hold the connection if it didn’t have a specific destination.
I put the ring on again. My finger itched underneath it. Purely psychological, I’m sure, but the itch didn’t mind.
I set the individual micro-gates to cycling, each dialing for an Earth world where I established a dynamo farm. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Some of them were bound to leapfrog forward, producing days or weeks of power for my altar ego in a few moments. Although, if I remember right, power produced in other worlds isn’t as readily useful. I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but he’s happy to have it. So, on the principle of “more is better,” I powered them for ten minutes or so of sequential firing while I considered what I had yet to do.
With my altar ego boosted by some unknown amount, and my finger-safety system engaged, I got busy. There were a lot of things to get ready by sunset.
That night, on a tall hill outside Sarashda, almost into the Razikian Range, Modric, of some House or other, mostly raised pigs and goats, but he farmed enough to outdo the garden in back of Applewood Hall. Bronze and I showed up, paid him quite a lot of money, and told him not to come back until morning. He stuffed some belongings in a sack and started toward Sarashda. I redirected him toward a neighbor’s house—one farther away.
I cut lines in the dirt and, with a little help from my quantum crystal, attuned them to my altar ego. Waste not, after all. Sacrificing animals to power my spell might not draw out of them the same forces he would use if they were sacrificed on an altar. If he could get his share of it, more power to him. Couldn’t hurt, anyway.
With wand in one hand, power crystals in pouches around my waist, and a whole line of pigs and goats rendered unconscious by tendrils of darkness, I got down to the serious business of spilling blood.
; I was reminded of the Hand compound in Telen. Pigs and goats, this time, instead of sheep, but otherwise this was the second take. I worried again about the use of sacrificial magic. I’m told it takes a toll on the user, eating away at the soul of the spellcaster. On the one hand, I wasn’t about to change a working formula. On the other, would I even notice? My soul is a ragged thing already. What are a few more threads?
Most of my spells were already in place, parked wherever necessary by gates just large enough for the purpose. The big issue, of course, was the weather. I was going all-out for intimidation and the disapproval of the various gods. My only question was whether or not the priests would believe it. If they didn’t believe in their own gods—or if those of them who didn’t believe; they’re not all a bunch of clones. I presume they have individual opinions—The ones who didn’t believe in their gods wouldn’t be as intimidated by the display. It would merely be powerful spells, not the upcoming Wrath of God. Then again, if they find out there’s a demon-wizard-whatever out there who can drop a tornado on them, maybe they’ll be intimidated, anyway. As for those who did believe, even without regular contact with the divine, they would be likely to try and persuade the others to do what the gods wanted and let Leisel go.
Failing any of that, I was going to huff and puff and blow the Temple down with explosives. I figured the Temple proper was the best choice. I’ve been in it and there’s no offices, no rooms, no place to put someone. I doubted they had a collection of cells underneath for heretics. My bet was Leisel was kept in one of the other buildings. And knocking down the Temple—if it came to that—would send a more direct message to the people of Sarashda and any surviving priests.
I raised my wand and began to conduct “Fugue for Atmospheric Duet in Major Blowhard,” with accompaniment in slit throats.
I should have brought a spear and magic helmet.
Winds rose. Clouds massed. Storm fronts marched toward each other. The electric tingle in the air increased. I’d forgotten how it felt to play with the weather like this. Usually, I ignore the weather, aside from overheating or the rain making mud. But this? This was fun. A wall of clouds advanced slowly northward, having been built over the ocean and drawn this way. Winds raced over the Kasnakani Range, high up, cold and clear.
