Nightlord: Shadows

by Garon Whited

  Likewise, I haven’t been able to reach Firebrand. Since I can put a scrying spell in Vathula pretty easily, I can see the place is a bustling city. I cannot, however, put a scrying spell into the Palace. I presume the same blocking spells are preventing me from reaching Firebrand. I have the same reservations about going and getting it that I have about bracing Keria in her lair.

  Something that is definitely not preventing me from reaching it is Tort.

  Normally, I would expect members of the inner circle around a king to have quarters in the palace, probably close to his, mainly to keep them available at all hours, in case the king gets a sudden urge to govern. And this is the case. My guard have quarters next to mine and Thomen lives just down the hall. Kelvin has chambers just before the first hallway junction.

  Tort, on the other hand, has gone one better and moved into the Royal Chambers. She sleeps in my bed and has filled a wardrobe. She’s even managed to talk the mountain into adding a workroom for her, just off the receiving room—I’m not sure how she did that, but the mountain is generally pretty agreeable. I’ve also noted other homey little touches. She has a large, enchanted chest where she keeps chilled food and wine, just in case I want a snack, as well as towels, soap, and other bathroomy things. There are decorative wall hangings. A couple of curtained pieces of glass mimic windows—they don’t go through the wall, just translate a viewpoint from higher up and outside. There are even rugs.

  She’s simply moved in with me. She just lives here, and is either pretty casual about getting dressed and bathing and all that stuff in general, or feels absolutely, entirely comfortable doing all that stuff around me. I can’t say that she’s throwing herself at me, but she’s certainly putting herself rather frequently and conveniently in my path.

  I get the feeling that if I expressed a willingness, she would trip me and beat me to the floor.

  Which is a bad idea. I’m heavy—at least three times as heavy as I look.

  It’s not that I’m necessarily against the idea, exactly, but I’m a little… I don’t know. Hesitant? Pressured? Uncertain? Although what I have to be uncertain about is a good question. I think her intentions are very clear. And I like Tort, quite a lot. I guess I’m not sure what else I feel about it. I loved her when she was a little girl, and I suppose she’s still a little girl in my heart. And my heart has some issues, right now, what with Tamara…

  Maybe I’m just not ready to fall in love. I can love Tort, and I do, but that’s not the same as being in love with her, if that makes any sense. I’ll love my Tort from now until they finally stake me through the heart, and maybe afterward. I’m just not emotionally equipped to deal with being in love right now.

  Everyone else, however, assumes. After all, it’s no secret where she sleeps. The fact I don’t sleep doesn’t seem to enter into it. People defer to Tort with a good deal more sincerity than they do to anyone else, presumably because she’s close to me. Even the rest of my de facto inner council seems to give considerable attention when she speaks.

  On the flip side, this doesn’t stop what feels like every unmarried woman in the place from flirting with me. Women have been flirting with me, or at me, almost since the day I woke up. Most of them just make eye contact, flutter their lashes at me, and cast their gaze down demurely. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a lip bite. Stuff like that. A few are more forward, finding excuses to lean over in my direction, looking at me to see if I’m looking at them.

  There are even a few that seem to be up all night, just waiting for a chance to bump—purely by accident—into the King in an empty hallway and see if he wants a snack.

  Since when did I become sexy? When I became King? Or when I became a nightlord? Did it happen all at once and I just didn’t notice? Or has it been getting worse over the years? And, while I’m quite gratified by the attention, I’m also busy, and not in the mood for either relationships or repercussions.

  I will admit I’m tempted, yes, and pretty much constantly. I’m alive during the day and have the same urges as a normal man. At night, my urges are a trifle unconventional. But I’m still too busy to get into that sort of tangle. One dalliance, one bite… it’s never just one, and it’s never just a dalliance, or just a bite. A whole slew of stuff comes with it.

  Thomen is another personal issue. While very polite and scrupulously respectful, he’s more than a trifle irked about Tort’s residential choice. Jealous? Probably. But he’s the Master Wizard to her Master Magician, and he has a chartered Guild. Now he’s got responsibilities that he’s not going to give up, no matter what his personal feelings are.

  It’s an unpleasant situation. I’m not sure what to do.

  Typical. People problems. Give me a science puzzle any day.

  My mornings usually start with breakfast with the Council, or the Cabinet, or whatever it is we’re going to call it. I’ve had the receiving room enlarged and a bigger table put in. There’s me, Tort, T’yl, Thomen, Kelvin, Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar.

  Kelvin has been immensely helpful in finding my guys some responsibilities. They’re learning new things, now: how to organize, how to plan, and how to lead. I’ve dismissed the spells for their physical enhancement. To put it bluntly, they are now big, scary men. From now on, the focus is on developing what’s inside. Their outsides are plenty well developed.

  Yes, I’ve monitored them with some care and attention. Nothing seems weird about their physical makeup. No tumors or other strange growths. They seem to be perfectly normal weightlifters.

  We often have visitors to the morning meeting, generally a specialist. Kavel has been invited to breakfast, Rethtel—he’s the guy in charge of lumber harvesting for the mountain, and, recently, he’s been supervising the building of a sawmill—and any number of others. Today, though, it was just us.

  Everyone talked about their work, how things were going, and I silently lamented the fact that I’m having meetings. I hate meetings. Why do I have to have meetings? So people can tell me how things are going. I used to have Raeth for this sort of thing.

  I miss him.

  Then Kammen mentioned a child molester that killed a little girl. I put down my cup and looked at him. Usually, I try to have everyone else work out what to do so I can just rubber-stamp their ideas. This had my full attention.

  “Where is he?” I interrupted.

  “He’s getting hauled up here on a boat,” Kammen replied.

  “Okay. T’yl, would you work with Tort in doing those gate calculations, please? I’ve been meaning to use it, and I hope to when I get back. Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar—no weapon work for me today; I’ll be in Mochara. Other than that, we’re done here. I have a boat to catch.”

  “Sire?” T’yl asked.

  “He’s not coming here,” I told him. “I’m going to turn the boat around, take him back to Mochara, look at his soul tonight, and see if he’s guilty or not.”

  “And then?”

  I shrugged.

  “If he’s innocent, I’ll see to it everyone knows that, then find the one responsible.”

  “And if he’s guilty?”

  “Let’s not ruin breakfast,” I advised.

  Bronze and I went down the Kingsway at her best downhill speed. It’s a wide street that starts out fairly low on the central mountain part of the city, but it’s still pretty steep—twenty degrees, say. It curves quickly, though, flattening out with the contour of the city to maybe a one-degree slope. It has sidewalks for pedestrians to dodge onto and a slightly-raised expressway down the middle specifically for Bronze. It’s been explained that she has the ultimate of right-of-way down that strip of stone, and anyone on it is subject to being crushed, burned, and scattered in bloody chunks for miles for several miles, all without warning.

  The explanation seems to be working; no one was in the way.

  We burned down the road, intercepted the boat, and I found I couldn’t just turn it back. There was a lot of cargo and a lot of people on it. Instead, I hoisted the suspect ov
er Bronze’s rump and we hauled him back ourselves.

  He tried talking to me, but Bronze just went faster until he couldn’t talk over the wind. That suited me just fine. If he was innocent, a rough ride wasn’t too much to endure. If he was guilty…

  In Mochara, I handed him over to the city watch with instructions to hold him, unharmed, and bring him to the city square at sundown. I think they could tell I was in a less-than-pleasant mood and saluted without asking questions.

  I met with the parents, walked through the place where the body was found, examined the little corpse—she was about Tianna’s age, which did nothing to soothe my damaged calm—and ordered that the body be brought to the city square at sundown.

  “Why?” asked the father, anguished. The mother just wept.

  “Justice,” I replied.

  I’m the King. I don’t have to explain.

  Then I listened to the stories of those who found the body, tried to find out everything I could, and finally went to Tort’s house to sit and fume and think. I did more fuming than thinking, I suspect. Pilea tiptoed in to put a plate of cheese and crackers at my elbow, along with a tall mug of beer.

  She’s a nice girl. I like her. And she knows not to poke the bloodthirsty monster that’s in a brown study.

  Night fell. I ran through a quick cleaning ritual and mounted up. Bronze walked me to the city square.

  My, but people do love a spectacle.

  I did not expect to see Amber there. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. She nodded at me and stayed off the central, raised area that served as a public stage. If someone was going to be burned at the stake, this would be a good spot, I thought.

  I looked at Frennin, the suspect. I combed through his heart and soul with dark tendrils, looking for the black spots, the grey spots, and the polluted streaks. Everyone has them. Some more than others, some blacker than others, and in some they run deeper than others. In due course, I found them. I examined them. I dove into them, plumbed them, swam in them.

  I knew Frennin better than he did, and was disgusted. I wanted a bath.

  With the girl’s body—Lia—right there, it was no trick at all to see her ghost, translucent and insubstantial, standing next to it and crying. Only slightly more difficult to ask her what happened.

  When I finished holding the ghost of a murdered girl, asking questions and comforting her, I took her with me to… wherever it is I go. That place between here and there, now and then, and we met with the Grey Lady.

  I think the Grey Lady was very kind as she took Lia’s hand. Maybe that’s just because it’s her job, her purpose, but I think there might have been something extra in that gesture this time. I would be pleased if at least one of the so-called gods had some empathy, maybe even pity. Or mercy.

  When I came back, I practiced restraint. Instead of killing Frennin outright, I picked him up by his chains, broke both his arms and legs, and dropped him.

  “Get this thing out of my sight,” I said. “Take it to a private room at the watch house. Bring Lia’s parents. Give them whatever sharp implements they might want, and give them leave to come and go in that room until dawn. If it dies before dawn, its wretched soul is mine.”

  And we did. We went to the watch house and everything was done as I said, and with not only dispatch and speed, but with considerable grim enthusiasm. I sat quietly outside the room while Frennin shrieked and screamed, and I didn’t feel bad about it even a tiny bit, not for a second. When his soul finally came loose from his flesh, I grabbed it, ripped it apart, and I ate the son of a bitch.

  I’m not known for my laws. I’m not even especially known for justice, although Lia’s parents might disagree. But I am known as, and will always be, a protector—and avenger—of children.

  Wednesday, June 9th

  I spent a lot of last night being moody and grim.

  I’m a vampire. We’re allowed to do that. It’s in all the brochures.

  One of the troubles of being a king is that I have to think ahead about people. I can tell you what frequencies of light will be visible, or how waves interact in water, or how heat flows through solids, liquids, and gases.

  But people, for all that I’ve digested so many souls, are still a mystery to me.

  How can I keep things like Lia’s murder from happening? How can I prevent it? More police? Police can be corrupt, lazy, or just inefficient. Even if they are incorruptible, diligent, and efficient, in order to prevent a crime, they would have to be unreasonably invasive to the average citizen, which means there would have to be lots of them—roughly three cops for every citizen.

  Fear? That might work for a lot of crimes, but for the really awful, sick things, there’s something wrong in the head with the perpetrator. They may be afraid, but, sooner or later, that urge is going to overcome their fear, or they’ll have an opportunity they think they can take and get away with. And, of course, for some thrill-seekers, that fear just makes a life of crime worth it!

  I’m stumped. Prevention isn’t a perfect solution, because it doesn’t always work. Avenging the victims isn’t satisfactory either, because you just can’t undo some things. Once done, they stay done.

  A division of effort between the two options, together, are the best we can manage, short of changing human nature.

  On the other hand, the fact that I will look at the suspect’s soul and know if he did it does take a lot of uncertainty out of the criminal justice system. So I’m ahead on points, there. Plus, because of that certainty, whoever did it will never do it again.

  That won’t help the victim, but it will keep the one responsible from making any more victims.

  From the standpoint of a kingdom, I’ll call that a win.

  The only problem is that I’m just one person. How do you set up a system of justice so that you don’t need my special talents?

  Sometimes, people make me sad.

  The morning meeting went pretty well; things are on track and proceeding at a rapid pace. I’m pleased with most things. For a while, I think things will lurch along fairly comfortably without my personal supervision.

  I still have work to do on the sand table in the conference room, though. The enchantments on the table and the sand are trickier than I thought. I’ve consulted with T’yl and Tort and they have some spells that help, but it’s a case of salvage work. I have to take those spells apart, mix and match different parts of them, and tie it all together again. The spells the magicians use are tailored for a specific purpose; most of mine are designed to be modular. Take a piece here, take a piece there…

  My sand table, when it works, to the extent it works, doesn’t work very well. I tried using a simple light-transmission spell, but that’s a nightmare when I’m trying to reproduce a multiple-source image. It’s simpler to have a spell to levitate and shape the sand; I’ll work on a holographic projection after I get the visual inputs aligned.

  Another item on the downside, most of my council doesn’t want me going through a magic gate. They didn’t like the idea when I announced it this morning and still didn’t like it when the meeting ended.

  T’yl’s the only one who doesn’t have a problem with it. I think he’s just not all that concerned about much of anything, now that he’s not going to die of old age. He’s gotten used to his new body and seems downright cheerful. Admittedly, people have had a hard time adjusting to him—not that I blame them—but he doesn’t dress like a stereotypical evil elf. He’s also much more friendly.

  Okay, he’s not the most friendly and helpful person I’ve ever met, but he beats the hell out of the elf who used to occupy that body.

  As for the rest of the council, I sympathize with their feelings, but things are going well here and I believe I can take a day. There’s a lot of stuff I want from an advanced technological society. Not just physical things, but reference materials. Books. Knowledge. I’m a physicist, not an engineer! Nor a chemist. Nor a microbiologist. Nor… nevermind. The point is, I have a lot of things I
want to know, and I don’t. So I’m going home for a day or so to scout the place out and come back to prepare better for a supply run.

  For this trip, I’ve got a sack of gold, a sack of diamonds—surprisingly large diamonds—and some clothes that should be either nondescript or at least not overly weird. There are a number of hand-crafted pieces of jewelry, as well, which ought to be valuable even if gold and diamonds are technologically manufactured. I’ve also got a nice, wooden case for my sword; I don’t want to wind up in jail for carrying an edged weapon ten or twelve times the legal limit in length. I figure if it’s in a case, then I’m transporting it, and hopefully don’t need a permit.

  Hopefully, I don’t need it at all. I’m bringing it because it’s valuable, I can get another, and if I do need it, I plan to have it.

  Okay, fine. I’m cautious, and I want a sword. I’m used to having one. The things are long, inconvenient, and often just in the way. I’m still attached to having one. Sue me.

  I’ve settled on the reflecting pool in my backyard as the target point. It’s been a gateway before, so that might help. Since I know exactly where I’m going, I can use a lot of my power, rather than charge off the archway, to get there.

  Later, when I find an arch to use for coming home, I’ll have all the charge and power of the Karvalen arch to help me, once I establish a pilot connection. The tricky bit will be making the connection, but I suspect I can afford something alive to help with the initial spell. Tort and T’yl will take turns in the gate room, monitoring the arch, ready to grab any trace of a connection and open it from this end.

  After some discussion, we settled on noon as the best time to begin. Time doesn’t roll along at the same rate in different universes, apparently. Leaving at midnight might introduce me to a daytime scene, with disastrous results. At noon, if I hit a daytime area, all will be well. If I wind up jumping through to night, all will still be well; there would be a very rapid change, but, with no sunlight involved, I should recover quickly.