by Garon Whited
“Have you told her that?”
Thomen was silent.
“I’ll just let you think that one over,” I told him, and went off to find a priest.
Brother Terrany was in the throne room, sitting on the raised lip of a firepit, talking with Sir Sedrick.
“Good evening,” I said. “How do you like the place?”
Brother Terrany and Sir Sedrick both rose; Sir Sedrick bowed in greeting.
“I have never seen its like,” Terrany admitted. “It speaks of enormous power, if not great wisdom.”
“Oh? Why not wisdom?”
“I have seen great caverns and corridors within the mountain, a city twice or three times as great as the one on the outside, yet only one tiny door.” He nodded to the main door. “Must everything that goes in or out go through the throne room, under the watchful eyes of the dragon throne?”
Hmm. He had a point. It wasn’t an issue right now, but if the population inside the mountain kept increasing, there would come a time when one door wasn’t going to do. How do I make a secure-ish door that can also accommodate large amounts of foot traffic? I’d have to think about that one.
“You’ve raised a good point. But we don’t need anything more right now. Later, when we have more people—and more guards—we can open other doors. I’m trying to keep people safe, you see, and the inconvenience is a minor one, right now.”
“Ah. Forgive me, Your Majesty. I should have realized that an immortal fiend would have worked out the details of his nefarious plots.”
“Not a problem. So, ready to blast me into oblivion with the full force of Law?” I asked. Sedrick did not look pleased by this.
“Majesty?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“Is this… ah, necessary?” I’m pretty sure he wanted to ask if it was safe. Of course it wasn’t safe. But it was important.
“I think so. Come, Brother Terrany. Begin.”
So he did. The amulet or symbol or whatever you want to call it was glowing, now, without casting shadows—a sure sign it was a glow only visible to eyes that saw differently. He held it out toward me and spoke, invoking the power of the Lord of Law.
The amulet glowed brightly, but it didn’t reach out toward me. It just glowed. I got a sense of presence, as though the eye was looking at me. I looked back at it. Was there a faint hint of a nod, some sort of acknowledgement? Maybe.
The glow dimmed to its original level as Brother Terrany lowered the symbol.
“Well, Brother Terrany, I have good news for you,” I told him. “I definitely noticed that your god has answered your prayer. He does pay attention to you; he hasn’t abandoned you. He just doesn’t agree with your estimation of my character, it seems.”
“You can tell that?” Terrany asked, lowering the amulet. “I do not feel it.”
“Trust him on this,” Sir Sedrick said. “If there is one who will know when the gods gaze upon him, it is one such as he.”
“Yep. He definitely looked at me and declined to smite me. But he didn’t seem upset or angry, so you’re probably in good shape, at least as far as being a priest is concerned. Could be that, since I’m the King, I make the laws, and that’s a good thing from the perspective of a lawgiver deity—I’m not sure. So, carry on.”
Terrany looked torn between elation and deflation.
“Look,” I said, “if I’m offensive to him, he’d let you know. Maybe you’re just assuming? I mean, when we were talking, earlier, I get the impression he didn’t tell you to come get me, did he?”
“Well, no.”
“Then you’ve got some rethinking to do, haven’t you?” I asked. “Maybe you need a few days in quiet contemplation and prayer. Maybe you’re hear for another reason. Who knows? Why don’t you go ask?”
Sir Sedrick put a hand on his back in a kindly fashion, steering him away.
“Come along, Brother. The King has many things that demand his attention. I’ll try to explain. See, I was in a very similar position to yours, not long ago.”
They walked off together and I watched them go, smiling. If I was really lucky, maybe Sedrick and Terrany would make a good team for talking to anyone else that showed up to smite the Evil Bloodthirsty Fiend. It would certainly save me a lot of time and aggravation.
Meanwhile, more to do…
Malena and Malana talked to T’yl about an appointment; he sent them to Kelvin, who, upon learning why they were to see me, sent them to Tort. Tort put them in my study and told me about it when I got back to my chambers.
I met them in one of their headspaces, I’m not sure which one, and examined the tutor I’d sent over. He was exactly as I recalled him. Handsome, helpful, charming, knowledgeable, demanding, understanding, ruthless, patient… Everything that would make him a good swordmaster. He was quite reserved and very careful about touching anything without invitation. Their headspaces, themselves, were still as I recalled them; no major changes and no signs of undue wear or stress.
Okay, nothing wrong there.
On a physical level, I spent some time and energy on spells to observe their nervous systems more closely. They developed reflexes and responses at a staggering rate; that told me where to look. As I suspected, there were signs of problems. I’m not a biologist or a neurologist, but my ability to see life told me their upper spinal columns were suffering; a lot of their other, voluntary nerves were also more than a little exhausted. I didn’t think there was any permanent damage, but I was glad they came to me when they did. I called a halt to their practice on the spot. I also told the internal teaching personification to take the day off and then throttle back on the rate until further notice.
Malana and Malena also got the day off—well, the next two days—while healing spells encouraged exhausted nerve cells and frazzled nerve fibers to feel better. The girls… hmm.
No, that’s wrong. They might be young, but they were living on their own, pursuing their own destiny, or at least careers. They weren’t girls.
The young ladies would continue to fence with each other every day, mainly to make sure their recovering nerves were fully integrated with their abilities, but most of their day would involve learning other things about being knights. I’m pretty sure they’re ahead of the curve when it comes to the combat classes.
After their practice break, I’ll check them over again to make sure they’ve recovered from the super-duper-speedy-learning I unwittingly inflicted on them. Then they’ll start working with sword and shield, albeit much more slowly.
If I can figure out a safe speed for this, maybe I can combine it with the physical enhancement spells. That could be impressive.
Now all I need is a way to help cadet knights develop their ethics as quickly as their capacity for killing. That might be a little harder. How do you improve human nature? A better question, maybe… If you improve on human nature, is it still human nature? If it’s improved, is it still human? And what does that do to free will, if there is such a thing?
Improving other people’s ethics seems to offer problems for my own.
The sand table works.
True, it only looks right from one side; two sensors give good binocular vision, but don’t help much for a full holographic view. Still, that’s good enough for now.
The view started at the western edge of Mochara. I started scrolling it forward along the road. It worked perfectly. Grains of sand danced up and down, forming different contours and lines, shifting as the road drifted to the left or right. I moved the viewpoint more quickly, testing the reaction of the table. It did a good job keeping up with the changes, I thought. I must have been moving the viewpoint at over a hundred miles an hour and the effective resolution was still pretty decent. It started to degrade after that and got pretty bad by, say, one-twenty-five.
Fine. I zoomed out for a higher viewpoint and started scanning along the road, zooming in wherever there might be something unusual.
I have the equivalent of a spy satellite. Or a reconnaissanc
e drone. I am unreasonably tickled by this. Not long ago, I would be on Bronze, pounding down the road, over hills and across bridges, directly eyeballing the place. If I didn’t find anything on my magical recon scan, I could still do that… but I might save myself a lot of time and effort this way.
And I did.
For much of the road’s length through the mountains, the north side is a vertical wall of stone, the south side is a low curb. The road has a very slight tilt toward the wall; I’m anticipating some snow and ice in the winter, and I don’t want people sliding over the edge. That left me with a drainage problem, though, so I included in the northern wall to flush water down through pipes and out on the lower slope. Beyond the curb is whatever terrain Nature provided, usually a steep, rocky slope, sometimes with trees, usually ending in jagged rocks or seawater. Above the vertical wall, the same applies, only ending in sky.
I found an oddity. I zoomed in on it.
It was a body. It looked as though he slid down the slope for some distance to fetch up against a low, scrubby bush at the edge of a drop. Zooming in closely, I noted he had at least three bits of what were probably fletching sticking out of his body.
I could have used the arch to simply go there—point-to-point in the same world is a lot less expensive than trans-planar travel—but I wanted it charged for later. Instead, I got into my armor; this might be that sort of trip. I let T’yl and Kelvin—the first two I found on my way to see Bronze—know what was up, just in case it turned out that I was right.
Bronze and I went for a run.
I swear, she’s getting faster. We made it around the first loop of the road from the inner gate and turned hard onto the Kingsway. There she really picked up speed, thundering down the road like an avalanche of bells. Near the city gate I told her to slow down; we burned across the bridge in a fury of blue-greens sparks as she braked.
I wrapped a little aerodynamic diversion around us. The wind was so awful I actually had to hold on.
With that done, we cut the corner across from Karvalen to where the road started winding up into the Eastrange, bypassing Mochara. We were up into the mountains and slowing for the curves in no time. It wasn’t half an hour later that I was looking down, over the curb, to see if there was an easy way to recover the corpse.
The body was a good distance down the slope. Fortunately, I’m not a complete moron; I brought a rope. I threw one end down and realized I was only a part-time moron; it wasn’t long enough. I should have brought the flying rope.
Well, damn. I had intended to throw the rope down, use my tendrils to tie it around an arm or leg, and simply haul him back up. At this distance, I doubted my ability to do anything more with tendrils alone.
On the other hand, the closer I am, the stronger my tendrils seem to be. Up close, I might be able to move the whole body. All I had to do was get close enough and I could give it a try.
Bronze held a knotted end of the rope in her mouth. I worked for a bit to get a gravity reduction, and to slightly alter the angle of gravity; I wanted to be pulled more into the slope, rather than down. The result was that I felt lighter, and that the slope didn’t seem nearly as steep.
I edged down it, holding onto the rope, until I reached the knot at the other end. Now, could I drag a body up the last twenty feet or so? Tendrils coiled out, stretching slightly, reaching, wrapping around the flesh and bones, covering it, and I started to carefully pull it directly toward me.
“Hello,” said a voice in my ear. I didn’t scream; I was too busy concentrating. Instead, I adjusted the body, cautiously, to avoid having it go over the edge. The bush seemed sturdy enough for the moment, so I let go of my concentration and looked around.
“Hello,” I replied. My conversationalist was a ghost. He looked thirtyish and curious. He bore a passing resemblance to the bloodied corpse.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m trying to recover a body,” I told him, not, I thought, unkindly. “Someone killed him and I mean to find out who.”
“Oh. That was me, actually. I died down there,” he nodded at the corpse, “after being wounded and falling from my horse. I slid all the way down.” He looked up the slope at how far he’d gone.
“Who shot you?”
“I’m not sure. I think it was a bunch of galgar, but I didn’t see it very well. I was busy.”
“Where were they?”
“They were hiding above the road, among the bushes and the trees. They shot down at me, I remember that.”
“Who are you?”
“Wollan. I’m a courtier in the service of Lord Rayvan of Philemon.” The ghost looked pained. “Well, I was.”
“I see. Well, do you have anything you want done with your body?” I asked. He looked at it with a faint distaste.
“Not really. Seems untidy to just leave it there, though.”
“I’ll just take it back up to the road, then.”
“All right.”
So I dragged it with my tendrils, hauling it up along the loose scree until I could lay a hand on it. After that, it was just a matter of slinging it over a shoulder and hand-over-handing my way up the rope. The ghost followed me up and looked on with interest as I laid the corpse out.
“I look awful,” it said.
“Not that bad,” I countered. “A little cleanup, a change of clothes, and you could be laid out quite nicely for a funeral.”
“If you say so. I can’t seem to really care all that much.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. Side effect of being dead. You just don’t get the same surge of adrenaline or other glandular reactions.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Sorry. I should be asking if you want me to see to your funeral.”
“I suppose. But what do I do?”
“Do?”
“Aren’t I supposed to go to some sort of eternal realm, or afterlife, or something?”
“Ah, we’re getting to that already, are we? Yes, that’s my job. Whenever you’re ready to, I’ll either show you to the Grey Lady, or you can use me as a doorway to eternity. Take your pick.”
“You came out here just for me?” the ghost asked. He seemed faintly surprised.
“I came out here to find out what happened to some diplomats. I guess I have.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else I can do for you, before…?”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
“All right.” I held out my hand. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The ghost took my hand, and I went… wherever it is I go when I have something for the Grey Lady.
When I returned, I looked around more carefully. No other ghosts to be seen. Maybe they followed their bodies, wherever those went. So I examined the corpse.
Yes, three crossbow bolts; two in the left lung and one that nicked the top of the heart. The bolts were small, ugly little things, very much suitable for a galgar-sized crossbow. The body also had a lot of scrapes and lacerations from its slide down the slope, but no other real injuries.
There was no sign of horses or other people, which made no sense. If this was an ambush, then a lot of people died here, possibly some horses, too. It hadn’t rained that I was aware of, but maybe this area of the seacoast had a shower or two that didn’t make it to Karvalen.
I knelt down and ran my fingers along the drainage gaps in the wall, then sniffed at the fingertips. No blood traces there. I worked my way along the road, testing each one, sniffing for a trace.
Yes, this one: blood. I sniffed at the road, down on all fours, and could smell it. There were other scents, too buried under the all-important blood trace… horses, yes. Leather. Sweat. A musty, damp smell that I didn’t immediately recognize. Orku? Galgar? Probably.
I realized I could follow this smell. It led along the road for nearly a mile, then diverted down a rocky, jagged slope. It was almost a trail; at least, it was a way among the rocks that was easy to climb. There were more traces of blood
and horsehide that hadn’t been washed away. The trail led to a gap between two great stones, more like a riven place in a boulder; within it was a narrow passage into the undermountain regions.
A little way below the opening, someone had used a flat place as a butcher’s block. Whatever rain had come by since the ambush had been insufficient to wash away the blood from that. Well, at least that explained what happened to the horses, and possibly to the prisoners.
I sat down next to the opening and thought for a while.
My first thought was to go into that hole and see if I could find anything to kill. While that’s not necessarily a bad plan, it was getting on in the night and I don’t like the idea of being on their home ground—or of being stuck on their home ground if I get lost. Unlikely, since I would unwind a spell like Ariadne’s thread behind me, but anyone with the magical wherewithal to cut it… Plus, I’d have to leave Bronze behind. The gap wasn’t large enough even for a regular horse and there was no telling what sort of narrow passages I might encounter.
That settles it. I’m not going down that hole.
That didn’t leave me much.
If I’m not going down there, is there anything I can send? I could, theoretically, animate the corpse of Wollan and send it off to kill anything it might find, but it would just be one animated corpse. He would be easy to finish off again. I’d also prefer to bring the body back to whoever might want it for a funeral.
I got up and climbed to the road. With Wollan thrown over Bronze’s rump, we headed toward Baret. She did the running, I did the thinking. How do I make this underground region an awful place to be—preferably a fatal place to be? I suppose I could just have the mountain form a tunnel around the road, but that’s a purely defensive thing. I want the current bushwhackers and any future bushwhackers to fear the very idea. I want them afraid to come this far south. I want them afraid to piss me off.
They should be.
By the time we got to Baret, I had an idea.
I wondered how much salt they could spare.
Saturday, June 12th
