by Garon Whited
“Halar?” he asked, without preamble.
“Yes.”
He looked at me, frowning.
“Please don’t say anything about my height,” I requested.
He frowned harder, almost scowled, then nodded. He beckoned me to follow, so Bronze did. We walked through the gate and into the richer section of Hagan. There was a pause while the captain handed us off to a runner, and the runner led us to the palace proper.
Hagan’s palace is not meant for a war. It used to be a castle, but someone had filled in the moat to make a garden, then added more doors in the outer wall, and then a few more windows, and so on. Where once it was the Tower of London, someone had tried to turn it into Versailles. It was much more pleasant a place to live in, though.
I wondered if I needed some windows in Karvalen. Maybe some enchanted frames, set to permanently move the point of view to a fixed location, just to provide a nice view? Or one view, connected to several enchanted frames? That might work…
We went into the courtyard, where I was told to wait. I didn’t mind. It was a very nice courtyard, with a circular fountain, a nice splashing of water, and banks of flowers scattered about. A pair of boys came up and asked me if I wanted the mud cleaned from my boots. They looked very earnest, so I told them to go ahead and clean Bronze, too.
I didn’t mention that I could do it myself. They seemed to actually want to do it. They also did a very thorough job. I might have flecks of mud inside my armor, but you wouldn’t know it by looking.
Afterwards, I surprised them with a silver coin; they didn’t expect that. Perhaps that’s why they bowed very low before departing.
“What do you think?” I asked Bronze. She flicked an ear: I liked them.
About then, the runner headed back across the courtyard while a very pretty lady in some sort of livery came over to me. There was a device on her tabard, or robe, or whatever that thing was—a black background with a golden crescent moon, horns-up, with a silver star between and slightly above the horns. It matched the flags around the place. Her hair was concealed by some sort of hood or wimple, showing only her face, with a kind of bag in the back to hold the length of it. She dipped low, almost knelt, before she spoke.
“Welcome, King Halar, to the city of Hagan, the domain of Prince Jorgen. He bids you welcome through me and offers you his hospitality. If it is your wish, a meal shall be prepared for you and a hot bath drawn, for doubtless you have journeyed long to reach us. Whatever you wish of comforts, we will most diligently attempt to provide.
“However, if you will, my good Prince requests your presence in his daughter’s chamber at your earliest convenience.”
To be perfectly truthful, I did want a hot bath, mainly for the hours I’d spent in a metal saddle. Bronze is not well-padded, but I will never, ever complain. On the other hand, my reason for being here wasn’t to see to my own comforts, but someone’s life.
“I’m perfectly happy as I am,” I lied, “but I would like a nice, hot bath later. I don’t suppose you have a hot waterfall anywhere, do you?”
“I regret to say that it has never before been requested,” she admitted. “Is it your wish?”
“No, no; I’ll settle for the bath, later. Right now, though, it would please me to be escorted directly to Prince Jorgen and his daughter.”
“If my lord will follow me?”
I dismounted and patted Bronze on the neck.
“No tormenting the stableboys, okay?” She tossed her head and snorted: If they mind their manners, I’ll mind mine.
Well, you take what you can get. I followed the nice lady into the palace proper and through a lot of very nice rooms. Prince Jorgen was rich, that was certain.
The Prince and his wife were in the bedchamber of their little girl. The room was large, very well appointed, and had more toys than my toybox ever had. Many of them were scattered about, as though someone forgot to put them away before bed, but most were neatly arranged. I wondered who did the putting away, the princess or the maids.
“King Halar?” asked the Prince. He was probably about thirty, tall, with long, dark hair that curled just slightly. He was of average build, but very handsome. He looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes and a slightly stooped posture.
“Yes, Prince Jorgen. Please, call me Halar,” I told him. He nodded.
“You must call me Jorgen. This is my wife, Taisa, and my daughter, Nina.” Taisa bowed from the neck. I thought she looked even more tired than Jorgen. She was probably the one staying up nights and holding a hand.
“A pleasure to meet you, Jorgen, Taisa. I’m sorry for the circumstances, though. Is this her? May I see?”
Jorgen stepped back. Taisa sat down next to the bed and held the limp hand. Yep, as I thought.
The girl was about five, with blonde hair like her mother. I opened her eyes and conjured a small light, checking for pupil response and for signs of concussion.
“Has anything been done for her?” I asked. Yes, quite a lot. Two priests and five wizards had already tried to help her. Once I conjured my spells to examine her, I wasn’t surprised, therefore, to find that the injury to her scalp and skull were completely healed. That meant the problem was inside her head.
Brain injuries can be pretty awful.
I took a few minutes to settle back into a chair and think. What I really did was go into my mental study and look up absolutely everything I had ever heard, seen, or read about the brain and brain damage.
That took a surprisingly long while. I should go data mining in my memory more often.
When I came back out, Jorgen and Taisa were looking at me expectantly.
“Well?” Jorgen asked.
“Well,” I answered, “I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, yet. Whoever healed her did a good job on the external injuries, but she’s got some sort of injury inside her head. I’m going to have to take a look and find the problem.” Taisa’s eyes widened as I spoke. She paled.
“I’ll have to prepare some spells,” I added, hastily. “I don’t want to open her head. I just want to be able to see through the flesh and bone.”
That helped a lot. She stopped looking faint and got some color back. Jorgen swallowed heavily.
“Of course. What do you require?”
“Not much. A private chamber would be a good start. Something with no windows, or with heavy curtains, at least. I’ve got everything else I need, and should be ready a little after sundown.”
“Very well.” Jorgen gave the necessary orders to a flunky outside the door. He accompanied me out into the hall and shut the door.
“Before you go,” he said, “tell me this: will my daughter live?”
“I don’t know,” I told him, honestly. “She’ll live if I can make it so.”
“Whatever you want, I will gladly pay.”
I’ve been insulted by people who have offered to pay me. This wasn’t one of those times.
“Jorgen, I have a granddaughter who is about eight. About the only thing I want is for the two of them to have the chance to become friends.”
“I swear it shall be so.”
“I didn’t mean—nevermind. What I meant was that I have a granddaughter only a little older than your daughter. I empathize with you. It’s the life of a child that’s at stake. Surely, you’ve heard about me and children?”
“I have,” he admitted. His shoulders sagged. “You swear that you will help her?”
“I swear that I’ll try. If I can help her, I will.”
“Then I shall go comfort Taisa.”
“As you wish. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got everything ready.”
He went back into the bedroom and I followed the flunky. The bedroom he showed me to was spacious and airy, but he worked rapidly to close shutters, windows, and curtains. It became a cave pretty quickly. I thanked him and sent him on his way.
I didn’t really have much to do in the way of preparation, aside from wait for the sunset. I don’t know any s
pells that are as sensitive, accurate, and informative as my own unnatural senses.
I prepared a cleaning spell, hid under the covers—just in case light leaked in—and waited for the sun to go down.
About halfway through the process, I heard a voice from under the bed.
“Hey, monster over the bed.”
“Fred?”
“No, I’m Graznork the Unspeakable Lizard-King. Of course it’s me.”
“How are things?” I asked. It was a pretty mild transformation, this time; distracting and annoying, but not actively painful. I could mostly ignore it while having a conversation.
“Pretty good. I’ve been trying to reach you, but you’re never in a bed. I gave that Melvin guy a week of bad nights, then went back to that mountain of yours. Been doing that thing you wanted, scaring your guys to see how they dealt with it.”
“Good job. Thanks!”
“Grownups have a fuller flavor to them. Did you know that?”
“Yes, but not in the sense you do. We eat different things.”
“Fair enough. Thanks for helping me out with the new food.”
“Think nothing of it. Thank you for being so helpful.”
“No sweat. I need to ask, though… Do you want me to nibble on your squires, too? I mean, you’re touchy about children, but they’re supposed to be brave…?”
“Good thinking. I’m glad you asked. No, we’ll hold off on that for a while; I want them feeling more confident in themselves, first. But you’re getting enough to eat, right?”
“Oh, yeah. The quantity is almost as good as the flavor. No problems there. I should tell you, you’ve got a couple of guys who don’t seem to understand what fear is, though. Those tend to roll off the bed and attack; it doesn’t seem to bother them that there’s nothing there. The rest of them get scared, but they don’t go screaming into the hallway. They just lay there and tell themselves it’s all gonna be fine. I’ve seen that before, a lot. Terror is tasty, but worry is pretty good, too.”
“Fair enough. Anything else you need?”
“I think the spells you gave me are going stale,” he said. “It’s getting harder to make myself heard.”
“I can fix that. I really need to get you some sort of enchanted object so it doesn’t wear off.”
“I’m for that.”
With the sunset finished, I lay there in the bed and set off my cleaning spell; no need to leave muck and gunk in the bed. It cleaned me and the sheets and moved everything to the floor.
“What the—?” exclaimed Fred.
“Sorry; the ooze is mine. I’ll get rid of it.”
“That’s worse than moldy socks and old pickles!”
“I said I was sorry.” I tendril-swept it into the fireplace and burned it away. Then I slid under the bed, worked with Fred’s spells, and patted him on a hairy arm.
“There you go. I’ll try to remember to get a bed put in, or get a niche carved under where I currently sleep.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and found myself under the bed again.
If he wanted to bring me along, could he? Or would I have to travel with him, walking or running or whatever it was he did? Could I stay in his little pocket universe thing and travel from under one bed to under another? Could I learn to create my own pocket universe like his? How would I navigate it around this universe? It’s not like I can see out of it. Come to that, how does Fred drive his? What makes it go where he wants to go, and how does he know?
Wait a minute. How did he even find me? Is it some sort of magical sense involving beds, or what?
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Always more to do than I have time for.
I hustled down the hall and back to the princess’ bedroom. Taisa was right where I’d left her; Jorgen was sitting in a chair next to hers. It looked like a familiar position.
I considered dragging over a chair, but I wasn’t sure it would hold me. I sat on the edge of the bed, instead, and looked into Nina’s head. Her life was still in there, as was everything else I would expect in a living human being. It wasn’t rolling around properly, though. While her flesh was healed, technically, the problem was a mass of blood in her brain. The tissues were intact, but they were pushed aside and compressed. Since she wasn’t bleeding into her brain anymore, her body would probably deal with in due course… At least, I think that’s how it works. If so, it would certainly take a while.
I also noticed that some of the attachment points for her soul had come loose. Interesting. Does brain damage disconnect the soul in some ways, resulting in the diminished faculties? Is the brain just a converter for the soul so it can interact with the physical realm? For a magical explanation, that makes more sense than usual.
Tendrils slithered and stroked their way through her head and down her spine, touching everything, tasting every line. After a thorough inspection and examination, I was confident I had identified the only problem. A quick healing spell wrapped around her head, a little tendril manipulation of tissue to gently drain blood into a vein, some extra attention to stitch all her spiritual connections back together…
I leaned back and rolled my head around on my shoulders, pretending to relax after great efforts. That was really for her parents’ benefit. People need to see evidence, however meager, that something happened to make the world a better place. It helps give them hope. Next time I do something like this, I’ll have to remember to create a glow around my hands and around the patient. Maybe a little crackling and some sparks, too.
“Well?” Jorgen asked. “Have you found the problem? Can you fix her?”
“I think I did, yes,” I admitted. “There’s a mass of blood inside her head—no, you don’t want the details. Let’s just stick with the thought that it’s getting better. I’ve set it up; it’ll just take some time. I’d like to keep an eye on her, just to make sure everything is going as planned.”
“Of course. Will it… if Taisa and I remain, will that disturb your work?”
“Not a bit. I’m done with the work. I just want to watch it to make sure it’s doing what I think it should. If it starts—no, again, you don’t want details. Think of it as using fire to burn down an old barn. I want to watch and make sure it doesn’t spread to the fields or farmhouse. That’s not exactly right, but it gets the idea across.”
Jorgen and Taisa nodded. They might not understand exactly what was happening to their daughter, but the example was easy to comprehend.
They stayed. They were a pair of worried parents, not the rulers of a small kingdom, and so not much as conversationalists. That was okay; I probably wouldn’t be good for much in the way of entertaining banter if Tianna’s life was in someone else’s hands, either.
Nina’s blood-mass continued to gradually drain. I was pleased to let it continue at a slow pace; I wasn’t sure if a sudden change in pressure would cause more harm. As it was, between the healing spell and her tissues’ natural resiliency, things seemed to be coming back into shape nicely.
A little after midnight, the whole mass was gone. I closed off the vein connection I’d made, tucked miniscule bits of tissue back where they belonged, and double-checked her healing spell. I also double-checked her spiritual wiring; nothing was loose. She seemed tight as a drum. Tired, of course; healing spells really take it out of you. And hungry.
“When was the last time she ate?” I asked.
“Four—no, five days ago, now,” Taisa said.
“She’ll be hungry when she wakes up.”
“When?” Jorgen echoed, bolting upright in his chair. I wasn’t sure if he was asking for a confirmation that it was only a matter of time, or asking what time she would wake.
“I don’t know. She’s tired and hungry. I’d like to leave the spells on her at least until morning, though, then just let her rest until she wakes up.”
Taisa put her face in the coverlet and wept. Jorgen looked as though he wanted to join her.
“If she
lives—” he said, and his voice broke. I smiled at him, carefully.
“We’re in the last part of the process,” I assured him. “At worst, she’ll need to spend some time recovering. I can stay until she wakes up, but then I have to get back to my own kingdom.”
“I understand,” Jorgen said, rubbing Taisa’s back while she wept. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” I said, because it was. “I’ll leave you three alone, now.”
I like high places, wind, and good views. The only trouble with enjoying the night air on top of a tower is the people. Even a night, people are moving around, making smells, making noise, all the usual stuff. I used to be able to ignore most of that. I suppose I still do, considering that my hyperactive senses don’t overload my brain. But I’m never deaf to the sound of a crying child.
Muttering under my breath, I climbed down the tower, listening to the sound and following it. I got some very odd, worried, and sometimes terrified looks from the palace guards, but so what? I’m a guest. Besides, I didn’t want to lose track of the sound by going inside and taking the stairs.
It wasn’t that far away. It was in the upscale neighborhood surrounding the palace. It only took a few minutes before I was looking in a second-floor window at the problem.
The kid was maybe six years old. He seemed perfectly all right as far as injuries went. The problem was the elderly cat lying in a cat bed. It wasn’t going to live out the night, and the kid seemed to know that.
I slipped the window open and glided inside. I can be sneaky when I want to be. It helps that I know spells to dampen vibrations in the air, too.
Since the kid was already tired, I ran tendrils over him, gently sucking out the rest of his vitality. He put his head down and went to sleep, still crying. That kept me from having to deal with screaming, which is all to the good.
The cat, on the other hand, was a trickier problem. I couldn’t fix it. I suppose I could have transferred it into a younger cat, but I didn’t have one handy. I could fill it with vitality and put a healing spell on it, but that would only be a stopgap; it would wear down rapidly—days? Weeks?—and be right back here again.
