Nightlord: Sunset

by Garon Whited

  “No, my lord, for I am but a humble singer of songs.”

  “Good. If you’d said yes, you wouldn’t have enough discretion for my taste.”

  He smiled. “As you say, my lord.”

  “I think I like you. Tell me something—that bit about the invasion of the Church to rescue my wife—did you see any of it, or was that all from others’ accounts?”

  “I did not see it of my own, my lord, but I did query most shrewdly all those who did.”

  “You did a fine job. A very fine job. And that leads me to this offer. How would you like to work for me as a… a rumormonger?”

  He stroked his chin and thought, shivering slightly. I gestured and wrapped him in a temporary warming spell.

  “I am uncertain what such a position would have in the way of duties, my lord.”

  “I would have you spread rumors, gossip, and choice bits of news. I would also have you collect such things, sift them for the truth, and deliver the results to me.”

  He seemed relieved. “That would be a pleasant pastime, I should think.”

  “Moreover, I would have you—apparently of your own motion—seek out others who might be willing to, shall we say, spread word and gather it. But words to my advantage, of course.”

  “That, at least, should also prove relatively simple, my lord.”

  “That is all.”

  He considered this; I noticed he stopped shivering.

  “What form of recompense would such duties entail?” he inquired.

  “I am quite prepared to see to it you are funded well. I am also prepared to enhance your musical accompaniment.”

  His spark of interest rose to flame. “Oh? How so, lord?”

  “What do you play besides the lute?”

  “I have a recorder and a lap-harp, lord.”

  “Would you like to play all three at once?”

  He blanched. “Lord! How so? I have no wish to have more arms!”

  I chuckled. “No, no! I had more in mind something closer to making stones sing. But instruments of music have voices of their own. I’ll just teach them to sing for you.”

  His eyes shone. “My lord, if you will do as you have just described, then I shall be forever in your service.”

  “Excellent,” I beamed. Now I could start thinking seriously about how to accomplish it… “What is your name?”

  “I am known as Linnaeus, my lord.”

  “Fetch your things and meet me by the door, Linnaeus; I’ve no desire to brave the mob again.”

  “Immediately.”

  He hurried; I waited for him and we walked together. Once we reached the keep, I led him inside and to my cell. This was going to take a while. While he sat on my cot and played song after song, I sat on the floor and stared at his instruments.

  How to do it? Obviously, an enchantment would be needed on the instruments; a spell would simply fade after a while. But what sort of enchantment? Something that drew heavily from the bard, I guessed; I have all the musical ability of a bent spoon. A little of the musician’s spirit to guide the instrument, backed by a lot of magical power. The first would leave my companion exhausted; the second would take a lot out of me.

  Fortunately, I had a glass ball that contained the power of a small village, or nearly. Some of them might even have had musical talents.

  The thought startled me. I took up his recorder and held it, thinking. It felt slightly familiar.

  “Do you know any common, everyday tunes anyone with a reed flute might play?” I asked. He nodded and started one on the lap-harp. I lifted the recorder to my lips, gave an experimental blow, and then played along with him. Not well, I hasten to add, but I knew the tune and my fingers stumbled over themselves to follow.

  I never knew how to play such a thing. I shivered and put it back down. Wisely, Linnaeus did not ask any questions.

  So I worked with his life-stuff while he played tunes. I impregnated something of the spirit of his music into the unliving instruments, one by one, each as he played them; I bound them all about with power and tuned them to his will like he might tune his lute.

  It sounds simple. It wasn’t. But I can’t describe it any better; I would have to show you, bring you along, let you feel it before you could really understand. It’s like that with the subtler aspects of the Art—or, at least, what I consider to be its subtler aspects.

  How I know that, I don’t know. I suspect it’s a few magicians I’ve digested.

  When I was through, the power in the ball was dimmed a little—this was finicky work, not the power-oriented feat of animating a metal horse! But it made Linnaeus wretchedly tired. Quite literally, it took a lot out of him. He was weak and looked wrung-out.

  “That’s it,” I told him. “We’re done.”

  He nodded and put down the last instrument, his recorder. I’d saved it for last because, while the strings of the lap-harp and the lute can vibrate to make sound, the recorder would need to move air through itself. A trifle more complex, that, and I wanted the practice of the other two before I tried it.

  “Will they play on their own, now?” he asked, wiping his brow on a sleeve.

  I nodded. “Sing something, if you have the breath for it.”

  And he did. It was a soft, gentle tune about being far from home and longing for it; the recorder accompanied him with a haunting, almost eerie melody, and the lute strummed itself softly. The lap-harp plucked counterpoint as he sang, and it was like having a quartet in my cramped little chamber.

  He stopped about halfway through, tears running freely down his cheeks. He looked at me in wonder. “I would never have believed such instruments could exist.”

  “They do now, and they are yours. They will sing for you and with you, with all your skill.”

  “Then I am your bard, my lord, to sing thy praises and tell thy tales. I am yours, until you or death loose me from this oath.”

  I regarded him. He meant it. I could see it. I’d made it possible for him to play three instruments at once with a coordination and teamwork impossible under any normal circumstances, and that was the whole world to him.

  He loved his music. I’d tripled his ability to make it.

  “I accept your service.” What else could I say? “Now rest. When you feel up to it, I will explain in more detail.”

  When my three retainers came knocking later, I asked them to bring me some breakfast. Servants were not in profusion in the keep so it wasn’t that unreasonable a request. Only the one meal a day had mandatory attendance; if you could wangle breakfast in bed, you were welcome to it.

  Bouger did not mind stepping and fetching this once, although he did eye the sleeping troubadour with amusement. Raeth and Dele both gave me long looks, but I just grinned and shooed them on. Bouger came back with enough food for three, which was fine; I was hungry, too. Then he made himself scarce.

  While Linnaeus ate, I explained at length. Not about being a vampire, but almost everything else. I told him where I’d been, what I’d done, and what I wanted to do.

  “So, you wish to bring down the Hand with rumors and gossip?” he asked. He didn’t sound skeptical, just cautious.

  “Not alone, no. That is merely a sideline. I also want you closer to the heart of things, the better to hear it beating. I know nothing of what goes on in the halls of the Church, especially now that I’m outcast from it. Find me the players in this drama and have a mind for the parts they play.” I found myself speaking more formally after a conversation with Linnaeus; he had a trained voice and almost annoyingly perfect diction. It made me speak more clearly just from his example.

  He nodded and abandoned the rest of breakfast in his eagerness.

  “I will, lord. How shall I report?”

  “I will reach you in visions,” I replied. Magic crystals are very helpful in that regard. I handed him about half the money I’d made the night before. “That’s to speed you on your way. What else will you need?”

  “Nothing more, I think. I have
traveling gear and a sturdy mount.”

  “Good. Go quickly, then.”

  He did. If it weren’t for the fact I’d just sent him off to do something exceedingly dangerous, I would have felt really good about it.

  Being in charge is nice. It stinks, too. Funny how that works out.

  After I saw him off, I wandered over to the practice fields. People were hard at it; the Duke didn’t believe in people getting soft just because of a little cold weather. The good news was the snow stuck; it was tricky ground, slick if you put a foot wrong, but it wasn’t thawed and muddy.

  Over by the keep, I noticed there was some construction work. I nudged a spectator, an infantryman by the look of him, and nodded toward the site.

  “What’re they doing over there?”

  He glanced where I pointed, then looked at me. He did a double-take, then tugged at his forelock. “Rebuilding the water tumbler, sir.”

  “Water tumbler?”

  “’Tis like a great wheel with buckets. The bottom of the wheel is in the water. When it turns, the water is carried up to pour into a trough. The river bank is too steep and deep for the keep to gain its water afoot.”

  “How is the wheel turned?”

  “A pair of mules, or horses. Sometimes it is men,” he added, “who have found what it is to be in a nobleman’s disfavor.”

  I nodded. Sounded likely. “So what happened to it?”

  “None knows, lord,” he said. “Some say ’twas the ice that did it, but it has turned for six years or more and never minded a snow.”

  I thanked him and wandered over to watch the construction. It was sweaty work, even in the cold, and there was much swearing to be done. A sort of trough was being built to carry water to the keep, and men overhung the sides of the riverbank on ropes to hammer at the rough-timbered beginnings of a wheel. Others scraped and sawed and hacked at new timbers, shaping them into pieces that would eventually be lowered.

  It looked quite busy and not nearly as interesting as I’d hoped. I found myself wanting to take charge and tell them how to do it; it wasn’t easy to overcome that urge. Instead, feeling a trifle queasy, I decided to pay a call on my horse.

  The stablemaster was nowhere in sight, but Bronze was easy to find. Her stall was at the very end, heavily shadowed, and clean as a whistle. She lifted her head to greet me and nuzzled me with a cold, cold nose. I stroked her neck and smiled.

  “Sorry I haven’t been about a lot,” I said. I wondered who held conversations with his golem besides me. Then again, who else do I really have that knows me for what I am? “Things have been a little busy. It ought to slow some for a while; we’ll go out for a run this evening. Okay?”

  She tossed her head, mane tinkling like wire—because it is—and then pawed at the ground in eagerness. She’s a horse. Running is what she does. I hugged her neck and headed back into the keep with thoughts of the privy; breakfast hadn’t agreed with me, it seemed.

  I wasn’t alone. There was a line, some of whom were quite urgent in their insistence. And a few who hadn’t made it to the privy but got rid of their breakfast by letting it come back up. Sour smells filled the corridor.

  Well. It looked as though someone had left this morning’s fish out of water a little long. I walked quickly away, trying not to let go, and made it outside. I’d have dug a hole, but I was in rather more of a hurry than I’d thought. I threw up. As though that were the signal, I suddenly, frantically lowered my breeches.

  No doubt about it. I felt ill. About as bad as anyone else in the keep, it would seem. A few others had forgotten pride and the privy and gone outside as well. It made me glad I was in regular clothes; men in full armor have a serious handicap when trying to be thoroughly ill. I didn’t envy them, and I had problems of my own.

  I lay on a section of clean snow and groaned. It’s hard to concentrate while being violently ill, but it came in spasms; for about ten minutes in between, I was weak and shaking, but otherwise okay. After the second spasm of purging, I turned inward and started giving instructions to my body. Purging is all well and good, but the process needed to go more smoothly, without this horrific upset.

  I knelt in the cold and ate snow, and lots of it. Along with my spell, it went through my system quickly, washing out the remains of food poisoning. Spasm after spasm had me lying helplessly ill in the snow and not caring about the cold. It was messy, it was horrible, it was foul and nasty, and I’d rather not dwell on it, thank you. I had more misery crammed into the space of a few hours than in most of my life before.

  I swore off any fish I didn’t personally catch.

  Somewhere in the afternoon, I started to feel like myself again. Numb with cold, weak, exhausted, and soaked from moving to a fresh stretch of snow after each attack, but my digestive tract wasn’t acting like a tube of toothpaste in a vise.

  When I started to pay attention to what was going on around me, I smelled smoke. The barracks and a large part of the town was burning.

  Nothing to be done about it, at least by me; people were trying to shovel snow onto the fires to put them out. With the water-wheel no longer supplying them from the river, it wasn’t easy to get water. There weren’t many people even trying.

  I worked my way over to another clean place and used a combination of fistfuls of snow and grim determination to clean myself up a bit. That’s something else I don’t want to dwell on. I was chilled to the bone, my stomach was empty, and I was as tired and filthy as a well-used dishrag.

  I think I would have killed for a hot shower and a meal. If I could have stood up reliably.

  Once I was feeling a bit less like a lump of protoplasm washed up on the shores of life, I ventured to refasten my clothes and stand up. It took more than one try; my hands were shaking. I finally took Firebrand, scabbard and all, off my belt and used it as a cane. Either it didn’t notice or it didn’t care. Maybe it just didn’t mind, circumstances being what they were.

  Lightheaded and staggering, I made my way over to the flames. All but one of the barracks buildings was fully aflame; the last one was smoldering along the roof from flaming bits carried by the breeze. Much of the rest of the town was also going well, including the whorehouse. I felt a pang of sorrow. Not for the lost income, but for the people I met who might have been in it. Hellas, her boy—did I ever get that kid’s name?—Maggie, even the Squire.

  A lot of people were simply evacuating. Scrambling to get what goods they might, they loaded up their horses, donkeys, wagons, and carts in a race against the leaping flames. The whole town was going to be a pile of ash before nightfall.

  I wondered dully where the soldiers were. Some were still fighting flames, trying to slow the advance by heaving snow against it. It was better discipline than I thought to see. Others were lying in bloody heaps in the aftermath of a skirmish of some sort. But there were many, many more who were rolling on the ground and being as ill as a human can be.

  I grabbed a firefighter as he went by. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “Traitors,” he answered, and hustled on.

  Seeing I’d get no answers while they were busy, I gripped Firebrand’s hilt.

  “Are you hungry, Firebrand?”

  It yawned and stretched in my mind. What do you want?

  “I know you absorb fire. Can you put a whole building out?”

  After a fashion.

  I drew the blade and staggered up to a burning building. I think it was a house, once. I stabbed Firebrand into the burning wall.

  The flames ceased to lick upward and started to lick sideways, all toward the sword. It looked like I’d brought a vacuum cleaner close to a campfire, but on a much larger scale. It looked, to me, like the flames had suddenly decided I was a tasty bit! They swarmed toward me, only to be drawn into a whirling vortex of fire, the core of which was steel. A tornado of flames reached for me and whirled into the blade.

  Firebrand glowed white as great tongues and sheets of fire poured into the metal, yet I felt no heat. T
he roof of the house fell in, the structure crumbled, and the flames burned yellow-white instead of red and orange. But I did not scorch and blister. It all flowed unnaturally into my sword.

  In the space of a minute, the house had burned completely to ash. Well, that did put the flames out, sort of.

  Firebrand made a satisfied sound. I went on to the next building to make a firebreak of sorts; the town was probably dead, anyway, but at least the ones who were fleeing could take a little more time about it. The next burning building vanished in the same fashion, only faster. Then another, and another, and another.

  When it was done, there were still several buildings afire, but they weren’t close to any unburning building. I sheathed a satisfied Firebrand—which was now nothing more than warm—and found a place to sit. I still wasn’t well. I was tired and shaky and my brain felt like it was askew in my skull. At least I wasn’t cold.

  Someone crunched through the snow next to me. I looked up and was pleased to see Hellas survived. She was soot-stained and dirty, which added nothing to her appeal, but she had a double handful of snow for me and the youngster—equally dirty—at her side. I accepted the snow and ate it; it helped a little.

  “What will you do now, master wizard?” she asked, while the kid clung to her leg; she kept a hand on his head to soothe him. He didn’t seem to need soothing; he was watching the fires.

  “Find my friends,” I said. “See to them. Help what others I can.” I noted a bunch of tired soldiers headed toward me. I blinked up at them.

  The sergeant among them saluted. “Sir… Halar, is’t not?”

  “That’s right. And you are?”

  “Sergeant Brynon of Helvetown, attached to Sir Gyeth. It seems you’re the only knight not tossing his guts, sir.”

  “Don’t depend on that,” I cautioned. “I’m only moving because I tossed all my guts at once. I’m exhausted.”

  “As you say, sir. We’re all tired.”

  I looked around. There were about thirty of them. “Where are the rest?”

  He pointed; the soldiers moved out of the way so I could see the smoking ruins of barracks.