Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  “The usurper.”

  “—Thomen, the usurper, you will declare war on my faith.”

  “No. I’ll simply kill all the priests I ever find. Incidentally, what did happen to Perrin? I know I didn’t throw him off the Kingsway.”

  “His death is irrelevant.”

  “I disagree. I’ve already taken the blame for it. I think I deserve to know. Besides, if you tell me, I’ll be more kindly disposed toward you. Considering where you’re standing, my goodwill is a pearl beyond price.”

  Lotar sneered at me.

  “Perrin was a naïve fool, believing only in the power of his faith, not in the power of the Church. I sent him up to face you, but you sent him back. Thomen was clever enough to anticipate your move; his servants in the Wizards’ Guild made sure Perrin did not come down the Kingsway.”

  “That makes perfect sense. Perrin was an obstacle—or his kind of priest is an obstacle—to the temporal power of the Church. Do you have a lot of those?” Another thought struck me. “Or is that part of the deal with Thomen? You send the most faithful and, as you put it, naïve of the priesthood to fight in a war. That either breaks them of their naïveté or gets them killed. Maybe more of the latter than the former. Is that part of the deal?”

  “I will not discuss internal affairs of the Church with you.”

  “I suppose it’s really none of my business how you kill each other off,” I agreed. “Back to the main point: Are you planning to continue being a vexation to me? Or are you going to keep your nose out of the political arena and stick to outmaneuvering the faiths of other gods?”

  “If I choose to challenge your rule? I spend the rest of my life in a dungeon pit?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if I withdraw my support of Thomen—yes, yes, the usurper—you will leave me alone?”

  “You’ll be leaving me alone, staying out of my business. I’ll return the favor and stay out of yours. I will give you my word on it, if you like, but I doubt you think it’s worth anything.”

  “And if we come into conflict with the Temple of Shadow or the Temple of Flame?”

  “Conflict all you like, but in my kingdom, bloodshed and other violence is the province of the King. You can persuade the people to worship; you can ask, offer, or cajole. But you don’t force anyone into a religion, you don’t muster troops, and you don’t kill people simply for disagreeing.”

  “I reject your proposal.”

  We looked at each other for several seconds.

  “May I ask why?” I asked, gently.

  “You are a dark thing and cannot be trusted.”

  “That’s it?”

  “People are fools, as well. They cannot be trusted to do what is right. They must be taken in hand and made to see the truth of the Light. They must follow the right path, even if, in their stupidity, they refuse it. I will see it done, no matter what. It is my duty and my right as Rethven’s Patriarch of the Light.”

  “How will you do all this from a dungeon pit?”

  “I don’t believe you will do that, either. You are not a complete fool. Too many already know of my arrest. Even now, the Church must be gathering the faithful. They will come for me, a never-ending horde of believers, until you are cast down and destroyed.”

  “Kind of like when you sent a lot of your faithful to kill the Demon King several months ago? Right here, in this very mountain. Oh! Was that an attempt to kill the Demon King? Or just a way to reduce the true faithful by attrition? Or both?”

  “You say the Demon King was not truly you, do you not? It was a possessing spirit?” he asked, smugly.

  “You have a point. I suppose I can’t hold the attempt against you. But now? Won’t an open attack on the proper king damage the Church? And what about your letters? Don’t you think the nobility of Rethven will take a dim view of your interference?”

  “I am worth it. Without me, the Church in Rethven is nothing. I am the leader; I am the Patriarch of Rethven and answer only to the deveas of the true Church. The letters are nothing; you cannot prove they are mine. More, trying to discredit me with them will only help me ferret out those fools whose faith in me is weaker than their faith in the Light. To do so will only add to my power. I will purge those who do not follow me unquestioningly. Under my guidance, my Church will ascend again to its rightful place, commanding the obedience of all who live and breathe within this kingdom, making the power of my Church absolute. Then may I cleanse the world in light!”

  “Oh. In that case, you are free to go.”

  “What?”

  “Go. Get out. Beat it. Scram. You’re cluttering up my throne room and I have things to do. The door is behind you.”

  “You’re… letting me go?”

  “Of course. Who do you think I am? The Demon King? I’m me again, no longer possessed by the monster.”

  I reached out with a sharp gesture and yanked his medallion into my hand. It was more effort than I let on—during the day, my ability to move things with my mind is rather weak—but I wanted this for the theatrics.

  Story of my life, sort of. All the really cool-looking moves are harder than they seem.

  The medallion’s chain flipped up over his head and the thing sailed through the air to my hand. I held it there, on my palm, and moved it a bit to reflect the light. I wanted it very visible, both for witnesses and to worry Lotar.

  “See? Not a trace of smoke,” I observed.

  “Give it back!” he demanded, taking a step up toward the throne.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said, putting it on. “I rather like it. Solid gold, is it?”

  “Of course! And it is a holy thing, not to be touched by the likes of you!”

  I flicked it a couple of times where it hung on my chest.

  “It doesn’t seem to mind. But, as I said, you can go.”

  “Give it back!” he repeated, and took another step up the stairs. I stepped down and stood in front of the dragon’s snout, grinning, feet planted, hands formed into fists. I beckoned with one finger.

  “Come and take it,” I invited.

  Lotar looked at me, looked at his medallion, snorted, and walked away, chains still clinking. Pity, that. At least he was going to have fun shuffling back down the Kingsway and through the streets in his chains.

  I turned off the recording crystals and started removing them from the walls. Torvil came back in, followed by Gilam.

  “Sire?”

  “Couldn’t have gone better.”

  “Good to know, Sire. What now?”

  “Now I get some enchanting done for Mary. Take these out of the walls,” I told him, indicating the recording crystals. I also handed him the medallion. “Make sure Seldar reviews them. I’ll want his opinion on who to show them to. Put the medallion away, somewhere. By the way, who do you know who gets along best with Malana and Malena?”

  “Kammen,” he replied, instantly.

  “Seriously?”

  “He is… very charming, Sire. When he wants to be.”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” I admitted.

  “But true. Most women find him fascinating. Part of it is his reputation, I think.”

  “Reputation? For what?”

  “We are giants, Sire, and it is said the size of Kammen’s—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I withdraw the question. I don’t want to know.” I added, muttering under my breath, “You think you know someone…” More loudly, I said, “Okay, I’ll talk with him when he comes on shift later. For now, go do the Seldar thing. Gilam will escort me to the lab.”

  Seldar showed up in the lab while I worked on Mary’s I’m-Not-Here ring. I put considerable effort into it, double-layering it, both to spoof active magical detection and block passive detection—false imaging for the scanners, cloaking from the sensors. As far as any of my detection methods went, she ought to register as herself, albeit a nondescript, unexceptional, mortal version of herself. Hiding the magic of the effect was trickier, as it involved hiding
the emanations of magic from a magic spell by using magic… but I had some examples from Zirafel to draw on. As long as no one probed her at close range, I was confident the ring would keep her hidden.

  Which made me wonder. How does this sort of effort scale with other magic-workers? Was it really so hard for normal people—okay, normal wizards—to do this kind of thing? I mean, sure, some people can work quadratic equations in their heads and do cube roots without a calculator. Others have a talent for spelling. Some people can even differentiate between six thousand shades of blue. In each case, it just comes naturally to them. They look at other people and think, “What, you mean it isn’t obvious?” Am I in that situation? Do I simply not see how hard magic really is?

  At any rate, Seldar came in, saw I was busy, and went away again. I would gladly have spoken with him, but some things can’t be stopped and picked up again; they have to be done in one go or you start over. It’s one of the many drawbacks to magical construction.

  He did come back, though, somewhat later. I was putting the finishing touches on Mary’s ring—the equivalent of making sure all the screws were tight and all the lights working. I’d paid special attention to the power intake for the enchantment, as well as multiple lines of spell etched into the ring itself. I wanted to make sure it worked well over there, in a magic-poor environment. That’s why I added inscriptions with the ideograms appropriate to her world.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  “Pretty good,” I replied. “I think it’s about as solid as I can make it.”

  “I am pleased you are pleased. You wished to see me, Sire?”

  “Absolutely. Did you review the crystal recordings?”

  “I did,” he replied, grinning.

  “What did you think?”

  “I think you are deceptively straightforward.”

  “Deceptively straightforward?” I repeated.

  “You are a blunt instrument, Sire. You are direct and forthright, sometimes even brutal and crude, bordering on barbaric.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “And then you do something like this. It makes me wonder if you pretend to be brutish to conceal how fiendishly subtle you truly are.”

  “I’m not nearly as subtle as you think I am.”

  “Of course.”

  “Seriously, I’m not.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Will you please stop agreeing with me in that tone?”

  “As you command, Master of the Bluntly Subtle. I enjoyed the crystals. They recorded your interview with Lotar in every detail.”

  “Wonderful. While he didn’t actually confess to anything, he certainly didn’t deny much. Which nobles can we show these to? Who will be especially cheesed off about it?”

  “With respect, Sire, may I ask if you are attempting to conceal your subtlety again?”

  “Sure. And no. I mean, yes, you may ask, and no, I’m not hiding anything. Have I missed something?”

  “Yes. You assume the nobles are the ones who need to see this. They will resent the interference of a religious power in a secular affair and so react against the religion.”

  “Basically, yes.” I thought about it for a moment. “Too obvious?” I asked. Seldar nodded. I swore.

  “You also forget, Sire, the prevalence of religion throughout the kingdom. To whom does a baron turn when his wizard cannot cure the baroness? Or when the countess fails to conceive? Or when the drought grows oppressive and the harvest is threatened? The gods and their priests are part of the daily life of every one of your subjects.”

  I continued swearing. Once I felt better, I spoke more normally.

  “I went to a lot of effort and wasted a big chunk of the day for this,” I complained.

  “It is very well-done, Sire, and will be invaluable.”

  “Wait. I thought you said it was a waste of time? At least, that’s what I thought I heard.”

  “Not at all,” Seldar protested. “For the most part, it is too obvious a ploy on your part to deliver such information to the nobles.”

  “We get someone else to deliver it?” I guessed. Seldar sighed and I began to wonder how much smarter than me he might be. Not if, but how much. Maybe, if I lived here full-time and cared about politics and met all the nobles and had a spreadsheet of all of them and drew a vector diagram of political influence and…

  Hmm. No, not even then. I lack the political gene. Plus, I think Seldar really is smarter than me. It’s a good quality in a chief advisor.

  “Sire, while some minor effect may result from the nobles seeing this, it will not fundamentally affect the Church.”

  “Ah! So we play it back in larger-than-life images over market fountains, on theater stages, all that sort of thing, all over the kingdom! If everyone sees how the leader of… the… No?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I give up. I thought I had a plan, here, but obviously I’m more of a doofus than I thought, and that’s pretty depressing, considering. Who gets to see it? Hold it. Do we show it to Lotar and keep it on file as blackmail?”

  “Closer. I was thinking we show it inside every Temple of Light in Rethven and let their clergy decide what to do about it. If we do so when there are few worshippers but many priests—there are holy days reserved for priests’ ceremonies—then we have kept it a reasonably private matter within the Church, thus showing our restraint. And, of course, we have also proven we have such information and can display it to whomever we choose.”

  “How is this better?”

  “If it is an internal matter, the Church of Light must find a way to purge itself of those like Lotar. If the rot is extensive, it may even provoke a schism within the Church, thus dividing our enemy into warring factions.”

  “That wouldn’t break my heart,” I admitted.

  “The alternative is a holy war against the Church of Light as a whole. While I know of no gods which have been destroyed by the eradication of their religion, I also cannot prove any forbidden religion does not continue in some form, in hiding.”

  “Huh. Valid point.”

  “So, shall we keep this an internal matter within the Church of Light?”

  “By all means, see to it. And get copies of the letters, send those along.”

  “I have already begun this process, Sire.”

  “If I ever get Lissette between the crown and throne, I’m recommending you for Grand Vizier.”

  “Grand what?”

  “Prime Minister, Chief Advisor, President of the Cabinet, Right-Hand-Man, whatever.”

  “I am gratified by your faith in me, Sire.”

  “I’m gratified by the smack in the chops you gave me.” Seldar blushed. “Don’t be embarrassed,” I added. “Sometimes, even a king needs a little percussive maintenance. But be careful with the tactic. I’m not at my most stable and happy, lately. I was this close to punching you right back.”

  “It was a risk,” Seldar admitted. “Kelvin spoke to me, many times, about how he wished he could hit you and make you listen. He thought it would be surprising enough to work, at least the first time.”

  “He really thought it would work on the Demon King?”

  “No.”

  “Then—oh. I see. It was still a risk.”

  “One I chose to take.”

  “You won your bet, then. I realize I wasn’t thinking like a king; I was thinking like a short-timer who wanted to get out of a nasty job. And it is part of your job to… keep me on point. Focused on the important stuff. It’s hard to keep it together when everyone around you agrees with you by default.”

  “As you say, Sire.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “I’m not sure it’s working.”

  “As you say, Sire.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “I mean it!”

  “Immediately, Sire.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore and burst out laughing. Seldar chuckled. Gi
lam watched us like we were crazy. He might be right.

  “I have also located the man you wanted in Mochara.”

  “Oh, good. Where is he?”

  “Flim is still in Mochara. His workplace is near the docks. By royal decree, he is chief artificer for the defense of Mochara—a title which has given the Lord Mayor some considerable grief over the years, I understand.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because no one knows what it means or what authority it gives him.”

  “Ah. Yes. That could be a problem. I should have been more specific.”

  “Indeed, Sire.”

  “I’ll discuss it with him later tonight. He’s expecting me?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “And stop that.”

  “As you wish, Sire.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon with Diogenes and a quantum computer core. Since the two were completely different technologies, I wasn’t sure it was possible to interface them. I can’t even power up the Diogenes drive in Karvalen, and it’s only a data storage device, not a processor. The quantum computer core, on the other hand, may be a data storage device as well as a processor. I’m not sure how it works.

  Whee.

  On the other hand, Diogenes is an operating system comprised of several weak AI systems. It’s designed to be adaptable to all sorts of hardware configurations and devices. Connecting the two magically wasn’t so hard. Data goes in and out of a storage device; data goes in and out of a processor. That’s actually the easy part. A spell to bridge the gap between the two was on the order of rigging up an adapter between two different connector types. The throughput may not be all it could be, but it works.

  The hard part was working out how the two could send meaningful signals back and forth across the interface. Lucky for me, the hard part wasn’t my job. Once I had the two able to send signals back and forth, I put some of my personal vitality into the system. This brought it—technically, temporarily, in a very limited sense—to life.

  It was much like the mountain in its early days. I put a lot of vital force into the mountain, then Tamara dumped a lot more into it. It was “alive” in the sense that we brought it to life, but it didn’t have any way to replenish those energies, much like the Diogenes drive and the quantum computer core. Unlike the mountain, this was a quasi-living being with two organs—a thinker and a rememberer, if you like—bound into a single organism.