by Garon Whited
Is it ironic I think this way? If I say anything against the Church of Light, everyone will assume it’s because I’m a blood-drinking monster. If I ignore them, people will keep going there to zone out on a religious high. Come to that, people will go there for a hit of Nirvana whether I forbid it or not.
I think it’s even more ironic the religion peddling the daily dose of unconditional love is also the only one completely intolerant of other religions. Nobody else seems to find it strange. There are a lot of contradictions in the Church of Light and it makes me wonder how well the Glowing One recovered from his encounter with the Devourer.
So, when we have potential traitors standing in front of us, what do we ask? For the panel’s interrogations, we worked out a set of standard questions for the guardsmen. Who are you? Do you have any objection to arresting members of the Church of Light? Do you have any misgivings about retaking the area they’ve captured?
If they had any problems with arresting a Church of Light member, they were relieved of duty and sent on their way. If they had misgivings about retaking city streets, the compromise worked out by Justice and Mercy saw them handed them off to a knight to talk about it. The whole process went pretty quickly once we hit our stride.
The big hitch was the mirror call from Kammen. I slipped into a side-room at the Hall of Justice to take it.
“What’s up?”
Kammen looked out of my pocket mirror and wiped some blood from his brow. He had quite a bit on him. His clothes didn’t seem cut, though. The blood probably wasn’t his.
“I could use a quick way out,” he said, quietly.
“Define ‘quick’.”
“Maybe soon, instead of quick.”
“I’ll get right on it. Do you have an opening you can use at your end?”
“I can get to one, but they’ll spot me.”
“Okay. Give me a slow count to two hundred and call me back.”
“One… Two…”
I hung up and headed for Bronze, shouting I’d be back shortly. My bodyguards did not seem pleased; there was no way they were going to keep up. On the other hand, I was with Bronze and—once I made it to the Palace—there were plenty of Order of Shadow guys to chase me down and surround me. They guys on bodyguard detail would call ahead and have more waiting. I don’t see what they had to complain about.
We whisked through the night and up the Kingsway, racing through the dragon’s throat. I wanted to get to my makeshift gateway for this. True, the spell had collapsed in my last use, but the gems were still charging. I could cast the spell on any old archway or doorway, but the added energy from the gems was crucial.
I should really set things up so the mountain didn’t have to hold them. Some silver power diagrams—or maybe some of that orichalcum stuff, if I could figure out what it was made of. Power diagrams would be helpful. I could have a rack of gems charging and place only the charged ones in the diagram.
While I’m at it, more gates would be good. I could have different sizes of useful gates, rather than one large one and a bunch of tiny ones. Maybe one large enough to dive through, one the size of a door, one wide enough for three men to run through, one tall and wide for Bronze and myself…
Someday. Someday, someday, someday. Someday I’ll go on a vacation and no one will try to kill me. Then I’ll relax, kick back, enjoy some tunes, get room service, have a massage, take up golf, lay out by the pool, go swimming. Well, no, obviously not swimming. Or water skiing. Or boating. Or anything else involving water. Maybe I should stick to amusement parks. Roller coasters, popcorn, that sort of thing.
Is it weird my real life revolves around magical gateways, spells, angry religious zealots, evil wizards, and androgynous elves while my fantasy life involves Disneyland?
Seldar came into the gate room with another pair of Shadows while I was setting things up. He started to say something but I put my mirror in his hand and told him to talk to Kammen. He did so while I wound power around words, drew lines of energy, and formed a fresh gate matrix.
Bless him, he talked with Kammen for a bit, transferred the call to the gate-targeting mirror, and got a lock on him while I worked on the gate spell.
“What do we have?” I asked, when I could.
“He is in Carrillon, outside the palace. He is hiding in a carriage.”
“Is that what I’m targeting with the gate?”
“No. Here.” Seldar moved the viewpoint down the hall to an open double doorway. It looked like a carriage house of some sort; several carriages of various sorts were parked inside. The double doors faced out onto a street. I could count three members of Carrillon’s city guard in sight. They were standing around, simply watching the world go by, at least as far as I could tell.
“Why there?”
“The door of the carriage in which he conceals himself is small. He will not move through it quickly.”
“Good enough. Kammen?”
“Sire.”
“Get ready.” I panned the view around a bit, looking up and down streets. He was right. They would spot him quickly if he headed for the doorway. But if he made it to the doorway…
“Go,” I told him, and watched carefully. He opened the carriage door and squeezed his bulk through it, scraping heavily in places. Once he was out of the carriage, his mass didn’t let him accelerate as quickly as smaller men, but his top speed was impressive.
Since I saw him coming, I timed it carefully. The gate swirled, opened, snapped into alignment. Kammen shot through like a freight train and applied airbrakes. I slammed the gate closed behind him and he managed to stop himself by using the width of the room and a dozen yards of the hallway.
“Sorry,” I said, swinging a chair around for him. “I really need a bigger room for this sort of thing.”
“Not complaining,” he replied as he returned. He took a seat at my nod. The chair held.
“Want to explain what that was all about?”
“Thomen’s dead. They think I did it.”
“Huh.” I thought for a second. “Did you?”
“Didn’t get the chance,” he admitted. “Planned on it, though.”
“Did I mention I wanted him alive?”
“Not that I recall.”
I sighed. It would have been nice to interrogate Thomen about what he did to Lissette’s mind, as well as why he did it, but…
“Okay, so you didn’t kill him, but he’s dead anyway. What happened?”
“Someone else did it.”
I refrained from gnashing my teeth. It’s terrible on tooth enamel and it’s painful for me.
“I understand that much,” I said, slowly and carefully. “Could you—oh, I don’t know—provide an additional detail or two?”
The story I got out of him was this: On nights when Thomen didn’t stay in with the Queen, he headed down the west hall to the nine-windowed tower—whatever that is. I didn’t chase the rabbit. There he took the stairs down to the ground floor and went out to… well, wherever an Evil Grand Vizier goes when he’s done messing with the Queen’s mind for the evening. Kammen picked a spot in the west hall where he could lurk—there aren’t many places a seven-foot-tall hulk of a man can effectively lurk—and proceeded to do so, night after night, until Thomen chose to walk down that hall again.
Someone else had the same idea. Kammen didn’t get a good look; the assassin wore a blurring spell. All Kammen could see was a collection of grey and brown and black, all fuzzy and indistinct, only roughly in the shape of a person. Whoever it was had to be on the small side, though; the unfocused fuzz wasn’t very large.
“So Thomen is comin’ my way, not a clue, and I’m watching through the tapestry,” Kammen explained. Seldar handed him something to drink. “I sweep it out of my way as I come out of my niche. He stops and gives out an oath, all surprised, and raises one hand. The ring he uses hits me with a cutting spell, or tries to, but I’m ready and his spell breaks on my shields. He starts to say something, then stops talking. There�
��s this silver tongue stickin’ out of his mouth, then it pulls back, faster’n a snake’s tongue—thwick! And then it’s all slashes and cuts and blood everywhere, mostly on me, and Thomen’s head looks all surprised right there at my feet.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. The blurry person leaves in a hurry and whoever it is is fast, damn fast. I don’t see the point to runnin’ when the wizard’s already dead. I should’ve, though. When he died, something he was wearin’ went off, and all of a sudden there’s alarms everywhere. People are and running around yelling and closing in and I’m covered in Thomen’s blood with his head looking all surprised at me from the floor. Maybe I coulda explained,” he finished, shrugging, “but I decided not to trust people’s reason and goodwill.”
“If you have a choice about it, it’s probably wiser not to,” I agreed.
“So I headed off toward my escape and got out of the palace through one of the hidden ways. Once I got out, though, I was stuck. Too many alarms, too many guards. You’d have thought someone tried to kill the Queen. I didn’t want to kill anybody, so I hid in the carriage-wright’s.”
“Why is there a secret niche behind a tapestry?” I asked. “For that matter, why is there a secret passage leading into the palace?”
“I guess things were pretty interesting in the days of the old kings of Rethven.”
“I guess they were. So, any ideas on the assassin?”
“Nope. He’s good, though. Stopped the wizard from talking or waving his hands with the first shot. Not a professional, though. That sticking through the neck was it for Thomen. All the rest was way more than he needed. That was someone bein’ all pissy about it.”
“Huh. I didn’t think of that.”
“You’re not much of an assassin.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re a killer. Assassins kill stuff quick and clean. You usually kill stuff all messy.”
“Your point is well-taken. Go on about this amateur assassin.”
“Um. That’s it. One killing thrust, then a lot of slicing. Mighta been an elf-blade—there wasn’t much chopping or hacking. Divided his spine in six places, not counting the thrust, and faster than most could do it. One of us, maybe, or you, Sire.”
“Could it have been an elf?” Seldar asked.
“Wasn’t too far off the right size,” Kammen admitted. “With the blur going, maybe so.”
“Sire?” Seldar asked, looking at me.
“I’ll see what I can find out. But, all things considered, I’m not sure I’m upset about it. This makes things a lot easier.”
“It does?” they asked, in unison.
“I think it does. If there’s no one there to keep mistreating Lissette’s brain, she’ll come to her senses. Hopefully her sane and rational senses. If she winds up walking the halls and wailing, that’s another story, but we can hope for something better. Besides, Thomen won’t be making promises to Lotar anymore. I’m not sure Lotar is up to speed on what’s going on in Carrillon, but whatever he and Thomen planned with this stupid assault on Mochara and bloody insurrection in Karvalen, it’s not happening.”
“It does seem poorly coordinated,” Seldar agreed. “I believe the plan was to take one of the cities while distracting the other.”
“How so?”
“Depending on the timetable, one or the other city should have had a major external threat demanding immediate attention, as well as all available troops. This would make the conquest of either city more likely. If I were arranging it, this move by the Church of Light would have happened days ago to nail troops down to Karvalen, leaving Mochara on its own. After Mochara was taken, then a relieving force could enter through the captured gate to reinforce the Church’s hold over their sector of the city and make it possible to actually take Karvalen.”
“I don’t know. The plan sounds better than what happened, but it would still be uncertain.”
“The only certainty of war is that it will come.”
“I should write that down,” I said. “All this still strikes me as poorly coordinated.”
“Sire, please remember—no matter how many mirrors you employ, among the citizenry, they are not common. I do not believe Lotar even has one, much less one he might use through the city shield. Those are quite specific—I can account for each of them, I believe. Aside from any you choose to alter, of course. Thus, Lotar can only know what he sees for himself, or what he reads in messages delivered to him. He cannot simply call out to anyone he pleases. Even if he does have a mirror, a basic one, he must journey outside the shield of Karvalen to use it, and he seldom leaves his temple without strong inducement.”
I pondered that for a moment. I’m so used to cell phones, radio, and other instant communications that I take them for granted. Making communication mirrors is a major project even for the few wizards who can. I guess I don’t understand how to think about the things. They’re unusual magical devices. In some ways, having one is like having your own telegraph during the days of the transcontinental railroad, sort of.
Maybe I should think of them more in terms of short-wave transmitters. They’re not telephones; mirrors are more like big, complicated things only a few people have. They’re not as common as I think they are. They’re the big metal box in the basement connected to the special, flagpole-sized antenna next to the house. That might be closer. After all, how many ham radio operators do I actually know? In theory, I know two—both of whom worked at the University about a century ago.
When it comes right down to it, I have a terribly skewed view of Karvalen, Rethven, and the nuts-and-bolts setup of this society. Maybe I should take a page from Mary’s book and get a better disguise. I could pull a Prince-and-the-Pauper caper, just without the Pauper, and wander around the kingdom as an itinerant wizard. Get a peasant’s-eye view of the world again, see it from other perspectives. It would probably do me good to get a better idea what the place looks like from somewhat lower down the totem pole.
“How many mirrors are there in Rethven?” I asked.
“In all of Rethven? Perhaps a hundred,” Seldar informed me. “Every noble has one, of course, and there are a half-dozen in the palace at Carrillon. There are another twenty or so here, in the palace—most of those are capable of seeing or calling beyond the city, itself—and in private hands, there are several mirrors useful only within the city or only outside it. Tianna has one, and there is one in the Temple of Shadow, I know.
“Of course, this does not count any mirrors in Arondael. There is no way to tell how many mirrors they may possess or have sold to others. Those—all of them, I strongly believe—are useful only outside the city shield.”
“I understand. I’ll try to keep those numbers in mind in the future.”
“It is my honor to be of service,” he assured me. Then he frowned. “The thing of most concern to me is not with their coordination, but with their intent.”
“How so? What am I missing?”
“We did not attempt to send out our forces,” Seldar said. “At least, not through one of the city gates. Therefore, to Lotar’s best knowledge, all the knights, all the infantry, everyone was still here, and a threat to him. I doubt he understands your use of a gateway spell. Creating one, much less holding one open, is not wizard’s work. It requires a magician to understand the spell, and often requires several to make it work. I am certain they are now concerned about the number of magicians in your service.”
“Seldar, right now there are no magicians in my service!”
“They cannot be certain. They do not know your powers, nor how willing you are to exert yourself to your limits. I know I have only the most vague idea how your gate works, nor how those strange spells work to power it. You do not have a dozen magicians at your command, but to one who stands outside, it must seem so.
“But his attempt to take the city is my main point. He could not do so with the force he now has. He must have been counting on some sort of assistance.”
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�An army smuggled into Karvalen?”
“Not impossible,” Seldar admitted. “I am told there were a number of the Demon King’s lesser knights involved in a Church of Light assault on the palace some months ago. I am equally sure those men yet remain; there are reports of many armored men wearing the white tabards with the golden sun-face on it. They seem quite formidable, individually. No doubt he has been recruiting forces into his religion ever since.
“But, given the way most of the houses of the City Guard in the occupied area simply surrendered, I suspect Lotar was counting on religious authority to trump civic authority. With worshippers of the God of Light in every Guard house, it would not be unreasonable to expect to take them quickly, even easily, and so gain more ground and impress more troops into his service. He may even have estimated—or been encouraged to estimate—that his expansion and assimilation would be rapid enough to bolster the existing forces under his command sufficiently to take Karvalen.”
“You think he really planted a lot of traitors in the City Guards?”
“Planted? Perhaps that is too strong a word. It may have been as simple as proselytizing, converting existing Guardsmen to his religion. We might ask him when we see him.”
“Don’t count on it,” I muttered, darkly. Seldar ignored this.
“As for his motives now, I am uncertain. My guesses are these. He may believe he possesses sufficient force to accomplish a takeover of Karvalen—or will soon possess such force in the form of reinforcements. He may not be aware the attack on Mochara was unsuccessful. On the other hand, he may already be aware of the army’s retreat and the defeat of the navy. If so, he knows he is unlikely to be reinforced, but is now trying to be difficult enough to dislodge so he can negotiate for something he wants. It is also possible he is simply being a radical fanatic intent on martyring himself and all his forces for the greater glory of his god.”
“Remind me to mention to Beltar how noble sacrifice should have a point, not be done for its own sake.”
“I will certainly communicate that to him, oh Undead King of Night.”
