by Garon Whited
If I get some sunglasses with a band of mirrored surface across the top—like regular ones, but with a rear-view mirror at the upper edge—can I look through my own head to see behind me? I’m going to try it just as soon as I find someone to make glasses.
I wasn’t sure of the protocol of the dust room. Do I stay until sent for? Do I step out as soon as I’m through? I chose to step out and wait. It seemed to be correct. I was met by a much younger man, probably still in his middle teens. He escorted me farther into the house.
The interior of the house was an open thing, obviously set up to circulate air. The wall facing the interior gardens was composed mostly of folding doors. With the sun long-set and things cooled off, these were wide open to help dissipate the heat of the day from the heavy stone walls. I noticed tapestries were still popular. Several magical ones hung above the folding doors, rolled up. Were they rolled down during the day to keep out the heat as long as possible? Or did it get cold enough at some point—night in winter, maybe—to warrant them? Or were they merely decorative?
Ah, the things I think about when I’m trying not to show how nervous I am.
“The lady of the house is not prepared to receive visitors,” my teenaged guide informed me. “You are commanded to wait her pleasure in the garden.”
“Certainly.”
He led me out to a small, stone bench by the central tree and left me there. It was probably a very nice spot during the day. Shady, by flowing water, all the usual stuff. I wondered if this was a servant’s idea to keep me from stinking up the house as a filthy unaccompanied foreign male.
While I sat there, trying to be patient and calm, I looked around.
The tree looked back.
I dismissed it as my imagination.
The tree kept looking at me.
All right. If it was going to be so impolite as to stare, I didn’t feel obligated to be polite, either. I looked at it more intently, examining it for all the usual things—magical energy, spells, vitality flow, spirits, auras, soul-stuff, the works. It was alive and innately magical, but that was about all I could tell on a moment’s notice.
The trunk of the tree was only about a foot wide. I wondered if it was fairly young, as oak trees go, or if the tropical climate disagreed with it. Then again, it was cool in the garden area. Then again, it was nighttime, too. Were there spells to see to the tree’s comfort? Yes, a spell roofed over the central garden, blocking out some of the daytime heat. Below it, the ground was different, possibly special soil imported from somewhere more tree-friendly.
“Firebrand?”
Yes?
“Why is this tree looking at me? And why is it… familiar?”
Got me, Boss.
I examined it more closely, running fingertips and tendrils over the bark, along the trunk, tracing the grain of the wood, feeling the slow pulse of sap inside, running lines of power through it out to every vein in every leaf.
It’s a magical tree. I have no idea how it’s magical. It’s not a dryad home, I know that. I would find the dryad, or some connection to the dryad. Yet the tree is magical and would probably make an excellent home for a dryad. Is this tree magical in the same way a wizard is magical? Is it a tree with a talent for magic, so magic flows through it naturally? It could be a special breed of tree, I suppose, deliberately bred to be the perfect wood for a magical staff. It’s not sapient pearwood, not by a long shot, but it might be semi-aware oak. Come to think of it, it might become a dryad tree. If a dryad manifests later in the life cycle, the tree might simply be too young.
If I built a wardrobe out of this wood, would it be easier to enchant into an inter-universal teleport box? Maybe I should ask T’yl’s nephew, if he has one.
Having examined the tree in intimate detail, I returned to my bench in time to seat myself before I was sent for. I heard footsteps before I saw him. The same young man who showed me out returned to fetch me inside. My escort took me to the second floor and knocked on a heavy, wooden door. At the soft-voiced answer, he opened it and ushered me in.
Tort sat in a tall, heavy chair. I barely noticed when the door closed behind me.
She wore a thick suit of clothes, like quilted pajamas. Heavy embroidery decorated it from neck to ankles—all of it magical. I recognized some of the design from the animation magic I saw in the moving suit of armor T’yl used to own. My knights’ armor sometimes had an emergency animation function to allow it to fight on if the wearer was killed, or to enable it to run to a medic if the wearer was merely unconscious. Hers was based in the embroidery and the weaving rather than any after-the-fact enchantment. Very practical. I noticed it included some protective effects, including one to block my vision of her spirit.
This was my glimpse of the outfit. My major attention was reserved for Tort.
She was old. Positively ancient. Her hair was silver-white and cut just below her ears. Her face was lined and creased, sagging everywhere. Her hands were long and thin, dotted with spots and traced with veins. The only things that seemed untouched were her clear, brilliant eyes and her teeth. I couldn’t guess at her health; all I could see was her flesh. Her quilted outfit was quite effective.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. It was the first thing out of my mouth. Nothing clever, no preliminaries, not even a polite greeting. Smooth, Eric. Real smooth. Moron.
Tort smiled and looked away.
“I know,” she answered, softly. Her voice was old, too. Breathy. I guessed she was short of breath rather often. Carrying on a long conversation might be difficult for her.
“May I sit?”
“Yes, you may.”
I picked the heaviest-looking chair in the room and slid it over to her. I settled into it with only minor creaking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What happened? I challenged the Demon King.” She shrugged, looking at her hands. “I won. This is the price of victory.”
“You shouldn’t be the one to pay it,” I pointed out.
“I must.”
“I’ll happily pay it for you. Or pay you back. Take your pick.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand? I did what I felt was needful.”
“I don’t understand what happened, why you’re here, or why I can’t help. Is it that I can’t help, or you don’t want me to?”
Tort did not answer. She continued to regard her hands as her fingers twisted together.
“We can run your clock back,” I went on. “If you like, I know where I can get an empty elf for you to wear. I can even arrange for you to drink blood, if that’s your preference. Hang on for another couple of months and I feel certain we can give you your own body, exactly as you were at eighteen years old—this time with both feet. Tell me what I can do for you. Name it.”
“No,” she whispered. “No.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was torn. Tort was old enough to be dying. I had to help. But this was Tort, and she told me she didn’t want me to. But I had to, because it was Tort. But, because it was Tort, I had to respect her wishes.
Tearing me in half would be less painful. Trust me. I know.
“All right,” I agreed. “I came to see you, not to interfere in your life. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. I don’t like it—I want to help! But I’ll… I won’t interfere.”
“Thank you. I am pleased to see you again, my angel.” For angel she used the term arhela, meaning an elemental force, rather than arhia.
“And I’m pleased to see you,” I admitted. “I’m even more pleased you permitted it. I was worried.”
“About what?’
“About whether or not you wanted to see me.”
Tort looked away again, raising the back of one withered hand to her lips.
“Tort? Is something wrong?”
“I have loved you all my life,” she whispered. “No. I will love you a
ll my life.”
I stood up and leaned over her, kissed her hair. She wept.
“Yes, you will,” I agreed, “and I will love you for all of mine.”
It’s an odd feeling, holding someone who could be my great-grandmother and rocking her extremely gently. There was no way I wouldn’t comfort her while she cried on me, but I was terrified of breaking her. I didn’t dare to hug her firmly. I merely wrapped my arms around her and rocked her.
Finally, she sniffled a little and leaned away. I let go and resumed my seat. She still had a hard time looking at me, but I blame the face of the Demon King.
“May I ask a question?” I asked, redundantly. She nodded. “Why did you leave?”
“I don’t want to answer that.”
“Okay. I get the impression you’re upset with me. Are you?”
“No.”
“But you still won’t look at me.”
“I…” she began, and went back to staring at her hands. I waited. Sometimes silence is the best question. If so, this was a long question. She wrung her hands and I kept still while the awkwardness in the room deepened. Eventually, it reached critical mass and exploded into speech.
“My angel,” she said, and sighed.
“Tell me what’s wrong. I need to know.”
“I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy. You can tell me anything and I’ll take it. Tell me I’m a moron. I’m used to that. Tell me I’m a blood-drinking monster. Tell me I’m an evil king with delusions of grandeur. Whatever you want.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Take your time. Take all the time you need. I’ll wait right here, with occasional breaks for sunrise and sunset, possibly the occasional trip to the toilet. I’d like time off on your birthday, though, to get you a present.”
I had to find a handkerchief. I hadn’t intended to make her cry again. Wonderful example, there, of my indefinable, possibly nonexistent charm. While she wept, I enclosed us in an air-filtering spell similar to the one used on Kavel’s forge. Since pressure tries to equalize, the oxygen content of our little area gradually rose. I didn’t want her to cough herself to death.
When her crying diminished to sniffles, I took her hand again and she clutched at it. I was surprised at how weak her grip was.
“It’s your face,” she admitted, finally.
“Yeah, I suspected. Lissette said the same thing. Too funny-looking?”
Oh, I’m a charmer, all right. Tort broke down into sobs while I tried to get my foot out of my mouth. It’s hard to do when it’s gone in up to the knee. This was not what I envisioned for our big reunion. Not as bad as I’d feared, in many ways, but it wasn’t going as well as it could have.
On the other hand, maybe it was going as well as it was possible to go. There’s a sobering thought.
Tort couldn’t speak too well, even with the magical oxygen tent. Serves me right for making her cry. What she did manage to tell me was rather broken, but I got the gist of it. Lissette only knew me briefly, so she didn’t have as much in the way of preconceived notions. The Demon King was a problem for her, but one she had to learn to live with.
But I was—I am—Tort’s angel.
Imagine meeting your best friend and finding everything is different. They don’t like you, but they use your positive opinion of them to their advantage. Everything they do is at odds with what you know about them, so much so you have to suspect brain damage or demonic possession. If you’ve imagined it successfully, you’re on the right track.
But, again, I wasn’t Tort’s best friend. I was Tort’s angel.
Every day for nine years, she was at the Demon King’s left hand, doing whatever he ordered. It was my face, my voice, my hands, everything. She had to watch her angel fall from grace, as it were. Her knight in shining armor tarnished it with every word, every gesture. Guinevere could not have been more appalled if Lancelot decided to take up slave-trading to get funds together to assassinate Arthur, burn the Table, and tear down Camelot.
I need to find that ball and have not one word of discussion with it. I wonder if I can shove it through a gate out in space, aimed at a star big enough to collapse into a singularity? Either the solar fires will destroy it or the gravitational collapse will. Short of that, anybody know where I can find Mount Doom?
It occurs to me… somewhere in the infinite multiverses, there very well might be a Mordor and Mount Doom.
Once she managed to explain the problem of even looking at me, she calmed down. She still had trouble meeting my eyes, but she seemed more than capable of holding my hand.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “The Demon King has a lot to answer for.”
“He is imprisoned in a ball of force,” Tort told me. “With great effort, his influence may reach beyond the surface of the sphere, but he can never escape.”
“Any spell can be broken, and he’ll find a way. I intend to get rid of him in a more permanent fashion.”
“As long as he remains within the sphere, it will serve to protect him as well as imprison him. It was the best I could do.”
“I’ll kill him,” I promised. “I have to.”
“I do not say it cannot be done, but to do so is beyond even my knowledge of such matters.”
“I’ll see what I can find. But what about you? What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. There is nothing to be done for me.”
“Please explain to the non-magician.”
“The spells to bind a demon are well known. Their weakness is in their impermanence. Over time, they grow static, rigid, stale—brittle, if you like. The Things they contain also wear away at the barriers from within. This is why those who summon such things tend their cages every day, refreshing them with new lines of power. Containment spells are not alive, not capable of growing and changing to meet the changing tactics of the creature thus imprisoned. And yet, sorcerers are not immediately ripped apart from within after the first sunset. Sorcerers are, themselves, living containment vessels. The ritual spells to make one a sorcerer bind the demon into the living flesh. While the flesh lives, the demon remains trapped. When the flesh dies, the containment turns static, allowing the demon to work its way free.”
I recalled a subdivided invisible sorcerer assassin. It did take a while before the demon started leaking out of him.
“So, you made a special spell to contain the Demon King?”
“Yes. The mirror reflects most of his power back upon him, so his efforts to break free weaken him. But the key to the spell was a vital essence—a web of living force to meet him at every point and fight him.”
“I’m starting to be more than a little suspicious of how you managed it.”
“I was linked to quite a number of living things at the time.”
“An awful lot of dazhu, as I recall, as well as several trees. At least, nine years ago. I’d imagine it was even more.”
“In the last four years, I made certain to have as many convicts as possible in my web.”
“Anticipating?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Go ahead and tell me.”
“The spell to trap the Demon King drew on my life. Had I not been linked to so many living things, it would have consumed me completely. Since I had hundreds of living forces at my command, I survived, although nothing else could say the same. Thus am I aged to something near my true age—a hundred years, perhaps. I tried to escape the fate of any who would cast such a spell, but I did not succeed. I live now only because magic sustains my body.”
“I hear the magical currents off the Sunspire are quite nice in this region.”
“Exactly.”
“I can fix this, you know.”
“No, my angel.”
“No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“There is little left of me to fix.”
“T’yl told me he thought you were sucked into the spell with the Demon King. Obviously, he had good reason to think so. But you’re not. You’r
e here, and this is the sort of problem I have a talent for. This is something I can do for you.”
“No. Look at me. Look closely.”
I looked at her. She was still shielded from my vamp-vision. I told her so.
“You are incorrect, my angel. The magic of my clothing supports the life of my body, but there is little enough of my essence remaining. You think your sight is blocked, but it sees everything that I am.”
“I don’t understand. Again.”
“Do you recall your experiments, attempting to create nightlords under your control?”
“Yes.”
“When you created living lords of night, then slew them to leave them soulless creatures of darkness?”
“Yes.”
“What were they like?”
“Well, without a soul, they were animated corpses. They had no real self-will, other than a habituated memory-pattern based on how long they were… shall we say ‘infected’?… with my blood. The longer they were infected before being killed as a mortal being, the better the memory pattern. If killed too soon, they were mindless, bloodthirsty monsters. If killed later, they acted like themselves, in general, but without any real will to do or inspiration. I gave some thought to these as potential soldiers, but their lack of resistance to control in general, rather than any special control I, personally, could exert on them made them too much of a risk to use. Why?”
“So clever,” she murmured, “and so slow.”
“All right, I’m slow. I admit it. What am I slowly not seeing?”
“Do you see a soul in me?”
“I…” I trailed off, staring into her. The magic in her clothes made it harder to see inside, but if it didn’t block my vampire eyes… no, it didn’t. It blocked some location magic, but I could see through that.
There should have been a bright glow behind the magical cloth. I stared deeper, looking harder. The glow of vitality was only barely there, of course, contributing to the illusion of a blocking spell. I looked past it, inside her, and saw the subtle, shifting colors deeper down were missing. The deeper levels of her spirit—her soul, if you like—were almost entirely gone. She was a shallow pool, stirred only by the surface currents.
