Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  “Get that thing out of the bathroom.”

  “Yes, Dean of Knives.” I heard it whir a few feet, no doubt hovering just outside the door.

  “What’s the question?” I asked.

  “Why not charge all the gems you want while closing the nexus points? I mean, you were planning to finish your thing with them, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Actually,” I added, brightening, “we’ve got more gems than we have rooftops. We could go do that while these are charging. Assuming the pressure doesn’t crush them, of course. Diamonds take the pressure pretty well, but I’m not sure about quartz and other crystals. And the time differential might even be favorable.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “There are advantages, either way. If we go there and spend five days to every day here, we come back with a lot of equipment in a week. If it works the other way, Diogenes will make a lot of progress without us and we have enough magical charge to drag a freight train through…” I trailed off. Could we build tracks and put a gate on them? We could, in fact, drive a freight train through. It would be tricky to align the tracks exactly—and it better be exact! —but maybe with suitable sighting devices and some computer-controlled pistons, we could align them almost as quickly as the gate opened.

  Not today. Bringing back a few truckloads of refined materials and manufactured parts would do. Why have Diogenes manufacture everything from scratch when we can simply buy things for him?

  “Shall I send progress reports, Professor?”

  “Excellent idea. Just when you hit milestones or snags, though. I don’t want to randomize the time differential too much.”

  “Certainly, Professor.”

  Mary and I got our stuff together. I opened a gate to Mary’s world, aiming for Nassau.

  Nexus, Thursday, March 11th, 2049

  When we landed and found the date, I decided it wasn’t too bad. The time differential was nominal.

  The Princess was still in port. Captain Tillard hadn’t yet rented it out as an excursion boat. We weren’t gone long enough. Most of the crew and staff were on leave, though. We gave them a two-day warning, saying we were putting out to sea on Saturday. It seemed unfair to show up and have them drop everything to scramble aboard. Two days should be plenty to settle bar tabs, recover from hangovers, and kiss people goodbye.

  Then we made some inquiries, several calls, and a few deals.

  Ordering various metals for Diogenes’ use in electronic gear was easy, though expensive. I’ve done it before. In any major city, we can get same-day delivery. For bulk orders, it can take up to two days, but I wasn’t in a terrible hurry. The longest delay was ordering some of the parts on Diogenes list. High-efficiency electrical motors of sufficient size and power, polyurethane membrane for gas bladders, Mylar sheeting, copper wire by the mile… Worst of all was a special magnesium-alloy framing for his dirigible-helicopter thing. I finally decided it would take too long to have them made, but commissioning a couple tons of the metal wouldn’t take nearly as long. Diogenes could skip the mining, refining, and alloying and just make the bits he needed.

  None of this was cheap, but we weren’t worried about asset management too much. Mary’s world—I’m going to call it “Nexus,” with her kind permission—isn’t a place for us to call home. Well, it’s not a place for me to call home, but I don’t think Mary’s too interested in staying, either.

  That night, after settling inboard the Princess, I noticed something. I should have noticed it sooner, but setting up for a major industrial relocation and fighting over the cybernet with online scheduling is distracting.

  My bombardment stopped.

  The ongoing, constant hammering of magic-disrupting spells wasn’t ongoing. It was quiet. Even at this distance, it should have been easily detectable. I simply didn’t notice the lack of it until I felt one—and only one—go off in the distance.

  “What’s the matter?” Mary asked.

  “My nexus bombardment. It’s stopped. Or mostly.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. I have terrible visions of a bunch of magi sitting in domes of magical force on the seafloor, slowly leaching their souls away in the awful rush of power that annihilates their essential humanity and leaves them as nothing more than virtually unstoppable egomaniacs.”

  “Uh, these visions… are you talking about psychic visions of things that may have come to pass? Or are you talking about horrible what-if scenarios in your imagination? Please tell me it’s not the first one.”

  “The second.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Only on alternate Thursdays.”

  “It is an alternate Thursday.”

  “So it is. All right, hate me. But help me, too. I want to run a scrying sensor out to the open nexus points and see what’s going on. You get on the cybernet and catch up on the news. See if there’s anything weird happening.”

  “What sort of weird?”

  “Anything which might be a sign some magi family got a power lock on a sea-floor nexus.”

  “Oh, that sort of weird. On it.”

  The spell to scry on distant locations isn’t a hard one—no, I’ll correct that. The spell is about average difficulty, but I use it an awful lot, so I make it look easy. Many of the necromantic spells are about as complex, but I simply don’t practice with them. At least with necromancy, I can usually afford to fumble around until I get them right. It’s not like dead people are in a hurry. Well… most dead people.

  My scrying spell took a lot longer to cast. I had to spend far more time and effort to gather sufficient power to charge it. Even then, I knew it wasn’t going to last all that long. A side effect of all the disruption shockwaves? The things were detectable, like shockwaves from meteors, volcanos, or earthquakes, all around the world. It’s conceivable they might have caused a severe level of turbulence in the regular flow of magic, making spells everywhere more difficult to cast.

  I checked my open nexus points, starting with the pyramid. I parked my scrying sensor fairly close and skimmed all around it, checking for anything untoward.

  No dome of force. No sign of interference. All seemed well.

  I switched to another major nexus. Same story, but with a much clearer view of the nexus itself.

  Power oozed from it slowly, a dribble of energy slowly filling up the disruption spell. In a day or two, it would reach critical level and fire. The rate of fire slowed so drastically because the nexus itself seemed to be running out of power.

  They can do that?

  I quickly flicked my scrying sensor around to the other open nexus points. They were all in similar shape, barely producing a trickle of energy. No one was interfering with them. They were just…

  …dying.

  I think I killed a world.

  All right, so that’s a bit melodramatic. I may have accidentally—well, unintentionally—used up the magic of a world. The magi families might be a bit disgruntled and, eventually, so might any supernatural creatures. But for all I know, if I seal up the nexuses and stop them from bleeding out power, the planet will generate more.

  Of course, the Atlanteans of this world used up a sizable amount of magical force, according to magi legend. A few thousand years later, it still wasn’t a major force in the world. Maybe it recovers at a geological rate—epochs or ages, rather than mere centuries or millennia. Or maybe they simply didn’t tend to the wounds they inflicted. I have no way to know; I wasn’t there.

  As a first order of business, I suppose I should bandage the planet.

  Nexus, Saturday, March 13th, 2049

  Captain Tillard headed us out without trouble. The weather was fine, the sky was clear, and I was experimenting with self-replicating spells.

  I had an idea for saving the world.

  An Ascension Sphere, power circle, power fan, and power-compression jet all draw in ambient magical energy to operate themselves. From there, I already developed a self-replicating spe
ll for containing an open nexus. Not only does it draw in magical power to maintain itself, but it uses that power to build a stronger version of itself.

  I can also build a spell to absorb different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and turn it into magical energy. It’s a converter, albeit a poor one.

  If I put these together, can I build a spell to absorb and convert sunlight into magical force, use part of it to maintain itself, and use the rest to build another spell just like itself? It would be a primitive sort of Von Neumann machine, only done with magic and based purely on energy, not matter.

  After plugging these two concepts into each other, I can definitely say the answer is a qualified “yes.” Yes, it can be done. Unfortunately, due to the abysmal power conversion rate, it takes an extraordinarily high level of input power—the sunlight, in this case—for it to work at any reasonable rate. It isn’t practical without a level of solar intensity found somewhere around… oh, the orbit of Mercury, I think.

  In theory, I can build a self-replicating solar-to-magical energy converter spell. It can copy itself indefinitely, forming an invisible solar-collection band around the equator. When it’s all the way around and, say, a hundred miles wide, it quits replicating itself and starts feeding the converted magical energy into a nexus, revitalizing the magical network in the planet.

  Assuming the planet’s magical network will accept a transfusion, of course.

  I ran through some experiments and made some assumptions, then had Diogenes do some calculations. Assuming I build one of these things and turn it loose at the edge of space—about a hundred miles up—the whole network will be complete in a mere six hundred and nineteen years. Most of it will be built in the last decade because of a peculiarity of compound interest. As the network gets bigger, it collects more power, so it builds individual units more quickly. The more you have, the faster you get more.

  Maybe I can start the process going, but hook up the output of an electromagical transformer to it. The conversion ratio for the spell is low, so any individual “solar panel” will provide only a trickle of power. The transformer, however, could keep up a steady flow, producing dozens of panels a day, every day, all the time. It would drastically shorten the time to make enough of them to be useful, especially if I set up more than one.

  Of course, that would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the world. How drastically would it affect the climate? These ongoing, self-replicating, potentially world-shaking effects are not to be used lightly! Maybe I should start the process on Apocalyptica and see what sort of effect it has, to test it. Apocalyptica has the added bonus of not having potential meddling from magi.

  I’m also wondering what effects a lack of magic will have on the world. This world, anyway. If Karvalen suddenly lost all its magic, I’d say the world would crumble immediately and disappear back into the void. But here? I don’t know if anyone will even notice. It’s a planet-wide phenomenon, though, kind of like the planetary magnetic field. Just because humans can’t directly detect its presence doesn’t mean it isn’t important. I’m leery of world-spanning changes. On that sort of scale, there’s no telling what effects it has.

  So, while I consider what sort of planetary-scale helpfulness I want to attempt and mess up, I have more immediate issues.

  Bandages. I can do bandages.

  Nexus, Tuesday, March 23rd, 2049

  We spent the last week and a half undoing all the work I did to put Johann down. At least putting a bandage on a dying nexus is easier than containing a healthy one. It takes longer to be lowered to the ocean floor and hauled back up again than it does to set up the spells.

  The reason it’s easy is the low level of power. Comparatively low level of power, I mean. A normal nexus fountains out so much power I couldn’t channel it myself if I had a dozen clones helping. A dying nexus, on the other hand, merely oozes power. It’s something I can contain and control without too much risk of boiling the flesh off my bones. It’s the difference between a volcanic eruption and a broken steam pipe. Either one is potentially fatal, but only one of them is definitely going to kill you by burning you to ashes and burying your charred bones in molten rock. The other one is merely going to hurt a lot.

  The bandage spells are the same as always. They grow over the nexus so it can repair itself—hopefully. The good news is the healing process should be comparatively rapid. It doesn’t have to patch a high-pressure leak, just a slow one. We’ll see how it looks in a year or two.

  On the plus side, I charged up several of my more durable power crystals. Opening a temporary gate to Apocalyptica shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe that’s callous of me, sucking up some of the last of the planet’s magic for my own purposes, but at this point I’m not sure it matters.

  In other news, Mary can’t find any information on my Magic Eight-Ball of Doom. Sure, there are a lot of world leaders making all sorts of ugly noises at each other, what with an inexplicable disaster upsetting the balance of power and all, but no one seems to be a candidate for the Palantír of Orthanc Award. I don’t think my evil twin is influencing anyone specific.

  The American forces have re-taken the East Coast, though. In the past couple of weeks, the horrific psychic phenomenon diminished so markedly that ground troops could roll over the region to secure it. They’ve found a number of failed genetic experiments—magical hybrid beasts, but that’s not what they’re calling them—and a remarkable level of ruination. Officials have no explanation for this attack, but sources close to the new President report alien invasion has not been ruled out.

  There’s an interesting thought. If the President, the Cabinet, and Congress all go phut in some sort of attack, who takes over? I’m sure there’s a chain of command, but the constitutional lawyers will argue over it for years to come, and at an obscene hourly rate, too. Not my problem, but still an interesting thought.

  Naturally, all this has done atrocious things to the global economy. It’s like a fat man doing the cannonball off the high dive. The ripples are going to take a while to settle down. It’s possible there may be some wars because of this. I wonder if the United Nations of this time and place has enough teeth to keep people from overreacting?

  This doesn’t help me with my problem, though. How do I find an Evil Orb?

  Actually, come to think of it, there might be a good way. With a severe shortage of magic in the world—and after the worldwide shockwaves of magic-disruption—any defensive spells hiding it should be weakened or even destroyed. Once I get Diogenes his equipment, I can use up the last of my available power to cast a seeking spell or two. Or, as a better thought, maybe I can find a major nexus on land, this time, and tap it for enough power to scan the planet. I know there’s one in South America, one in Canada, and I recall noting at least three spread out across Africa. We’ll see if they’re occupied and by whom.

  I like this plan. It stands a good chance of working and doesn’t involve vertical miles of ocean.

  In the meantime, we’ve purchased most of the materials on Diogenes’ list. Sadly, plutonium is not commercially available, but I suspect he only included it as a joke. I’d like to get some, just because it would amuse me to hear his reaction. I’m not mentioning it to Mary, though. She’d start planning how to steal it.

  Is there a world where one can buy plutonium? Legally, I mean.

  Everything we ordered is headed for Lisbon, Portugal, the nearest major city to our final nexus bandage. As soon as I’m done with first aid on the bleeding planet, we’ll be headed there ourselves.

  Nexus, Thursday, March 25th, 2049

  Lisbon is a nice place. I like it. It’s got an old-world feel to it, but it also has modern conveniences. Many of the streets use special power units, disguised as paving stones, instead of the usual power roads. It’s purely an aesthetic consideration, but they cared enough to keep the look. I like that.

  Neither of us speaks Portuguese, however. Well, we didn’t. We still don’t speak Portuguese, but after our
late-night dinner we understood it a little. Still, with suitable apps and earpieces, technology is what really came to the rescue. We rented a very nice two-storey townhome across from some park. The major selling point, to me, was the ground-floor garage with the oversized door. You never know when you’re going to need to drive a huge truck right off the edge of the world.

  During the night—after our dinner—we walked past the Pátio da Galé. There’s a metal statue of a man on horseback. I don’t know who he is or why he has a statue and I didn’t go up to read the plaque. Mary held my hand a lot after we walked by it.

  Is this my life, now? Being reminded of Bronze? Or of Tort or Tamara? Or Shada, or Sasha…

  I don’t like this regretting thing. I’m not a big fan of grief, either.

  Can I call them up from the basement and kill them? And if I can, the question becomes whether or not I should. Do regret and grief serve any purpose in a blood-drinking, soul-devouring monster? Or is that the difference between a monster and a person?

  Yay, psychological issues bordering on philosophy! Now, where can I find a therapist who would believe me? I can see how that’s going to go.

  “Doctor, I’m a vampire and I’m considering killing my subconscious manifestations of regret and grief.”

  “How long have you felt like a vampire?”

  “No, I am a vampire.”

  “Everyone feels, at some time or another, that they feed on others in some way…”

  Then I show him the fangs, he believes me, and I have to eat him to stop the terrified screaming.

  Mary tries to help, but this emotional problem of mine is not going away quickly. I’m worried it may never go away. I guess all I can do is survive one more day, every day, and hope it gets better.

  Problem is, I have distractions, not goals. All I’m doing is cleaning up after myself. Putting my affairs in order. I don’t have something to strive for. Sure, I’ve been promised I’ll see my Tort again, and that’s a good thing. I’m sure I’ll eventually have the emotional energy to want to find the Black Ball, too. And work on a space program for Bob. And any number of other things.