Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  Maybe I shouldn’t hunt for something to do. It could be I’m not ready to undertake a major project. I don’t even know what I want, much less what I need. Maybe I should learn to drift, to relax, recuperate, and rest until something catches my attention.

  Mostly I just don’t feel… motivated. I don’t seem to care enough about anything to summon up and direct my full focus on it.

  I’m smiling for Mary even though I’m depressed. I can do both at the same time, because I’m a liar as well as a coward.

  Nexus, Friday, March 26th, 2049

  The house is nice, for a rental. I don’t think I approve of the metal shingle things, though. It’s one of those roofs with the curved tiles, like overlapping pipe sections, but when they replaced the old roof they used metal “tiles” instead of actual tiles. Rain on the roof sounds very strange to my ears, almost like sleet on a field of xylophones. Every tile has a slightly different note, and that’s hard to cope with at night. Earplugs mute it a bit, but tiny earpiece headphones are even better. Playing music resets my hearing to the ambient sound volume and blocks out most of the rainy-roof sounds.

  It was still a good thing I wasn’t sleeping. Instead, I spent a lot of time and effort with a grease pencil, a ruler, and a French curve, getting the garage door prepared. While I could use power from the Apocalyptica side of an established gateway, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having it rely solely on remote power. I planned to drive a load of manufactured goods through it for Diogenes. Since a truck is no good when the halves are in different universes, I paid close attention to my sigil drawing and spell construction. This was a big gate, and it was going to have to be open for several seconds, possibly as much as a minute.

  I wonder. If I offer a bunch of homeless people a meal and a place to crash for the night, would it be worth it to wire them into the gateway? A lot of homeless aren’t in the best of health, so their vitality is relatively low. Even if it sucked the life right out of them, how much extra time would we get? Realistically, it’s probably too much trouble. Of course, killing them outright and using their energies directly, as sacrificial victims, would certainly power the gate for quite a while. I wonder… a minute per person? Or ten seconds? Would it matter what sort of physical condition they were in? Is it a function of the energies of their souls, or does their vitality count for something?

  Maybe I’ll ask my simulata-self, sometime. He probably has a different perspective on it. I don’t really want to experiment with the differences between a human battery, eating a human and redirecting the energies, and directly sacrificing a human to power a spell.

  On the plus side, one of our deliveries was a spool of iridium wire. I got out the hot glue gun and gleefully added some of the wire to our escape route. I may have to carry a spool of the stuff with me in the future. It does seem to make gates more stable and cheaper to use. Plus, I never know when I’m going to have to flee right out of the world from a family of angry demigod wizards. Or from hostile energy-state beings, for that matter.

  When I kill the Lord of Light—someday—how will the others react? Will they be glad he’s dead? Will they shrug and call it justice? Will they be violently opposed? Or will they merely be concerned I found a way to do it? I guess it all depends on how I do it, because I have no idea where to start.

  Well, killing all his followers is a good start, but that poses problems of its own.

  I may have miscalculated my gate requirements. Slightly.

  The garage door is enormous, for a gate. It’s big enough to drive a truck through. With a head start on the street, a truck could make the turn into the driveway, hit the accelerator, and enter the gate at a good speed. The gate wouldn’t have to be open for long at all.

  But we’re getting deliveries at our address, now. Boxes upon boxes of stuff keep arriving. It’s not all loaded on a single truck.

  So I’ve overdone it on the garage door. Fine. I can redo my efforts on a more mundane door. We can use the small switch-box for anything that will fit inside it, of course, but some things still need to be manhandled through a gateway.

  I opened the door-sized gate and shoved through a lot of ruthenium, exchanging it for a robot, the shift-box, some electronics modules, and some electromagical transformers wired for the local power outlets.

  “Okay, what’s all this for?” I asked.

  “If you wish,” replied the Diogephone, “we can establish a permanent link between the campus and this remote robot in much the same way the portable phone unit is connected. This will allow me to access the cybernet of Nexus, as well as transfer objects through the shift-box. The transformers are present to supply magical power from the local power grid, reducing the demand on the Apocalyptica side.”

  He’s a very clever computer.

  “All right. Shouldn’t we build the communications micro-gate into a wireless router or something, though?”

  “Communications with the robot is most important. It can relay to a local router and cybernet access point.”

  “If you say so. We’ll set things up so you can supply yourself. You do know to be careful about attracting attention?”

  “You forget, Professor. I am a native of the world you call ‘Nexus.’ My primary programs were written there.”

  “You probably know the place better than I do. All right. I’ll enchant a set of twin micro-rings for your local robot and you can use the house as a resource gathering point. But I’d rather do the spell-work there; the local magical potential is worse than ever over here.”

  “Hey!” Mary protested. “What about fixing the world? Or finding your lost ball?”

  “I want to get Diogenes set up, first. I’d like him to have as much time as possible to gather hard-to-salvage things before we attract a lot of attention—and we might. Once he’s able to operate on his own on this side, we’ll come back and hunt down a land-based nexus where we can experiment.”

  “Are you sure you want to bother anyone sitting on a major nexus?”

  “No, but I’m pretty sure they’re not going to argue as forcefully as they used to. The magical potential here is lower than I’ve ever seen, and their wizardry isn’t up to our standards. We’ll look them over before we pick one out, I promise. Unless you want to start poking around while I go back to Apocalyptica?”

  “Not on your life! I’m not being left behind to do the dirty work.”

  “I just thought you might want to case the joints beforehand.”

  “And we will,” she insisted. “You’re sticking with me so I can keep you out of trouble, mister.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  I left the Diogephone in Nexus to facilitate communications. Diogenes, once he had steady access to the cybernet, ordered quite a number of things. He also encouraged me to go out and buy or rent things manually. He was confident he could avoid notice, but it would help to have alternative delivery points and multiple cybernet access addresses.

  “It sounds as though you’re planning to stay,” I observed.

  “If the option is available, Professor. This planet has a manufacturing infrastructure in good working order. I am still building mine.”

  “There are other worlds. Maybe we could set up something similar on them.”

  “An excellent notion, Professor. However, a world which does not possess cybernet-enabled commerce poses problems.”

  “You’d need human-ish help,” I agreed. “Think about ways we can set things up, please.”

  “I shall give it considerable processor time.”

  “Very good. What’s the time like over there?”

  “Daytime.”

  “Then Mary and I should come through to avoid any sudden change-of-state problems.”

  “As you wish, Professor.”

  Mary and I returned to Apocalyptica, where I started work on permanent communicator-sized rings for the Nexus robot.

  Apocalyptica, Saturday, June 11th, Year 1

  Mary met me in our campus quarters when the
sun came up. After a brief interlude, Diogenes delivered a robot-driven breakfast. I was halfway through a waffle before I thought to wonder about it. Eggs, juice, waffles… even milk, butter, and ham. Bacon, sausage… fried potatoes, corn flakes… maple syrup.

  I stared at the food and held an internal debate about asking. When presented with something good, is it always necessary to ask how it got there? When is it acceptable to shut up and go with it? I know I sometimes shelve a notion or table a question and forget to take them down again, but I’m a pretty curious guy.

  “Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?” replied the robot cart.

  “I hesitate to ask, but my curiosity won’t leave it alone.”

  “Go for it.”

  “It’s possible a lot of this came from Nexus, ordered online and delivered to the house, then relocated and prepared here. Was it?”

  “No, Professor. This food was produced locally, before a semi-permanent link to Nexus was made available.”

  “All right. I can see where some of this came from. Surely, there are potatoes growing in the ground, somewhere, and you found some. The eggs could be from any large bird, I suppose, and juice is out there for the squeezing. Ham and bacon merely involve finding something like a wild hog, I presume. But milk? Do I want to know where you got the milk?”

  “I operate a cloning facility capable of producing fully-functional bodies, Professor. Blood is one product to be harvested. With suitable animal organs for sampling, milk can be produced artificially—artificially in that the organism producing it is not actually viable outside a life support tank. If you have something organic you would like me to grow, I will attempt to locate a suitable life form for sampling.”

  “I notice you didn’t actually answer about where you got the milk.”

  “Is that not an answer in and of itself, Professor?” I thought I heard a snicker, although whether it was from Firebrand, Mary, or both, I can’t say.

  “I’ll just eat my breakfast.”

  “Of course, Professor.”

  While we ignored the origins of the food, Mary made conversation.

  “So, my beloved monstrosity, what do we do next?”

  “I was thinking of going back to Nexus—your world—with some magical batteries. Since I haven’t worked out a practical way to do scrying between universes, I need to be there. I want to find a land-based major nexus, open it, and use it to locate the Obsidian Orb of Awful.”

  “Alliterative, but you’re mixing your vowels.”

  “Me physics person. Physicist speak math, ugh. Words hard,” I told her. Without blinking, she bounced a roll off my face, caught it, buttered it.

  “Anyting special I should bring?” Mary asked.

  “Not that I know of. We’ll plan ahead, though, once we pick where on Nexus we’re going.”

  “While you are there,” Diogenes mentioned, “perhaps you could also acquire more money?”

  “Did you spend everything already?”

  “No, but I believe I will before long.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” I promised.

  “Bank job?” Mary asked.

  “Not in Nexus,” I countered. “Too much security. Besides, we want digital money, not cash.”

  “Aww.”

  “Cheer up. You can always steal something valuable.”

  “I guess. Hey, do we still need the yacht?”

  “Uh? No, I suppose not. Why?”

  “Diogenes can list it for sale.”

  “Fair enough. Diogenes?”

  “I am listing it now, Professor.”

  “Thank you. So, since you’re getting help from a technological civilization, how does this change our schedule?”

  “I believe the resources procured will be sufficient to accelerate our timetable for the evacuation of the university base by at least a factor of four.”

  “How does that relate to our mutant elephant population pressure?”

  “Given my latest surveillance drone flights and the population count, I feel reasonably certain we will be safely relocated before they become a problem.”

  “Reasonably certain?” I repeated.

  “In excess of ninety-eight percent probable.”

  “That’s pretty reasonably certain,” I agreed. “So, we go get you more money, find my wayward sphere, and then I get to go lead a boring, uneventful, unheroic, mundane life for a while?”

  “If that is what you wish, Professor.”

  “Is it?” Mary asked. She sounded sincerely inquisitive, so I had to think about it.

  Kings, queens, murder, gods, sorcerers, magicians, armies, dragons, vampire tribes, inter-universal gates, planets bleeding magic, thaumoforming plans for dying worlds, dead lovers, dead friends, dead children, dead Bronze…

  One broken world. One evil orb. Are those two things enough to shut my overdeveloped sense of responsibility up? Can I sit in suburbia, pretend to be normal, and quietly lower the violent crime rate on Tuesday nights?

  Couldn’t hurt to try it.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, aloud. “I haven’t done it in a while. I think I’d enjoy the peace and quiet—I think it’s what I need to do. To go somewhere and pretend to be normal for a while. To pretend to be human, to blend in, to be just another guy down the street instead of a monster or a king or a god.”

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it okay if you’re married to an international jewel thief?”

  “Are you going to hate this?” I asked.

  “I’ll be bored out of my mind,” Mary admitted. “I can do it, if you need me to. Just… there’s going to come a point where I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “Then we’ll blow up that bridge when we come to it. Fair?”

  “I prefer to burn it.”

  I’m with her, Boss.

  “I knew you would be,” I answered. “All right, Mary. You do what you need to do while I do what I need to do. Diogenes, can you bring us the charged gems and replace them with uncharged gems? We’re going to need to bring as much power with us as we can.”

  “Certainly, Professor. Now finish your breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

  “You know I run on blood, right?”

  “That’s the most important meal of the evening,” he replied, primly.

  I finished my breakfast.

  We stepped through to Lisbon. That end of the gate wasn’t an enchanted doorway, of course, merely a gate spell with transformers feeding it. It’s still better than a plain doorway. I think the iridium wire glued to the inner face of it helped. We arrived in the afternoon, a day or two later than we left.

  While Mary looked into things to steal, I set up my mirror and started looking for the major ley-line intersection points.

  Overall, the planet seems to have a little over sixty major nexus points. Sixty-four, I think, but I’m not certain. Some of the ley lines are almost too dim to see. It’s easier at night, of course, because of my night-eyes, but it’s still sometimes a challenge to follow the faint ones. Fortunately, the spell filter I’m using shows crossing points as brighter spots, so it’s sometimes easier to draw an imaginary line between two bright points, even if I can’t actually see it. It’s slow going on such a magic-poor planet, but I think I found them all.

  A quick breakdown:

  North America: Two

  South America: Two

  Russia: Three

  Asia: Two

  India: One

  Europe: One

  Middle East: One

  Africa: Four, not counting the one just a few miles north of the tip of Egypt, in the Mediterranean. It’s not thousands of feet down, but it’s still underwater. All the rest are out in deep water. I may be well-suited to deep ocean exploring, but I am decidedly not aquatic! I stuck to the landlocked nexus points and hoped.

  There were sixteen places which might have magi family fortresses parked on top. I went ahead and stuck my scrying-sensor nos
e into them to look around.

  For the most part, yes, a magi family had something in the neighborhood, whether it be a mansion, an old castle, or a fenced-in area with warning signs. How they were doing, who they belonged to, what they thought about the situation, and anything else was largely guesswork. A few sites, however, stood out as… unusual.

  In Africa, three hundred or so miles south-southwest of Khartoum, stood a structure reminiscent of a pyramid. It had a triangular base instead of a square one, however. A number of low buildings surrounded it, mostly carved from stone, with great slabs of flagstone forming pathways between them. Stone slabs radiated out from the pyramidal structure in straight lines, each one following the path of a ley line. As I watched, cattle were being herded into the place for sacrifice. Someone at the end of each line of stones used a hand-made flint knife to kill an animal, offer up ritual prayers, collect blood, and so on. Lines of helpers carried bowls of blood, running up the pyramid to pour it over the point, and hurrying back to collect more.

  On a far-northern island in Britain, a young man’s body was cold and still on a natural-rock altar inside a circle of stones. Only his body—he was beheaded at least two days ago. His blood was dry and I didn’t see the head anywhere. As I watched, a number of people wearing fancy outfits and carrying swords escorted another young man into the circle. Others were binding together long sticks and branches, building some sort of elaborate cage.

  In northern Brazil, a deep depression, like a meteor crater, held at least a hundred natives—either actual jungle tribesmen, or people dressed up to play parts in some ritual—all on their knees, chanting and clapping and swaying, sometimes marking themselves with knives of volcanic glass.

  Somewhat west of India, maybe a hundred or so miles north of Karachi, in the Kirthar mountains, was a large mountain retreat—a monastery, I suppose. I looked all around the thing, but there was no one there—no one alive, anyway. They were all lying facedown in a central hall, facing the dais and altar. The cold at that altitude made it impossible to tell when they died.