Nightlord: Orb

by Garon Whited

  Then it was off to the truck stop for the rent-a-shower and some laundry. You would be amazed at the sorts of homey conveniences you can find at a major truck stop. True, we brought all that with us in the RV, but everything in an RV feels tiny.

  We drove on to a little place called San Jon. Sadly, we were unable to find any volunteers during our evening walk. No one seemed desperate enough to demand money. We did have a couple of polite requests, which we dutifully fulfilled. If more people simply asked politely, there would be fewer unsolved murders in the world.

  Ha. Vampires as an evolutionary prod toward politeness. We kill off the rude ones while the polite ones survive. I think I found some more irony.

  Mary decided a trip to the local buffet restaurant for the evening might be a good idea. I didn’t understand, but went along with it. We parked outside and darkened the windows, watching people go in and out. Tendrils reached right through the wall of the van and brushed lightly over people. It worked, from an intermittent snacking point of view, but Mary was still in the frequent-feeding phase. Vitality was good, but blood was never far from her mind.

  I don’t know what changes went on inside her. She didn’t develop more tendrils; she still only had the regulation one, as per a Thessaloniki. She didn’t seem to be gaining weight at high speed, like I did. She was heavier than one might expect, but not by any remarkable amount. I didn’t know what to make of it. All we could do was watch the changes and try to avoid being surprised.

  Mary kept tapping lightly the people who went by. With luck, she would find someone suitable for dinner. I left her to it and went down to the bus station. They have public terminals; I wanted to do some research.

  New Mexico has a surprising number of ranches. Finding a slaughterhouse, though, was more challenging. I got a couple of haunted house listings, but no butchering stations. Maybe the ranches did all their slaughtering and suchlike on-site.

  After her gentle snacking, Mary and I drove out into the country to cruise by a couple of the places. She checked them over while I drove past. She even tossed a toy camera drone into the air and piloted it around a bit, looking down by moonlight. She decided against the dude ranch and the horse ranch and picked a cattle ranch. We parked well away from it in order to approach on foot. I hummed the Mission: Impossible theme as we worked our way cross-country to the border of the property. At the fence, Mary thwacked me in the head and I stopped humming.

  I frighten cats. I don’t seem to frighten cattle. How do the cats know something the other animals don’t?

  Breaking and entering gave me practice at sneaking. Then my job was to be lookout while Mary carefully bit some cows. They seemed to dislike the actual biting, but once it was done, they calmed down. I suspect they were accustomed to being stabbed with needles; this wasn’t much worse, from a cow’s point of view. Mary didn’t take more than a quart from any one animal, and she spritzed the wounds with a coagulant afterward.

  She’s thoughtful like that. Or good at covering her tracks.

  We managed to sneak back out again without incident. Mary was delighted at being taken out for Thanksgiving dinner. I had to admit it was more fun than some dinner dates I’ve been on.

  Saturday, November 28th

  The van and trailer are all set up. I’ve got the plastic part of a canned-air horn mounted on the van’s grill; it scoops in magical energy in a broad area, like the magnetic scoop on a fusion ramjet. This feeds it into the van. There’s another one like it on the roof of the trailer, catching anything the front one misses and giving it to Bronze. I’ve also got several more spells converting auxiliary power from the van’s systems—plug-in points for charging gadgets, that sort of thing—into more magical energy.

  If this keeps up, I’ll be ready to try a small gate to Karvalen soon.

  Mary thinks that would be a good idea. She napped yesterday afternoon after spraying my scratches—we really need to work on that, by the way. It’s not that she’s… how to put this? Mary doesn’t particularly enjoy causing me pain. It seems to be an involuntary thing. It wouldn’t be so bad, really, if her fingernails weren’t exceptionally tough and strangely sharp. In the future, her morning routine will include doing her nails; I showed her how to use the electric die grinder I use for mine. I’m getting tired of being careful of my wounds all day.

  At any rate, when she woke up, she told me she had a terrible dream. She couldn’t remember the details, but there was a sense of something dark and powerful looking for her. I don’t know if that’s the orb, the Elders, miffed magi, or my personal nightmare. I don’t like any of those options, either. Of course, it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already, but it does add a sense of urgency to my work.

  We’ll see how the charge looks tonight. We’re not driving the RV to Karvalen, I know that much, but we might have enough to run through it if we have to. I think it more likely we could get T’yl to help from his end, assuming we can send him a message and coordinate a transfer.

  We went through Santa Rosa this morning and we’re coming up on Albuquerque. We’ll still be outside the city for the sunset, which suits me. I can try to send a message through to Karvalen tonight; I’ll be using a pyromantic effect rather than building a gate for it. It should be much less draining, if it works. And if it’s a particularly draining effort, I’ll have a major buffet—excuse me, “metropolis”—in the near distance.

  Mary and I discussed why I need to call back to Karvalen. I need to find out what happened to Tort. She says she understands, but she also had a terrible dream about something awful on the horizon. Is that because she’s having psychic dreams? Or is it a normal dream from dreading this call, afraid it will change things? She knows I’m married to a mortal queen in Karvalen, after all. There’s a whole life on the other side she’s only heard about. Now it may be about to become something more real and immediate.

  I like Mary. I like her a lot. But I also like a lot of people in Karvalen, especially Tort. How do I balance these things? What’s fair to all of them? What’s fair to me? Or do I matter?

  This is why I don’t have relationships. They confuse me.

  One good thing about New Mexico is the huge tracts of land without a swamp to be seen. It’s striking how much empty space you can find in the southwestern United States. Once we got past the Sandia Mountains, there were some housing developments near the road, but beyond them was nothing but a big, wide-open empty.

  We pulled off the highway and found an out-of-the-way spot to park. Sunset did its thing and we cleaned up in the van shower. Even before I got out, I knew Bronze was looking at all that open ground. She’d been cooped up in that trailer for much too long—never mind she was enjoying the trip, now that she was used to trailer travel. I can enjoy a road trip and still want to get out and stretch my legs. Her leg-stretching takes vastly more room and a lack of witnesses.

  Mary practiced some exercises for building a mental study. Bronze and I went for a run. It wasn’t a long run—ten, fifteen minutes at most. Maybe twenty. All right, it could have been half an hour. Possibly a little longer. No more than an hour. Or so.

  Bronze needed it. Actually, we both needed it. Truth to tell, it felt good to get the wind in my hair and smell Bronze’s internal furnace at full blast again. She bore down, racing her moonshadow and darn near gaining on it. She loves making fire and thunder in open spaces, trying to bite the horizon.

  I swear, she’s faster than I remember. She thinks so, too. She’s been giving it thought and working on it.

  I’m not sure what to make of that.

  When we returned, Mary had an interesting question.

  “May I try? I’ve never ridden a horse that fast.”

  “You know how to ride?” I asked. It hadn’t come up in conversation.

  “I used to. It’s been years since I got to compete in a steeplechase. Not only is it a daylight sport, horses don’t like undead.”

  “Steeplechase.” Well, that settled whether she knew how
to ride, at least.

  “Yes. Mother hated the idea; she hated the idea of any sports for her little girl.” Mary grinned at me. “Dad was much more liberal. I kind of suspect Mom married him for his money and for the social position, then fell in love with him later. Dad, being born there, didn’t care as much about appearances as she did.”

  “Seems reasonable. I’m not the one you have to ask.”

  Right about there, Mary did something to convince me I could love her. Without a moment of hesitation, she turned to look at Bronze—the towering statue with the smoke pouring out the nose and the occasional licks of flame coming from the mouth like a tongue—and asked politely if Bronze would consent to carry her.

  Mary did not ask if she could ride. She asked if Bronze would carry her.

  It’s a subtle thing, maybe even trivial. But someone once told me that when it comes to relationships, nothing is trivial.

  Bronze extended a foreleg and bowed. Mary mimed holding a skirt and curtseyed in return.

  If I’d had a heartbeat, it would have skipped one.

  Bronze bent a leg for Mary to use as a step. Mary bounced up into the saddle, grabbed fistfuls of mane, and whooped aloud. Bronze turned in place, took aim at the horizon, and tried to catch it.

  I watched them vanish into the distance. Bronze listened to Tort, too. So much so, in fact, that while I was asleep for several decades, people started to think of Bronze as belonging to Tort, which is patently ridiculous. Bronze belongs to Bronze.

  Bronze likes Tort. Bronze also likes Mary. So do I.

  I paused, half-expecting a sarcastic comment from Firebrand. It remained silent, with not even an I-told-you-so.

  While they rode through the night, I turned my attention to my spellcasting.

  There were two main things I wanted to try. One was a relatively low-power application, the other was a brute-force idea.

  Since there was some sort of fire connection to my daughter—probably a simple case of correspondence; fire there and fire here established a connection through similarity—I could start small. Build a fire, have extra fuel on hand, and see if I could reach Amber through it. I have an advantage in that sort of call; I know exactly who I’m trying to reach and she’s made of fire, herself. Even so, some caution was advisable. I’d have to start small and build up. If I did it wrong, I might accidentally summon her instead of simply communicating with her.

  The more brute-force idea was to prepare a message spell, open a small gate, and throw it through. Once on the far side, I would just have to hope it was close enough to home in on T’yl.

  I got my stuff together, locked everything up, and walked off a little distance while I reviewed what I wanted to do. I selected a bare patch of ground with some cover between me and the nearest housing development. No sense in attracting more attention than necessary.

  The first thing I did was a containment circle, scraped into the ground. This is the equivalent of putting on the apron, gloves, and goggles in a laboratory. Then came a big pile of deadwood and a couple of pieces of coal. Some plastic, printed symbols tapped into the earth around the circle. A couple of scratched symbols, as well, because I focused more on gate-related symbols than on communications symbols. Sue me. I also cut the coal into flat tiles and scratched Amber’s name into them in the Rethven alphabet.

  Firebrand lit the fire for me. It burned immediately. I spread my hands, felt the power I’d stored in my gems, and started to wave my hands, sketching invisible symbols in the air, and chanted.

  I always feel stupid doing that. I think I look silly.

  The fire took on a brighter color, shading into the yellow-white I remembered. Maybe a touch of blue, for Amber’s eyes? Yes.

  “Amber.”

  I repeated it. I would have thrown some blood into the flames for the relationship; I’m her father and we’re related by blood. The problem was I have a hard time bleeding at night. I should have drawn some earlier.

  Something stirred in the flames, then the blue sparks glowed brightly. The flames rose higher, going from a campfire to a six-foot pillar of light.

  “Father?”

  “That’s my girl.” I threw more wood on the fire as the flames resolved into a woman-shape. “I’m calling to say hello and see how things are. Is this a bad time?”

  “No, merely unexpected. Are you here? Or are you still elsewhere?”

  “Still elsewhere. Most definitely elsewhere.”

  “Good. The Church of Light still seeks you. I don’t think they know where you are.”

  “Good. Can you tell me what happened to Tort?”

  “Happened to her?” Amber’s fiery image asked.

  “Where is she? Is she okay? Was she harmed in rescuing me?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I have not seen her in some time. We do not move in the same circles, you know.”

  “Damn. Okay. She helped me with the possession problem and I get the impression she may have problems of her own, therefore. Can you find out from T’yl?”

  “I will certainly inquire. Discretely,” she added. “The Church of Light does not like her, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “She was your Court Magician for nine years. Your unflinchingly loyal and dedicated Court Magician.”

  “Court Magician to the Demon King?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That could be a problem. What else do I need to know?” I threw more wood on. Next time I did this, I’d have someone to feed the fire and a much larger woodpile.

  “The kingdom is doing well under the Queen. She has taken control in Carrillon with the backing of Torvil and Kammen—and therefore all the Knights of the Sword—and even Seldar agrees it is her right to rule. T’yl gives at least lip service to her authority. He resides in your palace atop Karvalen, so there is little the Queen requires of him. She is doing less well, I hear, at keeping the conquered princes united under her rule. Her efforts are mostly economic and social ones, rather than the direct military intervention her predecessor used. I suspect they do not respect her as they did the Demon King.”

  “You mean they don’t fear her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought she’d make a good queen.”

  “You were right, for the most part. She is more subtle than the Demon King, and the nobility—the former princes—are not accustomed to subtlety.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose. I’ll have to think about how best to help her with that.”

  “As for your heir and his siblings, your descendants are not actively persecuted by the Church of Light, although there has been some question about their fitness to rule—”

  “Hold it,” I interrupted. “You mean to tell me the Church is challenging whether or not the kids are legitimate?”

  “Oh, no. No one questions their parentage. Who else would get a child upon the Queen? The Demon King would flay him living and strangle him with his own skin. The Church of Light questions their fitness to rule, making noises about their heritage as demonspawn. Whether they really believe it or not is open to question, though. I think—and I admit I am hardly without bias—the Church of Light wishes to remove your heirs from the succession, making a power struggle for the throne inevitable. They could use such chaos to their advantage.”

  My suggestion was unkingly and anatomically unlikely for the Church of Light. Amber’s fiery figure nodded. I think she was smiling.

  “They have some old scores to settle,” Amber noted, “and they are greatly weakened as an organization. You did terrible things to their structure right before old Rethven fell apart.”

  “That wasn’t all my fault,” I countered, throwing on the last of the wood. “Tobias did most of that—their own Hand faction screwed over their central command, if I heard right.”

  “True, but they hold a grudge.”

  “A religion that holds a grudge? Nonsense. They are paragons of righteousness and mercy.”

  “Your sarcasm is understandable. Could it relate to the Mothe
r?”

  “I probably shouldn’t answer that. You know my feelings.”

  “Yes, and so does She. She already told me you need to know what happened with my brother.”

  “She could have saved everyone the aggravation if she’d told me when I asked,” I pointed out, “instead of slapping me with a solar flare.”

  “Dad,” Amber said.

  “Oh, all right. I’m listening,” I replied, seriously.

  “She’s a goddess. She has an ego big enough to eclipse mountains. But don’t tell Her I said that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Thank you. You do have to admit—would you, please?—you came into that conversation with an attitude other than gentle persuasion.”

  “Fine,” I agreed, because she was right. And my daughter. Probably mostly because she’s my daughter. “I wasn’t in the best of moods. I admit it. She still could have—”

  “And you could have been more polite,” Amber interrupted. I sighed. Yes, she had a point. I didn’t have to like it.

  “I could have,” I agreed, wearily. “Yes.”

  “She’s being…” Amber groped for a word. “Understanding? No. She’s trying amazingly hard—for a goddess—to be conciliatory. I think She really does care what you think of Her.”

  My reply was one word and involved fertilizer production. Amber’s fiery visage smiled.

  “That’s my opinion, of course,” she consoled, tolerantly, “as a priestess. And as a fiery avatar.”

  Damn it, she’s definitely my daughter. She has a genetic predisposition for knowing what to say to me.

  “Okay. I acknowledge your superior expertise. But before you finish telling me what happened to Beryl, answer me this. Since you were only a baby, yourself, did Sparky tell you what happened? Or did Tamara?”

  “I heard it from the Mother, first, when I was young. I spoke to my mother, Tamara, about it. She confirmed it.”

  “Damn.”