Nightlord: Orb

by Garon Whited

  The doors and Bronze didn’t have the same color. Bronze was more coppery-gold than bronze-colored. Originally, yes, she was bronze. What’s she made of, now? An alloy of lots of different metals, obviously; I have no idea what to call it. I’m not about to change her name to “Alloy,” but I’m curious.

  The doors opened at a gentle push. Why would they be locked? Why should they be locked? It was impressive, though. I didn’t think doors that massive could be so well-balanced. They must have weighed tons. Then again, Karvalen has rock doors that pivot. Then again again, these were on hinges, not pivoting around a central balance point. Still impressive.

  Inside, the moonlight showed brightly polished floors; I’d hate to try and take a corner while wearing socks. The floor was also covered with intricate tile-work—no scenes, but lots of abstract geometrical designs. Along the walls, a dozen or more big statues stood in alcoves. Another dozen or so, done on a human-sized scale, were arrayed inside the door. They faced away from us, as though the group of them entered before we did. A few more of these lay on the floor in various states of broken.

  Mary started to go in, but I laid a hand on her arm.

  “What?”

  “Those broken statues,” I told her, nodding at them. “They’re the first signs of disrepair we’ve seen.”

  “And?”

  “And the rest of the group aren’t mounted on anything. They’re free-standing.”

  “Unlike the big ones in the niches,” she added, now frowning. “Why?”

  “Exactly. Never underestimate the value of paranoia in a world of magic or technology.”

  I shifted my vision into the magical spectrum and regarded the place more carefully. There was no major spell to be seen, although a number of minor ones were still about—cleaning and polishing, mostly.

  Spells decay over time. You put energy in, the spell runs until the energy runs out, and it collapses. I mentioned as much to Mary, who then switched to magical seeing. She frowned with me, but prettier.

  “So,” she pondered, slowly, “these either started with a battery bigger than the Brisbane reactors…”

  “Look again. They don’t have the capacity. These weren’t built to hold much of a charge. They couldn’t possibly have a duration longer than… say, a week? Probably less.”

  “…or they were put here recently.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “So someone does live here,” she stated.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “Do we shout again?” she asked. “What’s the protocol for housebreaking around here? It’s your world; I’m the tourist.”

  “It’s not my world; I just live here.”

  “You’re a king in this world?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I own the whole world.”

  “Maybe you should,” she suggested.

  “Bite your tongue!”

  “You do it; that’ll be more fun.”

  “Not with my teeth, it won’t.”

  “You underestimate me.”

  “Maybe later. Weirdo.”

  “But a fun weirdo?”

  “Always.”

  “So, do we go in guns blazing?”

  “Let’s see if we can make friends, first. Although being ready for trouble might not be a bad idea.”

  “I brought extra ammo.”

  She drew a pistol and a long knife, then pressed back against the doorframe. I stepped over the threshold and waited. After a moment, I prompted anyone or anything that might be around by saying, “Hello?” Technically, I called out sallev, (sah-lev) which is a Rethven corruption of the old Imperial salleve (sahl-eve). Recognizing my mistake, I tried it both ways.

  A statue against the wall—ten feet tall, sculpted like an Hellenic wrestler—activated. Magic flickered over it, flared to life, and the statue glowed with power. Nice trick. I wouldn’t have noticed the enchantment in sleep-mode without an up-close examination. It lumbered over from its niche to stand in front of the assembled lesser statues. It spoke in the old Imperial tongue.

  “Who comes to the Palace?” The voice sounded gentle and cultured, with a warmly intimate feel. It was also three times louder than a normal speaking voice. I was pretty sure it was a recording. The lines and angles of the enchantment were complicated, but still, fundamentally, a wind-up toy, not a form of life.

  Well, what does one do when the automated doorman asks who you are?

  “Halar, from Rhiatha’Eyn, with Mary, his consort.”

  “Enter, travelers, and be welcome.” The statue lumbered to its niche and returned to immobility. The enchantment shut down and it appeared to be any other mundane statue. Impressive spellmanship.

  I turned to say something to Mary; she was covering the statue with her gun. Her eyes were wide and staring, but she didn’t tremble.

  “Come on in,” I told her, in English. “It’s okay. I think the bouncer cleared us.”

  “Bronze is one thing,” she said, sliding gracefully next to me, gun still trained on the statue, “but that… Is that normal for around here?”

  “I don’t know about normal, but not unusual.”

  “Is it too late to go home?”

  “Nope. Do you want to?”

  “No, I just want to know I can.”

  “Give me a day or two of warning. Gate-work isn’t easy.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” She put her knife away and held my hand—my left, so I could draw Firebrand easily. She kept her gun out.

  We walked around the lesser statues. I wondered what they were for and why they were there. A makeshift barricade? It would slow invaders slightly. Maybe a clumsy alarm? They weren’t too stable. I didn’t see any spells on them, not even the cleaning or polishing spells scattered around the rest of the place.

  It was quite definitely a palace. It was big and impressive, done by people who knew how to do big and impressive. Wide halls, high ceilings, bits of gold and gems here and there for accents, and the occasional mural made me think in terms of Versailles rather than Rome. Nero’s pleasure palace, maybe? Perhaps this was what Rome might have done in trying to copy Versailles. All it lacked was a wall of mirrors.

  We wandered through the place like invading tourists. That is, we walked quietly while looking all around, we stopped at corners to check our turns before going around them, we kept an eye on our rear, and we made sure we knew our way out if we had to leave with frantic haste.

  In the course of our wandering, we found the maintenance crew. They weren’t human, or even alive. They were a pair of tall, spindly constructs made of some springy metal. All their surfaces and edges were rounded and polished smooth. They put me in mind of skeletons, only made of some shiny metal and stretched about fifty percent. Maybe a modern art display based on skeletons done in chrome and stainless steel. They clicked slightly as they moved, clacked softly as they walked delicately across the floor.

  One of them found a mural where the repair spell had failed. It reached out with one arm-like appendage, there was a surge, and a fresh repair spell enveloped the mural.

  “That’s the janitor?” Mary asked.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “What spell did it put on the wall?”

  “Repair spell. Pretty good one, too. Not too powerful, but extremely fine work. My guess is it’s not for major repairs. It might do well at helping to restore an old painting, though, or at offsetting the gradual effects of time and wear. It looks to me as though it might be directly affecting entropy in some way, which is—”

  “—not my area of interest,” Mary interrupted. “Janitors?”

  “Janitors,” I agreed.

  “Are they… alive?”

  “I don’t think so. They look like constructs. Look at the magical structure.”

  Mary stared at them, brows drawn together.

  “They don’t look anything like Bronze. On the inside, I mean. They’re all… lines and angles. Bronze is more cloudy. Foamy.”<
br />
  “She’s a special case. She’s a living entity in a metallic body. These are automatons. Think of Bronze as a… a consciousness in a machine. These are mindless robots, programmed to do specific jobs.”

  “Is one of those jobs ejecting people who mess with them?”

  “Possibly,” I allowed. “It’s also possible every statue we’ve passed is like the doorman, only waiting until we do something unpleasant before throwing us out.”

  “There are hundreds of the things!” she whispered, fiercely.

  “I know. Let’s be on our best behavior.”

  “You could have told me sooner!”

  “Would that make you run faster if they started to move?”

  Mary gave me a dirty look.

  “Remind me to stab you in the heart some night,” she suggested.

  “Okay. Mind if I apologize, first?”

  “Spoilsport.”

  We continued our impromptu tour. The ground floor was obviously devoted to Imperial business. There were rooms for meetings, conferences, speeches, state dinners, all that stuff, but the majority of the rooms struck me as being offices. Small rooms for clerks, managers, or functionaries. Bureaucracy invades every government, apparently. Maybe Max Weber was right.

  The ultimate office, of course, was the throne room, complete with a fancy, gilded chair. The round back and the stylized sun-rays coming out of it led me to believe Sparky might have had a hand in its design. Mary examined it carefully, mostly paying attention to the jumbo-sized golden topaz in the center of the design and the ruby chips along some of the gold rays.

  “Don’t,” I suggested.

  “I’m only looking. Can’t a girl look?”

  “Yes, but you’re an international jewel thief, too.”

  “Not anymore. But I could be an interuniversal jewel thief.”

  “Not tonight, please.”

  “A girl can dream,” she pointed out. “Am I seeing a spell on this, or an enchantment?”

  I examined it with her. Her confusion was understandable. The enchantments in the chair had a sleep-mode, much like the one in the doorman-bouncer statue. They were dormant, almost hidden. When I had time to go paging through the leftover memories of Zirafel’s digested ghosts, that was a technique I wanted to learn.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but they’re buried in the thing, somehow. I’m not sure how they did it.”

  “Look it up in your head?” she suggested.

  “Later.”

  “How would we get a better look?” she asked.

  “We’d have to turn it on.”

  “Is there an easy way to do that?”

  “I’d guess sitting on it might do it. No, wait—” I snapped, but it was too late. She promptly planted herself on the throne. She became promptly un-planted, catapulting the length of the room. She landed well, turning like an acrobat mid-air to land on her feet and tumble. I helped her up.

  “Did you get a look at it?” she asked.

  “Are you hurt?” I countered.

  “Nope! But what does it do, aside from launch people?”

  “I think it’s one of those One True King spells. Whosoever shall sit his butt on this throne and keepeth it there is rightwise king of all Zirafel, or something. Everyone else shall be launched at high speed to make nasty crunching noises upon impact.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I have no idea. It only saw it for a second. And, no, you’re not doing it again. There are other spells on the chair; it might have secondary effects for repeat offenders!”

  “Pshaw. Spells don’t scare me. Giant statues that can crush me, those scare me. You worry too much. ”

  “And I’m still alive.”

  “—ish.”

  “Touché. You’re still not sitting on it again.”

  “Sometimes you’re no fun.”

  “How about we see if there are more portable things you can steal?”

  “And sometimes you are,” she added, brightening.

  The second floor was much less of a public space, being reserved for officials of some sort. Most of the space was given over to large offices, along with meeting-rooms, debate chambers, whatever you want to call them. The furnishings here were also intact and remarkably well-preserved. Apparently, the custodial automatons took care of that, too.

  A third floor existed only in the central section; the wings had two floors. The entirety of the top floor was luxurious and palatial. Imperial family quarters, probably. There were jewels embedded in the walls; that seemed like a clue. The bedrooms were also a clue, and the murals on the walls of the… let’s call it a “playroom,”… weren’t merely suggestive; they were practically a set of instructions. There was also a steam room/bath, a cold plunge, and a warm soaking pool.

  The plumbing interested me. No aqueducts flowed into the palace, so, somewhere, there was a pump. I could see the enchantments on the pools to purify the water and maintain temperatures, but how did they get the water up here? An enchanted pipe that constantly drew water up instead of letting it flow down? Possibly, but that wasn’t how most people got their water in Zirafel…

  Oh. Imperial Family. Kind of a special case, I guess.

  “Halar?”

  “You can call me by my right name,” I pointed out.

  “You’re known as Halar around here, right?”

  “Yes, if you mean ‘in this world,’ rather than ‘this geographic region’.”

  “Let’s stick with that. I’ll find it less confusing.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “What I want,” she said, looking around, “is to move in. This beats the hell out of an archaeological wine cellar.”

  “You’re certainly right about that,” I agreed, waving a hand through the hot water. “I’m leery about moving in until we’ve checked it out thoroughly, though.”

  “Why? It all seems in good shape.”

  “Yes, but how many other surprises—like the janitors—are we going to find? For all I know, there are hidden spells that will go off on any living being attempting to enter the Imperial chambers.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Spells are more dangerous than you think, especially here,” I pointed out. “I know spells—and so do other people—capable of throwing bolts of lightning, balls of fire, missiles of magical force, lances of flesh-freezing cold, or simply cause your heart to stop.”

  “So? I’ll get better.”

  “If they hit you during the day?”

  “Ah. Right. So let’s look for booby-traps.”

  “Okay. But we’ll still spend the morning in the cellar, then come back and look again. I hate surprises.”

  “That’s fair,” she agreed. “Overcautious, maybe, but fair.”

  We looked high and low, searching the Palace for hidden spells and ancient enchantments. We found quite a few, but they were all conveniences. Enchanted windows would move air in or out, heating it or cooling it—they were in constant operation, at present, warming the third floor. Tables would preserve the temperature of anything placed on it—a complicated enchantment, that one, as it would handle multiple dishes at different temperatures. Things like that were high-end enchantments, obviously expensive, but almost to be expected in the Imperial Family’s private quarters. No, certainly to be expected.

  Why did the Empire have a Queen? And, by wondering, I remembered. Queen Flarima ruled the part of the Empire centered around Zirafel, just as Queen Oleana ruled the region around Tamaril. They were subjects to the Emperor as rulers of their own small kingdoms. They continued to rule regardless of which residence the Emperor chose to occupy in the world. The Empire provided Imperial law everywhere, leaving much of the administration to the local kingdoms.

  Well. At least I was no longer confused about something I’d never wondered about before. That’s comforting, in a preemptive sort of way.

  On the other hand, I wondered at the lack of security spells. Obviously, I didn’t have enough people in my di
et who knew about that. Maybe they were actual spells, cast by the Imperial Magicians? Enchantments are fixed, unchanging; they could be discovered, charted, and bypassed. Or did it have to do with the servants? It’s hard to turn your living room into a minefield if people have to go through it every day.

  Still, it was nearly dawn and we didn’t find anything insurmountable. If that held true during the day, we might move in, at least until I found out the situation in Karvalen. Maybe even afterward, depending.

  Local Day? Good Question. First Sunrise.

  We took our resurrection sunrise in the wine cellar. In preparation, we built a couple of fires in the corners and I set up a guide-spell for air movement through the opening of the cellar stairs. It was cold outside and we were about to be mortal. I’ve noticed the transformation from dead to alive goes more smoothly when the corpse is warm. The transformation will fix frostbite as it re-engages the life processes—I think. I also suspect it isn’t a pleasant experience.

  Last night was exceptionally long for us; we went from one time zone to another. No jet lag for the unsleeping undead, though. Sunrise did its usual thing.

  With a few gates on Earth, could I stay in the night forever? Step from pre-dawn to post-dusk every eight to ten hours? There’s probably not enough magic on Earth for such a setup, but elsewhere it might be possible. Elsewhere with time zones, that is. Around here, when the sun comes up, it comes up everywhere.

  As I expected, it was a rough transformation; regenerating my earlier sunburn did nasty things to my metabolism. Mary waited until the tingling died away, then ran upstairs, gasping for air and holding her nose. Her senses are enhanced, too.

  “Yeah, I know,” I called up after her, and worked my cleaning spell. Gunk and goo and everything else rolled off me, slipping downward like a layer of sapient slime trying to get to the floor. It crawled down my legs and up from my toes, slithered over the tops of my boots, and settled into a fetid pile between my feet.