Nightlord: Orb (73 page)

“If I have to deal with a mortal wife and lovers, I’m going to be judgmental and territorial.  I know it, and I’m letting you know it.  Get used to the idea.  Not because you don’t have a choice, but because
I
don’t.  I know how I work.  I’m not always proud of it.”

“Okay.  We’ll both be as patient and understanding as possible.  Deal?”

“Deal.  And I want you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“If you ever decide I’m being difficult, don’t ignore it.  Talk to me.  Discuss with me.  If necessary, yell and scream with me.  Do
not
quietly take it and never say anything.  I will feel ignored and unappreciated, as though I don’t matter to you.  Too much tolerance and patience will make you seem as though you don’t care.”  She smiled, sadly.  “I’ve been down that road before, too.  When I was still alive.  I know where it goes and how it ends.”  She slid closer to me in the water and put her head on my shoulder.  “I thought I ought to mention it, since you suck at relationships.”

I thought about it for a minute.  I couldn’t think of anything to say.  On the other hand, I could think of a good conversation stopper.  I picked her up and carried her dripping from the bath.  She put her arms around my neck.

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing?” she asked.  “Not that I object, so far.”

I took her to one of the other bedrooms, tossed her on the bed, and pinned her down.  With my mouth next to her ear, I whispered softly.

“I really don’t care if we break this furniture,” I told her.  She leered up at me with a heavy-lidded gaze and a wide, sensual smile.

“Have I mentioned I like you a
lot
?”

I didn’t teach my flesh-welding spell to Mary, but I did show her how I cast it, then gave her control of it.  My wounds weren’t deep, but most of them were pretty long.  I handled her wounds; I forgot to bring my fingernail grinder.  As long as we had the magic for it, why not?  It saved the first-aid sprays for special occasions.

She’s
vicious
at unarmed combat.  If I hadn’t started it, it would have been touch and go.  As it was, since I’m not entirely ignorant and I outweigh her by a factor of three or four, I succeeded in my attempt to subdue her.  Sort of.  I have the feeling she wasn’t really trying.  Mary enjoyed it enormously.  It’s
really
not my cup of tea.  It’s not even my cup of distilled water.  But as long as she enjoys it, I’ll make the effort.  Maybe it’ll grow on me, if she doesn’t accidentally hit an artery in the process.

I cast a spell to connect the main mirror in the Imperial bedroom to my pocket mirror.  It would work like call forwarding; any incoming communication would be shunted to my pocket mirror.  I didn’t want to miss a call if T’yl tried to reach me.

I wanted to go check out the Great Arch; Mary wanted to continue exploring.  We compromised.  Bronze dropped me off at the Plaza of the Arch and carried Mary on an alarm-bell tour of the city.  I got to examine ancient workmanship in the magic of the Arch.  She got to play amateur archaeologist.

The Gate was an impressive piece of work.  As I suspected, it wasn’t a physical construct, but a magical one.  Energy was packed so densely as to form what seemed to be a solid structure.  Degenerate energy, like degenerate matter, possibly?  It wasn’t regular matter, of course.  Rather, it was in a state between regular energy and matter.  It was also quite large and powerful.

As I examined it, I discovered it was tuned specifically for its twin in Tamaril.  That made sense; it would be unable to miss its intended destination and the ongoing power requirements would be drastically reduced.  The only place it could reach out to was the other Arch.  Other gates could make contact with this one only if it wasn’t in use.  In effect, it was a door that could be opened only to Tamaril, but any other magical door could open to here.  Or like a phone with only one number on speed-dial, it could call only one place while any other phone could call it.

That might explain the lack of traffic.  Nobody wants to go to a cursed city of the ancients if they can’t turn around and come right back.

On the other hand, Zirafel, City of the Sunset, was the western capitol of the Empire. Tamaril, City of the Dawn, was the eastern capitol.  What did Sparky do to Tamaril?  Anything?  Or was it still there and hadn’t heard about the curse on Zirafel being broken?  How could it not have heard?  So, why was this place still abandoned?

I resisted the urge to open the Great Arch and see if Tamaril was still standing.  It wasn’t easy to resist; I really wanted to know.  Besides, if we had to run from something, Tamaril might be a good choice—the only choice, if we were going through the Great Arch; we can’t open it to anywhere else, after all.  T’yl could open a gate from the mountain’s gate room, though, to let us through.  But if we activated the Gate from this end, it would alert everyone in Tamaril that Zirafel was once more open for business.  I’m also not sure I could establish a connection to Tamaril and then break the connection.  It wasn’t meant to be turned off.

I was pleased to discover I understood the spell of the Gate better than I thought.  Taking the base spell apart and examining it really improved my comprehension.  I couldn’t improve on the workmanship in the Great Arch, but I thought I might have some things to talk about with the original designers.  Procedural questions, mainly.  Why do it one way and not the other way?  Why have thirty-eight variable transformation subroutines for a point-to-point gate?  Why not an even forty?  Or thirty-five?  That sort of thing. 

The day moved on into afternoon and the weather started to warm up.  I clenched my teeth and ignored the idea the edges of the world should
melt
.  Variable star.  That’s my theory and I’m quite happy with it, thank you.  It’s none of my business how the so-called gods run the place.  It’s possible, somewhere, I might find a world where a shining-faced deity actually drives winged horses across the sky every day.  If there is such a place and I find it, I won’t like it any better and will probably leave immediately.

Back at the Palace, I found Mary digging into dinner.  She was dressed for the occasion, too.  Lots of silky stuff, low-cut and flowing, in every color the clothier’s art could manage and then some; I suspected spells.  Her jewelry was also impressive.  A net of silver and sapphires restrained her blonde hair.  A diadem with an emerald the size of the first joint of my thumb adorned her brow.  Elaborate traceries of wire circled and banded her ears; long, hair-fine streamers of gold and diamonds came down to her shoulders.  Broad bracelets of gold twinkled with intricate designs.  A necklace, almost a mantilla, covered her shoulders and down to the top of her dress with a web-pattern of braided silver and white gold.

She stood up and curtseyed.

“Like it?” she asked, and turned in place.  Fluttering afterimages of color followed her every movement.

“Very nice,” I agreed.  “I’m no expert on fashion, but that’s a head-turning outfit anywhere.  It helps that you’re in it, of course.”  Mary smiled widely and bobbed again.

“Did you know,” she asked, “the Imperial family didn’t live here?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.  I didn’t remember it until you brought it up.  My mental library isn’t as organized as I’d like.”

“I saw.  I’ve been exploring the city and I found their residence.  It’s not like these state chambers.  It’s much more personal.”

“That explains the clothes.”

“Yep.  There’s tons of wardrobe and it’s all preserved.  Quite a number of the wealthier-looking places are in good shape, but there are even more with broken robot maintenance things in them.  I don’t know what went wrong.”

“That’s weird.  They shouldn’t break down.  Then again, they could wear out over time.”

“I think that’s it.  The busted ones were solo.  The working ones were in pairs.  I’ll bet they maintain each other as well as the homes and property.”

“You’re probably right.”  I ran a length of diaphanous material through one hand.  “Nothing objected to you taking any of this?”

“You know, nothing did.  I didn’t even get challenged by a statue or anything.  I’m thinking they relied less on magic and more on guards.  They had some pretty decent locks, though.  I left most of the magical ones alone, but I got all this from things I could open.”

She gestured toward the bedroom and I whistled.  There was a pile of stuff—clothes, jewelry, all sorts of miscellaneous goods.  Well, she was a professional housebreaker.  She didn’t do it for the money; she did it for the fun of it.  And she always wanted to be an international jewel thief.

“Congratulations.  You’re now an inter-universal jewel thief.”  I held up a pendant with a deep yellow stone on it the size of a golf ball.  “This, all by itself, will earn you a place in history.  If you want it.”

“Thank you.” She curtseyed again.  “I’m glad someone appreciates my talents.  Dinner?”

I sat down with her at the table and started eating.  The dish warmed the food to a good eating temperature.  We ate for a bit before Mary resumed.

“I also found some other stuff that wasn’t totally shot.  This place is mostly a ruin, but a few of the unmaintained buildings aren’t too bad, aside from the dirt.  I checked a few of them out.  Public buildings, for the most part.  These guys knew how to build.”

“That they did,” I agreed.

“One of those is a big, domed thing—bigger than most.  It looks like a church.”

“Well,
there’s
a nasty flashback to a major religious organization and their equivalent of the Vatican.”

“Is that bad?” she asked.

“Not as such.  Worrisome, if it’s the Church of Light.  I didn’t think they had anything to do with Zirafel, but I suppose, now that I think on it, they might have influenced Queen Flarima toward religious freedom.  Sparky pretty much had the place to herself in a religious monopoly until the Queen made other religions legal.”

“So, if this Church of Light persuaded the Queen to go with a polytheistic stance instead of a monotheistic one, Sparky might have cursed the place because of that?”

“I know she cursed the place for the rejection of monotheism.  Well, for the rejection of her monopoly, anyway.  I’m not too sure of the details, that’s all.  But back to this dome.  What did you find inside?”

“Stone benches in a sort of stadium seating arrangement, along with a stage, an altar, stuff like that.”

“No giant statue with a big, polished thing hanging over it where the head should be?”

“Um.  Not exactly.”

“Good.”

“The statue was a woman, holding her arms up, like so,” she demonstrated.  Her hands went over her head, insides of her wrists touching, fingers spread wide.  “She didn’t have anything in her hands.”

That sounded familiar—not from my memories, but from my leftovers.  That sounded like the Temple of Fire.

Sparky.  Of course.  They didn’t have time to build a massive temple to the Church of Light between the date of the decree and the start of the curse.

“We’ve only got a couple of hours,” I noted.  “Let’s eat quickly.  I’d like to look at it before nightfall.”

“Why before nightfall?”

“Undead burn in the presence of holy light.”

“Ah.  Suddenly, I’m not hungry.”

“I understand.  Wait a second,” I added, as a thought struck me.  “Did your feet give you any trouble?”

“Not a bit.  Is that because it’s daytime and I have a pulse?”

“I don’t know.  I’d guess that has something to do with it.”

“Then we should hurry.  Let’s go.”

It looked familiar, but most of Zirafel looked familiar.  This particular building design, or something much like it, I had personally seen before.  If someone crossed the Astrodome with Notre Dame, this might be the result.  It was a mammoth dome done in some sort of white stone.  It might have been concrete; it had no seams, cracks, or joins.  The dome was pierced in two places we could see—sets of double doors, each set facing east or west.

All around this stupendous dome was a paved court of the same stone.  Once gleaming white, it was now dimmed by a layer of dirt.  I could almost hear the shouting of hawkers, hucksters, and shills as they tried to sell offerings to the faithful.

Do we want to go in there, Boss?
Firebrand asked.  From the tone of thought, it didn’t like the idea.

“Yes.”

Are you sure?

“No.”

But we’re going in anyway?

“Yes.”

Are you crazy?

“Jury’s out.”

Mary chuckled.  Firebrand shut up.

Bronze carried us to the western doors; one was ajar enough for a person to slip through.  She nudged one with her forehead and they creaked a little, shifting.  She pushed harder and the door groaned like a damned soul with a hangover.  It gave grudgingly, grinding slowly out of her way.  She stepped inside, hooves ringing more sharply, unmuffled on the pristine stone within.

The circular dome covered a circular amphitheater.  At the top, well above the upraised hands of the statue, an oculus gave us a blue slice of sky and a slanting sun-ray.  Half a dozen rings of benches circled the place, stair-stepping down toward a central stage.  They stopped on a level with the stage, but the stairs continued down into an empty ring around it.  The stage itself had stairs and ramps leading up from there.  Doors in the outer face of the surrounding ring led under the seating.