Nightlord: Shadows (16 page)

“I need some armor,” I said, and started to explain.

“Six weeks,” he said, without looking up. “Got too much right now to do it any faster.”

“Do you know who this is?” Torvil asked. The smith glanced up, looked back down.

“Fancy guy in armor,” he said, still hammering.

“This is the king!”

“King of what?”

“King of Karvalen!”

Wethel looked me up and down.

“I thought you’d be taller,” he observed.

“Judge me by my size, do you?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Tell me, do you work with magic in your metal? Or is it plain steel?”

“I use a little forge magic,” he said, slowly, suspiciously. He stopped hammering to point at the fire-symbols carved into the sides of the forge and the anvil. “Stokes up the fire quick, keeps the metal hot out of it longer. Why?”

“In exchange for prompt service, I will put a spell on your forge that will cut what you pay for fuel by half, and keep in so much heat that you may have to build a separate fire to heat this room in the winter.”

He looked at me suspiciously, trying to find a trick.

“I’ll show you, if you like,” I offered.

He gestured me to the glowing forge. I gathered up magical energy and formed it into a webwork that crawled inside. I mounted it on the interior surface and started adjusting it. It would reflect everything—heat, light, all the radiant energy. It was as close to a perfect reflector as I could make it.

A second spell crawled up the chimney and built a lattice all through the open space. The hot air was wasted heat. The lattice through which it now flowed would draw heat from the air. With magical lines connecting that lattice to another in the pipe through which the bellows pumped, the temperature between outflow and inflow would equalize, keeping yet more heat inside.

“There,” I said. “That’s the basics. It’s not going to last more than two or three days, but see if that’s an improvement. And, if you like it, I can probably provide you with a new bellows design that will pump up the forge even hotter, and with less effort. Just a thought. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

We strolled out and left him to play with his super-furnace.

“It’ll still take him time to make anything,” Torvil pointed out.

“And a good point you make,” I answered. “Well, it’s a warm day. How deep is the water in the canal?”

“Uhm. About chest deep,” he said, putting a hand on his body to demonstrate.

“Good! Then let’s get you guys in shape. If we can’t work on your skills, we’ll work on your physique.”

We went out to the canal and paused on the brink.

“You all know how to do some basic healing spells, right?” Three nods.

“Seldar is the best,” Kammen said.

“I gathered. How much better?”

“I have somewhat greater talents in that arena than my friends,” he admitted. “I know the spells and many techniques for using them.”

“He’s the healer,” Torvil said. “Kammen and I aren’t wizards, just amateurs. Seldar could be a wizard—a real wizard—if his father would let him.”

“Good to know. So, what does a typical, general healing spell do, Seldar?”

“It instructs the body to exert its life force in a manner specific to the spell. If used to heal a wound, the whole of the body is directed to the wound, to heal it. If used to heal a sickness, the body is… awakened? Instructed? Told to fight the sickness. Illness is much more difficult,” he added, “because you cannot aim for an illness, only encourage everything else to fight it.”

“A good description. And do you know the one that links the lives of the healthy to the life of a wounded person?”

“I know of it, but I am not so skilled as to perform it safely.” He paused. “It is dangerous if done improperly.”

“It can be, but I have a talent for it,” I said, and winked. “I’m going to cast a healing spell on you three, and on me. You’re going to work, and work hard, at using your muscles and building them. The spell will help with that, because your bodies will realize that they are supposed to be getting stronger. And you’ll also have me helping, because you’ll have some of my life energy supporting and powering you as we work. Got it?”

Whatever their personal opinions, they stood up straight and agreed. Full marks for guts, these three.

So I worked my spells over them and through them, telling their muscles to grow long fibers, short fibers; thicken and reinforce the tendons mounting muscle to bone; cardiac muscle fiber, too, because it’s different from normal muscles; tell the rest of their bodies to wake up and get moving on helping with that.

I also tied their lives together with mine so that we would share each other’s energies, allowing us all to draw strength from the others as we exerted ourselves. It’s really a refinement of a healing spell that drains vitality from a healthy creature to improve the rate of healing in a wounded one. In the version I used on us, energy could flow both ways.

If I set it up with a magical diode—a one-way power transfer—could I do this at night? What would be the effect on a living, breathing mortal to get vitality from an undead creature? That was something to find out much, much later, with some test animals and maybe a volunteer.

“All right, everyone into the canal.” We jumped in, stood up. Yes, the water was shallow enough to stand in, about four feet deep; my misgivings about drowning were completely unfounded. The walls of the canal varied in height with the terrain; they were always at least a foot higher than the water, more when the canal cut through a rise. Over dips in the ground, the canal resembled a bridge of solid stone. Here, the water was about two feet below the lip. If I jumped, I could see over; otherwise, we were in a long, water-filled hallway.

“Now, follow me!” I headed upstream, toward the mountain, slogging through the water. They fanned out and followed, not asking questions. It’s good exercise, I give it that. I can plow through water fairly easily, but then I’m unreasonably heavy and even by day, I’m shockingly strong. They slogged gamely after me, determined to keep up, and I let them.

I suppose it would have been more efficient to walk alongside the canal, saving my energies for them to draw on. They could have gone on longer, then. Purely from a mathematical standpoint, that was the right thing to do. Keep working, keep building strength, and do it longer and harder. Objectively, rationally, that’s the right way.

But not from my standpoint. I wasn’t going to walk alongside the canal while they struggled. I was going to be in the water, right there with them, leading the way. Not standing above them and yelling at them to try harder. If I wanted them to try harder, I’d go faster, and they would try to keep pace.

And they did. Seldar was having rough going, being the shortest of them, but he dug in with his toes, made swimming motions with his arms, and powered on at his best speed. All three of them made me proud. They didn’t ask questions, they didn’t hesitate, and they didn’t let up for an instant. They just followed me. What could I do with a hundred like them? What couldn’t I do?

They also frightened me. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t hesitate. They went all in, just on my say-so, because I went in. I’m going to have to work on their judgment, I think. They need to know that it’s okay to ask questions when I’m having a private chat with them. They already have the part about jumping straight into it when they’re given an order. Right now, I have fanatical children following me like baby ducks, all in a line.

One more reason I think I’d like to go home. If I stay, they’ll expect me to king, and I’m not comfortable with that.

We struggled up the canal as fast as we could go. I started calling an old cadence, chanting it while we planted a foot on every other beat.

“Come on, I chant it out, you chant it back!

“I don’t know but I’ve been told!”

“I don’t know but I’ve been told!”

“If you don’t slow down you don’t grow old.”

“If you don’t slow down you don’t grow old!”

“The sun is bright but I’m still cold.”

“The sun is bright but I’m still cold!”

And so on. Apparently, a singing canal is unusual; people occasionally came over to watch us run/swim slowly by. We ignored them. Well, I ignored them. My ducklings were more than a little self-conscious, but they plowed on.

I’m used to feeling the flow of life energies within me; I know when I’m running out. Unlike human beings, I practically have a fuel gauge. There came a point where, if I was a car, I was about to have a little light come on a computer voice scold me for not filling up the tank. Since we were sharing energies, they had to be about the same level of exhausted.

I called a halt, boosted each of them out of the canal, and they combined their efforts to help haul me out of the water. I probably didn’t need the help; even with the armor, I could have jumped it. But doing things as a team is also important. We flopped on the road and dripped there for a while, breathing heavily and resting. It took a bit, but eventually we all sat up.

“Good run,” I told them. “Now we get back in and walk back.”

“It’s a long walk,” Kammen noted.

“It is. But this time, you can swim.”

“Will you?”

“No. I can’t swim.”

They traded a look.

“We could teach you,” Torvil offered.

“You don’t understand. I can’t. Boom. Straight to the bottom. Here, the three of you—lift me.”

I lay down and waited. Kammen is the strong one; he got my ankles. Seldar and Torvil each got an arm. They lifted—and I didn’t move. They changed grips, moved around, and I tried to make it as easy as possible. Grunting, they got me off the ground, then put me down. I sat up.

“See the problem? Even without the armor, I’m—what? Two or three times what I should weigh? I float about as well as Bronze. I’ll walk back, but I’ll take my time, and you three can swim after me.”

They agreed immediately. Again, no questions. That bothers me. I’m going to have to get these three into a classroom and force them to be confused, just so they’ll get used to the idea of asking me things.

We got into the water and I started marching. I kept us at a pace that was tiring enough that we didn’t feel any better as time went on, but slow enough that we weren’t wearing ourselves out, either. Pushing along at a level that kept us at “tired,” bordering on “exhausted” was the endurance portion of the exercise. It also gave the other spells more of a chance to see what needed more work—muscle fibers, mainly, but also the circulatory and lymphatic systems, to prevent the buildup of fatigue toxins.

It took a while to get back to Mochara, and it was well after lunchtime. Judging by the way we felt, it was also overdue. We dripped mostly dry by the time we half-walked, half-staggered back to Tort’s house. I ran a quick cleaning spell over us when we reached the front door, just to be polite.

Tort was expecting us. Pilea was already piling food on the table. We sat down and ate.

“Did you have a premonition, or did you see this coming?” I asked, careful to do so without food in my mouth.

“I helped you build that defensive spell,” she said. “I know a seeking cannot find you, but I knew where you were. I kept you in view. Thus, I did not need to locate you.”

“Huh. Well, that works. I can live with that. But how is it I didn’t see the other end of the spell?”

“I kept putting them in windows around town to look down on the roads. They were always on the second floor, and you do not look up.”

Dammit. I thought I broke myself of that habit. Mental note for the future.

“You followed me with a scrying spell by looking down at me?”

“No, I followed you with a succession of scrying spells along the length of the canal. The terminus of a scrying spell does not move.”

“Ah. You’re either more clever or better trained than I am. I’m guessing both,” I told her. She blushed and looked down. I took it as an opportunity to stuff my face. While I might not benefit from a physical workout…

Hmm. Do I? During the day, I’m alive. I eat, I breathe, I bleed, all that stuff. Admittedly, my metabolism and biology are weird, but does that mean I can’t benefit from jogging, weightlifting, or yoga? How would that affect my nighttime metabolism? Will I regenerate back into my “normal” state, or will I keep any gains I make? And, if I increase, say, muscle mass, will that change how strong I am at night, or is that purely a function of the magical metabolism of semi-dead people? If my living lift goes up by a pound, does that mean my dead lift (no pun intended) goes up by five? Or ten? Or whatever the ratio is? Come to that, what is the ratio? How much stronger am I at night?

It’s so depressing to have no lab rats.

Hmm, again. Can I make vampire mice?

On second thought, whether I
can
or not, I
should
not. Skip that idea. The thought that vampire mice might escape and get loose in the world isn’t worrying, it’s downright frightening. Also comic, in some ways. I can visualize a white mouse with a black opera cape and glowing pink eyes; he’s ordering around legions of rats… No. No, no, and no.