Nightlord: Shadows (3 page)

Four stone-lined channels ran away from the lake, or moat, or whatever—I think I’m going to call it a moat—each with broad, flat roads running along both sides. One set of canals and roads headed into the Eastrange, right into the gap left behind by my apparently-mobile mountain. Another ran north, roughly parallel to the mountains. Another headed east, into the plains, cutting through the rolling hills. The last headed almost due south, toward the ocean; that one might angle slightly westward. Arched stone bridges crossed each of them, one over each canal, about a quarter-mile from the shore of the moat.

“Oh, those canals,” I noted. The water level looked about a foot lower than the lip of the canal, at least locally; I had no idea how deep it was. They were about thirty feet wide or so, a very effective barrier to something that looked much like a long-legged buffalo with curling horns like oversized rams. The nearest group of the shaggy things was, possibly, fifteen miles away to the southwest.
Dazhu
, hmm? Well, now I know what to call them. The smell of them reached me even miles away and a couple thousand feet up. Was that from the intensity of their smell, or just my hyper-acute senses?

A long, straight stone bridge crossed the lake-moat in a line to the southwest. It ran level over a series of wide arches—suitable for barges to row under, perhaps—until it reached the shore. There it made a long, shallow descent to the dirt. This looked like the only connection between the city and the mainland. It was quite wide, something over fifty feet, with a low divider to form two lanes for traffic. It looked like both ends of a one-way street; traffic entered the bridge in one lane and probably followed the road around to the only obvious city gate, a giant pivot-door on the northeast of the city wall, between the one o’clock and two o’clock position.

Looking at it, I wondered if it saw much traffic. It certainly seemed needlessly awkward for a pedestrian; the trip in or out must have been six miles or more.

My guests did not follow me to the wall. They stuck by the door and their cart. I walked back, removing my helmet as I did so. It was warmer than I liked, and I was wearing more armor than I usually do—a bunch of blackened scales over chainmail wherever I might bend, with rigid pieces over the long bones, and the upper half of a breastplate. It was a nice suit, very mobile, and obviously enchanted. Further evidence that someone with money arranged it all.

“Okay, I see breakfast.” At their suddenly-increased tension, I added, “Over the wall. Down on the plains.” They relaxed visibly. I wondered what they might have heard about me, or if they were just naturally suspicious of strangers. Then again, I’d be suspicious of me, too; I’m a suspicious character. “Any idea where my horse is?”

“Um,” Seldar said, “the Lady Tort probably has it, if it belongs to anyone.”

“Tort?” I asked, surprised. Last time I checked, Tort was just a little girl. But, then, I had been out of it for a long time… possibly a very long time. Good to know someone was still around that I might recognize. “Where is she?”

“In Mochara, probably.”

I sighed.

“Okay, look,” I began. “I’ve been having a bit of a nap for the past while. My geography isn’t up to speed.” I glanced toward the Eastrange and the gap of the missing mountain. “In the sense that I’m not familiar with how a map ought to look,” I added. “What is Mochara and where is it?”

They looked at each other again, questioning. Seldar spoke up again.

“Mochara is the city on the coast. Follow the south canal and it will take you straight there.”

“Is that where you three are from?”

They nodded.

“Okay. About how far is it?”

“It can take three days, on foot. One day, if you take a boat and take turns poling,” Seldar said.

“If there are any boats to take,” Torvil observed.

“It is an additional reference,” Seldar replied, “not a suggestion. He may have resources we know not of.”

“Think so?” Kammen asked.

While they chattered, I closed my eyes, folded a bit of power into the equivalent of a paper airplane, and embedded the thought of Bronze. I tossed it away to let it seek her out and tell her I was awake. It hit some sort of magical barrier around me. The barrier flashed as my magical message spell disintegrated.

What the…?

I felt around me. Yes, there was a spell on me. It’s hard to tell when you’re already inside a spell. You have to look for it.

It was surprisingly powerful, in fact; both subtle and old. It took me a minute to figure out what it did. It seemed to absorb whatever magical energy it encountered, whether it was a spell or just ambient magic, and keep it contained and concentrated inside. This kept me in a bubble of constantly increasing intensity of magical energy. I could still cast spells—probably some extraordinarily powerful ones!—but I couldn’t affect anything outside the bubble without the bubble shattering the spell and absorbing the power again. My effective range was about four feet, for all the good that did me.

I didn’t like that spell. It seemed to violate the Laws of Thermodynamics—for me, that’s a problem magic has, just in general. Or so it seems. Maybe magic, by definition, can’t be reconciled with normal physics. Or maybe it requires quantum physics and the willingness to go insane to understand the insanity. Or maybe I just don’t understand the nature of magic well enough to have an opinion. Whatever the case, the spell was there and working.

I wondered why I was wearing it, who put it there, and what it was for. Among other things.

It resembled a spell used in the Rite of Ascension, sort of a final exam for a magician’s doctorate. Normally, it was a twenty-four-hour ordeal where the would-be magician proved his ability to channel power through himself by enduring the rising energy levels without setting his soul on fire.

Don’t ask me how I know that. I didn’t know I knew it until I remembered it. I suspected that swallowing a city of ghosts might have something to do with it. I do retain a miniscule bit of everyone I consume, after all. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands…

The trio was still staring at me. They probably didn’t know what to make of me. That was fair; I didn’t know what to make of me, or of my situation, and I was living it.

“I don’t suppose any of you three are wizards?” I asked. They all nodded, then Kammen and Torvil looked at Seldar. “Good! Can you see the spell I’m wearing?”

“Yes,” Seldar admitted. The other two also nodded.

“Do you have any idea how to take it down?”

“Um.” They looked at me intently, with that semi-unfocused look that wizards get when we’re examining the stuff of our trade. “It’s old,” Seldar said.

“Yeah,” Torvil agreed. “It was well-made, too.”

“I believe it to be an Ascension Sphere,” Seldar offered.

See? Close enough.

“I’ve never seen one, but it could be,” Torvil agreed.

“But it’s
old
. They don’t last more’n a day,” Kammen replied

Seldar’s eyes focused on me. “How is it that you are still alive?”

“Technically…” I started to say, then changed my mind. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, instead.

“This power has been building for a long time. It should have set your soul on fire and turned your flesh to ashes before the first week.”

Again with that “soul on fire” metaphor. Maybe it wasn’t a metaphor. I’d have to think about that when I wasn’t in the middle of it. I don’t really want to know how horrible my situation is if I can get out of it without finding out. It would only promote panic and worry, and they’re on my list of things to give up for Lent.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied. “How do we turn it off?”

They glanced at each other again.

“Well…” Kammen started. “I think… I dunno for sure; I’m no magician. But I think… don’t the initiate sorta soak up all the power?”

“Hmm,” Torvil and Seldar replied.

“I think so,” Torvil added. “I don’t remember.”

“Nor I,” Seldar said. “My talents lie in the healing magics, not the higher. I’m not slated to become a magician.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “If this is the thing we think it is, if I just gather up all the power inside it and tuck it away in some other spell, the main spell should just quit?”

“If it is the spell we think it is,” Seldar agreed. I took another look at the spell structure. Maybe. It certainly looked like an amplifying feedback loop was involved. If the interior power level dropped below a critical threshold, it would probably stop working.

The trouble was, there was a lot of power tied up in the thing. I didn’t want to mess with it right then. Given a choice, not ever. Then again, if the choice is between being immensely powerful within arm’s length or back to normal at any distance, I’ll go with the second.

“Look, I’m just trying to get a message to my horse. My plan is to call my horse, ride down to breakfast, and then decide where to go from there. I’d really like to get all that done before the sun sets and I start to get
really
hungry. Can I get you three to help with that?”

Torvil nodded at the cart.

“How about you just eat the goat?”

I looked at the goat. It looked back. It had no idea what we were discussing. At least, it didn’t chomp through the rope and run like hell.

“I thought that was for your sacrifice?”

“Does it matter how we give it to you?” Torvil asked.

“Oh.” I refrained from asking why they were sacrificing a goat to me, more than half afraid of the answer. “Well, I’m feeling really hungry. One goat isn’t going to do it once the sun goes down.”

“Oh,” he replied, in a very small voice. The three shared a communal glance. “We should probably help you summon your horse.”

I nicked a finger and smeared some blood on the wick of an unlit candle. I backed away as they each lit their own candles, stood around the unlit one, and concentrated. Together, they extended their candles and lit the one in the center, causing it to give off a small cloud of grey smoke. This formed into the shape of a horse and seemed to gallop off to the south, dissipating as it went.

“Good job,” I observed. “That was very well done.” And it was. I couldn’t help them from inside my magical barrier, so they had to do all the heavy lifting. They also had to supply the mental focus on Bronze; I only supplied a drop of blood to provide some helpful correspondence for the magical resonance, and to help Bronze recognize a legitimate message.

They seemed unreasonably pleased at the praise. I wondered if anyone ever complimented them on their work before. They also seemed quite tired. Well, it was a long climb up the circling road to the upper courtyard and an unfamiliar spell; each is exhausting in its own way.

“Come on in,” I told them. “We’ll find someplace to sit down, out of the sun, and maybe find a way to cook that goat of yours.”

They followed me in, Torvil and Kammen pushing the cart like a wheelbarrow while Seldar talked.

“The goat is actually for you,” he told me. My stomach-knot tightened again at the idea of roasted goat. It’s really amazingly good. Then again, almost anything is when I’m hungry.

“How did you know I’d be hungry? No, scratch that. How did you know I’d be awake?”

“We did not. But our families always send boys to Karvalen for their coming of age.”

One sentence, lots of mental associations. My brain kicked around a bunch of information.

Karvalen, in the Rethvan language, translates pretty much to “kingdom of the living stone.”
Khar
was the original word for
stone
or
rock
in the language of Zirafel, along with
vael
, or
life
.
Eyn
, used as a suffix, denoted an Imperial property—in this case, royal property. So, with a bit of grammatical and pronunciation evolution,
vael-khar’Eyn
in the old tongue became
Karvalen
in Rethven.

I thought that rather appropriate, given that the mountain is self-aware. Very slow, but self-aware.

I also found it interesting to realize that
Rethven
was derived from
Rhiatha
, a province of the Imperium. Over time
Rhiatha’Eyn
evolved into
Rethven
. Don’t I sound linguistic and knowledgeable?

At the same time, half a dozen rites of passage from different cultures danced through my head. Four out of six—five out of seven, counting this one—involved some sort of religious ceremony, as well as a test of either courage or endurance or both. These kids were here for something like that and I wondered just how difficult it was supposed to be. Was this a real test of manhood, or just an unsupervised field trip?

“And what happens during this coming of age ceremony?” I asked, rubbing one temple. I suddenly had a minor headache. Is that a sign of vampiric indigestion?

“We make the journey,” Seldar replied, “make sacrifice, stand vigil, and endure any visions or hauntings that might present themselves. If we are brave and true, like our fathers before us, we might emerge from the mountain as men, with stories to tell and enchantments on our blades.”