Nightlord: Orb (7 page)

The place was a mess.  It needed a good cleaning and reorganization.  Whatever else my dark side might be, it was also a lousy housekeeper.

I noted the trapdoor in the floor was still there.  Later, when I had a moment and some attention to spare, that was getting deleted.

“Now we may have enough time for the short form,” T’yl fretted.  “The Church of Light was not destroyed when you killed Tobias and buried the Hand compound in rubble.  It was merely out of favor.  Their kingdom-wide power was broken, but the
religion
continued to exist.  Your other self has been a prime recruiter for them; he was everything they needed in a persecutor.  He rather enjoyed priests of their persuasion—more than criminals or other sorts your pet giants brought him.

“He also intimidated, killed, angered, or humiliated much of the nobility during the re-conquering of old Rethven.  While we have reunited Rethven, it was a brutal campaign of conquest and slaughter, not the gentler, more patient expansion into those territories you indicated to me.  This left many of the old guard in many city-states disgruntled and bitter, but they dare not rebel against their conqueror.

“Lastly—and perhaps worst—is Thomen.  I am well aware he and Tort once shared affections.  He was disgruntled when she chose to be with you; you salved his pride, somehow, and made him an ally, although not a friend.  Your darker side has not kept him as an ally.  It mistreated Tort and used her, but she stayed with him because ‘her angel’ wanted it so—and her devotion to you infuriated Thomen.

“When Tort discovered the reason for the apparent change in you, she still bore it with a smile, for your sake, to stay close to that thing so she could work its downfall.

“Tort never told Thomen of your circumstances.  She feared he would work to have you killed in the procedure, rather than restored.  Not knowing why Tort would be so loving and devoted to such a monster, Thomen moved from infuriation to hatred.  He has many in his Guild who will follow his orders without question, and more who will follow him in good cause against a tyrant.  I believe he was—and is—actively working against the reign of your darker self, possibly in conjunction with the Queen, but I know only what little Tort has told me of that.

“Now, with the King in Karvalen and alone—having left his personal killers and his two pet giants, Torvil and Kammen, back in Carrillon to keep order among his court—these factions now see their chance to attack and destroy what they think is still a monster.  How they have managed to raise such support in Karvalen with lightning swiftness, I do not know, but there are, plainly, over a hundred armed men trying to find you and kill you.  Those men, along with several priests of the Church of Light, as well as some unknown number of wizards, are charging down the empty corridors this moment!” he finished, shouting.

“Look, T’yl, this is all a misunderstanding.  I’m sure that once we explain what happened—”

“No!” he cut me off.  “You
still
fail to understand!  Ye gods and demons, how can you be so
slow
?  They do not want an explanation; they do not want to talk.  There will be neither parley nor truce while you work some trickery to their downfall.  They have seized what they see as an opportunity to kill you for what they believe you have done.  It does not matter that you are innocent. 
It does not matter
that you are an entirely different person!  When they blast down that door, they will see only the tyrant nightlord.  The priests will pray at you; the wizards will cast spells at you; the warriors will attack you.  By all their powers combined, they will
cut you down!
”

Ah.

Well.

That certainly put a different spin on things.  I thought about it for a moment.  If T’yl was right, then, yes, this could be more than a trifle unpleasant. I didn’t like the feeling of being hurried out the door, of course.  I would much rather take a step back, look over the situation, and decide for myself.

Unfortunately, by the time I got a complete grasp of the situation, I might be dead.  Deader.  Seriously dead.

Tort, Tianna, T’yl, Firebrand, and Bronze were all in on this.  They had a plan worked out.  I really should have the decency to not screw it up.

“So, what do you suggest?” I asked.

“Run.”

“I’m strangely okay with that,” I agreed.  “I bet I could hide out with the People of the Plains, maybe with the
viksagi
…”

“You misunderstand.  They will hunt you even though you flee to the Spire of the Sun or the Horn of Ice.”

“But you told me to run—”

“Through the gate.”

“Hmm.”

“Go through it, wherever you will, and I will destroy it after you.”

“Maybe,” I allowed, unwillingly.  Running isn’t always a bad idea; I’m not against it.  I have a lot of time and care invested in this place, though.  And there are things about it that I love… “First, though, tell me what happened to Tort.  I have to know.”

“There is no
time!
” he shouted.

I slammed a hand down on my desk and everything in the room jumped.  Papers fluttered. The trapdoor gave a resounding thud as something heavy hit it from below.  It held; I ignored it.

“Don’t tell me we don’t have time!” I shouted right back.  “You have
no idea
how fast things move in here!  Firebrand will tell me if anyone enters the room and Bronze will cheerfully stomp anyone coming through that door into a sizzling meat paste! 
Now tell me what happened to Tort!
”

T’yl and I glared at each other for several seconds while we got a grip on our collective composure.

“Stubborn jackass,” he growled, quietly.  “She intended to use her reflection in the mirror to seize the creature’s reflection.  In some fashion I do not understand, she would then pull the creature itself into the mirror, leaving your flesh empty.  If all went as she planned it, she would then activate the mirror and it would become the black sphere.  If the thing inside was too strong for her to devote attention to activating the spells, then she would have to keep it penned until someone else could activate them—you, if you could occupy your body quickly enough, or I, on my way as soon as word went out through the Dragonsword.”

“Okay, I get that.  Now, answer my question:  Where is Tort?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted.  “I never saw her spells.  All I know is she was in the mirror with that Thing, and if she remained, it would consume her.  She knew that.  She did it anyway.”

“She didn’t have an escape plan?” I demanded.

“How?” T’yl replied, which stopped me.  If T’yl, a professional magician and Tort’s teacher, couldn’t see a way to survive the process, there very well might not be one.  Then again, she created spells T’yl didn’t understand.  Maybe she did have a way.  But if she was trapped in there with a ravening monster-spirit-reflection-thing, she might still be fighting it.  I had no idea how it worked or what precautions she might have taken.

“Is it possible she’s still in there, still uneaten?” I pressed.

“It’s possible, but unlikely.  You don’t know the power of that thing!”

“Don’t I?” I asked, softly.  T’yl sighed.

“Very well, perhaps you do.  No, certainly you do.  Of course.  Forgive me.”

“I might.”

T’yl sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Fine.  So take the sphere with you through the gate.  Experiment with it at your leisure; you certainly don’t have time to play with it here and now.  Go, you idiot, and save her if you can—save yourself, first, so you have the
chance
to save her!”

“Damn you,” I said.  He found the one argument that could persuade me to abandon everything else.  “What about Amber and Tianna?  What about all the children my body sired?  Torvil?  Kammen?  Seldar?  What about the kingdom?”

“Lissette can choose a new King, or we can have a regency until Liam—the eldest of her children—is old enough to take the throne.  I can see to the good care of the rest!  That isn’t your concern, not anymore!  Now
go!
”

We stepped out of my headspace together.

Bronze shut the pivot-door and waited, hooves planted firmly on the floor to hold the door shut.  Anyone outside would have to tunnel in; the door wasn’t about to move.  The only trouble was the wizards.  If they were determined to do it, they
could
tunnel in, or at least blast the door.

“Firebrand?  Anybody out there?”

Not yet.  I can hear them, but they’re still a long way off in fighting terms.  Not all that far at a dead run, though.

“I love it when you’re exact.”

I’m a sword, Boss, not a yardstick.

“Sorry.  I’m a little on edge.”

Weapon puns.  Nice touch.

“Thanks.”

T’yl moved to the gate and started working.  I drew Firebrand and pointed it toward the door.

Nope, still not here, yet.

“Keep me posted.”

I moved to stand next to T’yl.  He was covered in sweat and was clearly exerting himself.  He held a key of blackened silver in his hands.  I recognized the design as one of the keys from Telen—one of the ones they used to make opening a Gate easier for their inter-universal vampire hunting parties.  I wanted to ask him how he got it, but would probably just tell me it was a long story.

“How can I pick up the ball?” I asked, instead.

“Try your cloak,” he suggested, eyes still on the gate.  I thought that a brilliant idea.  I unpinned the fancy thing and wrapped the ball in it.  The sensation of a malignant presence grew stronger as I picked it up, but it didn’t seem able to reach out of the glass.  Maybe it could if I actually made skin contact with it, which was high on my Do Not Do list.  It was surprisingly heavy—a hundred pounds?  I’m not good at gauging weight; my strength fluctuates too much between night and day.  It seemed much heavier than I expected, though.

They’re at the door,
Firebrand reported.  Moments later, there were muffled thuds of fists on stone.

“T’yl?”

“Get ready,” he ordered, teeth clenched.  I didn’t need to check with Bronze; she nodded, mane tinkling at the movement.  I bounced lightly up onto her back and she shifted slightly, preparing to spring toward the gate.  T’yl pressed his hands together with the key between them and glanced at me.

“I wish you well, my King, and goodbye,” he said, and drew his hands apart.  The key floated in the air between them, glowing with a pale bluish light.  The archway filled with a silvery sheen that spun away like a whirlpool viewed from above.  It seemed to whirl and twist, reaching into infinity, the far end slithering around as though hunting for something.

I recognized what he was doing based on theory; I’d never seen it before.  He was using the power stored in the structure of an enchanted item—not only the charge any enchanted item builds up in order to function, but the energies built up and tied down in the structure of the object.  The
enchantment
, the structure of it, was burning itself up to do its job.  Technically, two things were—the gate and the key, both.

I wondered why.  Then I answered myself.  Because opening a gate is strenuous, opening a big gate even more so, and opening a big gate between universes is almost impossible.  T’yl couldn’t do it by himself.  But this way, yes, he could open the gate—once.  As a bonus, this would also destroy it behind me.

Bronze pushed off from the door, rounded the pool in the center of the room in a screaming skid of blue-green sparks, and headed directly for the Gate.  I did what I usually do when she makes drastic maneuvers: hung on for dear life and tried my best to neither scream in terror nor succumb to maneuvering forces.

The whirlpool snapped like a whip and suddenly the far end of the whirling light was right there, at the archway, an opening no more unusual than a door to the outside.  We pounded through it onto wet grass.  Lightning flickered overhead as rain came down in sheets.  Thunder grumbled a bit, muted by the leafy trees around us.

I turned; T’yl had a fist over his heart in salute.  Our eyes met.

“I
will
come back,” I told him, over the sound of wind and rain.  He nodded.  Then the key began to glow more brightly and disintegrate.  T’yl turned away and threw himself into the raised pool in the center of the room.  Bronze kicked divots in the ground, launching us aside in case some sort of nasty effect came through the gate.

The gate spell had linked itself to an archway on this side.  It was an ornamental thing of interwoven metal, probably wrought iron, in an overgrown ruin of some sort.  It destructed at the same time the other one did.  A circular plane of disruption blasted out from it, as though the arch turned into silver-white energy and expanded into infinity… which it might have.  It left strange distortions behind it as it scythed through concrete, earth, and iron.  It made unnatural ripples in the materials as the space things occupied bent in strange ways.  The clouds roiled above us, as though something sucked them up and spat them back down along a narrow line.  I smelled something like scorched iron, briefly, before the wind and rain washed it away.