Nightlord: Sunset (107 page)

Call me provincial, but I take that sort of thing personally.  

“I admit,” I said, “I would like to take a swing at him.  But I don’t see that as being important enough to feed you blood until you change.”

She toyed with the coverlet as I spoke, picking and plucking at it.  Her lower lip was caught between her teeth, and her eyes were large and soft.  Her pose was seductive, showing off her curves.

“There are other things you could have,” she offered.

“I told you I’ve got a consort,” I countered.  “She would turn you into a steaming pile of ashes so fast it might not even hurt.”

She sniffed.  “There is no magician powerful enough to do that to me.  I am old, Sir Halar.  Old beyond any mortal lifetime.  My skills are honed sharper than the razor’s edge.”

“Okay.  Did I mention she’s also a fire-witch?”

That got her attention.

“You… a nightlord and a …?”

“Yep.  So, while I don’t mind a floor show if you want to lounge around and look good—you do, and no mistake—you can get the idea of seducing me completely off your mind.”

She sat up straighter and became all business.  Pity, that.  She really was beautiful.

“Very well.  You have shown that you can care about others and you have demonstrated loyalty to your friends.  If you do not wish so dearly to kill Melloch, allow me to sweeten the offer.”

“I’m listening.”

“He still works closely with Cardinal Tobias.”

“Still listening.”

“He knows where the Cardinal has fled.”

Hmm.  I hadn’t known Tobias had actually fled anywhere.  Of course, the number-two guy in the Hand was in council in Tobias’ place…

“Fine.  Let him run.  I’m still not prepared to simply kill him, but I’m working up to it.  If he’ll shut up and go away, I’ll settle for that.”

She shook her head.  “You are a fool.”

“Probably.  Almost certainly.  But it’s my foolishness, thank you.”

“As you will.  Are you so much of a fool that you will also care about your dark-haired lady?”

Shada
.

I must have shown it in my face.  She smiled.  “I see you do.  You wish to know what bearing this
gata
wench has on the Cardinal?”

“I don’t see how she’s involved,” I replied, carefully.

“The Cardinal has taken her.  She is in his possession at this moment.  You came to her rescue once; he believes you will do so again.”

All that self-doubt and self-recrimination for not taking the opportunity to beat Tobias’ head in with a banquet table came back and jeered at me.  Then it pissed me off.  Yeah, I still felt bad about not killing him—damn that ethical streak!—but this was, to me, a kettle of fish of another color entirely.  Tobias was no longer just some nameless stranger.  He was now an active offender using one of my friends as a hostage.  I met him, disliked him—and now I had a heart-strong reason to kill him.  Him
personally
, rather than a collection of flunkies, grunts, and lackeys.

That changed
everything
.

I took one long step to stand before her, almost nose-to-nose.  It was a movement faster than the eye could follow.  She froze, staring at me, muscles rigidly locked in both surprise and terror.

“
Now
I’ll kill him,” I whispered.  “Where is he?”

“Th-that… that I do not know,” she stammered.  My expression must have been something terrible, because she immediately went on, “Melloch does!”

I stepped back and she relaxed, trembling.  Sometimes it’s good to be a terrifying being of the night.

Melloch knows where Tobias is.  Melloch is someone I want to kill anyway; that whole kidnapping and binding thing, you know.  So, find Melloch, get the location out of him, and kill him.  Find Tobias and therefore Shada—dammit,
Utai
!  I keep thinking of her as Shada!—and kill the one, rescue the other.  Sounds simple enough.

I had the distinct feeling I was missing something.

“How do I know that Melloch isn’t just in your way and you just want me to get rid of him—conveniently making you a nightlady in the process?”

She pulled her composure together and eyed me coolly.  “I have no other objectives but youth.  At my age, there is nothing else of concern.”

I watched her heart-lights as she spoke, and it looked like the truth to me.

“All right, I believe you.  Why is Melloch still with Tobias?”

“I do not know.”

“You worked with him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must have some idea.”

Keria hesitated, thinking before she spoke.

“Melloch is not… entirely…” she groped for a word.  “Rational.  I do not understand his motivations for anything.”

Great.  A pair of madmen.  As if my life weren’t complicated enough.

“Explain, please.”

“At first, our partnership—all of us—agreed that to aid the Hand would give us the greatest hope of obtaining the blood of a nightlord.  We have made use of many methods to hold back the advance of age, but even with all our knowledge and experience combined, we could but hold it at bay, not step aside from its path.”  She rose and raised both hands to lift her hair.  She turned about, showing herself.

“Look at me.  Through my arts I have taken the years of this body and divided it among a dozen people.  I am once again young and beautiful, as once I was.”  She let her hair cascade over her shoulders and seated herself again.  “Yet those years come creeping back, quicker than Time.  In the beginning, a year might pass in the stream of Time, bearing with it one more year that was my due.  The denied years return more quickly now, so that every month, my body gains again a year of its total.  My flesh is all of eighteen; in a year, it will bear the signs of a woman of thirty.  In two years, more than forty.”

Her eyes were touched with fear as she looked at me.  “That is why we agreed to hunt your kind.”

“You didn’t tell the Hand this,” I said.

“No.  Of course not.  In our declining years, we claimed to have seen the light.  We came to the Hand on our own.  Tobias welcomed us, for he needed our power in the Hand’s quest through the Mage’s Door.”

“But why did the Hand bother?  The nightlords were gone.”

She sniffed disdainfully.  “Gone, but not forgotten.  They were hunted to extinction, save for the very few who escaped.  What fool would allow a persecuted people to flee and recover, to grow strong and return?  Especially when they need but bite, and bite, and bite, multiplying like a plague.”

I shook my head.  It made sense from that viewpoint.  How were they to have known the nightlords of my world just wanted to be left alone?  Come to that, who says they even got the right world?  There could be an infinite number of them.

“All right.  What does this have to do with Melloch?”

“Melloch was the leader of our cabal.  It was he who suggested we allow a nightlord through the Door and into the world.”

“Wait a second.  Why not just use the Door yourselves?  Go through, mug some poor bloke like you did me, and drag him back?”

“The magic of your world is thin and weak.  We were not sure we could do it.  More important, there was no Door on your side.  It would have to be held open for far too long—it cannot be held, without a Door at the destination, for more than a few moments. 

“Thus, we worked to empower the Door with special keys.  These aided the working of the Door, providing it power.  We could open a portal between the Academy and Telen with nothing more than a twist of a key; by turning the others, we could hold the Doors open to each other for hours.  For contact with your world, they were immensely useful; instead of ten magicians working in tandem, it required but one—although we often used three.  The work was exhausting.”

She sighed and looked down at her hands.  “Each key Melloch made was more powerful than the last.  Eventually, we would have had enough to hold the Door open even to your world.  We would have Called through it and summoned one such as yourself to a place of our power.”

A lot of thoughts went through my head.  I didn’t recall that the magic of my world was thin and weak.  Then again, I’d just been learning the arts.  I never really saw
magic
, as such, until I got here and Jon showed me how.  I recalled the keys that were sitting in a pouch on my belt.  I wondered what they were worth, and to whom.  Still, these were just background thoughts.  I was more focused on the events Keria described.

“I came through too soon,” I observed.  “You didn’t expect that.”

Keria nodded.  “That upset all our plans.  No more expeditions to other worlds, now; only the work in seeking you.”  She smiled slightly.  “You were hard to find.”

“Good.  So, on with Melloch’s story.”

“He became obsessed with finding you.  This earned considerable favor from Tobias, true, but it also led Melloch down pathways to power that no sane man should ever take.”

“Such as?” I prompted.

“Human sacrifice.  Negotiations with dark forces.”

“The two aren’t the same?”

She sighed.  “You are abysmally ignorant.  No.  Dealing with the darkness is dangerous, but it does not eat away at you in the sense that human sacrifice does.  A demonic being will trick you, tempt you, and deceive you… if it cannot simply kill and eat you.  Contrariwise, a living sacrifice to empower spells uses that creature’s life essence, but a bit of your own also gets caught up in it. 
That
eats away at your soul.”

I nodded.  “Got it.  So Melloch killed someone and called up the Hunt.”

“That, too.  He also used the power of others’ lives to send out seeking spells the like of which have been seldom seen.  It took its toll on him.”

“I imagine it did.”

Keria clasped her hands and took a deep breath.  “I understand he found you once before, early on, but lost you again when you took more precautions.  We had to track you down indirectly, by sending out proxy creatures to search for you.  When we did find you, all of us used our most stealthy abilities to attack you by surprise, in unison.  When you eventually escaped us, he turned to Tobias for aid.”

“Hold it.  How can Tobias aid a master magician?”

“Tobias is the Cardinal of the Hand.  The Hand holds the Vault of Night.”

I looked inquisitive and said nothing, waiting.

Keria pursed her lips and elaborated.  “The Vault is a storehouse of earlier days.  A place where things that could not be destroyed were contained, that they might do no one harm.”

“I see.  And they are things of great power?”

“Yes.”

“I have a feeling I know the answer, but what did Tobias say to Melloch’s request?”

“I believe Tobias agreed.”

“’Believe’?”

“Melloch…” she began, then looked away.  “After you slew those you could reach, we dared not attempt to recapture you.  We were too few, and too weak to face your power.  Melloch made his deal with Tobias, the black-hearted priest of the light, and slew the rest of us.”

“Except for you.”

She nodded, still not looking at me.  I could see the pain and shame in her aura, but she controlled her voice as she spoke.

“I was in communication with Dessier—another of our cabal—when I felt Melloch’s spell take him.  I was warned of Melloch’s treachery by the dying cry of Dessier’s mind.  Melloch found a way to take Dessier’s being and consume it, adding that power and force to his own.”

I thought about that.

“So, Melloch has a half-dozen other magicians’ powers instead of just one?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a dangerous man.  He knows where Sh— where Utai is?”

“And I know where Melloch is.  Yes.”

I paced for a bit, thinking. 

“What’s to keep me from cracking your skull and jerking the knowledge from your mind?” I asked.  I wouldn’t do it—I knew that, but she didn’t—and I was interested in what she’d say about it.

She stiffened.  “I do not doubt that you are capable of such a feat.  Yet, were you to do so, it would set in motion certain preparations that would warn both Melloch and Tobias.”

“Preparations?”

“I am not so much a fool as to give you the tools to circumvent my countermeasures.  I will say nothing of them.  But know this:  you cannot take from me what you must have without destroying it.”

Nice.  Neat.

I thought about it some more.  What would it mean to turn her loose as a living vampire?  True, she could then make more; we could have an epidemic on our hands in short order.  Aside from that, what was the downside?

“What would you do if I agreed?”

“Live,” she said.  Here eyes met mine and her voice was husky.  “I would cease to fear the creeping of the years, the slow decay of my body.  I would enjoy the strength and health that comes with the power of a nightlord.  You who have never felt the frost of age in your hair or the creaking of your bones, you cannot know the terrors that lurk within your own body.  I would live, Sir Halar.”