Nightlord: Sunset (39 page)

The baron had himself a nice seat already arranged and had delegated the officiousness to a flunky.  The flunky called us close, ran through a bunch of formal rigmarole, and told us to have at each other.  We did.  I can’t say I went in confidently and with serene detachment; I had no idea if Lothen was really good with a staff or not.  I was a little concerned about it and definitely still pissed about being told to
lose
.

I noticed the pulse of fury wasn’t bothering me.  I guess it only happens when I’m dead.  Either that, or Lothen didn’t scare me enough.

I’m not good with a staff; it takes a lot more skill than you might think to wave a six-foot stick effectively.  But since I had used magic to recuperate from the morning’s workout, I wasn’t stiff and sore—just a little tired.  Lothen was exhausted from a night of worry.  I had a lot of warm-up; Lothen hadn’t.  I wasn’t entirely human; Lothen was.

He never laid that stick on me.

I would have cleaned his clock in the first ten seconds.

I could have danced around him and laughed at him while he flailed like a frantic flagellant.

I didn’t.

Instead, I blocked everything he threw at me.  I smiled at him.  I backed away and let him press the attack.  Finally, I stopped against a wall, unable to back farther, and stayed there.  Just stood and parried, blocked and—nothing.  I just defended.  Never once did I swing at him.

When he finally stepped back—angry, frustrated, sweating, and exhausted—I said loudly, “I yield.”

He didn’t have the breath to accept; he just nodded and leaned on his stick.  There was
hatred in his eyes; he couldn’t even touch me and he knew it.  Everybody in the crowd knew it, too.  There were catcalls and jeers.

The baron, not
entirely
pleased but happy enough, packed up and headed back home. Lothen did the same—albeit in a much nastier mood—and headed for the local church.

And I?  I went to the glassblower to see about another piece of work.

A lens is a tough thing to do well.  Even a simple magnifying lens isn’t easy, at least not at this level of technology.  Much, much simpler is a round lump of glass.  Ten minutes after I walked into the glassblowers, I had a ball about the size of my fist.  I let him get back to his other work and I got back to my workroom.

I had already built a spell to protect myself from being magically located.  After my week in wizard school, I realize the spell I kludged together is actually pretty inefficient.  It’s a lot more power-intensive than it needs to be; if I were to re-do it now, it would take a lot less power and time.  But it is also about as simple and fundamental as it gets.

Why not use magic and try to track Shada down?  After all, I’m a wizard.  It’s the sort of thing we do.  It’s
my
spell that’s keeping her from being found; I should be able to bypass it.  And Jon had gone over the particulars with me, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.  In theory.

Jon liked using a mirror; I could see his point.  He had a nice mirror, too.  It was about four feet high and two wide, very clear.  But the disadvantage of a mirror is it’s just a window to wherever you are looking.  You can’t look around with it, just through it.  A ball, on the other hand, can be walked around.  That allows the user to look at the target and at the scenery on all sides.

Unfortunately, a lump of glass is pretty blurry.  I cheated.  I enspelled it a couple times; one to hold it midair—it was light enough to not strain my brain—and another to heat it up to melting again.  Surface tension pulled it into a perfect sphere and I held it there while it cooled.

Not too useful for making most lenses, I admit; that’s more of a grind-and-polish job.  But for a simple globe?  Piece of cake.

After it cooled, I set it in the middle of a table and started work.  Shada, fortunately, had various things lying about that belonged to her, thus helping set up the sympathetic link.  I also know her pretty well, so that was easy.  I “reached” out for her, specifically for her, and waited.

It’s kind of like radar, or ripples in a fog-shrouded pond.

I drop a rock in a pond.  Ripples spread outward.  When a ripple starts to come back from somewhere, I know where to look.  But it’s more than that.  Once I know where to look—or have a target lock, as I think of it—I can focus my attention there and burn away the fog between. 

Taa-daa!  Instant image in the glass.

Of course, the farther away it is, the bigger the rock—or the more powerful the spell—I have to use.  And the less precisely I identify what I’m looking for, the more false positives I get.  I could look for “all women” and get a thousand echoes back in short order; it would take a long time to search through them all.  Or I could look for “all dark-haired women” and get fewer results.  Or “all dark-haired women, about five-foot-six, with dark eyes,” which would narrow the search even more.

Jon described, without demonstrating, an alternative method.  It was more like astral projection than scrying.  You locate a place in your crystal, mirror, pool of water, whatever.  Then you step out of your body and into the image, and your spirit is there!  You can look around, walk through solid objects, go over a hill, whatever you like, just as if you were walking around, intangibly and invisibly.

It’s incredibly useful.  You can explore places you’ve never seen just by sending your spirit to the closest place you know and walking.  Taking too long to get there?  Take a good look around, then step back through your focus and into your body!  Now start afresh tomorrow where you left off!

Not sure what’s in the ruined castle?  No problem!  Project through your crystal to the door, then walk inside!  Wander around.  Whoops!  A ghost!  Step back through your focus—it follows you around; a blurry patch into which your silver cord vanishes—and you’re back in your body again.

It’s incredibly risky.  If something happens to your astral self—say, that hypothetical ghost smacks you—your body will feel it.  And if something happens to your body… well, you aren’t actually in there.  How do you know anything is happening to your body? 
You
are out.  For all you know, you’ll come back to find that there are small animals munching on your toes!  And worst of all is if something happens to your focus.  It’s bad.  Your astral link to your body is going through a magical interface; if the interface fails, the cord snaps, and your spirit dissolves into the ether.  Your body just lies there, a mindless vegetable, and eventually dies.

I’m rather attached to my skin.  I’ll scry.  It takes a lot more effort and time and it’s only good for people or places that you know, but I’m chicken.

In this manner, I sought Shada.  And I found her.

I caught the baron between visitors and offered to let him see what Davad had taught me if we could talk.  He agreed.  We fought with wooden swords and, while I didn’t manage to hit him, he didn’t touch me, either; I was pretty defensive.  We spoke during our match; it’s not hard.  Your eyes and hands just
do
it, or you’re dead.

“Baron?” I asked, parrying wildly and corkscrewing the point around to go for a disarm.

“Yes?” he replied, stepping back and slashing at me.

“If someone is taken by the Hand, what recourse might one have to get them released?”

“Nothing.  Oh, I suppose the King might order their release, but it is really an ecclesiastical matter.”

“So Church law is all that matters if the Hand accuses someone?”

“Quite so.”

“If I spoke to Ander… ?”

“He is a priest, but not an inquisitor of the Hand,” the baron replied, working a bit to keep off a heavy attack.  “He has not the authority.”

“Who does?” I asked, suddenly backing up as he counterattacked.

“That would be Tobias, the Cardinal of Telen; he is in charge of the Hand.  Or his superior, Javar, Light of the World.  But they would not; the Hand is their instrument.”

I stepped back and lowered my practice sword.  “I see.  Thank you.”

The baron lowered his own weapon, watching me.  “You… who is it that… ?”

“Shada.”

The baron’s face darkened, slightly.  “You are certain?”

“Yes.”  We handed our practice weapons to Bhota and the baron gestured me toward a pitcher.  I poured; we drank in silence for a moment.

“What will you do?” he asked, quietly.

“Learn about war.”

He looked at me for a long minute, maybe trying to decide something.  He nodded, finally.  “I think you will.  Good fortune.  And if I cannot say it later, goodbye.”

When I finished talking with Keldun, I swung into the saddle outside his house.  We had talked for quite some time and made arrangements for my abrupt departure—hopefully with Shada.

“You will take care of everything at the docks?” I asked.

“You may depend upon it,” he replied, bowing.  “It will be my great honor.”

“Thank you, Keldun.”

“Thank
you.
  My prayers and Geva’s will go with you.”

I’m not sure I appreciate that, but he meant well.  I guess I should have asked who they’d be praying
to
.

I rode up to the front steps of the local temple on Bronze.  The front of the building reminds me of major government buildings—or ancient Greek temples.  Wide, wide steps, shallow and long, about a dozen.  Big columns out front.  Big doors, too; three sets of double doors.  The front face of the building has a bas-relief, apparently of God.  It’s a big, muscular male, arms spread wide, with a blank spot for a face that has carved rays of light shooting out in all directions.  Very impressive.

A blank spot can’t watch me.  Can it?

If it had any idea of what I was about to do… maybe.

I was in a hurry.  A fast getaway struck me as a sound idea; beyond the Eastrange, we should have some breathing space.  I wished, not for the first time, that I’d managed to work out a spell for flying.  There’s only so much that low-gravity jumping will do for you.  But you use what you’ve got.

I left Bronze outside as a reserve.  It’s impolite to go barging into someone’s place on horseback; if this could be done politely, then fine.  If not… well, that would have to be fine, too, wouldn’t it?  I had Firebrand on my left hip, my dagger on my right, a pair of pistols in shoulder holsters under my jacket, and a stout oaken staff in hand.  Did I mention I had my bulletproof vest on?  No?  You bet I did.  I’ve treated it like an American Express card:  I don’t leave home without it.

Can you tell I was nervous?

So I walked into the metaphorical lions’ den, yea, with sword and pistol to comfort me.  It helped.  Inside, I found an acolyte, asked for Ander, waited patiently and tried not to fidget.  I took a good look around to try and distract myself.

Rows upon rows of benches, with aisles down both sides and the middle.  There were doors in either wall, presumably to monks’ cells, or offices, or quarters, or something.  At the far end of the church—the central area was much longer than it was wide, by the way—was an altar and a statue.  That whole section of the room was built up, three steps—maybe two feet.  The altar was a businesslike affair, large enough for an ox, and with braziers at either hand for juicy bits. 

The statue was three stories tall, apparently done in the same theme as the carving on the front of the building.  It was a man, big, heavy, and muscled.  But it had no head; instead, it had a sort of fish-eye mirror, like the security mirrors in stores.  It looked like brass and it hung over the statue.  There was a fire pit in the statue’s torso to illuminate this area via the mirror.  Nice effect.  I was in no shape to appreciate it other than to note it looked rather like a giant, flaming eye, staring at me.  It made me even more nervous.

Ander came toward me, looking concerned.

“Halar, what is wrong?  You seem troubled.”

“Can we talk, Ander?” I asked, trying to keep cool.

“Of course!  But you are wearing weapons within—”

“Yes, I am, and I apologize.  But I am in a terrible rush.”

“As you will, then.  This way.”  He led me to one side, through a side door, then down a hallway to his chamber.  I had expected his office again, but this would do fine.

As the ranking priest in this church, I expected him to have some above-average quarters.  He didn’t.  Just a simple fifteen-by-fifteen room for his personal chamber.  I noticed it was spotless, too.  Acolytes with scrub brushes?  Maybe… but I wouldn’t count on it.  He did have more priestly robes than one might expect, but, hey, he’s the High Priest.  Doubtless there are special vestments for every sort of ceremony.

He gestured me toward a chair—it looked a lot more comfortable than it was, and that wasn’t very—and seated himself in its twin.  The chair-making art leaves a lot to be desired around here.

“What troubles you, Halar?”

“To get right to the point, I need to see Shada.”

“I am sorry, but I am afraid that cannot be,” he replied, sounding pained.  He didn’t seem surprised I knew.

“And why would that be the case?”