Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series Read online

  Nightlord

  KNIGHTFALL

  Garon Whited

  Copyright © 2017 by Garon Whited.

  Cover Art: “Firebrand” by R. Beaconsfield ([email protected])

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Other Books by Garon Whited:

  LUNA

  Nightlord, Book One: Sunset

  Nightlord, Book Two: Shadows

  Nightlord, Book Three: Orb

  Short Stories:

  An Arabian Night: Nazin’s Dream

  Clockwork

  Dragonhunt

  The Ways of Cats

  “Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.”

  — Al Capone

  Disclaimer

  In the normal course of events, occasionally one must take a moment to pause and reflect, to take a breath—if one does such a thing—and to consider the sum of one’s life. Taken as a whole, is the life in question a thing of good or evil, right or wrong, chaos or order? Do these concepts even hold any relevance when applied to life, itself? Or are they only for actions, specific and limited?

  Moral questions have never been my forte. I specialize in the practical, not the philosophical, theological, or political.

  Yet I wonder, sometimes… am I a good person or a bad person? I prefer to think of myself in positive terms, to believe I am a creature of principles and kindness, not some hollow shell animated by hunger, pain, and fear. Does the desire to be good make me more than a monster? Does wishing to be better mean I am less a monster than I fear? Or am I only as much a monster as any man?

  There are things about myself I do not like. But can a man—or a monster—change his nature by some act of will? Or must such change, by necessity, come from some external force, some outside intervention, for good or ill? Or is it some alchemy of within and without, above and below, will and destiny? I am torn between the hope I may change for the better, and the fear I may be changed for the worse.

  How am I to judge? Who am I to judge myself—or anyone? My reflection mocks me by its absence, and my shadow twists and shapes itself in ways my spirit cannot follow.

  I can see myself only through the eyes of others, and I do not trust their eyes to see me as I truly am.

  What Day Is It?

  I hit with a splash and a thud. The water was only a few inches deep and did nothing to break my fall, but it gave me one hell of a scare before I hit bottom. I pushed myself upright and wiped scummy water from my face. The room was pitch-black, which, for me, only meant the world was black, white, and shades of grey. At least my vision told me it was between sunset and sunrise, corroborated by the absence of my heartbeat.

  Five seconds later, I recognized where I was. It was my old gate room, and this was the former gate-pool I aimed for. Ten points to House Bloodsucker for a successful, if somewhat poorly-executed, escape.

  And, while I’m at it, add a point to my paranoia score. I sat there in brackish, filthy water and activated my cloaking device. Which is to say I cast spells to hide myself from detection spells. It might not do any good, of course, or it might be completely unnecessary. Or it could be the only thing keeping a bunch of soul-scorched magi from tracing me and turning me into undead chowder. Regardless, I raised cloaking spells.

  They tried to kill me, but I’m sort of used to that. What burned itself into me was the thought of how they wounded me, used me—and having used me, they tried to dispose of me like the foil wrapper off a condom, and with about as much respect.

  I could list a lot of emotions appropriate to the situation, all of which I had. Most prevalent were fear and rage. Possibly rage and fear. The two were pretty well mixed.

  The room was empty, unused. The water smelled and tasted awful. When I finished my cloaking work, I climbed out of the pool. I wrung myself out and dry-cleaned with a few sharp gestures. It helped I was still missing my hair. Johann enjoyed setting me on fire almost as much as I didn’t.

  I didn’t know if Johann would pursue me immediately or if he would gather his forces before striking… or, to be fair, if he might be content with the tortures inflicted. Somehow, I doubted the last option. I killed his grandson and a number of other relatives in my breakout from the Mendoza estate. He would come after me again, I felt certain, but he might have other hobbies to distract him from doing it instantly.

  Can I call this a huge misunderstanding? No, in the Mendoza Incident they came hunting for me, chasing down a vampire. The fact I’m not one of the Atlantean vampires has nothing to do with it. I’m a victim of prejudice. I’m offended. Triggered. I need a safe space. I’m sure there’s some other whiny-sounding thing I could come up with, but I really don’t like whining. They came after a vampire, they got one. I don’t think they have any right to be angry when their would-be prey turns into a predator. That won’t stop them from being angry, of course. Besides…

  He’s got my orb. It’s helping him and he’s obviously listening to it. He’ll come after me. The orb will talk him into it—if it even needs to.

  With some dismay, I realized my amulet was missing, as were my rings. I hoped really hard the mountain’s anti-detection defenses were also in good working order. Now, where did I leave my stuff? Did Johann take it? Or did they remove my stuff in Carrillon when they were peeling clothes off me to treat electrical burns? Could go either way, I decided. Maybe I could ask Lissette or Tianna.

  While I thought about my missing stuff, I searched the perimeter of the room. I didn’t find a door. A moment of work with a spell and the mountain started making one for me.

  I sat down on the raised lip of the pool and waited. The room obviously hadn’t been used in quite some time, possibly not since I ran through a gate and T’yl destroyed it. There were no signs of the damage caused by an exploding gate, though. Good to know the mountain could fix such things.

  In that quiet moment, while I waited, recent memory reared up, towered over me, and guilt fell on me like the proverbial bricks down a well.

  Yes, a Lord of Night can weep. The tears are blood, and they streak down like comets with crimson tails before vanishing. We can keep it up all night, especially when we’re feeling particularly sorry for ourselves.

  I was used by Johann for a number of things. Tricked, tortured, lied to, manipulated… and, part and parcel of all of it, he used me to kill children. How many, I’m not certain, but even one was too many. Worse, he made it personal by finding children I knew. Children I liked. Even—in my self-centered, egotistical fashion—children I loved. All four of them, plus the little one. They were good kids. Kind. Helpful. Loyal. Clever. Talented. And little Olivia could barely say my alias, pronouncing it “Flad” the few times she tried.

  And I killed them.

  Oh, I know Johann set it up. He pushed me into being a starved, mindless killer and set me loose on a roomful of children—teleporting them in, dumping them in through the ceiling, whatever. He kept feeding me the things he knew I would never eat until I could grasp the enormity of what I’d done.

  Whether or not Johann might come after me no longer mattered. He used me. He forced me to murder c
hildren. I hated him for it, as if I needed another reason. I wanted to kill him. No, I wanted to hurt him, hurt him as badly as he hurt me. I wanted to punish him. Not out of a sense of justice, either. Revenge, pure and cold and bright. I wanted him to understand pain. To understand my pain by possessing it for himself.

  I got a grip on myself, down there in the depths of the mountain, in the dark. I was thinking like something in an orb. I know I can, but I should aspire to greater things.

  But it’s hard. It’s so hard to think of rising above when you’re knee-deep in the bloodless bodies of slain children. It’s a sensation I’ll never forget and—are you listening, God? —hope never to repeat.

  Could I walk away from my hatred? Could I walk away from revenge disguised as justice? Every time I try to punish the wicked, something terrible results. Every time I try to do something good, it seems to turn around and bite me. What about giving up? What about walking away, finding some random world in the tree of infinite possibilities and simply hiding? With no idea as to my whereabouts, they could search for a thousand years and never find a clue, much less me.

  Lissette could rule without my help. Seldar could be happy as a priest of Justice. Mary could steal anything she liked and live in the palace atop Karvalen. The various children of my body might or might not need a father figure, but I certainly wasn’t a worthy role model. Firebrand could stay or go, whatever it chose. Amber and Tianna have careers as professional clergy. All I would need is Bronze and a day or so to shift from one world to the next—maybe we could keep traveling from world to world, exploring!

  Oh, that sounded so good. Tempting, even. But… Lissette has problems, Seldar is trying to help me, Mary would miss me and insist on coming along, Amber and Tianna would want a way to keep in touch…

  And then there’s Tort. Most especially Tort.

  No, I can’t simply walk away. I still have to find out what happened to Tort. T’yl, too, but mostly Tort. They’re both adults and capable of looking out for themselves, but it took me a long time to come to terms with loving Tort—to admit to myself how much I love Tort. I owe her better than she ever got from me. If she’s alive, I have to know. At minimum, I have to know her fate and, if she isn’t happy with it, change it.

  That’s part of why I’m staying. The other part is what happens when I close my eyes. An image is seared into my eyeballs. When I turned to look at the wall of my torture chamber, my eyes absorbed every detail. Four bloodless bodies hanging in their chains, and the fifth one, the tiny one, ripped in two. By my hands.

  No, I have to admit it, if only to myself. I can’t let Johann get away with this. I’m their Guardian Demon. Their deathly faces won’t go away until I kill Johann—maybe not even then. I have a kingdom to settle, true, but also a magi family leader to kill. And I will.

  Miles to go before I sleep.

  The mountain built a pivot-door very quickly, for a geological pet. It doesn’t start at a point and draw a line somewhere. It defines where the door is and pulls the stone of the frame away it, all the way around it, all at once. I pushed it open. A passage curved outside the door, sloping gradually up and down, and it was a long walk up before I reached a public area. I gave the mountain a spell-note to have the old gate room connected to the private passages of the palace.

  People gave me funny looks as I walked through the undermountain city. I was hardly in the height of fashion. The velvety chiton and sandals Juliet conjured for me stood out like a Roman senator in Camelot, and for much the same reasons. Nobody bothered me, though. They tended mostly toward odd looks; nobody recognized me. A few of the ladies gave me interested, even flirtatious looks. I’m guessing they liked my dress. Either that, or bald guys with slightly-pointed ears are in fashion.

  Luckily, there weren’t a lot of people up and about. Judging by the silvery tint to the lighting, it was some ungodly, cow-milking hour of the way-too-early morning.

  I went up to the lower door of the palace—essentially, the front door, rather than the long, sloping back door of the Kingsway. This was the somewhat more public entrance, rather than the King’s Private Driveway. I pushed, the door opened, and I closed it behind me.

  Oddly enough, I felt at home.

  I barely made it up the ramp to the top door of the entryway before it started swinging open. Mary slithered through it and grabbed me, squeezing for all she was worth. I hugged her in return and wondered how long I’d been gone this time. After a minute, she switched from hugging to kissing, which kept me fully occupied for another minute.

  Finally, she let go of me and looked me over.

  “What in the name of sanity are you wearing?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s called a chiton,” I told her. “Kind of a short, one-shoulder toga, it was popular—”

  “Stop right there. We’ll get you out of the skirt and into some regular clothes. Your de facto council wants to talk to you about the war.”

  She took me by the hand and led me inside while I wondered about the war. I turn my back and everything goes to pieces. What is it with my life?

  “How long have I been gone?”

  “Sixteen days. Where have you been?”

  “Summoned, captured, tortured, abused, tricked, used, offended, and deeply enraged.”

  “How is ‘deeply enraged’ different from ‘angry’?”

  “Scale.”

  “Here we go again. I remember the last time we had a talk like this. Maybe you have some examples?” she requested.

  “Angry is someone getting their head ripped off with my bare hands. Deeply enraged is binding someone’s soul into a mummified tongue before burying it in a demon’s outhouse.”

  “I have a good imagination and I remember feeding in a slaughterhouse,” she said, thoughtfully. “I am amazingly sorry I asked for examples.”

  “I’ve been through worse. Recently, in fact.”

  “Is that where you lost your beard, hair, and eyebrows?”

  “Yes. Thank you for reminding me.” I worked on my follicles for a moment. “Do I need the beard?”

  “No. It would be best for you to look like the king they remember.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” I started the spell; hair sprouted on my head and started to lengthen. It went much more quickly than if I had been alive—no messy biological balances to maintain, probably. We walked on while it slowly grew out.

  “Where’s Tianna?” I asked.

  “She, Bronze, and Firebrand are guests of the Queen.”

  “Hold on. Define ‘guests.’”

  “Real guests. She’s the granddaughter of the King and the other two are his personal property. Although,” she added, “someone did raise the question of whether or not your laws on slavery applied to any living thing, including intelligent magical artifacts.”

  “Freedom is the right of anything capable of understanding the concept and desiring the state,” I replied. “But Tianna, Bronze, and Firebrand are all okay?”

  “Yep. Spoke with Tianna just yesterday, on the mirror. She’s trying to get Lissette to see reason.”

  “She’s trying to persuade Lissette and make her see the light. Reason isn’t the anthropomorphic personification Tianna represents.”

  Mary was silent for several steps, apparently considering how seriously to take my remark.

  “By the way,” I added, “who are all these people in my house?” As we talked and walked, we passed a dozen or more individuals. They all stepped out of our path and bowed their heads until we passed by.

  “I don’t know them all. Some of them are Order of Shadow, some are merely members of the faithful, some are other locals, a few are immigrants from Rethven. Seldar and Dantos are acting as head honchos since nobody seems to want to follow a woman.”

  “Is that bitterness I hear?”

  “It ain’t sugar.”

  “I’ll have a word with the two of them.”

  “Seldar’s okay. I think his wife beat him over the head with her compet
ence. It’s the rest of these primitive idiots.”

  “Duly noted,” I replied, but I was thinking, Wife? Seldar has a wife? He can’t be older than… Nine years older than the kid I remember.

  Immortality problems. Will I ever get used to this? Sure I will. It’s just a matter of time.

  We stopped by my chambers for a change of clothes. Mary selected my outfit; I wore what she picked out. She also told me to stop the hair-growing spell and she trimmed it for me. She wanted me looking dignified. I didn’t have Firebrand to go with the swordbelt, but someone hung one on it while I was out. It was the lighter, elvish-style blade I’d woken up with inside the base of my statue. Still had the sharpness enchantment, too. I was glad to have it. I don’t feel dressed without a sword, these days.

  Is it my paranoia acting up, or am I simply used to having a sword?

  The scabbard was more interesting to me. Magical monatomic edges don’t sit well in normal scabbards. Last I looked, my three knights were using spells to protect the interior of their scabbards from touching the actual edge of the super-sharp blades. This scabbard had an enchantment for that, yes, but the clever bit was mechanical. A lever on the scabbard could work a mechanism to turn off-center cylinders inside the scabbard. When rotated into position, they clamped the blade along the flat, pinning it in place. When clicked into the other position, they rotated the thicker portion of the off-center cylinders away from the blade, allowing it to be drawn.

  “Are you done admiring the gadget?” Mary asked. I admitted I was and locked the blade in place again. Mary watched me with a perplexed expression.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “Sit down,” she instructed, pointing at a heavy, carved chair. I did so. “Tell Mary what’s wrong.”

  “It’s going to take a while.”

  “I know. You can’t be concise to save your life. Do it anyway.”