Nightlord: Shadows Read online

  Amber stared at me for several seconds. She started to say something, paused, thought some more.

  “I once heard that you have the manners of a dragon,” she said.

  “I suppose that could be the case,” I said, wondering if dragons were famous for their manners—and then ruthlessly suppressed a memory surge. Right then was not a good time for a sudden, stabbing headache.

  “I don’t like to offend people needlessly,” I continued, “and I don’t take it well when others offend me needlessly.”

  “Would it be rude to ask you to leave? Or would it be more polite to go out to the idol while you wait here?” I considered it a good sign that she was trying to be nice to me.

  “Probably the second, but I’m not going to be fussy about it. At least, not with you; you’re my daughter, and I can let you get away with a lot. I can come back tomorrow, if you like.”

  “No, no,” she said, rising, gesturing me to remain. “I will be less than a single stripe of the candle.” She snapped her fingers at the walls and candles sprang to life. Either that was politeness, or she didn’t know about my ability to see in darkness. I took it as another good sign.

  I stood for her and watched her go before sitting down again. Mister Manners, that’s me. A moment later, I felt some sort of spiritual movement, like being in water and feeling the edge of a current. Something was going on out there, and I had a pretty good idea what.

  A girl, probably about eight, came into the room and headed toward the front door. She was wearing a white, sack-like garment, presumably a nightgown. Her hair was as red as a traffic light, but not actually on fire. She stopped when she saw me and her eyes went round. Hers were as blue as her mother’s. Something about her eyebrows and chin looked familiar.

  I’m not just a father, I realized. I’m a grandfather.

  Had I been living, I would have needed to sit down. Luckily, I was dead and already seated.

  “Good evening,” I said, pleasantly, and stayed right where I was. I didn’t feel too stable, and the bench did. Besides, getting to my feet might be frightening. I can intimidate the hell out of children; I’m terrifying like that.

  She blinked at me for a bit and then waved a little. I waved back. She continued to stare. I continued to smile. I remembered to keep my teeth hidden.

  “Are you dead?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am,” I admitted. “Have you ever seen a dead person that was still moving?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, there aren’t many. My name is Halar. What’s yours?”

  “Tianna.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Tianna. Would you like to shake hands?” I asked. Her hands moved quickly behind her back.

  “No.”

  “Okay. It’s just nice to offer; you don’t have to. What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “Mom is talking to the Mother,” she said, as though that explained everything.

  “Yes, she is. She’ll be right back.”

  “I’m supposed to watch and learn,” Tianna offered.

  “I bet you are. But I bet you’re supposed to be in bed, too.”

  “Yes.” She examined the floor with considerable care while she said it.

  “If she wanted you to watch, Amber would have come to get you.”

  “Well… yes.” The floor was scanned minutely.

  “So, if you hurry back to bed, I won’t mention this.”

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  “Really?”

  “Hey, I was your age, once. Some people think I’m still a kid, now just a very tall one. I know it can be difficult, keeping parents happy while you’re trying to do your own stuff,” I told her. She looked at me with the same intensity she gave to the floor, but with a different expression. She cocked her head and her eyebrows did that thing where they moved closer to each other.

  “You’re different from other grown-ups,” she observed.

  “Yep. Probably because I’m dead. Could that be it?”

  Tianna frowned in thought.

  “Maybe. The other ones are poopheads.”

  “Poopheads?” I echoed.

  “I’m not allowed to say ‘shitheads’,” she explained. I blinked in surprise.

  “Ah. Well, it is bad language,” I agreed. “And you’re right; most of them are.”

  “Are you really dead?” she asked. I pulled off a gauntlet and put my hand flat on the bench.

  “Check to see how cold my hand is. Go ahead; I’ll hold really still.”

  She circled behind me and came up to the bench. She touched my hand, then snatched her hand away.

  “You are cold!”

  “Room temperature,” I agreed. “Do you know how to find a pulse in the wrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  A little bit later, she stared at me.

  “See?” I said. “Dead. I don’t even need to breathe, except to talk.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I lay on my back on the bench.

  “Okay, hold my nose shut so you know I’m not cheating. Then you take a breath and hold it with me.” She did so, and I puffed my cheeks out to look silly while not breathing. We waited until she finally gasped for air.

  “Are you still not breathing?” she asked. I shook my head, just a little, while she kept holding my nose closed. “Wow.”

  “Sorry; I have to breathe to talk,” I said, pitching my voice to sound silly while she held my nose. She giggled.

  The outer door opened. Tianna dashed for the other door without even looking, bare feet skimming over the stone floor. I rattled and clanked to my feet and turned toward the entry door, crossing into view to attract the eyes of anyone entering the room. Tianna might not be aware that I did it to cover for her, but appreciation isn’t always my motive for doing nice things.

  “Done already?” I asked. Amber entered the room, nodding.

  “She doesn’t like it when those who serve her turn to other gods.”

  “I can imagine.” I also wasn’t sure what that had to do with it. Did Beryl choose a different deity than the Mother of Flame?

  “She did not say I could not speak with you.”

  “But she didn’t endorse the idea, either?”

  “Correct.”

  “In short, you have to make up your own mind?”

  “Yes.”

  I really wanted to ask for a decision, but sometimes pushing for a decision pushes people the wrong way. Or, at least, pushes them the way you don’t want them to go.

  “Okay. I’m going to be training knights, tomorrow. Do you want to come by and help deal with sprains, aches, tears, pulls, cracks, concussions, and contusions?”

  “It is not I who does such things, but the power of the Mother,” she corrected me.

  “A fair point. Would you like to come watch? I’m not insisting, not even asking you to, just pointing out where I’ll be tomorrow, and if you want to, you’re welcome to drop by.”

  “Perhaps I will.”

  I bowed slightly to her; she bowed slightly, stiffly, in return.

  “Then, until we meet again, it has been a pleasure.”

  “I am pleased to have met you,” she replied.

  As I started to leave, door open, foot across the threshold, I turned back.

  “I am sorry,” I told her, sincerely. “I really am. I was terrified of being a father, and very much looking forward to it.”

  “I…” she trailed off into another awkward silence.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to explain. Anyway, goodnight,” I said, and shut the door.

  Bronze followed me as I walked through town. She was very glad to be away from the Mother of Flame’s idol. Bronze kept her head lowered over my shoulder and I kept my arm under her neck, hand up alongside her cheek to reassure her. Well, someone was reassured by the contact. As we went, I talked to her about what I found out and how I felt about it. Being a father with a full-grown daughter is disconcerting. Discovering
that, during your nap, you became not just a father but also a grandfather, all in one go…

  Immortality problems. I am disturbed. Well, more disturbed than usual.

  I once decided to accept that I’m not a human being anymore. I find that I have to keep reminding myself of that. I started as one and that’s still my dominant experience—possibly reinforced by all the humans souls I keep eating; I am very much what I eat, apparently—and it’s not always easy to reconcile being alive and dead. So, I’m sort of human, at least part-time. I have to be human and inhuman, which really messes with my moral navigation.

  I’m a grandfather. An undead, blood-sucking, soul-eating, monster of the night grandfather to a sun-goddess Chosen One priestess of fire.

  Suddenly, everything is different. In no particular order:

  Tort used to be the little girl that had bad dreams about an ugly man with a heavy boot. She slept in a bed between a fire-witch and a nightlord and suddenly, no bad dreams. She used to be small enough to ride my hip and watch everything with big eyes while being adorable.

  Now she’s a grown woman. She’s got the equivalent of a doctorate in magic. She’s got a career as a professional magician. She’s got her own home and, apparently, is moderately wealthy. She’s also very attractive, which I find hard to reconcile with my month-ago recollection of her being small and adorable.

  I used to date a fire-witch. She was the priestess of a fiery goddess for a whole kingdom. She bore my children while I was sleeping—again, about a month ago, tops, to me. My girlfriend is now apparently old and senile, somewhere, and I should probably find her. We need to talk.

  What we need to talk about is my daughter, who is now a grown woman and the Princess of Mochara, whatever that means. And we need to talk about my deceased son, whose deceasement seems to be a secret, or at least a sensitive subject. And there’s my granddaughter… She complicates my life in ways I don’t understand just by existing.

  And, of course, Firebrand. We don’t share the same sort of connection that Bronze and I do, but Firebrand can actually talk—well, converse—with me. It will also argue with me, and is enough different from me that it has different viewpoints and opinions. In the deep of the night, when everyone else needs to get some rest, Firebrand and I can talk. But it’s probably quite content right where it is, hacking off heads and setting fire to anything it likes.

  I looked at Bronze. She nuzzled my face with her nose. She assured me it would all be okay.

  “Someday, I’m going to give you a voice,” I said. She flicked an ear dismissively. She really didn’t care, one way or the other.

  Then, of course, there’s Tianna. I have a granddaughter. I don’t know who the father is, and I might not be able to find that out. If she was conceived during one of the rites on a high holy day, Amber might not have seen fit to tell her. Being fatherless makes the priestesses more devoted to their mother, or the Mother of Fire, or something. It’s the only family they have.

  Which might explain Amber’s awkwardness around me. I’m not supposed to exist.

  Of course, my awkwardness can be explained by being me.

  Okay. Okay.

  It’s after midnight, I’m wandering around a town I don’t really know, people are abroad in the world who want to kill me, I’m emotionally disturbed by a number of changes in my life, I have no one that I feel comfortable waking up just to talk to, I don’t know where my former lover or former sword are, I have factions of trained combatants who either want to serve me or test me or kill me or something, I have this insane urge to be moving and doing without pause, and because I am the ruler de jure, I may be about to be embroiled, so to speak, in political problems with the de facto ruler of this place, who happens to be my estranged daughter and priestess of a solar deity, and I’m undead.

  To top it all off, I just want to go home. I miss easy chairs and air conditioning. I miss having small responsibilities.

  Right. So. Do the next thing, that’s the ticket. What do I need to do now to get ready for tomorrow? Forget about the day after tomorrow. Focus on the immediate future.

  In the morning, I’m training knights. Right. For now, what do I need to get ready for the morning?

  Well, I could check in with the mountain. Bronze and I headed out the north gate again. She put her head down, grabbed my hands with her mane, and accelerated like a rocket sled on legs. It was a long, straight, smooth road, and she kept accelerating until I thought the wind was enough to peel a normal human right out of a saddle. I hunched lower, squeezed tighter, and she went faster. I gave up on trying to look forward; I didn’t want to lose my helmet. I just kept my face down and held on against a headwind that felt like the exhaust from a jet engine.

  She really does love to run.

  I briefly considered having her stop to let me put a windshield spell around us, but she was enjoying this. Smoke poured past me on both sides and the flare of flames from her nostrils illuminated the rapidly-moving area in front of us. I had no way to judge our speed, but I longed for a radar gun. I’d settle for a stopwatch and range markers. I think she’s even faster than I remember.

  As we thundered up the road, I saw the mountain closing in on us. Were we gradually going even faster as she ran? Possibly. I’ve seen her body adapt to circumstances before. Given her heavy, draft-horse appearance, I’d guess she hadn’t gone for a speed run in quite some time. Judging by the feeling of exhilaration, not to say joy, I was absolutely correct.

  A three-day trip on foot took, at most, half an hour. Probably less. That works out to slightly under ridiculous miles per hour on horseback.

  We clanged over the bridge and around. The pivot-gate in the wall was still open, so we cornered through it and started up the mountain. She slowed a little as we reached the top; the curve of the road was more pronounced up there. We finally slowed to a more normal trot as we cornered at the end of the road, through the courtyard gate, and made our way around the inner/upper peak to the main door.

  I leaped down as Bronze halted in the great hall. Without the wind to cool her, she could have been a horse-shaped door to a furnace—which, come to think of it, she might be. I dismounted quickly because I didn’t want to risk setting anything I was wearing on fire. She also breathed fire involuntarily, jet after jet of it roaring from her mouth—waste heat as she cooled off? I don’t know enough about golem biology…

  Actually, yes, I do. It is waste heat, because bending metal heats up and causes the external portion of the golem to generate more heat than normal, while the internal portions also generate more energy due to the increased demand. Jointed golems, such as suits of armor, don’t generate as much waste heat because they’re designed—

  Ow. Headache. But, yes, all golems generate heat, and it was the normal way to cool off.

  I patted her on the nose and thanked her, then went up toward the royal chambers and the room the mountain chose for providing metal. There were obvious ribbons of ore in the walls, but no actual lumps that could be easily hacked off. Well, the stone could only respond so quickly. Maybe in a couple of days.

  I mentally checked that off. One down. What else could I accomplish before dawn? How about more equipment for tomorrow’s training? I might not have metal to work with, but there are lots of trees in the Eastrange.

  We zinged down the mountain again, gaining speed as we descended the grand spiral, hooves clanging and ringing. We slowed a bit when we entered the large, open area just inside the city’s main pivot-gate.

  Something heaved itself out of the water to a great height. It crashed down, smashing the southern guard tower and the pivot-gate itself. Stone crumbled under its weight and rubble rolled and tumbled aside. Just the portion of the Thing that lurched out of the lake-moat must have been eighty feet long and maybe twenty in diameter. I couldn’t see any eyes, but the business end of it was entirely mouth. I knew this because it opened in three directions and showed me its tooth-lined maw and gullet, preparatory to eating me.


  Why is it that Tort is the only person that gives me pleasant surprises?

  It was directly in front of us as we barreled down on the gate. I drew steel and leaped straight up; Bronze lowered her head and accelerated right down the Thing’s throat. We didn’t plan it that way, we just did it. There was no way she could stop on the stone surface, especially with the sudden burst of rubble and gravel, but she made a great missile. I, on the other hand, needed room to swing a sword effectively.

  I landed on top of the Thing, or nearly so; the smell reminded me of rotting blood and burnt onions. I slid across the slick, oily surface while it involuntarily swallowed Bronze. Unfortunately for it, I had the presence of mind to reverse my grip, ram my sword down into its rubbery hide, and continue to slide with it, like a man in a boat holding a steering oar. My own mass and momentum, even without armor, was more than enough to rip the Thing open for yards. A terrible, fetid odor immediately bubbled out of the Thing, followed by a black sludge full of severed rubbery bits. It put me in mind of a whale corpse that had rotted on the beach until it exploded.

  When I came off the Thing’s back, or top, or whatever that surface was, I landed on the ring road with nearly a foot to spare; just a little farther and I’d have been in the moat. I hurled myself away from the Thing and from the edge. I expected the Thing to whip around and snap at me, but it didn’t. Instead, it sat there, partly inside the wall, partly trailing over the edge of the road into the water. It bulged and humped and twisted, as though having some sort of big, worm-like seizure. At a guess, it was trying to digest my horse, which is problematic for anything short of a car crusher.

  I circled away from the moat and started slicing the Thing. Up, down, and across, the sword was wonderful; it cut right through the thick, rubbery hide, the blubber and foulness, even the occasional cartilaginous bit. It was almost like swinging through air. I even ran down one side of the Thing, sword buried to the hilt in it, and opened it from midline to jawline.

  Bronze kicked her way out through that cut, bellowing fire. The Thing seemed glad to let her go; it certainly made no move to try and eat her again. It did try to eat me, but I parried three snatching tentacle-tongues with the edge of the blade and severed them messily. When it snapped at me the next time, I was prepared. With a cutting implement of that quality, I could do surprising things.