Nightlord: Shadows Page 21

  I stepped forward in hyperdrive, between the open jaws, placing myself inside the mouth but between the majority of the teeth; Bronze had bashed out a nice gap when she went down its throat. I also had my sword ready, held low, pointed down and to my left. When the jaws closed around me, I cut across and up and over and down and around, a huge, circular cut.

  This maneuver removed its face, or the equivalent. The front of the jaws fell off and I stepped back out, mindful of ichor on my clothes. Bronze took that as an opportunity to breathe fire into that ichor-spurting orifice.

  With that much done, killing it was just a matter of keeping at it until it quit. While Bronze’s kicks—even Bronze’s kicks!—didn’t have much effect, Bronze practically stuck her head into any opening I made and roasted internal chunks. It thrashed, trying to pummel us, but Bronze didn’t really mind being hit with a sack of blubber. While I minded something awful—yuck!—I generally managed to punish it by carving away large chunks. That was a trade I could make all night, no matter how disgusting it might be.

  When not actually being hammered by a demonic sausage, I kept zipping around it, first slicing deep cuts in it anywhere and everywhere I could reach, then going back to cut again at an angle, letting long wedges of it fall out. We sliced it and roasted it, and anyone who has to dissect an earthworm in Biology class will never again get sympathy from me.

  Finally, Bronze rammed her way into the front end of the thrashing, weakened Thing, planted her front feet through its flesh, lifted her head, dug in with her rear legs, and acted like a temporary anchor. I waded in from one side, slicing up and down, and rapidly worked my way entirely through the Thing, severing it very messily in two.

  When we finished, it collapsed into a bubbling gush of ichor and other goo, evaporating rapidly. I hurried to hit us with a cleaning spell, just in case there was acid involved. There was, but it was only a mild corrosive. We weren’t hurt—nothing that wouldn’t be better by morning—but my outfit was ruined.

  I wasn’t nearly so concerned about an attempt to kill me as I was about the state of my clothes. When that occurred to me, it struck me as odd.

  I double-checked. No, I wasn’t feeling upset or scared. My clothes were frazzled and discolored, with ragged patches and some holes. That seemed to be the worst of it, from my perspective. I wasn’t having a moment of I-need-to-sit-down-and-gather-my-wits sort of thing.

  That’s probably a good thing. The fact I am getting used to this is not.

  But what was the point of this Thing? To eat me? Maybe. It didn’t feel like a real problem, though. It was… too easy?

  I recalled the size of the Thing. It had never come fully out of the water, so I don’t know how long it really was, but it was huge. On the other hand, it also wasn’t terribly threatening to a nightlord. It couldn’t suffocate me, even if it ate me. It wasn’t fast enough to chase me if I chose not to fight it. And, being a Thing, it would evaporate in the sunlight, so I wouldn’t have to face it while mortal. Even the goo into which it dissolved would be gone with the morning light.

  I made a note to make a circuit of the outer lake edge and put a filter spell over the mouth of each canal before we left. Better safe than sorry.

  Still, why would anyone send this Thing after me? There was no real hope that it was going to kill me. Annoy me, certainly. Irritate me, even. I might even be temporarily damaged. If I’d had people with me, they might have been in trouble, but the Thing wasn’t fast or smart—I’m pretty sure I could have kept it busy while anyone else got some distance.

  But could someone have wasted so much effort in a foolish attempt to actually destroy me? I suppose it was possible, but the odds were so terrible… it really wasn’t worth the huge expenditure of power it took to summon that Thing.

  Wait… I’m assuming it was meant for me. Could it be intended for someone else? Anyone who tried to reach Karvalen during the night, maybe? Or intended to act as a nighttime guardian of the place? No, it wasn’t here during my first night; it was more recent. Could it be just for me, but a test to see how I would react?

  I looked around—remembering to look up, as well!—and scanned for the distortion of a scrying portal.

  Son of a bitch. There must have been a dozen. They were scattered about at roughly head-height, presumably watching me from multiple angles.

  Well, I asked nicely, last time.

  I gathered up magical power and blasted one of the scrying sensors. Normally, they just absorb an impression of the location in a semi-psychic fashion, translating it down the lines of a spell to a termination point, where the caster of the spell receives it as a sort of vision in his meditative focus. What I did was hit it with a lot of magical power, overloading the scrying spell. Whoever was using it wouldn’t be harmed, but it would leave him with a headache like the hangover after a three-day bender.

  I blasted four of them before the rest caught on. They winked out, just like that.

  Feeling annoyed and grumpy, I vaulted up on Bronze and we walked around the mountain. I had filters to build, then a trip to the Eastrange.

  Naturally, I can’t even cut down trees without problems. Annoyances just seem to be my lot.

  My sword can cut down trees; I very carefully slice wedges out of the trunks, near the ground, then just push them over. It was a good opportunity to watch my sword’s enchantments in action. It was fascinating, watching the atom-sharp edge glide through the wood, and the way the enchantment continuously re-sharpened the edge, keeping it intact.

  I was interrupted by a bear. A tree crashed down and the bear growled at me. It started lumbering in my direction. I’ve never actually encountered a bear up close, so I can’t say it was unreasonably large. I can say it was quite respectably large in every way. Large bulk, large claws, large teeth, bad breath, all standing on its hind legs and looking as pissed off as if I’d just burned down its forest. Smokey the Bear on PCP and outrage.

  I’m going to have to drag home a rug, I thought, as it opened that mouth and roared at me. It wasn’t out to kill me, at least not maliciously; it was just an animal. I didn’t want to kill it. Bronze knew I didn’t want to kill it; she stayed where she was, but was ready to walk it to death under her tonnage if I needed her.

  Could I persuade it calm down, or simply go away? It was worth an attempt, anyway. I reached out with one tendril and touched it. I used that as a magical channel for my translation spell and thought at it as I spoke.

  “I’m not here to bother you. Ignore me and I’ll go away.”

  What I felt in reply was a sense that I was too close. Not really to the bear, but to something important to the bear. I had to die or be driven off. I backed away, slowly, and that seemed to help.

  “Look, just calm down,” I told it, and started draining vitality from it. It snarled and shook its head, lumbered forward a few more steps, reared up and roared again. I stepped back some more and kept draining it. It flopped down onto all fours again as though too tired to keep upright. It took another step toward me, paused, grunted, eyed me suspiciously, and finally lay down.

  “It’s okay,” I assured it, softly. I approached, cautiously, making sure it was too tired to care. I kept one hand in front of its nose so it could smell me as I scratched it behind the ears; it couldn’t hurt to let it associate my smell with something pleasant. A little work with a cleaning spell made the fur much more attractive as a rug, even though I didn’t really want a rug. It also dealt with an awful number of fleas, ticks, and other vermin. A quick look over the bleary-eyed, exhausted bear also found some internal parasites, some inconvenient scar tissue, and a variety of other, minor annoyances. I fixed most of that.

  The reason for the bear’s belligerence came waddling over to its mother. I gave the cub the same treatment and left the pair of them snoozing peaceably. Maybe they would be a little more prone to simply avoid people, rather than be grouchy at them. Probably not, but who knows? I like to think I just did a good deed, rather than assuring some woodcut
ter will get eaten next week. I turned back to my own woodcutting.

  There was a glowing thing sitting on a tree branch. I paused as I was about to cut down the tree; it might be a tree-spirit of some sort, and I’m trying to run a green kingdom. To my vampire eyes, it certainly looked like a spirit of some sort. I wondered if it had any corporeal existence.

  “Good evening,” I offered. It shifted and changed, adopting the shape of a dragonfly-winged humanoid about three inches tall. It put me in mind of Tinkerbell, just without the details. This was a smooth, undifferentiated figure that might have been carved from a block of light. Well, spiritual essence. I don’t think it was visible to mortal eyes.

  “Hello,” it replied. The voice was incredibly high-pitched. I doubted human ears could have detected it, aside from a strange feeling around the inner ear. I decided it had to have at least some physical existence to generate sound.

  “Pardon me; is this your tree?”

  “No. It’s its own.”

  “Ah. Okay. Do you mind if I cut it down? I need the lumber for building things.”

  “It’s not my tree,” it—she, judging by the shape—elaborated.

  “Thank you. I’ll have someone come out and plant more saplings when I’m done.”

  “All right.” It regarded me for several seconds. “Why are you nice?’

  That’s not a question I get asked every day.

  “I don’t understand,” I admitted. I sheathed my sword and leaned on the tree, looking up at the little creature. I wondered what she was. A spirit of some sort, certainly, and interestingly constructed. I’m pretty sure she was a natural phenomenon, not something made in a laboratory.

  “You’re one of those hungry darkness things,” she said. “You’re being nice to living things when you don’t have to. You even said hello without trying to eat me.”

  “I only kill things when I feel it’s necessary.”

  “But you were nice to the bears.”

  “Maybe they’ll be nice to someone else,” I countered.

  “You’re strange.”

  “Yes.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “Lots of things. I’m a teacher, a physicist, a programmer, a hero, a wizard, a king, a vampire—or a nightlord, if you want to call it that—and a whole bunch of other things. What do you do?”

  “I watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “Everything I see.”

  “Hmm. All right. What are you?”

  “I’m a lahr.”

  I took a moment to think about the word. It meant a spirit-entity, something like a pixie or a fairy creature, usually associated with a location. A woodland sprite, perhaps? That seemed to fit.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “I’m going to cut down this tree, now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to get out of it, first? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I can fly.” She demonstrated by zipping, bullet-fast, from the branch to my shoulder. She stood on my shoulder and held on to the rim of my ear. I barely felt it; she didn’t seem to weigh anything.

  “So I see.” I carefully started cutting down trees and stripping branches. Bronze kick-rolled things into the canal for me.

  “Why do you need the trees?” asked the lahr.

  “I’m building things out of wood.”

  “Oh. Can I watch?”

  “Can you travel?”

  “Yes.”

  I pointed at the canal.

  “That runs to a mountain. Another canal goes south—off to the right—to a town. I’m usually in one or the other of those places.”

  “Okay.” She bulleted up to a nearby branch. “You don’t act like you were a man.”

  I paused to consider that. I was pretty sure she meant man as in mankind.

  “I used to be. I still am, in some ways.”

  “I like this better. Men did bad things to the world when they got here.”

  “When they got here?” I echoed. “Got where? This forest?”

  “The world. Maddarrah brought them from somewhere else. Are you always nice to things that aren’t men?”

  “If they’re nice, I’m nice. It’s a rule,” I told her, still thinking about the origin of mankind. The thing—the lahr—was a spirit-entity. She might be immortal, like elves. For all I knew, she might have been present when whoever-it-was “brought them from somewhere else.”

  “If they’re not nice, are you not nice?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” I admitted. “I still try to be. I’m not always very good at it.”

  “Okay. Come with me.” She bulleted away through the forest.

  I looked at Bronze. Bronze looked at me. She chimed her mane and flicked one ear, the equivalent of a shrug. I sighed and started off in the same direction; Bronze trotted along with me, following. I hadn’t made it thirty yards before the lahr bulleted back into view. I revised my opinion on her corporeality; she should have made some sort of sound at those speeds. Maybe a ballistic crack.

  “Can you go any faster?” she asked.

  “Yes, I can, but it’s hard to follow you when you just vanish like that. I have to get ready.”

  “Oh. Are you ready now?”

  I suppressed a growl. With a moment of concentration, I prepared to follow her in my new hyperdrive mode. I kicked the ground a few times, forming divots to act as starting-blocks. I leaned forward into a runner’s stance.

  “Okay. Now I’m ready.”

  She bulleted away and I did my best to follow. For the record, I didn’t do too badly. She was faster, but not grossly so. It took her close to ten seconds to get out of sight around a shoulder of stone.

  As I tried to round the same shoulder of stone, I realized that she was much more maneuverable. As a master of various subtle arts, I used the ancient form of Bug On Windshield to reduce my speed. The rock took it about as well as I did.

  The lahr hovered over me as I sat up.

  “Tired already?” She didn’t sound sarcastic, just concerned. I decided that she might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier. “We’re almost there.”

  “What are we going to see?” I asked

  “You might want to be nice to someone,” she said, and zipped away again. I climbed to my feet and followed more slowly, wondering if all this was just a waste of my time. Forest spirits with limited intellect and short attention span are not the best guides.

  She came to rest on a fallen tree and pointed. I came up behind the trunk and looked over it. In the clearing ahead was a young girl, not even Tianna’s age, sitting on a blanket and looking both bored and excited. It’s hard to do both, but it can be done. I examined her as well as I could at a distance of sixty or seventy feet. She seemed human, healthy, and unenchanted. In short, a perfectly normal girl alone in the woods in the dark of the night.

  “What’s she doing?” I asked, almost whispered.

  “She’s the bait,” the lahr replied. “That’s how men hunt the kirien.”

  Kirien? Ah. A mythological creature about the size of a pony, covered in scales like a dragon, with a lion-like tail, a somewhat leonine head, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and a single horn. They consume morning dew, lifting it off the grass with their long, delicate tongues. Since they love only purity and goodness, they refuse to have anything to do with the race of men or elves, except for virgin girls. Hunting one requires live bait; it isn’t safe for the bait or for the hunter, since the things can be highly dangerous when provoked. Legend said they were insanely fast and capable of going right through trees, nets, and walls without leaving a hole. In some ways, it was similar to a unicorn, but both uglier and more hostile.

  “There’s a kirien in these forests?” I whispered.

  “Oh, yes. Two, actually.”

  “And someone is being a moron?”

  “Someone is alway
s being a moron,” the lahr said. I couldn’t argue.

  “Okay, yes, true. But someone is being a moron by risking his daughter as bait to hunt a kirien?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are kirien smart enough to talk with?”

  “Well…” it said, considering. “Talk to? Yes. Talk back? Not really.”

  Grumbling, I got up and went into the clearing. If I could have, I’d have told the kirien about this and asked them to just avoid it. If they aren’t smart enough to avoid such an obvious trap, though, I’d just have to break the trap. While it’s true that I try to let parents raise their kids—or risk their kids—in whatever way seems best to them, there are lines no one should cross. Using one as bait for a magical creature that could kill her in a number of gory fashions was across that line.

  “Hello!” I called, waving. “Sorry to disturb you, but could you tell me the way to Karvalen?”

  The crossbow bolt went right through me. Completely. That wasn’t a crossbow. That was closer to an arbalest; a heavy-duty crossbow that required a winch to cock it. Only this one was large enough to count as semi-portable. One man could carry it, but its use involved setting it up somewhere it could be braced. It shot a heavy metal quarrel or bolt. The draw on it was about six feet and had a lot more force behind it.

  I made a mental note to include some in the watchtowers of every city. That bolt penetrated completely through me and vanished downrange.

  Their big drawback though, was how long they took to reload.

  Whistling cheerfully, I ignored the rapidly-closing hole and strolled over to the hunter’s blind. I dragged the front of it down, opening it. I hadn’t intended to be instantly confrontational—I just wanted to investigate the whole daughter-as-bait thing. But being shot hurts, even if it doesn’t do me any harm. It brings out the worst in me.

  “Hi there!” I said, smiling. “I’m the guy you just shot, and I think you’re an irresponsible nitwit.”