“Not really. Seems untidy to just leave it there, though.”
“I’ll just take it back up to the road, then.”
“All right.”
So I dragged it with my tendrils, hauling it up along the loose scree until I could lay a hand on it. After that, it was just a matter of slinging it over a shoulder and hand-over-handing my way up the rope. The ghost followed me up and looked on with interest as I laid the corpse out.
“I look awful,” it said.
“Not that bad,” I countered. “A little cleanup, a change of clothes, and you could be laid out quite nicely for a funeral.”
“If you say so. I can’t seem to really care all that much.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. Side effect of being dead. You just don’t get the same surge of adrenaline or other glandular reactions.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Sorry. I should be asking if you want me to see to your funeral.”
“I suppose. But what do I do?”
“Do?”
“Aren’t I supposed to go to some sort of eternal realm, or afterlife, or something?”
“Ah, we’re getting to that already, are we? Yes, that’s my job. Whenever you’re ready to, I’ll either show you to the Grey Lady, or you can use me as a doorway to eternity. Take your pick.”
“You came out here just for me?” the ghost asked. He seemed faintly surprised.
“I came out here to find out what happened to some diplomats. I guess I have.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else I can do for you, before…?”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
“All right.” I held out my hand. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The ghost took my hand, and I went… wherever it is I go when I have something for the Grey Lady.
When I returned, I looked around more carefully. No other ghosts to be seen. Maybe they followed their bodies, wherever those went. So I examined the corpse.
Yes, three crossbow bolts; two in the left lung and one that nicked the top of the heart. The bolts were small, ugly little things, very much suitable for a
galgar-
sized crossbow. The body also had a lot of scrapes and lacerations from its slide down the slope, but no other real injuries.
There was no sign of horses or other people, which made no sense. If this was an ambush, then a lot of people died here, possibly some horses, too. It hadn’t rained that I was aware of, but maybe this area of the seacoast had a shower or two that didn’t make it to Karvalen.
I knelt down and ran my fingers along the drainage gaps in the wall, then sniffed at the fingertips. No blood traces there. I worked my way along the road, testing each one, sniffing for a trace.
Yes, this one: blood. I sniffed at the road, down on all fours, and could smell it. There were other scents, too buried under the all-important blood trace… horses, yes. Leather. Sweat. A musty, damp smell that I didn’t immediately recognize.
Orku
?
Galgar
? Probably.
I realized I could follow this smell. It led along the road for nearly a mile, then diverted down a rocky, jagged slope. It was almost a trail; at least, it was a way among the rocks that was easy to climb. There were more traces of blood and horsehide that hadn’t been washed away. The trail led to a gap between two great stones, more like a riven place in a boulder; within it was a narrow passage into the undermountain regions.
A little way below the opening, someone had used a flat place as a butcher’s block. Whatever rain had come by since the ambush had been insufficient to wash away the blood from that. Well, at least that explained what happened to the horses, and possibly to the prisoners.
I sat down next to the opening and thought for a while.
My first thought was to go into that hole and see if I could find anything to kill. While that’s not necessarily a bad plan, it was getting on in the night and I don’t like the idea of being on their home ground—or of being stuck on their home ground if I get lost. Unlikely, since I would unwind a spell like Ariadne’s thread behind me, but anyone with the magical wherewithal to cut it… Plus, I’d have to leave Bronze behind. The gap wasn’t large enough even for a regular horse and there was no telling what sort of narrow passages I might encounter.
That settles it. I’m not going down that hole.
That didn’t leave me much.
If I’m not going down there, is there anything I can send? I could, theoretically, animate the corpse of Wollan and send it off to kill anything it might find, but it would just be one animated corpse. He would be easy to finish off again. I’d also prefer to bring the body back to whoever might want it for a funeral.
I got up and climbed to the road. With Wollan thrown over Bronze’s rump, we headed toward Baret. She did the running, I did the thinking. How do I make this underground region an awful place to be—preferably a fatal place to be? I suppose I could just have the mountain form a tunnel around the road, but that’s a purely defensive thing. I want the current bushwhackers and any future bushwhackers to fear the very idea. I want them afraid to come this far south. I want them afraid to piss me off.
They should be.
By the time we got to Baret, I had an idea.
I wondered how much salt they could spare.
I spent all day in Baret as a guest of Prince Banler. A lot of it was spent just sitting around and talking with him. I get the impression that he likes being informal and doesn’t get to do it often; persons of equal rank are hard to come by, it seems. We talked about the old Baron Xavier and I told him stories about me in Rethven. He told me about growing up as a Prince and about his political troubles.
We also took a walk to observe the canal works. I didn’t find much to criticize in the construction of the water gates. My only input was to suggest making the gears out of bronze instead of wood. Wood rots in a wet environment; bronze eventually corrodes, but it takes a lot longer.
At lunch, I met the Lady of Baret, Verenna, Prince Banler’s wife. She was younger than I’d have thought, but I suppose that’s just my own upbringing talking. She had Brenna, their youngest daughter, with her. The little one didn’t want to shake my hand; she hid her face in her mother’s skirts. Well, she was all of three years old. I’m terrifying to small children.
I also saw Melvin, in passing. He looked rather haggard and tired. I suspected he wasn’t sleeping well. The urge to ask him about it was strong, but I refrained. It wasn’t easy.
That reminds me. I need jail cells. Occasionally, it’s appropriate to incarcerate someone. While they’re thinking about the error of their ways, Fred can mention that they really should reform. I’ve always felt that a comfortable—or even tolerable—jail is counterproductive.
We also spent some time with the wizard Velina and one of their metalworkers—a guy who specialized in brassworks. While Velina could, fairly quickly, boil away seawater to produce salt, the amount of salt per liter of seawater was almost not worth her effort. So, in payment for all the salt they could spare, I helped with the design of a salt extractor. It was just a solar-heated evaporator, really. Once you evaporate the seawater, you’re left with salt. This would go much faster than the traditional method of putting a pan of seawater in the sun and scraping salt out the next day.
I am morally certain that there’s a spell to remove the salt without boiling away the water, but I can’t seem to quite remember it. I’ll look into it, maybe, in case I ever develop another sudden need for a lot of salt.
They seemed very pleased with the solar boiler method, though. At any rate, they gave me two giant sacks of salt. Pricey stuff, salt, but now they could produce it more quickly. Good investment on their part, I think. An investment of goodwill, too, if you want to look at it like that.
They loaded up the body of Wollan for transport back to his prince. Banler promised that this would not reflect badly on me.
“It’s a road,” he assured me. “Things happen. And I’ll mention that you’re so offended that you’re taking a personal hand in the matter. Prince Larsus will understand.”
“I’ll leave that in your hands, if I may. I’ll be busy tonight, dealing with this, and then I’ve got to get back to my mountain.”
“Of course, of course. Stop by anytime.” He winked at me. “That’s part of our deal, after all!”
“I will.”
“And, if you could,” he added, more quietly, “next time, would you bring along some of that beer you make? The dark stuff.”
“Is it that good?” I asked. “You’ll understand that I don’t really drink beer, myself.”
“Eh? Oh.” He looked uncomfortable. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t. But, yes, I do have a fancy for that dark beer you make. It’s got a taste to it, and no mistake.”
“I’ll see what I can do. If I come by without a disaster on my heels, I’ll remember.”
“Can’t ask for anything more fair.”
“Do you have any idea what he was sent for? Wollan, I mean. I don’t know anything about Prince… Larsus?”
“Larsus, yep.”
“…or about Philemon. Wollan said he was in the service of someone named Rayvan.”
“Well,” Banler said, marshalling his words. We were sitting in a lounging chamber, up on the third floor of the “palace,” making use of
comfortable
furniture. Banler swirled wine in a goblet and looked at the ceiling.
“Rayvan, if I remember right, is the lord of some little place in Philemon’s territory, on the north border, I think. A small town called…Friel? Frayel? Something like that. They’d be the first of Philemon’s territory to get overrun, so I can see why he’d be concerned and want one of his own people along.
“Prince Larsus and Rayvan, well, they’re not bad chaps, not really. Got differences with them, of course; Larsus wants to rule the old kingdom and I don’t think he should. That’s really the big sticker; it usually is. They don’t like the way Byrne is spreading, though, and we’ve all got that in common. Since they’re even farther north than Wexbry—they’re right up against Vathula, share a border with them, you know—I’d guess they’re pretty nervous about it. And about Vathula, come to that. Nothing much comes out of Vathula, but everybody along the Range gets their share of
orku
and
galgar
coming down to steal what they can.”
“Nothing organized?” I probed.
“Nah,” he said, waving his free hand, then slugging back a draught. “You get a lone thief, maybe a group of six or so, and they steal a pig or a couple of sheep, maybe some chickens. They don’t usually kill anybody; that’s not what they’re after. It’s like they know a little thievery won’t be pursued into the Range, but a bunch of murderers will.”
“Yes, I suspect they do,” I agreed. I was pretty sure of it, in fact. I did make it a point for Bob to leave Rethven strictly alone; I wondered if Keria had kept that policy from sheer inertia, or if she understood why I wanted it that way.
Or if this thievery was really just testing the waters for something bigger. Crap. I was going to have to do a pan-and-scan of the Eastrange, just for the intelligence value. That could take a while.
“So,” I continued, “you think he wants to open up trade? Or is he more interested in straight-up military support?”
“I’d guess he’d be willing to pay for troops,” Banler offered. “Just a guess, though. He’s not all that rich. Wexbry could probably take Philemon and keep it, but it would be years before it paid for its conquest.”
“Fair enough. Well, here’s hoping they send another someone—and that they make it all the way in one piece.”
“You sure the road’s going to be safe?” he asked. “I could send them by ship. No trouble. Or just a bit more of an escort on the road.”
“I don’t think anything underground will want to be anywhere near this end of the Range in a couple of days.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“I’m going to put a curse on the place.”
“On second thought,” he decided, “I can get by without knowing.”
Sunset came and went in its usual prickly fashion. Not so bad, though, since I hadn’t really exerted myself during the day. When I emerged from the privy, I was already cleaned up and ready to go.
Prince Banler and his wife saw me off, along with his eldest son, Tanner. Tanner was a solid-looking man, hard hands, good calluses, sharp eyes. Definitely a fighter.
Tanner’s eyes kept going back to Bronze. I think he wants my horse. I can’t say I blame him. I did introduce Bronze to the family, though, and she was both delighted and dignified.
I’m guessing that Tanner will ask someone about how to get a golem horse.
Bronze and I headed through town; there was an errand I had to run. Rather than knock on doors and introduce myself to dying people and their families, I just made the rounds for any of the recently deceased. It seemed the simplest way to go about it.
Once outside the city, we headed back along the road. There are places where it is possible to climb down from the road to the sea without a rope, but only a couple. We stopped at the first one we came to; I needed something from the sea and I hoped Ssthich wouldn’t mind.
I climbed down until I was on slick rocks, hip-deep in salt water. Tendrils spread out from me like ink, uncoiling and twisting through the waves, reaching down along the stony floor, following the slope of the rocks.
“I hate to bother you,” I said, both with my voice and with that special part of me on the inside. “Ssthich, I’m not sure exactly what offends you and what doesn’t, but I’m trying to be polite. I’m asking for a shark, or some other, similar creature that swims and kills and eats and not much else. Bigger is better than smaller, too, if that’s all right with you.
“I’m going to use it to kill a lot of those ugly little grunts that live under the mountains, here—or, at least, that’s my plan.
“If that’s okay with you, I’ll take whatever I can find. If not, then I trust I won’t find anything. Is that fair?”
Crashing of waves on the rocks. Sea breezes. Nothing, not in my ears, not with that part of me that listens in other ways.
Well, nothing ventured…
I scrambled and splashed my way into the water, down the underwater mountainside, and looked around. There were fish here and there, but nothing of the size or nature that I wanted. I killed a couple with tendrils, sucking the life out of them and dragging them over. Gutting them and spreading their bloody remains through the water required a little finesse; the blood tended to migrate in my direction, rather than spreading out. Observing the phenomenon told me that the force of it declined on a curve, possibly with the square of the distance, just judging by eye. Beyond fifteen or twenty feet it was hardly noticeable.
Still, with a few tries, I managed to get bloody fish guts far enough away from me that it spread through the water normally. With a bit of luck, chumming the waters would bring me something more my size.
It took a while, but fishing always does. The things seem to know you’re after them.
The type of fish I wanted came swimming up to me, looking for lunch. It was about ten or twelve feet long and had a mouth full of teeth. It was probably a shark, but I don’t really know sharks; it was just big and hungry and willing to do something about that. The bloody guts in the water attracted it and the fact I was a moving target made me look appetizing.
What I wanted was a little bit more complicated than just killing it outright. I wrapped it in tendrils, carefully, as it swam toward me. It moved in to chomp and I stuck my left arm down its throat; it held on and shook while trying to swim away with me, but I held on, too. I didn’t want a fish story about the one that got away. The bite wasn’t going to bother me too seriously; it hurt, yes, even with my armor, but I get better and I know it.
That makes it tolerable. It doesn’t mean I like it.
Now that I had it right where it wanted me, I drew the spirit out of it. Not in my normal fashion, gulping it down in surges, but carefully. Instead of drinking it, I lifted it out of its fleshy container and held it in a web of dark lines, delicately, keeping it intact. When I did this, it stopped shaking me; this helped my concentration enormously as we slowly sank back to the ocean floor.
It was much easier than dealing with a soul; this was just an animal, a spirit. How is that different? Well, it’s simpler, for one thing. It’s less complicated and intricate in its connections to the flesh.
I sliced my catch thoroughly open with my sword; the rest of the ocean would eat it soon enough. All I wanted was the blood to soak in to me to deal with the bite marks. My arm hurt more than I expected; I figured that I might be pulling triangular teeth out of my armor, later.
Holding the shark-spirit carefully in my tendrils was like holding a mouthful of fizzy drink without swallowing it. It wasn’t that hard, but I had to pay some attention to it. I climbed back up the underwater mountainside, all the way to the road.
Now I could sit down and build the matrix. Since I hadn’t known exactly what it would contain, I couldn’t build it in advance. Tricky, this part; I had to hold the spirit while I built a spell to contain the spirit.
This is not easy. It’s like carrying on a conversation while writing down instructions. If anything had interrupted me, even merely distracted me, I’d have lost the thing. As it was, I drew my circles and lines in peace, charged it, and placed the shark-spirit inside like laying an instrument in its case.
It wasn’t happy. I didn’t blame it.
That done, I walked around the containment circle, surrounding it with another one. This was to contain the gas.
I poured out all the salt in a ring around this whole setup—pounds of it. Thirty pounds? Fifty? I can’t judge weight by the feel anymore, but quite a lot of it. I walked around and around, making the ring of salt fairly even. Then I started a sort of breakdown, filter, and pumping spell. The outer ring was made of salt—sodium chloride. That’s sodium and chlorine, chemistry so basic that even I know it.
After the better part of an hour, the ring was just powdered sodium metal. The outer magic circle, the one containing the containment circle, had a thick tower of roiling smoke inside it. In regular lighting, I knew it would be a dirty yellow-green.
Merging the spirit and the gas was complicated and surprisingly tricky. The spirit didn’t like being part of some sort of gas cloud instead of a solid object, and it really didn’t like being merged with a little bit of my own essence—a hungry tendril. I insisted. Repeatedly. And strongly. And I kept insisting in different ways until bits of it started to stick.
The fact it resisted didn’t help at all. I tried matrix after matrix, each more elaborate than the last. Finally, I asked Bronze to stand next to the circle and pose for me. Her magical matrix is something I still don’t understand, but I don’t need to understand it, necessarily, to copy elements of it.
It took half the night, but I got my way.
The result was a quasi-living cloud of chlorine gas, capable of moving itself at speeds approaching that of a running man. It could engulf a target, killing it with a gas attack, and then absorb some of its vitality as it died.
It was used to being underwater; I imprinted on it that it belonged
underground
, instead, swimming through the reefs and shoals of the caverns and crevasses.