Nightlord: Shadows (32 page)

“I am sorry.”

“So am I. I’ll still try to stop by tomorrow, if you don’t come visit. Okay?” I asked. She swallowed, nodded, dropped her hand, and hung her head.

“…okay.”

I nodded to her, nodded to Tianna, and lightly sprang into the air to land astride Bronze.

That made things so much easier. All I had to do was hang on without crushing her.

Bronze walked very carefully through the rain. I barely noticed. I was concentrating on adapting to what I’d just eaten. I suspect the raindrops weren’t reaching me, anyway.

Dragons were bad. The last and only time I tried to eat one, it nearly killed me. Now I’ve taken a bite out of a goddess and I’m having issues with it. How do dragons compare to godlike entities? I ate the whole dragon, or tried to; I only got a bite—a big bite—of whatever Sparky is. Is it the same sort of thing? Do I digest it differently? Does that matter? Did the practice of a dragon’s soul help get me ready for this? Or did the Ascension Sphere? How can I rate things when I don’t have anything external to compare them to? Nowadays, am I capable of swallowing a dragon whole? This was a huge meal for me, but was it indigestible? Or do I just need some time to process it?

I need numbers. I can’t quantify things without numbers. I have no yardstick, no way to measure anything. All I know is how it feels, and that doesn’t tell me anything concrete. I need some objective form of measurement to get my head around this sort of thing.

Then again, sometimes the only thing I need to know is that I feel terrible. A four-degree fever doesn’t feel much different from a five-degree fever. I’m still miserable.

What was I doing? Oh, right. Changing shirts. The one I was wearing was now short-sleeved and rather scorched.

Wasn’t there something else?

Tort pointed me to a chair. Her mouth moved, probably that talking thing. I sat down in the chair.

I resolved not to throw up. Then again, could I throw up if I had to? How do you regurgitate energy? That could be awful. Worse than the normal awful. What if I throw up and it’s like a small sun? Can I toss nuclear cookies?

I resolved not to throw up. Did I already resolve that? And why is the word “resolve” like that? It looks like you’re trying to solve something twice: re-solve. How does that relate to promising yourself something? Does it relate to confirmation? Re-solve is to confirm results; promising yourself something is confirming that you’ll do it. Maybe that’s it.

Wow. I feel awful.

I slept.

Light. Lots of light. Brightness like the inside of a sun.

I adjusted, adapted. The brightness seemed to dim, to resolve itself into shapes and forms.

I lay in a round pool of sparkling water. It was warm and comfortable, even refreshing. Small, face-like fountain stood at the edges of the pool, water trickling gently from the mouths: a man’s face, faces of a
galgar
, an
orku
, and an elf. There was also a distorted face I didn’t immediately recognize; it took a moment for memory to retrieve it. It was a face belonging to that race of fish-men I’d met when the clergy in Baret sank the boat I was on. Water trickled from all these faces at various rates, but mostly from the fishy fellows.

I tasted the water; it was clean and fresh and… hmm. Refreshing? Tasty? Well, it was good, that much I know. I realized how thirsty I was and drank my fill.

I stepped up onto the white paving, out of the water. I didn’t drip; the water refused to cling to me, remaining instead in the pool.

Odd. But I’m getting used to odd. Someday, a rabbit in a waistcoat is going to run past me, glancing at a pocketwatch and bemoaning how late it is. I’m just going to point it toward the hole in the hedge without batting an eye.

To my left and right, arranged in a great circle around a pillared structure, were other pools of varying sizes. Mine was on the low end of mid-sized; I wondered what that signified. Each had a fountain in it, refilling the water in its pool. Most of them had simple, plain fountains with one or two faces. Outside this circle of pools was…

…was…

Okay, so, that wasn’t working. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anything out there, it just wasn’t anything I managed to comprehend. It was as though the light from before had coalesced into shape and form in this little space, but hadn’t bothered with everything else. It wasn’t nothing; I’ve seen nothing. It was something, but it didn’t have any handles for my mind to grab on to.

Yep. That was odd. But look at how well I deal with the odd, strange, and even the incomprehensible without going any more insane than I already am!

Which led me to a question I didn’t like. If this is what I saw around me, was it really here? Or was it just the interpretation my brain put on it? How much of this is real (let’s not get bogged down with defining “reality,” thank you) and how much is a metaphorical construct of my psyche?

Or am I simply dreaming? Somehow, I suspected that might be too convenient.

I turned my attention to the apparently-comprehensible: the pillared building. It reminded me of the Parthenon, but gleamingly polished and done in Late Ostentatious, possibly in Pre-Bling Vulgar. Bas-relief sculpture spiraled up each pillar, either in solid gold or covered in gold leaf. Mosaics in glittering gemstone or glass covered the floor. Frescoes of heroic people and heraldic beasts adorned the walls.

I walked, naked as a peeled egg (possibly slightly scrambled), into the building. There was really nowhere else to go.

Ever had that dream where you’re the only naked person in a crowd?

The interior of the building was brightly illuminated and filled with people—I use the word loosely—of all descriptions. And I do mean “all descriptions.” Some were animal-headed humans; others were combinations of animals; others were human, but with odd changes—no nose, three eyes, one eye, no ears, horns, and so on. They all wore different garments as seemed to suit their particular, peculiar tastes. Armor was in abundance, along with togas, wraps of mist, long tunics or gowns, crawling vines, et cetera. It was a big-budget sci-fi movie full of aliens disguised as a cocktail party.

Nobody paid any attention to me. Well, almost. I got a few glances, possibly a disdainful sniff or two, and then ignored. I felt like that one relative you have to invite, but you don’t have to like.

For a while, I just stood there and tried to figure out the purpose of the gathering. For the life of me, it looked like a cocktail party. Cliques of… okay, I’m going to continue using the word “people” for now… people were chatting, snacking, drinking, and occasionally mingling. It was possible to read the crowd a bit by noting the glares and occasional nods and smiles between cliques. Not everyone here was friendly to each other, perhaps not even mostly, or even generally. They merely acknowledged each other, possibly like ambassadors meeting at high-level peace talks to discuss the current war.

What was I doing here?

“One side,” said a voice, from behind me. It was a cross between a merman and a shark, carrying an obsidian-headed spear. It spoke quite clearly, though. It balanced on its powerful tail and I wondered how silly it would look if it tried to walk.

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“You’re blocking the door,” it added. It looked at me keenly for a moment. “I know you.”

I stepped out of the way.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” I told it.

“I think we have,” it replied, “but not here. Well done.” It glided forward, moving in a way that reminded me of a dolphin balancing on its tail out of the water. It looked quite graceful, rather than silly. It also looked impossible, but so what? It wasn’t even time for breakfast; I could handle at least five more impossibilities.

I just stayed out of the way and watched for a while.

Besides the people, there were a nine displays that reminded me of large dioramas under glass. They were difficult to see through the shifting crowd, but the glimpses I got told me they were very detailed and complicated.

I edged my way over to the nearest. Surrounding it were a number of odd-looking chessboards. I say chessboards; they had squares and pieces, but each of the squares seemed to have depth. No, that’s not quite right. It was more than just depth, it was… I don’t know what it was. The pieces, too, seemed much more detailed than the eye could follow. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they moved on their own when I wasn’t watching.

That particular diorama was easily recognizable as a model of an Aristotelian Earth. Concentric crystal spheres floated inside, each rotating at its own speed. In the center, a spherical planet sat still, shadowed on one side, illuminated on the other by a glowing ball on one of the rotating crystal sphere shells. It was a wonderful model and I wondered how it was reproduced so perfectly.

The model hurricane was slowly turning. Perspective shifted. I wasn’t looking at a model. I was on the outside, looking in at a world.

Was anyone on it looking back at me? On that strip of early night, with those little lights in cities and towns, were any of them looking up at the night sky and wondering if they saw a face? Or were they hiding in their homes, hoping not to be noticed?

I slipped away from that diorama to look at another, hopefully a less philosophically-disturbing one.

No such luck. This, too, was surrounded by game boards with pieces on them. Inside, a great, flat world rested on the back of five elephants, and those stood on the back of a giant turtle. The turtle turned its head slightly and blinked at me. The elephant facing me raised its trunk. This did nothing to make me feel any less disturbed.

All right, I admit it; there are weirdnesses that can still weird me out. I thought I’d gotten past that. I was wrong. There. I said it.

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

“You!” boomed from behind me.

I turned around; I didn’t have much choice. The gentleman who accosted me was as tall as I was and about a foot broader. His thick, dark-red beard crackled with electricity. His free hand held a double-bladed axe. I decided instantly that I didn’t want to get into any sort of fight with him. Unfortunately, his tone and manner suggested my options were limited.

“Yes?” I replied. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making—”

He swung his fist and I saw a lot more light. For a moment, everything was a scintillating cloud of geometric patterns, glowing and glittering, and then I was skidding on the polished mosaics and glad the tiles were smooth rather than sharp-edged. Everyone else drifted away or closer, depending, to form a wide ring of spectators.

“You creature!” he shouted, and came after me. He wasn’t swinging his axe, but it trailed electric sparks like a comet’s tail; I didn’t like it a bit. I rolled to my feet, away from him, and kept moving back. I tried to stay out of range and the crowd seemed inclined to do the same.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to offend you,” I told him. I checked to see if my nose was broken; it wasn’t even bleeding, which I took to be a good sign. “I don’t even know you!”

At this point, two figures came out of the crowd and gave me an enormous sense of déjà vu. One was a tall, muscular man with antlers growing from his head; the other was the shark-like fellow I’d encountered at the door. Now I recognized him as Ssthich, and the other was the Hunter. Two of the gods. Which made the rest of these people…

When I say “gods,” I don’t mean omnipotent beings. These Things, whatever they are, do not meet my standards as “gods.” Maybe I’m wrong; maybe they are what passes for gods, kind of like ancient aliens might have been mistaken for gods by primitive humans back in the dawn of the race. To me, a god would not need humans; as far as I can see, these beings do. They’re like parasites—well, symbiotes, in the case of the more helpful sorts—on the sapient races. So when I say “gods,” I’m referring to the things that claim to be gods.

My adversary turned to face them, but didn’t turn his back on me. He stepped to the side so he could see all three of us. His comment to the other two was rude, if not outright offensive. Ssthich seemed annoyed; the Hunter ignored the comment and replied.

“You can’t do this here,” the Hunter said, patiently. “You know the rules.”

“Don’t you lecture me on the law!”

“Then start paying attention to it,” Ssthich said. “He’s here. He is as protected as you are.” Ssthich grinned and took his spear into both hands. His smile was much more frightening than mine. “Unless your attack on our fellow was a sign that you choose to surrender that protection?”

Others of the gods stepped up, apparently backing up the Hunter and Ssthich. One was manlike in form, but had a right hand made of shining steel and a left eye that matched. Another was a dark-cloaked, hooded figure with gaunt, almost skeletal hands. A third was a beautiful, brown-skinned woman wreathed in green and gold.

My adversary’s heavy eyebrows descended like thunderclouds and he grumbled.

“He assaulted one of us first!” he declared. “This lower creature wounded the Mother of Flame!”

The Hunter glanced at Ssthich. Ssthich shrugged. The Hunter looked troubled. A slim, female finger tapped him on the shoulder and he stepped aside. A lady in a long gown moved up.