The Gaming Outpost

Glen Paullings rode the mountain pony down the steep track with a boneless boredom that did not stop him from continually scanning for banditi, and keeping an eye on Pav on his steel-gray pony in front of him, and Roc on his tiny black pony behind him.  They watched those nearest to him so that everyone in the ten man column that trickled slowly down the rawboned orange of the mountainside had at least half an eye spared to them at all times.  Riding the Ventreides Hills taught paranoia and vigilance. The harsh stones were only called ‘hills’ because the Maor Mountains were so nearby, so clearly touching the sky with their year round snow mantles off to Glen’s right.

A whicker from Splash, his dutiful roan steed, brought Glen to a higher state of attention, and he drew out his laser pistol that he had gotten from another realm, another world beyond this one.  For Glen was a verser, a traveller of the paths between dimensions when involuntarily sent forth by seeming death.  Looking about, he saw nothing, but some circling birds below them.

And then the significance of those birds came home to him.

“Vultures.” He murmured, and even at the head of the line, old and whiskery and tough Msac heard him for ears were keen here in the quiet of the world.  The line halted, and all saw that the destination they headed too was overflown by the harbingers of death.  The valley was over the next hill, a true hill not a miniature mountain, and down a bit.  It was perhaps four hours away.

Grim-faced, the men on the trail pressed on.

Toward nightfall, they heard the cries and the wailing as they rode through the vale along their white stony track between fields of vineyards until they came to a stickwalled village of Arb Mandu.  The men and women of that place poured out toward them, gestured them on, and the trailriders let themselves be led through the gate, and into the central space of the campfire.  There they saw a dozen women with their arms chopped off, laying there quite dead.

Glen rolled off his pony, and ran to the pile of the dead, weeping, and found amongst them many faces he had known.  There was Kaz, and Arli, and Toas, and Mithe, all friends.  All people, women that he had persuaded…

He stood up and looked around, and saw that many looked at him, and those who did not looked his way, but could not reach his eyes.

“What happened!” His voice cracked out, slapping the dusty ground with its fury.

“You know what happened.” The speaker was tall, roughly bearded, eyes tearstained, and full of rage that he pushed toward Glen.  His name was Birandu, and while he was not a chief, he was a man that mattered.  “You came.”

“I did not do this.” Glen contradicted him with a chopping wave of his hand.

“You did. You told these women they could be more than the third wife of a mountain lord.  They could be the first wife of a man of the vale, and thus make of him a prince if they chose well.”

Glen remembered.  He had been appalled when he came from another world to this land of high hills and small valleys and dozens of tribes barely above the iron age.  Women married minor lordlings in the more brutal tribes, and the men of the lesser tribes gave tribute, and had not wife nor child.  It seemed to him that telling the young ladies of this place that they could have a man of their own, and a house of their own, and not have to live under the thumb of a first wife was a good thing.  And in proof of his intention, he had told them of gold marriage rings, and given each of them that promised to do this, a gold ring.

The same arm that had borne the ring had been chopped off by the mountain lord.

More eyes now stared at him, and in them was accusation.

“I see weeping and sadness.”  He said, and they nodded knowing they were a kindly people.

“I do not see burnt fields, or despoiled gates, or warriors dead with the arrows of the mountain lord through their chests.”  This time he stared back at them gathered in loose clumps around the central area, and they could not hold their gaze against the fury in his.

“We were wise.” Birandu spoke.  “Had we fought, we would have all died.”

“I came to you with treasure, a year’s worth of harvest, and twelve good young virgins who worked well and were beautiful, and you said you would treat them  as your own.”  Glen said.  Msac, leader of the trailmen spat on the ground.

“Cowards. Gutless worms.”

“We could not match these men.  They kill without mercy or hate like an avalanche.  We are a kind and generous people…”  The first wife of the chief of the village spoke pleadingly.  She received nods of approbation, but Glen noted that some of the young men of the village could not face him or her.  They seemd soft, unformed to him, but he saw resentment in their unmarked bodies.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.  The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

“Yes! Yes!” The people cried, glad that he understood.  And then Glen smiled like a shark, and silence fell, an uneasy pained silence with few noises but the shuffling of feet.

“Birandu, how much did the mountain lord pay you when you told them where the twelve were hid?”

“I-I…” He began to babble, and all could see his shocked guilt.  Glen drew and slice him in half with a sword of light that outdazzled the sun.  Then he turned to the rest.

“Those among you that have houses of their own, that took the wealth I had given you, and bought not even a spear for your young men, you will walk ahead of us.  Call it a shield, a buckler as we go forth to hunt.”

“No we will not!” The chief’s first wife spoke strongly, and stood proudly on her heavy legs, and amidst her jangling gold chains, and Glen smiled faintly, and cut her down as well.

“You took my gold, but in your hearts you hated the virtue and beauty of the twelve.  You knew they beckoned to a better world, and you were ashamed of yourself.  You never worked to defend yourself from what you knew must come.  For you wanted it to come.  You desire to be sheep, to be forced to do the evil you do so willingly.  Well, if you desire to be sheep, then sheep you will be, and I will drive you forth.”

“What of us?” Said a young man with no weapon, and poor clothing.

“I will give you a spear, and if you live, and if you kill a mountain warrior, I will give you his house, his horse, and his prettiest wife.”  And with that Glen swore a terrible oath, and all the young men came to join his war, and he drove the rich and the treacherous down the track to the fortess of the mountain lord, and there he made a great slaughter, and in the end, the fearless, the ruthless lords of the mountains begged him for mercy in piteous voices, but he could not see them for he could only see the dead around the village center, his friends. 

Vnicsi gently scraped under his tertiary left underarm with his secondary right dewclaw removing a thin layer of air-hardened, and thus useless stretchskin to drift down to the floor of the scoutship’s cabin.  There a spongebot, a cleaning robot with less brains than plant matter decay chewer insects, would swoop by, deform itself as needed, pushing its drive trains and vacuum intakes into whatever positions needed to fit into whatever crevice it faced, and inhale the shiny flakes of Varigmash skin as it had been designed to do.

The Varigmash continually grew, and they did not moult, so they needed a new skin, but in patches.  Among other species along that spiral arm ‘as itchy as a Varig’ was a byword.  Among themselves, they boasted of their itchy skin as size meant age, and age was much revered among the Varigmash.  It helped that a fully mature Varig of several centuries, before it went senescent, could slap and claw the living crud out of a half-dozen of its juniors with its enormous primary, secondary, and tertiary arms along the main slug-like bodyform, if they, that is the juniors, became insulting.

Vnicsi touched his wiggle nose to his extended tongue, sharing  chemically information between his upper brain and his lower brain.  Yes, he, the he that was independent of body, he was sure.  The planet below him in orbit was barren, and devoid of life, but quite suitable to terraforming,  or Varigmashforming.  But the Varigmash called their home planet Earth just as Humans did.  Both species had a love of good farmland and fertile dirt.

He tabbed the FTL com.

“Revered Great Captain of the Worldmaker.  I bring your exaltedness good news.  Your perpisacity no doubt knows what it already is, but it brings me joy to say it.”  The Varigmash indeed talk such.  They praise each other with at least every other sentence.  It has some basis in biology, but its primarily a cultural tendency of the last thousand years to focus on the good things, a deliberate attempt at being optimistic and respectful of others is taught in all their schools and songs and other instruments of culture much as Americans are taught to praise diversity.  But we shall bring it down closer to how human’s speak, or we should be here a very long time.

“The planet Bounty is in my view, ready for terraforming.  Our samplers can find no information, no specified complexity in any of the molecules.  Although the environment is chemically active,  there is naught but chaos and simple order in the world.”  Life requires information.  The sign of information is complex forms that have unused potential of some kind as only the parts that are specified are used.  Complexity or a wide variety of chemicals or other that is not limited in some way is equivalent to babbling.  It is chaotic, and carries no more information than a babblng brook.  I am here. I am here.

This is not even so much intelligence as a single cell organism requires (although frequently such organisms need more information cell per cell than the larger organism as a cell in a body can farm off some of its duties, while a unicellular organism has no one to take out the laundry.)

“Psionically, O Mighty Traveller of Many Dimensions?”  The Captain of the Worldmaker in a far distant stellar system FTL commed back.

“Nothing, that I could detect, Great Captain.”  And here there was some worry for it was possible that his information samplers had missed something, some niche of life, and every Varigmash in this dimension remembered the Tale of the Four.  Four vile alien criminals had been sunk in the depths of a planet’s core by other aliens, and the psi detectors assigned to the task could not catch their brainwaves because the alien’s brains were too strange, and frankly too evil.  So the crew of the Good Fortune had accidentally awoken these four master psis who had then wreaked terrible pain on all the worlds they came too until finally an Alliance of Eight Races had brought them down in deep space.

“Go, then, you have done well, and pray to the Creator that all will be well.”  And so they prayed, and then Vnicsi the Verser sent out his probes.  The grav pulse probes fled out, seeking pre-targetted comets, and Vnicsi went to sleep for a week as his kind could do with ease.  They could stay awake for a month, or sleep for weeks at a time.

His computer woke him, and Vnicsi, contrary to Human propaganda which he had seen in one universe where he had met those strange creatures, did not eat live worms for breakfast, but decently cooked vegetables for his kind were herbivores.  Thankfully, all his other realities he had visited had no Humans in them.

The comets slammed into the planet, and made it ring like a bell.  Dust boiled up in the air from all over the globe.  Volcanoes began shooting off, and since they were sitting on top of huge aquifiers the percentage of water to other mass was not the measly seventy percent of a well established planet, but nearly ninety-five percent.

Regrettably, the fantasies of the Oort Cloud, were just that, fantasies.  So, Vnicsi sent out his grav probes again for more comets scattered about the system, and fell asleep again.  Upon waking, he eliminated, and sent in the second wave of comets.  This blasted the mantle into different pieces, and caused all of the worlds’ volcanoes, including the several dozen brand new ones to erupt.  Shortly  thereafter, his in atmosphere probes revealed a global flood.

The water began to recede and as it did, certain chunks of  the crust got heavier as more water was above them, and so they sank.  And this caused certain other nearby areas to rise in response, and this drove more water off them, and shortly thereafter there were ocean floors and high mountains.

Vnicsi measured the heat of the planet and was pleased with his graphs.  Due to the volcanoes and the superheated water, the planet had risen fifteen degrees.  This made the oceans nice and warm so that they evaporated easily which made for a huge cloud cover.  With that, the cloud cover, keeping winter warm, and summer cool, and huge amounts of water in the hydrological cycle the winters were wet enough for snow, and the summer was cold enough to keep the snow.

The Great Ice in the interior of the new continents had arrived.

Vnicsi was pleased, but he knew this would only last for a few hundred years so he then turned his attention to the leading gas giant in the stellar system. He opened a Star Device.   Carefully rechecking the major error faults in the poem of computer coding, he again prayed, and sent it out.  Two weeks later, it impacted a Saturn like gas giant, and crushed it. c

See, a Jupiter liked planet is already on the verge of becoming a star.  It just needs a little help to temporarily (like for a thusand years) cross that barrier.  And so, a second sun was born in that system.  It would provide added heat to the planet which the Varigmash appreciated.  A good cool day for them was in the mid-nineties Fahrenheit.

Now that he had the placed warmed up, Vnicsi turned and released a launch of bacteria into the planetary atmosphere.  These bugs would begin to eat rock, and turn it into dirt.  Other bugs would follow later.  And finally, the Varigmash would come to add another world to their domain.

When a man does what he knows he hates, it usually involves a girl.

I met the delightful Megan, Kimlyn, Aelywyn, and Tasha at the coffeeshoppe where I work when they came in that Tuesday morning in a bouncing, jesting cluster of girlish good humor to order from the guy at the rust-brown marble counter their respective Vanilla Americano, Double Mocha Exspresso, Fruitberry Tea, and Plain Java.  The guy with the short, black hair, slopped over his forehead unevenly, under the front to back paper hat suitable for setting sail all your dreams in, as long as those dreams are small, and do not mind immersion was me.   They took the glass-walled corner of the shoppe which let in natural light from Perkin’s and Hickory Streets, and allowed the passing stockbrokers, messenger runners, and other assorted males on both streets a good look at their legs as they sat in the bar stools under the heavily glossed redwood trunk slice table

The stools with their wickerwork backs, and rattan pole base spun and wiggled as the quartet laughed and .giggled over their drinks at the table that had been retrieved by my boss, the redoubtable Robert Strong, on one of his trips to Manitoba.  They knew they were the center of attention in the big, glass-walled coffee shoppe, and yet none showed it by any measure.

It was only when they were halfway out the door that I heard ‘Starsong’.  And I did it.  I reached out for a mind, and for my scriff sense.  For a time unmeasurable, I felt a soul that sung in unison to mine, and I felt that vector, that knowing, that ‘Its this way, of course’ feeling that leads one to another verser.  My world crashed in, pain raced on red and black lines toward my skull, and feebly I swiped at them, and they struck, and took my down so hard that I had no time to scream or beg or anything.  Unconsciousness was a blessing.

Waking, seeing glowing auras around the IV pole, and the slightly wilted flowers on a table nearby with a red cardstock placard attached saying  ’We hope you get well soon’,  I looked around the rest of my hospital room.  Pale white curtains of a tough, but airy weave hung close to his right and left which meant he was in one of the public wards.  Forty or so beds full of the non-contagious and the quiet lay around him, behind their own sight shields made of weaved cotton.  I felt wrung-out, ripped apart and stitched back together by someone not particularly skilled at needlework.  Closing my eyes, I tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed, but it was hot and damp underneath me, and I could not rest, nor was I able to do my preference which is to sprawl out from corner to corner, my arms flung every which way for the hospital bed, unlike my bed at home in the apartment, was narrow.

Uncomfortable, I drifted off, and then a voice spoke.

“Mister? Kevin Wakefield?” The male voice was high and thin, but full of concern.  Kevin opened his eyes to see red-haired man with a goatee standing quietly, but earnestly near Kevin’s bed..

“I’m Peter Haddington,your doctor.  You had a seizure at work,  and collapsed unconscious.  Since then, we’ve been trying to stabilize your waves and thought patterns with drugs, and sleep, but it’s been slow going.  Do you have any information you might give us?”

Keven groaned inside.  This was the last place he wanted to be.  Modern EKG’s could map his strange mental waves that diagnosed him as a psi,   Or they might reveal what had been done to him.  In a previous universe, he had crossed wills with a certain high rank psi.  Now if he tried to use psi, or even scriff sensing, it nearly killed him.  But still, he remembered the beauty of that soul he had brieftly touched.  It, that lovely soul, was one of those four girls, he was not sure which.  She pretended to be normal to her friends, but she was not.  And perhaps, she could be Kevin’s soul mate if he could but find her in the Big City.

“Hey pal, where you from?”  The speaker was tall, leaned down by life, dressed in faded blue jeans and a green terry cloth pullover shirt with sockless feet inside soled moccassins, and he came up behind the rounded fellow in brown corduroys, an argyle sweater, and red hiking boots who weaved a bit, and sweated a bit under his loose blonde hair which was unlike the first man who was shaved bald.

“Um, New, New York.”  The blonde man stepped sideways, and then back, unsteady in his boots in the walkers only designated street between the rows of art deco storefronts, amidst the other walkers in their jeans and jean shorts.  The blonde man grasped the others arm to stop him.

“My names Jake Dassault, brother, and you’re looking a bit shocked at your recent travel”. 

“Meh, ah my-ah name’s Rupert Desjarlais.”  Rupert’s voice stumbled in on itself in great weariness.

“Brother Rupert, how about you and I sit down at one of my favorite eateries, and I’ll tell you about this place?”  Jake said with a worried smile.  He knew what verser shock could be like, but this guy had it bad.  You wake in a new universe, and everything is different.  Some people can cope without a blink of the eye because they’re just that cool, and others are that unimaginative.  They have all the sensitiivity of a petrified tree stump.

Rupert nodded weakly, and Jake reached up, and tagged a bell on green painted metal summons pole so that it chimes.  Nobody else in the street pays any mind, but soon a rickshaw drawn by two large dogs, lightly furred so that they would not get too hot came up to the summons’ pole.  Jake scooped a gold centime out of his belt purse, and dropped it into the half-circular, red painted with many layers for most rickshaws got repaired over and over since the locals manifestly did not believe in throwing stuff away, metal can attached to the wall of the yellow painted rickshaw.

Two chimes came from inside the half-can which had an intricate clockwork mechanism for counting money.  Now it was possible to cheat it, but the dogs were smart enough to remember every person they took and in order, and to smell them.  A rickshaw dog could remember for up to four days its customers by scent, and this was accepted in court.

Jake also gave them a treat of the kind bought from the rickshaw company which was the only kind they were trained to eat.  It cost a bit more, but dogs that did not get treated tended to run through puddles in the street rather than around them, and other sorts of mischief.  And no one with any brain wanted to tackle two two hundred pound rickshaw partner dogs.  Even a strong man would lose such a fight without a shotgun.

Rupert got in, warily, and the dogs turned to look at him, noting his unease.  So they set out slow, and when they judged he had enough time to calm down, they started to run.  Ten blocks later, the quartet drew up in front of Mia Colorado, Jake’s favorite Mexican restauraunt.  Rickshaw riding is noisy so they had not been any attempt to talk during it.

Guided by Jake’s gentle touch on his shoulder, Rupert got out, and stared at the dogs for a long moment, until he shook his head and turned away.  The dogs sat down to wait to listen for another bell chime in the downtown area, and Jake led the other verser into Mia Colorado which was close to his idea of paradise.  Mama Rosita came out, kissed him on both cheeks, pointed out that she had three daughters who needed a man, and told him that the special that night was tacos al carbon.

He introduced Rupert who seemed calmer inside the dark lit room.  He loomed over Mama Rosita, but he spoke to her in good Spanish to which she replied that she could indeed whip up some huevos with extra spicy chorizo.  He went on to one of the eight tables with their wooden chairs, and Mama Rosita caught Jake’s eye, and pressed fingers to lips and blew it in the direction of the poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe behind the clerk’s wooden counter where Mamam presided under the Virgin’s benevolent gaze.  Jake nodded, and his eyes were worried, for if Mamam saw the doom and weirdness around Rupert than it was indeed a problem and not just his imagination.

Jake crooked his elbow in reply, and waved off Mamam’s look at the Corona poster with the midriffed bared abs of steel girl.  He wanted the good stuff.  Mamam nodded, and went to fetch it.

Cool morning airs switched and swam over the white stone floor and gray cement grouting of the low tower encrusted with battlements, and holding an iron ballista that could swivel on its mount.  A woman in a white silk gown, showing her pale shoulders, and covering her arms down to the back of her hands, and to the mid-point of her feet stood there, her shoulders slumped.  Before her, two low walls of white stone and cement, and then  a killing field went down  at a gentle ten degree slope until it reached the vineyards which went on to the horizon.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” The man wore a bronze colored leather vest with epaullets of metal, and leather clad leggings.  His fists were on his hips, and his chin up, and his eyes looked also out toward the horizon.

“You’ve done well in this world, Willard.”  The woman’s voice was low and musical.  She said no more, and he turned, and paced up one step, and then back down another.
“What is it, Katerina?” He snapped. She looked at him sadly.
“You should not have done it, Will.”
“Kidnap you?  We’re immortals. Your boy toy is too.”

She laughed, her voice sparkling, and shook her head.
“Oh Will. You’ve been a friend, and as a friend, I tell you, you shouldn’t have done any of it.”
“I…don’t know what…”

“Will, please. Like you say, we’re immortals.  I’ve seen you operate, mostly for the good, on five different worlds and for nigh on to forty years.  As smart as your advisers in this world are, and Kedren the Sage is a genius, this whole situation reminds me of how you dealt with the space pirates near Krmi.”
“Okay, Kat.  I funded pirates to make the Neius Sea to dangerous which meant you had to send your goods by my railroad to my port city.  I needed to do so.  The railroad cost four times what I expected, and so few people were using it.  Its necessary to move this society into the Future.”

The Neius Sea offered a quite route from the southerly tribes ranchlands to the more developed Cities of the Deep South on the far side of the equator.  Sending their goods north along a railroad to Willard the First’s Nova Port City was going in the exact opposite direction.  It added nearly two thousand miles to the trip, and caused some of the more precious hides to begin to decay, and thus not fetch top value in the great markets of the long-settled South.

“I understand.” She said sadly.
“I knew you would.  Its in a ways like what you did for the Dofor…”  He was eager and charming.

“Yes.  I had not thought of that, but you’re right.”  She shook her head, and clutched her shoulders.
“Are you cold?  I can send for a wrap…”
“Such concern from a kidnapper.” She said lightly.
“I only do what needs must.”  He stiffened in affront.
She reached out, and touched his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. Truly I am.  For that, and for this.”  And she pointed out her arm toward the horizon where a low dust cloud seemed to stretch for miles.
“Is that a storm?” He seemed perplexed, and looked about but saw no vines whipping, no flags and banners waving except for the faint ripples of an early morning turning into mid-morning.
“You know what it is.” Katherine said, her voice full of doom and woe and the world’s sorrow.
“No, that’s….”
“Famous last words, Will.” She said lightly.
“I’m not an evil overlord.”

“Sure about that?” She arched an eyebrow at him, and he gave her a studying look.
“Ok, what is that?”  He pointed to the cloud, a long line of boiling dust, that had grown visibly closer, even if very slowly.
“That is the Gathering of the Tribes.  Every warrior from the age of twelve to, well the Tribes don’t let you retire unless you’re missing more than two limbs for the whole of the thousand mile square Wsl Basin is there.  And at their head is a man.  He is seven feet tall, and he has eyes that might as well be made of lightning.  He killed his first lion when he was seven.  He has personally killed a the quasi-tyranosaurus rex…”

“By himself.”
“Uh.”

“Armed with a dagger.” Her voice was cold.
“That’s…” He wanted to say ‘impossible’ but he had never known Katerina to lie to him.
“He’s no a boy toy.  He’s my husband, and despite my having nearfly a hundred years practise, and being an immortal verser, I can barely keep up with him in normal life.  On a battlefield, I just hide behind a rock, and pray for his safety.”
“But I had too, surely he understands…”
“I understand Will.  All my husband understands is that you killed his people, oppressed his tribe, and kidnapped his wife.  He is going to kill you, and then he is going to burn your city to ash.”  In her words was a solemn certainty, and Will stared at his feet, and then nodded.
“Guards!” He hollered.  Trained guards appeared instantly.

” Bring my horse saddled, the lady’s carrier, and my sword”  His voice was firm, and yet he touched the stone wall of the tower top to pat it.
“What are you going to do?” Katerina’s voice had a bit of fear in it.
“Are you lying to me. Kat?  Just a little bit, for military and strategic reasons.  I understand if you are.”  He looked at her, and she shook her head sadly.

“Well, then I shall go fight this paragon of a man, sword to sword with you watching.  Perhaps he will spare my city that I have poured my love into then.”

And so it was that the Lord of Nova Port City, a standardbearer, four large slaves holding up the lady’s box on long poles went forth from the Main Gate, and slowly road toward the dust cloud. 

Many hours later, the dust cloud turned and dispersed to the south with tales of how the High King of all the tribes had vanquished a demon in swordduel.  The demon had challenged him to one on one combat, and had spoken a few words to the High King as the High King’s blade pierced its chest.  And then the demon was vanquished from the world, was dust and no more.

The man stood in shadow, clothed in black with trimmings of dark green scarfs to break up his shape.  For miles around, hunters paid with good gold, given horns, and spears took their dogs out to seek for his life, but even though he saw a dozen that day, he was not worried for he stood in the space between two branches, thick ones, with one hollowed out by a lightning strike the year before.  One hundred feet above the forrest floor, he had nothing to fear from hounds.

As night fell, the hunters turned back.  The man pulled out a blackened staff, bent it, and attached a looped thread to both ends.  Then without more ado, he pulled forth an arrow, and shot it in a high arc toward the south.  That accomplished, he dismantled the bow, left it where it was, and leapt out of the tree.

He plunged through the narrow line between the branches, pausing to slap one branch as he fell to keep himself properly aligned. And out of the tree, head-first he plunged like a dropped arrow, straight down, and there he saw the chief of the hunters conversing with another hunter about the dark blue stone they had found.  It had been placed there, and made to look normal for the man knew it would be brought to the Cheif’s attention.  And so both hunters were kneeling, and the ninja came down from straight above, and put a long strip of paper in the hood of the chief hunter’s jacket.  And without more ado, the cord came to its end, and rewound, and shot him back up.

Both hunters looked about for a second at what seemed the noise of a nightbird, and then went back to plans to retrieve the stone when things were more quiet.  That done, they left to go back to the castle, to the vampires that held it, and to the lady held by the vampires.  And she greeted them, and slapped the chief as was her wont,which the vampires found amusing, and in the process a paper came from his hood, and another went back in.

Later she would stick her hand outside her tower window, and retreive the arrow.  The thin strip of paper would be wrapped around the oddly calibered arrow, and a message could be read vertically on the paper on the arrow.  The man had another such arrow for his own use, and thus the man and the lady communicated under the nose of the vampires.

All’s fair in love and war is the saying.  My only excuse for what I did is that I loved my people.  The Tiinaruy live  in the marshes and earthquake crumpled land of the Upper Strombuy River.  Impassable ravines run in mazes into other ravines, and all filled with dense undegrowth, and lavish low-growing threes, and deadfalls (some natural), and these serve as the hard outer shell for the flat marshlands next to the rapids riddled  Strombuy where the Tinnaruy really live and fish in the giant sitll ponds below the watefalls.  They are a world unto themselves, and rarely deal with the Kronal to the East,  except to occasionally hire themselves out to serve as scouts, and hunters, and for darker deeds.

Now to understand, one must realize that the Kronal is the Matriarchy of Kronal, and they rule up and down the coast, and even on fhe far side of the Tinnaruy.  And about every generation, some Kronal lady general has to be taught to respect the Wilderland, and its hidden hunters.  This is hard for them, as the Tinnaruy are a patriarchy, and quite content to be so, and furthermore, require nothing from the Kronal, not even steel for knives after I came to this world, and taught the Tinnaruy how to use bog iron to make knives.  This irritates the Kronal as they think we laugh at them (I’ve been here twenty years and so I think of myself as Tinnaruy), and in fact we do laugh at them.  Tinnaruy children go to sleep with tales of bungling Kronal to lighten their sadness at being parted from their parents who as all parents do, go to the communal campfire, and sip beer, and chat about fish, and pottery, and what who said to they, and what they said back to who, and to crack jokes, and such.

You know those bumper stickers that say ‘a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work’.  Well, that’s the Tinnaruy’s life.  The men crack jokes, the women laugh, and no one works very hard.  I love it.  I’m a Protestant, but that whole Protestant work ethic thing slipped right by me.

And then the hunters, and the darker daggers, and the occasional herb lady with some bit of magic kept coming back, and telling tales, and the tales kept making the same picture.  The Matriarchy was weak and rigid (the men nodded knowingly and so did the women), and that would have been nothing, but now it seemed the Visconsi from over the sea were moving in.  In various ways, they were extending their power, corrupting, intimidating, funding pirates, offering loans that should not be offered.  And the Visconsi did not leave Wilderlands or anyone be.  Unlike the Kronal, they knew how to destroy.  On the Isle of Kelta, they burnt the city Kelta to ash, and shoved the stones into the harbor, blocking its harbor.  We did not understand how they thought, but the clear vulnerability of the Wilderland to the Visconsi terrified us.  The Kronal had laws and customs of war, and they really were not the most competent warriors ever to sit sidesaddle.  We could stand off the Kroanl for the next four hundred years without difficulty, but the Visconsi would destroy us.

Plans were considered.  Some suggested we flee for another land far to the east.  Others that we surrender en masse to the Kronal, and join their army.  Others said to send out droves of assasins armed with poisoned daggers and arrows, and reap the lives of the officers and the mighty among the Visconsi until they feared us like Death.  But in the end, they sent me and a small entourage to travel as my servants.

I am a verser, an extradimensional traveller from Earth (although I’ve met versers that started from different places), and although I’m near sixty, I look twenty.  And I am immodest or truthful enough to say I’m more than a bit handsome, and while I’m clearly not the most dangerous man alive, I’m also clearly not someone most people would choose to fight without good reason.  My arms are long, well-muscled, and I stand with a well-balanced grace in my new velvet tunic, and dark blue leggings.  I had no shoes because Tinnaruy did not wear any, except for the very old who were bothered by cold.

We rode out of the Wilderness, and headed straight to the first redoubt.  Nervous men with bows glared at us as I sat on horseback, and my ‘servants’ stood about casually joking about the locals, but in the Secret Tongue.  Shortly, a red-faced man, his overcoat still not hanging right, evidently just roused from sleep came up to me, and asked what we wanted.

I handed him a pair of scrolls.  He scanned one, it was the latest treaty.  The other one had him reading it again just to make sure.  Finally, he bowed to me.

“Your Highness.  Let me send an honor guard with you to protect you from ruffians and misunderstandings.”  No doubt the last had him more worried than the first.  Troops, even small groups, did not wander around in the Matriarchy.  I accepted the offer.

A week and a half later, we entered the south gate of the capital city of Kro, amidst a blizzard of rice, and the bellow of many off-key trumpets blown by amateur players.  Crowds surged about us, but the now largerf honor guard of a hundred kept them back to keep the “Prince of the Wild Men” safe from trampling.  Up the winding cobblestoned ways, pass the cheering crowd, and I caught a rose tossed by a maid, and then we went under the inner wall gate with the murder holes above us for thirty nervous yards, and then inside the courtyard where my bride awaited.

She was short, petite, and very lovely with a strong, willful way she moved her chin, and there current three husbands each responded differently to her ‘tude.  sho The ginger haired man just laughed, the slim, dark haired one shook his head, and the tall skinny fellow never took his nose from his book.  I slid off my horse, and walked to the princess.  Before her, I went down on my knees, and begged her to marry me.  Also, I handed to her first maid a small box full of river polished gemstones, enough to bu a galleon.

A week later, we were married, and the Krontal thought they had their wedge into the Forest.  That night, my servants kidnapped all of her husbbands, save me, and began the long journey to take them back to the Wilderness by secret and secure routes.  I hope no one was seriously hurt, but it had to be done.  We left signs which led to the Visconsi.  The Krontal were enraged, and the Visconis were enraged back.  Then my men kidnapped the king and queen, sorta.  Actually they shot them with dangerous coma-inducing poisons on their darts which might well kill now, or over time.  They survived for the nonce.

And then I encouraged with words, and manipulations, and some drugs for the Queen my wife, whom I had come to love, to express her grief in front of her court.  Paid men then cried that she had cracked under the strain.  And I mounted my coup d’etat.  We only had to kill several hundred loyal troopers including several friends of mine from the Krontal forces, and the Empire was mine.

I was, am King. But it tastes like ashes.

And then I commanded the books of monies, and the laws and treaties to be opened to me, and I realized that we, that is the Tinnaruy should not have bothered.  Considering the real state of their finances, their internal enemies, the lack of properly trained troops (three-fourths of their soldiers were not suited for anything harder than garrison duty) the the Krontal were well and truly dead meat waiting for a vulture to eat them.

I swore.  There had to be some way to save the Tinnaruy, and even the Krontal whom I had grown fond of.  But then an aide came to me, fear on his face.  He said a few words to me, and I rushed after him to the Queen’s suite where she was confined ‘for her own good as her mind is delicate’.  She was not there.  Instead on our marriage bed was a letter held down by a jewelled necklack of saphires I had given here was a letter.

‘Dear heart,

So handsome a face, so lying a soul.  Be assured, O my husband, that I will be back for what is mine, and that I will be spending my nighttime hours dreaming of you.  Dreaming of the best way to torture you to death for your lies and treason.  Right now, I’m favoring starvation naked in a metal cage in the public square, but you know how us women are, fickle.  I may come up with something more painful and humiliating later.

All my love.

The Rightful Queen.’

Rsalthan commander Dnrik sat behind his folding desk in the open awning roofed tent walled headquarters, and squinted into the unknown country, trying to discern a way to rebalance his water wagons, his troopers, the trebuchet wagons that would enable him to leave from Pon Deland to Pon Qustere minimizing the danger from attack at either point, or along the muddy rutted track over the Coramos Hills in sight of the Laxland Sea.  If it rained tommorrow, as the augurers seemed fairly positive it would, that meant it would rain more, higher in the hills, where the raiding tribes of the Skivanni lived.  And the Skivanni hated rain, and unless they were really angry, the probably would not leave their tents and lodges for an attack on Rsaltan troopers.

The Modjbek were angry enough to do so, which is why he had to make sure the defenses at Pon Qustere were strong, to minimize his chance of defeat in detail.  He had more armed might than the various tribes, and the duchies scattered up and down the Cora Peninsula, if they did not unite, and if he did not split his forces too much or too long.  Send half his forces up to Pon Qustere, and then have a serious rainfall set in, perhaps sung in by the Modjbek shaman, and that half would be alone for a day and a night, plenty of time for the Modjbek with their huge long but shallow bladed axes to overrun his forward post.  On the other hand, stay in one place too long, and the locals would start conspiring together against him.  He would start losing sentries, and eventually, a unified army would rise and trample him.  You had to keep moving, keep your enemy off balance.

Now, if he only sent one of the medical wagons, and one water wagon, he could manage another squad of troops.  And that should give him a lot of power at Pon Qustere to outface the bloodthirsty Modjbek….

“Um, sir.”  Aide Ravind stuck his nose into the tent.  He was a tall man, with broad shoulders, and still quite skinny.  But once he really begain to fill out, he would be a great warrior.

Dnrik raised a single eyebrow.

“Someone needs to see you sir.” The words came out in a rush, and so Dnrik nodded, and waved the aide out.  He looked down, considering another way of balancing the needs of logistics and combat power.

“I would not worry about it.” The voice was deep, and tinged with authority and amusement.  Dnrik looked up, and up as he saw a black armored man, adorned by furs, and small silver chains,  and buckles.  Rsalthans were not among the tallest of the peoples around the Middleworld Ocean, which the Laxland Sea flowed into, but this man was very tall, even for the Woldac Tribes whose men wore their hair as long as another man was tall.

Dnrik noted he had his weapons, which should not be allowed,  And without thinking, he was shouting ‘Guard!’, and had leapt from the chair, and caught up his piercing blade, and his buckler.  He then turned on the the man, and waited for the guards to show up, and take the man prisoner.  The man stood and smiled, and waited.  No guards showed.

Dnrik stuck his head out the tent flap, and all about him, he saw men fallen over.  Even his aide was so. 

“They’re not dead.” The tall man said in a harsh accent, neither fact surprised Dnrik although he kept this to himself.  Dnrik turned, and looked back at the tall man who still stood in the center of the tent.

“Care for some wine, sir?” He said, walking over to the wine table.  Dnrik slipped on his sword belt, sheathed the blade, and lay the buckler down within easy reach as he poured some of the good Frantizi, a white suitable for a warm night.  The tall man walked over, took his small metal cup, and sipped even as Dnrik did.

“Thank you. You’re most civilized about this.”

“We try.  Bringing the virtues of civilization to the barbarians requires us to remind ourselves of those virtures.” Dnrik said trying to control the beating of his heart.  This man was huge, and he stepped with a dancer’s grace.  Fighting him would be like fighting a grizzly bear crossed with a mountain lion.  Dnrik felt a shudder go through him.

They sipped again.

“My name is George Monteagle.”

“No offense, sir, but that is a most strange name. I do not think I have heard its like.  I am Commander Aluden Dnrik of the Rsalthan Imperium.”

“You would not have.  It comes from beyond this world.”

“Oh, well that makes more sense.  How did the Granady deal with this?”

“The oh so sophisticated Risalthan aristocrat.” George chuckled, and Dnrik smiled faintly.  “And the Granady thought that I was demon-possessed, although they do not call it that.”

“I doubt they thought that.” Dnrik said with a small smile.  George frowned at him and raised one eyebrow invitingly.

“Those who believe in the existence of more than one world, of a reality beyond the material, are in essence demonic.  Which means, they did not think you were possessed.  They thought you were a demon.”

George chuckled. ” Now the rants they were shouting before I knocked out a couple of them make more sense.  Still, they came around.”

“Oh yes, the Granady are ultimately pragmatists.  It has to do with their materialism.  They have no fixed pole stars.”

“After I blew up one of their food storage buildings with this…” George pulled out a metal can, like a metal clad wineskin almost, and grinned.

Dnrik raised an eyebrow in question.

“It burns with more heat than the heat of your hottest forge, and casts this heat out in a circle twenty feet across.”

Dnrik thought about it, and then nodded.

“Your burned their granary to ash, pointed out you could do it again, and they went to their knee and acclaimed you their master.”  Dnrik shook his head.  “I’d love to have some of those.”

“I’m sure you would.” George replied with a laugh. “And I’m aware your empire would pay much in gold for some.”

“We’d fill a wagon with enough gold to break the axles.” Dnrik said softly, and poured himself some more wine along with his uninvited guest.

“The problem is, I don’t like your empire.”

“Ah.” No surprise could be heard in Dnrik’s tone.  “You’re one of those.”

“Those?” Said George with an surprised twist to his mouth, and his large chin.

“Every generation, it seems, we find some uniquely talented individual.  A military genius, an intuitive magician….someone.  Somewhere around the Middleworld Ocean.  And he or she gives the Rsalthan commander a really hard fight, gets the local tribes or city-states all stirred up, sometimes they even win, and then the Rsalthan’s send four times as many forces, and civilize the area anyways.  Thirty years ago, on the Jerym Delta, there was a pirate commander, Randu, powerful water wizard, and a very clever admiral who led our fleets a merry chase for over ten years.  He ended up on a rope.”

“I’m not afraid to die, and I’m no mere water wizard.”  The words were delivered with a menace that made Dnrik, who had gutted and otherwise killed two hundred eighty-seven people in his lifetime (not counting those he killed with arrows or trebuchet), pause and swallow.
“I didn’t say you were.  The point of my story is that Randu’s great-grandson is a captain in the Risalthan Navy.  So is a son, and a daughter married the local assistant governor.”

“The tribes, you obliterate their way of life, you turn them into little Risalthans.  I’m here to stop this, and unlike your water wizard, I have enough power to do so.”

“Kill me, and….”

“I know your empire.  If you were killed, you’d be honored in a parade, given a statue in the Heroes Walk, and they’d send another commander.”  He paused.  “I put your whole army to sleep.  I could have just as easily killed them all.  Its a matter of altering brain waves, and causing a self-reinforcing cascade failure is not really that much harder than triggering the sleep patterns in someone’s mind.  Not once you learn how to do it anyways.”

Dnrik shivered.

“For all practical purposes, I am a god.”

Dnrik threw the wine cup, and it clanged off George’s head.  George glared, and reached, and the air between them rippled, and twisted, and yet Dnrik did not move.

“Why?” George said, his patience clearly tried.

“If you’re a god as you say, then you’e a god of idiots. What’s so good about their way of life?”

“Its theirs.”

“Is it? Really? A few members of each tribe arrange things for their benefit, and the rest have to play a rigged game.  Why is it that a generation after we’ve conquered a tribe, its young men are proud soldiers in the Army and merchants and senators and farmers?  Half of my troops are ‘little Risalthans’ as you would call them, but to themselves, they are Risalthan.”

“Each tribe gets too…”

“Now you’re just being naive.” Dnrik laughed, and George flushed.  “We bring world-wide trade so that Ithacanas can sell their gem cups for a thousand stadia in any direction, and receive in return the barley from Yonas, and the wheat from TEmoo to make their favored two grain soup in their gem cups, even though their is hardly any good growing land in Ithacanas.  And I could repeat that story a dozen times for every part of the world.”

“Authentic culture.” George said.

“Gods who demand righteousness and honesty from all, and disdain the blood of humans.” Dnrik replied.

“Native traditions.”

“Closed sewers, and babies that don’t die in childhood most of the time.  Which is a large part of why we are conquering the world.  We have more children than our neighbours.”

“You just don’t understand.” George hollered, and the force of the yell was aided by a mental bellow that caused Dnrik to see black sparks.  Swaying, he looked at George and laughed.

“I understand all too well.  You like visiting weird little villages, and trying out new foods, and for that you would condemn them to live in the mud.”

“I-I…” George began and stopped.  His shoulders slumped.

“We could use a good man in the Risalthan Army.  Bring peace, justice, and underground sewers to the world.”

George looked at him, tormented, and walked out into the night.  A few minutes later, everyone had awoke, and Dnrik called for his aide.

“Bring me paper, and a second lamp.  I have a report to write for the Emperor himself.” Dnrik said, and after his aide left to get the required supplies, he sighed.  It was going to be a long night, and after that who knew what was going to happen.  But the world had changed.  It was yet to be seen if the hatching egg were a chicken or a poisonous wyvern.

The brown-haired beauty sat in a spelled chair in my office. She was no kind of Fey or Infernalist creature as I had checked for that, but an Unseelie had placed a magic sigil in her outer aura as a sign to others that this was his or hers chosen prey.

“Have you bought anything recently?” I asked, and she breathed in, and bit her full lip, and I was again struck by how fascinating any of my male friends would find this women. Now as a woman, I am largely immune, but you had to respect someone that gifted. After a bit of thought on my question, she shook her head.

“I’ve been getting a lot of telemarketers lately, even though I’m on the no-call list. But I never buy from such people. I don’t want to encourage them.” I nodded listening to her speak. Likely at least half of those telemarketers were Unseelie court creatures: fey imps, boggles, gremlins, and bodachs in particular. The Unseelie were big in telemarketting, and they actually enjoyed working from cold, slimy basements with mold problems. No sunlight to irritate their eyes.   And it was more profitable in cash anyways than sending out the trolls to do loan-sharking, even though trolls dearly enjoyed breaking knees.

“House loans? Bought a new car recently?” Often enough Infernalists and the diabolical Fey will hide a separate Contract in the fine print.  Despite the propaganda of Infernalists, you cannot sell your soul, but it is possible to open yourself to malign influences, so always read the fine print, and never trust a banker.

“I take the tram, or my bike as I’m a city girl.” Right. In this world, without governmental financing of roads, no one built a road unless they really, really needed it so cities were small and fairly tightknit. And a decent percentage of city folk never learned to drive a car.

“And my townhouse is half paid for, early payments, my father was a big proponent of pay debts down quickly. So I’ve paid eight years in three years, and have seven years to go, but three years at this rate, if I can keep it up.” She looked a bit doubtful, and worn at that thought.  No doubt more than double mortgage payments were a bear, and a strain at times, but it showed good character which tends to be its own defense against the Unseelie.  And four years ago was really too long for what was going on here.

“Maybe we should go look at your townhouse.” I said, running down a checklist in my mind as I did not have a clue yet what was going on.  Still, if you want to hang some hostile magic on a person, to affect them daily, you can do worse than snag its tendrils around their mailbox (as long as its not cold iron).  My mailbox is cold iron, and made under the light of a new moon.  Even a dark elflord would burn his fingers on it if he tried to magic it.

She consented, and we went out to catch the tram.  After paying the coins, we boarded, and hung out the windows, mutually without words we agreed to spend the time chatting about non-trouble related issues like the fine fall weather, and cute college boys that passed us in the street.  It was female bonding, and I enjoyed it being the sort of girl who had way more guys who were friends than girls, and sometimes feeling the lack.

Upon arriving at the junction near her house, we put feet to the ground, and I felt a slight tremble in the Earth as if something Wicked had stepped there, and not that long ago. But, I looked around and saw a line of commercial shoppes, a pub, a cigar store, a ladies’ shoe shoppe, a cafe’, and a refresher (paid bathrooms with personal attendants, heated towels, and clean enough due to the continual labor of poor collegians that, well you would not eat off the floor, but you might let your dog do so.)  This served the surrounding dense network of townhouses set up in a grid fashion with tiny front yards, and at least one oak or hickory in each front yard with narrow streets not suited for a tram line.  Nothing immediately nasty sprang to view even though I looked to an alley way for the dried slime on brick walls that boggles leave behind.

I spun us both clockwise thrice to blind anything Wicked that had felt my footstep on his (and I was sure it was ‘his’, not hers or indeterminate, or inexplicable.)  Some things can feel when you track them. This way of doing magic is heavy on knowledge.  Boggles hate salt on their skin, demons hate salt under their feet as it snaps their connection to the Lower Hells, and Dark Elves like salt, it reminds them of the taste of human blood and internal organs.

My client looked a bit amused until she saw my face.

“We’re hunting. And what we’re hunting is nothing so sweet as the Bogeyman.” I informed her.

“You believe…”

“I believed you once you mentioned your flowers drained of color.  But now I know its not some mischief making tatterdermalion or drunken pixie out for a joy ride, high on dandelion wine.  Its something nasty, a red cap, or worse.”

“What so bad…”

“They can only manifest in the human world when their red cap is still liquid.” I told her grimly as I headed down the small street toward her house, following her directions.  I waited for her to figure it out.  Most people think of a cap being wet means water.  But red, and add in the fact that I said ‘nasty’, and …

“Oh.”

“Oh is right. Red caps trip you up, smash in your skull, and daub their hat in your blood.  They like violence, brutal little thugsabout as tall as a fire hydrant who can’t be reasoned with, which is why I’m thinking it might be one of them. Stay behind me, and do what I say.”  I reached into my pocket as I stalked down the street, and brought out a ball of string.  Red caps need yarn for their caps as they are constantly unravelling and threatening to send them to the Endless Night with No Stars.  They need  and just adore balls of string.

We went right, even though the shortest route would be to the left, but always, always clockwise.  Three rights in a box street grid is a left, and its a lot safer with the Unseelie, even if more inconvenient.  I kept an eye out for dandelion, preferably a seeded one, as tatterdermalions love them, and a tat is at best neutral, but they hate red caps.  A cap can’t hurt one, and a tat can’t really hurt a cap, but it can sure make a massive nuissance of itself.  But I saw nothing, which bothered me as tats are some of the more common fey.

We came up to her house, which was set between a yellow clapboard townhouse, and a red and black brick townhouse.  It was purple gingerbread Victorian, and looked gracefully lovely just like its owner.  It was with no surprise that I saw the door of the red brick open, and a handsome young male step out.  He had a smile on his face for my client, and she sucked in her breath as he came up to us.

Handsome, did I say? I lied. He was gorgeous. Blue eyes, curly black hair like horns over his forehead, a loose button up shirt that hung flat on his stomach and bulged over his pectoral muscles that left you pretty sure he had washboard abs, and if you asked him to fix something around your house, he’d have that shirt off in a jiffy, and be handily working away without a complaint, just as sexy as a greek god…

I mentally slapped myself. Okay, he was good looking, but one, I had a guy, a boyfriend, good guy.  I had to remind myself of that.  And two I was here on business.

“Um, I need to go inside.” My client said, and the Adonis gave me a baffled look which I gave back to him.  And then I trailed my client up to her front door, still trying to shake off my romantic encounter, and look for signs of a red cap.  A positive clue would be a bit of tiny red, crusted yarn, or a small footprint.

Not cloven though.  Red caps don’t have cloven feet.  Now why did I think of that?

We followed my client in to her house, and she seemed upset, and went to get tea.  I turned to the guy, but he was pursuing her, offering to help her, saying he understood how the recent events had left her traumatized, and he did understand if she needed help…

Given that he was sooooo mouth-wateringly handsome, I would have agreed to practically anything he suggested.  And indeed, he was just being a good neighbour, and I don’t want to be one of those stupid girls who denies the help of Prince Charming just because she’s a paranoid nut.  And it could be that my client, who was trying to politely retreat through the kitchen, not saying ‘go away’ or anything, but still finding excuses to put herself further away from her neighbour had had a lot of problems, and could be understandably freaking out over nothing.

But why did I have my hand covering the cross hanging around my neck?

 I stepped around the corner of the kitchen, at the threshold, which was the place of challenge, and I saw the frightened client, her face confused, and a shadow reaching from the neighbour, reaching out, and caressing her.  He laughed low and delighted.

“Two is better than one.” And his voice promised sensual delights that are better left undescribed.

“Go to Hell, demon.” I said and dropped my hand from the cross.  He winced, and shuddered, and his shadowself fled into his body.  My client looked up, seeming dazed, and he turned to face me.

“So you’re the sorceress who killed the Dark Lord.” He said to me.

“Ugh.” My client said, and I spoke calmly to her.

“Drink the tea.” Without thinking, she did, and he grimaced as the purification inherent in mint leaves cleansed her mind of the temptation she had been in the process of yielding too.

“Tell him to get out. Its your house, and …” I spoke firmly to my client on the far side of the kitchen, with the demon between us.

“I lent her a lawnmower.” He smirked, and I sighed. With something of his inside her house, he had permission to be here that could not be broken by a simple ‘get lost, you creep’.

“I’ll give it back.” And she stormed out of the room before he could move, intent on throwin the lawnmower, for all I knew, through his front window.  He shrugged.

“That still gives me until nightfall tommorrow.”

CRASH.

He shook, and looked a bit amazed.  I was too. She had thrown the lawnmower through her own front window.  Then she ran, almost flew, in her rage, her blonde hair escaping from her ponytail, and she bellowed out a command.

“GET OUT!”

He took a step toward the door, and then laughed, genuine humor seeming to leak out from him.

“Ah, even now, you carry what you carry.  In the days of old, my lady, you would have been a Queen, and could have outfaced me, but here and now, the powers of the Kings and Queens of Men are faded to a dull memory.”   She looked appalled, and he stepped toward her.  Even as he did, I focused my Sight on her more closely.  Past the Sigil of Ownership placed there by this incubus demon, past the charm, and there, there I saw it.

Tied about her waist, in the aethereral plane, a tiny gold band of links, easily broken, and a letter ‘C’ crossed with a pen.  I shivered at her burden.  The first man she knew, on the first night, she would have his child, and that child would be a great Captain of perhaps writers or finance or politics or law (hard to say what the pen meant exactly) but it implied a leader with the power to influence millions  Imagine knowing that your child is destined for greatness, and that you would have to protect him as he grew from being corrupted or being killed by enemies from the Lower Hells.  Take all the fears of a normal parent and multitply them by a thousand.

“You won’t have her.” I spat out.

“Oh, but I think I will.” The incubus chuckled like dark, melting chocolate.  “Now the question to be settled is how…Be reasonable, and we can be a delight to the senses.  Your child will be grown, and all will love him….”

“Except for the wise and the good.” I muttered interrupting the spell of enchantment he was trying to weave around my client’s mind.

“So few of them.” The incubus said and chuckled. “Fewer after your son reaches his adulthood.”

My client drew in her breath, and faced the incubus squarely.

“No.”

“Or….” And his face became horrifying, demonic, leering without him moving a muscle or shifting a bone. “I can take you. Your child will stilll be great, but from birth, all will know he is wrong, unnatural, devilish.  You will go down in history not as th emother of a great philosopher like Karl Marx, but as the mother of a savage dictator.  Either way, dear heart, you serve Hell, but one is assuredly far more pleasant.  Now choose.”

I waited for moral choices are up to clients.

“Go to Hell.” She said, wearily, drained of energy, but picking up a pepper shaker, she prepared to give it her all, and brain him.

He chuckled, and you could tell that this is what he really preferred.  Oh, he enjoyed seducing the innocent, and twisting them into their own destruction, but for real fun, that required blood and screams.

“You heard my client. XCKLA: SIO NFLA” I spoke, and then added some harsh words as I put my right foot in front of my left, and raised my right hand high, ring finger bent at the second knuckle just so.

“You don’t have a unicorn horn.  Nor, do you have salt, or blessed water, or any of the traditional cures for demons.  You foolishly thought that a Fey was involved, not a Demon.  Now if you run along, little sorceress, I’ll let you live.”

The fact that he was letting me live meant he was a bit frightened of me.  After all, I had killed his former boss.  But unicorn horns are not easily come by, and he was right.  I had been expecting a red cap, not a demon trying to seduce his neigbour into servitiude like Halloween’s trick AND treat.

“True enough. Clever of you.” I complimented him, which swelled him up a bit.  Demons are as bad as dragons when it comes to compliments.  “IRAL, DO. KIPHEHNE.”  I intoned, and jerked my left hand high to join the right. My index finger crossed to touch the tip of my ring finger, and I counted heartbeats.

“Look what is this silliness? You know how magic works, don’t make…” He reached for me, and my client moved behind him to brain him so he spun back to glare her into subsmission.  She froze, but clearly not yet giving up, with the heavy pepper shaker ready to serve as a mace.

“I know how the traditions of the Fey work. How Glamoure works. How the blessings of the Holy work.”  He grimaced at my cross around my neck.  Trouble is, I’m not exactly known for my humble faith.  Some people suspect that beneath my somewhat quiet manner is a good bit of arrogance which makes placing trust in God a bit hard.  I mean, I trust him for my soul, and for forgiveness, and even that He will drive back minor Demons, but…

Perhaps I should have just stopped what I was doing.  Perhaps I should have just listened to God. But…I considered it, and clear as a bell came the notion….continue on.

I laughed harshly.

“God doesn’t like you either.” And I touched thumb to thumb, and spoke again. “ARS IH DO MOROKVEK!!!!”  And the room shuddered, and the windows blew out, and I saw the room through a orange fire for my eyelids were no longer eyes, but sockets of the True Fire.

He flew at me, and I gestured. He slammed into the ceiling, and I laughed again.

“Foolish demon. You think the only source of magic is the Fey.  Let me tell you of the Power.”  He spat a tongue out from his mouth, like a frog, but barbed and forked, and ten feet long, and I clothed myself in Infinity so that he could never reach me no matter how long he reached.  And from that Vastness, I spoke like a goddess.

“I am a Worker of Power. The universe is mine to twist, fold, and spindle at will.  Little demon…” And I was in the kitchen again, and he fell, and I pointed an index finger at him, and  a stream of plasma, roared from the Sun, and poured into him,

“The Ancient Contracts of Fey and….”

“Are of no use if I override them, if I say they are not.” Which might be true if I was an arch-mage, but in any case, his protections extended to only rocket fire, and not the fire of the Sun.  He thought he was invinciible.  He should have read the fine print.

Hacking, missing an arm, he stood in flame, and I let it die out.  By my will, I let him live.  And then I crooked my fingers in a peculiar fashion, and magnetism, and gravity, and time and fire bent to my will, and a three-fingered talon of fire caught him under his neck from across the room.

“Tell your masters that a student of the Will and the Power, a student of Arch-Magi Cariolanus sent you.”

And then I closed my hand, and severed his head. In a half-second, he screamed pure hate, and was gone.  And I stared at my client who stared at me with more fear than she had for the Incubus.  But I did what the Magi did.  I went to my knee, and bowed.

“I will protect you and your child to be with my life.  I swear it by the Power.” And I heard the Universe echo with my promise.

“Child?” She sobbed.

“You will.” I promised her.  “First we have to find you a very good man.  Luckily, I know a few.”

A rapping on the door of the Needle of the Sun drew Doctor Clement Wilkins to the front door. The Needle was a gray spike rising out of black cliffs, and low beaches, and shallow waters roundabout. He peered out of the iron-grated window set in the door, and saw nothing.

Warily, he brought up a minor arcana as protection against neighbourhood children throwing tomatoes, and opened the door. A young woman, four foot ten inches tall, thin, and athletic, clad in a denim and cullottes over fluorescent pink unitards, with a backpack tossed over her shoulder, and pink and purple feathers wound into her blonde hair sat on the ground, legs crossed, looking weary, and waiting for him.

Sadly, he reached out with his verser sense and verified she was a verser. She rose to her feet without using hands, just uncoiled from the floor in a way that showed gymnastic training.

“Come in, dear. Would you like some tea? I’m afraid I used up the last of my coffee a decade ago.” He stood back, and pulled the door in to let her into the narrow hallway, its wallpaper black and white checkered, and the floor a tongue and groove oak strips were well-worn from centuries of use.

“Thank you. This looks like a wizard’s tower. Are you the wizard in residence?”
“Temporarily.” He smiled. “The library is this way.” And he led her down the hall, and into a door on the right that was not a door, but the mere painting of one, but it worked all the same.

In the library, they could see several thousand books encircling the small room and a huge pile of scrolls on the table in the midst that took up most of the free space.

“Lovely,” She exclaimed running her fingers carressingly along the spines of the nearest leather volumes. “Are they in Deutsche?”
“You’ll find that inside the Needle, all conversations and reading are in your native tongue.” He pointed to a glittering, multi-faceted gem that floated above the library. It was a master arcana, and she looked seriously impresed.
“You should be able to do it sometime soon.” He assured her, his face more lined than it had been a few minutes ago. His manner was quiet, reserved, but a sense of power clung to him.
“Oh…I don’t know any magic. I’m barely getting the hang of this versing thing.”
“Ah.” He paused, pursed his lips, and then drew down one book. “You’ll have a chance to learn. May I suggest you begin with this one?”
The leather cover had letters in calligraphied gold that scurried into the Deutsche form of ‘Basic Forms, Theory, and Minor Arcana.’ She began to flip through it, but he ushered her out quickly. From there, through another painting, and they were in the kitchen.
Two cups of tea awaited them on the table, both steaming. His had three sugars in it, and hers had only one. She sipped it and smiled.
“How did you know?”
“The Needle knows. You have to provide the food, but it will cook it for you, and clean for you.”
“Wow….that’s really nice.”
“You’d think so wouldn’t you?” He said dourly, and led her to another painting in the wall of the kitchen which showed stairs. She protested that she had not finished her delightful tea, but he gave her an impatient look.
So she slurped up a bit, burnt her mouth, and followed him.
Up they went.
“Keep in mind what floor you want to go to.”
They exited into a large airy room with wind gusts crossing the space, and open windowways that spanned most of the walls except for the three pillars at the outer edges that held up the tip of the Spike.
“So, one floor of steps and anywhere. How many rooms are there in the Needle.”
He looked grimly at her.
“No one knows. And sometimes I think there is a ghost or two in there. People who tried to go to a room that did not exist, and got caught forever.”
She shivered.
He walked out to the windy window on the left and looked out. She joined him, and stared shocked as mile after mile of countryside sprawled out in front of her, and kept on going and going.
“How?”
“How high? I’m not sure there is an answer that makes sense. I’ve done some geometry, and we’re in orbit, but we have gravity and air. Besides, the Needle is tall, but not that tall.” He pointed at a town in the far distance.
“Look closer.”
She did and the town filled her eyes.
“Closer.”
She did, and mumbled that she could see a street of bakers.
“Aye. Look for a pretzel sign.” He said with a smile in his voice.
She saw it in full detail, and a bushy haired man underneath it. Telling him this, she noted his tears.
“Its a good omen.” And he brushed off her arm, and concerned look.
“I taught my friend how to make pretzels so that if I were ever in town I could get some. So he called his shoppe, the High Wizard’s Magic Bread Shoppe, and overcharged his customers. Heh. What a scoundrel.”
She looked at him amazed.
“I’d heard of the High Wizard on my travel to here. He’s a figure of power and….”
“Not at all a middle aged doctor of podiatry…eh? Appearances can be deceiving. In both ways.” And he spoke, and shadows filled the air for miles around, and thunder crackled through the sky. She shrank back, and drew her knife.
He bowed, and stepped back, and walked to the middle of the room, and spoke softly, and the winds and the thunder and the darkness went away.
“I’m not the High Wizard.” He spoke, but with his back to her, and she put up her knife.
“Then…?”
“You are, my dear.”
He reached his hands up, and a ladder came down from the painting on the ceiling. He ascended into it. After a moment, still struggling with the words she had just heard, but made no sense, she followed him up into a room that looked like the hollowed out interior of a pyramid. In the middle of the space, twenty feet above their heads was a thirty foot tall shimmer of light that rippled, and wavered, and gradually she realized, it rotatated about once every ten seconds.
“I don’t know magic.”
“The Needle will help you. Also, I’ll leave you my Notes on the Major Forms of Magic. Its in my desk in my office. Just climb the stairs and think real hard ‘office’. Plus the library is very good. If any books fall out of their shelves be sure to read them.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m a dancer. I…”
“You don’t have a choice.”
The knife came back out, and she snarled.
“You gonna make me?”
“No. I came here ninety-three years ago. Knew some magic, but not as much as now. Found that I was ‘high wizard’ and expected to keep the peace among the nations, and do ten impossible things before breakfast, and be terribly wise. I remembered what a sorceress had told me…at least half of magic is faking it.”
She shrugged. It was clear she meant, well good for you, but what about me?
“The preceding verser gave me the tour and left, as the preceding verser had done. Not sure how far it goes back. I’ve deciphered records going back three thousand years. The Needle brings a verser to the world, makes them high wizard, and forces the previous verser to leave.”
“And if I kill myself?”
“You can try. I think if you really, really want to, it will let you. Are you willing to take a swim in an acid bath? Thats what it would have taken the verser before my mentor. It didn’t let him jump or use a knife, and so he gave that up, and served the Needle for three hundred years.”
“Ok, well then I have some questions…”
He raised his hands and began to float up toward the light.
“Time’s up, kiddo, err High Wizard. Best of luck.” And he accelerated into the light in a blazing bolt of power, and was gone. The girl with the knife stared at it in dismay.
“Um, now what?”
No answer came back to her.