Nightlord: Shadows Read Online Free Page B

trip in or out must have been six miles or more.
    My guests did not follow me to the wall. They stuck by the door and their cart. I walked back, removing my helmet as I did so. It was warmer than I liked, and I was wearing more armor than I usually do—a bunch of blackened scales over chainmail wherever I might bend, with rigid pieces over the long bones, and the upper half of a breastplate. It was a nice suit, very mobile, and obviously enchanted. Further evidence that someone with money arranged it all.
    “Okay, I see breakfast.” At their suddenly-increased tension, I added, “Over the wall. Down on the plains.” They relaxed visibly. I wondered what they might have heard about me, or if they were just naturally suspicious of strangers. Then again, I’d be suspicious of me, too; I’m a suspicious character. “Any idea where my horse is?”
    “Um,” Seldar said, “the Lady Tort probably has it, if it belongs to anyone.”
    “Tort?” I asked, surprised. Last time I checked, Tort was just a little girl. But, then, I had been out of it for a long time… possibly a very long time. Good to know someone was still around that I might recognize. “Where is she?”
    “In Mochara, probably.”
    I sighed.
    “Okay, look,” I began. “I’ve been having a bit of a nap for the past while. My geography isn’t up to speed.” I glanced toward the Eastrange and the gap of the missing mountain. “In the sense that I’m not familiar with how a map ought to look,” I added. “What is Mochara and where is it?”
    They looked at each other again, questioning. Seldar spoke up again.
    “Mochara is the city on the coast. Follow the south canal and it will take you straight there.”
    “Is that where you three are from?”
    They nodded.
    “Okay. About how far is it?”
    “It can take three days, on foot. One day, if you take a boat and take turns poling,” Seldar said.
    “If there are any boats to take,” Torvil observed.
    “It is an additional reference,” Seldar replied, “not a suggestion. He may have resources we know not of.”
    “Think so?” Kammen asked.
    While they chattered, I closed my eyes, folded a bit of power into the equivalent of a paper airplane, and embedded the thought of Bronze. I tossed it away to let it seek her out and tell her I was awake. It hit some sort of magical barrier around me. The barrier flashed as my magical message spell disintegrated.
    What the…?
    I felt around me. Yes, there was a spell on me. It’s hard to tell when you’re already inside a spell. You have to look for it.
    It was surprisingly powerful, in fact; both subtle and old. It took me a minute to figure out what it did. It seemed to absorb whatever magical energy it encountered, whether it was a spell or just ambient magic, and keep it contained and concentrated inside. This kept me in a bubble of constantly increasing intensity of magical energy. I could still cast spells—probably some extraordinarily powerful ones!—but I couldn’t affect anything outside the bubble without the bubble shattering the spell and absorbing the power again. My effective range was about four feet, for all the good that did me.
    I didn’t like that spell. It seemed to violate the Laws of Thermodynamics—for me, that’s a problem magic has, just in general. Or so it seems. Maybe magic, by definition, can’t be reconciled with normal physics. Or maybe it requires quantum physics and the willingness to go insane to understand the insanity. Or maybe I just don’t understand the nature of magic well enough to have an opinion. Whatever the case, the spell was there and working.
    I wondered why I was wearing it, who put it there, and what it was for. Among other things.
    It resembled a spell used in the Rite of Ascension, sort of a final exam for a magician’s doctorate. Normally, it was a twenty-four-hour ordeal where the would-be magician proved his ability to channel power through himself by enduring the rising energy levels