Nightlord: Orb Read Online Free PDF Page A

We can’t keep him in a diagram for long.  My proposition is this:  we put him in the mountain, itself.”
    “It’s large enough,” Tianna mused, thoughtfully.
    “Will not the mountain reject the invading spirit?” Tort asked.  “It has done so before.  When the Witches of Kamshasa tried to take control of it, it crushed the spirit of the—”
    “It’s a risk,” T’yl admitted, “but he made the thing.  It knows him.  There should be room in there for it to let him share.  It runs through the whole of the Eastrange most of Rethven, for the love of gods!  For all anyone knows, it may have crossed the southern seas and eaten the Mountains of the Sun, as well.  It can hold him.  I’m sure of it.”
    “I am not so sure,” Tort said.  Tianna looked up at me.  I shrugged.  What was I going to do?  Argue?  Aside from waving my hands and mouthing words, how was I going to say anything?  Maybe I should learn more sign language than “Yes,” “No,” and “I don’t understand sign language.”
    “We will try it,” Tianna decided.  Tort wanted to argue, but swallowed it.  T’yl moved quickly to get the chalk and start editing the diagram.  Tort helped and, to my surprise, so did Tianna.  I guess she decided to study wizardry after all.
    They worked quickly, albeit with a few, “No, no, no!  That goes here , this goes there!” moments.  That’s one problem magic-workers often have; they all think they know how to do the spell and the others are wrong.  It’s sometimes hard to get them to cooperate.  Still, they were in a hurry, so I’m sure they ignored each other’s “mistakes.”  Close enough for government work and all that.
    Huh.  Technically, I’m a king.  It really is government work.  This amuses me more than it probably should.
    Once the diagram was complete, they paused to look it over and make sure they had it right.  Tianna asked a question about the juxtaposition of a couple of symbols.  Tort and T’yl took her questions seriously, but affirmed that the symbols were correctly drawn and placed—or close enough.  There is always a lot of compromise when magicians work together.
    “Ready?” T’yl asked.  Tianna glanced up at me.  I gave her a double thumbs-up.  I had no idea what this was going to be like, but they obviously thought it was a life-or-death thing.  I was along for the ride.  What the hell.
    Tort started the spell, T’yl chimed in, and Tianna gestured up a cloud of not-exactly-fire.
    Then it all went swirly and the floor rushed up at me.
     
    As a note, I’m not a creator.  Life, energy, matter, it’s all the same.  I move it around, change it, convert it.  I can’t actually create life, only take it from somewhere and put it somewhere else.
    Case in point:  My mountain.  It’s a rock.  It’s a really big rock, but a rock.  When I dumped living energy into it, I didn’t create a living being.  All I did was allow it to take on some of the qualities of life, temporarily.  It would eventually expend that living energy and return to being just another rock.
    Later, while I slept within the stone, I dreamed up my nightmare of a matter-conversion reactor.  With the power-transforming spells around it, turning energy into vital force, the mountain had an ongoing supply to keep it in a quasi-living state.  Fundamentally, it was still an unliving rock, but it had a constant supply of vital force to keep giving it an artificial semblance of life.
    See what I mean?  I don’t create anything.  All I do is move stuff around.
    When two magicians and a fire-witch put me into the mountain, I found I suddenly had room and to spare.  The mountain wasn’t merely a mountain; it was a body of stone, full of vitality.  Sentient, but not sapient.  It perceived experiences; it felt, it sensed.  It didn’t reason.  It didn’t think .  It was alive without being intelligent.  It didn’t have a soul.
    It felt me enter into it and reacted