Nightlord: Shadows by Garon Whited Page A

sits along the right-hand wall, bookcases line the left, and a big, comfy chair behind a glass-topped desk faces me. The room is decorated with lots of small lights, like candles, scattering a very even glow everywhere, with some dark wood paneling and a couple of large rugs on the floor. Next to the entry door, another door leads to what I think of as my mental workshop. That’s pretty much the whole place.
    Papers littered the floor more than ankle-deep. The desk was clear, but the piles to either side of it implied the expedient of sweeping everything off it. The couch was a lump under a pile of papers. And the bookcases along the left wall were jam-packed.
    I kicked my way to the top of the papers and walked on them to examine the bookcases. A lot of new books had arrived, on a lot of subjects. At a guess, these were the leftovers from digesting a million ghosts. While I do learn some things from eating someone’s soul, most of it fades away quickly. Still, a faint trace remains, usually as a sense of familiarity about something they knew intimately. Multiply that by a million or so and I probably know a lot of things that I don’t know I know.
    Well, the groaning bookcases I could deal with. I looked at the wall behind the bookcases and concentrated. The wall moved back, widening the room. The bookcases themselves divided into four sections, rotated in place, and lengthened to touch the now-distant wall. The shelves thickened, grew a center partition—bookshelves on both sides, now. I redistributed books to ease the bulging sidewalls.
    Now, about all these loose papers. I picked up an armload, put them on the desk, seated myself, and started reading. They seemed almost nonsensical. Handwritten in many styles and languages, they were rambling thoughts on various subjects, often starting in the middle of a sentence and ending in the middle of another. It was as though someone had torn a bunch of random pages from people’s diaries and dumped them in here.
    Inside my head. Ah. Yes, I suppose this might be a symptom of indigestion.
    While I might not be all that well-versed in imagination dueling, I’ve been extensively trained in the proper use and workings of a wizardly headspace. I don’t know that anyone has ever combined that with a basic understanding of Freud, but I was willing to give it a go. With a moment of concentration, the floor rippled aside and down. A rectangular hole formed, becoming a set of wooden stairs arrowing downward, disappearing into darkness.
    I heard movement down there.
    “Hello,” I called. “I need an assistant.”
    There was movement and some noise—slithering, rasping, heavy breathing, some metallic clicking, a wet sucking sound, and what I can only describe as many-legged scuttling.
    Just offhand, I don’t think I want to go down there. And what is that smell…? Are those eyes looking up at me?
    No, I definitely don’t want to go down there.
    “Just send up a logical and helpful subset of my personality, please.”
    My basement sounded grumpy and dangerous, but I also heard footsteps on the stair. Moments later, a dignified fellow ascended. He was tall, slim, and dressed in what I can only call a butler’s outfit. Just as he reached the level of the floor and stepped out, Something tried to rush up the stairs behind him.
    I don’t want to talk about it. It was very large and personally frightening. I barely managed to kick it in the face and slam the trapdoor. I shot the bolt on the door and sat on it while It pounded on the underside a few times. It gave up after a half-dozen hits and thudded back down the steps.
    There are a lot of unpleasant things in my subconscious.
    “Good evening,” the butler said, once things had quieted. “I am a personification of your personality. I embody your willingness to recognize that something has to be done, accept it, and simply do it.”
    “I have one of those?” I asked, still sitting on the lid.
    “Indeed. I was vital to