Palaces of Light Read Online Free Page A

nominally his superior. Not at present. Right now it seemed that the baron was looking up to him as a superior because of powers he appeared to possess. His faith was touching, if a little misplaced. Morgan mused that if he had been the kind of man who wished to gain and use power, he would have been able to use the baron’s belief against him. For a man who had used a very physical and worldly grasp of power to gain his position, he had a vulnerable point that was unexpected.
    But Morgan wasn’t that kind of man. He considered that running his own life was enough of a struggle, let alone taking on the task of telling others how they should live. He also had what he considered to be a sense of perspective. And from that he knew that the baron had overestimated what he could do. The baron believed in magic and power that was beyond the physical and human. Morgan didn’t. All those old stories were crap. It was true that he had a certain ability. He was a doomie, as he had heard others like himself be called. He could see things that weren’t there, or that were happening some way distant. But he didn’t call it magic. He came from a long line of those who carried the history of the time before the nukecaust. This role as a person who could recall the stories of the past gave him a kind of protection. He was treated with a kind of awe akin to those who could cure the sick. Doctors, as they called them once. With a wry twist of humor, he realized that he was one of the few who would know that word around these parts. Just as he was the only one who knew that doomies weren’t some kind of supernatural beings.
    But let the baron believe what he wanted. It kept Morgan alive and relatively safe.
    It was true, though, that he did possess that kind of doomie gift that enabled him to see from a distance. If he concentrated, then he could see what it was that he concentrated his attention upon. Viewing remotely, as some had once called it. Or second sight, which seemed a stupe name to him, as he could barely see now that he was getting on and his eyes ailed him.
    The fire wasn’t really necessary, but it added a sense of occasion to what he did, as did the empty room and the silence around him. If he could shut himself off mentally, then he could do it anywhere. The most important thing about the fire was that it sent a shiver down the spine of the baron, and actually made him keep his big mouth shut. The worst obstacle that Morgan could face while trying to do this was to keep being interrupted by K’s incessant questions.
    So now, with the baron silenced by his own sense of occasion, Morgan was able to settle down, to relax his body from the toes up, and to blank his mind by thinking of nothing, just seeing the flickering flames in front of him.
    He thought of the six people he had met all too briefly: the one-eyed leader and his wiry sidekick, the one with the stupe hat and the odd obsession with hardware. They were the kind of men you’d want on your side in a fight, though you might not want to be their friends in times of peace. The other four comprised a strange and motley crew. The red-haired woman was a doomie. That much he had sensed right away. That made his task easier, as he could focus on her. How it worked, he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to know. It just did. The black woman and the old man were really odd. There was something about them that seemed aged beyond their looks, as though they came from another time. He would have loved to have known their stories. They would have been well worth knowing to tell again and again. And then there was the albino. Not a youth to know in times of peace, like One-eye and the Hat. But different from them. He had an air of wildness to him.
    They were brave. He had to give them that. He wouldn’t have undertaken the mission, no matter how much jack was involved. When he thought of those they were chasing, a sense of cold, enveloping darkness came over him. Just