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Authors: Judith Tarr

Tides of Darkness (29 page)

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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He could not be weak now. He could not falter even in the slightest. These men without magic somehow had mastered a greater working than any mages of any world had ever ventured.
It was something to do with the thing of metal and glass that spun light and dark, and the lord who called this conclave. The Mage was a key, but there was more. He must know more. He must—
 
“My lord. My lord Re-Horus!”
Daros plummeted into his body. Shapes were stirring about him, slaves rising, shuffling toward the dining-hall. The guards were watching—more closely than before? He could not tell.
Menkare caught his eye. There were questions there, a myriad of them, but none of them could escape, not now. Daros looked away—guiltily, he supposed.
Far above them in the tower, the conclave was coming together. Daros had to be there. Somehow, if he could find a corner to hide in, he must dreamwalk again. Or—
He was to labor in the kitchens this lightless day, in the drudgery of grinding grain and baking bread. As soon as he could, he found occasion to be sent to the storerooms for another basket of grain. But when he left the kitchens, he went not down but up.
He risked much—too much, maybe. But he could not stop himself. He must know what was said in conclave.
The Mage's feather stirred under his robe. It was whispering, speaking
words he could almost understand. He closed his hand about it. It tugged, drawing him onward.
He was mad enough, and desperate enough, to do as it bade him. He was less than a shadow, no more than a shifting of air in those silent halls. He passed as he had in dream, but his body was solid about his consciousness. The well of his magery was deep, and brimming full.
It was the Mage leading him, taking him by ways he had not gone before, deep into the citadel. First he went down, into deserted passages and dusty stairs; then he began to ascend. The way was long, the darkness suffocating. Mage-sight showed nothing but blank walls and empty corridors.
There were wards, but the Mage had wrought them. They let him pass unharmed. His thighs were aching, his lungs burning, when he came to the end of that endless stair. The door yielded to his touch, sliding almost soundlessly into the wall.
He was in the highest tower, as he had known he would be. This door opened on a small gallery, hardly more than a niche. The hall of the conclave lay beyond it.
They had gathered but not begun. He counted a score of them in that great empty space, dwarfed by the vaulting. They reminded him somewhat poignantly of the priests of the dark on his own world, in the castle of the secret, which he had destroyed. But those had been the last feeble remnants of a forgotten order. These were commanders of an army that had driven the dark across the worlds.
They were all of the same race and kin, and no doubt the same world—this one, he could suppose. While they waited for the greater lord, they spoke softly among themselves. Daros stretched his ears to hear.
Most of what they spoke of was remarkably ordinary. They spoke of wars, of course; of the management of estates; of rebellious offspring and difficult servants. They did not speak of wives, or of women at all, which was odd. Did they have no women? How then did they get children?
That thought begged him to pursue it, but two men near him were conversing of something that caught his attention. “The captive,” one said. “I hear it's weakening. It's not feeding Mother Night as strongly as before.”
“And I hear,” said the other, “that it's stronger; that it's working its way free. The high ones are working harder to keep it bound.”
“It's dying, I heard—freeing itself the only way anything can. The high ones are working harder because there's less power to work with. And there's a rumor—a whisper—that we may have found the End.”
“I don't believe that,” the first man said. “Something's blocking us. We're going to break that block soon.”
“Now that is true,” said the second with a gusting sigh. “We should never have given so many worlds to Mother Night—arrogant of us, to think that there would only be more, and the more we destroyed, the more we would find.”
“But isn't that the point?”
A third man had come up beside them. He was younger than they; his beard was soft and rather sparse. But perhaps because of that youth, he had a harder, wilder look to him. “Isn't that what we're for? Haven't we sworn ourselves from the first origin of our people, to the service of the Night? Isn't it our dearest ambition to render all that is into darkness and silence?”
The others greeted him with a mingling of wariness and faint contempt. He was young, their tone said, and reckless, and none too wise. “Indeed,” the second man said, “that is our purpose before the Mother. But while the flesh constrains us, we must have means to live: air to breathe, food to eat, slaves to serve us. Do you, like a child, believe that this world exists by itself? That it sustains us in blessed darkness without need of intervention?”
“Of course not!” the boy said irritably. “I know that this foul flesh needs the fruits of light to live—that the air of this world would bleed away without certain expedients. But if the End has come, shouldn't we be rejoicing? Why are you conducting yourselves as if this were a disaster?”
“Because,” the first man said with conspicuous patience, “the wall we've met is not the End. Something is barring the way. Our source of power is willing itself to death. And our slave-worlds are now too few to feed us all.”
“Are they?” said the boy. “Well then, cull the slaves. The fewer we have to feed, the more there is for us.”
“We need them,” said the second man. “Without them we have no food, no weapons, no armor, and no war. The last culling—of both worlds and bodies—was meant to leave room for new and fresher ones. Instead, we ran headlong into a wall.”
“So break the wall,” the boy said.
His elders growled to themselves and walked pointedly away from him.
He stood forsaken. For an instant Daros thought he caught a flicker of hesitation. Then the boy bared his teeth. “Aren't we strong enough to break down a simple wall? Are we not the destroyers of worlds?”
They did not pause or respond. He aimed a slap of laughter at their backs. “Cowards! Mother Night has opened her arms, and you're too craven to embrace her.”
“Better craven than dead in the light,” one of his elders said as he departed.
T
HE LORD OF THE TOWER CAME LATE TO HIS OWN CONCLAVE. HE did not look as if he had rested; his face was haggard, his shoulders bowed with the weight of worlds.
Others followed him into the hall. If the lords who waited had the look of warriors, these made Daros think of priests. They carried themselves differently; there was a subtle tension between them and the rest.
The one who led them—for Daros had begun to be certain that he was, if not a king, then something very like one—had somewhat in him of both warrior and priest. He carried a tall staff, which served to support his body as well as his authority. The thunder of it on the stone floor called the conclave to order.
The murmur of voices broke off. The silence was complete. In it, the king ascended what Daros had taken for an altar, but proved to be a
small dais or pedestal. It was a contrivance of some sort: when he set foot on it, it was hardly a handspan above the floor, but once he was settled, it rose to set him well above the rest of the gathering.
He looked down upon them, though he could have had no mage-sight. Maybe he perceived them by sound and scent, and by the heat of their bodies. “The rumor is true,” he said. “We have come to a wall. We are facing famine. And the source of perpetual Night is willing itself to death.”
“Despair is our birthright and oblivion our hope,” someone murmured, half in a chant.
“Indeed,” the king said, biting off the word. “Still there is the paradox of our existence: that we must feed on what grows in the light to live; that if we are to serve our purpose, we must avoid despair. Oblivion will come for each of us, but if we are to grant its blessing to all that is, we must fight to preserve our strength. We must live so that all else may die.”
No one responded to that. Daros sensed the currents in the hall: fear, hostility, a strange exhilaration.
“I have given thought to this,” the king said. “Since the days of the first king, the maker of night has been our greatest weapon and our most sacred charge. Now it fails. And yet, this world that halts our war, this nexus, this swallower of Gates, might it not be a power to rival that which we are about to lose?”
“It is filthy with light,” said a voice from the conclave. “If it had not trapped us and rendered our Gates useless, we would have made a sacrifice of it and its searing hell of a sun, and mercifully forgotten it.”
“Its dark is as strong as its light,” the king said. “The slaves of light have polluted it, but once it is cleansed, it will be as potent a weapon as ever the first king found ready to his hand.”
“Yet if we are weak,” said the other, “where will we find strength to do such a thing?”
“We are strong,” the king said. “For a while we were invincible. So shall we be again. Nothing in that pebble of a world can truly stop us, once we discover what it has done to bind our Gates.”
“The Gates before it still open on the slave-worlds,” said one of the conclave who had not spoken before. “We'll strip them bare—and pray to the Mother that the wall breaks before we starve.”
“Strip them,” the king said, “but as slowly as you may. No worlds are to be sacrificed until the Gates are free again. See that the lords and commanders are made aware of this. If any disobeys this command, let him be fed to the light.”
They bowed to that. None disputed it.
“Go,” he said to them. “Harvest the worlds. You, my priests—come to me in the tower at the changing of the guard.”
They were all obedient servants. They left to do their duty. He remained, standing still. When the last of them was gone, his head bowed to his breast. He drew a breath that caught like a sob. Then, astonishingly, he laughed. “A war,” he said. “An honest war. I will be remembered for it until the last world crumbles into dust.”
 
Daros escaped by the same way he had come in. The kitchens had not noticed his absence; his magelings, the few that were left, were alive and profoundly glad to see him again.
The dark day wound down. Near the end of it, at last, the beacon in the Gate sparked to life. It was brief, hardly more than a tugging at the awareness, but it brought Daros full awake. It was all he could do to move as a slave moved, mute and slow, and to shuffle with the rest out of the kitchens into the dining-hall.
His stomach was an aching knot. He choked down the bread and the hard lump of cheese that had been set in front of him, and drank the oddly astringent water. When the rest of the slaves rose, he rose with them, nigh as mindless as they. He was seeking with his mind for a sign, any sign, that Merian's mages had indeed, at last, passed the Gate.
There was none. When he went walking in dream, he found nothing: not the Mage, not the king in the tower, not twice nine mages of his own world and one Olenyas. He was alone in the dark.
The king's voice echoed in the cavern of his skull, and the voices of the lords in the tower and the conclave. They had found the end of things: a world to which all Gates led. What if …
Surely it could not be. His world was no more remarkable than any other. Gates touched it as they touched a myriad worlds—or had done before the dark lords came. All Gates did not lead to his own world, or its mages, either. There had been the Heart of the World, but that was a nexus of powers, like the Mage's prison. It had not been a world in itself.
And yet the lords had seemed most certain. Their advance was halted. They could go no farther. The world that they spoke of, its sun, its moons—it was Daros' world. He was sure of it.
Maybe the war was won after all, or at least frozen in impasse. Maybe—
The power that swallowed stars, that blasted worlds into ash, surely had not been brought to a halt by the simple existence of Daros' world or any other. The raiders only served that power. They were mortal, as he had had occasion to observe. The dark was not.
The raids might end and this human enemy be driven back, but the greater enemy would remain. For a few moments he had indulged in hope, in certainty that a simple war would end it all. But it would not be simple. The great matters never were.
 
The mages came to the citadel on the third day after they passed the Gate. They came heavily shielded and in battle order, darkmages warding lightmages, and Perel leading them. In his black robes he fit this world rather well.
Daros was aware of them long before they came to the citadel. Khafre and Menkare had found a procession of passages that led to an unguarded postern; he and they and Nefret slipped out together. He almost thought, standing under the sky, that he could sense light beyond the veil of darkness: a sun, stars, moons perhaps.
His magelings drew in closer. They had found a balance in this
hideous place; their magery was growing stronger, their spirits less frail, and of that he was proud.
They had steeled themselves to endure the dark world, but the coming of trueborn mages—gods, as they thought—drove them close to panic. Daros found himself in the lead and the others behind him, as the mages came up the steep way to the citadel.
Daros advanced a step or two. Perel quickened his pace as his companions slowed. They embraced as brothers, which in the way of war they were. Perel withdrew first, searching Daros's face with mage-sight. His own face was hidden behind Olenyai veils, but his eyes were keen. “Well and well,” he said. “The boy's a man. These are your mages?”
“All that are left of them,” Daros said.
Perel bowed to them. “Your sacrifice is great,” he said, “and your courage greater still. I'm honored to be in your presence.”
He had done a great thing, a thing that put Daros in his debt. The magelings stood straighter, and their hearts were firmer. They had begun to remember their strength.
Truly, it was considerable. More than Daros had thought, more than he had hoped for. They all drew together in the lee of the wall, Perel's mages coming in close, murmuring their names and offering greeting with the courtesy of their order. They eyed Daros askance—even yet his reputation ran before him—but he sensed no hostility, merely curiosity.
He hoped that they were gratified. “We've been exploring the citadel,” he said. “Khafre and Menkare have found a number of forgotten or unguarded ways, apart from this one. Nefret has learned the guards' patterns. We could break this place.”
“Would it make a difference?” asked Perel.
“Very little,” Daros said. “This world is like a hive: it's clustered with cities, tunneled with mines. It reaches through Gates to worlds where the sun still shines, so that its lords and its slaves may eat.”
“We had thought,” one of the mages said, “that these lords drank blood.”
“They're mortal,” said Daros. “They worship oblivion; they live in the dark. But they're flesh and blood. They eat bread as we do.”
“No blood?” the Mage seemed disappointed.
“Nightwalkers live on blood,” Nefret said. Her voice wavered at first, but then grew stronger. “The lords use them like hounds, to hunt through Gates, to find new worlds. Then they reward them with the blood of captives.”
“How many Gates?” asked Perel. “How many worlds?”
“Many,” said Daros. “But there will be no more, they say, until they break a wall that's risen to bar their Gates. From everything we can discover, it seems to be our world that's stopped them. Did you know you'd done that to them?”
Perel's blank look was answer enough. One of the others said, “You're sure it's our world? Our walls?”
“It can't be any other,” Daros said. “Maybe it has something to do with the Ring of Fire. Can you speak to your fellows? Did you keep a binding when you came through the Gate?”
“We tried,” Perel said. “It broke once the Gate closed. We're alone here. Unless—maybe you … ?”
“Not I, either,” said Daros. He stiffened his back and drew a breath.
“No matter. You are what I prayed for. You'll be enough. Khafre has found an empty barracks. Better yet, it has a passage to the storerooms. You'll have food, water. No one should find you.”
“What will we do, then? Simply hide?”
“For a little while,” Daros said, “until you have the lie of the land, and until I'm certain of a thing or two. I think I know what we can do, but it may be more than we're capable of.”
“Yes?” said Perel.
“Yes,” Daros said. It was almost a sigh. “This world is populated with slaves. If they can be freed and persuaded to turn on their masters …”
“Indeed,” said Perel. “That would be an intriguing solution. But how does it drive back the darkness?”
“That will take more than this one world. It will take ours, too, and
the world in which the emperor is, and one other. That one I can reach. The others … if we can't come to them, there may be nothing we can do to end this war.”
“I prefer hope to despair,” Perel said. “Come, bring us in. We'll settle as we can, then see what we can see.”
Daros had been in command too long. He welcomed Perel's air of brisk decision, but it stung a little. He had wavered and wobbled and dithered for a long count of days. This Olenyas stood outside a postern gate, not even having seen the inside of the citadel, and knew at once what to do and how to do it.
The Olenyas had training. Daros had experience, though hardly as much as Perel had, and a degree of headlong folly that could pass, in certain quarters, for courage.
And he had knowledge. He was not sure how much he had yet, or how much of it was truly useful, but he would gather more as he could.
He did not say any of that. He simply said, “Come.”
 
Daros saw the mages settled in the forgotten guardroom, and made certain that they could raid the stores of food and water. He left them eating packets of hard cakes that must be a form of journey-bread, and drinking jars of water. They would have liked him to stay, but he had a thought in his mind, and it was best if he continued among the slaves.
Nefret stayed with them. She would serve as messenger if there was need, and she would teach them all that she knew of this place and its people. The others followed Daros back to captivity.
Sometimes slaves died. Their bodies vanished, and nothing more was said of them. It seemed the overseers reckoned Nefret dead; there was no outcry, no inquiry. Her niche that night was as empty as Daros' dreams.
In the morning, when maybe a sun rose beyond the thick wall of shadow, a lord and his following strode into the dining-hall as the slaves broke their fast. He stood with haughty expression and folded arms while his companions passed up and down the hall, running hands over
faces, prodding arms and thighs, singling out this slave and that.
Daros gritted his teeth at the touch of those hard hands, and secured his shields as best he might. The man who had examined him thrust him sharply away from the table, toward the wall. A number of slaves stood there already. Menkare was among them, and after a moment, Khafre.
BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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