In the Empire of Shadow

Chapter Ten

They struck the road around mid-morning, and emerged from the forest shortly after noon.

Not that it was much of a road, by the standards of either the Earthpeople or the Imperials. Pel had noticed the four soldiers exchanging derisory glances when Raven called the narrow path a highway. He had sympathized, but had kept his mouth shut; Raven knew this world, and the Imperials didn’t.

“Do you know where we are?” Pel asked Raven, as they all paused, blinking in the bright pale sunlight, atop the gentle slope that led down to cultivated fields and half a dozen crude huts. Rolling farmland stretched out before them almost as far as they could see, broken by streams and occasional small groves and ending in a grassy ridge topped by a massive structure Pel could not make out clearly.

The air had warmed again, and a trickle of sweat was running down his back and into the waistband of his pants.

“Not as exactly as I would choose, friend Pel,” Raven replied, scanning the landscape. “This must surely be the Starlinshire Downs, and behind us the Low Forest, but this road we follow is not the Palanquin Road – ’tis not of the size to be that. Thus we must be well to the north, but I’d know no more than that until we find landmarks or ask the dwellers here.”

“My lord?” Valadrakul said quietly.

“But ah, look you, friend Pel,” Raven said, turning suddenly, his hand on the wizard’s shoulder. “Look you all, we’ve no need to limit ourselves to means natural, for we’ve a practitioner of the arcane arts with us! Speak, then, Valadrakul-where are we now, and where may we find he that we seek, your compatriot Taillefer?”

“I know not, my lord, but a spell can tell me, an you allow me a moment.”

“’Tis safe, my friend, e’en in this realm of Shadow?”

Valadrakul spread empty hands. “Who can say, when we know not the extent of Shadow’s power? At this moment, we might yet be pursued by creatures keen to avenge those we slew beside the sky-ship, and perchance even the merest trace of an incantation will draw disaster upon us. But ’tis only the very simplest of magicks, and I’ve practiced its like many times before, without mischance.”

“Thus, wilt know our whereabouts?”

“Aye, and more,” Valadrakul answered. “Though I know not where we be, yet I sense that this place is a goodly one for magicks, and that hence can I send word to Taillefer through the currents of the air and ether. It might chance that such a message Shadow will feel likewise, but ’tis only a small risk; ne’er has Shadow troubled itself with the signals that we lesser magicians send each other betimes.”

Raven hesitated, then nodded-Pel noticed that he didn’t bother to look around at any of the others, let alone to consult them.

“Go, then,” Raven told the wizard. “Work thy wonders-methinks ’twill give the ladies a needed rest. And if thou canst discover us whence our next meal may come, as well, surely shalt thou have the gratitude of us all!”

It seemed to Pel that Raven and Valadrakul were getting carried away, their phrasing becoming more flowery than ever for no good reason, even while their peculiar Australo-Brooklyn accent grew stronger. Pel didn’t like that. Any time Raven began to talk too much, it meant trouble.

But the man in black did have a point; a glance at Amy convinced Pel that she did, indeed, need a rest. She looked terrible. She hadn’t thrown up again since that morning, but her face was pale, and she appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Susan was keeping a solicitous eye on her; Pel was relieved that someone was.

The four Earthpeople and Prossie settled to the grass in a group; the other four Imperials settled a few feet away. Raven and Stoddard remained upright, roaming along the slope, studying the countryside.

And Valadrakul crouched on the slope, muttering, working his magic.

* * * *

Amy was ravenously hungry, but at the same time she doubted she could keep anything down if she ate it. She felt achy and exhausted; her feet throbbed. The stop for Valadrakul’s magic had been very welcome indeed.

She wondered what was wrong with her. There were so many things it could be.

Stress, hunger, weeks of bad food-that could be it. The others weren’t visibly suffering, but stress didn’t affect everyone the same way. Ted Deranian wasn’t exactly suffering, but he’d snapped completely. And Pel Brown had become sort of detached since his wife and daughter were killed; that might be his way of dealing with the strain.

Susan, of course, could cope with anything; Amy was convinced of that. She’d been through it all before, as a child in southeast Asia.

And the others-well, they were different. The Faerie folk were in their own world, they were used to dealing with Shadow’s monsters and all the rest of it. The Imperials were all soldiers, even Prossie; they’d been trained for hardships. And they’d only been out of their own reality for a day and a half, not a couple of months.

So maybe it was just stress affecting her. Stress, and the thin air, and the heavy gravity, and the heat, and the humidity, and the weird washed-out sunlight.

She liked that idea, the idea that it was just stress, much better than the other possibilities. If this space wasn’t quite right for Earthpeople to live in, then finding a way home wasn’t just a way to get back to normal, it was a matter of life and death.

But none of the other Earthpeople were showing any symptoms that she could see, so she hoped that that wasn’t it.

If it were, then she was the most sensitive. If the others did start showing symptoms, then she would be the first to die.

Right now, she felt as if she might die if she didn’t get a few days’ rest and some good food.

There were other possibilities, of course, and in a way those were even more frightening. What if she’d contracted some alien disease somewhere? What if she’d caught something from her rapist, Walter, back on Zeta Leo III? She’d been free of him for weeks-heavens, he’d been dead for weeks, hanged on her testimony-but how could she be sure she hadn’t picked up something from him? Who knows what loathsome alien diseases he might have had?

Oh, hell, who needed anything alien? If he had syphilis or herpes or something, that would be bad enough, though she didn’t think her symptoms fit either of those.

What if Walter had AIDS? Did AIDS exist in the Galactic Empire? In the space movies on the late show they never talked about things like that.

And what were the symptoms of the early stages of AIDS? Despite all the scare stories on TV she didn’t have any idea. Feeling tired and sick and nauseous didn’t seem very distinctive. And didn’t AIDS usually take years to appear?

That brought a terrible thought-could she have gotten AIDS from her ex-husband and have had it all along, for the past year and a half? Despite all their arguments and accusations, she had no idea whether Stan had ever really been unfaithful, whether he might have picked up the virus somewhere.

This was all silly, though, she told herself; it wasn’t AIDS. It was more likely to be mononucleosis, or that “yuppie flu,” or something. She could have caught anything on Zeta Leo III. Or on Base One.

And that was all the more reason to get home to Earth. Somehow, she doubted that modern medicine was easily come by here in Faerie.

Valadrakul was crouched a few yards down the slope from her. “How’s it going?” she called.

“Don’t bother him,” Prossie said, from where she sat just behind and to Amy’s left. “He’s working magic, or whatever you want to call it.”

Amy glanced at her, startled.

“He needs to concentrate,” the telepath explained.

“Are you reading his mind?”

Prossie grimaced. “No,” she said. “I can’t, here. Telepathy doesn’t work any better here than it does on Earth.”

“But I thought…weren’t you relaying instructions from Base One?”

Prossie nodded. “That’s right,” she said, “but only as a receiver; it’s my cousin Carrie who does the sending.”

“Oh, that’s right, you said that.” Amy waved a hand at herself and said, “I forgot.”

Prossie shrugged.

“So, is Carrie sending anything right now? Does she have any news about Lieutenant Dibbs?”

Startled, Prossie stared at Amy. “How could she have any news about him?”

“Well, if they sent a rescue party, or something.”

Prossie shook her head. “They’re not sending any rescue party,” she said. “If there were any chance they’d do that I’d probably have stayed there myself.”

Amy frowned. “Then what’s going to happen to those men?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Prossie said. “I hope that eventually they’ll have the sense to leave. Or maybe we can send Taillefer to help them, after he’s sent you Earthpeople home.”

“That sounds good,” Amy agreed.

“What I’m afraid of, though,” Prossie said, “is that Shadow’s going to send more monsters, and more, and more, until Dibbs and his men are all dead. That’s what Raven’s expecting, you know; that’s why he fled, but didn’t argue more about everybody coming.”

“I don’t understand,” Amy said uneasily.

Prossie picked up a pebble and tossed it down the slope. “It’s simple enough,” she said. “Shadow knows something’s happened back there at the clearing where we crashed, right? It sensed the space-warp, and it sent those creatures to investigate, and we killed them all. So it’ll be expecting a report, and it isn’t going to get one; what’ll it do then?”

Amy stared at her.

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” the telepath said. “It’ll send another force, a larger one. And if that doesn’t work, it’ll send a third, and a fourth. It’ll send trackers, too, in case whatever it’s after has left.”

“Then they’ll be coming after us,” Amy whispered, suddenly terrified.

Prossie shook her head. “No, they won’t,” she said. “Or at least Raven doesn’t think so. He thinks that they’ll find the ship and Lieutenant Dibbs and the rest there, and they’ll kill them all, and it’ll never occur to Shadow that there were more, that the rest of us got away.”

“Is that…” Amy began. Then the implication sank in. “But that’s…that’s horrible…”

Prossie grimaced. “Raven set them up,” she said. “A decoy, so we could get away.”

Amy glanced at Raven, standing further down the slope, showing no sign at all of a troubled conscience.

“He did ask for volunteers,” Prossie said unhappily. “He gave them a chance.”

“Do you know for sure that that was what he was doing?” Amy asked. “Did you read his mind?”

Prossie shook her head. “I told you,” she answered, “I can’t read minds here.”

“You’re just guessing?”

“You can call it that if you like.”

That was exactly what Amy liked; she didn’t want to think of Raven as being as callous and calculating as Prossie claimed. She swallowed, then changed the subject. “So what is your cousin Carrie saying? What’s happening back on Base One?”

“Not much,” Prossie said, a trifle uneasily.

“Oh,” Amy said.

Her stomach cramped.

“I wish Valadrakul would hurry up,” she said. “And I wish…oh, the hell with it. I wish I were safe at home and this was all over, that’s what I wish!”

“Me, too,” Prossie.

* * * *

Prossie watched as Amy lay back on the grass and closed her eyes. The Earthwoman had a hand on her belly, and winced occasionally at some internal discomfort.

There were advantages to being cut off, Prossie thought; she couldn’t feel Amy’s discomfort, whatever it was, at all.

And of course, being in this other universe made it possible to keep her contacts with Carrie to a minimum, as well; Carrie had not yet been forced to realize that Prossie was deliberately disobeying orders, that Prossie had lied, had given false reports.

And she didn’t know that Prossie had willingly let Raven set Dibbs and the others up to be sacrificed, in order to preserve the group he led, the group Prossie was in.

Of course, the brass back at Base One had sent the entire expedition out as a sacrifice to save face for themselves, but Carrie would expect better of a fellow telepath, wouldn’t she?

Prossie knew that Carrie suspected something was very wrong, beyond what had been reported; Prossie suspected that Carrie knew Prossie had gone rogue.

That’s what it was, of course; that’s what she had done. And that was one more reason, aside from her increased chances for survival, that she was very glad that she had gone with Raven’s group. If she had stayed with Dibbs people would have asked her questions, demanded she relay orders, and her treachery would have been revealed. With this group, no one bothered her-even the four soldiers seemed to have forgotten that she was a telepath, that she could talk to Base One at any time. She could keep her secrets.

She could never go back to Base One, though. She could probably never again risk reentering the Galactic Empire anywhere.

She would never again be able to live in her own reality, and that meant that she would never again have her full telepathic ability. She would always be able to touch the minds of her family, back in the Empire, but no one else.

That was a frightening and lonely thought, in a way, but it wasn’t all bad. She would never again have to feel the fear and hatred of others, would never be forced to share in someone else’s pain or sick terror. She had been mulling it over for hours now, as they traveled, and she was beginning to reconcile herself to the idea.

She didn’t think much of Faerie as a place to live, though; she thought Earth would be much more enjoyable. When the others got their space-warp, their magical portal, open, she would go through it with them.

Prossie?

Carrie. Prossie looked up; no one was watching her.

“What is it?” she sent.

“You’ve been ignoring me. All today and last night, and even before that. I don’t think you even heard some of what I sent.”

“I probably didn’t,” she admitted. “I was thinking.”

“Prossie, you’re in trouble. I can’t get answers out of you. General Hart and Under-Secretary Bascombe are both…well, they say they’re furious, but they’re relieved. They can write off the whole mission if they lose contact with you. They’ve already written off that poor lieutenant and all those men. They can’t admit that, of course, but it’s true-and Prossie, they’ll blame it on you. They’ll say that the crazy mutant bitch screwed up communications and got everyone killed. And if they need a scapegoat on this end, they’ll get me. Prossie, I’m really scared about this.”

Prossie hesitated, then said, “Carrie, it’s okay. Don’t worry about me. Save yourself, Carrie-tell them I really have screwed things up. Tell them anything you like-anything they like. Let them blame me. I really did disobey orders.”

“Prossie, you didn’t, did you? Have you gone crazy?”

“Maybe I have. You tell them whatever you need to tell them to get yourself out of trouble, Carrie, and don’t worry about me-I won’t be coming back.”

For a long moment, Prossie heard only with her ears, only the gentle near-silence of the Faerie hillside-a gentle wind rustling leaves, Wilkins muttering something, a distant bird’s call. She hadn’t heard many birds in the forest, but now one was singing somewhere.

Then Carrie asked, “Are you really sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Before either of them could transmit more, Valadrakul made an unexpected noise, a sort of great wheezing sigh, as he let his breath out all at once.

All eyes but Amy’s turned toward the wizard, but no one spoke as the man got slowly to his feet and turned to address the rest of the party.

Amy, Prossie noticed, stirred, but did not sit up.

For a few seconds, no one spoke.

“He is bespoke,” Valadrakul announced. “Taillefer is called, and he comes. We’re to meet him at yon ruin, at nightfall.” He pointed to the misshapen edifice on the ridge ahead.

“Prossie, what’s happening?” Carrie asked.

“Nothing,” Prossie said. “It’s not important any more. Don’t worry about it.”

The contact wavered as Carrie floundered for something to say, for the right way to respond.

“You’re really leaving the family?” she asked at last.

Prossie frowned. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but of course, that’s just what she was doing.

“Yes,” she said, “I really am.”

“Then good-bye, Prossie.”

“Good-bye, Carrie-but hey, I’d still like to hear from you sometimes, you or any of the others. If you can’t find me here, check on Earth, too.”

“Earth? But, Prossie…”

“Good-bye, Carrie.”

“Well, come on, folks,” Pel said, marching down the slope. “We’ve got to get there by nightfall.”