In the Empire of Shadow

Chapter Fifteen

“You’re sure there’s no magic ring, or mystic gem, or something?” Pel asked Raven as they walked down the western slope, away from the thorn-covered ruins of Castle Regisvert, and down into a broad green valley. Grey clouds hung on the horizon before them, but where they walked the sun shone warmly. A bird sang somewhere in the distance, and the rich scents of late spring filled the air. “Maybe Shadow keeps its heart in a bowl somewhere, or something like that?” he suggested.

Raven shook his head. “I’ve heard naught, in all my days, of any such device. Shadow draws its power from the magic that flows through earth and sky, and weaves that into its web; it needs no rings nor jewelry, any more than does our own Valadrakul.”

“Does Valadrakul weave these same currents, then?” Pel inquired, looking back at the wizard.

“Indeed, he draws ’pon them,” Raven agreed, “though not as Shadow does; Valadrakul and the other free wizards, as they tell me, make their magic but from the crumbs that fall from Shadow’s table, as it were. They weave no webs outside their own bodies, hold no elaborate traceries at the ready, own no patterns save those in their own minds, but instead pluck away what they can when chance allows, and shape the magicks within themselves.” He hesitated, then added, “Ah, in truth, I’ve most probably made nonsense of it, for ’tis none of mine that we speak of here, friend Pel. If you’d have it right, you’d best speak with Valadrakul, and not myself.”

Pel nodded, and dropped back a pace to where the wizard walked.

Valadrakul turned and stared silently at the Earthman as they marched a dozen steps farther down the highway.

Pel realized that this was the first time he had deliberately and directly addressed Valadrakul in normal conversation, and he wasn’t sure just how to begin. At last, though, he said, “You’re a wizard, right?”

Wilkins, a few feet away, snickered.

“Have you not seen for yourself, Pellinore Brown?” Valadrakul replied.

“I suppose, yeah,” Pel admitted. Wilkins snorted, but Pel ignored him. “So tell me about wizards.”

Valadrakul blinked, then smiled crookedly. “You’d have me open to you all the secrets of my kind, the mysteries we hold dear, the teachings I struggled for a dozen years to absorb, here as we walk? Think you, perhaps, that what you ask might not be so simple as that?”

“Yeah, well,” Pel said, annoyed, “I didn’t mean that. I mean, tell me why, if you’re a wizard and Shadow’s a wizard, why Shadow’s so much more powerful than you are.”

“And who told you, I pray, that Shadow is a wizard?”

“Didn’t you…” Pel hesitated. “Or maybe it was Raven-I don’t know, but somebody told me.”

Valadrakul didn’t reply, and angrily, Pel demanded, “All right, if Shadow isn’t a wizard, what is it?”

“’Tis Shadow,” Valadrakul said with a shrug. “It needs no other name, for there’s no other like it, nor has ever been. What in truth it is, no one knows.”

“Didn’t one of you tell me that it started out as an ordinary wizard?”

“Perhaps,” Valadrakul admitted.

“Then did it start out as an ordinary wizard?”

“So ’tis said. And perhaps ’tis true. ’Tis no wizard now, though-not as we use the word.”

“So what happened, then?” Pel asked. “How come Shadow’s so incredibly powerful, and the rest of you wizards aren’t?”

“Good question,” Wilkins said. “Took you long enough to get it straight, though.”

Pel glared at him for an instant, then turned back to Valadrakul.

The wizard looked thoughtfully at the ground for a moment, and the entire party moved onward a few yards before he spoke again.

“Raven spoke to you of the flow of magic through the world,” Valadrakul said at last.

Pel nodded.

“’Tis not exactly a flow, you understand-nor is it precisely in this world. The exact nature…well, you’ve not the understanding.” The wizard glanced up at Pel.

“All right,” Pel said. “Explain it however you can, don’t worry about getting all the details right.”

Valadrakul nodded. “As you wish.” He gazed about at the surrounding greenery. “If you think of the sources of nature’s magic as springs, from which flow not water but the invisible energies that we wizards wield, you will have but a poor understanding, for the flow is not as water, nor as light, nor as any other thing in the commonplace world. It permeates all the world, yet varies throughout, from the faintest of traces in one spot to a bursting torrent in another. And when a wizard draws upon it, it is not consumed-the well cannot be emptied. There are flows, but they are not streams-more oft, they’re loops, spinning endlessly. And there are points, and lines, and patterns.”

“All right,” Pel said. “I think I have the idea.”

Valadrakul nodded. “Well,” he said, “a wizard such as myself, such as all modern wizards, can draw upon whatever energy might be found in the place where that wizard stands, and no more. I can sense these energies, but only dimly; they are not as light to me, but as, perhaps, faint sounds-I can perhaps tell you, that way there is a great power source, but I cannot tell you how far, nor its exact nature, nor can I in any way draw it nearer. At most, if I find a locus I remember, I can perhaps use its peculiar nature to my advantage-as when I used what might be described as a line of magical energy to send a message to Taillefer.”

“Okay,” Pel acknowledged. “I think I get it.”

“Of old, though,” Valadrakul continued, “there were wizards who had a greater understanding of these forces, who could perhaps see them, and map them, and distinguish the patterns in them. This higher art, these pattern wizards, these are now thought to be lost-though I’d not swear that none might still lurk in the odd corners, hiding from Shadow. ’Twas pattern wizards who provided much of the art that we lesser wizards use; they were more powerful than we, and for that reason Shadow has made every effort to obliterate them, lest they be a threat to its dominion.”

“So Shadow was a pattern wizard?” Pel asked.

Valadrakul shook his head. “Nay,” he said, “listen further. ’Tis said that long ago, there was yet a third tier among those who wield magic-those who could not only perceive the patterns, but could alter them, could alter the flow of energy, could divert one stream into another, could weave the threads of magic as if they were merest wool, could form matrices of magic that they carried about with them-not the mere patterns of spells trapped within their minds, as we yet do in our small ways, but great intricate webs of the raw stuff of magic itself, that might be formed into whatever spells they needed. They had no need to make do with what powers were at hand, but could draw to themselves whatsoever powers they needed, through these matrices they held. Matrix wizards, these magic-weavers were called.”

“And Shadow was a matrix wizard?” Pel asked, remembering what Raven had said about Shadow’s webs and networks.

Valadrakul nodded. “Aye,” he said. “The greatest of them. And Shadow built about itself a structure that stretches out to embrace all the magic in this world-it gathered in all the lines to itself, drew down the wells, absorbed the matrices of all other matrix wizards, and left nowhere untouched If another somehow learned the lost art of the matrix wizards, and sought to draw into himself even the slightest part of the world’s magic, Shadow would sense it, would feel the tug upon its web as a spider feels a fly’s struggles. Should that happen, Shadow would reach out and strike down whoever had dared to tamper with its networks.” He sighed. “Indeed, ’twould seem that that’s why Taillefer would send you nowhere-the portal spell impinges upon Shadow’s matrix, tugs at its web, as it were.”

“Oh,” Pel said. The explanation made sense, he supposed.

Or did it?

“Wait a minute,” he said, as they trudged onward. “If Shadow’s linked to all the magical energy in the world, doesn’t it feel something any time any wizard works any magic?”

“A good question,” Valadrakul said. “But alas, we’ve no good answer. It may be that Shadow senses it as we sense the distant hum of insects, as something always there and not worth the trouble to stop. It may be that our spells are so weak that Shadow sees them not at all, as you and I cannot see the stars in the sun’s daylight.” He shrugged. “We know not the truth of the matter.”

“Oh,” Pel said again.

He was hardly satisfied, but how could he demand that Valadrakul tell him something the wizard didn’t know himself? Shadow’s true nature would have to remain a mystery.

* * * *

The idea that she might be several weeks pregnant with Walter’s child was appalling, but somehow it was a relief, too-it was an explanation, and one that fit all the facts. What’s more, it was one that Amy understood, more or less, and one with a definite end in sight. AIDS could take years, other diseases could be sudden or chronic, but pregnancy was nine months, at most, give or take a few weeks.

And it wasn’t a death sentence. Childbirth was dangerous, certainly, especially if she couldn’t get back to Earth, but she wasn’t going to follow Grummetty and Alella and die horribly in a matter of days.

At least for the moment, having an answer, any answer, was better than nothing. And crying all over Susan and Prossie had helped, too.

Perhaps as a result of her lessened worry, perhaps just because her pregnancy was progressing past that point, she was feeling better. She still felt heavy and clumsy in the stronger gravity of Faerie, still tired easily, but her stomach was no longer cramping, and she felt no urge to vomit.

Thank God, she thought, for small blessings.

And being able to think about something other than her own insides and the possibility of imminent death brought her to wondering just what she and the others were doing. Yes, they had to get back to Earth-but were they really just walking right into Shadow’s home territory, marching right up to Shadow’s lair? Wasn’t that, well…suicidal?

Did Pel know what he was doing?

She had voted to do this herself, she knew that, but she was having second thoughts now. At the time of the decision she had been panicky, desperate to do anything that would get her home; now she was thinking a bit more clearly.

Would this get her home, or would it get her killed?

And if it would get her killed, what should she be doing instead?

She glanced at Raven, but he appeared to be lost in thought, and besides, he was a liar and a thief, not to be trusted-she thought he meant well, that he was sincere in thinking that everything he did was justified by the need to defeat Shadow, but still, she couldn’t trust him.

Valadrakul was better, but he was explaining something to Pel. And those two were the only natives of Faerie left in the party-Elani and Squire Donald were dead, Stoddard and Taillefer had abandoned the group.

Raven kept talking about Shadow as if it were some ultimate evil, and Pel always thought he meant it literally, like some monster from the fairy tales, or a movie villain, but Amy didn’t think she believed in stuff like that.

There were real villains, though, lots of them, and if she couldn’t quite believe that Shadow was Evil Incarnate, she could believe that it was the local version of Adolf Hitler, or Stalin or Pol Pot or the Ayatollah Khomeini. The woman in the cottage had told Raven some of Shadow’s rules, and they’d sounded like something Hitler or Stalin might have come up with.

Well, then, what if she thought of herself as having somehow landed in Nazi Germany? What would she have done?

She’d have tried to get out, of course-across the Alps to Switzerland, like the von Trapps, or to England or somewhere.

Except there was no Switzerland or England here. Shadow had won its war and conquered the entire world.

So what then?

There was an underground, of course-Raven was proof of that. She had already seen the underground, by traveling with Raven and Valadrakul, and talking with Taillefer, and they’d made promises to get her home, and then they hadn’t been able to deliver.

Well, to hell with them, then. She wasn’t going to join the underground and become a freedom fighter if they couldn’t keep their promises. And it didn’t look as if they stood any chance of winning the war, anyway.

Undergrounds never won their wars without outside help, anyway-she was pretty sure she’d read that somewhere.

But to return to her analogy, here she was, in the Faerie equivalent of Nazi Germany, with no way to get out of the country to Switzerland or England. She was going to stay in Germany unless Hitler himself decided to send her home, so she was on her way to Berlin to ask.

Was that going to work?

Well, it might; she wasn’t the local equivalent of a Jew, so far as she could tell, or otherwise fodder for the concentration camps. If there was an equivalent to the Jews, from what Valadrakul had said she supposed it was wizards. She certainly wasn’t a wizard.

She was a foreigner, of course, and Hitler had hated foreigners, but he hadn’t just killed them out of hand.

And besides, there was no point in carrying the analogy too far.

So they were going to Berlin to ask a favor of Hitler, more or less-and if that failed, Pel wanted to try to assassinate him.

What were the odds of getting away with that?

Probably nil. She just couldn’t imagine a bunch of lost American tourists walking in and killing Hitler, which would be the equivalent.

And she couldn’t see how they could hope to destroy Shadow, whatever it was, and get away with it; despite what Pel seemed to think, this wasn’t some silly adventure story. Things like that didn’t happen in real life.

But maybe Shadow would send them home.

And what else could she do?

Well, if she were in Germany, she could just settle down somewhere, find work, or someone who would take her in, and just hope nobody reported her to the Gestapo as she got on with her life. She didn’t suppose there’d be much call for an interior decorator in a place like Faerie, but she could find something to do, she was sure. And she wouldn’t even have to learn the language-the people here spoke English.

When they came to a town, she decided, she’d do that, she’d settle down and make the best of things. Not a farm-she wanted nothing to do with rural life. But sooner or later, surely, they’d find a place with shops and some semblance of civilization, and she could stay there. The others could go on to Shadow’s fortress if they wanted, and if Shadow agreed to help they could send for her, but she didn’t want to walk in there with them.

She’d have the baby to worry about, of course, if she settled down and stayed.

Well, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad; she could claim to be widowed, that she’d left her home because she couldn’t manage alone with the baby coming. And just because it was Walter’s child didn’t mean it would be a monster; she could bring it up properly, and it would probably turn out fine.

And it might die, anyway.

That was a horrible thought, she told herself, but she couldn’t help it. Her situation was so awful-trapped in an alien, uncomfortable, hostile world, carrying her rapist’s child-that she thought a little morbid speculation was entirely justified.

She looked ahead, at Raven and Pel and Valadrakul, and decided she wouldn’t mention anything to them yet. They might not approve. Time enough when they found someplace she could stay, some suitable little town or village.

That woman’s cottage had been primitive, but Amy didn’t think it was too uncomfortable, really. If she could find a place no worse than that, she thought she could stand it.

She wondered if Prossie or Susan would be interested in staying with her.

* * * *

The land undulated, Prossie decided. It was a fancy word, but it fit. The countryside was an apparently-endless series of gentle-sloped ridges, and their path led them up and over each one. The westward slopes, the ones they went down, seemed longer and steeper than the eastward sides; that meant they were gradually descending these ripples, coming down from the forest, and that eventually, if they continued, they would reach either the sea or the flat plain of the coast.

It also meant, though, that most of the time they couldn’t see where they were going, but each time they topped a ridge the whole world would suddenly be spread out before them, a green expanse of small farms, groves, meadows, orchards that seemed to go on forever, arranged in the rows formed by the ridges-or rather, Prossie corrected herself, the Downs.

From each summit they could see a new valley, and then the tops of the succeeding ridges, fading away in the distance. The horizon was lost in mist from the first few ridgetops, but as the day progressed and the air warmed the mist receded and vanished. From the next two ridges everything was sharp and clear-but then the air began to grow hazy again as the temperature continued to rise. Dark clouds hovered on the western horizon, far ahead of them, but drew no nearer.

There was a pleasant sort of repetition to it all. Prossie supposed that eventually they would arrive somewhere, but she was in no particular hurry; she had been on perhaps a dozen worlds in her lifetime, and despite the high gravity this was one of the most pleasant she had yet encountered. The spaceborne habitats and bases where she had spent most of her time weren’t even in the running.

Also, the long walk gave her time to think, to meditate, to remember, and to just be.

She thought back to her childhood, remembering when she had first realized that she was a distinct individual. She knew, from reading other minds, that normal babies began to differentiate themselves from their environment when they were just a few weeks old, and had a pretty good grasp on the concept of “I” by the time they were toddlers; telepathic children, though, had a rougher time of it. Distinguishing their own thoughts from those around them, and from the network of other telepaths, was not easy.

Prossie had been slow; she had been almost four when she finally got a firm grip on which thoughts were her own and which came from outside. The key had been when she finally learned to close out other minds.

By then she had learned any number of things that normal children didn’t encounter until much later-she knew about sex, from several different viewpoints; she knew about death, and addiction, and lust, and grief; she knew about the dark, sick thoughts that lurked below so many minds.

And she had accepted all that as parts of herself, because she was part of all humanity, a link in the chain of telepaths that bound her species together. She knew that people didn’t speak about those darknesses, the raw lusts and searing pain, but it wasn’t until years later that she really understood why. She heard people thinking, over and over, that their thoughts were wrong, were different from everyone else, but she had known it wasn’t true.

It was so much easier to just accept it all, the foulness and shame and guilt, along with the joy and beauty and peace, and to not think about any of it, to not distinguish any of it as “good” or “bad.” It just was. It was in everyone, in varying degrees.

Except, of course, in herself, since she was a mere passive receiver, a relay, a servant of the Galactic Empire, not responsible for anything except performing her duty.

But now, thinking back, she knew that she had the darknesses in herself, too. That disgusting Bascombe, the Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs, hadn’t had a second thought about sending his own people out to die, just to help his own reputation, and she had, somewhere in the back of her mind, thought she was better than that, that she would never have done such a thing-but hadn’t she left Lieutenant Dibbs and the others to die? Paul, who had raped her back on Zeta Leo III, had been awash in fantasies of power and abuse, and she had never done anything like that-but she had never had the chance, and hadn’t she deliberately lied to the people here, to manipulate them into doing what she wanted, and hadn’t she enjoyed the feeling of power it gave her?

And after all, hadn’t she betrayed her own family and her Empire?

But then, her family and Empire had virtually enslaved her from infancy, in their own way just as much as Paul had when he bought her at auction and took her to his home in chains.

Did that make her treason acceptable?

Perhaps it did, but it was still a betrayal. Certainly, her little crimes weren’t as bad as Bascombe’s or Paul’s or the Empire’s, but she was no pure little innocent.

And now that she was alone in her head, she could look at that, could take the time to consider her own motives and see just what was lurking down there in the back of her mind.

And she was discovering, as she walked across the Starlinshire Downs, that she had the same drives as anyone else-power and pride and sex and fear and anger, the need for love, the need for acceptance, all tangled together into her own individual mix.

She was thinking about her reasons for serving the Empire so willingly for so long, the fear of punishment, the acceptance by her family, the pride in her work, when she felt Carrie’s presence.

She blinked, almost stumbled on the latest upgrade.

“Are you all right, Prossie?” Carrie’s thoughts were tinged with worry-nothing serious, just concern for Prossie.

“I’m fine,” she thought back, “just fine.” To her own surprise as much as Carrie’s, her reply carried an edge of annoyance; she had already become accustomed to the mental isolation, the partial sensory deprivation, and she had been enjoying it. The sudden contact came as an intrusion on her own meditations.

“What about the others?”

Prossie looked around as she topped the rise. “Wilkins and Marks and Sawyer and Singer are all fine; the Earthpeople are alive, anyway, and seem to be functioning. Raven and Valadrakul are the only natives we still have with us.”

“What about Lieutenant Dibbs and the others?”

“How should I know?” The edge of anger was stronger and more obvious than ever, Carrie could hardly miss it, but Prossie didn’t care. “We left them back at the ship; you know that.”

“You haven’t heard anything more?”

“No.”

“What about that wizard who was going to send people home?”

“Didn’t work out,” Prossie replied. She wasn’t really paying very close attention any more; she had just looked out across the valley before them, and realized that this time they weren’t just going to pass more scattered, isolated farms.

This time, a town stood in the center of the valley. She couldn’t see very much; the afternoon air was hazy and humid, wavering in the heat, but the collection of stone and wood structures half a mile or so away was definitely a town.

“So what’s happening, then?” Carrie demanded. “Where are you going? You’re walking, I can sense that-where to?”

“We’re going to Shadow’s fortress,” Prossie said, studying the town. The highway widened out to form the main street; another road crossed at the center of town, and a few narrow back-streets filled in the rest.

For several seconds Carrie didn’t reply; when she did, she said, “Prossie, that’s crazy.”

“I know,” Prossie said, taking her first step down the slope. “But it should make General Hart happy, shouldn’t it?”