In the Empire of Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Four

The throne room was full of people, but eerily silent. No one coughed, no one spoke; they all simply stood there as Shadow’s patterns of light and color played across them. Amy stopped in the doorway and looked uneasily in, her eyes adjusting to the glare, her ears starting to ring with the odd sensation of pressure that Shadow’s presence usually provoked.

The unmoving people were more of Shadow’s black-clad servants, dozens of them. Amy was more certain than ever that whatever they were, they weren’t really human.

Prossie stopped behind her, but Ted ambled on past them and began pushing his way through the crowd.

“Come you,” Shadow called, and the servants shoved back against each other, opening a path. Watching them move, Amy noticed for the first time that they all wore belts bearing sheathed swords.

What was that about?

Uneasily, Amy followed Ted, Prossie trailing behind, and the three of them made their way to a wide clear space before Shadow’s throne.

Shadow’s glory was relatively restrained just now, so they were not blinded, and they could vaguely see a human outline within the glimmering matrix. Pel was standing to one side of Shadow’s seat, partially obscured by the shifting colors. In front of the throne was an area of open floor about twenty feet across; all the rest of the vast chamber seemed to be jammed full of servants-homunculi, walking dead, whatever they were, there were hundreds of them, all of them outwardly human.

There were no obvious monsters anywhere to be seen, which struck Amy as a bit odd. Shadow used so many monsters outside her fortress, and in that huge entrance hall; didn’t she use them in here?

“Welcome,” Shadow said, as Amy stepped into the open area.

Amy stopped.

“You see before you,” Shadow announced, “my personal bodyguard. Never in this realm have I had any need of such, but I go now to visit thy land, Telepath, where my magicks cannot protect me.”

Amy glanced around at the expressionless faces. That explained the swords, anyway-Shadow didn’t have any guns to give her guards. And Shadow’s monsters couldn’t live in Imperial space, which explained their absence, as well.

“In a moment,” Shadow continued, “your companion, Pellinore the Brown, will open a portal to a small, pleasant world in the Galactic Empire; my escort will precede me thereunto, and make ready my way. And likewise, you two Earthpeople will step through.”

Amy started. “Why?” she asked. “Why aren’t you sending us home?”

“Because,” Shadow explained, “though I have taken what precautions seemed good to me, yet am I wary that our good Messire Brown may not act for love of me. Thou and this madman shall serve me as hostages for his good behavior-an he faults in any way upon my desires, shalt first the madman, and then thyself, be slain.”

Amy felt tears stinging her eyes. This just went on and on, world after world, but never Earth. “What about Prossie?” she asked.

“The telepath? Nay, nay, I’m not such a fool as that; an she came, the Empire’s soldiers would know my plans and my whereabouts in a trice, and they’d not be troubled by the loss of a handful of you, nor greatly slowed by my swordsmen. I’d flee safely hither, but ’twould be a misfortune best avoided. She’s to stay here.”

Amy blinked at the indeterminate shape on the throne, and at Pel, there beside it. For a moment she thought an odd expression seemed to appear on Pel’s face, as if he were struggling not to smile, but Amy could not be sure through the haze of color.

“Now, Pellinore,” Shadow said, “let us begin.”

* * * *

Pel watched as the black-clad creatures Shadow had called fetches marched, one by one, into the portal he had opened.

Raven had mentioned fetches-weren’t they supposed to be the walking dead?

Did that mean that these were dead people brought back to life, or live people condemned to a sort of half-death? Pel didn’t know.

He didn’t know the name of the planet they were appearing on, either, but he thought it was a green and pretty place, and that the low towers of a city would be visible in the distance from the other side of the portal. He could not really explain how he had found it, or how he knew what it looked like-one didn’t see through a portal, rather, one put a portal through to what one saw, and Shadow had told him through the matrix, in ways words could not describe, where she wanted this one.

He supposed that this troop of black-garbed swordsmen was really a scouting and raiding party, as much as Shadow’s bodyguard; he was certain she intended to fight the Galactic Empire eventually, and he supposed she might well conquer it all in time.

And after that, she would probably go after Earth. He really was face to face with a world-conquering menace, just as in all those stories, and one that didn’t have any ring to throw in a volcano, nor sword to be broken, nor plug to be pulled-but one he wanted to kill.

He couldn’t harm her, though, nor ask another to, and he couldn’t refuse her instructions regarding the portal.

He could think about harming her, of course; he could imagine her hanged and disembowelled, or torched and burning, or beaten to death, like some of her victims-but he couldn’t do anything directly to make his imaginings come true.

The throne room was emptying; he could see Susan’s corpse again, no longer hidden by Shadow’s slaves.

And he could see Prossie, standing to one side, waiting, as the crowd trickled away through the portal, until finally the last four slaves took Ted and Amy by the arms and led them through.

That left Shadow, himself, Prossie, and Susan alone in the throne room.

“Now, Pellinore,” Shadow said, “thou shalt hold this portal open ’gainst my return, and shalt open no others lest they distract thee; understood?”

“I understand,” Pel said, annoyed that he could not deny her orders about it. He had been wondering if he might be able to maintain two portals at once, once he was holding Shadow’s incredible matrix. It certainly wasn’t possible with the little dribble of eldritch power he had access to so far, but Shadow’s power was so vast that he doubted the limitation would have held. He had been thinking of opening a portal to somewhere else…

But she had forbidden it, and the geas was irresistible.

“’Tis well,” she said. “Be ready, now.”

And then Pel felt power pouring into him, and felt himself spilling out of his body, as Shadow’s magical matrix was transferred to him. The line between himself and the huge network abruptly blurred, and for an instant he was everywhere, all through Faerie, in the currents of magic; he felt the winds and the earth, the seas and the forests, he saw from a thousand eyes at once. An entire world was within him and around him, all at once.

With an effort, he tried to recollect himself.

Maintaining the portal, which mere hours before had seemed a major task, and mere seconds before had taken a conscious effort, was now as thoughtless and automatic as breathing.

Light and color were spilling out around him, he realized once he had managed to relocate himself as being in a specific place, in the throne room of the fortress.

And beside him, a pudgy dark-haired woman rose from her throne and announced, a trifle unsteadily, “’Tis done. Fare thee well until my return, Pellinore Brown.”

He was still trying to gather his wits and get a firm grip on reality, and said nothing as she walked, a trifle unsteadily, into the portal.

* * * *

Prossie watched the matrix transfer with interest, as far as she could; at first it didn’t seem as if Shadow were giving anything up, but merely as if Pel were developing his own shifting and colorful aura.

Pel’s aura grew brighter and brighter, however, far past the level Shadow had been maintaining herself, and Prossie had to look away.

In seconds, Pel blazed with a brilliance fully as unbearable as Shadow’s had been when first the party-eight of them, then-had entered the throne room. (Had that really only been the night before?) Prossie closed her eyes against the glare, flung an arm across her face, and turned away, pressing up to the wall.

And still the light grew brighter.

Then, finally, it stopped, though it was so intense that Prossie thought she could see the bones of her own arm silhouetted, black against red, right through the flesh and through her closed eyelids, and that was merely from the light that reached her with her back to the source, light reflected from the gray stone wall.

She heard Shadow’s voice, sounding oddly weak, say, “’Tis done. Fare thee well until my return, Pellinore Brown.” Although her ears were ringing and blood was roaring through them, she heard footsteps.

And then she heard them stop.

And then Pel’s voice roared out, loud as thunder, “Prossie? Are you all right?”

* * * *

The two men, or whatever they were, pulled Amy forward a few steps, and then released her arms, leaving her standing there in the open air of a meadow; Amy looked around warily.

Shadow’s black-clad servants were fanning out across the meadow, stamping down the tall grasses and wildflowers without so much as glancing at them; tiny insects, or at least creatures that resembled insects, whirred and buzzed about as the invaders trampled their habitat, flittering through shadow and oddly-dim sunlight.

There were insects, but there were no birds, and no trees anywhere to be seen; just grasses and flowers and stalky things like oversized weeds. In the distance she could see what appeared to be rooftops, but of an architectural style she’d never seen before.

The sky was a peculiarly purple color, and utterly cloudless above the gently-rolling hills; the sun was far up the heavens but as orange as if it were setting, and its light seemed almost thick, somehow-syrupy and rich, but not as bright as sunlight should be.

The air was fresh and cool and spicy, and she felt light on her feet; her back felt straight and strong, and she realized for the first time that it had been aching dully for days, an ache that was now fading rapidly. She took a step, and almost lost her balance.

Clearly, the gravity here was less than in Faerie, and probably less than on Earth-though it had been so long since she had been on Earth she was not absolutely sure of that. The change took some adjustment.

Ted, beside her, tumbled to the ground; quickly, he sat up again and looked about. The four servants who had brought the two of them through the portal were a few steps away, standing as if waiting for something, completely ignoring the two Earthpeople.

“Am I awake?” Ted asked. “It still looks a little funny…”

“No,” Amy told him, “it’s not Earth.” She took another tentative step. “I think the gravity’s weaker here, for one thing, and look at the color of the sky, and the sun.”

Ted looked up at the purple sky, and his face seemed to cave in.

“Oh, damn!” he said, and he started crying, heaving deep sobbing breaths.

* * * *

“I’m fine,” Prossie said, “but I can’t stand the light.”

Until that moment, Pel had not consciously realized that he was emitting light at all; the light had seemed a part of him, and he had somehow not recognized that it existed outside his own perceptions. He struggled for a moment, looking for some way to control the glow, and found it.

He wasn’t really much of a matrix wizard yet, he thought wryly, not if it took a struggle just to stop leaking so much light.

He fought down the leakage as best he could, until he thought he was seeing it entirely by magic, then asked, “How’s that?”

“Better,” Prossie said, warily opening her eyes and turning to face him. She kept a hand up, and blinked often-he supposed that despite his efforts he was still glowing, but more tolerably.

He didn’t have time to worry about it; he didn’t know what was happening on the other side of the portal, didn’t know what Shadow was up to, didn’t even know if she could see or hear what was going on, and he wanted to talk to Prossie quickly, before Shadow could do anything about it. This might be his last chance to ever talk freely to someone who understood the situation, someone who could advise him, someone who could tell him he wasn’t making a horrible mistake.

“Listen,” Pel said hurriedly, “when she sent you through there, and you said she wasn’t lying-did you mean that? Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”

Prossie blinked again. “She can’t hear us?” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you sure?”

Pel noticed the hesitation, and some little part of him wondered whether Prossie was afraid of him, now that he held Shadow’s all-powerful matrix, or whether she was just unaccustomed to not knowing, telepathically, how sure someone was.

Or whether it was something else entirely.

It didn’t matter, though. “She’s through the portal in the Galactic Empire, and I’m holding the matrix,” Pel answered. “She can’t hear us from there any more than you can read minds from here.” He thought that was the truth; he hesitated, and then in a fit of partial candor added, “But there might be homunculi listening, and they could tell her what we say-if she comes back and asks them.”

The telepath took a second to consider, then replied. “She wasn’t lying,” Prossie said, “but she could change her mind at any time-instantly. She’s selfish and short-tempered and…and whimsical. You can’t trust her, not about that, not about anything.”

Pel sighed, and wind whistled around the fortress tower above him. He was aware of it, aware that the matrix had caused that gust in sympathy to his sigh, as he might have been aware that he had blinked, or that his pulse was beating-he knew of it, but it was unimportant.

“I never really thought she could be trusted,” he said, “but what choice did I have?” He tried to keep the sound of pleading out of his voice, and could not tell if he succeeded. “She says she can raise the dead-if it’s true, she can bring back Nancy, and Rachel.”

Prossie nodded. “She can bring corpses back to life,” she agreed. “After a fashion, anyway. That’s where a lot of those servants came from, I think-I didn’t get the memories very clearly.”

“The servants?” Light flickered across the walls in the magical equivalent of a blink.

“The ones in black, like the ones she took through the space-warp with her,” Prossie explained.

“Fetches,” Pel said. “She calls them fetches. I heard her call them that.”

“That’s right,” Prossie agreed. “Fetched back from the dead-it’s not quite what the word means in the Empire, but that’s what she means by it.”

“Then she can bring back Nancy and Rachel!” A surge of long-suppressed hope and joy welled up, and for a moment white light flooded the throne room, forcing Prossie to turn away.

The telepath blinked, trying to clear her vision, and for an instant, inadvertently, Pel thought he looked out through her eyes.

“I know you want them back, Mr. Brown,” Prossie said, “but I…” She stopped.

“But what?” Pel demanded, the hope turning to ash within him.

“But wouldn’t she need the bodies?” Prossie asked. “I mean, to bring back your wife and daughter.”

Pel sat motionless for a moment, and sickly reds and violets flickered along the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said, finding himself involuntarily looking at Susan’s body again. “Would she?”

He hadn’t thought about that. Maybe he should have asked Shadow about it, tried to make her promise to revive Nancy and Rachel.

But maybe she couldn’t, without the bodies. And what if the bodies had to be fresh? Rachel and Nancy had been dead for some time now; he had spent weeks at Base One and on the long journey from I.S.S. Christopher.

He didn’t want to think about it any more, didn’t want to kill his hope completely, and he changed the subject. After all, there were other things that needed to be discussed.

“Listen,” he said, “I can’t harm her; she put a spell on me, and maybe I could break it if I knew how, now that she’s there and I’ve got this matrix of hers, but I don’t know how. I can’t harm her, and I can’t ask anyone else to. But I won’t stop anyone else who tries.”

Prossie blinked at him, not understanding, her hand shielding her eyes against the glare.

“Are you still in touch with Base One?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Prossie admitted. “Not right at the moment. And even if I were, it would take time for them to find her and reach her…”

“And she’d see them coming. She’d kill Ted, and maybe Amy, and she’d come back here and probably kill me,” Pel agreed. “I couldn’t defend myself; the spell wouldn’t let me. I have to give back the matrix when she wants it, I can’t close the portal and trap her there.”

“If she were killed, she couldn’t bring anyone back from the dead,” Prossie pointed out. “She couldn’t send anyone home.”

“I could send people home,” Pel said. “That much I learned.” He paused, as a thought burst through his mind, a thought that he now saw as so obvious that he could not understand why he hadn’t thought of it before.

He had learned how to open a portal; maybe he could learn more.

No one had taught Shadow to raise the dead, had they? She had managed it on her own, by virtue of the incredible accumulation of magical power she had amassed.

It might have taken her awhile, though; she’d had centuries in which to experiment. And he didn’t really know anything about the magic he now controlled.

But there were other wizards out there. They could help. And if Shadow were dead…

He couldn’t harm her, of course.

But he didn’t need to stop anyone else from harming her, if someone could figure out how.

And as far as raising the dead went, he certainly had enough corpses around to practice on; even if Raven and Singer were beyond recovery, Susan and Valadrakul remained, and there were the bodies hanging over the fortress gate.

A sudden urgency swept over him as pieces fell into place. He didn’t just want to talk to the telepath; he wanted her to do something.

He wished she were still able to read his mind; how could he lead her to the conclusion he wanted?

He would have to try.

“Prossie,” he said, “I can’t leave here, I have to hold this portal open-go down to the gate, will you? I’m going to cut down the men hanging there.”

Prossie blinked at him. “What?” she asked.

“Just…just go down and look at them. Hurry!”

He wanted to explain further, but he couldn’t. The geas stopped him.

It was too much like asking someone to harm Shadow.

* * * *

The woman called Shadow appeared from the air; Amy saw the arrival from the corner of her eye.

There was no glare of light, no shifting colors, no darknesses or other peculiarities. Shadow was just an overweight middle-aged woman, standing in a meadow and staring about open-mouthed; there was no trace of magic to her-or to anything else here, beyond the everyday magicks of nature, sun and sky and flowers and grass.

“’Tis real!” Shadow said, and her voice seemed weak and thin without her magic amplifying it.

Amy turned, and started to take a step toward Shadow, but then stopped herself.

Here Shadow was, without her magic, and Amy wanted to kill her, she wanted to beat that ugly head against a rock until it broke, to pay her back for Susan and the rest-but she stopped herself.

Because Shadow still had her guards; the four who had brought Amy and Ted through the portal were stepping up beside her, standing at attention, obviously waiting for orders. Their hands were mere inches from the hilts of their swords.

Amy had not lived through so much just to get herself run through by some semi-human creature’s sword.

“Yes, it’s real,” Amy said. “Now what?”

* * * *

Puzzled and wary, Prossie emerged from the throne room onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She didn’t understand what was going on, whether Pel was cooperating with Shadow or pursuing some scheme of his own.

It would be so simple, back home, to dip quickly into his mind, maybe not see the details but at least sense which way he was going-but here it was impossible.

Did she want to cooperate with him? What was going to happen to her, if Pel was cooperating with Shadow? Where would she go?

Return to the Empire meant death; living here, under Shadow, meant constant fear and probably death as well. And would Shadow allow her to go to Earth with Amy and Ted?

Would Shadow ever allow Amy and Ted to return to Earth at all?

Prossie paused atop the stairs and glanced down.

The black dragon was still down there, looking up at her from below, but then, abruptly, its head burst into flame; for a moment Prossie thought her eyes were playing tricks, or it was an illusion of some sort.

Then the creature bellowed, spitting fire; it crumpled, toppling to one side, and fell, twitching once and then lying still, obviously dead.

“I can’t really control them yet,” Pel’s voice, unnaturally loud, called from behind her. “Run!”

Whatever his plans, Pel was determined, she realized, and while it might have been cowardly, she didn’t dare defy him, not when she could be incinerated as easily as the dragon, or as Raven and Singer before it. Prossie dashed down the steps, but slowed as she neared the dead beast.

The beam of light above the corridor was dim and flickering unsteadily; Prossie glanced uneasily up at it as she picked her way carefully past the dead dragon.

Sunlight was pouring in through the open doors, and the eldritch glare of Shadow’s matrix shone down from the top of the stairs, so there was plenty of light even should the beam vanish completely; it wasn’t darkness Prossie was afraid of, but the uncertainty.

The creatures along the ledges weren’t moving; that was some comfort, anyway.

She heard several distant, muffled thumps from somewhere ahead, and she stopped in her tracks.

“Hurry!” Pel called from above, his voice weirdly distorted.

Baffled and frightened and annoyed, Prossie hurried, running down the long, long passage and out into the sunlight, where the six bodies lay.

They stank. Maybe they had before, and the height had kept the odor away, but now the stench was overwhelming, and Prossie shied away involuntarily.

And they didn’t look very pleasant, either; they had fallen heavily into loops of their own entrails. Decaying blood and damaged flesh were heaped across the threshold, only partially wrapped in ruined purple uniforms.

Why had Pel wanted her to see this?

Was this some sadistic quirk, forcing her to look at her dead comrades? Was he going mad?

Bloated hands, dead faces, staring eyes; torn cloth, scuffed black boots, black leather belts.

Prossie wished desperately that she could read Pel’s thoughts, and find out what she was supposed to see.

Lieutenant Dibbs’ mouth gaped open mere inches from another man’s bowel, and Prossie had to swallow hard; she looked away, down Dibbs’ body, but that was no better, with his slit-open belly, the severed ends of the waistband of his Sam Browne belt dangling into the cavity within, the empty holster at his side…

Empty holster.

They weren’t all empty.

And Pel was holding the portal open. He couldn’t go through it himself, he couldn’t harm Shadow-but Prossie could.

Suddenly, she had no doubt at all of Pel’s intentions, and she found herself smiling even as she struggled to hold down her breakfast. She scrabbled eagerly at Spaceman Shelby’s holster.

* * * *

“Oh, ’tis wondrous strange!” Shadow exclaimed, oblivious to Amy; the wizard smiled broadly, taking it all in.

Annoyed, the Earthwoman glanced at Ted; he was ignoring her, too, as he stared at the flowers.

And the men in black weren’t paying any attention, either. Most of them had formed a hundred-yard ring, while half a dozen hovered warily near Shadow, hands on sword-hilts.

For her part, Shadow was lifting her feet and marveling at the feel of the lighter gravity, staring at the color of the sky, and trying to look every direction at once as she wandered slowly in the general direction of those distant buildings.

“And ’twill be mine,” Shadow sang, “all mine!”

Amy snorted.

The ring of men was moving with Shadow, and Amy was, reluctantly, moving as well.

Ted didn’t notice, didn’t move, until the ring touched him, and two of the swordsmen snatched him up by the arms and dragged him along.

A few feet away, as Amy watched, a swordsman vanished into the portal-presumably by accident, since the opening was invisible. The swordsman had been keeping his station in the moving circle when it reached the portal, and had stepped through.

Amy waited for him to reappear-surely, once on the other side, he would simply turn around and step through again.

He didn’t.

Amy blinked; what was happening back there in Shadow’s fortress? Why hadn’t the swordsman reappeared?

“Hey,” she said.

No one paid any attention.

“Hey, look!” she shouted.

* * * *

Prossie dashed into the throne room, blaster in hand, just as a fetch stepped from the portal; Pel saw her raise the weapon and point it at the black-garbed slave, but of course it didn’t do anything.

Rayguns didn’t work here; magic did.

He let one little tendril of arcane force free, just as he had with the dragon, and the fetch burst into flame-as Raven had, as Singer had.

He wanted to shout encouragement to Prossie, but he couldn’t, the geas wouldn’t let him. He didn’t need to stop her, Shadow hadn’t worried enough about her safety to appoint Pel as her guardian, but the spell prevented him from doing anything to urge the telepath on.

She didn’t need encouragement; she ran through the hot, drifting ash and through the portal without slowing.

* * * *

Amy stared as a figure burst from the portal, a figure in a slashed and dirty purple uniform, a figure with a gun in her hand.

The gun fired with an electric crackle and a muffled thud, and a swordsman fell, headless and twitching, as blood sprayed around him; Shadow spun, astonished.

Prossie fired again as Shadow opened her mouth to speak, and Shadow’s shoulder exploded into bloody scraps. Whatever Shadow had planned to say was lost as she screamed and tottered, but for another long second the wizard remained upright. Amy glimpsed her face, and saw nothing but surprise; she had obviously not suspected that anything like this could happen.

Shadow had been ready to confront the Galactic Empire with spies and swordsmen, and had not realized how vulnerable that made her. In an instant, Amy understood what that meant. Despite all the reports her agents had brought her, Shadow had never seen a blaster, nor any other weapon produced by high technology-or Imperial science-except Susan’s pitiful little pistol. She hadn’t really comprehended how powerful they were. She hadn’t known what she was getting into, hadn’t realized how vulnerable she was in this universe where magic didn’t work.

She hadn’t understood that here, the Empire held a scientific matrix just as powerful as her own magical one.

Prossie fired a third time, and Shadow’s chest burst into rags; she toppled forward, and landed face-down in a patch of strange red flowers, her blood staining their leaves and stems almost as bright as their blossoms.

A hundred blades flashed in the alien sun as the black-clad men drew their blades and prepared to defend-or avenge-their mistress.

“Run for the portal!” Prossie cried, as her weapon blasted the belly out of the nearest swordsman.

Amy hesitated at the idea of running toward that thing Prossie was firing, but then she obeyed; she stumbled once, forgetting the lower gravity, but she quickly recovered.

She didn’t know how it had happened, but she knew an opportunity when she saw it. Pel must have arranged it somehow, despite all Shadow’s plans. He had sent Prossie to save them.

And he was waiting for them, back in Faerie.

She hoped that Pel had some way of sending them back to Earth, but even if he didn’t, they certainly couldn’t stay here.

“Ted!” she called. He looked up. “Through the portal!”

He didn’t move, and she was almost there; Prossie was picking off swordsmen one by one, starting with those nearest her, but there were an awful lot of them, and some were coming around behind her.

“Ted, I swear, just get through the portal and you’ll wake up!”

Ted hesitated, then stumbled toward the faint waver in the air, but Amy didn’t wait for him; she dove past Prossie and through, and landed on freshly-skinned knees on the stone floor of Shadow’s throne room.

Or rather, she corrected herself, of Pel’s throne room.