In the Empire of Shadow

Chapter Four

Raven of Stormcrack Keep had seen many strange things in the hard, sad days since his brother had betrayed the clan and yielded the Keep and its lands to Shadow. He had fled through haunted forests by night, and had seen creatures there whose nature he still did not know, things he dared not contemplate too closely. He had lived for a time among the little people of Hrumph, the people his grandfather had called gnomes, before they were driven into exile; he had dwelt like a giant among them, and had been amazed by their ways and customs. He had fallen in with a handful of the few remaining wizards, had seen them in their own strongholds, where they lived unhampered by the dictates of the nobility and used whatsoever magic they might please. One of those wizards, Elani, had opened for him portals into the Galactic Empire, and into the world of Earth, where he had seen wonders that even the mightiest magic could not equal. He had been slave and supplicant in those other worlds; he had been beaten and abused, and still bore scars and wounds not yet healed from those encounters. He had thought that nothing could faze him any more. But now, as he stared at the men who had piloted the Imperial vessel, he discovered that he had not lost his capacity for surprise.

It was not any new marvel of science or magic that astounded him, but the depths of idiocy to which allegedly intelligent men could sink.

“Colonel,” he said, “what might those two be about?” He pointed at the two men crouched beside an open panel, poking at the tangle of wires and baubles inside.

“They’re trying to fix the engines, of course,” Carson replied edgily.

“Be your engines broken?”

“Well, of course they are!” Carson snapped. “Why else would we have crashed?”

Raven considered this question for a moment, admiring its magnificent ineptitude. “Prithee,” he asked eventually, “has none told you the nature of this realm?”

Carson glared at him. “What do you mean?”

Raven hesitated, then waved the matter away. Perhaps it would be best if he were to leave the man’s ignorance intact for the moment; an opportunity might arise to exploit it at some other time. “Mayhap later,” he said. “Erst, you sought my favor in some matter?”

“Yeah,” Carson said, looking distastefully at the broad forward viewport. “I want to know where the heck we are. I’d figured on reconnoitering from the air, taking a look around-but then the drive quit on us. In fact, nothing seems to be working; must be a break in the power system somewhere.”

“I fear, sir, that I know not where we be,” Raven said. “Did they not tell you where the great portal would be?”

“They told me we’d come out around two hundred miles from this Shadow thing,” Carson said. “I didn’t listen to all the damn details; I figured we could straighten that out from the air once we came through.”

Raven nodded. “And I’ve no more than that.”

“You know this country, don’t you?”

“Aye, for the main, an I’ve landmarks…”

“Well, then, take a look, damn it!” Carson waved at the viewport.

Raven looked.

The view here was a good deal more extensive than that from the porthole by Amy Jewell’s seat, but it still revealed little more than that they were in a mature forest somewhere. Broken branches and scattered leaves were everywhere, signs of the ship’s fall strewn in a web of sunlight and shadow; oaks towered overhead, while moss and fungus flourished below. The light was the clean sweet white of home, not the hot glare of Earth’s sun, or the harsh blaze of the lights of Base One. He judged from its angle that the day was just short of mid-morning.

“’Tis a forest,” Raven said, “and I and mine drew best we could a map for you ere we left, and thereon we indicated those forests we knew-and some would put us your two hundred miles from Shadow’s stronghold. How to tell one forest from another, who can say? Saw you aught before we fell-a keep, a mount, any such as that?”

Carson turned and glared at one of the pilots.

“No, sir,” the man replied. “We didn’t have time to see much of anything. Just trees.”

“There might have been mountains off that way,” the co-pilot offered, pointing to the left.

Raven considered that, studying the angle of the sun and the patterns of the moss on the trees. “Then, an those were the Further Corydians, we might be in the West Sunderland,” he said at last, “but I’ve no certainty.”

“All right,” Carson said. “If we’re in Sunderland, where do we go, and how will we know if we’ve got it wrong?”

Raven bit back a retort; he took a second to calm his voice, then replied, “An we’re in the Low Forest of West Sunderland, we need but make way to the west, and in due time we should either strike the Palanquin Road, or reach the edge of the forest and the Starlinshire Downs. If it be the road, turning south will bring us in time to the River Vert; if it be the Downs, we should find landmarks enow.”

Carson nodded. “And then what?” he demanded.

“And then? Why, then we strike out westward for Shadow’s keep, should our plans be made and the omens favorable, and if they be otherwise, then seek we shelter with those who yet serve the cause of the Light.” Raven’s own plans were already made, and consisted mostly of the latter choice, locating a surviving part of the resistance to Shadow’s rule; he had no intention of flinging himself against Shadow’s keep in some pointless, suicidal raid.

However, throwing Carson and his men into such a raid might be the best way to rid himself of a nuisance, and to provide the evidence needed to convince the Empire to devise a serious attack. And who could say that they might not learn something from such an assault? To Raven’s best knowledge, no one had been foolish enough to attempt anything of the sort in centuries.

“You can contact these others?” Carson snapped.

“Certes, I can,” Raven replied, meeting his eye. He had developed the knack of lying straight-faced as a child, and had never lost it, but in this case he spoke very nearly the truth. Contact could be made, though it would best be done by a wizard, rather than by himself.

“And they can contact the Empire?”

Raven hesitated. “Aye,” he said, “that’s within their powers.” That was beyond question; the hesitation was due to uncertainty as to the wisdom of letting Carson know it.

He didn’t mention that in plain truth, either Elani or Valadrakul could doubtless make contact with others in the anti-Shadow network at any time, now that they were once again in their native realm, where good magic worked as it should. In truth, Elani could most likely make contact with agents in the Galactic Empire at any time, and they could, in their turn, carry messages to the Imperial authorities.

Of course, that would most probably put an end to their usefulness as spies. Furthermore, Raven did not trust the Empire. He would communicate with it only on his own terms, not at the urging of this arrogant oaf of a commoner.

He had not yet fully settled upon his own preferred course of action to be followed once he had found a new place in the resistance. That the Empire had some fool notion of using him as native guide in their assault on Shadow’s keep he knew; that he had assented to the Empire’s instructions, however, did not mean he would actually obey them. He had agreed because such an agreement was his only way to leave Base One and return to his own world.

Here, though, he was in command. Colonel Carson might not have realized that yet, but Raven knew who was master here, in the natural world, away from the topsy-turvy Empire. He was the heir to Stormcrack Keep, and as such he need take no heed of such as Carson.

* * * *

Carson glared at the damned foppish barbarian who called himself Raven, trying to decide whether or not he could be trusted.

He didn’t really trust any foreigner-none of them could think straight, they all had minds as twisty as their infernal streets in those little outworld colonies or the Azean backwaters on Terra. He had been told to cooperate with this Raven, though; the savage was supposed to be sworn to fight Shadow, and it was Shadow that really scared those pissant politicians back home, especially that twit Bascombe in the Department of Science, with his fancy title that he’d made up and got his father-in-law to make official.

And, Carson admitted to himself, the people who gave him his orders might actually know what they were doing this time-though he wouldn’t bet his pension on it.

They’d told him that the space warp would put him in a whole new universe, where space itself was different; he’d had his doubts, and for that matter he still wasn’t entirely convinced that this planet wasn’t just someplace off in an odd corner of the galaxy, that the space warp wasn’t just a shortcut from here to there, but it did seem to operate as advertised.

They’d told him to expect equipment failures, that some of the machinery wouldn’t operate in the space here, maybe most of it, and sure enough, the damn ship had fallen like a rock, the AG drive working about as well as a popped rubber. He still suspected a break in the power feed somewhere, but he couldn’t prove it.

So maybe they knew what they were doing when they told him to trust this fancy-talking twit.

“We can breathe the air here?” he demanded.

“Most assuredly,” Raven replied gravely.

“All right,” Carson growled. “Let’s get out and take a look around, then, and maybe find these friends of yours.”

* * * *

Amy scuffed one half-booted foot through the dead leaves, enjoying the rustle that made.

It wasn’t quite the same sound she’d have gotten doing the same thing back on Earth, in, say, Vermont; the air was slightly thicker here, and the higher gravity made the leaves pack down more tightly. That made it an effort to just stand and breathe, really; the tired irritability that had hounded her ever since her rescue from Walter and Beth, back on Zeta Leo III, was still with her as well.

Still, it was good to be outdoors again after all the weeks at Base One. They had been lucky enough to arrive on a beautiful day-warm in the sun, cool in the shade-and the contrasts were delightful after the stuffy boredom of the hollowed-out asteroid. And it was good to see trees and leaves; she hadn’t realized it, but she had missed them, not seeing a proper forest, or even a decent grove, since she had first arrived in the Galactic Empire.

The rich smells of black earth, rotting leaves, and growing things were absolutely wonderful after weeks of steel walls and stale air.

The forest seemed awfully quiet, though. She heard no birds, no squirrels or other animals; perhaps the spaceship’s crash had frightened them away. The heavy, still air wasn’t stirring anything overhead, either; the only sounds came from the stranded humans.

She looked up as the Imperial soldiers, in response to a brisk order from Colonel Carson, formed up in a line alongside the ruined spaceship, facing into a small clearing. At the sight of them, all together in their neat uniforms and silly purple helmets, it occurred to Amy that they had all been lucky that the ship had not smashed directly into one of the huge trees.

But then, the trees weren’t all that close together, for the most part; a few giants had crowded out most of the lesser competition.

Even so, it appeared to Amy that they had been fortunate in falling into one of the larger gaps. Trees crowded close around the ship’s nose and one side, but farther back the vessel lay in a relatively open space-open enough, at any rate, for Carson to stand there and order his men about, while the rest of the party stayed in sight but out of the way.

She saw Raven and Valadrakul exchange a derisive glance at seeing the soldiers standing in their tidy row, chests out and shoulders back.

“Popinjays,” Elani muttered. “Gaudy purple popinjays, ready to have the stuffing knocked from them.”

Stoddard didn’t say anything; he crossed his arms on his chest and watched. Pel and Susan were still helping Ted down from the ship, and not paying any attention to the rest.

Amy turned and whispered to Elani, “You don’t think much of them?”

“Pah!” Elani said. “Soldiers such as these perished in their thousands in the wars against Shadow. The others, Captain Cahn and his men, at least showed small signs of wit; this lot, ha!”

“You haven’t had a chance to get to know them,” Amy protested.

Elani made a noise of disgust. “I need not,” she said.

Amy remarked, “Raven seemed eager to have them along.”

Elani muttered, “My lord Raven is a wise man at times, but he can be a fool, as well. Look you now, and see what he thinks of these.”

Amy looked at Raven, who was making no attempt to hide his disdain for Carson and company.

Well, that was fine. It might serve as a distraction.

“Elani,” she said, “now that we’re here, is your magic working again?”

The wizard turned to look at her. She waved a hand, and something flickered briefly in the air, and then vanished.

“Aye,” she said. “The craft’s with me again.”

Amy smiled. “Then we have a favor to ask-Pel and Susan and I.”

Elani quirked one side of her mouth upward in a crooked smile of her own. “It seems to me that I might guess whereof you speak,” she said. “In truth, I’d wondered when you might speak of it.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

The wizard shook her head. “In time, aye,” she said, “for we’d have none with us who’d not be there freely, and indeed, what would we with such as your man Deranian? And yourself, a dealer in knickknacks and drapery, what have you to do with deeds of high courage and state? So aye, I’ll see you home-in time, in good time. But this is no place suitable, nor have we time enow, and ’twould be impolitic to attempt this ere I have spoken to Raven.”

Amy pursed her lips and reluctantly nodded. “I can see that,” she said.

“And it might have risks, as well,” Elani added. “There’s reason to believe that the opening of the gates between worlds is what drew Shadow’s eye before, when erst you came to our land. An that be so…well, you’ll be safe in your own realm, but those of us who remain behind…” She shook her head.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Amy admitted.

“I had,” Elani replied. “But naught of it, i’truth, for I’ll have the risk, an you’re quick. We’d the gate to Earth a time or two ere ever Shadow caught us at it, and all I ask is that we have at the ready a way to make good our flight when the portal again closes. For that, ’twould seem wise to know better where we stand.”

Amy hesitated. “You mean you want to wait until we know where we are?”

“Certes, you have it.”

Amy would greatly have preferred it if Elani had opened the portal immediately, but that evidently wasn’t going to happen. She frowned, but in the heavy gravity and thick air, with her stomach uneasy, she found that she didn’t have the energy to argue.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

* * * *

Pel watched with interest as the black-garbed nobleman and the purple-uniformed colonel stood almost nose-to-nose, glaring at each other.

“Colonel,” Raven said patiently, “imprimis, you know naught of this land. Would not it be wise, then, to heed the counsel of those who do? Secundus, is’t not but common sense to dissemble, when in the enemy’s lands?”

Carson glowered at Raven.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “I want my men in uniform. We aren’t a bunch of spies.”

“Are we not?” Raven demanded sarcastically. “What are we, then?”

“We are a fighting squad sent to destroy this Shadow of yours, Mr. Raven, or whatever your name is.”

“And you think, then, that such a motley party as this can best a power that has laid waste twice a dozen kingdoms, and brought all this world ’neath its sway?”

“I think, sir, that one properly-disciplined squad of Imperial soldiers can do a better job of damn near anything than any bunch of foreign barbarians!”

Raven threw up his hands in anger and disgust. He turned away, and spotted Prossie Thorpe.

“Mistress Thorpe,” he called, “come hither, lend me your counsel!”

Several sets of eyes swiveled toward the telepath, who had been leaning against an immense oak and picking idly at the bark.

Prossie started and looked up, dropping flakes of bark. “Me?” she asked.

“Aye,” Raven said, beckoning. “You.”

Prossie had not expected anyone to notice her presence; she had no idea that she would be dragged into an argument between Raven and Colonel Carson, and had hardly even been listening. She sometimes had trouble paying attention to people whose minds were closed to her, and telepathy did not work in this universe-in what Amy called “Faerie.” Prossie had picked the name up in passing, and rather liked it.

She still found it somewhat odd, being so out of touch with the thoughts of those around her. In fact, after the crowding at Base One, and the constant buzzing of thoughts on all sides, it was rather restful.

And it wasn’t the same horrible cut-off loneliness she had felt in her cell on Earth, because here she was in constant contact with her cousin Carrie. That was the communications line between this party and the people back at Base One; it was also a natural and comfortable link between the two women. The two of them could chatter away while Prossie took in the physical sensations of this strange new world.

She had been in Shadow’s world once before, but weeks ago, and in a different place. The trees here were taller, older, more imposing, the atmosphere more restful-if warmer, perhaps uncomfortably so.

It was rather intriguing to look at things, to touch things, to smell them, without having any preconceptions impinging from other minds about what the things should look like, should feel like. Prossie had really been too concerned with other, more urgent matters to take an interest in that before.

So instead of listening to the others she was picking at the bark of a gigantic oak when Raven called to her, picking at it and enjoying the feel of it.

She started and looked back at the others.

“Thorpe,” Carson said, “get over here.”

Reluctantly, Prossie left the oak and obeyed. Her stride was brisk and military; her expression was not.

“Mistress Thorpe,” Raven said, “you can look into the minds of others, is’t not so?”

“Well, ordinarily, I can,” Prossie admitted hesitantly, “but not here, or on Earth. Only in normal…I mean, Imperial space.”

“Then you cannot see what I am thinking, nor what Colonel Carson believes?”

“No, sir.”

“Is that right?” Carson demanded angrily.

“Yes, sir,” Prossie said.

“Well, then, what the hell did they send you for,” Carson shouted, “if you can’t read minds here?”

“I can maintain telepathic contact with my cousin Carrie, sir-Registered Master Telepath Carolyn Hall, that is, back at Base One,” Prossie explained. “I can still handle communications with General Hart and the High Command.” She did not add that he had been told all this previously; she knew perfectly well that Colonel Carson had ignored most of his briefing, assuming, as he always did, that he knew better than all the pantywaist experts and fat-bottomed generals.

Carson glared at her, and Raven took the opportunity to ask, “But ere we left Base One, you could see into the minds about you?”

“Yes, sir,” Prossie admitted warily. Although it was an interesting novelty, she was never entirely comfortable when her telepathic ability was blocked off, and any sort of talking to other people without it was unpleasant. This questioning, about matters she preferred not to discuss, was much worse than ordinary conversation. She had no way of knowing whether Raven suspected that she had illicitly eavesdropped on him earlier. He hadn’t suspected anything at the time, but the idea could easily have come to him after the ship passed through the warp.

“And your cousin Carolyn Hall,” Raven continued, “she can still see into the minds of others about her?”

“Yes, sir,” Prossie admitted, “but there are strict rules to protect privacy.”

Carson rumbled, muttering something that might have been a remark about it being a damn good thing. One good thing about having her head blocked off, Prossie thought, was that she could ignore the distrust and hatred everyone felt toward telepaths.

Raven nodded. “Assuredly,” he said. “But then, perhaps you could answer a question of mine, as it regards the thoughts of General Hart and the others above you.”

Prossie hesitated. “Maybe,” she said.

“Perhaps you can tell me, Mistress Thorpe,” Raven said, “why these men should have chosen to saddle me with a blockhead such as Colonel Carson.”

Prossie’s mouth opened, and then closed again. Someone snickered.

Had the time come to admit what she had done, and tell them all the truth?

“I didn’t snoop…” Prossie began uncertainly. Then she stopped. Her expression wavered for a moment; Raven, who had started to turn away from her to argue further with Carson, saw the colonel’s expression and turned back.

She had been nervous as Raven and Carson questioned her, but Carrie, who was listening in, had thought the whole affair was thoroughly amusing. Prossie could sense her mental giggling. Carrie could afford to giggle; she was safe at home, not out here in an alien forest.

But then Raven asked why he had been saddled with Colonel Carson, and Carrie, at first amused by the question, had read what Prossie knew.

And suddenly she wasn’t giggling, mentally or otherwise. Her amusement had vanished. She sent a feeler out to General Hart, and then to others…

By now everyone, from all three universes, was staring at the telepath, though several of them were not sure why. Pel, watching, felt a growing tension; for his own part, he had a sense of impending doom.

But then, he had felt a sense of impending doom for much of the time since Nancy’s death.

Prossie’s face went oddly blank as Carrie, panicking, pulled her briefly into a full linkage; then her expression returned more or less to normal.

“What troubles you, lady?” Raven asked.

Prossie hesitated, trying to think over what she had read herself, and what Carrie had relayed. Trying to decide what to say, when she couldn’t read her listeners’ reactions, was very difficult.

“It’s a mistake,” she said at last. “General Hart…there’s been a lot of factional fighting about Shadow…there were several plans, and they got confused, what with Major Copley being ill. It should have been Captain Haggerty in command, not Colonel Carson…”

It was actually worse than that, but Prossie had had a lifetime of not telling everything she knew. She didn’t relay what Carrie had just told her.

General Hart’s choice of personnel, and entire attitude toward the mission, had been subtly affected by undeservingly trusted subordinates. Prossie had known that Hart had intended to send an officer he wanted to get rid of, but it had actually gone beyond that.

Colonel Carson had been selected by agents of Shadow as absolutely the worst possible officer for the job.

“Bull!” Carson shouted.

For a moment, Prossie thought Carson was replying to her unspoken thought, but then she realized he was simply denying that his appointment was a mistake.

Prossie felt lost without her mind reading. She knew what everyone wanted; the Earthpeople wanted Elani to send them home, Elani wanted to send them. Raven wanted to take command of the rest and take them to join the underground. Elani and Valadrakul and Stoddard trusted Raven and would support him in whatever he had planned against Shadow.

Most of the fifteen troopers just wanted to finish whatever the job was and go home; they had no idea of what they had gotten into.

And Carson wanted to prove that he was a great leader and a true man among men, but since he was not, in fact, either one, he had no idea at all how to accomplish that.

She knew what they all had wanted, up to the moment they hit the space-warp-but what they intended to do about it, she had no idea. Why hadn’t the Earthpeople taken Elani aside? Amy had been talking to her, but nothing had come of it, so far as Prossie could see.

Why wasn’t Raven playing along with Carson, as he had with Hart? Didn’t he see that the man was an arrogant fool who could be coaxed into doing anything, so long as he thought it was his own idea? If Raven didn’t see it, what about Valadrakul or Elani?

Prossie wished she could take Raven aside for a few moments, or Elani, or almost any of them, but instead here she was, trapped between Raven and Carson in the most public manner possible. She regretted, now, that she had taken time to look around and admire the trees.

“It’s bull, I said,” Carson repeated, and Prossie realized that everyone was looking at her. She stared back at Carson. Even without her telepathy, Prossie could almost feel the hate Carson felt for her.

“Maybe I misunderstood something,” she said.

“Nay, lady,” Raven protested, “’twould explain much, if this man was sent in error. ’Tis plain he’s no master of subtlety, and ill-fitted for our task here. What, then, shall I, as a rightful lord, take the charge? What say you all?”

“I say it’s bloody treason, you barbaric fop!” Carson bellowed. He reached for his sidearm.

Raven stepped back and reached for his sword-hilt-but he had no sword. The weapon was lost long since, somewhere back in the Galactic Empire. “Valadrakul!” he called.

Carson’s blaster was out and pointed, and Prossie stared at it in horror.

Didn’t they know it wouldn’t work here?

Carson pulled the trigger as Valadrakul raised his hands; the wizard’s fingers twisted strangely as he spoke a word.

For a moment, Prossie thought the blaster had worked after all, as something flashed, pale and quick as heat lightning, between Carson and Valadrakul. Then she realized that the weapon was pointed at Raven, that the shimmering flare had traveled from the wizard’s upraised hands to Carson’s body.

For an instant the colonel stood motionless, an expression of astonishment spreading slowly across his features; then it turned to a rictus of pain, and he crumpled to the ground, still holding tight to the useless blaster.

The sound of his fall into the dead leaves seemed impossibly loud and prolonged. Accustomed to a constant telepathic echo behind every voice, the eternal hum of other minds drowning out the ordinary noises of the inanimate universe, Prossie rarely heard mere sound so clearly, but here, in this telepathically dead environment, there were no distractions. She thought she could almost hear each individual leaf crumbling, each separate impact as first one knee, then the other, then a hand and the blaster and the other hand struck, his belly and finally his face landing in the rustling detritus.

And when the sound of the impact had faded, she heard a strange arrhythmic chorus of faint clickings. At first she took it for leaves settling, but then she realized it came from the wrong direction.

She turned, and saw a dozen blasters, drawn and aimed, triggers clicking uselessly against copper contacts. Carson’s men were avenging their fallen commander-or trying to.

“Men of the Empire!” Raven called, his hands upraised in an orator’s gesture. “Yon usurping fool is dead; drop your arms, an you’d not taste the same!”

“The hell you say,” someone called.

“Raven,” a quiet voice said-a woman’s voice, speaking from the side, not from the line of men by the ship.

Startled, Raven turned, and found Susan Nguyen standing straight, legs braced, her pistol held out before her, gripped firmly in both hands. Her black handbag, whence the revolver had come, lay open at her feet.

The barrel of the little gun was pointed directly at Valadrakul’s head, from a distance of perhaps four feet away. The wizard was utterly motionless, his hands hanging stiffly at his sides.

“This gun works here,” Susan said, speaking calmly but emphatically. “You’ve seen it.”

“Aye, mistress, I do so recall,” Raven replied warily.

“You are not going to hurt anyone else. Neither is Valadrakul. If anyone else is harmed, your wizard dies. Clear enough?”

Raven flicked his gaze to Elani; Prossie’s own eyes turned to follow, and she found that Pel and Amy stood one on each side of the female wizard, each gently restraining one of Elani’s arms.

“Now,” Susan said, “we are all going to sit down quietly, and talk this out, and settle what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it without any sort of violence, because the first person to use violence is going to get a bullet in his gut. Is that clear?”

“Aye, mistress,” Raven said, “’tis plain as the day. And it pleases me well-I’d no wish for strife. Yon fool drew ’gainst me, and I’ve no blade; am I to perish undefended by the hands of such as he?”

“You know perfectly well that blasters don’t work here.”

“Ah, but mistress,” Raven protested, “in the heat of the moment I misremembered.”

Susan did not reply to that.

She didn’t lower the gun, either.

For a moment, no one spoke; then Ted Deranian burst out giggling.

“What an anti-climax!” he shouted. “No gunfight, no wizard war! My subconscious is wimping out on me.”

“Shut up, Ted,” Pel said.

Ted ignored him, and turned to Susan.

“Lady, if you’re a real person and I didn’t just dream you up,” he said, “I sure hope you don’t try this sort of thing in the courtroom!”