by William King
“What were they like?”
“They were like you or me, at least to begin with.” He considered that. Scripture said they were incarnate devils, the very personification of evil. Asea’s manner said something quite different.
“What changed them?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. We walked along the same road for a very long way, and then they chose a different fork in the path.”
“Did they really make a pact with the Shadow, and sell their souls to it for power?”
“There are times when I am not even sure there is a Shadow, Rik. Not in the sense that you have been taught.”
“The priests always used to tell us that was one of the snares the Shadow used to trap our souls.”
“And maybe they are right. Who can tell? I am not one of the Prophets. God does not talk to me. She never did.” He could see that her gaze was turning inward, as it often did, as she retreated from the prospect of answering his questions. He wanted answers desperately, and he pushed on.
“So you don’t think they made a pact with the Shadow?”
“Al’Terra was not the way the priests taught you it was, Rik. This I know. I was there. For reasons of politics, the Temple tells humans things that make them easier to control. But whatever else they were, the Princes of Shadow were real, and they were wicked, and I do not think it really matters whether they made a pact with the Shadow of God or not. The end result was the same.”
“And yet you say you were once like them, or they were once like you -- what changed them?”
She looked at him long and hard. He said, “You told me never to apologise for asking questions. I am merely taking you at your word.”
“There are questions and there are questions, Rik, and there are ways of putting those questions that make them easier or harder to answer. There are ways of making questions weapons as well.”
“I did not mean them so.”
“I know that, but the effect may be the same whether you mean them or not. There are times when I ask myself what the difference was between myself and the Princes of Shadow, and there are times when I do not like the answer.”
“You are not like them. You are not some Lord of Darkness.”
“And you think that is what they are?”
“That is what I have always been told. If you know differently, I will listen.”
“Rik, you will get me burned for heresy yet. I could almost believe Inquisitor Joran put you up to this.” She said it as a joke but for a moment he could see her taking the idea seriously. She waited as if she expected him to say something. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference so he remained silent.
“The Princes of Shadow were like your father, Rik. They were eaters of souls. They devoured their fellow Terrarchs because they needed the power to work magic, and the energy that made magic possible was going away.”
She had alluded to this before but had never seemed to willing to go into details. “So the magic was fading before ever you came to Gaeia.”
She nodded. “In truth I hoped when we came through the Eye of the Sun that we might find the magic once again, a new world with all its magical potential untapped, but it was not so. There was less magic here than on Al’Terra.”
“Why did the magic go away?”
“No one really knows, Rik. My theory is that we simply used it up. Imagine a great forest. Woodcutters come and cut down the trees, to build their houses, to make their fires. It takes trees decades to grow, but more and more people come and build more and more houses. Eventually the forest is gone. Perhaps it was that way, or perhaps it was like a well that runs dry. In any case the magic went away. The Princes of Shadow found another way of acquiring power. They mastered techniques for draining it from living things.”
“Malkior said he wanted to use human beings as cattle. Is that what he meant?”
“Humans possess less magical energy than Terrarchs so you would need far more of them, but it is a similar plan. Unsurprising really since Malkior was a follower of Shadow.”
“The Princes of Shadow killed a lot of your people then.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t someone stop them?”
“Because at first no one knew, and then they were too powerful. They could still work the great magics when most of us could not. And there were those who hungered for power and followed them because of it.”
“You think it could happen here?”
“I think it has happened here, and that it is still happening here. What alarms me is the thought that the Terrarchs might come to look on humans as cattle.”
“A lot of them already do.”
“There is a difference between looking on something as property and something as food or wood or some other source of power.”
“You think that really might happen?” Rik was prepared to believe many bad things about the Terrarchs but he found it hard to imagine them keeping people in herds.
Asea seemed to follow his thoughts. “It does not take too many people to think that way to have the Princes of Shadow come again, Rik. The ones who do will acquire power that in this world could only be described as god-like.”
The words burned in Rik’s mind, and he hoped their effect was not visible. The Quan had made him privy to such techniques. If he could find a way to tap into them the way Asea claimed then he too could possess such powers. He was not sure he wanted power acquired that way but the temptation was there.
“Were you ever tempted to walk that road?”
“The problem with walking that road is that it drives you mad eventually. You can’t absorb another sentient being’s memories without being affected by them. Your own experiences must have shown you that.”
She was right. He thought of the voices and tried to imagine thousands of them, all crying away in his mind at once. That was not a pleasant prospect.
“Surely there must be techniques for controlling the side-effects.”
“None that I have ever heard of.”
“Why did the Princes of Shadow continue then, if they knew the results?”
“I am guessing that they thought as you did, and did not realise what was happening until it was too late. And Rik, it is worth remembering that the Princes of Shadow were Terrarchs, with hundreds of years of experience, and among the best trained sorcerers of their world.”
The warning in her voice was unmistakable. She obviously could see the way his thoughts were running. “Were you ever tempted?”
“Not once I saw what would happen.”
“Did you look for other ways of casting magic?”
“Of course, but then war was upon us and the Princes of Shadow conquered the world.”
“How did they do that? If someone wanted to devour my soul I would fight against them. I cannot imagine that the majority of Terrarchs were any different.”
“As I am sure you must have realised, things rarely appear that clear cut. The Princes lied about the source of their power, they confused the issue with political arguments. They bound servants with spells. As they gained power, their secret police terrified most folk. If only one in a hundred people vanishes then you can convince yourself that it won’t be you, and that maybe they deserved it anyway. You can build systems where people will co-operate with those who oppress them, Rik. You have seen it here on Gaeia.”
Rik could see the sense in what she was saying. He thought about the world in which he lived. He had been a soldier of the Queen. He had helped put down the Clockmaker’s rebellion. This was a world where humans fought against humans at the behest of Terrarchs. When Talorea clashed with the Dark Empire most of the dying would be done by human beings.
“And yet you want us to fight against the Sardeans?”
Her smile was sour. “I want a better world. But of course that is what a Prince of Shadow would say as well.”
“Why would people follow those who called themselves the Princes of Shadow?” He saw the stupidity of
the question even as he said it, and answered it for himself. “They did not call themselves that, did they?”
“They called themselves many things; the Illuminated, the Enlightened Ones, The Brotherhood of Peace. It was their enemies who called them the Princes of Shadow. It’s what they called us.”
“The same way we call Sardea the Dark Empire.”
“Indeed. In all of history I cannot think of any nation that ever called itself the Dark Empire.”
“The Sardeans probably call us that.”
“They call us the Scarlet Empire, the Bloody Handed Empire and a lot worse.”
“Whichever side wins will get to name the other.”
“It was ever so, Rik. I have no doubt that now on Al’Terra, they refer to Gaeia as the world of Shadows.”
He thought about what the Terrarchs had done since they came here, and of what Malkior and perhaps others like him still planned to do. “Maybe they are right.”
Chapter Ten
Looking down from the hills above Askander, Tamara felt she was finally home. The city lay nestled around the Bay of Claws, a giant monument to the glory of her people. The chill northern sunlight filtered down through thin clouds. It was a light unlike any other she knew, estuarine, over-brilliant, as if the sky had taken on something of the glitter and sheen of the sea. Gulls squawked, and the air had the familiar wet, salt tang.
From up here she could see the mighty dragonspires of the Temples, the ancient walls the city had long outgrown and the statues of former Emperors and Empresses that dominated the squares set at each compass point of the central ring. A dozen more of them stood on huge island plinths in the bay, gazing out to sea.
Over everything loomed the Imperial Palace, a combination of fortress and royal mansion that dominated the city by its sheer size, massive as the cliff in which it had its roots, its walls every bit as strong as the rock on which they rested. It seemed an extension of the cliff, part of some great demonic tusk of stone emerging from the soil of the city. Beneath it was an endless labyrinth of dungeons in which terrible things happened to the enemies of the Empress.
As in all the lands she had ridden through so swiftly, there were signs of gathering war. In the bay a massive fleet was anchored, a mixture of galleons and trading ships pressed into service. The purple flag of Sardea fluttered proudly on every vessel. She was surprised that the fleet had not sailed yet. It must be costing a fortune to keep it there.
The rumours were true then. The Quan Sea Devils had closed the northern waters to all Terrarch vessels, and not even Arachne’s proud fleet would risk the wrath of those alien monsters. Kraken could smash even the mightiest ships in their tentacles, and the Quan possessed alien sorcery that was matchless on the ocean. So much for landing troops by sea on the coasts of Kharadrea.
She studied the city, drinking in its appearance. It was a place that represented all that was proudest and most ancient in the traditions of her people. Cynical as she knew herself to be, it never stopped surprising her that some small part of her responded to that. She was part of a generation who prided themselves on seeing through the follies and hypocrisies of their elders, and yet as she grew older she discovered that she had more in common with them than she liked to think. Perhaps it was her father’s influence.
Her steed panted, grateful for the rest. It was the last and strongest of the relay of post horses she had used since the border. She had driven it unmercifully, using magic when necessary to keep it moving, and she had made good time. The journey had cost her dearly in energy, but its hardships had distracted her from her grief and worries.
The sight of the city below her made it all worthwhile. She loved the place with its broad avenues and ancient alleys, its cafes and salons and palaces, its starving authors and civil servants and its rich nobles who packed it in season from every corner of the far flung Empire. She had grown up here, attending balls and Court functions, taken her first lovers, killed her first enemy, learned sorcery and stealth. She felt the same way about Askander as the First felt about the home world. If she truly had any place in this world, it was here.
With a word, she urged her mount down the long winding road, through the farmlands and estates, towards her father’s ancient townhouse.
Tamara rode through the outskirts of town. The South Road came in through the least fashionable area, where the poorer Terrarch families had their small mansions and the shops of the less expensive tradesmen catering to them were to be found. There were some factories and manufacturing concerns where coaches and saddles and guns and dresses were made. Corrals for livestock driven in from the country stank up some squares. Tanneries belched chemicals into the nearby waters as they turned hides into leather.
There wasn’t the huge slum population she so often encountered in the cities of the West. In the Empire, no humans had been driven off the land, and come to town in search of work. Most Sardean Terrarchs still measured their wealth by the number of thralls they owned.
Askander was considered backwards by the progressives of the West, but that was true only in some areas. In the study of sorcery and the occult mysteries, the Empire still led the world, and there were more scholarly bookshops, and monasteries here than in the whole of Talorea.
There was also a profusion of Temples and shrines to saints, and even at this time of the day, they were surrounded by human supplicants. Within each was an altar and hundreds of sacred ikons and above each altar was a picture of the Empress, revered by them as Madonna and goddess, the living embodiment of the greatness of Sardea.
It was an irony that Tamara’s father had always enjoyed pointing out. In Sardea, where humans were most oppressed, they loved and worshipped their ruler all the more. Many of the older generation claimed that it showed humans loved the lash, and lost respect for those who would not use it. She had heard the arguments trotted out again and again, spoken of with the certainty of religious truth but she had come to doubt them.
Something was happening in the West. The world was changing as the humans woke to the strength of their numbers. The old order would be swept away if it did not adjust to that new reality. Or unless it did something dark and deadly.
As she rode on the size of the buildings increased. Statues to famous Terrarchs stood proudly at every junction and over every fountain. Many clasped ever burning lights in their hands or had them mounted on their crowns or the blades of their swords. By daylight they were merely dull gems but by night they would emit their soft sorcerous glow.
She reached the Ring; its streets lined on the outer side by the palaces of the mighty, on the inner side by the offices of the great government departments such as the House of Gold and the Palace of War. Each of those buildings was sub-divided as a beehive into hundreds of offices where thousands of drones moved from small cells to administer the wishes of their masters who sat like queen bees in their central cells.
The main industry of Askander was government, and the maintenance of the small army of functionaries who oversaw the workings of the great bureaucratic machine. Power was the material that was dealt with here, cut and sewn by those who held it and dispensed to their representatives so that they might go and work the Empress’s will in the wider world. Every Terrarch family had their palaces here for that reason. They could not afford to be too far from the font from which all other benefits flowed.
She was getting stared at now. She had changed out of her earlier disguise but she still looked grubby from travel, dressed in male clothes, and armed. On the roads she had been one more soldier swept along by the winds of war. Here the Terrarchs were more elegant, finely dressed and spectacularly well-groomed. As she sometimes did, she felt suddenly rootless again, out of place among these glittering people, unsure of herself. It was a feeling that had swept over her since her father had begun her true education, and her training as a Shadowblood. She was apart from these people, separated from them by a terrible and holy secret, for which she could be killed if it were ever uncover
ed.
One or two of the high Terrarchs looked like they might like to hail her or challenge her, but that would not be polite, and it was always possible she was someone of very high status returning on some mission of great importance, so they did what was normal and ignored her.
She entered the Street of Saint Selena and was at once struck by the wealth and beauty of the mansions that fronted it, its proximity to the towering mass of the Imperial Palace that dwarfed them all. She saw the number of small private temples interspersed among the buildings, and the swarms of liveried humans going about their master’s business. She turned right and came to the gates of her father’s house, now her own, she supposed, and was gratified when the humans on guard duty recognised her and saluted her at once.
They were both huge men, flat-featured, cold eyed, with cropped blond hair and a manner that was a mix of politeness and icy menace to anyone other than Terrarchs. Her, they looked genuinely glad to see.
Other servants, and stablehands, came to greet her and soon she was at the centre of a quiet storm of activity, as they welcomed her and made her comfortable. Her horse was taken and stabled. Her rooms were prepared. Fresh clothes and a warm bath at just the right temperature were made ready. As she always did at this stage of her return, she realised how much she had taken these things for granted, how natural it seemed to be in a world where she was the centre of so much flattering attention. She was grateful for it now, but she knew that would pass, and soon it would seem like things had always been that way, until she had to leave the cocoon and make her way in the cold world again.
After she was refreshed she wandered the house. It felt huge and empty, and the fact that her father would never come back to it made it seem all the more so. She paused in the library and looked at his favourite chair where he was wont to sit with his collection of histories and grimoires and books of Al’Terran lore.
