Sword flashing, then.
Pel tried to imagine Wilkins with a sword; the image wouldn’t come. Instead, he saw him with a switchblade. It seemed more his style.
Ted had stared up at the corpses with everyone else, but had said nothing; now he shrugged and strolled forward, toward the gate, boots crunching on the gravelly road. The sound drew everyone’s attention.
Pel didn’t mind staring at Ted; he was happy to be distracted from the corpses.
For a moment, no one spoke, as Ted stepped through the open arch onto the stone floor beyond. The crunch of gravel turned to scuffing as he stepped into shadow.
“Our mad friend has the right of it,” Raven muttered. “We’ll learn nothing more out here; ’tis within that our fate awaits.”
“Maybe yours,” Sawyer said, stepping back, “but I’ve had it. I’m not going in there. I’m not the one it wants, any more than Wilkins was.”
“How do you know?” Amy asked.
“Because I’m just another soldier,” Sawyer said. “I’m nobody special.” He pointed to Valadrakul and said, “He’s a wizard,” then indicated Raven and continued, “and he’s some kind of prince or something. Thorpe’s a telepath, you’re pregnant—you’re all special somehow. Your crazy friend has visions, maybe that’s important. Mr. Brown—well, I don’t know, because I don’t know anything about him or the world he came from. That other woman hardly ever says anything, I’m not even sure of her name, she could be anything. But Singer and me, we’re just a couple of packhumpers and shipjumpers. It let Wilkins get away—why shouldn’t it let me go, too?”
“It didn’t let Dibbs go,” Pel pointed out. “Or Marks.”
“It killed Marks so the rest of you wouldn’t turn back,” Sawyer said. “And maybe the lieutenant put up a fight or something. Look up there, though—there are six of them, out of what, eleven men we left back at the ship? Where are the others? Shadow let them go, I tell you, because they weren’t important!”
“You’re guessing,” Pel said.
“We’re all guessing,” Sawyer retorted, “all of us, all the time! We don’t any of us have the first idea what the hell is going on here. We don’t know what Shadow is, or what it wants, or anything, all we can do is guess—and I’m guessing that it doesn’t want me, and I’m staying out here.”
Pel glanced at the others.
“Let him stay, if he would,” Raven said.
“What difference does it make?” Singer asked. “If Shadow wants him inside, it can get him inside.” He pointed at the giant-slug things.
Pel looked, back at the monster-speckled highway, then up at the dangling soldiers, then into the gloom beyond the gate. The sun was down, the light dying, but the darkness within the fortress was still far deeper than that without; there were no lights anywhere to be seen.
This was not how Pel had pictured it. Oh, the fortress was suitable enough, the marsh reasonably appropriate if a bit on the drab side, and the dead bodies were a fittingly macabre touch, but the gathering darkness, unbroken by torchlight, didn’t seem quite right—it wasn’t the shadowy, sinister darkness of dungeons or of midnight, but the soft dimness of twilight, the sort that doesn’t scare anyone but just gradually convinces everyone to go home for dinner.
Pel wished he could just go home for dinner, and find Nancy and Rachel waiting there for him. He was trying to get home—but of course, Nancy and Rachel wouldn’t be there.
And the gentle darkness didn’t seem right for an assault on the villain’s headquarters. The fact that poor mad Ted had gone on ahead, was already almost out of sight in the gloom, didn’t seem right. That they were virtually unarmed, no swords, no armor, no secret magic, didn’t seem right. That they were walking openly into the front gate, aware that Shadow expected them, didn’t seem right—shouldn’t they be sneaking in by some secret passage, scaling a back wall, crawling in through the sewers? They had no plan, no organization…
And no choice. One of the slug-things was crawling up onto the highway less than a yard behind Sawyer’s feet.
“Let’s go in, then,” Pel said. “And maybe Tom Sawyer’ll change his mind when those Shadow things start crowding him.” He pointed.
Sawyer whirled and saw the creature behind him. It opened its maw and showed him its teeth, but Sawyer did not retreat.
“I’m not going,” he said, still facing the slug. “The rest of you, go on if you’re going, and when you’re in there, maybe this thing will leave me alone.”
“What will you eat?” Susan asked abruptly, startling everyone. “We’ve had nothing since breakfast, and it’s a long way back to the last village.”
“Don’t remind me!” Amy said.
Pel sympathized; he was hungry, too. He thought he must have lost twenty pounds since he first stepped through his basement wall; he never seemed to get enough food, or any good food, anywhere in Faerie, nor even in the Galactic Empire before it.
“I’ll manage,” Sawyer said, still not looking at the others. “It’s not that far.”
The thought occurred to Pel that Sawyer meant to die, out here—that he preferred being eaten by those slug things to facing Shadow itself.
Or maybe not. Pel didn’t know, and decided he didn’t want to ask.
“What the hell,” he said, turning back to the gate, “maybe at least Shadow will give us a last meal.”
He marched forward, into the darkness of the gate.
Chapter Nineteen
Amy had expected something to happen when they were all inside the fortress—the gates to slam shut, or the Shadow-things to surge up and attack poor Sawyer, or lights to spring up, or something—but nothing did. She shuffled on into the blackness, hands out before her to fend off stray furniture, feet sliding along the stone flooring.
“Ted?” she called. “Are you there?”
“Shut up!” Ted answered furiously. “I think I’m waking up! I don’t see anything any more!”
“That’s because it’s dark in here, you idiot!” Pel snapped.
Amy giggled nervously, and glanced back at the huge gateway. It was still wide open; she could only vaguely make out the gates themselves, grayish shapes to either side. Sawyer was clearly outlined against the dimming sky; he was standing there, facing away from her, in a sort of crouch, as if expecting an attack from the stovepipe things.
She couldn’t see anything attacking, though.
“Now what?” she said.
“Damned if I know,” Pel said.
“’Tis an excellent question,” Raven’s voice answered; Amy could see nothing of him in the darkness. She could see Sawyer, and Pel was a shadowy figure to her left, but the others were invisible now.
She could hear footsteps, but couldn’t identify them all—were they all here? Was anyone else here, lurking in the darkness?
She wondered what sort of room they were in; it seemed to be large, judging by the sounds, and since no one had reported bumping into any walls or other impediments. The air was cooler than outside, and seemed a little drier, a little less of a dead weight pressing down on her.
Then she heard rustling—not clothing, but a different, drier sound. Unbidden and unwanted, the thought of rats immediately leapt to mind.
They had seen a few rats along the long walk, but never very close, and never when they were inside, in the dark, in a strange and forbidding place.
“What’s that?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.
Then a light sprang up suddenly, off to her right; Amy started.
“It’s me,” Susan said, holding up a lit match and a twist of paper. She lit the paper, shook out the match, and held up her impromptu torch. “I thought we could use some light.”
“You had matches?” Amy said, astonished. “And you never told anyone?”
“I only had about three left,” Susan replied. “They were in my purse. Valadrakul seemed to do just fine lighting fires, so I figured I’d save them until we really needed them.”
Two or thr
ee voices spoke up at once; one of them was Amy, asking, “And you think we need them now?”
“My thanks, mistress,” Valadrakul said. “I’d no stomach to try my magic here in Shadow’s own keep.”
Amy didn’t bother arguing with Susan about it, though it still didn’t seem fair, somehow, that she had had matches and not told anyone. Instead Amy peered around in the darkness, trying to see where they were. The paper was burning quickly, and not casting much useful light; Amy tried to take in as much as she could before it burned away.
They were in a huge chamber of bare stone, fifty or sixty feet wide and at least twice as long, the ceiling invisible in the darkness above—and they weren’t alone. A ledge or balcony ran along either side of the immense room, about ten feet up, and on those two ledges were crouched dozens of vague black shapes, shapes with heads and legs and claws, with eyes and gleaming teeth.
Monsters.
“Are they statues?” Singer asked. The tone of his voice made it clear that he didn’t think so.
“They’re moving,” Pel answered.
“I’m not sure that proves anything here,” Prossie said.
“They aren’t attacking,” Singer said, a bit more hopefully.
Then the flame reached Susan’s fingers, and she dropped her paper torch to the floor; it flared as it fell, then went out on impact.
“’Tis my guess,” Valadrakul said in the renewed darkness, “that Shadow retains these creatures ready here, to be sent hither and yon as the whim strikes it. Were we to be slaughtered, surely ’twould have begun.”
Amy turned, looking for anything that might reassure her, but the only things she could see were the last few sparks dying by Susan’s feet, and the dim gray arch of the entrance. The light outside had died away completely, full night had fallen—and Sawyer seemed to have vanished; she couldn’t see anything of him.
“Now what?” Pel asked.
“We wait,” Raven said.
“What, until morning?” Amy demanded. “No way. I couldn’t stand it. Susan, light another ma…hey!” A thought struck her. “Matches work here? Aren’t they technology?”
“Of a sort,” Pel agreed. “Susan’s gun works, too, remember? But my watch didn’t. Some things do, some things don’t.”
“Blasters don’t,” Singer said bitterly. “If they did, we wouldn’t have any problems.”
“Anti-gravity doesn’t, either,” Prossie added. “Nor telepathy.” When Singer started to object, she corrected herself. “At least, not properly; I can only communicate with telepaths back in the Empire.”
Amy stared at the doorway, wondering what had become of Sawyer. The others all seemed to be here; she had heard Raven and Valadrakul and Pel and Susan and Singer and Prossie…
But Ted hadn’t said anything since he told her to shut up, and she hadn’t seen him when Susan burned her bit of paper.
“Ted?” she called.
No one answered.
“Ted?!” she screamed.
Again, no one answered; the others all fell silent, listening.
Amy could hear rustlings and scratchings from the creatures on the ledges, could hear the breathing of some of her companions, could hear a faint, distant splashing from somewhere out in the marsh—and somewhere, far off toward the interior of the fortress, she heard footsteps, boot leather on stone.
“He’s gone on ahead,” she said. “Into the darkness.”
“Into Shadow,” Raven replied.
* * * *
Pel wasn’t sure why Amy was so certain that Ted had gone on ahead, but it seemed reasonable enough. Ted believed this wasn’t real—or at least, he said he believed it wasn’t real, and acted as if he believed that—which meant that nothing could hurt him. He therefore wasn’t afraid of anything, and he wanted to get it all over with. Why wouldn’t he have gone on ahead?
Pel had been too concerned with his own worries—Nancy and Rachel and his own attempts to get home—to worry much about Ted, but he had decided back at Base One that Ted’s disbelief was a defense mechanism, a way to keep from breaking down completely. Convincing himself that it wasn’t real was a way to avoid going into a state of perpetual panic; Ted had always wanted to be in control of his surroundings, and didn’t deal well with surroundings that didn’t cooperate.
Whether the disbelief was genuine, or just a front Ted put up, Pel wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter, because Ted was tough and stubborn enough to act as if he disbelieved no matter what. Pel had proved that to his own satisfaction weeks ago.
Maybe, Pel thought, Ted had decided that whether it was real or not, it was all a story, and he was the hero. Pel could understand that; he’d thought the same way sometimes. If Ted thought of himself as the hero, then he was destined to win out, no matter what.
To Pel, though, Ted looked more like one of those pitiful innocents in a Hollywood movie who gets killed to show the audience just how rotten and nasty the villain is, to show that this is not a game, that there will be blood and death and violence.
“Ted!” he shouted. “Wait!”
“Shut up!” Singer snapped. “Listen, you two, all of you, stop yelling!”
“But…” Amy began.
“We’re standing in this thing’s headquarters, unarmed, in the dark, defenseless, with monsters lined up on either side of us, and you people are yelling,” Singer said angrily. “Do you want to get killed?”
“Think you that Shadow cares?” Raven asked. “What are shouts to it?”
“Noisy, that’s what,” Singer retorted. “Why go out of our way to anger our host? Didn’t we come here peacefully, to ask it to send us home?”
Pel blinked in surprise—not that blinking made any difference, in the darkness.
They had, hadn’t they?
After what had happened to Bill Marks, after seeing Dibbs and the others hanging over the gate, after all the corpses and monsters, Pel had forgotten that it was possible to think of Shadow as anything but the enemy.
“What about Ted?” he asked quietly.
“Let him go,” Singer said. “There’s nothing we can do anyway, is there?”
“True,” Pel reluctantly admitted.
“So what do we do now?” Amy asked.
“We wait,” Raven repeated.
“Or maybe we ask Shadow politely for some light,” Singer suggested. “Or to send us home.”
“You think it can hear us?” Pel asked, peering around into the darkness.
Then, abruptly, before Singer could answer, light blazed; blinded, Pel threw an arm over his eyes. Even through his closed lids, the light that poured around the shielding arm was intensely bright.
Then, gradually, it dimmed, and after a moment Pel risked opening his eyes, arm still raised.
The floor was blue-gray flagstones, joined so well that the seams were almost invisible. His boots, Imperial military issue, were muddy and badly scuffed; the cuffs of his purple uniform pants were frayed and stained. The light was still bright, but bearable.
Cautiously, he raised his eyes and lowered his arm.
Something was glowing overhead—not the ceiling, which was now visible perhaps fifty feet up, but something several feet below the ceiling, something long and straight that ran from the wall above the gate down the length of the room—if it was a room. Pel looked around.
He and most of the others were standing near one end of a chamber that was perhaps fifty feet wide at floor level, but at least sixty by the time it reached the blue-painted ceiling, thanks to the setbacks on either side where the Shadow things stood. However, it was not at all clear whether it was a room or a corridor, because the length was easily a hundred yards, and the far end was not a wall, but a gigantic staircase leading upward.
The walls were pale gray stone, unadorned—granite, Pel guessed. The floor was blue-gray flagstone, unbroken by rugs, carpets, rushes, or any sort of inlay or decoration. The ceiling was hard to make out beyond the glowing rod, or beam, or whatever it was, but it appeared to
be plaster, painted the color of the sky in a baroque fresco, that warm, rich blue that made such a fine background for cherubs and chiffon-draped nudes.
Pel couldn’t see any cavorting nymphs here, though—just blank blue. The whole place had a rather barren, unfinished look to it. The intense color of the ceiling didn’t seem to go very well with the natural gray of the walls.
The light source was an utter mystery; Pel had never seen anything remotely like it. It was as if there were an invisible tube full of glowing gas running the length of the chamber, then vanishing into that immense stairway.
Ted Deranian was more than halfway to the stairs, Pel saw; everyone else was clustered near the door.
Everyone else human, anyway—there were all those creatures on the ledges, too. Some looked almost normal—panthers and apes—while others were tentacular horrors, or just things that Pel couldn’t describe. They ranged from the size of a cat—assuming there weren’t others he couldn’t see that were even smaller—up to a gigantic creature near the gate that could only be called a dragon, so large that it appeared to have some difficulty squeezing onto the ledge.
All of them, even in the brilliant white light, were black. Some were flat grayish black, some were glossy black, but all were black, except for eyes, claws, and teeth. Even the dragon was shiny black, from its pointed snout to its snakelike tail, its taloned feet to its batlike wingtips, scales glistening darkly.
And as Pel watched, the dragon moved.
All of the Shadow creatures looked alive, all of them seemed to be breathing, their eyes open and alert, but the others were motionless—or at least staying where they were; a few twitched or shuddered, a few heads turned, claws shifted slightly.
The dragon, though, was stretching its foreclaws and wings, and black horny claws rasped loudly against stone.
In the Empire of Shadow Page 23
