Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  He partook of it all with regal courtesy, and gracious manners that began to win over the less suspicious of the servants. He even knew how to dismiss them so that they were not offended; they told one another in her hearing that he was tired, he had had a long journey, he must rest.

  She was of the same mind, but when she made as if to go, he stayed her with a word. “What may I call you?” he asked. “Lady? Queen? Majesty?”

  “Tanit,” she said before she could catch her tongue.

  He bowed to her. “Tanit,” he said. “And I am Estarion.”

  “Seramon,” she said.

  “Estarion,” he said.

  Her tongue could not shape those sounds in that order. “Seramon,” she said, struggling.

  He shrugged and smiled and spread his hands, the one that was dark and the one that cast shards of light over the wall. “Seramon,” he said.

  FIVE

  ESTARION WAS GONE.

  Daros had indulged in a fit of pure pique, devoting himself after Merian’s departure to all the tasks he had been given, and all of Estarion’s, too. By sunset of that day, he was too exhausted to do more than eat a bite of bread and fall into his bed.

  Morning brought a soft mist of rain and no relief from solitude. He might have reveled in it, seized it and escaped, but the thought persisted that this was a test. They wanted him to bolt. Therefore he would not.

  By the sixth day he was deathly weary of his own company. Woolbeasts had no conversation. The senel had no interest in it. The stores of necessities—ale, salt, grain for grinding into flour—were running low. Every cycle of Brightmoon, either Estarion had gone down to Han-Uveryen to fetch provisions, or the fortress had sent a packtrain up the mountain. The moon had come to the full the day after Estarion went away, but no train of beasts had come winding up the trail. Obviously they expected the men on the mountain to come down.

  On the seventh day, he ground the last of the grain, baked a day’s worth of bread from it, and knew that either he went down the mountain to beg at the castle—and begging it would be, without Estarion to speak for him—or he went through Gates as they all seemed to wish him to do. Then of course, if he did that without a chaperon, he would be caught and killed, and they would be rid of him at last.

  Unless …

  She was in the midst of something that, from the taste that came to him through a tendril of magic, was both tedious and obligatory. It felt in fact like a court function.

  He made so bold as to borrow her eyes. Yes—there was the great hall of audience in Starios of the kings, that Estarion had built between two great and warring empires. He glimpsed the regents on their twinned thrones below the golden blaze of the throne of Sun and Lion: Daruya like an elder and somewhat darker image of her daughter, and her consort not greatly unlike Daros’ mother: tall and strongly built, with broad cheekbones and narrow black eyes. The court stood in ranks before them, glittering in regal finery.

  Merian was enormously and unbecomingly bored. Courts of the law, imperial audiences, embassies, those she could bear; they were interesting. But High Court was dull beyond belief.

  He was tempted to linger in this hidden corner of her awareness, where even she had no inkling of his presence. It was a surprisingly pleasant place to be. Her mind was not at all as he had expected; there was nothing either dour or repressive about it. It reminded him of the water garden in his father’s summer palace: bright, melodious, full of sudden delights and fluid order. The wall she had built about it was thick and high, overgrown with thorns; but the heart of her was wonderful.

  He hated to leave it. But she would be furious if she knew, and just then he did not want her anger. He slipped free, curved round, presented himself for her notice.

  His wards were almost not enough to shield him against the full glare of her attention. She was Sun-blood, and that was pure blazing fire. She did not even give him time to speak. “Have you found him? Where is he?”

  Daros could not make his mind shape words. She caught hold of him, opened one of the Gates in him, and stepped through it.

  She did it to punish him; she could perfectly well have opened her own Gate. But that would not have proved that she was his master.

  He allowed it because he was still so enthralled by what he had seen inside her. They stood in the shepherd’s hut, with the rain dripping sadly from the eaves, and stared at one another.

  She was as splendid as a firebird in her court dress, all gold from head to foot. He in plain worn leather, with no ornament but the copper of his hair, bowed as a prince should to an imperial heir.

  Her lips narrowed at that. He had not meant it for mockery, but he was set too long in the habit of insolence; he could not perform an honest obeisance.

  She seized him and shook him. He did not stiffen or resist, but let his head rock on his neck. “Where is he?”

  It dawned on her eventually that if she wanted an answer, she had to stop rattling his teeth in his skull. She let him go. He dropped to his knees. “I don’t know,” he said through the ringing in his ears. “I came to ask you. This isn’t a test? You aren’t tempting me into running through Gates?”

  “Why would I—” She bit off the rest. “You would think that, wouldn’t you? You haven’t seen him at all?”

  “Not since the morning you came,” he said.

  “And you let this happen? You haven’t gone looking?”

  “You forbade me to go alone,” he said.

  He thought she would strike him, but she struck her hands together instead. “You could have summoned me!”

  “Isn’t that what I just did?”

  She did not like it that he was being reasonable and she was not. He watched her gather herself together. After a while she said, not too unsteadily, “No one knows where he is. That’s not terribly unusual—he vanished for the whole of a year once, before we found him on a ship on the eastern sea. But my dreams have been strange. This morning when I woke, I wanted to ask him something, and he was nowhere. He is not in this world.”

  Daros could not claim to be surprised. “He must have done it while we were engaged with one another,” he said. “Otherwise one or both of us would have known. And if he did that …”

  “There are worlds beyond worlds,” she said. “And he can hide himself wherever, and whenever, he pleases.”

  “Why would he do that?” Daros asked. “Is he testing us both?”

  She shook him off. “No. No, that’s absurd. He wouldn’t play that game now. Which means—”

  Daros finished the thought for her. “He’s trapped somewhere.”

  “Or dead,” she said starkly.

  “No,” said Daros. “You would have known if he had died. So would I, if he’d died in a Gate. Power like that doesn’t just vanish when the body dies.”

  “Unless the power itself had been consumed,” she said.

  But he was stubborn. “He’s still alive, somewhere among the worlds. I’m going to find him.”

  “He might not thank you for that,” she said. “If this is a hunt, and you come crashing through his coverts, you’ll only make it worse for all of us.”

  “Lady,” Daros said, and he thought he said it quite patiently, too, “either you want me to find him, or you don’t. Either he’s safe or he’s not. You can’t have both.”

  “I don’t think he’s safe,” she said. “I’m going hunting. Will you come?”

  “You think I can be of any use?”

  “You can sense the thing that I suspect he was after.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I’m to be your hunting hound.”

  “Call yourself what you will,” she said. “We leave as soon as I can gather a few necessities.”

  “Gather a few for me,” he said. “Unless you’d rather wait a day or two while I fetch them from the castle?”

  “I’ll fetch them,” she said. “Be ready.”

  She melted into sunlight. He stood for a moment, simply breathing. The Gate inside him begged him to
open it now, and vanish before she came back to plague him.

  He was growing wise at last, or else he was turning into a coward. He gathered a change of clothes, a waterskin, one of the woolen cloaks; he rolled them together round an oddment or two, and the half-loaf that was left from his morning’s baking. That bundle, with Estarion’s second-best bow and a quiver of arrows, and a long knife, were all he could think to take.

  She took her time in coming back. He began to wonder if she would; if she had thought better of it and gone alone. But the Gates were quiet. She had not passed through them.

  He was napping when she came, propped against the house-wall in the sun. Her shadow, falling across his face, woke him abruptly and fully. He was on his feet, shouldering weapons and bundle, before his eyes were well open.

  Her golden robes were gone. She was dressed much as he was, in coat and trousers, with a small bag slung over her shoulder. She had brought no weapon but a knife at her belt. Her hair was plaited tightly and wound about her head. She looked even younger than she had before, but strong, too, and a little wild.

  She said no word. He had the briefest of warnings: a flicker in the Gates. She gathered him with her magic and swept him with her through the walls of the world.

  They stepped from sunlight into firelight in a hall of stone. Now it seemed as vast as a cavern, now hardly larger than the shepherd’s hut on the mountain. “This is the Heart of the World,” he said. “I’ve heard of it. I’ve never been here.”

  “Never?”

  He ignored the bite of Merian’s disbelief. “You would have known about me if I had.”

  “So we would,” she said grimly. “Now sit. This place belongs to us, to Gate-mages. It’s as safe, and as shielded, as any place can be. You will remember it, where it is, how to come to it. This is where we will meet if either of us is separated.”

  He had always known where it was, but he held his tongue. He sat where she bade him, on a bench that he could have sworn had not been there a moment before. She stayed on her feet, frowning at the fire. It was hot; it danced as flames should. But it was no mortal fire. Power of Gates was contained in it, and worlds spun like sparks.

  “We will find the trail here,” she said. “You will be obedient; you will set aside whatever arts and fashions you may be enamored of, and be my servant until the emperor is found.”

  “And then?” he inquired. “Do I finally die?”

  “Do you want to?”

  He did not answer.

  “If by fecklessness or folly you endanger the emperor, or prevent us from finding him at all, I will kill you with my own hand. Find him, help me bring him home safe, and I may see fit to free you from your bonds and your sentence. Then you may go back to your taverns and your women.”

  “For how long? Until our world flares into ash like all the rest?”

  “That won’t concern you, will it? Your service will be done. When the fire comes, if it comes, you can die with a flagon in your hand and a doxy on your knee, and never know a moment’s grief.”

  Daros could hardly give way to anger. He had cultivated his reputation with great care; he had made certain that no one ever overestimated him. It made life simpler and much more pleasant.

  But here, with this daughter of gods, he wearied of the game. He rose, quick enough to startle her, and stepped past her toward the hearth and the fire that was not fire. She spoke; he took no notice. He was sifting the sparks, searching among the worlds for a thread of gold, a memory of passage.

  The blight on the worlds had spread. He saw it as black ash and blinding smoke, a darkness in the heart of the fire. The size of it, the breadth and sweep, caught his breath in his throat. No mage had such power; even if all the mages of this world banded together, they would not come near to the strength of this thing.

  It was not a living will, though living will must drive it. He thought of walls and of shields—of a shieldwall, and an army behind it.

  As if the thought had unlocked a door, he glimpsed … something. He was just about to grasp it when her voice shattered his focus. “Daros! You fool. Get back!”

  Her hands were on him. He was leaning over the fire; his cheeks stung with the heat. She dragged him back.

  He was glad of the bench under his rump, but not of the woman who bent over him. “Don’t you know enough not to startle a mage out of a working?” he snapped at her.

  That rocked her back on her heels. She could not have been reprimanded for such a thing since she was a tiny child.

  He pressed such advantage as he had. “Lady, I don’t think we can do this alone. We can hunt for the emperor, yes. But the other thing, the thing he was hunting—it’s coming toward us. If you would have a world to bring him back to, you would do well to call on your mages and set them to work building such shields as they can. They can do that, yes? Even if they don’t see or believe in the reason for it?”

  “It has been done,” she said.

  He flushed.

  She was not inclined to be merciful. “You will leave the searching of the shadow to the mages. Your task is to find your master. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said tightly.

  “Good,” she said. “See that you remember.”

  He lowered the lids over his eyes before she saw the extent of his defiance. The shadow was the key, he was sure of it. If Estarion was not inside it, then he was very close to it. “Do I have your leave to hunt?” he asked. And added, after a pause, “Lady.”

  “Hunt,” she said. “But watch yourself. Don’t fall into the fire.”

  For answer he sat more sturdily on the bench and knotted his hands between his knees. He was well away from the fire, if not from the lure of its myriad worlds.

  She set hands on his shoulders. So mages guarded one another in workings. And so, he thought, could she keep him chained to her will.

  She did not know all there was to know of Gates, or of his magic, either. He sent a part of himself down the safe road, threading the loom of worlds. The part beneath, after a careful while, he sent back toward the shadow.

  He had done such a thing before, more than once, to elude his father or his mother, or to escape the testing that would have bound him to Gates or temple. But he had not done it in such close quarters, under such a watchful guard. The lesser hunt must seem to be all the world, and the greater must leave no trace at all. To divide himself so, he needed every scrap of power he had, and every bit of discipline that he had taught himself. That was more than anyone knew. Whether it would be enough, only time would tell.

  The lesser hunt skimmed the sparks of worlds, finding no trace of what it sought. The greater one skirted the edge of shadow. It was a shield, he was certain now, but how it was sustained, what had wrought it, he could not tell.

  He sought the source, the life behind the wall. It was elusive; it warded itself well, shields within shields. He looked for a face, a mind, anything that he could grasp, to draw him behind the shield.

  He was not strong enough. Merian wore at him with the weight of her watchfulness. If he could have focused on the shadow alone, he could have found its makers, but the fruitless hunt through worlds not yet touched by shadow kept him from discovering the truth.

  He must find Estarion. The emperor had gone hunting the shadow; Daros was sure now that he had found it. He was strong enough to face it; nor need he bow to any will but his own.

  Daros let go the greater hunt and focused himself on the lesser. He pressed it as close to the darkness as he dared under Merian’s eye. There was a hint, a glimmer—

  It dropped away. He pulled back in frustration, into the hall again, beside the fire that never shrank or went out. But if all the worlds were laid waste, would it not, itself, vanish into ash?

  Merian set a cup in his hand. It was full of honeyed wine. She gave him bread to sop in it, to fill his belly with care, quenching a hunger as strong as it was sudden.

  He ate and drank because he must, but his mind was not on it. “
I have to go back,” he said.

  “Not now,” said Merian. “You’ll rest first.”

  “But I almost found him. He’s there. I couldn’t—quite—”

  “I saw.” She pulled him to his feet. “Come and rest.”

  He fought her, but his knees would barely hold him up. “Stop that,” she said, “or I’ll carry you over my shoulder.”

  He did not doubt that she would do it. Sullenly but without further objection, he let her lead him out of the hall.

  This was a castle after all, with stairs and passages, and rooms that seemed mortal enough, if ascetically bare. One of them had a bed in it, and a hearth on which she lit a mortal fire. He lay because she compelled him, and suffered her pulling off his boots and covering him with a blanket as mortal as the fire, worn and somewhat musty, as if it had been long unused.

  The starkness of it comforted him. It was real; there was no magic in it. He was deathly weary of magic, just then.

  He lay on the hard narrow bed in the stone cell. Merian was gone. He was aware of her in the hall of the fire, holding council and audience from afar with the army of her mages. She had kept a part of herself, a thin thread of awareness, on guard over him, but that could not constrain his vision.

  He stood on the shores of a wide and heaving sea. It was a sea not of water but of shadow, of darkness given substance. Things stirred beneath, great beasts rising from the depths and then sinking again with a sound like a vast sigh.

  Because he was dreaming and knew it, he set foot on the surface of the darkness. It felt firm and yet yielding, like a carpet of moss on a forest floor. It was darkly transparent, showing the play of shadow within shadow in the depths beneath.

  Slowly as he trod those swelling hills and sudden hollows, he began to distinguish among the shapes below. They were worlds, each floating in a bubble of darkness. Those that were nearest the surface came clearest to his vision. Some of them he knew, others were strange. He stooped to peer through the dark glass.