Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  “I couldn’t tell,” Daros said without too palpable a sense of relief. “I could only see that he was alive, tossed in the storm-wrack.”

  “That’s the best we can hope for,” Daruya said levelly, “and better than many of us can claim. We’ve lost too many mages—in body or in spirit—and all our greater Gates. Thank the gods and the foresight of those who built them, many of the lesser Gates are still standing—they were built and sustained through the power of this world, which is still intact. We’ll keep them open, but closely guarded, for as long as we can. Every ward and shield that we can raise, we will raise. And we will pray that when the war is over, we can find our emperor again, and bring him back.” She drew herself up and stiffened her back. “You will rest and restore yourselves, both of you. Tomorrow I will have need of you—as of every mage with strength or wits to fight. Until then, be as much at ease as you can.”

  Daros bowed as if in either weariness or submission, but Merian did not believe in either. She kept her own tongue between her teeth and undertook to seem more convincingly obedient than Daros. He was out on his feet; she was a little tired herself. Sleep would serve them both well, whatever came after.

  SEVEN

  OF ALL THE OUTCOMES DAROS HAD EXPECTED, TO FIND HIMSELF a guest in the palace in Starios was one of the more unlikely. He was given every comfort, even a pretty maid if he should be inclined; somewhat to his surprise, he was not. He was worn to the bone, and above all he needed sleep. His lack of interest had nothing to do with a certain haughty royal lady.

  He slept like the dead, a sleep blessedly free of dreams. In that sleep, the raw edges of his mind began to knit, and powers taxed to the utmost began slowly to heal. When he woke, he felt as if he had been beaten with cudgels, inside and out.

  He fully expected to find Merian sitting beside his bed, but the person there was almost a stranger. He knew the face, of course; Hani the prince, son of the regent’s consort, was known even to layabouts in taverns. “Am I under guard?” Daros asked him.

  The prince raised a brow. He looked remarkably like Daros’ father, though his hair was black rather than copper; his voice too was very like, deep and soft, but the accent was of another country altogether. “Do you feel the need to be guarded?”

  “That depends,” said Daros. “Am I safe here? I seem to remember a sentence of exile.”

  “You’re not in Han-Gilen, are you?” Hani yawned and stretched. “I’m to tell you that after you’ve rested sufficiently and bathed, and one presumes eaten, though that wasn’t mentioned, the lady Merian will see you.”

  Daros’ lips twitched. It was like Merian to remember a man’s bath but not his breakfast. “I’d best get to it,” he said. “By your leave, my lord.”

  “Ah,” said Hani, shrugging. “I don’t stand on ceremony.” He snapped his fingers. Servants came at the run with bath and clothes and, yes, breakfast.

  The bath was welcome. The clothes were good but plain—not court dress. Daros widened his eyes somewhat but offered no other commentary. Neither the servants nor the prince remarked on the myriad bruises that stained his skin, though their hands were gentle, to spare him such pain as they could.

  Hot water and clean clothes restored him rather well. Breakfast set him truly among the living. He did his best not to fall on it like a starving wolf. Bread so fine, cakes so sweet, had not passed his lips since he left Han-Gilen.

  He ate less than he wanted but somewhat more than he needed; then he was ready to be taken to the princess. Hani was his guide; the servants, dismissed, vanished wherever servants went when their lords did not need them.

  He was sure, well before he came there, that he was a prisoner after all, and he was going into a cell deep in the bowels of the palace. But his guide brought him out of the tunnels and into a different place, which had the air and the proportions of a noble residence. He supposed that it was Merian’s house, or perhaps her brother’s.

  It was a handsome house, well kept, and apparently deserted. But he sensed human presence elsewhere within the walls, and not only in the room to which Hani led him.

  It was a library, and she was in the middle of it, half-buried in books, shuffling rapidly among a half-dozen scrolls and scribbling on a bit of parchment. She glanced up, preoccupied, and said, “Hani. Where did you put Vanyi’s book?”

  Hani slipped a scroll from the bottom of the heap, unbound it, and handed it to her without a word. She did not thank him, or acknowledge Daros at all.

  He could sulk, or he could peer over her shoulder to see what she was reading. He recognized a history or two, a very old grimoire of which he had thought his father had the only copy, and what seemed to be a compendium of songs and gnomic verses.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked her.

  “Help,” she said. “Wards alone won’t be enough. But nowhere is there any word of such a threat as this.”

  “Don’t you have priests and mages to do this hunting for you?” Daros asked.

  “They are,” she said: “all those that aren’t flattened by the loss of their center.”

  He was not sure he understood. “The Heart of the World? But—”

  “You really don’t feel it, do you?” She sounded almost exasperated. “When it went down, weren’t you rent to the core of you?”

  “No,” he said. “I can feel a gap in the fabric of magic—an emptiness where once was a nexus of Gates—but it doesn’t touch me at all. The worlds are still full of Gates, and most of those are still open. Those that are shut, the shadow took, just as it took your nexus.”

  “To the mages of Gates,” she said, “the Heart of the World is the very heart and center of what they are. The other mages, lightmages, darkmages—their power is born and nurtured here, in this earth, this sun. But the power of Gates was contained there, in the Heart of the World.”

  “Not for me,” he said. “Nor for you, either, or you wouldn’t be sitting here, being impatient with me. How badly are your mages hurt?”

  She seemed surprised that he would care. “There are a dozen dead. Another hundred might as well be. The rest look as if they will recover. The lesser Gates are still alive; that sustains them. But how—”

  “I’m not a Gate-mage,” he said.

  “That is obvious.” She shook herself. “You’re a great Gate—as I am; as, it seems, Estarion is. It’s inside you. You can still leave the world.”

  “So can you.”

  “Yes,” she said, but not as if it mattered. She turned back to the books in front of her. “I had been hoping to find something that would show us how to find the emperor.”

  “I know that,” Daros said. “I remember where I found him. I could find it again.”

  “But should you? The danger is worse than ever. If the shadow can swallow the Heart of the World, it most certainly can swallow you.”

  “It can swallow him, too, and whatever world or place of magic in which he’s found refuge,” said Daros. “Lady, the sooner we get him out, the better. I don’t know that anything can live, once the dark tide has rolled over it.”

  “We must know what it is,” she said. “Else how can we fight it? But how can we do that, if even you can’t go near it without being battered half to death?”

  All his bruises twinged at once. He set his teeth against them and said, “I know where he is now. I don’t need the worldroad, or the sea of night, either.”

  He thought she might seize him, maybe to strangle him, maybe to kiss him, but she did neither. “If you go, you may not be able to come back. You said he was trapped. What good would it do to join him in his prison?”

  “Maybe none,” he said. “Maybe a little, if we discover what the enemy is. Who knows? Maybe we can even destroy it.”

  “As well expect a gnat to destroy a mountain,” she said. She rubbed her eyes as if they troubled her, and drew a long shuddering breath. “If we only knew what it was!”

  “The Forbidden Secrets,” Hani said abruptly.

&nbs
p; They both rounded on him. He met their stares calmly. “There is on the far side of the world,” he said, “an order of—priests is not the proper word. Devotees? Adepts? They call themselves the servants of the Great Oblivion; they worship the night without moons or stars. Their fastness stands on the summit of heaven. It’s said that only those blessed of their gods can visit it, still less live there, because the air is too thin for simpler mortals to breathe.”

  “Would they know of Gates and dark tides?” Merian demanded. “Are they mages?”

  “Some may be,” he said. “I only heard of them as a story long ago, before we came to live in this empire. But I’ve heard since of the knowledge that they keep, that they say was passed down to them by their gods. What that knowledge is, only the initiate knows; it’s not even known how it’s conveyed, though most likely it’s written in books. Still, there are rumors of what may be in it, whispers of strange things, dark things, things that feed on stars.”

  “Things that feed on stars.” Merian stroked the scroll in front of her, absently, as if it had been an animal. “The books, scrolls, inscriptions, whatever they are, are forbidden, you say. I gather their guardians will be somewhat reluctant to present them for our inspection, even with an imperial decree. It’s not their empire, after all, or their emperor who is lost.”

  “Even to save the world?” Daros asked.

  “My own mages hardly believe that,” she said. “Do you think devotees of a hidden order on the other side of the world will be any more willing to hear me?”

  “You could ask,” he said.

  Innocent, her eyes said, and she did not mean it as a compliment. He shrugged.

  “You could ask,” her brother said.

  “Find them,” she said, “and ask them, if you have such hopes of them.”

  “I may do that,” Hani said.

  He wandered off. Daros would have liked to follow, but he was curious as to why she had summoned him. Surely it could not have been to watch her scowl at books that told her nothing.

  At length she seemed to recall his existence. He had been reading the grimoire with widened eyes and guiltily beating heart, for he had never been allowed to touch its mate in his father’s library. When he had tried, he had scorched his fingers, and been thrashed soundly into the bargain.

  This had no wards on it, or none that could trouble him. Nor was there a great deal in the book to appall him. The magic was dark and the rites nearly all of blood, but he had seen worse elsewhere. Nothing in it spoke of shadows across the worlds.

  Just as he came across a spell for opening Gates, which required the blood of a virgin boy and the soul of a saint, Merian said, “I set you free.”

  Daros blinked. “You—What?”

  “You’re free,” she said. “You can go. Your sentence is commuted.”

  “But you just said—you need me!”

  She raised her eyes to his face. They were tired, but there was something more, something that he could just begin to read. “I have no time for you,” she said. “You lack training; your discipline is rudimentary. There’s no leisure to train you, and none to protect you against the trouble you will inevitably get into if left to yourself. One of my mages will take from you your knowledge of the emperor’s whereabouts, then bind your power within the circles of this world. You should suffer little inconvenience.”

  “You need me,” he said stubbornly. “You said so yourself: I’m not bound by the limits of mages. I can go where they don’t think to go, do what they can’t imagine doing. I can find the emperor while they’re still groping in the dark.”

  “But,” she said with sweet reason, “you don’t want or need to be involved in this war. Don’t you miss your taverns? Your wine? Your women?”

  “No,” he said, and it was mostly the truth. “I want to finish what I started.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  He paused. This was not a light thing that he was doing. Her eyes on him were bright gold. The tiredness was still in them, but she was stronger than he had thought. “I want to finish it,” he said.

  “If you would do that,” she said, “I can’t have you bumbling about like a weanling child. You will swear yourself to me by the laws of mages. I will not bind you with priest’s vows, or with the lesser vows of my order. But you will be my sworn man. You will answer to me; whatever you do, you will do by my leave. If you cannot do this, then you will leave, and be bound, and never trouble my peace again.”

  Daros opened his mouth, then shut it. He could see the trap about him, the jaws open wide. She had plotted this with skill that bade him remember precisely who and what she was. She was royal born, bred to rule. She would use every weapon that she found to hand, however flawed, however ill-balanced it might be.

  “I think,” he said after a while, “that my decision was made some time since. You made sure of it, didn’t you? You need me—but you don’t want me free to do as I please.”

  “You are a spoiled and insolent child,” she said, “without sense or discipline. You are also a gifted mage, a master of Gates, and the key to the emperor’s return. I will use you, and if necessary destroy you.”

  “So you said,” he said, “when you first sat in judgment over me.” He knelt at her feet and held up his hands. “I swear myself to you, Lady of Gates, to serve you as I may.”

  “You will serve me,” she said, “with your heart and your hand, with your strength and your magic, to death or beyond, while the world endures. Do you swear this, on pain of dissolution?”

  “I swear,” he said steadily.

  She took his hands. Her fingers were cool and firm, but in the palm of her right hand was a living sun. She laid that against his own palm, and then against his heart. He gasped; it was as if she had pierced him with a white-hot blade. “You are bound,” she said, “and freed. No power but mine may compel you. No oath can bind you, unless I choose to allow. You are my servant. Serve me well; and may the gods defend you.”

  He knelt with the blade of the Sun in him and a weird high singing in his ears. He had done many things that were irrevocable; trespassing in Gates was not the least of them. Yet this was something more. For once he did a thing for a purpose other than his own pleasure.

  He wanted suddenly to run far and fast, and hide where no one could ever find him. He had hidden for so long, pretended to be of so little worth, that it was as if he had been stripped naked in front of the High Court.

  Well, he thought, as to that, he was not at all ill to look on. Might not his mind and his magic be the same?

  He let her raise him. She did not at once let go. Her eyes seemed caught in his face, as if something there enthralled her.

  Daros the libertine would have slain her with a smile. Daros the royal servant lowered his eyes before she could see the smile in them. He was sure now of several things, but he did not think that she wanted to know any of them.

  This was her house, that she shared with her stepbrother; he kept it up, oversaw the servants, looked after her with quiet competence. He had a wife and children, but they lived on the other side of the world, in the country in which both he and his father had been born. Here he seemed to have neither wife nor mistress; ladies of the court pursued him, but he was adept at evading them.

  Daros did not go to court. Merian went as seldom as she could; she much preferred the company of priests and mages. Of late, with the great loss among the Gates, the mages needed her more than ever. If she had no time to tame a reckless boy, she had even less to trouble with courtiers.

  Of Daros she expected little, but he decided the first day that he would keep himself at her disposal. She rapidly grew accustomed to his presence in her shadow.

  The shadow on the stars was growing stronger and coming closer. In his darker moments he was almost tempted to give way to it, but he was far still from despair. He wanted to live, for however long his world might have. He did not believe as too many of the mages did, that now the Heart of the World was gone, th
is world was safe; the darkness was sated, and would not come closer. It would come—later rather than sooner, maybe, but there was no escaping it.

  He was remarkably light of heart. “Better dead than bored,” he said to Hani a Brightmoon-cycle after he swore himself into Merian’s service.

  Hani was a man of middle years and impeccable reputation, but behind the stern mask of his face he was still a wild boy. They were sharing a jar of wine that evening, while wind and rain lashed the walls. A fire burned on the hearth; there were cakes and fruit and roast fowl to go with the wine; and Merian had gone to bed, freeing them to be frivolous. Hani knew even more scurrilous songs than Daros did; he had taught Daros the most reprehensible of them.

  In the silence after the song, Daros sensed as he often had of late, that the tide was rising beyond the sphere of the moons. He said nothing of it, but Hani was a mage. “Will it be soon?” he asked.

  Daros shrugged. “Who knows? Nothing’s stopping it—but maybe there’s a mage somewhere, or a Power, or a god, who can stand against it.”

  “You don’t sound troubled,” Hani said.

  “Should I panic? We won’t live any longer if I do.”

  Hani peered at him through the haze of the wine. “Ah. I keep forgetting. You’re the living image of youth and ennui.”

  “I was,” Daros said. “I set every fashion, and my whims were all the rage. I’m sadly fallen now. It seems I have a purpose apart from the cultivation of extreme taste. My old circle would be appalled.”

  “Are you?”

  Daros laughed. “Terribly! But there’s no help for it. I’ve become that most dreadful of creatures: a dutiful servant.”

  “May the gods avert,” said Hani piously. He filled Daros’ cup again, and then his own. They drank to duty—and to the horrors of courtiers. And with that, for a whim, to the tides of the dark, that came on inexorably, for all that anyone could do.