by Judith Tarr
Daros did not like that at all, but she had shamed him into acquiescence. He kissed her hand with rueful respect. “You are as implacable as he is,” he said.
“Of course I am,” she said. “I’d never be able to stand up to him if I weren’t.”
He laughed a little painfully, bowed low with no mockery whatever, and left her with her maid and her nurse and the son for whom she had prayed through all the years of her youth.
TWENTY-SIX
YOU MAY GO,” ESTARION SAID. HE SPOKE WITH NO PLEASURE AT all, with such a face as he must have worn in grim judgment over the courts of empire.
Daros had never expected to be given leave, or so soon, either. They had passed a brutal night, with raids on half a dozen villages, barely beaten off, and a new and alarming thing: attacks on the wards.
Daros had been standing guard on Waset’s walls, holding it with magery while Estarion sustained the web of wards in the greater kingdom. His magelings had known the first test of their new existence, weaving their fledgling powers with either Estarion’s or Daros’. Daros had divided them quite deliberately into the half who would go and the half who would stay. He kept Menkare and Kaptah and Nefret, Ay and Huy who were brothers from Sekhem, and Khafre the captain of the king’s guard of Ipu. They were all trained in war, all but Nefret, and she, the healer and seer, was perhaps more valuable than the rest.
They had done not too badly that night, but by dawn they were out on their feet. Daros saw them to bed before he turned toward his own too long forsaken chamber.
Estarion was waiting there, seated cross-legged on the bed. He had made the decision that he had no choice but to make.
“We can’t take many nights of this,” Estarion said. “Gods know, I think you’re mad, and I think you’ll die, if you’re lucky—but without this gamble, there’s no hope.”
“If it can be done,” Daros said, “I’ll do it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Estarion said dryly. “You may have your six magelings. Do your best with them, as fast as you can. You’re leaving tomorrow night.”
“We can leave sooner. We can—”
“Don’t be a fool,” Estarion said. “You’re out on your feet. Today you’ll sleep. Tonight and tomorrow, you’ll prepare those children of yours. We’ll hold on meanwhile. There is one other thing. A price, if you will.”
Daros held his breath. Of course there was a price.
“My cats and my cats’ allies,” said Estarion. “They’re not mages, not as yours are. But give them what you can. Help as you may, for the defense of Waset.”
Daros bowed his head. He was willing, even glad to do that. But first he must rest. He was falling asleep where he stood. He needed to sleep long and deep.
And he needed to dream. Dreams might hold the answer. He let himself be put to bed, barely even startled that the servant who tended him had been an emperor in another world, another time. Estarion could be whatever it suited his fancy to be.
Daros had tried before to force the dreams of Merian, and failed. They came when they came. But this was urgency beyond simple desire. He shaped himself into a prayer to whatever god would hear, and offered whatever that divinity would take, even his life, if he could only walk in dream where he needed to walk.
It seemed that one of the gods heard him. He passed through deep water, through darkness that though absolute was not the nothingness that the Mage had wrought. It was a living thing, the breast of Mother Night.
Merian was on the other side of it. She stood atop the tower of a hill-fort, looking down into the crash and roar of a sea. Wind whipped back the golden masses of her hair, and plucked at the folds of the mantle that she had wrapped about her.
He in kilt and bare feet, long accustomed to the heat of a hotter sun than had ever shone in this sea-smitten country, felt the cold like the cut of a knife. The chattering of his teeth brought her about, even in the roar of the gale. Her eyes were wide, her expression flat astonished, but she kept her wits about her. She opened her cloak of wool and fur, drawing him into blessed warmth. Her arms clasped him close; he gasped as she crushed the breath out of him, but he uttered no protest.
She loosed her grip a little and tilted her head back. He had to kiss her; he could not help himself at all. “I’m not dreaming you,” she said. “You’re real. You are here.”
“I can’t stay long,” he said, “or linger for loving, not now. Will you forgive me?”
“Maybe,” she said. “What is it? Why are you so somber?”
“The world we’ve been living in,” he said, “is about to fall. I have a plan—the emperor says it’s madness, but he’s given me leave, because there’s no other hope. I think there is a little, if you will help me. Are you terribly beset here?”
“Not quite yet,” she said. “We’ve lured them all to Anshan. This is Ki-Oran—”
“Ki-Oran!” For a moment it seemed to Daros that the tower rocked underfoot. “Gods! You’re madder than I am.”
She frowned. “You’ve heard of this place?”
“My father’s library,” Daros said. “I used to make a game of reading the books he’d forbidden. He has books that tell of the mages in Anshan. They’re nonsense mostly, written long years after the fall, but there’s a little honest meat on the bones of the stories.”
“Your father’s library,” she said slowly. “We never even thought—”
“He keeps it quiet, mostly,” Daros said, “even—sometimes especially—from mages. As useful as the temples are, and as much as he approves of the orders of mages, there are still things, he says, that most of them were better not to know.”
“I should know.”
“And they call me arrogant.” He smiled to take the sting out of it and brushed her lips with a kiss.
She was too preoccupied to return the kiss. “I’ll send word to him—ask him, command him if I must—”
“Lady,” he said firmly, so that she looked up startled. “Whatever the books can tell you, I doubt there’s anything you haven’t learned already, if you’re here, alive, and sane. Are you using the Ring of Fire?”
“Yes,” she said. “How did you—”
“It’s logical. Lure the enemy in, keep him contained. We’ve done something like it, though with nothing like the power you can bring to bear. That lack of power is killing us. Therefore, while we’re still alive, we’ve decided to take the war to the enemy.”
“With what? Have you armies? Weapons? Magic?”
“A realm half a thousand times as long as it’s wide, encompassing the banks of a long river. Reed spears and a copper blade or two. My lord and I, and a dozen fledgling mages, and perhaps twice that many who can make fire if they’re pressed to it.”
“You’re mad.”
“So your kinsman said. But he can’t think of anything better.”
“Tell me,” she said, “that you’re not planning to let yourself be taken in a raid.”
“Is there any other way?”
“You don’t know,” she said. “You really don’t know. When they take slaves—they blind them and take their souls. We saved a handful of men, kept them alive, but they were beyond any power to heal. Some of them are dead now. The rest are eyeless, mindless, stripped of will or understanding. Nothing that we’ve done has made the slightest difference.”
He stiffened; his breath came suddenly short. But he was not about to turn coward. “We’re warned now—I thank you with all my heart. We’ll take measures to protect ourselves.”
“Even if those are enough,” she said, “what do you think you can do in the dark world? Go up like a torch? Take as many of the enemy with you as you can, before the rest overwhelm you?”
“Something like that,” he said. “I was thinking—lady, if mages from this world could find us there, we could join together, find and destroy the leader or leaders, and free the Mage from its prison. Then maybe we could bind the darkness, once the powers driving it were taken away.”
“My kinsman
is right,” she said. “You are mad.”
“Do you see any other way?”
“No,” she said as unwillingly as Estarion had. “Damn you, no.”
“Can you help?”
“I would have to ask. This isn’t something I’ll lay on anyone who isn’t as mad as you are.”
“Yes, we need good madmen,” he said. “But don’t take too long, please, lady. Our world hasn’t much time left.”
“Your—” She broke off. “Come with me.”
“I don’t think I can,” he said. “I’m dreamwalking. I’ll wake soon. Can you do it? Will you?”
“You’ll trust me?”
“With my soul.”
“Don’t make light of it,” she said sharply.
“That, I would not do,” he said. “Lady, will you come to me as soon as you may?”
“I will try,” she said.
He kissed her, lingering over it, nor did she try to break free. There was more than desire in it. There was a gift, a pearl of magic that he set in her heart. Hardly had he done that when the dream took him away, reft him out of her arms.
Merian stood alone in the bite of the wind. Her cloak was gone, and he in it. She drew the magic of the place about her, warmer than any wool or fur, and paused to gather courage. Then she said calmly to the air, “Perel. Come. I need you.”
He came as soon as he could. It was a long hour, but Merian put it to good use. She had sent word to certain others, lightmages and darkmages both, and bidden them wait upon word from Ki-Oran.
By the time he arrived, she had prepared everything that could be prepared. He came through the Gate that she had opened, full-armed and on guard, though she had sent him no word that she was in danger.
She wasted no time in preliminaries. “Perel,” she said, “if I asked you to be taken by the enemy, would you do it?”
He stood where the Gate had brought him, just inside the door of her workroom, wrapped in Olenyai black, with only his eyes to be seen. They had widened slightly, but he betrayed no other sign of startlement. “You have a plan?”
“The heir of Han-Gilen does.”
That did astonish him. “He’s here? He’s come back?”
“No,” she said, “but he dreamwalked here, to ask me this. He’s trapped in a world within the shadow, he and the emperor. They’re about to fall. He thinks—he hopes—that if he can be taken to the enemy’s own world, he can fight from there, and close their Gates, and bind or destroy them at their source.”
“That boy has a finely honed deathwish,” Perel observed. “Which is all very well for him, but what makes you think that I share it?”
“Don’t all the Olenyai?”
“Most of us prefer to stay alive. All of us would rather be unmaimed.” Perel advanced a step or two into the room. Merian rose from the worktable.
Once again she had surprised him profoundly. She was not greatly swollen with the child yet, but in shirt and breeches, she was obviously not her old slender self. She met his stare and said flatly, “I’ll thank you not to make a public outcry of this. Nobody else knows, except my loyal people here.”
He bent his head to her will. “Only tell me one thing. Please, by all the gods, swear to me that it’s not Batan’s.”
“It is not Batan’s,” Merian said, “or any other pirate’s. Don’t fret, cousin. Even Mother won’t object to the breeding of this child.”
“She might take issue with the timing of it,” Perel said.
“Yes—that I didn’t do it fifteen years ago.” Fifteen years ago, she thought, Daros was a youngling child.
Perel did not press her to name the father; nor had she expected him to. Olenyai were bred like fine animals. Once she had assured him that this child was properly bred, he had ceased to fret over it, except on her behalf.
“I am thinking,” Merian said after a pause, “that if lightmages and darkmages went in together under shields, then the slavetakers could be persuaded that they had been duly bound and blinded. Once you were there, you would find Daros and his people, join forces, and do the rest according to his plan.”
“That supposes,” said Perel, “that they can be found at all, and once found, that all of them are sane and whole. We know nothing of this world, where it is, what it is. We’ll be going in, quite literally, blind.”
“He knows,” she said. “He’s been there. He’ll set a beacon in the Gate, for only us to find. That will guide you to the enemy’s world, and once you’ve passed the Gate, guide you to him.”
“Even so,” said Perel, “without knowing what to expect—”
“He gave me this,” Merian said, “through the dreamwalking.” She held out her hand.
Perel took it warily, braced against the lash of sudden pain or power. She gave him what Daros had given her, the flash of knowledge wrapped in memory: the dark world, the stronghold, the men in it.
Perel let go her hand. He drew a long breath, and let it out slowly. “No name, no words in their language. No knowledge of what or who leads them, or how, nor very much of why. Their weapons, we know, are stronger than ours. What does he think he can accomplish by invading their stronghold?”
“He believes,” she said, “that some force is driving them, and some power ruling them. If that can be removed, the rest won’t matter.”
“You’re asking us to gamble a great deal on a guess and a dream.”
“Yes: I’m asking you to gamble your lives on the defense of this world.”
He flushed. She had stung him; he was as close to anger as she had ever seen him. “I would die for you, lady of the Sun, and for the empire you’ll someday rule. But I want that death to be worth something. If I throw my life away, what good does it do you?”
“Very well,” she said, and her voice was as cold as her heart. “Go. I’ll find someone else to lead the expedition. For it will go, Perel. It’s a vain hope, but it’s action beyond simple defense. It might even succeed.”
“Did I say I would not go?”
“Weren’t you hinting at it?”
“I do not hint,” he said stiffly. “I’ll go. I’ll pick my mages—will you give me a free hand?”
“I’ve spoken with a number of mages who confess themselves willing. You may choose others, if that’s your wish.”
“Lightmages as weapons, darkmages to shield them. Masks of illusion for us all.” Perel straightened his shoulders. “How many?”
“Enough to be a threat. Not so many that the enemy senses that threat until the knife is at his throat.”
“Twice nine,” Perel said, “and I. If we’re taken like slaves, we’ll not be able to bring worldly weapons. That could be a difficulty.”
“The enemy has weapons, and probably to spare,” she said. “But none of them, in himself, has magic.”
“That does give us an advantage,” Perel conceded. “Very well. When do we go?”
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “You’ll be cast like a lure. With luck and the gods’ favor, the enemy will seize you.”
He bowed. He was not happy with her at all, but he would do what she needed him to do. That was the way of the Olenyai—just as it was the way of imperial blood to use him with ruthless disregard for his life or sanity.
She was not happy with herself, either, but so be it. She gave Perel a gift, because she trusted him, and because in her mind he deserved it. “This child is his—the Gileni’s. For her sake, will you serve him as if he had been of the blood royal?”
“How in the worlds—”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said, “but it appears that one can do more than walk in dreams.”
Her cheeks were warm. He saw the flush: his lips twitched. “I am glad,” he said, “that I don’t have your gift for dreaming true.”
“I think the gift is his,” she said. “He’s a mage unlike any other. Will you help him?”
“I will help him,” Perel said with a sigh.
“You have your mages,” Merian said.
She had tracked him through thickets of dream, past lies and delusions, wishes and fears. He was perched on the prow of a boat, sailing down a broad deep river. Small brown men filled the boat, and one large and very dark one at the steering oar, golden eyes full of the sun.
But she had not come to Estarion, however it gladdened her heart to see him. He looked splendid, strong and young, laughing and trading banter with the men in the boat.
Daros was drowsing, smiling a little, full of sun and empty of fear. She slipped inside the stream of his thought and warmed herself in his sunlight. His smile bloomed all around her.
She hated to darken that brightness, but time was short. “Twice nine mages,” she said, “and Perel. Will that be enough?”
“It will be ample,” he said with swift joy and a strong surge of relief.
“They’ll set themselves in the enemy’s path tonight. That will be somewhat after you go, if all goes well. Once they’re past the Gate, they’ll find your beacon. You’ll command them after that. Perel knows; the others understand.”
“Are they dismayed to be taking orders from the rakehell of Han-Gilen?”
“Not all of them,” she said. “Some allow as how you’ve earned a little respect through serving the emperor so demonstrably well.”
“How very kind of them,” he said.
“Most charitable.” She could not kiss him, here inside him, but she could envelop him in the sensation. He was warm to the tips of his toes. “Beloved,” she said. “Stay alive, and unmaimed if you can. Come back to me.”
“I will,” he said.
“I’ll hold you to that,” said Merian.
TWENTY-SEVEN
DAROS WARMED HIS HEART WITH HER MEMORY, AND WITH THE hope that she had given him. Nearly a score of mages, the best and the strongest, and an Olenyas to lead them—he was richer than he had dared to dream.
And yet, like the madman he was, he could not help but think that his magelings had been chosen for this; that they would prove themselves before men and gods. He roused from the last of his dream and turned his eyes toward them where they sat together. They did not cling to one another; none of them wept or trembled. They looked as soldiers should before a battle: a little pale, a little shaken, but strong.
