by Judith Tarr
The one who led them—for Daros had begun to be certain that he was, if not a king, then something very like one—had somewhat in him of both warrior and priest. He carried a tall staff, which served to support his body as well as his authority. The thunder of it on the stone floor called the conclave to order.
The murmur of voices broke off. The silence was complete. In it, the king ascended what Daros had taken for an altar, but proved to be a small dais or pedestal. It was a contrivance of some sort: when he set foot on it, it was hardly a handspan above the floor, but once he was settled, it rose to set him well above the rest of the gathering.
He looked down upon them, though he could have had no mage-sight. Maybe he perceived them by sound and scent, and by the heat of their bodies. “The rumor is true,” he said. “We have come to a wall. We are facing famine. And the source of perpetual Night is willing itself to death.”
“Despair is our birthright and oblivion our hope,” someone murmured, half in a chant.
“Indeed,” the king said, biting off the word. “Still there is the paradox of our existence: that we must feed on what grows in the light to live; that if we are to serve our purpose, we must avoid despair. Oblivion will come for each of us, but if we are to grant its blessing to all that is, we must fight to preserve our strength. We must live so that all else may die.”
No one responded to that. Daros sensed the currents in the hall: fear, hostility, a strange exhilaration.
“I have given thought to this,” the king said. “Since the days of the first king, the maker of night has been our greatest weapon and our most sacred charge. Now it fails. And yet, this world that halts our war, this nexus, this swallower of Gates, might it not be a power to rival that which we are about to lose?”
“It is filthy with light,” said a voice from the conclave. “If it had not trapped us and rendered our Gates useless, we would have made a sacrifice of it and its searing hell of a sun, and mercifully forgotten it.”
“Its dark is as strong as its light,” the king said. “The slaves of light have polluted it, but once it is cleansed, it will be as potent a weapon as ever the first king found ready to his hand.”
“Yet if we are weak,” said the other, “where will we find strength to do such a thing?”
“We are strong,” the king said. “For a while we were invincible. So shall we be again. Nothing in that pebble of a world can truly stop us, once we discover what it has done to bind our Gates.”
“The Gates before it still open on the slave-worlds,” said one of the conclave who had not spoken before. “We’ll strip them bare—and pray to the Mother that the wall breaks before we starve.”
“Strip them,” the king said, “but as slowly as you may. No worlds are to be sacrificed until the Gates are free again. See that the lords and commanders are made aware of this. If any disobeys this command, let him be fed to the light.”
They bowed to that. None disputed it.
“Go,” he said to them. “Harvest the worlds. You, my priests—come to me in the tower at the changing of the guard.”
They were all obedient servants. They left to do their duty. He remained, standing still. When the last of them was gone, his head bowed to his breast. He drew a breath that caught like a sob. Then, astonishingly, he laughed. “A war,” he said. “An honest war. I will be remembered for it until the last world crumbles into dust.”
Daros escaped by the same way he had come in. The kitchens had not noticed his absence; his magelings, the few that were left, were alive and profoundly glad to see him again.
The dark day wound down. Near the end of it, at last, the beacon in the Gate sparked to life. It was brief, hardly more than a tugging at the awareness, but it brought Daros full awake. It was all he could do to move as a slave moved, mute and slow, and to shuffle with the rest out of the kitchens into the dining-hall.
His stomach was an aching knot. He choked down the bread and the hard lump of cheese that had been set in front of him, and drank the oddly astringent water. When the rest of the slaves rose, he rose with them, nigh as mindless as they. He was seeking with his mind for a sign, any sign, that Merian’s mages had indeed, at last, passed the Gate.
There was none. When he went walking in dream, he found nothing: not the Mage, not the king in the tower, not twice nine mages of his own world and one Olenyas. He was alone in the dark.
The king’s voice echoed in the cavern of his skull, and the voices of the lords in the tower and the conclave. They had found the end of things: a world to which all Gates led. What if …
Surely it could not be. His world was no more remarkable than any other. Gates touched it as they touched a myriad worlds—or had done before the dark lords came. All Gates did not lead to his own world, or its mages, either. There had been the Heart of the World, but that was a nexus of powers, like the Mage’s prison. It had not been a world in itself.
And yet the lords had seemed most certain. Their advance was halted. They could go no farther. The world that they spoke of, its sun, its moons—it was Daros’ world. He was sure of it.
Maybe the war was won after all, or at least frozen in impasse. Maybe—
The power that swallowed stars, that blasted worlds into ash, surely had not been brought to a halt by the simple existence of Daros’ world or any other. The raiders only served that power. They were mortal, as he had had occasion to observe. The dark was not.
The raids might end and this human enemy be driven back, but the greater enemy would remain. For a few moments he had indulged in hope, in certainty that a simple war would end it all. But it would not be simple. The great matters never were.
The mages came to the citadel on the third day after they passed the Gate. They came heavily shielded and in battle order, darkmages warding lightmages, and Perel leading them. In his black robes he fit this world rather well.
Daros was aware of them long before they came to the citadel. Khafre and Menkare had found a procession of passages that led to an unguarded postern; he and they and Nefret slipped out together. He almost thought, standing under the sky, that he could sense light beyond the veil of darkness: a sun, stars, moons perhaps.
His magelings drew in closer. They had found a balance in this hideous place; their magery was growing stronger, their spirits less frail, and of that he was proud.
They had steeled themselves to endure the dark world, but the coming of trueborn mages—gods, as they thought—drove them close to panic. Daros found himself in the lead and the others behind him, as the mages came up the steep way to the citadel.
Daros advanced a step or two. Perel quickened his pace as his companions slowed. They embraced as brothers, which in the way of war they were. Perel withdrew first, searching Daros’s face with mage-sight. His own face was hidden behind Olenyai veils, but his eyes were keen. “Well and well,” he said. “The boy’s a man. These are your mages?”
“All that are left of them,” Daros said.
Perel bowed to them. “Your sacrifice is great,” he said, “and your courage greater still. I’m honored to be in your presence.”
He had done a great thing, a thing that put Daros in his debt. The magelings stood straighter, and their hearts were firmer. They had begun to remember their strength.
Truly, it was considerable. More than Daros had thought, more than he had hoped for. They all drew together in the lee of the wall, Perel’s mages coming in close, murmuring their names and offering greeting with the courtesy of their order. They eyed Daros askance—even yet his reputation ran before him—but he sensed no hostility, merely curiosity.
He hoped that they were gratified. “We’ve been exploring the citadel,” he said. “Khafre and Menkare have found a number of forgotten or unguarded ways, apart from this one. Nefret has learned the guards’ patterns. We could break this place.”
“Would it make a difference?” asked Perel.
“Very little,” Daros said. “This world is like a hive: it’s clustered
with cities, tunneled with mines. It reaches through Gates to worlds where the sun still shines, so that its lords and its slaves may eat.”
“We had thought,” one of the mages said, “that these lords drank blood.”
“They’re mortal,” said Daros. “They worship oblivion; they live in the dark. But they’re flesh and blood. They eat bread as we do.”
“No blood?” the Mage seemed disappointed.
“Nightwalkers live on blood,” Nefret said. Her voice wavered at first, but then grew stronger. “The lords use them like hounds, to hunt through Gates, to find new worlds. Then they reward them with the blood of captives.”
“How many Gates?” asked Perel. “How many worlds?”
“Many,” said Daros. “But there will be no more, they say, until they break a wall that’s risen to bar their Gates. From everything we can discover, it seems to be our world that’s stopped them. Did you know you’d done that to them?”
Perel’s blank look was answer enough. One of the others said, “You’re sure it’s our world? Our walls?”
“It can’t be any other,” Daros said. “Maybe it has something to do with the Ring of Fire. Can you speak to your fellows? Did you keep a binding when you came through the Gate?”
“We tried,” Perel said. “It broke once the Gate closed. We’re alone here. Unless—maybe you … ?”
“Not I, either,” said Daros. He stiffened his back and drew a breath.
“No matter. You are what I prayed for. You’ll be enough. Khafre has found an empty barracks. Better yet, it has a passage to the storerooms. You’ll have food, water. No one should find you.”
“What will we do, then? Simply hide?”
“For a little while,” Daros said, “until you have the lie of the land, and until I’m certain of a thing or two. I think I know what we can do, but it may be more than we’re capable of.”
“Yes?” said Perel.
“Yes,” Daros said. It was almost a sigh. “This world is populated with slaves. If they can be freed and persuaded to turn on their masters …”
“Indeed,” said Perel. “That would be an intriguing solution. But how does it drive back the darkness?”
“That will take more than this one world. It will take ours, too, and the world in which the emperor is, and one other. That one I can reach. The others … if we can’t come to them, there may be nothing we can do to end this war.”
“I prefer hope to despair,” Perel said. “Come, bring us in. We’ll settle as we can, then see what we can see.”
Daros had been in command too long. He welcomed Perel’s air of brisk decision, but it stung a little. He had wavered and wobbled and dithered for a long count of days. This Olenyas stood outside a postern gate, not even having seen the inside of the citadel, and knew at once what to do and how to do it.
The Olenyas had training. Daros had experience, though hardly as much as Perel had, and a degree of headlong folly that could pass, in certain quarters, for courage.
And he had knowledge. He was not sure how much he had yet, or how much of it was truly useful, but he would gather more as he could.
He did not say any of that. He simply said, “Come.”
Daros saw the mages settled in the forgotten guardroom, and made certain that they could raid the stores of food and water. He left them eating packets of hard cakes that must be a form of journey-bread, and drinking jars of water. They would have liked him to stay, but he had a thought in his mind, and it was best if he continued among the slaves.
Nefret stayed with them. She would serve as messenger if there was need, and she would teach them all that she knew of this place and its people. The others followed Daros back to captivity.
Sometimes slaves died. Their bodies vanished, and nothing more was said of them. It seemed the overseers reckoned Nefret dead; there was no outcry, no inquiry. Her niche that night was as empty as Daros’ dreams.
In the morning, when maybe a sun rose beyond the thick wall of shadow, a lord and his following strode into the dining-hall as the slaves broke their fast. He stood with haughty expression and folded arms while his companions passed up and down the hall, running hands over faces, prodding arms and thighs, singling out this slave and that.
Daros gritted his teeth at the touch of those hard hands, and secured his shields as best he might. The man who had examined him thrust him sharply away from the table, toward the wall. A number of slaves stood there already. Menkare was among them, and after a moment, Khafre.
All of those chosen were larger than their fellows, and stronger. The rest stayed where they were, mute and empty of thought. The chosen formed in a line and marched out of the hall. They turned, not down the corridor to their usual day’s labor, but up a stair. It led to more barracks, level upon level, but then to the first of the training courts.
It was empty now of men in training, but the lord waited for them there, and with him one who might be a priest. Neither man had any glimmer of magery, but both had eyes, for whatever use they might be in this place. Daros kept his head down and his body slumped in imitation of the slaves around him.
The priest drew from his robe a thing of metal and glass that looked somewhat like the whirring sphere in the tower. This was smaller; it emitted no light. It did not whirr, but hummed softly as he held it up, balanced on his palm, spinning and spinning.
A faint sigh ran through the slaves. One by one, then all together, they stood straighter. Their faces were still blank, their eyes still gone, but somehow they seemed more awake. Still slaves, thought Daros, but slaves with a glimmer of conscious will.
His heart beat so hard that he feared the lord could hear it. The feather on his breast was still, but there was awareness in it. It might almost have been an eye, looking out upon this place with cold intensity.
The lord hissed softly. His escort sprang from behind him, scattering through the court. Steel rang as they drew swords. They struck without warning.
Not a choosing after all, Daros thought in despair, but a culling. Except that …
They were not striking to kill. The ones chosen, freed of binding on their bodily will, whirled into defense. Some fled. Some leaped on their attackers. Some few stood with the passivity of slaves.
Those who fled and those who stood motionless were cut down. Those who fought were let be. Daros understood this in the flash of an instant, even as a long curved blade slashed at him. He darted in under it and caught the wrist of the man who held it. The speed of his attack carried him fully round, and the swordsman with him, sword and all. He braced, twisted.
Hot blood sprang over his hands. The swordsman wheezed and died. Daros recoiled.
He had never killed a man before. But he could not stand in horror, gaping at the thick wetness on his hands. He was a slave—waked to fight but not to think. With all the strength that he had, he lowered his head and his hands, and calmed the swift gasp of his breathing, and stood as the other slaves stood.
The blood dripped from his fingers, dripped and dripped. He felt rather than saw the lord halt in front of him. One of the lord’s men knelt and brushed a hand over the body. “Dead,” he said.
The lord did not acknowledge the word. It was much too brief to encompass the whole of it: reek of blood and loosed bowels, sprawl of body stiffening in the lightless cold.
He gripped Daros’ chin with a gloved hand. Daros struggled not to resist as the lord wrenched his head up. He turned all his furious resentment toward his shields, to conceal the eyes that he had, and the living will.
The lord could see. His eyes fixed on Daros’ face. For an instant, altogether without his willing it, Daros saw into and through those eyes. They did not have sight as he knew it: sight that relied on light. This was …
He saw heat. Heat of the body, heat of the air about the body. His world was a pattern of shifting shades of darkness, and about them a deep red cast, like the embers of a dying fire.
He saw Daros in red on red on red: a tall and rob
ust man-shape, its heat faintly concealed by the robe it wore. It seemed he did not see eyes. His lip curled at the stink of cooling blood. “Take it,” he said to one of his men. “Clean it. Bring it to me.”
The man kicked Daros’ feet from under him, then heaved him up and carried him out. He made himself as heavy as he could, a limp, lifeless weight dragging at the guard’s hands. The man cursed him but did not drop him.
In the hall, the culling ended; the dead were carried away. Just before he passed out of earshot, he heard the clang of weapons, and the voice of one whom he had taken to thinking of as a sergeant: “Up weapons! On guard!”
But Daros was not to be trained to fight. He suspected that he would not live much longer, either, for the crime of killing a lord. He bided his time, gathered his power, held fear sternly at bay. Fear was the very breath and life of this place. He would not let it conquer him.
THIRTY
THIS CLEANSING WAS MORE THOROUGH THAN WHEN DAROS HAD first come to this world as a slave. He was stripped of the dark robe—but not of the things he wore about his neck, which were invisible, intangible, imperceptible—and passed through cold fire and cold water and a scalding blast of steam. Then slaves scrubbed him all but raw, and clipped his hair and shaved his beard and scraped every scrap of hair from his body.
When he was as naked as a man could be, they dressed him in a garment as tight as a skin but strangely flexible, binding him from throat to ankle. It covered him, but left nothing to the imagination. He had a brief, thoroughly unworthy thought, of radical fashions and wanton women.
The thought fled as soon as it appeared. In that strange notnakedness, he was brought to a room in which stood four others likewise clipped and clad. None was of either world that he knew. They were all eyeless, but sharply alert. Their stance, their carriage—they were warriors, honed to a deadly edge: Olenyai of their people.
