by Judith Tarr
“Is it not my place to be the judge of that?”
“If you fail to see why she should be taken to safety, then your judgment is even more faulty than I feared.”
“Nowhere in this world is safe,” Merian said. “It will all be gone before this child is weaned, if we don’t find a way to win the war first.”
“There is one safe place,” said Daruya. “Endros Avaryan.”
“What, the old royal city? The Tower of the Sun? Shall we go to sleep beside our firstfather, we three, and hope to wake on the other side of oblivion?”
“Don’t mock it,” Daruya said sharply. “The well of power there is even stronger than it is here.”
“It draws from the same source,” Merian said. “When the Ring of Fire falls, so will the Tower. The world itself will be blasted into ash.”
“And you speak of it so lightly” Daruya sank into the chair that stood beside the bed. She was as tired as they all were, driven to the edge of exhaustion. “Whatever we do, we should do it quickly. I’ve called out the armies, and armed the lesser Gates. Wherever the enemy appears, our forces will appear to fight him. They have orders to seize whatever weapons they can. Mages will discover if they can be made by magic or by craft. I have also,” she said after a pause, “raised an army of picked fighters to turn the tables on the enemy: to pursue him through his own Gates, and take the war to him in the dark world.”
Merian should have been outraged. The mages of Gates were hers; they were not her mother’s to command. But whether it was the aftermath of the birth taking the edge off her temper, or the inevitability of the logic that informed all her mother had done, she could muster no more than a spark of irritation. “Your army will be welcome,” she said, “to fight beside my army of mages. Those whom we sent are doing as they were bidden. When the enemy’s slaves are in revolt, we attack.”
“My troops will move in the dark of Brightmoon,” Daruya said.
Seven days. Merian set her teeth. Now her temper was rising. “My mages in the dark world will send a summons when the time comes.”
“How will they do that? Sacrifice another of their own to the dark army?”
That was cruel. “Some of them are already in it,” Merian said sweetly. “They will come with word.”
“Seven days,” her mother said. “Have your mages ready”
“This is mad!” Merian burst out. “You rush in headlong, you know nothing of where you go—”
“We do know,” Daruya said. “Your lover gave us all that we need.”
“You trust him?”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” Merian said. “Damn you, yes.”
“I do not,” said Daruya. “But last night we captured another of the dark captains, and put him to the question. It seems your fallen prince told the truth.”
“It could be a trap.”
“So it could,” Daruya said, “but no worse than what we face if we continue to do nothing.”
That was manifestly true. Merian hissed but said no further word.
Her mother rose, stiff with exhaustion, and kissed her, and then Elian, on the forehead. “Seven days,” she said.
It was an ultimatum. Merian set her lips together and held her peace.
THIRTY-FOUR
SIX DAYS.
The Prince of Han-Gilen arrived much as the princess regent had, but he had had the grace to ask leave before he appeared in her receiving-room. It was much changed since he was last there: rather against Merian’s will, it had become the nursery. Elian’s cradle stood near the wall. There was never a mage far from her.
The rest of the room was crowded with gifts. Mages had brought them, things that they reckoned an infant could use, or bits of tribute, or garlands of flowers from far quarters of the world. Soldiers had come, too, or sent their captains; villagers who dared venture outside their walls; lords from round about, and lords from farther away with mages, and lesser Gates, in their service. One day had passed, and already this room was full; the stream of booty had begun to overflow the door and trickle down the stair.
It was ungracious to refuse anything that was given. After a suitable interval, Merian would give most of it to the poor; it was the custom. But it must be seen in her possession first, and universally admired.
The prince, like the princess regent, arrived empty-handed. He bowed to Merian and bent over the cradle. The child in it was awake, watching the dance of lights that one of the mages had wrought for her. He wove a net of gold and silver fire and set it to dancing with the rest. She was much too young to laugh, but her pleasure was a warmth in Merian’s belly
When he straightened, he was smiling. He looked much more like his son then, however briefly; he was somber soon enough. “She is an ornament to both our houses,” he said.
Merian accepted the tribute as her daughter’s due.
“I have a gift for you,” he said. “One of your scholars found it. If I may?”
That was mage’s courtesy. She lowered her wards to accept the gift.
The book in which the scholar had found it was ancient; the tongue was long vanished from the earth. The scholar had not been perfectly certain of every word, but she had rendered it as best she could.
The text was not long at all. Much of it, if the scholar had known it, was embedded within, in the shape of the words. Sea of worlds, drifts of foam. Darkness into light.
A bowl of water. A feather in the wind. Winged splendor bound and forced into servitude.
The seed of knowledge would take root and grow. Merian could only pray that there was time for it to bear fruit before her mother’s madness overwhelmed them all.
“I don’t think she is mad,” the prince said, caught still in her thoughts. “There is another thing that we found, raiding through my library. The message declared this world to be a nexus, a core and center of Gates. The enemy must break it in order to go on, but in the breaking, might close their own Gates forever. They can do nothing until they find a way past us. And that did baffle me, lady, because as dearly as I love this world, I never had reckoned it the heart of all that is. Even the Heart of the World, despite its name, was only a way-station of sorts. It, in itself, had no power over Gates.
“We found, buried between household accounts from the reign of the third prince and a grimoire so black it had to be thrice warded before I could touch it, a scroll of tales for children. It told of the mages of Anshan, how they made alliance with a race of gods from the stars. Falcon-gods, they were called. They flew from world to world and from sun to sun, and they trailed streamers of light behind them. But where light is, there must be shadow. As the ages passed, the shadow began to swallow the light.
“The gods begged the mages for aid in reining in the shadow and bringing back the light. The mages had sworn oaths of aid and alliance, and so were bound. Most had no objection; they had gained much from their allies, had learned great arts and powers.
But a few had always whispered that the gods were no gods at all, but beasts with the minds and powers of men. They gathered the young and the foolish and the merely afraid, and convinced them that the false gods were fair prey; that they should be overcome and their power seized. Then the mages would rule the worlds, and be as gods themselves.
“There was one among this faction who nursed a great grievance. He was brother to the ruler of the mages, but his mother had been but a concubine. He was the elder and the stronger and, he reckoned, by far the better fit to rule, but the law was against him. He had to see a foolish stripling, a mage of no more than adequate power, preferred forever above him.
“He was not a darkmage as we would reckon it, but he had long been a student of the darkness that the falcon-gods had created. In time, he became enthralled with it. He began to worship it. He became its priest, and he gathered others of like mind, and founded a cult of oblivion.
“There was a war—one of many, all forgotten now. It ended with the falcon-gods destroyed and the priesthood of the dark vanqu
ished and all their power taken away unto the final generation. Their lord escaped with a number of his followers, after his power was taken but before he could be put to death for the murder of gods. What became of him thereafter, no one knew.”
“Not all the gods were destroyed,” Merian said. It was enormous, this truth. Too enormous to encompass in these brief moments. “One lived, and was enslaved. The dark enemy—they are our own. Do you think they know?”
“It was a hundred generations ago and more,” he said, “and theirs was a cult of forgetfulness. The Forbidden Secrets—I think those might have been theirs, and the order that protected them were their heirs and survivors, escaped to the far side of the world.”
“The Gates end here because they began here. The gods found no other world so blessed with magic or so numerous with mages. They built their Gates to pass back and forth.” Merian had not known she knew this. It was coming from inside of her, from the place where Daros’ message lay, and from the vision in the water. Oh, indeed, she had been given a key, and this was the lock in which it turned. “When they died and the priests’ power was taken away, the knowledge of these Gates faded. Their captive would hardly have wished to remind them. Then how—why—”
“Inevitability,” he said. “Sooner or later, the dark priests would come back this way, and find the world that they no longer recognized as their own. Their prisoner is weak, and likely dying. It can no longer protect us, if indeed it ever did. Who knows what it remembers? As ancient as it is, and as crazed with confinement, it may not itself know what it knows.”
Merian had her doubts of that, but she did not voice them. “Our fault,” she said. “In the end, all of this is our fault. We thought we were but one more obstacle on the road to oblivion. Our ancestors—our kin—built that road.”
“For myself,” said the prince, “I appreciate another irony. The Sunborn devoted his life to battle against the dark. His heir fought against him on behalf of the balance of light and dark. And now, after all, the mad conqueror has been proved right, if not precisely sane. The dark truly was to be feared; truly would come to overwhelm us all.”
“Do you think …” She could hardly form the words; there was something terrible about them. “Do you think this is the great cause for which he was enchanted into sleep? Is it time for him to wake?”
“No,” said the prince, as flat as a door shutting. “You have been in the Tower. Is he sane? Has he dreamed his way out of the rage that would have destroyed this world?”
Merian looked down at her hands, at the golden Kasar that had come to her from that first father of her line. It burned perpetually; she was never free of pain. But in the Tower, there had been no pain at all.
She had been very young when her great-grandfather took her there. He had taught her how to use the Kasar as a Gate, not quite like the one inside her, but of that kin and kind. He had shown her the chamber in the heart of the black crag above the river of Endros, and brought her before the sleeper on his bed of stone. She had been properly awed, and suitably humbled, by the strength of that son of a god: even enchanted, even in sleep as deep as death.
He had not been sane. Not even slightly. All his being was banked rage. If she woke that, she could only conceive of waking it to do what the dark priests would do: to blast this world to ash.
“We may be as forgotten as the mages of Anshan before that one is ready to wake,” the prince said. “No, lady; we have no one to rely on but ourselves. It’s fitting, yes? It began with our world. It will end here.”
“But,” said Merian. “The dark world. I thought it was theirs. How—”
“I would wager,” he said, “that it was their refuge after they fled the justice of their kin. They cloaked it in darkness and opened Gates to worlds of light, so that they could be fed and clothed and provided with servants. Women, too, one would suppose, since all the priesthood were men. Their blood may be so far removed from us now that there is little common kinship left.”
“They were ours in the beginning,” she said. “They remain ours until the end. Ours to burden us with shame; ours to overcome if we can.
He bowed to her. She was the heir of the Sunborn, his expression said. However great a prince he might be, he was and always had been her vassal.
“You have given us a great gift,” she said. “We are in your debt.”
“You are not, lady,” he said. “Are we not kin? Do not kin look after one another? I ask only one thing in payment.”
“Ask,” she said, “and it is yours.”
“Give me leave to visit my granddaughter,” he said.
“My lord,” said Merian, “that right is yours by blood and bond of kin. You had no need to ask for it in payment.”
“I was not done, lady,” he said. “Give me leave to do that. And when we both judge that it is time, send her to me. Let me teach her what I know.” She would have spoken; his upraised hand silenced her. “Lady, I know I earned no credit in the raising of my son. I would hope to be more proficient in instructing my son’s child.”
Merian startled herself with the intensity of her resistance. This was her child—hers. But she had a little sense left. “When we judge that it is time,” she said, “you may foster my daughter.”
That time might be never. She left that unspoken. But he was content.
He left her with a great deal to ponder, and little time in which to do it. She had mages to gather, a war to prepare. And there was Elian. Merian had refused a wetnurse: she would nurse her child herself. Yet that day, after the prince had returned to Han-Gilen, she sent for the robust young woman who had been presented to her when Elian was born. She had been polite in her dismissal; she was glad of that now. If she had flung the woman out bodily, she might have had difficulty in persuading her to take the position after all.
Jadis had nursed three of her own, all weaned now, and half a dozen for ladies in Seahold. She was sensible and calm, and she had no fear of mages. Their comings and goings, the opening and shutting of Gates, roused barely a blink after the first hour. She kept quietly to a corner, she tended Elian when there was need, and she intruded not at all on the business of war.
Well before that day was over, Merian’s breasts ached abominably. She bound them tight with bands as Jadis instructed, and schooled herself to ignore them. It was harder by far to watch this stranger nursing her child, but that too she endured.
Batan found her late in the day, creaking through the beginnings of the swordsman’s dance. He had been in Seahold; she had heard him ride in with a great clatter of armor and hooves, and a shout of laughter that she could never mistake. Batan was not nor had ever been a quiet man.
Except in the birthing of a child. With that in memory, she smiled as he came into the practice-court. “Welcome, my lord,” she said. “All’s well in Seahold?”
“As well it can be, lady,” he said. “And you? I saw the little one—she’s grown already. I could swear she smiled at me.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she had,” said Merian.
The pause had given her back her breath, or most of it. She returned to her exercises, cursing her weakness but determined to overcome it.
“You’re back to it early, lady,” he said. “Is it safe for you to do that?”
“I’m not fragile!”
He blinked. She had startled herself; he recovered more quickly than she. “No, lady, you are not fragile. But you’re not even two sunsets out of childbed. Should you be pushing yourself so hard?”
“I can rest after all this is over.” He frowned at her. She tried to smile—if she remembered how. “Come now, my friend. I’m a mage, and I’m Sun-blood. I’m as strong as I need to be.”
“I do hope so, lady,” he said.
She lowered the wooden sword and wiped the sweat from her brow. “Batan, will you do something for me?”
“Anything, lady,” he said.
“If this goes as I fear it will, look after my daughter. See that she’s saf
e. And when you can, bring her to the Prince in Han-Gilen.”
That only slightly surprised him. Word was out, she could see; there were already rumors enough of a redheaded child and the rare gift of the Red Prince’s presence. “Not to the princess in Starios?” he asked.
“Take her to the prince,” said Merian, “if it’s no longer safe here.”
“You’re riding with the army.”
She had been fool enough to hope that he would not come to that conclusion—at least, not until she was safely gone. She should have known better. “Don’t tell my mother,” she said.
“She probably will come after me, at that,” he mused. “How much of an army will I need to defend myself?”
“None,” said Merian. “She has a virtue rare in princes: she only blames those who are worthy to be blamed.”
“And I won’t be, for letting you go?”
“All of that blame is mine,” she said. “Will you promise? Take my daughter to the prince; keep silent to the princess until I’m well gone.”
“I will promise,” he said, “on one condition.”
“I will not give you my firstborn,” she said swiftly.
He laughed. “Of course you won’t. She’s already spoken for. A kiss, lady. That’s all I ask. Give me a kiss, and I’ll be your servant to the death.”
That was so preposterous and so utterly presumptuous that she could think of no better response than to give him what he asked for. He was a man of experience; he was thorough, and he much enjoyed the taking of the gift.
She felt nothing. As soon as she courteously could, she withdrew, and resisted the urge to wipe her mouth. He was flushed; it spoke much in his favor that he had not fallen on her in blind passion.
Many men would have deluded themselves with hope, but he looked into her face and saw the truth. His sigh was full of regret, but she sensed no anger in it. “Lady,” he said, “whoever has your heart, I envy him with all that’s in me. If you aren’t the very world to him, then he’s the greatest fool there ever was.”
She could find no answer for that. What was she to Daros? Did he even remember her? Or had the darkness faded all memory to oblivion?
