Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

“She will,” Perel said. Then after a pause: “My lord, are you well?”

  “Well enough,” said Daros. “It doesn’t matter. You—are you strong? Are you succeeding?”

  Perel nodded. “The binding on the slaves is a remarkably simple thing, stamped like a sack of coins from the same mint. Once we free one, the rest of the slaves bound with that one begin to work their way free as well. It’s rather wonderful. One working, one man roused to awareness of what was done to him, and twenty more rise up beside him.”

  “There’s no murmur of it above,” Daros said. “No one there knows of it.”

  “Everyone below is sworn to silence,” said Perel. “When the time comes, the signal will go out; the slaves will rise. All over this world, they’ll raise the revolt.”

  Daros took a dark pleasure in the news. “Good,” he said. “Splendid. The gods must be with us. Who knew that so many people could be so adept at pretending to be enslaved?”

  “Well,” said Perel with a touch of discomfort. “There is a small binding within the oath, to hold their tongues for them until they’re all set free.”

  Daros’ lips stretched in a mirthless smile. “Ah well,” he said. “What’s virtue in a war such as this? We’re none of us innocent, in the end. Only let us win back the light; then we’ll remember the laws again.”

  “My lord,” Perel said, drawing closer, peering into the darkness of the hood. “What is it? Have they harmed you?”

  Daros wanted to laugh like a mad thing, but he had a little sense left. “They’ve done nothing that I can’t undo.” And now he was lying to a friend as he had lied to the dark lords.

  It was in a good cause. He lightened his voice as much as he could and said, “I’ve breathed the air of home again. It’s made me remember why I fight.”

  “Ah,” said Perel. “It’s been years for you. Why did you even come back?”

  “I had to,” Daros said.

  Footsteps sounded; voices. Daros would not have said that he fled, but he retreated quickly, in what order he could. Maybe Perel tried to call him back; maybe not. He was long gone before the Olenyas might have found words to say.

  The mages were safe. The war was proceeding apace. Daros returned to his prison, walking slowly once he had escaped the mage’s too-clear perception. His wards were armed; he had not far to go before he walked where slaves of his kind were permitted to walk. His hunger for light was approaching desperation—even knowing that the touch of it would burn out his eyes.

  There was no light left inside him. He could remember stars, but when he sought the sun, there was only pain. His fingers clawed, itching to tear out the eyes that had been forced upon him. With an effort that wrenched a gasp from him, he knotted them together within the sleeves of his robe.

  They were waiting by the stair that led upward to the lords’ tower. The wards that he had set were undisturbed. They had not crossed the line; they stood just behind it: a dozen warrior slaves and the king himself. A priest stood behind the king as if to use him for a shield.

  Daros halted. Another dozen men closed in behind. He had not sensed them at all. To magery they were still invisible, warded in a way that he had not seen before.

  The priest advanced warily from his hiding place. He had a thing of metal in his hands, round like a ball, made of wire and glass. It looked very like the thing that the king guarded in his tower. Something stirred inside it, something that Daros’ eye did not want to fix upon.

  The priest trembled as he drew nearer. The warrior slaves closed in behind Daros, barring his retreat. The thing in the priest’s hand whirred and hummed. Then, to the priest’s manifest astonishment, it began to spin, throwing off sparks of dark light. Completely without conscious will, Daros struck it with a slap of power. It burst asunder.

  The priest shrieked and collapsed. But the king was smiling. There was nothing reassuring whatsoever in that curve of thin lips in the black beard. He cocked his head at the warrior slaves who surrounded Daros—none of them from his own barracks; these were all strangers. They got a grip on him; something slipped over his head from behind and snapped tight.

  He could breathe, just. It felt like steel cord digging into his windpipe. But worse was the constraint upon his magery. Breath was mere fleshly necessity. Magery was the essence of what he was.

  The king’s smile widened. He turned and began to climb the stair.

  Daros stood alone in a bare cell of a room. They had stripped him of everything but the cord about his neck. Estarion’s knife, the Mage’s feather, Seti-re’s stone—gone. All gone. His arms were drawn up over his head and bound by a rope to a ring in the ceiling. His feet touched the cold stone floor, just.

  Warrior slaves had hung him like a newly slaughtered ox and withdrawn. Without magic to warm him, the chill of this sunless place was sinking into his bones. His feet and hands were numb. It would be a great irony if, having survived all this while in the dark world, he died of simple cold.

  He had nowhere to go but inside himself. That was not the most pleasant of places, but it was better than the world without. There was light in it after all: sunlight caught in the gold of Merian’s hair. She never had been able to tame it; even when she was most severe and queenly, curls of it persisted in escaping any bonds she set on them. He loved to tangle his fingers in it, covering her face with kisses, until she laughed and protested, then retaliated in kind.

  In this dream or memory, she was not laughing. She sat in a circle of mages and hard-bitten personages who could only be warriors and generals. Somewhat incongruously, she cradled an infant in her arms. The child was too young to look like anything in particular, but there was no mistaking the color of its hair.

  The council was settling the affairs of a great war: matters of armies and weapons, attack and invasion. The child was asleep with its fist in its mouth. He could not focus on the war; his eyes and mind kept returning to those tiny and perfect fingers, and those copper-bright curls.

  What he felt, he did not know. Joy. Incredulity. Wistfulness: that such a thing could not be in any world but that of dream.

  Something was nagging at him. After a long and reluctant while, he gave it a name: pain. A mailed fist was striking him again and again, with beautifully calculated precision. It broke nothing, but it hurt a very great deal.

  He opened eyes on a world altogether alien to that of sunlight and a child’s face. Red and black: blood and darkness. One of the lords had the honor of striking him even after he had groaned and come to himself. The king watched, arms folded, dispassionate. After a stretching while, he said, “Enough.”

  The lord lowered his arm. He was breathing quickly; he flexed the arm as if he were glad of the respite.

  The king looked Daros up and down, then walked in a circle, examining him fore and aft. His finger brushed points of particular pain: elbows, knees, back and buttocks, ribs. Daros’ breath hissed between his teeth. Perhaps in spite of the lord’s care, one rib was cracked.

  Last of all, the king laid a hand on his genitals. He held them lightly as they did their best to crawl into Daros’ belly. One twist of the fingers would crush them.

  With what might have been regret, the king’s hand withdrew. “It seems human,” he said to the priest who had been hiding behind him. “Can you be sure it has what we need?”

  “As sure as I can be, lord,” the priest said.

  “It seems perfectly powerless now.”

  “It is bound, lord,” said the priest. “Its humanity serves our purpose well: it requires fewer strictures than the other.”

  “It will be docile? It will serve our purpose?”

  “It is bound,” the priest said again.

  “Do bear in mind,” the king said rather too gently, “where we found it, and what it had risen to before we understood that our devices were going mad because of something among the slaves, not some rebellion from the thing in its prison. This slave should have been bound beyond resistance; and yet it was spying in passages forbid
den to it.”

  “This binding will hold,” the priest said.

  Daros had had enough. “I am not an it,” he said. “I am human—at least as human as you. Will you do me the courtesy of killing me quickly, and get it over?”

  He more than half expected to be ignored, but the king turned those lightless eyes on him and raised a brow. “But,” he said, “we have no intention of killing you. Not at all. You are much more useful alive than dead.”

  “As what? A hostage? You know or even care who I am?”

  “Who,” said the king, “no. What you are—yes, that matters. Your kind are an offense before the gods. But my priests assure me that you are more than the usual run of magical vermin. A great deal more, they insist. So much more that we can make actual use of you.”

  Daros had begun to see where this was leading. “No,” he said. “Oh, no. You can’t make me—”

  “It is fortunate that intelligence is not a requirement of this captivity,” the king said. “Only power. And power you have, power like a sun. Light casts shadow, the ancients teach us. The greater the light, the deeper the shadow. Your light will feed our darkness. Your power will make us strong.”

  “No,” said Daros. Desperately he beat against the binding that held his magery. To kill with power was forbidden—not only because it was murder, but because it killed the power itself. Estarion had done it. It had driven him mad.

  In the end he had gained back both his magic and his sanity: he was Sun-blood, after all. Daros was mortal. If he killed with power, he killed that power. Then the lords would destroy his body, and it would be over, done with. He would be gone. The Mage would die. And—

  Agony rent him to his center. He hung gagging, retching, no strength in him to curl about the focus of the pain.

  They had not gutted him, nor gelded him either, though he could almost wish they had. The lord with the iron fist lowered it and stepped back. Very slowly the agony faded.

  “I am not to be ignored,” the king said mildly. And to the lord: “Cut him down.”

  The lord looked as if he might protest, but he did as he was bidden. Daros dropped bonelessly to the floor. His hands, his neck, his power were still bound. He lay on his face, trying not to count the number of his hurts. His magic hammered still against the bindings. Were they a little weaker?

  A foot hooked beneath him and flung him onto his back. The king stood over him. “If you submit,” he said, “and consent to serve us, your servitude will be much lighter and your lot less difficult. But whether you will or no, you will be the most potent of all our slaves.”

  Daros bit his tongue until it bled. He could cry like a child; he could beg for mercy. He could be defiant or rebellious. It would not matter. There was no escape from this but death.

  He lay limp, as if he had been defeated. Warrior slaves heaved him up. He was glad to require three of them; his dead weight was considerable. He only regretted that neither the lord nor the king could be troubled to assist their servants.

  They grunted as they hauled him out of the cell and up a narrow stair. They were not above dragging him, catching bruises on every step, until they had come to the top of the tower. A door slid open. Priests waited beyond, and a structure such as Daros had seen before; but those had been small enough to hold in the hand. This was nigh as broad as the room, and as high as a tall man. Set in it was the device that the king had guarded, or its near twin.

  They caged him in it. It closed upon him, encasing him like armor, holding him immobile. No fortress between the worlds, this; no prison for an inhuman Mage. He would endure his slavery within this world.

  The bond about his neck had let go when the cage enclosed him. It made no difference. Each cold metal band ate a little more of his will, sapped a little more of his strength to resist. It opened him to the whirring, humming thing set in the cage, and tempted his power; it lured it out, into the trap.

  So had they captured the Mage long ages ago, and bound him to their will. For all Daros’ struggle to shut down his mind and suppress his power, he could not stop the trickle through the cracks in his shields.

  This was the thrice ninth hell of the Asanian priests. As before when he was simply taken prisoner, he had no useful choice but to retreat into his own mind. It was a capacious place, crackling with lightnings, most of them dark.

  The Mage waited in one of the deep halls. It wore a semblance of life and vigor, but its voice was faint, its shape not quite substantial.

  “You,” Daros said with no love at all. “You did this.”

  “The fault is mine,” the Mage said, “but this was not my will.”

  “They know what I am. Who else could have told them?”

  “You,” said the Mage. “You told them. Your presence in their tower, your hunting and spying—their machines saw you. Be glad, youngling. If the roar of your magic had not overwhelmed the piping and twittering of theirs, your little mages would have been betrayed.”

  “Would it have made a difference?” said Daros bitterly. “I’m trapped now as you were. Are. Will be—but not for much longer, no? Now that you have a successor.”

  “Not much longer, no,” the Mage said. “Youngling, listen. The gift I gave you, the feather of my wing—”

  “Gone,” Daros said. “They took it with the rest.”

  “No,” said the Mage.

  It gestured with its chin. Daros looked down. The feather hung as it had for so long, secure on its cord. He closed his hand about it. It felt real—as it would; he was dreaming.

  “No dream,” the Mage said. “Use the gift. Build with it.”

  It had been speaking sensibly until then—human sense. For that, Daros had doubted that it was real. But this strange twist of thought, that was indeed the Mage. Did it seem a little more substantial?

  “Build,” said the Mage. “Hold and guard. Then later, fight.”

  It melted to mist before Daros could demand that it explain. He could not call it back, even in memory. But its feather remained, solid and real in his hand.

  For lack of greater inspiration, he slipped it from its cord and wielded it like a pen. When he drew it through the air, it left behind a glimmering line. He shaped the letters of his name, a little stiffly for it had been a long while since he held a pen. They hung before him, gleaming. With swift strokes he drew walls about it and surmounted them with towers. Then he drew a gate, but locked and barred it.

  He paused. He was breathing hard as if he had lifted each stone of a living wall and set it upon another. Yet he moved more freely. The trickle of magic through the wards had stopped.

  The Mage’s voice whispered through the feather in his hand. “Build strength, youngling. Build resistance. Hold fast.”

  He fancied that he could hear sadness in that voice, a touch of wistfulness. It had never had that strength, even as great as its power was. Once trapped, it had had no power to free itself, nor to refuse the use that was made of it. It had lacked even the courage to seek the death that would free it.

  Daros had little that the Mage had not given him. It had served him poorly enough. He was as trapped as the Mage had ever been. His magery was protected, yes, but for how long? The dark lords needed it. They would find a way to take it. That was inevitable.

  Or he could die. He had thought that he was ready. Yet, enclosed within his wards, he could not find the determination to do the necessary. The mages might succeed; the war might end. Even the darkness—it might yield to light.

  Not if the dark lords had his power, enslaved, to do with as they would. He must die. He must not give them even the hope of turning him against all that lived and walked in the light.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  NOW. IT MUST BE NOW.

  Merian started awake. She had snatched a few moments’ rest between the long day’s preparations and the night’s incessant attacks; but it had not been overly restful. Her dreams were dark, full of madness and pain. And then, sudden and piercingly clear, came that voice like a ha
wk’s cry.

  You must move now. There is no time to waste!

  It was two days still to the muster. They were nearly ready, but she had yet to speak to her mother of Estarion’s message. It was not cowardice, she told herself. The less time she gave Daruya to ponder objections, the easier it might be to win her over.

  But the urgency in that voice, the desperation beneath, set her heart to pounding. She knew the voice. It was the Mage, the creature whose power the dark lords had enslaved. She reached to the place where it had been, hoping to catch it, hold it, learn more of it, but it was gone.

  Quickly, before she lost courage, she touched her mother’s mind, away in Starios. She had good hope of finding Daruya too preoccupied to trouble with her, but Daruya happened to be resting as well. She basked in the sun as all of their blood were wont to do, in the innermost of her chambers, where even her husband must ask leave to enter.

  She admitted Merian to her mind with remarkably little testiness. “Trouble?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Merian said. “I had a sending. The dark ones’ Mage—it summoned us all. Now, it said. We must attack now.”

  “Did it?” Daruya frowned. “How could it know what we intend?”

  “The mages know,” Merian said. “It is a mage. Maybe—”

  “Maybe we’ve been betrayed.”

  Merian’s heart constricted. “No. He would never—”

  “Is the Mage a he?” Daruya inquired.

  “Mother,” said Merian, scrambling her wits together. “This is a true sending. Whatever the cause, I believe we should obey it. All is ready, or as ready as it can be. And there is something …”

  When Merian did not immediately go on, Daruya raised a brow. “Something that rives you with guilt?”

  “Something that you may find objectionable, but it comes from the emperor.”

  “The emperor is lost on the other side of the dark.”

  “He found his way to me,” Merian said: “in strict truth, to Elian; he was hunting the youngest heir of the line. He has a plan that may scatter the darkness.”