Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  This she had not foreseen. Nor the length of the hunt, the darkness, the weight of lightless stone. The diversion had succeeded: these passages were deserted, their defenders drawn off toward the beleaguered gate.

  Urziad went in search of the mages, if any were left here; most or all of them would be abroad, leading slaves against their masters. Varani was still on the scent, following the track upward and inward. Merian knew where she must be going. The compulsion of it reached even through her own fogs and confusions.

  Estarion was weakening. Daruya, with the Sun’s power to draw on, had risen to match him. Merian, trapped in the dark, was no more than a link in the chain, without strength or volition of her own.

  She must break free; must find her will, wield her power. Two alone could not fight this fight. She was the center, the key. This heaviness of spirit, this darkness within her, was the enemy—far more so than men fighting men under the starless sky.

  One mage remained in the citadel after all, waiting for them. It was a darkmage, hardly more than a child, but strong in her power. The track ended in the passage in which she waited, up against a long stair. There was a strange scent in that place, somewhat like thunder and somewhat like blood. It raised Merian’s hackles.

  The others seemed not to notice it. The darkmage, whose name was Gaiya, greeted them with rigid composure and a spark of gladness that she could not quite conceal. She spoke in a whisper. “They have the prince,” she said. “They caught him here. The Mage is dead; they’ve bound the prince and will compel him to work their magics for them, unless he dies first. We didn’t know until we’d scattered to wage the war. If our mages should have come back and tried to free him—”

  “No,” Merian said. “The war needs them more. Can you guide us to him?”

  “He’s in the lords’ tower. That’s warded. We haven’t been able to break the wards, and he forbade us to force them. Then he was taken, and there was the war, and—”

  As strong as she was determined to be, she was near tears. This had been a cruel duty. That none of the mages had broken was a tribute to their strength and the clarity of their power.

  “Go to Perel,” Merian said, “and serve him as you may. We’ll find our way upward.”

  “But—” said Gaiya.

  “Go,” said Merian. “Give him this message for me: ‘Fight until it all ends, or until I myself bid you stop.’”

  “Until it ends,” Gaiya repeated, “or you command it to end.”

  “Yes,” Merian said. And for the third time. “Go.”

  The child fled with relief that almost cleansed the air of the memory that haunted it. The others would have been glad to follow, but they had a war to fight.

  Merian had some of her wits back. It was Varani now who seemed fuddled, who stood slack with despair. “If they have him,” she said, “there is no hope for any of us.”

  “He’ll die before he surrenders,” Merian said.

  No one gave voice to doubt, which was a kindness. Time was running out; but now she had a focus, and knowledge. “Upward,” she said. “Those who would come, come. The rest of you, go where Gaiya went. I’ll have no deadweight in this.”

  They all stood watching her. None retreated. She nodded briskly and began to ascend the stair.

  There had been wards. They left a memory behind, like the scent of blood and terror below. The Mage’s death had broken them. They would rise again if Daros surrendered his will to his captors.

  Merian’s heart was keening, nor would it desist for any will she set on it. Yet her mind was very clear. She had left confusion down below. The mortal war, the war in heaven, had shrunk to insignificance. It was all coming to this single point, this stair, this tower and its captive.

  Varani walked close behind her. The others trailed somewhat, weaving wards as they went. Kaliya, in the rear, climbed with drawn sword.

  Merian’s weapons remained in their sheaths. This fight would have little to do with steel. The quiet grated on her nerves. No sound of fighting came through the walls. Her legs ached. Her breasts ached. She was weary to the bone.

  They were near the top of the stair. Varani’s hand gripped her shoulder. She halted. After a moment she heard it: a sound below the threshold of mortal hearing, like the pounding of waves on a distant shore.

  Wards, beleaguered by a force such as she had not seen before. It had nothing in it of living spirit. It made her think, somehow, of the automatons that craftsmen made in the Nine Cities to amuse the Syndics’ children. Metal and glass; power without soul. Magic trapped and twisted to mortal will.

  That was the secret—the key. Stripped of magery, the dark mages of Anshan had found another way. It was darker than dark magic, and cruel beyond conceiving.

  If she had harbored any faintest glimmer of pity for those mages so long bereft of their power, it vanished in that moment of understanding. She broke the door at the top of the stair, and blasted the guards beyond it with the Sun’s fire.

  They went up like torches. Even in her rage, she was taken aback. Altogether without intending it, she had taken all that was in her, Sunpower threefold, and wielded it as if it had been hers to command. Estarion’s startlement, her mother’s shock, sparked in her awareness.

  The light of the working lingered, plain light of day in any mortal world, but unbearably, searingly brilliant here. Those defenders who had not fallen to the blast of fire were felled by the light. They lay writhing, screaming soundlessly. She stepped over them. Behind her, Kaliya did the merciful thing: a swift stroke of the blade to each throat.

  Merian was beyond mercy. She followed the path of fallen defenders. The end of it was a door, and a barren room, and a cage of metal about a shape of shadow.

  The defenders there wore shielded helms and carried the weapons that spat dark fire. She left them to Kaliya and the other mages. Estarion was broad awake inside her, and Daruya in a rage that nearly matched her own. They confronted the last of the defenders, the tall man who stood in front of the cage. Royal blood knew royal blood.

  The dark king had shielded his eyes with a band of metal and black glass. In his pale face with its black beard, Merian saw a distant echo of Batan and his people, the warrior folk of Anshan.

  He had no power to see what she was, and perhaps no spirit for it, either. He had courage; that, she could not doubt. His men fell before they could even lift their weapons, but he neither wavered nor flinched. “Whatever becomes of us,” he said, “the dark will rule.”

  “That might be true,” she said, “or it might not. Either way, you will be dead. You were condemned long ages ago for crimes beyond the reach of mercy. Your crimes have only grown worse since you fled that sentence. If there could ever have been hope of appeal, that is altogether gone.”

  “Indeed?” said the dark king. “And who are you to stand in judgment?”

  “I am everything you ever feared or fought against. I am the destroyer of darkness, the bringer of light. The Sun begot me. The light reared me. I rule in the Sun’s name.”

  He flung back his head and laughed. “Brave little maidchild! When ours are so puny, we drown them. How were you let live? Pity? Scorn? Weakness of spirit?”

  “Only the weak resort to mockery.” She raised her hand. The Sun in it roared and flamed.

  Just as she gathered power to blast him, a shadow darted past her toward the shape in the cage. The bolt of light flew wide. The king sprang. Merian stumbled aside, warrior skills forgotten, fixed on Varani, who had flung herself at the cage, and at the thing that whirred and spun on top of it.

  The king howled and leaped toward Varani. Merian clutched wildly at his arm and spun him about. He slashed at her with a steel claw.

  Merian’s arm and side burned. She snatched her sword from its sheath, stabbing with all the strength she had. The blade struck armor, turned and snapped. The king spat in contempt. She slashed her second blade, the long sharp dagger, across his throat. The hot spray of blood spattered her face and drenched he
r armor.

  She gagged in disgust, but she had already forgotten him. Varani tore at the cage with bleeding fingers. Merian caught her hands and held them, though she struggled, cursing.

  “Lady,” Merian said. “Lady, stop.”

  After a stretching while, Varani yielded. Merian kept a grip on her until she had eased completely, then let her go, but warily. The cage showed no sign of her efforts. The thing of metal spun faster, that was all. The shape within the cage was visible as if through dark glass. The width of the shoulders, the copper brightness of the hair, were unmistakable, though the rest was lost in shadow.

  He was alive—just. The king and his guard were dead, the rulers of this world gone away to the war, but the soulless thing that held him cared nothing for that. It ate at his mind and power, sustaining the life in him when he would have let it go, and bleeding away his magery like a slow wound.

  The Kasar was a white agony in Merian’s hand. She raised it to unlock the bonds of the cage, but hesitated. If he was deeply enslaved, wholly bound to the dark, she would unleash a horror that would put the Sunborn’s madness to shame.

  Varani read it in her eyes. Merian braced for recrimination, but in some deep corner of her spirit, the lady had found both strength and sanity. “If he must be killed,” she said steadily, “I beg your leave to do it. I gave him life. Let me take it away.”

  “Not yet,” said Merian. She could barely speak. The tide of the dark was rising. The magery in her, doubled and trebled, strained to hold together. The effort of sustaining it across the worlds, against the force of the dark, had begun to wear on both the powers within.

  The dark, like the cage, had neither mind nor soul. It simply and inexorably was. A mage, even a god, one could fight. But how could any fleshly being stand against the universe itself?

  “Light,” said Estarion within her. “Fight darkness with light.”

  “Darkness so vast?” she demanded of him. “Oblivion so absolute?”

  “Can you see any other way?” asked Daruya.

  “No,” said Merian. “But—”

  “Tides of light,” said Estarion. “If all the mages could be gathered—if he could be freed, and persuaded to lend his power—”

  “He is dead or corrupted,” said Daruya. “The other mages must be enough.”

  “The other mages are fighting a war across the face of a world,” Merian said.

  “Call them in,” said Estarion.

  “There’s no time.” Merian swayed as she spoke, buffeted by the force of the dark. It smote the bond that joined the three of them, and battered the edges of the light. The war was a bloody confusion; the lords had rallied, and the armies of freed slaves were flagging, their numbers terribly depleted, their makeshift weapons broken or lost. She could feel their despair in her skin, in the outer reaches of her magery.

  With no thought at all, she set the Kasar to the cage. Its cold metal resisted, but Sun’s fire was stronger than any work of hands. The whirring thing spun faster, faster, until it was a blur. It burst asunder in a flash of blinding light. In the sudden and enormous silence, the bars of the cage drew in upon themselves. The shell of glass crumbled into the sand from which it was made.

  The captive lay on a bier within, robed in darkness. No breath stirred. His eyes were open, empty of light. His flesh was cold.

  His mother breathed warmth upon him. She gave him light; she poured out her own life to feed his. Merian laid her hands over Varani’s, not to stop her, but to give her what strength there was to spare.

  It might be madness. She could find no light in him. They had taken his eyes, his life, his spirit. There might be nothing left of him at all. But she could not stop herself. She was corrupted, maybe; enspelled. It mattered nothing. There was no hope. The light could not win this war. Not without all the power that they could bring to bear.

  THIRTY-NINE

  DAROS SWAM UP OUT OF DEEP WATER. HE LEFT THE ARMS OF Mother Night and drifted through stars, drawn inexorably upward.

  The thing that he had fled, the ceaseless, whispering temptation, had faded greatly, but it was not gone. It had set in his bones. It murmured through his walls and barriers; it thrummed in the stones of the dark world.

  Darkness and corruption. Doom and damnation. He dived back into oblivion, but strong hands held him up. He struggled; he fought. They would not let go. They were too many, too strong.

  They wrenched him out of darkness and into searing, agonizing light. He twisted, gasping, biting back the cry. The taste of blood filled his mouth: he had bitten his tongue.

  Something hard and cold clasped his face. He lay in blessed dimness. His eyes were shielded. He looked into faces recognizable even to what his sight had become. Mages: Kalyi, Urziad, a stranger or two. Merian. And—

  He could flee, but there was nowhere to run. He could not hide. She had seen—she knew—

  “Later,” his mother said. Her voice was taut with pain. “Help us. The dark—”

  The dark was rising. A great hunger was in it, a craving for the blood and bones of living worlds. It beckoned to him, whispering, tempting. He would be its greatest servant, its most dearly beloved. The light was bitter pain. Darkness was sweet; was blessed. It would embrace him and make him its own. He would be the great lord, the emperor of the night. All worlds would bow before him.

  “Indaros!”

  The light of the Sun’s child was bitter beyond endurance. She was made of light; filled with it, brimming over. She touched him with it; he gasped. She, merciless, gripped tighter. “Remember,” Merian said fiercely. “Remember what you are!”

  Doomed. Damned. Lost to darkness.

  “Indaros.”

  Foolish child. Did she imagine that she could bind him with that name? In the darkness, all names were taken away.

  “Indaros!”

  It struck like a scorpion whip. It seared him with light and filled his veins with fire. It shot him like an arrow, full into the heart of the dark.

  He laughed. Death, had he yearned for? Here was the death of the shooting star: pure glory. He was a conflagration across the firmament, a stream of fire in the face of the night.

  The dark fought back, thrusting again and again into his heart. Its whisper rose to a roar. Death, oblivion, annihilation—the surcease of purest nothingness.

  Estarion could not hold. It was too far, the dark too deep. The weight of flesh dragged at him. If he could but cast it off, he would be free. He could fight untrammeled.

  There was the answer to every riddle, the key to every door. Cast off the flesh; be pure light. Be magic bare, untainted by mortal substance. Become the light, and so embrace the dark, and swallow it as it had swallowed light.

  The flesh disliked that thought intensely. Foolish flesh.

  “Great-grandfather.” Merian was in his thoughts as he was in hers, interwoven with them. “I’m in the center. Your heir behind me, my heir before me—I’m unnecessary. I stand in the heart of the dark world. If I let go—if I loose the fire—all of it will end.”

  “And you,” he said. “You will end, too.”

  “I don’t matter. I’ll be in the light.”

  “No,” said Estarion. The truth unfolded in him, in glory and splendor. What he was; what he was meant for. Why the gods had brought him to the land of the river and set him on the far side of the dark. He understood at last why he had been moved to surrender the key of his life to Seti-re. If he had not so divided his soul, the flesh would have bound him too tightly; he could not have escaped, whole and free. That surrender, that bit of folly, would save them all.

  He was not afraid. There was a strange, aching joy in it. Tanit—Menes—

  If he did not do this thing, there would be no world for them to live in, no sun to warm them, no life to live to its fulfillment. The dark would rule. The worlds would crumble into ash.

  Merian was still rebelling, still insistent, and Daruya beyond her, for once remembering her headlong youth. “Empress,” he said to the
m, “and empress who will be. Rule well. Remember me.”

  They babbled in protest. He took no notice. The dark gaped to swallow them all.

  Someone stood at the gate of it, a lone still figure, eyes full of darkness but heart blooming suddenly with light. Daros had lit the spark. Estarion fanned it into flame.

  The young fool tried to thrust him aside; to take the glory for himself. But Estarion was too strong for that. He eased the boy gently out of the gate. The fire was in him now, consuming him. The pain of it was exquisite. It seared away the flesh; let go the constraints of living existence.

  Great blazing wings unfurled. He was a bird of flame, soaring up into the darkness. Song poured out of him: the morning hymn to the Sun that every priest in his empire sang at the coming of every morning; that he had sung to his son in the land of the river, and so consecrated him to the god his forefather.

  It was pure adoration; pure light. Pure joy. Freedom beyond imagining—glory, splendor. Beauty unveiled.

  Dawn broke over the dark world: true dawn, the rising of the sun above the king’s citadel. The last slaves of the darkness burned and died. The armies of the Sun stood blinking in the light, bloodied, battered, but victorious.

  FORTY

  NO LIGHT CAME THROUGH WINDOWLESS STONE, AND YET MERIAN felt it like a wash of warmth over her skin. The threefold power that had been within her was gone. She was herself again, separate. Her mother blessed her with startling sweetness before slipping away out of this world. Estarion …

  The name called forth a vision of singing light: a bird of flame soaring up to heaven. In that death was no oblivion. He was gone from all the worlds—and yet a part of every one, embodied in the suns that shone upon them, and the stars that brought beauty to the night. There was no grief, no loss. Only joy.

  She laughed, there in that dark place, even though she wept. How like Estarion to find a way out of the world that none had ever ventured.

  She came back to herself to find her mages staring at her, standing half-stunned amid the slain. Only Varani had forgotten her existence. She knelt beside her son. He was conscious, but barely. Flickers of flame ran over his body, tongues of fire born of the power that was in him. It fed on the darkness inside him, burning deep, searing all of it away.