Well of Darkness

by Margaret Weis

  “He had much better look to himself,” said Dagnarus, releasing Gareth and giving him a shove. “The hour draws near. Let’s go.”

  The streets were empty in the upper part of the city where the ambassadors resided. The houses were dark and quiet. Most of the ambassadors had been attending Dagnarus’s feast and would probably be wondering what had become of the guest of honor. Silwyth was on hand, to make the necessary excuses—the prince had retired early, mindful of his need to be at his best in the morning.

  Gareth and the prince left behind the elegant homes of the ambassadors, turned into a mews, traversed the alley until the end. There was a tavern frequented by the hostlers, stableboys, and servants to the ambassadors. The tavern was filled, it being a night when most of the ambassadors were out. Few gave Gareth and Dagnarus so much as a glance when they entered. The regulars were accustomed to keeping one eye shut, as the saying went. Dagnarus cast a glance at the barkeeper, who nodded and jerked his head. Gareth and the prince, hoods pulled low over their faces, climbed the stairs to the second level.

  Two soldiers lounged outside a closed door, playing at dice. At the sight of the prince, the soldiers bounded to their feet.

  “All well?” Dagnarus asked.

  “All is well,” one replied, as the other, removing an iron key from his belt, opened the door.

  The room had no windows. The only way in or out was past the guards at the door. Its furnishing consisted of a bed, a table, and two chairs. Seated in one of the chairs was Shakur. He lay sprawled on the table, a wine jug at his side, his hand still clutching a partially filled mug. A frowsy woman, half-unclothed, slept noisily in the bed.

  Gareth walked across the room and shook Shakur by the shoulder. The man’s hand dropped from the wine mug, but that was the only response.

  “What is this, Your Highness?” Gareth demanded, alarmed. “He must be conscious! He must know what he is saying!”

  “He will,” Dagnarus replied. “The sleeping potion will wear off soon enough. Sooner than he will wish, undoubtedly. I thought it would be easier walking through the streets without him bleating and creating a ruckus.”

  “True,” said Gareth, regarding their prisoner doubtfully. “If you’re sure it will wear off…”

  “I am sure.” Dagnarus turned to the guards, drew out a purse. “Here is your pay.”

  The two shook their heads. “It is our duty to serve you, Your Highness.”

  “Well, then,” said Dagnarus, smiling, pleased, “I thank you for your duty and now dismiss you from it.”

  The two saluted, but did not immediately leave. “Do you require our assistance, Your Highness? The wretch is daring and cunning. He has tried to escape us twice, once by playing possum as you see him now.”

  Dagnarus walked over, reached down to Shakur’s private parts, and gave a squeeze and a twist. Shakur groaned and twitched, but otherwise did not move.

  “He would have to be more than human to feign sleep through that,” said Dagnarus to the now grinning soldiers. “My friend and I can handle him. Thank you again for your service. Tell Captain Argot I said you were to have a week’s leave as recompense.”

  The soldiers departed.

  “What about the woman?” Gareth asked, as they bundled Shakur into the robes of a novice, making certain his hands and feet were securely bound.

  “She’s been paid,” Dagnarus returned. “Well paid. She has earned it. You’d think this bastard could have bathed!”

  Once Shakur was disguised and trussed, Dagnarus lifted the drugged man, slung him over a shoulder. Shakur’s head and arms, their shackles concealed by the long sleeves of the robes, dangled down behind the prince’s back.

  “I shall have to burn my clothes after this,” Dagnarus said, grimacing. “I’ll never be able to remove the stench!”

  “Hurry, Your Highness,” Gareth said nervously, disapproving of the levity. “There is not a moment to lose. We must be in the Temple ready to perform the ceremony at one hour past midnight. And it is nearly midnight already.”

  The two left the tavern, carrying their burden. They received a few stares from the patrons, but no one said a word. It was none of their concern. Back out into the streets, they looked like revelers carrying home one of their number who had imbibed more than was good for him. They followed a circuitous route to the Temple; coming around to the back.

  There was a tradesmen’s entrance, with heavy double doors wide enough to accommodate carts loaded with sacks of flour and sides of beef for the kitchen, casks of wine and ale for the cellar. The carts were trundled inside, where they were unloaded, their contents stacked in the large and echoing buttery.

  The double doors were locked with a large iron padlock.

  “Keep a lookout,” Gareth bid Dagnarus in a whisper. “There’s a watchman. He doesn’t usually make his rounds until well after midnight, but sometimes he is early, walking off sleepiness. If you see anyone, summon me. I know what to say to him.”

  “What will you say?” Dagnarus inquired. His eyes, by the moonlight, shone brilliantly. The burden he carried was heavy and foul-smelling, but he bore the weight with ease and the smell with only a grimace. He was enjoying himself, enjoying the danger and the intrigue. “What is our story?”

  “I will say that I am helping home a drunken friend and that you agreed to carry him for me. The watchman is a kind man. He is used to such tales and will let us off with only a lecture and a promise to reform.”

  “Well, make haste,” said Dagnarus. He dumped Shakur into a corner, wiped his hands, and brushed off his clothing. Shakur stirred and muttered, he was coming out of his drugged sleep. Dagnarus eyed the padlock. “This seems formidable. Have you the key?”

  “No, that never leaves the porter’s side. But I have my magic.” Gareth glanced at Shakur with some trepidation. “Keep close watch. If you see anything amiss, alert me.”

  Dagnarus folded his arms, tilted his head back, admiring the stars, and leaned negligently against the wall. Gareth couldn’t see the stars, for the blackness that seemed to envelop him, covering him head to toe like a pall. He cast Shakur another worried glance. Seeing him quiet for the moment, Gareth went to work on the lock, an ordinary padlock, to keep out common thieves. Wizard locks were generally used to keep out other wizards, and it was unlikely wizards would be intent upon breaking into the buttery.

  Though time was precious and trickling away rapidly, Gareth paused before he set about his task, nerving himself. As does all magic, the use of Void magic demands a toll from the magus who summons it. Other magicks, those of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, draw upon the elements to power them. The Void demands to be filled and so Void magic demands a portion of the magus’s life force, represented by the ulcerations that form on the skin afterward. A Void magic spell mishandled can result in the death of the magus. The aftereffects Gareth would suffer from casting a spell this powerful would be painful, debilitating. But then, the drunkard knows the same when he wakes.

  He breathed upon the lock, breathed seven breaths. “By the Void, I summon air,” he said. “Destroy this metal.”

  The iron padlock was rusty to begin with. The magic merely accelerated the rusting process. He breathed on it again and the iron turned brownish in the moonlight and began flaking away. He was about to breathe upon the lock yet again, but there came no breath. His heartbeat had altered its steady reassuring rhythm, become erratic, painfully erratic. He felt a flash of fear as starbursts tingled on the backs of his eyes. He struggled, fought to breathe, and, finally, was granted a gasp. His heartbeat returned to normal.

  Exhausted, shivering, he was forced to lean against the door for one moment, a moment he could ill spare, before he gained strength enough to carry on. Patches of skin on various parts of his body burned and stung. The pustules were forming. Thankful that Dagnarus had not been present to witness his weakness—a weakness the prince would have never understood—Gareth continued to breathe on the lock until there was a pile of shavings at hi
s feet.

  He tried the lock, tugging on it, several times, and when—weakened by the spell—the lock gave way, he ended the spell by ceasing to breathe upon it. He did not want the lock to rust away completely. That would have looked suspicious.

  “Well done!” said Dagnarus. “I am impressed. How did you do that?”

  “There is no time to lose, Your Highness,” Gareth snapped, still weak and too nervous to feel pleasure at the praise. “Bring him and follow me.”

  Dagnarus’s expression darkened; he did not take kindly to being ordered about by an underling.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness,” Gareth said. His hands were shaking, he was covered in chill sweat. “I am not myself…This ghastly business…”

  Without a word, Dagnarus lifted Shakur once again to his shoulder and walked into the storage room. Gareth, with a shivering sigh, shut the door behind them. When the unlocked door was discovered the next morning, it would seem only as if a rusted lock had finally given way.

  Once inside the storeroom, Gareth took one of the torches that habitually stood in a barrel near the door. The storeroom was dark, even in the daylight. A word of Void magic caused the torch to light. Holding it aloft, Gareth led Dagnarus, carrying Shakur, into a large tunnel that branched off into several tunnels, running from the buttery to the kitchen, the wine cellars, and the drying rooms. The air was scented with smells of herbs hanging in the drying room, the dark yeasty smell of wine, the faint odor of decay from fowls suspended from hooks. Mice and rats, eating the spilled grain, skittered underfoot.

  They entered another tunnel before they reached the kitchen, passing by enormous casks of wine, and from there into another tunnel. Dagnarus was soon lost amid the twists and turns they took, but Gareth kept to his way unerringly. They had been inside the Temple for perhaps fifteen minutes and Shakur was—with unfortunate timing—beginning to awaken, when Gareth brought them to a halt outside a high, arched entryway carved of marble.

  Shakur was muttering and grunting and would suddenly lift his head and shout out an incoherent word or two.

  “Can’t you keep him quiet?” Gareth whispered.

  “Not unless I smother him,” Dagnarus said grimly. “Quit lurching about, you bastard! Besides, I could march an army down here, and no one could hear it.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Gareth, whose guilt magnified the least sound into a yell calculated to wake the slumbering dead.

  “Where are we?” Dagnarus asked, staring up at the ornately carved marble entrance.

  “The Hall of Eternity,” Gareth replied in a subdued voice. “The old tombs.”

  Thick, soft dust covered the floor, cobwebs trailed from the ceiling. Figures of carven marble lay at rest upon sepulchers. All lay in the same posture, with eyes closed and their hands folded upon their marble breasts. All were clad in robes, some with ornate vestments and various head coverings, depending on rank and the style of the time. Men and women were entombed there, slept their marble sleep.

  “Long, long ago, this is where the Revered High Magi were once buried,” Gareth said softly, passing among the rows of the dead. “No one is buried here now. It is not considered fashionable since they built the great mausoleum. No one comes here at all anymore, not even to do them honor. Sad, really. Few people know of this hall’s existence; only those of us who live within the Void. The altar we seek is connected.”

  “Of course it is,” said Dagnarus, and even his ebullient spirits were somewhat subdued, awed by the presence of death. “It would be. The ideal location.”

  “Quite,” said Gareth dryly. “That was why the altar was built here, back in the days when the practice of Void magic was accepted.”

  Dagnarus looked at the silent, peaceful figures, bathed in the torchlight. Dried rose leaves had been scattered over each one, perhaps twenty-five in all. The floor had been swept, the cobwebs brushed away.

  “Someone has done them honor,” Dagnarus said quietly. “Recently, at that.”

  Gareth’s pale face took on a tinge of color. “It was only right, Your Highness,” he said. “I use them, use their spirits to work my magic. I should give them something in return.”

  “Propitiate them?”

  “That, too,” Gareth muttered. They had walked the length of the hall, arrived at a small door made of iron, which stood at the end.

  This door was wizard locked; Gareth had cast a spell upon it, a spell that only he, with the correct words and proper counterspell, could remove. He placed his hand upon the door handle, muttering and mumbling to himself, while Shakur, lifting his head, gazed around with bleary eyes.

  “Where am I?” he demanded.

  “In a tomb,” Dagnarus told him. “Here, stand on your own feet. I’m sick of carrying you.”

  “A tomb,” said Shakur, frowning as he took in his surroundings. “Funny sort of job, to be done in a tomb.”

  “Actually quite an appropriate location,” Dagnarus returned.

  The iron door opened with a creak of its hinges. Fetid air wafted over them, causing Dagnarus to wrinkle his nose and Shakur to snort in disgust.

  Gareth stood to one side. “Please, enter,” he said.

  Shakur did not move. He peered in, trying vainly to see.

  “You’ve had your two days of fun and frolic,” Dagnarus said. “Time to pay the piper.” He gave Shakur a shove that sent him tumbling headlong to the floor.

  Reaching down to lift the manacled felon, Dagnarus picked up Shakur by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him inside the room. Gareth shut the iron door behind them. He looked at Shakur and, turning back to the door, inserted his finger inside the lock, as he might have inserted a key.

  “By the Void, I seal this door,” he said. “To be opened only on my command.”

  “What is the matter?” Dagnarus asked, staring at Gareth, who was hunched over like an old man, his face contorted, his arms wrapped around his body as though he were holding his bones and his organs inside his body.

  “The penalty I pay for the magic, Your Highness,” Gareth replied after a moment. Drawing in a pain-filled breath, he straightened. “You may free Shakur of his bonds. His feet at least. He cannot escape.”

  Gareth lit thick beeswax candles placed on heavy wrought-iron stands around the room. Dagnarus released the manacles from Shakur’s ankles, hauled the felon to his feet.

  Shakur stared around through the thatch of matted hair that overhung his hideously scarred face. “Hey!” he demanded angrily. “What’s going on? Why have you brought me here?”

  “Relax,” Dagnarus said impatiently. “I spoke of requiring an oath from you. This is where you will take it. In this room, you will embrace the Void, as you agreed. Or”—he gave a quick, tight smile—“back to the hangman.”

  The room was large—a man Dagnarus’s height could stride thirty long paces across it diagonally. Round in shape, with a high, domed ceiling, the room was empty except for a stone altar carved of smooth black marble, devoid of decoration. The walls and ceiling and floor were made of onyx, polished so that the tiny pinpoint lights of the myriad candles were reflected in the surface, reflected many times over, for the polished walls took one candle flame and made of it a thousand, looking like stars in a cloudless night sky. Such was the illusion that it seemed those standing within the room stood in the emptiness of the night, with the stars above and below them, adrift in darkness.

  Dagnarus gazed about, above and below.

  “Patch,” he said, and his voice was soft with awe, “this…this is what I saw long ago, when I looked into the center of the Sovereign Stone. I stood alone in the darkness and the stars surrounded me. There is a power in this room, a force.”

  “What you feel is the absence of power,” Gareth said, his voice smothered and quiet as if he were in the Royal Library. “The gods shun this room, they have no authority over it. This room belongs to the Void.”

  “Do the Revered Magi know this room exists?” Dagnarus asked.

  �
�They know,” said Gareth dryly.

  “Then why do they not destroy it?”

  “They cannot. You see the arched ceiling? The weight of the Temple itself rests upon this room. Destroy this room and the entire Temple is weakened. Such was the wisdom of those who built the Temple so many years ago. Water quenches fire, yet man needs both to survive. He needs air to breathe, he needs the earth beneath his feet, he could not live in a world made solely of one or the other. The gods wield power only because there is a place where they wield no power at all. We are given the ability to draw from both. The gods are wise, they do not seek to destroy their opposite, nor does the Void seek to encompass the universe, for then the Void itself would be filled and cease to exist. If all is nothing, then nothing ceases to be anything.”

  Dagnarus had no glib rejoinder. He felt himself suspended in time, suspended in the heavens, in a realm where no laws constrained him, no rules bound him. Life was nothing more than a single candle flame. Breathe on it and it would go out, but millions more were left. And he stood in the center, filling the Void, at last.

  “All I do is swear some sort of oath?” Shakur asked.

  “To the Void,” Dagnarus replied, turning to look upon him.

  Shakur nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said, and he spoke to himself, but the whispered words flitted through the empty air like ghosts. “I am ready. What do I say?”

  “Do you, Shakur, consent to make the Void your master?” Gareth asked. “To dedicate your life and your soul to the Void?”

  “I do,” said Shakur, shrugging.

  “This is serious!” Gareth snapped, glowering. “We must be certain of your loyalty. We want to know that you mean what you say.”

  “I mean it,” Shakur said bluntly. “I’ll tell you why, if you want. I’ll tell you my story. I never asked to be born. My mother didn’t want me; I interfered with business. She tried to rid herself of me before I was born, but she failed. My father—who was he? I never knew. Some customer who paid a pence for the privilege of creating me.

  “I was kicked and slapped when I was small, until my mother discovered I had some worth after all. Some of the men who called on her also took a fancy to boys, you see, and paid her well for my services. In the end, though, the money was mine. She hit me one night in a drunken rage, she and one of her lovers. I grabbed his knife from the belt he’d thrown on the floor and that was the end of my mother. Of all those I have killed, and there have been many and many after that, I still hear her cries.”