Authors: Judith Tarr
Tides of Darkness (16 page)
D
AROS FELL FROM DARKNESS INTO DARKNESS. THE SPARK OF light that had drawn him winked out just before the Gate took hold of him. He fell, rolling and tumbling, with his magery in tatters and his wits all scattered. He fetched up with bruising force against something that might, perhaps, be a wall.
AROS FELL FROM DARKNESS INTO DARKNESS. THE SPARK OF light that had drawn him winked out just before the Gate took hold of him. He fell, rolling and tumbling, with his magery in tatters and his wits all scattered. He fetched up with bruising force against something that might, perhaps, be a wall.
He lay winded, throbbing with aches. He did not think his neck was broken. He could move his fingers, his toes. He could roll groaning onto his back.
Almost he might have thought he had fallen back into the chamber of the rite in the dark fortress, but he knew deep in his bruised bones that that was gone. This was a different room in a different world. Tall slits of windows surrounded it. Strangeness flickered in them, like flame, if flame could be dark.
A pale blue light welled slowly. In this darkness it seemed as bright as moonlight. He sat up with care. His hands were glowing with that sickly light; it seemed to come from within him, though he had done nothing, raised no magic, nor willed it at all.
Something stirred in the circle of light. It unfolded, straightened.
It had a man's shape: it stood on two legs, lifted two arms. But it was not quite a man. The face was too long, the chin too sharp, the mouth lipless. The nose was a sharp hooked curve. Its eyes were round and huge, like an owl's. They blinked at him.
His power was drained almost to nothing, but he had enough, just, to raise a shield about his mind. And none too soon, either. The blow that struck it swayed him to his knees.
He crouched on the cold stone floor. He had no weapon, no magery to wield. The creature stood above him. In some remote way he supposed that he should be afraid.
It lifted him to his feet. Its hands were four-fingered, like a bird's, and the fingers were very long, thin pale skin stretched over bones that flexed in too many ways, in too many places. It brushed them over his face, ruffling his hair. It spoke in a voice like a flute played far away.
He had the gift of tongues; it was common enough among mages. He understood the words, though there was a strange stretching, as if they did not mean quite what his sore-taxed magic tried to make them mean. “Recover quickly, please, and go. You are not safe here.”
“You brought me here,” he said, realizing it even as he said it. “Now you send me away?”
“You are not what I expected,” the creature said.
“I disappoint you?”
The owl-eyes blinked slowly. “You are young,” it said. “Your spirit is light. What I called ⦠it was strong; a sun burned in it.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. The creature recoiled as if an animal had snapped in its face. “I know what you called. I was hunting him. Shall I find him for you?”
“I called you,” the creature said. “You, too. You both. He would come, you would come. One more would come. But not only you.”
“Why?”
“I need you both,” it said. “You are young, your spirit is light. He is a little less young, and strongâso very strong. Almost as strong as you.”
“I am notâ”
“You will be.” The creature straightened. What had seemed a cowl, veiling its head, unfurled and shook itself free and rose, fanning like the crest of some great bird. It glowed in the blue light, shimmering in bands of white and blue and icy green.
He was gaping like an idiot. The creature loomed over him, beautiful and unspeakably strange. And yet, looking into those round pale-golden eyes, he saw a spirit that was not, after all, so very different from his own. “You are a mage,” he said.
“Mage,” it said. “You may call me that. Mage.”
“Mage,” he said. “What do you need of us?”
“I need you,” it said. “This placeâthis prisonâthis thing I am compelled to do-”
Daros' head ached with making sense of alien words. He had little power left, barely enough to be certain that the walls of this place were more than stone, they were wards as well. What they guarded, what they forced upon the prisoner â¦
That was the knowledge he had brought from the citadel. The darkness was made, and magic had made it. There were oaths, covenantsâ
“But you are not a dark god,” he said. “You're a mage, no more if no less. How could you have brought
that
into being?”
that
into being?”
“Simply,” it said. “You could do it. Be afraid of what might come from beyond the stars; ward your world. Build the wards to renew themselves. Bind them with darkness because it is stronger for this than light. Let the darkness grow too strong. Thenâthenâ” It stopped, as if it had lost the courage to go on.
“Then see the darkness gain a will of its own?”
“Not its own will,” the Mage said. “What I was afraid ofâit came. My wards brought it, my darkness. It found me and took me prisoner. It compelled me to do its bidding.”
“It? What is it?”
“Will to conquer,” it said.
He did not understand.
The Mage furled its crest and lifted him without effort: though its limbs were stick-thin, they were strong. It cradled him as if he had been an infant. He struggled, but it ignored him. It flung him through one of the many narrow windows.
It was, as he had thought, a Gate. The Mage's awareness was about him, its power on him, though its body could not leave its prison. Enfolded in that half-alien, half-familiar magic, he slipped through mists and shadow onto a wide and barren plain. Wind blew across it, sighing with endless regret. Clouds veiled the stars, if stars there were.
A city rose on the plain. It was a city of night, lit by no moon or star. There were people in itâhuman people. He could have no doubt of that. Weak with exhaustion though his magery was, the Mage's power sustained him, and lent him a little of what he lacked.
It bore him on silent wings, soaring above the walls and towers, the dark windows and blank doorways. People moved through the streets, passed through the doors. They were blind: they had no eyes. There were no mages among them.
They labored with grim and endless persistence. What they did, he could not always understand. They ground grain, they forged metal. There were no fields to till; the grain must come from lands where the sun shone: lands that were raided, stripped and emptied of their riches. Just so were the people made captive, bound and enslaved, their eyes taken and their minds darkened and their souls held prisoner.
It was conquest, and absolute. “But why?” he cried to the power that cradled him. “Who would do this?”
It carried him onward, up through the levels of the city to a nest of towers at its summit. There was darkness visible, lightlessness so profound
that he felt it on his face like the weight of heavy wool, clinging close, trapping his breath.
that he felt it on his face like the weight of heavy wool, clinging close, trapping his breath.
It tore away. He saw again with mage-sight, clear in the darkness. He looked down into a hall that, though alien in its lines and the shape of its pillars, was surely royal. Figures stood in ranks there. They were cloaked, cowled. He looked for faces, but saw none.
They were not like the Mage. They were men, he could have sworn to itâyet men who could not abide the light. They lived in darkness. Darkness was their element. They wielded it as a weapon. They clung to it as a haven.
They would blind the stars, and darken the sun of every world. They sang of it, a slow rolling chant, very like the chant of the priests in the citadel on his own world. The god or power to which they sang was the darkness itself. The Mage had opened its way into the worlds, fed it and nurtured it, and made it strong.
They had no magic, these men who lived in night. They were empty of it; and yet that emptiness lured the dark, and gave it substance.
He began to see as he hovered above them, why they had captured the Mage; what they needed of it, that they were so utterly lacking. The Mage was a weapon in their long and holy war. Light into darkness, darkness into silence, silence into oblivion.
He fled before it engulfed him. He twisted free of the Mage's grip, broke the wards, and with the last strength that was in him, flung himself through the Gate.
Death's wings beat close, so close that they brushed him with the wind of their passing. His bones cracked with the cold of it. He was stripped bare of will and wit. One thing was left, one memory, one presence. It drew him irresistibly from darkness into darkness.
Â
He opened his eyes on the Mage's face. Its crest was upraised like a strange crown. “You are strong,” it said, “but not yet wise. Do you see, young mage? Do you understand?”
“No,” he said. His voice was a strangled gasp.
“The fabric of what is,” it said. “I tore it. My world is gone, my people ⦔ It made a strange whistling sound, like wind in a wasteland, eerie and unbearably sad. “They who came, they worship the void; they bind their souls to nothingness. They conquer in order to destroy. They would unmake the worlds.”
“It seems they're succeeding,” he said.
“You are too light of spirit,” it said. “You do not know that you are mortalâeven now, even believing what I tell you. You expect to live forever.”
“I do believe that my soul will,” he said. “Or are they going to destroy that, too? Will they even slay the gods?”
“Everything,” said the Mage. “All that is.”
He shivered. “There is no hope, is there?”
“Most likely not,” the Mage said, “but I am alive, and I cannot keep myself from hoping. I called you to me, you and the other, with the strongest spell that was left to me. I set it to find the one thing that could stop this tide of nothingness.”
“I? And my emperor?”
“He is an emperor?” The Mage seemed ⦠disappointed?
Daros thought he could understand. “He's been a shepherd since before I was born.”
“Ah,” said the Mage in evident relief. “Kings and kings of kings, they are no use to us. It will not be pride or power that wins this war, if it can be won.”
“I am a prince,” Daros said. “Is that an impediment?”
“You are a well-bred animal,” said the Mage. “It seems hardly to trouble you. You must go nowâI have held us out of time, but now it turns in spite of me. I give you this. Keep it safe; when the time comes, you will know its use.”
Daros found that his hand was clenched about something narrow and strangely supple. When he looked down, he saw that it was a feather,
glowing blue in mage-sight. He slipped it into the purse that hung from his belt. Even as his hand withdrew, the Mage and the room and the myriad windows whirled away. He spun like a leaf in a whirlwind.
glowing blue in mage-sight. He slipped it into the purse that hung from his belt. Even as his hand withdrew, the Mage and the room and the myriad windows whirled away. He spun like a leaf in a whirlwind.
He gave himself up to it. There was nothing else he could do. He let his body go slack, his limbs sprawl where they would. His mind held its center.
Â
He burst through darkness into blinding light. It stabbed him with blessed agony. It was so wonderful, so glorious, and so excruciating, that he dropped to the splendid stabbing of stones, and laughed until he wept.
Something jabbed his ribs. It was not a stone. Those were under him, blissfully uncomfortable. This was alive: it thrust again, bruising several of his myriad bruises. He caught it, still blind with light, and wrenched it aside. The gasp at the other end, the grunt of a curse, told him what he had known when he closed fingers about it: it was a spearhaft, and there was a man gripping it.
Men. He could see now, a little, through the streaming of tears: shadows against the light. They were human. They were small; Asaniansmall, lightly built and wiry. Their hair and eyes were dark, their skin reddish-bronze, rather like his own.
They all were dressed in kilts, and they all had spears. The man who had brought him so rudely to his senses stood disarmed, staring at the point of his own spear, angled toward his heart.
Daros lowered it slowly, grounded the butt of it, and used it as a crutch to lever himself to his feet. The spearmen fell back before him. The tallest came just to his shoulder.
He had never towered before. It was an odd sensation; he was not sure that he liked it. Towering was for northerners. He was a plainsman; he was accustomed to being a tall man but not a giant.
He resisted the urge to stoop. They were staring, but not, he realized, at his height. He shook his hair out of his face.
The copper brightness of it made him pause, then smile wryly. Of
course they would stare at that. Even plainsmen did, and they were born under the rule of red Gileni princes.
course they would stare at that. Even plainsmen did, and they were born under the rule of red Gileni princes.
This was not his world, even a remote corner of it. He could feel the strangeness underfoot, the heartbeat of earth that was never his own. The sun was very hot, and he was dressed for the roof of the world. He stripped off his woolen mantle, his coat of leather and fur, his tunic, his shirt, his fur-lined boots, andâwith the flick of a glance at the men who watchedâhis leather breeches. Even the light trews felt like a burden, but he kept those. He did not know how modest men were here, nor would it do to offend before he had even uttered a greeting.
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