Authors: Judith Tarr
Tides of Darkness (31 page)
Someone held a cup to his lips. He drank perforce. It was water. He kept it down, somewhat to his amazement. It washed the taste of blood from his mouth. It could never cleanse the stain of what he had done.
He had been so sure, so arrogantly sure, that his spirit was free; that this place had no power to corrupt him. Now two men lay dead by his doing, and the blood of one stained his face and hands. He was as dark as any other man in that room, as deeply tainted by the tide of shadow.
He stood straight. The men about him drew back. There was fear in their eyes. One still held the jar of water. He cleaned himself with it as best he could. They watched him as wolves watch the one who has killed their pack-leader.
“If you are thinking that I will lead you,” he said, “stop thinking it now. I have no presence here. I know nothing of what your veterans know.”
“The lord who brought youâhe leads us,” one of the warriors said. “We fight as he bids. Who leads here, that's won by combat. You did win that. Don't tell us you didn't mean it.”
Daros bit his tongue. He had meant itâwillingly or no. He had known what he did when he locked in combat with the pale man. He must have known in his heart how it must end. How could he not?
“Tell me, then,” he said: “what we do here, what we are for. Be sure it is the truth. I will know if you lie.”
They blanchedâin the strange sight he had been given, their faces darkened as blood, and therefore heat, drained away. One spoke for them all. He marked that one: a warrior from Tanit's world, he would
wager, a giant of a man with the full lips and blunt features and the dark gleaming skin of the lands to the south of the black land. He had a deep voice, like stones shifting.
wager, a giant of a man with the full lips and blunt features and the dark gleaming skin of the lands to the south of the black land. He had a deep voice, like stones shifting.
“We are the lords' warriors,” he said, “their bodyguards, the commanders of their raiding parties. They give us their eyes, so that we can see as they see, and give us back the great part of our will, so that when we fight in one of the worlds, we may make choices in difficult circumstances, and protect the lesser troops under our command.
“We are not free. You killed a lord in the testingâhe was one they could afford to lose, or they would never have given him such duty. You will not be permitted to do such a thing again. If you have dreams of finding your way back to your own world, give them up. You will go back, very likely, if your world exists at allâbut you are now of this world and not of that one. Its light will blind you and its sun destroy you. You belong to the dark world now. Never forget that.”
“I was exiled from my world,” Daros said.
“So were some of us,” said the giant. “And some of us were sent to fight the enemy that came out of the night, and were taken into his armies instead. There is no escape from our lords or from the darkness they serve. You are wise not even to dream of it.”
“Slave-warriors,” Daros said. “My world has had them.”
“This world lives by them,” the giant said. “Mountains, worlds full of slaves, all bound to the will of the masters. We are the highest of them, the strongest and best. We are the chosen. There is pride in that, if your heart knows any such thing.”
“My heart knows the taste of blood,” Daros said, “and the lure of oblivion.”
“The lords will love you,” the giant said, “if you can restrain yourself from killing any more of them. Slaves' bloodâyou may drink that with fair freedom, if you do it wisely. They'll blame it on the nightwalkers; those will escape and feed, if they can manage it. But lordsânever touch those. Lords are our gods. However much you hate them, they hold the cords that bind your soul.”
“I shall remember,” Daros said.
He turned to face them all. They kept a wary distance. “If I lead you, you do as I bidâbarring a lord's command. Yes?”
“Yes,” they said in a ragged chorus.
“Good,” he said, letting them see the teeth that had ripped the pale man's throat. “Dispose of that carrion. Then come with me. I have weapons to win, and fighting muscles to find again. I was too long below, among the cattle.”
They glanced at one another. Oh, yes, he thought as he scanned their faces: he was a bold, bad man, and would be bolder and badder when he was strong again. Which had best be soon.
He could feel the worlds shifting, the tides of darkness turning. It was growing stronger. It was inside him, eating away at his heart. If he was to have any hope at all of vanquishing it, he could not tarry much longer.
“Weapons,” he said to the men whose command, by sheer blind luck, he had won. “Now.”
They leaped to obey him. He sauntered in their wake, as a prince of slaves should do.
W
ITH THE SIGHT HE HAD BEEN GIVEN, DAROS COULD AT LAST distinguish between night and day in this place. Night was cooler, gentler on the eyes. Day was perceptibly brighter. If he turned his eyes toward the sky, he saw the swirling darkness, clouds of heat and cool, and beyond it the furnace of the sun.
ITH THE SIGHT HE HAD BEEN GIVEN, DAROS COULD AT LAST distinguish between night and day in this place. Night was cooler, gentler on the eyes. Day was perceptibly brighter. If he turned his eyes toward the sky, he saw the swirling darkness, clouds of heat and cool, and beyond it the furnace of the sun.
On the third day, he was at weapons-practice with the rest of his company. The dark flame was not dark at all; it was red within red within red, a seethe and coil of power that consumed whatever it touched. The weapons that hurled it were simple enough to wield. They needed little precision, only strength to lift them. Swords, bows, spearsâthose needed art, and of that, he had much to learn.
As he practiced his archery in the largest of the courts, he was aware that one of the lords had come to watch, attended by men like those
about him: slave-warriors with living eyes and bound souls. It was a great temptation to spin on his heel and aim his arrow into the lord's heart, but he was stronger than thatâbarely.
about him: slave-warriors with living eyes and bound souls. It was a great temptation to spin on his heel and aim his arrow into the lord's heart, but he was stronger than thatâbarely.
Pity, he thought as he lowered his bow and released the arrow from the string, and turned slowly to face the lord. It was the king himself. His dark-on-dark eyes fixed on Daros. “Prepare your men,” he said. “You raid tonight.”
Daros bowed. The king's lip curled in what might be a dour smile, or might be scorn. “Take many slaves,” said the king. “Empty all their storehouses. But leave the fields. We may need them later.”
Daros bowed again. The king laid a hand on his shoulder. He tensed, still bent in obeisance, but held his ground.
“You are not like the others,” the king said. “Serve me well and there may be more to hope for than the command of a simple company.”
Daros lifted his head. “Freedom?”
The king laughed. “Are you not free now? The worlds are yoursâin our service. Would you not rather have power? Conquest? Blood in gleaming rivers?”
Daros set his teeth and was silent. The king patted him like a dog and left him to seethe in peace.
Â
No one in this world had a name. That was the first sacrifice to the dark: the sound that embodied a man's spirit. But some of the slave-warriors remembered who they had been before they were taken away. He who had passed the test with Daros was Chenyo; the giant was Mukassi. Others mattered less than those two, but Daros remembered names when he could.
He was not to take most of the slave-warriors in his company. Three, he could take; the rest would be true slaves, fighters from the courts below. He chose Chenyo and Mukassi and a man of his own world, a Shurakani who had been called Janur. Janur seldom spoke; in weapons-practice he was single-minded in his quest to be perfect. Daros suspected that he had kept more of his mind and will than many of the others.
He was not a mage. The lords killed mages wherever they found them, and shattered worlds in which magic was strong. So would they do to Daros' world if they could break the wall that barred the Gates.
It was rather a pity that Janur had no magery, but it mattered little for what Daros had in mind. What mattered more was that there would be no nightwalkers on this raid, and no lords. Those, he had reason to know, were spread dangerously thin. They were mounting a monstrous assault on his world, of which this would be but a testing of the waters.
He knew perfectly well what that made him. He was bait for a trap, he and the dozen other leaders who would raid that same night, some on his own world, others elsewhere. If he came back alive, he would be accorded due honor. If he died, the lords would be rid of him. They could not lose, whichever way the dice fell.
Â
He and his three lieutenants were given armor and mounts. The scaled beasts were not as dangerous as they looked: they were placid in the main, docile and rather sluggish. Still, in armor scaled like the beasts' hides, in tall helms and sweeping cloaks and panoply of weapons, and mounted on the fanged, clawed creatures, they were a vision from a nightmare.
The slave-troops would march afoot, matched in pairs. They shepherded wagons drawn by more of the scaled beasts, and carried the shackles that Daros remembered too well. Those who would fight surrounded them, armed much as Daros was.
Menkare and Khafre were among the fighters. He found them as much by gait and feel as by sight. Their magery was a spark of fierce warmth, burning bright within the ruddy glow of their bodies.
He could not approach them. He was being watched. They must ride out with the rest of the companies, out onto the plain, and there the Gates would open. Their orders were simple: raid, rob, withdraw. They were to fight no more than they must.
They were the third of the companies to ride out. The others were of similar size, with the same orders. They marched in silence broken only
by the rattle of cartwheels and the occasional squeal of a beast. No one laughed or spoke or sang. Only the commanders were free to think thoughts that were mostly their own. The rest were altogether enslaved.
by the rattle of cartwheels and the occasional squeal of a beast. No one laughed or spoke or sang. Only the commanders were free to think thoughts that were mostly their own. The rest were altogether enslaved.
They rode down from the citadel and out onto the plain. There where the land rolled to a long level, two pillars stood. They were thrice the height of a tall man, and that same distance apart. The wagons could pass easily between them, or six men abreast with room to spare.
Priests stood on either side, as still as the pillars. They held rods like smaller versions of the flamethrowers. As the first company drew near the gate, the priests raised their rods. Dark fire arced between them and leaped to the top of the pillars. A lintel shaped itself, so that it was a Gate indeed, and a swirling madness of worlds beyond it.
The priests chose the worlds to which the raiding parties would go, speaking a single word as each party came to the gate. The word that Daros heard was
Avaryan
. It was well that he was mounted and not afoot, or he would have stumbled. Did they understand how great was the irony, that they should direct the forces of dark with the name of the god of light?
Avaryan
. It was well that he was mounted and not afoot, or he would have stumbled. Did they understand how great was the irony, that they should direct the forces of dark with the name of the god of light?
The Gate hummed and throbbed. Magegates did no such thing. This, like the force or device or spell that the king guarded, had a flavor about it of a thing made by hands. A machine, thought Daros, driven by magic.
They made machines in the Nine Cities, automatons that walked and spoke a tinny word or two, or clocks in which they tried to trap time. None of them had ever, that he knew of, trapped a mage and fed his machines with the mage's power.
That was a potent thought, but he had no time to think the whole of it. The Gate caught him and his following, and drew them in.
Â
They came in under a shield of darkness. Yet with this sight he could see beyond it to the glory of the moons and the myriad of stars. He drew in the air of his own world, his body's home. The earth's power surged up and over him, drowning him in blessed strength.
They rode down a long line of headland, with the roar of the sea on their right hands, and sea-grass hissing as they marched through it. They had not so very far to go. A village huddled in a fold of the coast, ripe with the reek of fish. Nets were spread before the houses; boats were drawn up on the shingle. Even in these days, they were prosperous. They had herds of cattle and woolbeasts, and stores of grain and of salt fishâperhaps they traded the one for the other.
There were walls about the village, raw with newness, and wards on the walls. A mage was in the village. Daros thanked the gods for answering his prayer.
Dark fire broke the walls, crumbled them into dust. Raiders ran for the storehouses and the cattle-pens. People surged out of the houses, strong people, armed and ready. They had fire: torches and magefire. The light of them seared into Daros' brain.
Almost too late, he dropped the visor of his helmet. He could see through itâit was like dark glass. He could ride, raid, fight where he must. He did not strike to kill. The terror of his mount held most of them off; they went for the fighters on foot. Those had orders: to defend the wagons and the herds, once they were taken.
The fighting was fierce, the defenders strong. Daros took little notice. The mage's presence was a beacon before him. It was a woman; she wielded bolts of magefire, blasting attackers who came near. He in his armor, shielded with his own force of magery, struck aside a bolt aimed direct at his head. He overran her, heaved her across his mount's saddle, and turned the beast about. It was remarkably agile for so large and cold-blooded an animal; it wheeled with uncanny speed, whipping its head from side to side, scattering and rending fighters who sprang to their mage's defense.
She was winded, briefly shocked out of her senses. In that brief blankness of mind, he set in her the thing that he had prepared. It was memory and a message, and a compulsion laid on it. Just as she came to herself, he let her slip from his hands.
She leaped to the attack. He had not prepared for that. She surged upward toward his face, armed with lightnings, and struck his helm. It spun away, driven by more than mortal strength.
She hung in midair, eyes as wide as they would go, frozen in shock. He was hardly more in command of his wits. That faceâhe knewâ
Mother?
He never spoke the word. She never dealt the deathblow. His mount leaped away from her, roaring and lashing its tail.
The battle was nearly done. With the mage distracted, the village had been easy prey. They had what they had come for: grain, fish, cattle. There were few slaves; the villagers had fought too hard. They did not linger to destroy the village. Raid only, the king had said. Daros would do exactly as the king had commanded.
The Gate was waiting. He gathered his forces, took swift count of the wounded, gritted his teeth while they were flamed to ash. Death had been swift, and merciful. And none of them was a mageling.
It wrenched at his heart to pass through that Gate again, to abandon his own world for the dark land. But he could not stay, even if he could have abandoned his mages. He could no longer abide the light. He was a creature of darkness now. He could only pray that his spirit would not go the way of his eyes, and give him over altogether to the lords of the night.
Other books
One Little Sin by Liz Carlyle
The Hero Sandwich by Gerrard, Karyn, Taylor, Gayl
China Jewel by Thomas Hollyday
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Bitter Taffy by Amy Lane
The Wolven by Deborah Leblanc
Consequence by Madeline Sloane
One Night More by Bayard, Clara
I'm a Fool to Kill You by Robert Randisi
StrokeMe by Calista Fox