She had taken the inner ways of the temple, away from the eyes of priests and the faithful; there was not even a servant to stop and stare. They descended by narrow steps into a maze of tunnels, lit by a wisp of magelight that bobbed ahead of them.
Daros stumbled. She was almost too late to catch him. His weight dragged at her; his breath rasped in her ear. He had overtaxed himselfâfool; child. But she was worse than that, for allowing him to do it.
There was nothing for it but to press on with what speed she could. The urgency in her had come close to panic. It took all the discipline of both mage and priest to keep walking, and not to drop the stumbling, gasping boy and run back into the light.
An eon later, though not so long by the turning of the sun, they came out at last in a forgotten corner of the palace. There was still some distance to go before they were truly safe; she paused in the dim and dusty cellar, plotting her path from a memory decades old.
She heard no footstep, sensed no presence, and yet her hackles rose. She could not whip about: Daros impeded her. She had to turn slowly, every sense alert, braced to drop him and leap if she must.
She nearly collapsed in relief. Her stepbrother lifted Daros in strong
arms, taking no notice of his feeble protests, and said, “The others are in the autumn garden. Can you walk that far?”
“Easily,” she said.
Hani's glance raked her mistrustfully, but he shrugged, sighed, turned to lead her onward.
Â
The autumn garden grew in a corner of the palace wall, where the sun was warmest in that season, and there was shelter from the first blasts of winter. Flowers grew there even into the dark of the year; the fountains flowed later than in any other of the gardens, and birds sang long after they had left that part of the world.
It was nearly summer-warm when Merian came there, the sun shining in cloudless heaven, the water singing into the tiers of stone basins. This world knew nothing of darkness or lossânot yet. It was almost painful in its beauty.
By the lowest of fountains, on the porch of the little house that ornamented the garden, her mother sat with Urziad and Kalyi and the high priestess of the temple with her golden torque and her eyes that, though blind, could pierce to the heart. Their faces mirrored the shock that seemed set indelibly in hers. That they were alive and conscious spoke of their strength and the strength of their power. Through their eyes she could see the losses: mages dead or broken, Gates fallen, spells and magics in ruins.
The princess regent stirred, drawing Merian's eye. She shared the gift or curse of her line: she seemed hardly older than Kalyi, who was but a year past the Journey that had made her priestess as well as mage. People said that Merian was like her mother, though paler; she was gold and ivory, but Daruya was honey and bronze. Merian bowed to her as the chief of Gate-mages should to the regent of Sun and Lion. Even as she straightened, her mother drew her into a bruisingly tight embrace. “We thought we'd lost you, too,” she said. “Whatever possessed youâ”
“I did.” Daros had startled them: he was conscious, struggling free of
Hani's grip, swaying on his own feet. “I found him. I found the emperor.”
Daruya wasted no time in foolish questions. “Where?”
“On the edge of the shadow,” he said, “almost inundated by the tide.”
“And you left him there?”
He faced her with a perfect lack of fear. “Lady, he's trapped. I barely found him, and I knew where to look. Before I could come closer, the tide drove me away. I did try, lady. I'll try again, but first I have to rest.” That was not a thing he admitted easily; he was young and male and proud. But he was brave enough to tell the truth.
“You will not try again,” Daruya said. “No one can. Do you understand, boy? The great Gates are gone. The Heart of the Worldâthe center of our magicâis lost.”
“But that's notâ” Daros shut his mouth just before Merian would have shut it for him. He bent his head, concealing the rebellion in his eyes.
It seemed the pretense deceived the rest of them, though Merian was in no way taken in by it. Daruya addressed him as if the rest of it had never been said. She was not belittling the great loss; she was making it bearable by focusing on what might possibly be salvaged out of the ruin. “The emperor is safe? Only trapped?”
“I couldn't tell,” Daros said without too palpable a sense of relief. “I could only see that he was alive, tossed in the storm-wrack.”
“That's the best we can hope for,” Daruya said levelly, “and better than many of us can claim. We've lost too many magesâin body or in spiritâand all our greater Gates. Thank the gods and the foresight of those who built them, many of the lesser Gates are still standingâthey were built and sustained through the power of this world, which is still intact. We'll keep them open, but closely guarded, for as long as we can. Every ward and shield that we can raise, we will raise. And we will pray that when the war is over, we can find our emperor again, and bring him back.” She drew herself up and stiffened her back. “You will rest and
restore yourselves, both of you. Tomorrow I will have need of youâas of every mage with strength or wits to fight. Until then, be as much at ease as you can.”
Daros bowed as if in either weariness or submission, but Merian did not believe in either. She kept her own tongue between her teeth and undertook to seem more convincingly obedient than Daros. He was out on his feet; she was a little tired herself. Sleep would serve them both well, whatever came after.
O
F ALL THE OUTCOMES DAROS HAD EXPECTED, TO FIND HIMSELF a guest in the palace in Starios was one of the more unlikely. He was given every comfort, even a pretty maid if he should be inclined; somewhat to his surprise, he was not. He was worn to the bone, and above all he needed sleep. His lack of interest had nothing to do with a certain haughty royal lady.
He slept like the dead, a sleep blessedly free of dreams. In that sleep, the raw edges of his mind began to knit, and powers taxed to the utmost began slowly to heal. When he woke, he felt as if he had been beaten with cudgels, inside and out.
He fully expected to find Merian sitting beside his bed, but the person there was almost a stranger. He knew the face, of course; Hani the
prince, son of the regent's consort, was known even to layabouts in taverns. “Am I under guard?” Daros asked him.
The prince raised a brow. He looked remarkably like Daros' father, though his hair was black rather than copper; his voice too was very like, deep and soft, but the accent was of another country altogether. “Do you feel the need to be guarded?”
“That depends,” said Daros. “Am I safe here? I seem to remember a sentence of exile.”
“You're not in Han-Gilen, are you?” Hani yawned and stretched. “I'm to tell you that after you've rested sufficiently and bathed, and one presumes eaten, though that wasn't mentioned, the lady Merian will see you.”
Daros' lips twitched. It was like Merian to remember a man's bath but not his breakfast. “I'd best get to it,” he said. “By your leave, my lord.”
“Ah,” said Hani, shrugging. “I don't stand on ceremony.” He snapped his fingers. Servants came at the run with bath and clothes and, yes, breakfast.
The bath was welcome. The clothes were good but plainânot court dress. Daros widened his eyes somewhat but offered no other commentary. Neither the servants nor the prince remarked on the myriad bruises that stained his skin, though their hands were gentle, to spare him such pain as they could.
Hot water and clean clothes restored him rather well. Breakfast set him truly among the living. He did his best not to fall on it like a starving wolf. Bread so fine, cakes so sweet, had not passed his lips since he left Han-Gilen.
He ate less than he wanted but somewhat more than he needed; then he was ready to be taken to the princess. Hani was his guide; the servants, dismissed, vanished wherever servants went when their lords did not need them.
Â
He was sure, well before he came there, that he was a prisoner after all, and he was going into a cell deep in the bowels of the palace. But his
guide brought him out of the tunnels and into a different place, which had the air and the proportions of a noble residence. He supposed that it was Merian's house, or perhaps her brother's.
It was a handsome house, well kept, and apparently deserted. But he sensed human presence elsewhere within the walls, and not only in the room to which Hani led him.
It was a library, and she was in the middle of it, half-buried in books, shuffling rapidly among a half-dozen scrolls and scribbling on a bit of parchment. She glanced up, preoccupied, and said, “Hani. Where did you put Vanyi's book?”
Hani slipped a scroll from the bottom of the heap, unbound it, and handed it to her without a word. She did not thank him, or acknowledge Daros at all.
He could sulk, or he could peer over her shoulder to see what she was reading. He recognized a history or two, a very old grimoire of which he had thought his father had the only copy, and what seemed to be a compendium of songs and gnomic verses.
“What are you looking for?” he asked her.
“Help,” she said. “Wards alone won't be enough. But nowhere is there any word of such a threat as this.”
“Don't you have priests and mages to do this hunting for you?” Daros asked.
“They are,” she said: “all those that aren't flattened by the loss of their center.”
He was not sure he understood. “The Heart of the World? Butâ”
“You really don't feel it, do you?” She sounded almost exasperated. “When it went down, weren't you rent to the core of you?”
“No,” he said. “I can feel a gap in the fabric of magicâan emptiness where once was a nexus of Gatesâbut it doesn't touch me at all. The worlds are still full of Gates, and most of those are still open. Those that are shut, the shadow took, just as it took your nexus.”
“To the mages of Gates,” she said, “the Heart of the World is the very heart and center of what they are. The other mages, lightmages, darkmagesâtheir
power is born and nurtured here, in this earth, this sun. But the power of Gates was contained there, in the Heart of the World.”
“Not for me,” he said. “Nor for you, either, or you wouldn't be sitting here, being impatient with me. How badly are your mages hurt?”
She seemed surprised that he would care. “There are a dozen dead. Another hundred might as well be. The rest look as if they will recover. The lesser Gates are still alive; that sustains them. But howâ”
“I'm not a Gate-mage,” he said.
“That is obvious.” She shook herself. “You're a great Gateâas I am; as, it seems, Estarion is. It's inside you. You can still leave the world.”
“So can you.”
“Yes,” she said, but not as if it mattered. She turned back to the books in front of her. “I had been hoping to find something that would show us how to find the emperor.”
“I know that,” Daros said. “I remember where I found him. I could find it again.”
“But should you? The danger is worse than ever. If the shadow can swallow the Heart of the World, it most certainly can swallow you.”
“It can swallow him, too, and whatever world or place of magic in which he's found refuge,” said Daros. “Lady, the sooner we get him out, the better. I don't know that anything can live, once the dark tide has rolled over it.”
“We must know what it is,” she said. “Else how can we fight it? But how can we do that, if even you can't go near it without being battered half to death?”
All his bruises twinged at once. He set his teeth against them and said, “I know where he is now. I don't need the worldroad, or the sea of night, either.”
He thought she might seize him, maybe to strangle him, maybe to kiss him, but she did neither. “If you go, you may not be able to come back. You said he was trapped. What good would it do to join him in his prison?”
“Maybe none,” he said. “Maybe a little, if we discover what the enemy is. Who knows? Maybe we can even destroy it.”
“As well expect a gnat to destroy a mountain,” she said. She rubbed her eyes as if they troubled her, and drew a long shuddering breath. “If we only knew what it was!”
“The Forbidden Secrets,” Hani said abruptly.
They both rounded on him. He met their stares calmly. “There is on the far side of the world,” he said, “an order ofâpriests is not the proper word. Devotees? Adepts? They call themselves the servants of the Great Oblivion; they worship the night without moons or stars. Their fastness stands on the summit of heaven. It's said that only those blessed of their gods can visit it, still less live there, because the air is too thin for simpler mortals to breathe.”
“Would they know of Gates and dark tides?” Merian demanded. “Are they mages?”
“Some may be,” he said. “I only heard of them as a story long ago, before we came to live in this empire. But I've heard since of the knowledge that they keep, that they say was passed down to them by their gods. What that knowledge is, only the initiate knows; it's not even known how it's conveyed, though most likely it's written in books. Still, there are rumors of what may be in it, whispers of strange things, dark things, things that feed on stars.”
“Things that feed on stars.” Merian stroked the scroll in front of her, absently, as if it had been an animal. “The books, scrolls, inscriptions, whatever they are, are forbidden, you say. I gather their guardians will be somewhat reluctant to present them for our inspection, even with an imperial decree. It's not their empire, after all, or their emperor who is lost.”
“Even to save the world?” Daros asked.
“My own mages hardly believe that,” she said. “Do you think devotees of a hidden order on the other side of the world will be any more willing to hear me?”
“You could ask,” he said.
Innocent
, her eyes said, and she did not mean it as a compliment. He shrugged.
“You
could
ask,” her brother said.
“Find them,” she said, “and ask them, if you have such hopes of them.”
“I may do that,” Hani said.
He wandered off. Daros would have liked to follow, but he was curious as to why she had summoned him. Surely it could not have been to watch her scowl at books that told her nothing.
At length she seemed to recall his existence. He had been reading the grimoire with widened eyes and guiltily beating heart, for he had never been allowed to touch its mate in his father's library. When he had tried, he had scorched his fingers, and been thrashed soundly into the bargain.
This had no wards on it, or none that could trouble him. Nor was there a great deal in the book to appall him. The magic was dark and the rites nearly all of blood, but he had seen worse elsewhere. Nothing in it spoke of shadows across the worlds.
Just as he came across a spell for opening Gates, which required the blood of a virgin boy and the soul of a saint, Merian said, “I set you free.”
Daros blinked. “YouâWhat?”
“You're free,” she said. “You can go. Your sentence is commuted.”
“But you just saidâyou need me!”
She raised her eyes to his face. They were tired, but there was something more, something that he could just begin to read. “I have no time for you,” she said. “You lack training; your discipline is rudimentary. There's no leisure to train you, and none to protect you against the trouble you will inevitably get into if left to yourself. One of my mages will take from you your knowledge of the emperor's whereabouts, then bind your power within the circles of this world. You should suffer little inconvenience.”
“You need me,” he said stubbornly. “You said so yourself: I'm not
bound by the limits of mages. I can go where they don't think to go, do what they can't imagine doing. I can find the emperor while they're still groping in the dark.”
“But,” she said with sweet reason, “you don't want or need to be involved in this war. Don't you miss your taverns? Your wine? Your women?”
“No,” he said, and it was mostly the truth. “I want to finish what I started.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
He paused. This was not a light thing that he was doing. Her eyes on him were bright gold. The tiredness was still in them, but she was stronger than he had thought. “I want to finish it,” he said.
“If you would do that,” she said, “I can't have you bumbling about like a weanling child. You will swear yourself to me by the laws of mages. I will not bind you with priest's vows, or with the lesser vows of my order. But you will be my sworn man. You will answer to me; whatever you do, you will do by my leave. If you cannot do this, then you will leave, and be bound, and never trouble my peace again.”
Daros opened his mouth, then shut it. He could see the trap about him, the jaws open wide. She had plotted this with skill that bade him remember precisely who and what she was. She was royal born, bred to rule. She would use every weapon that she found to hand, however flawed, however ill-balanced it might be.
“I think,” he said after a while, “that my decision was made some time since. You made sure of it, didn't you? You need meâbut you don't want me free to do as I please.”
“You are a spoiled and insolent child,” she said, “without sense or discipline. You are also a gifted mage, a master of Gates, and the key to the emperor's return. I will use you, and if necessary destroy you.”
“So you said,” he said, “when you first sat in judgment over me.” He knelt at her feet and held up his hands. “I swear myself to you, Lady of Gates, to serve you as I may.”
“You will serve me,” she said, “with your heart and your hand, with
your strength and your magic, to death or beyond, while the world endures. Do you swear this, on pain of dissolution?”
“I swear,” he said steadily.
She took his hands. Her fingers were cool and firm, but in the palm of her right hand was a living sun. She laid that against his own palm, and then against his heart. He gasped; it was as if she had pierced him with a white-hot blade. “You are bound,” she said, “and freed. No power but mine may compel you. No oath can bind you, unless I choose to allow. You are my servant. Serve me well; and may the gods defend you.”