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Authors: Judith Tarr

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BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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“Hunt,” she said. “But watch yourself. Don't fall into the fire.”
For answer he sat more sturdily on the bench and knotted his hands between his knees. He was well away from the fire, if not from the lure of its myriad worlds.
She set hands on his shoulders. So mages guarded one another in workings. And so, he thought, could she keep him chained to her will.
She did not know all there was to know of Gates, or of his magic, either. He sent a part of himself down the safe road, threading the loom of worlds. The part beneath, after a careful while, he sent back toward the shadow.
He had done such a thing before, more than once, to elude his father or his mother, or to escape the testing that would have bound him to Gates or temple. But he had not done it in such close quarters, under such a watchful guard. The lesser hunt must seem to be all the world, and the greater must leave no trace at all. To divide himself so, he needed every scrap of power he had, and every bit of discipline that he had taught himself. That was more than anyone knew. Whether it would be enough, only time would tell.
The lesser hunt skimmed the sparks of worlds, finding no trace of what it sought. The greater one skirted the edge of shadow. It was a shield, he was certain now, but how it was sustained, what had wrought it, he could not tell.
He sought the source, the life behind the wall. It was elusive; it warded itself well, shields within shields. He looked for a face, a mind, anything that he could grasp, to draw him behind the shield.
He was not strong enough. Merian wore at him with the weight of her watchfulness. If he could have focused on the shadow alone, he could have found its makers, but the fruitless hunt through worlds not yet touched by shadow kept him from discovering the truth.
He must find Estarion. The emperor had gone hunting the shadow; Daros was sure now that he had found it. He was strong enough to face it; nor need he bow to any will but his own.
Daros let go the greater hunt and focused himself on the lesser. He pressed it as close to the darkness as he dared under Merian's eye. There was a hint, a glimmer—
It dropped away. He pulled back in frustration, into the hall again, beside the fire that never shrank or went out. But if all the worlds were laid waste, would it not, itself, vanish into ash?
Merian set a cup in his hand. It was full of honeyed wine. She gave him bread to sop in it, to fill his belly with care, quenching a hunger as strong as it was sudden.
He ate and drank because he must, but his mind was not on it. “I have to go back,” he said.
“Not now,” said Merian. “You'll rest first.”
“But I almost found him. He's there. I couldn't—quite—”
“I saw.” She pulled him to his feet. “Come and rest.”
He fought her, but his knees would barely hold him up. “Stop that,” she said, “or I'll carry you over my shoulder.”
He did not doubt that she would do it. Sullenly but without further objection, he let her lead him out of the hall.
This was a castle after all, with stairs and passages, and rooms that seemed mortal enough, if ascetically bare. One of them had a bed in it, and a hearth on which she lit a mortal fire. He lay because she compelled him, and suffered her pulling off his boots and covering him with a blanket as mortal as the fire, worn and somewhat musty, as if it had been long unused.
The starkness of it comforted him. It was real; there was no magic in it. He was deathly weary of magic, just then.
 
 
He lay on the hard narrow bed in the stone cell. Merian was gone. He was aware of her in the hall of the fire, holding council and audience from afar with the army of her mages. She had kept a part of herself, a thin thread of awareness, on guard over him, but that could not constrain his vision.
He stood on the shores of a wide and heaving sea. It was a sea not of water but of shadow, of darkness given substance. Things stirred beneath, great beasts rising from the depths and then sinking again with a sound like a vast sigh.
Because he was dreaming and knew it, he set foot on the surface of the darkness. It felt firm and yet yielding, like a carpet of moss on a forest floor. It was darkly transparent, showing the play of shadow within shadow in the depths beneath.
Slowly as he trod those swelling hills and sudden hollows, he began to distinguish among the shapes below. They were worlds, each floating in a bubble of darkness. Those that were nearest the surface came clearest to his vision. Some of them he knew, others were strange. He stooped to peer through the dark glass.
It was a war. He had never seen one; there had been no more than bandit raids in his world since before he was born. Yet he had heard of battles, and seen them through the memories of those who had fought in them.
Armies faced one another on a wide and windy plain. The beasts they rode, the armor they wore, were strange, but there was no mistaking what they were or what they did. One side was smaller by far, and had a desperate look. The other came on like a black wave.
There
, he thought. He bent lower, peering as closely as he could. The dark warriors were all armored, their faces hidden, their shapes not quite human.
The sea surged, flinging him off his feet. A vast shape rolled over the world and its warriors. An eye opened, as wide as one of the worlds. It turned and bent, as if searching.
He was tiny, a mite, a speck of dust in the vastness of the worlds. He was nothing; no more than a breath of wind. The dark thing need take no notice of him. It was far too great a beast for such a speck as he was.
It rolled on beneath and left him gasping, tossed on the restless sea. He was lost; the land was gone. In concealing himself from the great guardian, he had concealed himself also from the Heart of the World.
M
ERIAN LEFT THE BOY TO SLEEP FOR PERHAPS TOO LONG. THERE was a great deal to do, and her mages, while willing to be obedient, lacked belief in the task. Even after she had let them see as much as she had seen, she still sensed the current of doubt and heard the murmur among them: “She's a great mage, we all know that, but we also know that she is a living Gate. What if the Gate in her has driven her mad?”
That murmur would grow if she loosed her grip on any of them. There were always doubters and naysayers; nor was every mage her friend, though she had ruled them since she was little more than a child. If she was wise, she would give up this foolishness and return to her palace, and let the emperor find his own way home. Had he not done so before, and more than once?
But this was not the same. There was an urgency in her, a sense almost of desperation, as if there were no time left-as if each moment that she let pass, she wasted, without hope of replenishment. She must find the emperor; there was no hope otherwise.
This was nothing that she could say to any of her mages. They were blind to it, and worse than blind.
“It could be said,” said Urziad from amid the Heartfire, “that you are deluded and we see the simple truth.”
“My old friend and frequent adversary,” she said, “so it could. Do you believe it?”
“I believe that what you see terrifies you,” he said. “I dislike that you place your trust in a useless frippery of a boy.”
“He believes in what I see,” she said.
“Surely that should tell you how well to trust it, and him.”
“The emperor also believes,” she said. “And before you tell me that he's a senile old man who has been questionably sane from his youth, do recall that no mage now living can equal him.”
“Except you,” said Urziad.
She shook that off, however true it might be. “I think this boy may be stronger than any of us imagines. He's the hunting hound. I'm his huntsman. Will you see to it that there is a world for us to return to?”
“I would prefer that you never left at all,” Urziad said.
“So would I,” she said. “But needs must. Be watchful, my friend.”
“For your sake,” Urziad said, “and for no other reason.”
“Gods grant it be enough.”
 
He vanished from the Heartfire. She stretched and sighed. There was no measure of time here, but in the world of the sun her forefather, the day had come and gone. It was deep night, almost dawn.
The boy had had long enough to sleep. She went up to the room in which she had left him. He was sprawled on his face, perfectly still: the pose of one who had raised laziness to high art.
She laid a hand on his shoulder to wake him, and gasped. He was rigid. The skin of his neck was cold.
She heaved him onto his back. He was still breathing, shallowly. His face was grey-green, his eyes rolled up in his head.
She hissed at the folly of the child. He had fallen into a mage-dream; it had swallowed him whole. And she, worse fool yet, had left him alone. She should have known what he would do.
If there had been another mage to stand guard over her, she would have gone hunting him down the paths of his dream. But she was alone, and time was wasting. She flung him over her shoulder—grunting a little for he was not a light weight, but she was stronger than most men would have liked to know. She carried him out of the cell, down a passage and a stair, to a cavernous room in which glimmered a pool of everflowing water.
The water was cold—icy. A flicker of magic could have warmed it, but she had no interest in his comfort. Quite the contrary. She stripped him of his clothes and dropped him unceremoniously into the pool.
For a long moment she knew that she had erred; that he was too far gone. He sank down through the water, limbs sprawling, slack and lifeless.
Just as she was about to dive to his rescue, he jerked, twitched, thrashed. Eyes and mouth opened; he surged up out of the pool, gasping, choking, striking at air.
She moved back prudently out of the way and waited for him to find his sanity again, such as it was. He scrambled to the pool's edge and lay there, breathing in gasps, skin pebbled with cold.
When it seemed clear that he would refrain from attack, she wrapped him in a cloth and rubbed him dry. His eyes were clouded still; he submitted without resistance. Only slowly did he seem to see her or to know who she was; even then he only stared at her dully.
Her heart constricted. Not, she told herself, that she cared overmuch whether he lived or died, but she needed him alert and sane, to hunt for the emperor. Indaros with his mind gone was of no use to her.
Little by little the light came back into his eyes. He straightened; he shuddered so hard that she heard the clacking of teeth. When he spoke, his voice was raw. “How long—”
“Part of a day and most of a night,” she said.
“Not so bad, then,” he said with a small sigh. “Lady, what I saw—” He was shaking uncontrollably. “Armies, lady. Wars. And something … I don't know what it is, how they raise it, what sustains it, but it rolls ahead of them. We aren't strong enough, lady. Not even all of us together.”
“We are going to have to be,” she said grimly. “Show me.”
He opened his eyes wide. They were as dark as the night between stars, and shimmering with bubbles that were worlds. Before she could speak, move, think, she was deep within his memory.
He was strong, she thought distantly. Stronger even than she had imagined. As strong as she. Untrained, yes, but far from undisciplined. He had taught himself—really, rather well.
She gathered everything that he had told her, found Urziad where he drifted on the tides of dream, and sent it all to him, whole, as it had been sent to her. His shock knotted her belly.
There would be no doubt among mages now. Not after this. She struggled free, raising every shield she had.
In the silence, alone within herself, she stood staring at the boy from Han-Gilen.
No—let him be the man and mage that he so evidently was. Let her give him his name, Indaros Kurelios, prince-heir of a small and yet powerful realm. “Why?” she asked him. “Why hide yourself so completely?”
“I never wanted temples,” he said, “or orders of mages. It seemed they never wanted me.”
“I am thinking,” she said slowly, “that it's great good luck for us all that that was so.”
“What, that I'm a coward and a layabout?”
“Stop that,” she said. “This needed someone outside the walls. Someone who could see unimpeded; who could go where none of us was able to go.”
“Does that mean my sentence is commuted?” he asked sweetly.
“You still broke the law,” she said.
He sighed, shrugged. The color had come back to his face, the insouciance to his manner. She was growing used to it; it grated on her less now than it had. “And the emperor is still missing. I know he's somewhere on the shores of the shadow—but where, I can't tell.”
“We will find him,” she said, “if we have to walk on foot from world to world.”
“I don't think there's time for that,” he said.
“What else can we do?”
He bit his lip. It was odd and rather gratifying to see him so far removed from his easy insolence. “I can track him. I think … . if you ward me and protect me from the dark, I can find the trail he left. It's still there; I can almost see it. But it will fade soon.”
She searched his face. He was speaking the truth, or as much of it as he could know. “Do it,” she said. “Do it now.”
He bent his head. She was prepared this time for the swiftness with which he acted. He had no deliberation; he knew no rituals. He simply gathered his magic and flung it forth. It was inelegant, but she had to admit that it was effective.
 
They flew on wings of bronze over a dark and tossing sea. What he followed was as subtle as a scent, as faint as a glimmer in the corner of an eye. She could find it only through him.
That piqued her. He was royal kin, but she was royal line.
He was her hunting hound. She let him draw her onward through the swirl of worlds. They clustered near the edge of the shadow, gleaming like foam on a dim and stony shore.
She who was a living Gate, had never seen nor imagined such a thing as this. There was no worldroad, no simple skein of worlds. It was a much greater, much more complex thing, too great for mortal comprehension.
He rode these shifting airs as if born to them. She, earthbound, could only cling to him and be drawn wherever he went.
He circled a cluster of worlds far down that grey shore. The tide lapped but did not quite overwhelm them. They gleamed like pearls, or like sea-glass.
He had begun to descend. Broad wings beat and hovered. His eyes were intent, fixed on the worlds below.
Without warning the sea rose up and clawed the sky. It seized the tiny thing circling in it, struck it, smote it down.
 
They whirled through darkness. Winds buffeted them. His wings were gone. He clung as tightly to her as she to him, rolling and tumbling through infinite space.
She flung out a lifeline, a thread of pure desperation. It caught something, pulling them up short, dangling in the maelstrom of wind and shadow. Hand over hand she climbed up the line, with his dead weight dragging at her until he gripped the line below her. She hesitated, dreading that he would let go and fall, but he was climbing steadily, if slowly.
Light glimmered above them. Wind buffeted them, striving to pluck them free. Her fingers cramped; her arms ached unbearably. She set her teeth and kept on.
The thread began to rise as if drawn from above. The wind howled, raking flesh from bone and body from spirit.
The Heart of the World hung below her. She reached for it with the tatters of her magic, seeking the power that had sustained her and every Gate-mage since the dawn of the world.
Just as she touched it, the darkness struck. It had been waiting like a great raptor poised above its prey. It roared down with power incalculable.
There were wards, walls, structures of magic so strong and so ancient that they had been reckoned impregnable. They melted as if they had
been no more than a wish and a dream. All the woven elegance of spells and workings, remembrances of mages eons dead, great edifices of art and power, crumbled and fell into nothingness.
The Heart of the World was gone. It had whirled away below her, drowned in darkness. The place where it had been, woven in the core of her magery, was echoing, empty.
This could not be. The Heart of the World was not a place, nor a world. It was a living incarnation of magic.
The dark had devoured it, swallowed it, consumed it. It was rendered into nothingness, just as the worlds had been beyond the lost Gates.
Shocked, shattered, stunned almost out of her wits, she fell into light. A grunt and a gasp marked Daros' fall beside her. She was far too comfortable on real and living ground to move or speak. That was cool stone under her, or—tiles?
Tiles indeed. She knew them well. Painfully she lifted her head. The two of them lay in a heap in the innermost shrine of the Temple of the Sun in Starios. The light about them was pure clean sunlight flooding through the dome of the roof. For a long blissful moment she basked in it, sighing as pain and fear melted away. Her whole being was a hymn of thanks to the god who had freed her soul from the black wind.
Daros groaned and rolled onto his back. His eyes narrowed against the light, but he did not flinch or cover them.
Movement caught Merian's eye. A pair of priests stood staring at them. Both were young, in the robes of novices; their eyes were wide, their mouths open in astonishment. One of them held a basket of flowers, the other clutched an armful of clean linens. They had come to tend the altar.
She rose stiffly. The novice with the flowers dropped onto his face, hissing at his companion to do likewise. “Lady!” he bleated. “Lady, forgive, we didn't recognize you, we—”
“Please,” she said, cutting across his babble. “Go on with what you were doing.”
He took it as an order, and no doubt as a sacred trust. The young and eager ones invariably did. Daros, to her relief, said nothing; he creaked even more than she, and when he followed her from the shrine, he walked lame. He did not complain, which rather surprised her. She would have expected, at the very least, an acid commentary on the ailments of mages.
Her aches eased as she walked, though the void in the heart of her felt as if it would never heal. He said nothing of what he might be suffering, if indeed he felt anything at all. He was not bound to Gates as she had been; the Heart of the World was no great matter to him as it was to her—and as it would be to every mage of Gates in this world.
BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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