Tides of Darkness (37 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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They caged him in it. It closed upon him, encasing him like armor, holding him immobile. No fortress between the worlds, this; no prison for an inhuman Mage. He would endure his slavery within this world.
The bond about his neck had let go when the cage enclosed him. It made no difference. Each cold metal band ate a little more of his will, sapped a little more of his strength to resist. It opened him to the whirring, humming thing set in the cage, and tempted his power; it lured it out, into the trap.
So had they captured the Mage long ages ago, and bound him to their will. For all Daros' struggle to shut down his mind and suppress his power, he could not stop the trickle through the cracks in his shields.
This was the thrice ninth hell of the Asanian priests. As before when he was simply taken prisoner, he had no useful choice but to retreat into his own mind. It was a capacious place, crackling with lightnings, most of them dark.
The Mage waited in one of the deep halls. It wore a semblance of life and vigor, but its voice was faint, its shape not quite substantial.
“You,” Daros said with no love at all. “You did this.”
“The fault is mine,” the Mage said, “but this was not my will.”
“They know what I am. Who else could have told them?”
“You,” said the Mage. “You told them. Your presence in their tower, your hunting and spying—their machines saw you. Be glad, youngling.
If the roar of your magic had not overwhelmed the piping and twittering of theirs, your little mages would have been betrayed.”
“Would it have made a difference?” said Daros bitterly. “I'm trapped now as you were. Are. Will be—but not for much longer, no? Now that you have a successor.”
“Not much longer, no,” the Mage said. “Youngling, listen. The gift I gave you, the feather of my wing—”
“Gone,” Daros said. “They took it with the rest.”
“No,” said the Mage.
It gestured with its chin. Daros looked down. The feather hung as it had for so long, secure on its cord. He closed his hand about it. It felt real—as it would; he was dreaming.
“No dream,” the Mage said. “Use the gift. Build with it.”
It had been speaking sensibly until then—human sense. For that, Daros had doubted that it was real. But this strange twist of thought, that was indeed the Mage. Did it seem a little more substantial?
“Build,” said the Mage. “Hold and guard. Then later, fight.”
It melted to mist before Daros could demand that it explain. He could not call it back, even in memory. But its feather remained, solid and real in his hand.
For lack of greater inspiration, he slipped it from its cord and wielded it like a pen. When he drew it through the air, it left behind a glimmering line. He shaped the letters of his name, a little stiffly for it had been a long while since he held a pen. They hung before him, gleaming. With swift strokes he drew walls about it and surmounted them with towers. Then he drew a gate, but locked and barred it.
He paused. He was breathing hard as if he had lifted each stone of a living wall and set it upon another. Yet he moved more freely. The trickle of magic through the wards had stopped.
The Mage's voice whispered through the feather in his hand. “Build strength, youngling. Build resistance. Hold fast.”
He fancied that he could hear sadness in that voice, a touch of wistfulness. It had never had that strength, even as great as its power was.
Once trapped, it had had no power to free itself, nor to refuse the use that was made of it. It had lacked even the courage to seek the death that would free it.
Daros had little that the Mage had not given him. It had served him poorly enough. He was as trapped as the Mage had ever been. His magery was protected, yes, but for how long? The dark lords needed it. They would find a way to take it. That was inevitable.
Or he could die. He had thought that he was ready. Yet, enclosed within his wards, he could not find the determination to do the necessary. The mages might succeed; the war might end. Even the darkness—it might yield to light.
Not if the dark lords had his power, enslaved, to do with as they would. He must die. He must not give them even the hope of turning him against all that lived and walked in the light.
N
OW. IT MUST BE NOW.
Merian started awake. She had snatched a few moments' rest between the long day's preparations and the night's incessant attacks; but it had not been overly restful. Her dreams were dark, full of madness and pain. And then, sudden and piercingly clear, came that voice like a hawk's cry.
You must move now. There is no time to waste!
It was two days still to the muster. They were nearly ready, but she had yet to speak to her mother of Estarion's message. It was not cowardice, she told herself. The less time she gave Daruya to ponder objections, the easier it might be to win her over.
But the urgency in that voice, the desperation beneath, set her heart to pounding. She knew the voice. It was the Mage, the creature whose
power the dark lords had enslaved. She reached to the place where it had been, hoping to catch it, hold it, learn more of it, but it was gone.
Quickly, before she lost courage, she touched her mother's mind, away in Starios. She had good hope of finding Daruya too preoccupied to trouble with her, but Daruya happened to be resting as well. She basked in the sun as all of their blood were wont to do, in the innermost of her chambers, where even her husband must ask leave to enter.
She admitted Merian to her mind with remarkably little testiness. “Trouble?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Merian said. “I had a sending. The dark ones' Mage—it summoned us all. Now, it said. We must attack now.”
“Did it?” Daruya frowned. “How could it know what we intend?”
“The mages know,” Merian said. “It is a mage. Maybe—”
“Maybe we've been betrayed.”
Merian's heart constricted. “No. He would never—”
“Is the Mage a he?” Daruya inquired.
“Mother,” said Merian, scrambling her wits together. “This is a true sending. Whatever the cause, I believe we should obey it. All is ready, or as ready as it can be. And there is something …”
When Merian did not immediately go on, Daruya raised a brow. “Something that rives you with guilt?”
“Something that you may find objectionable, but it comes from the emperor.”
“The emperor is lost on the other side of the dark.”
“He found his way to me,” Merian said: “in strict truth, to Elian; he was hunting the youngest heir of the line. He has a plan that may scatter the darkness.”
“A plan,” said Daruya, “that you think I may not like.”
“I know you will not,” Merian said. “It requires one of us in this world, and one of us in his—and one between, in the dark world.”
There was a pause. Daruya's understanding was swift. “He was going to rely on the Gileni. Yes?”
“The Gileni is lost,” Merian said, though the words knotted her belly
with grief, “and in any case it should be Sun-blood. We were born in and of the light; the light is alive in us. It fills us. Who better to break this thing that shatters worlds?”
“Who better to rescue the father of your child?”
“That supposes that he needs rescuing,” Merian said with a hint of sharpness. “Mother, we need you to hold this world as he holds the other. I'm the youngest, the mage of Gates. My place is in the dark world.”
“Your place is here, as my heir.”
“There is a newer heir,” Merian said. “If I don't come back, I trust you to see that she lives to inherit.”
“You're sending her to me after all?”
“No,” said Merian. “She's going to Han-Gilen. But—”
Daruya rose. Merian braced for the blast, but her mind-voice was soft and dangerously mild. “You would send my granddaughter there, and not to me?”
“Elian is the prince's granddaughter, too. And,” said Merian, “he, unlike you, is not in the vanguard of the war. He can keep her safe until all of it is over—for good or for ill.”
Daruya liked that little, but she had ruled an empire long enough to recognize sense when she heard it. “Were you planning to tell me any of this?”
“I'm telling you now.”
“Yes—and telling me to mount the attack without delay. What were you afraid of, that if I had time to think about it, I'd find a way to stop you?”
“Something of the sort,” Merian admitted. “But, Mother, there really isn't—”
“I see no other way,” said Daruya. The taste of the words must have been bitter. “Tell me what the emperor would have us do.”
Merian was almost too startled to reply. “Swear you won't stop me before I pass the Gate.”
“I will not stop you,” Daruya said. “I will hate every moment that you
are gone, and dread every outcome until you come back. But when have I ever stopped you from doing as you pleased?”
That, for her, was tenderness. It tightened Merian's throat. “I will come back. We will win this war.”
“You do that,” said Daruya.
“You will call the muster tonight?”
“Today,” said Daruya.
“Then you trust—”
“I trust you. Now go, or we leave you behind.”
Merian went. Even as she retreated into her own body again, the call thrummed through her. It was the Great Summons, that she had not heard in all her years: calling every mage of this world to the muster. Mages passed the summons to mortal lords and commanders. The armies of the Sun began to move.
Almost without willing it, Merian sent the summons winging outward through the darkness, toward Estarion on the far side of the night. She did not know whether it came to him; she could only hope.
Men were stirring in the fortress. Half would stay to guard it; half would go. So too with the mages who had come to her here. Some must ward the world, but some would take the war to the enemy
She would go in armor, and armed. Her greatest weapon was her magery, but she would fight if she must. Her mail was shimmering steel, the surcoat over it the violet and grey of her order. Gold shimmered through it; Sun-brooches clasped the shoulders. It was rather too splendid for her taste, but the army needed to see that Sun-blood marched with it. It was a price she paid for the rank she had been born to.
Elian's nurse was ready, in a guard of strong mages. She surrendered the child into Merian's arms, for a little while. Merian clasped her close to breasts that still ached in their bindings, and breathed the sweet infant scent of her. It was more than difficult relinquish her into Jadis' care again, to open the lesser Gate, to send them to the prince in Han-Gilen. When they were gone, Merian's heart was as empty as her womb.
She straightened with an effort, and steeled herself. She would come
back; she made it a vow, sworn on the searing pain in her hand. She pressed that hand to her heart. “May the gods witness it,” she said.
 
The sun was still high as the last of the armies gathered and waited. Mages linked mind to mind across the face of the world. Merian gathered their power together within the Ring of Fire, in the heart of Ki-Oran. She forged of it a key, and set it to the Gate within her.
Darkness resisted, surging against the Gate like a tide. She set all their conjoined strength against it, to break its power, to open the Gate.
It was too strong. Without the Heart of the World to bolster the rest, all the mages, even with Merian, were not enough. If she had been Estarion—or Daros—
Despair was the darkness' weapon. She countered it with the Sun within her. It shrank away—then roared back like a wave of the sea.
Just before it would have drowned her, it broke. It frayed and shredded and melted into mist. Astonishment froze her in the last act of defense.
Now!
cried the Mage's voice. Desperation sharpened it, and yet it sounded faint and growing fainter.
Go now!
There was no time to waste. Before the dark could come back like the swing of the tide, she thrust open the Gate. The armies of the Sun poured into the dark world.
 
Estarion sat bolt upright in the queen's council. Her chamberlain told the tally of cattle and fodder, barley and storehouses. Those were vital matters, matters of the people's survival, but they were deadly dull; and the news was all bad. The enemy was stripping them bare.
The Great Summons rang in Estarion's skull. It was so strong, so compelling, that it was all he could do not to leap to his feet and run to a muster on the other side of the sky. Even some of those in the council sensed it, however dimly. Tanit sat as stiff as he, eyes wide, staring into the blank and singing air.
He rose. “It's time,” he said.
Lord Bes droned on, but the rest welcomed the distraction. The more warlike rose to face him. He addressed them through the buzz of the chamberlain's voice. “The battle has come. Arm and prepare your men. Tonight, we fight.”
Some of them were pale, some flushed with excitement. They were all firm in their courage. They were not a warrior people, but they had learned to fight. Daros had taught them. His legacy in this world, Estarion thought fleetingly. There was no time for sentiment.
He bowed over Tanit's hand and kissed it. It was steady, strong. Only a mage would know how hard her heart was beating. “One stroke,” she said to him. “One hard blow. That's all we have in us. Guide it well, my lord.”
He should go, but he lingered. He had every intention of surviving this as he had so much else, and yet he could not leave before he had impressed in memory every line of her face. He ran his finger down her cheek, and kissed her softly on the lips. “Until morning,” he said.
“Until morning,” said Tanit.
 
The defenses of the city and the string of cities from Waset to Sakhra were as strong as mages and cats, priests and warriors, could make them. Estarion tightened the weaving of the wards and saw that the mortal guards were armed and ready. When that was done, and the land of the river was as well protected as it could be, he turned his steps toward the temple of the sun-god.
Seti was waiting for him. The old priest had summoned a handful of priests whom he trusted, and instructed them in their duties. They had prepared the room for him in the house in which he had met Seti before. The bed was moved to the center and hung with clean linen. Lamps stood at head and foot, ready to be lit when the night came.
There was a light meal waiting, as Estarion had requested: bread, cheese, clean water. He ate and drank carefully. Fasting was no part of this: he needed to be strong. When he had had his fill, he suffered the priests to surround him with their chants and incense. It did nothing for
his magic, but it consoled them greatly. It comforted him, too, in its way. He had left his priesthood with his empire, laid it all aside to become a shepherd in the Fells. Yet when all was done and said, he was still what he had been born to be: mage, priest, lord and king.
As the last chant died away, he lay on the bed, which had been made long enough for him. Seti sat in a chair beside him. The others divided: half to retreat to the inner room, to rest; half to take station about him. They would guard him while he journeyed to the heart of his magic.
He settled as comfortably as he might, and steadied himself with long, deep breaths. Each brought him closer to his center, drew him deeper into his power. He was aware of the priests watching over him, of Seti's blind eyes that saw clearly to the soul. The world beyond them, the people, the river flowing forever to the sea, all that had become a part of him since he fell through the Gate, wrapped him about and made him strong. Strongest of all was the queen in her hall of audience, and their son in his nursery, playing contentedly in a patch of sunlight. He gurgled at the touch of his father's mind, and laughed, teasing it with flickers and flashes of power.
Strong young mage. The joy of that rode with him into the heart of this world, and so outward through the memory of Gates. He bore with him the light and power of the sun, and the splendor of stars, and the cold glory of the moon that ruled the night in this world.
The dark had retreated somewhat. It had not faded or died; it hung like a wave about to break. But some strong blow had weakened it.
He sought the Mage in its prison, passing swiftly through the paths of the night. He found the chamber, the many Gates pulsing uncontrolled, and the long strange shape limp and lifeless in its bonds. It was not dead, not quite, but its power had broken, and all the structures of its making had collapsed. The dark world swirled with confusion. Slaves rose up; lords who had never dreamed of such a thing were fighting for their lives.
The Mage's power mustered one last feeble flicker. It touched Estarion's and held, gripping like a soft hand.
Time is short. Be swift. He cannot fight forever.

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