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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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He stiffened just visibly. “What do you fear in the night?”
He must know, as gods did. But it seemed he needed to hear it spoken. “We fear the things that walk in the dark; that rend flesh and devour souls. My people believe that you must be one such. But I see the sun blazing in the darkness.”
“Ah,” he said. “No wonder you won't look me in the face. I won't blind you, lady, or suck out your soul. I am a man, though one or two of my forebears were gods.”
She did not believe him, but she nerved herself to look up.
If he was a man, he was like no man that she had ever seen. He was smiling at her. His golden eyes were warm. He did not frighten her, but neither did he put her at ease. “You came from the gods' country,” she said, “from the land beyond the horizon. Don't deny it; I see it in you. You are not of mortal kin.”
“Not of this world,” he admitted. “The things you fear—I came hunting them. Your world is in great danger.”
“You hunt them?” she said. She was not daring to hope, not yet. “You have weapons that will kill them? Powers? Magics?”
“I don't know,” he said. Her face fell; he brushed it with a fingertip, a touch as light as a whisper of wind. “Lady, we've only now become aware of them; we don't know what they are, where they come from, or anything but that they are destroying worlds. If I can discover the truth, I will. But you shouldn't hope for too much. I'm only one man.”
“But surely,” she said, “there are others where you come from. They can come here, too, yes? They can join us in our war.”
“There are others,” he said, but his face for once was somber. “Whether they can come here … I barely managed it, and the darkness had had no warning of my coming. I don't know whether I can go back, or whether my people can find me. There are so many worlds. And none of my people knows—none of them believes—that any of them is occupied.”
She did not understand him, except that he was troubled, and that he might not be able to summon reinforcements. The rest was a matter for gods.
This she understood: that he was still weak from his passage from the gods' world to that of men; and that she was sorely remiss in her hospitality. She summoned the servants, bidding them bring food, drink, cooling fans, and a basin of water in which had been scattered a handful of sweet-scented petals.
He partook of it all with regal courtesy, and gracious manners that began to win over the less suspicious of the servants. He even knew how to dismiss them so that they were not offended; they told one another in her hearing that he was tired, he had had a long journey, he must rest.
She was of the same mind, but when she made as if to go, he stayed her with a word. “What may I call you?” he asked. “Lady? Queen? Majesty?”
“Tanit,” she said before she could catch her tongue.
He bowed to her. “Tanit,” he said. “And I am Estarion.”
“Seramon,” she said.
“Estarion,” he said.
Her tongue could not shape those sounds in that order. “Seramon,” she said, struggling.
He shrugged and smiled and spread his hands, the one that was dark and the one that cast shards of light over the wall. “Seramon,” he said.
E
STARION WAS GONE.
Daros had indulged in a fit of pure pique, devoting himself after Merian's departure to all the tasks he had been given, and all of Estarion's, too. By sunset of that day, he was too exhausted to do more than eat a bite of bread and fall into his bed.
Morning brought a soft mist of rain and no relief from solitude. He might have reveled in it, seized it and escaped, but the thought persisted that this was a test. They wanted him to bolt. Therefore he would not.
By the sixth day he was deathly weary of his own company. Woolbeasts had no conversation. The senel had no interest in it. The stores of necessities—ale, salt, grain for grinding into flour—were running low. Every cycle of Brightmoon, either Estarion had gone down to Han-Uveryen to fetch provisions, or the fortress had sent a packtrain up the
mountain. The moon had come to the full the day after Estarion went away, but no train of beasts had come winding up the trail. Obviously they expected the men on the mountain to come down.
On the seventh day, he ground the last of the grain, baked a day's worth of bread from it, and knew that either he went down the mountain to beg at the castle—and begging it would be, without Estarion to speak for him—or he went through Gates as they all seemed to wish him to do. Then of course, if he did that without a chaperon, he would be caught and killed, and they would be rid of him at last.
Unless …
She was in the midst of something that, from the taste that came to him through a tendril of magic, was both tedious and obligatory. It felt in fact like a court function.
He made so bold as to borrow her eyes. Yes—there was the great hall of audience in Starios of the kings, that Estarion had built between two great and warring empires. He glimpsed the regents on their twinned thrones below the golden blaze of the throne of Sun and Lion: Daruya like an elder and somewhat darker image of her daughter, and her consort not greatly unlike Daros' mother: tall and strongly built, with broad cheekbones and narrow black eyes. The court stood in ranks before them, glittering in regal finery.
Merian was enormously and unbecomingly bored. Courts of the law, imperial audiences, embassies, those she could bear; they were interesting. But High Court was dull beyond belief.
He was tempted to linger in this hidden corner of her awareness, where even she had no inkling of his presence. It was a surprisingly pleasant place to be. Her mind was not at all as he had expected; there was nothing either dour or repressive about it. It reminded him of the water garden in his father's summer palace: bright, melodious, full of sudden delights and fluid order. The wall she had built about it was thick and high, overgrown with thorns; but the heart of her was wonderful.
He hated to leave it. But she would be furious if she knew, and just then he did not want her anger. He slipped free, curved round, presented himself for her notice.
His wards were almost not enough to shield him against the full glare of her attention. She was Sun-blood, and that was pure blazing fire. She did not even give him time to speak. “Have you found him? Where is he?”
Daros could not make his mind shape words. She caught hold of him, opened one of the Gates in him, and stepped through it.
She did it to punish him; she could perfectly well have opened her own Gate. But that would not have proved that she was his master.
He allowed it because he was still so enthralled by what he had seen inside her. They stood in the shepherd's hut, with the rain dripping sadly from the eaves, and stared at one another.
She was as splendid as a firebird in her court dress, all gold from head to foot. He in plain worn leather, with no ornament but the copper of his hair, bowed as a prince should to an imperial heir.
Her lips narrowed at that. He had not meant it for mockery, but he was set too long in the habit of insolence; he could not perform an honest obeisance.
She seized him and shook him. He did not stiffen or resist, but let his head rock on his neck.
“Where is he?”
It dawned on her eventually that if she wanted an answer, she had to stop rattling his teeth in his skull. She let him go. He dropped to his knees. “I don't know,” he said through the ringing in his ears. “I came to ask you. This isn't a test? You aren't tempting me into running through Gates?”
“Why would I—” She bit off the rest. “You would think that, wouldn't you? You haven't seen him at all?”
“Not since the morning you came,” he said.
“And you let this happen? You haven't gone looking?”
“You forbade me to go alone,” he said.
He thought she would strike him, but she struck her hands together instead. “You could have summoned me!”
“Isn't that what I just did?”
She did not like it that he was being reasonable and she was not. He watched her gather herself together. After a while she said, not too unsteadily, “No one knows where he is. That's not terribly unusual—he vanished for the whole of a year once, before we found him on a ship on the eastern sea. But my dreams have been strange. This morning when I woke, I wanted to ask him something, and he was nowhere. He is not in this world.”
Daros could not claim to be surprised. “He must have done it while we were engaged with one another,” he said. “Otherwise one or both of us would have known. And if he did that …”
“There are worlds beyond worlds,” she said. “And he can hide himself wherever, and whenever, he pleases.”
“Why would he do that?” Daros asked. “Is he testing us both?”
She shook him off. “No. No, that's absurd. He wouldn't play that game now. Which means—”
Daros finished the thought for her. “He's trapped somewhere.”
“Or dead,” she said starkly.
“No,” said Daros. “You would have known if he had died. So would I, if he'd died in a Gate. Power like that doesn't just vanish when the body dies.”
“Unless the power itself had been consumed,” she said.
But he was stubborn. “He's still alive, somewhere among the worlds. I'm going to find him.”
“He might not thank you for that,” she said. “If this is a hunt, and you come crashing through his coverts, you'll only make it worse for all of us.”
“Lady,” Daros said, and he thought he said it quite patiently, too, “either you want me to find him, or you don't. Either he's safe or he's not. You can't have both.”
“I don't think he's safe,” she said. “I'm going hunting. Will you come?”
“You think I can be of any use?”
“You can sense the thing that I suspect he was after.”
“Ah,” he said. “I'm to be your hunting hound.”
“Call yourself what you will,” she said. “We leave as soon as I can gather a few necessities.”
“Gather a few for me,” he said. “Unless you'd rather wait a day or two while I fetch them from the castle?”
“I'll fetch them,” she said. “Be ready.”
She melted into sunlight. He stood for a moment, simply breathing. The Gate inside him begged him to open it now, and vanish before she came back to plague him.
He was growing wise at last, or else he was turning into a coward. He gathered a change of clothes, a waterskin, one of the woolen cloaks; he rolled them together round an oddment or two, and the half-loaf that was left from his morning's baking. That bundle, with Estarion's second-best bow and a quiver of arrows, and a long knife, were all he could think to take.
She took her time in coming back. He began to wonder if she would; if she had thought better of it and gone alone. But the Gates were quiet. She had not passed through them.
 
He was napping when she came, propped against the house-wall in the sun. Her shadow, falling across his face, woke him abruptly and fully. He was on his feet, shouldering weapons and bundle, before his eyes were well open.
Her golden robes were gone. She was dressed much as he was, in coat and trousers, with a small bag slung over her shoulder. She had brought no weapon but a knife at her belt. Her hair was plaited tightly and wound about her head. She looked even younger than she had before, but strong, too, and a little wild.
She said no word. He had the briefest of warnings: a flicker in the Gates. She gathered him with her magic and swept him with her through the walls of the world.
 
 
They stepped from sunlight into firelight in a hall of stone. Now it seemed as vast as a cavern, now hardly larger than the shepherd's hut on the mountain. “This is the Heart of the World,” he said. “I've heard of it. I've never been here.”
“Never?”
He ignored the bite of Merian's disbelief. “You would have known about me if I had.”
“So we would,” she said grimly. “Now sit. This place belongs to us, to Gate-mages. It's as safe, and as shielded, as any place can be. You will remember it, where it is, how to come to it. This is where we will meet if either of us is separated.”
He had always known where it was, but he held his tongue. He sat where she bade him, on a bench that he could have sworn had not been there a moment before. She stayed on her feet, frowning at the fire. It was hot; it danced as flames should. But it was no mortal fire. Power of Gates was contained in it, and worlds spun like sparks.
“We will find the trail here,” she said. “You will be obedient; you will set aside whatever arts and fashions you may be enamored of, and be my servant until the emperor is found.”
“And then?” he inquired. “Do I finally die?”
“Do you want to?”
He did not answer.
“If by fecklessness or folly you endanger the emperor, or prevent us from finding him at all, I will kill you with my own hand. Find him, help me bring him home safe, and I may see fit to free you from your bonds and your sentence. Then you may go back to your taverns and your women.”
“For how long? Until our world flares into ash like all the rest?”
“That won't concern you, will it? Your service will be done. When the fire comes, if it comes, you can die with a flagon in your hand and a doxy on your knee, and never know a moment's grief.”
Daros could hardly give way to anger. He had cultivated his reputation
with great care; he had made certain that no one ever overestimated him. It made life simpler and much more pleasant.
But here, with this daughter of gods, he wearied of the game. He rose, quick enough to startle her, and stepped past her toward the hearth and the fire that was not fire. She spoke; he took no notice. He was sifting the sparks, searching among the worlds for a thread of gold, a memory of passage.
The blight on the worlds had spread. He saw it as black ash and blinding smoke, a darkness in the heart of the fire. The size of it, the breadth and sweep, caught his breath in his throat. No mage had such power; even if all the mages of this world banded together, they would not come near to the strength of this thing.
It was not a living will, though living will must drive it. He thought of walls and of shields—of a shieldwall, and an army behind it.
As if the thought had unlocked a door, he glimpsed … something. He was just about to grasp it when her voice shattered his focus. “Daros! You fool. Get back!”
Her hands were on him. He was leaning over the fire; his cheeks stung with the heat. She dragged him back.
He was glad of the bench under his rump, but not of the woman who bent over him. “Don't you know enough not to startle a mage out of a working?” he snapped at her.
That rocked her back on her heels. She could not have been reprimanded for such a thing since she was a tiny child.
He pressed such advantage as he had. “Lady, I don't think we can do this alone. We can hunt for the emperor, yes. But the other thing, the thing he was hunting—it's coming toward us. If you would have a world to bring him back to, you would do well to call on your mages and set them to work building such shields as they can. They can do that, yes? Even if they don't see or believe in the reason for it?”
“It has been done,” she said.
He flushed.
She was not inclined to be merciful. “You will leave the searching of
the shadow to the mages. Your task is to find your master. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said tightly.
“Good,” she said. “See that you remember.”
He lowered the lids over his eyes before she saw the extent of his defiance. The shadow was the key, he was sure of it. If Estarion was not inside it, then he was very close to it. “Do I have your leave to hunt?” he asked. And added, after a pause, “Lady.”

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