STAR TREK: TOS #22 - Shadow Lord

by Laurence Yep

  “I brought these too—though I wasn’t sure what they were.” She held the communicators out to Sulu.

  [178] “Even better,” Mr. Spock said approvingly. “Mr. Puga, could you hide one of those so I could get it later?”

  Holding one end gingerly between his fingertips, the old man lifted a communicator from Urmi’s palm. “Don’t worry. I’m used to hiding things from tax collectors. No one will ever find it.” He slipped it into his sash-end. “I’ll take good care of it and you.”

  Hitching up his robe, Sulu took the other communicator and attached it to his belt. “You can’t stay here. The other villagers might blame you.”

  Puga gave a merry wheeze. “Bless you, child, and what could they do to me? Take my life? There’s little of that left now anyway. At my age, death holds very little terror.”

  Impulsively, the prince seized the old man’s wrist. “You and Urmi are the only two good people that I’ve met on Angira.”

  The old man grasped the prince’s wrist in return and gave it a fierce squeeze. “We all have our flaws. You’re just not seeing the others at their best. They’re more scared than we are, that’s all. Give them enough food so that their fur grows sleek and golden and they’ll follow you anywhere.”

  “They still couldn’t match you and your granddaughter,” the prince insisted.

  The old man brought his other hand up and patted the prince’s arm. “Just make the world safe for all of us.”

  The prince was silent for a moment, staring helplessly at the old man.

  Urmi arched an eyebrow. “My grandfather’s waiting for an answer.”

  [179] “I’m only a shadow lord.” The prince tried to turn away, but the old man would not let him.

  “Even the smallest shadow can grow,” Puga said urgently, “and even the smallest person can match the longest shadow.”

  “Or even the dream?’ the prince asked with a slight smile.

  Puga pressed his lips together and nodded his head firmly. “Just so.” He let go.

  “I’ll ... do what I can,” the prince promised lamely.

  It was dark outside the stable and the prince took Sulu by the hand to guide him. “Which way, Urmi?” the prince whispered.

  “No place,” said Mumtas. And torches guttered into life. “I knew you’d overstep yourself if I let you, Urmi.”

  He stepped out of a nearby house with his ornate spear resting on his shoulder. Four swordsmen with torches fanned out across the street. At the very center of the line was Schami with a spear, along with another spearman.

  Urmi dropped her pack and sack to the ground. “Mumtas, it’d be a pleasure to take your head right now; but I’m in a hurry.” She drew out her sword. “Just stay out of our way, Schami.”

  Schami jabbed his spear point at her. “You’re the last person I expected to betray us.”

  Urmi let her right foot slide out in front of her as she got her body into position. “Sometimes people don’t know what’s really good for them.”

  Sulu drew out his sword. “You realize that if you kill any of them, you’ll never be able to come back here.”

  [180] “I may not have a choice,” Urmi shrugged.

  The prince drew out his sword, unwrapping the rag from around the hilt so he could shake out the ribbons. The bells jingled loudly in the silent village. “I wouldn’t pose for any monuments quite yet.”

  “Where did you ever get a sword like that?” Mumtas demanded. He was standing safely behind his guards. “If it’s a joke, it’s in poor taste.”

  The prince shook the sword slightly so that it rang again as he took up his stance. “It’s no joke. I paid dearly for this.”

  Mumtas shifted his feet uneasily as if he were no longer feeling quite as confident. “You’re a fool if you paid anything for it.”

  “The price I paid wasn’t in coin.” The prince was on the militia in three quick strides. Schami thrust his spear point at the prince and lost the blade as well as part of the shaft when the prince chopped them off.

  He whirled, twisting his wrist so that he could hack off another spear blade when he brought his sword back up. Another stride brought him right between Schami and the other spearman. The prince’s sword sliced through the air, halting only centimeters from Schami’s neck. “Would you care to pay the same price for my sword?”

  The rest of the militia stood dumbfounded, watching Schami and the prince. Schami glanced down at the sharp edge that was hovering so close. “N-n-no,” he stammered.

  The prince called out to the other militia. “Would any of the rest of you care to inspect the sword? I’ll gladly bring it over to you.” The other spearman threw down his now useless shaft and started to back down [181] the street. The others simply dropped their weapons and the torches and ran.

  “Halt,” Mumtas shouted frantically. “In the name of the people, I order you to stand firm.” He snatched at a fleeing militiawoman, but she dodged past him easily, leaving Mumtas’s hands clawing at the empty air.

  “Go on, Schami.” The prince lowered his sword. “My quarrel isn’t with you.”

  “I ... I ...” Schami’s voice failed him. Twisting around, he started to run after the others.

  Mumtas tried to throw himself in front of Schami. “Stop,” he yelled. But Schami, who was still clutching the shaft of his spear, swung it at Mumtas. Mumtas brought his spear up so that he blocked the blow with the shaft. And then Schami was beyond him, dashing down the street as fast as his legs would carry him.

  For a moment, Mumtas was too full of righteous indignation to remember where he was. “How dare you?” He pointed toward the fleeing Schami. “A blow against me is a blow against the people.”

  “How convenient.” The prince slapped the flat of his blade against his palm. “One could repay so many scores that way.”

  Mumtas turned sideways so he could look at the prince. “It was only a figure of speech.” He smiled anxiously as he took a step down the street. “You shouldn’t take me literally.”

  The prince stretched out his right leg so that it stamped loudly on the ground. With a scream of sheer terror, Mumtas went chasing after his fleeing guards.

  Urmi gathered up the pack and sack. “That’s probably the most exercise he’s had in years.” She let out a loud, relieved laugh.

  [182] “He can be quite nimble when he has the right incentive.” The prince took his pack from Urmi.

  “We’ll be safe enough now,” Puga said from the doorway to the stable. “If Mumtas tries anything, I’ll threaten to sic you three on him.”

  “I’ll be back,” the prince promised. “And Mumtas won’t enjoy it any more than he did this time.”

  The prince had to take Sulu’s hand again when they left the torchlit street. Despite the handicap of having to lead Sulu, they made it to the village wall in just a few minutes. Urmi climbed up on top first with a boost from the prince and Sulu and then, leaning her belly against the top of the wall, she lowered a hand to help them climb up beside her.

  They moved downriver, following the path through the silent fields. Urmi led the way and the prince followed, holding onto Sulu to guide him since the prince had better night vision. A half kilometer on, the river began to grow stronger as its bed narrowed and deepened and the rocky walls of the valley closed in so that it was impossible even for the ingenious farmers to grow anything.

  Toward sunrise, they reached the northwestern wall of the valley. There, the path began to climb as the river undercut the rock ledges so that there were sudden drops and gaps, and they left it finally as it plunged into a steep gorge. Instead, Urmi took them up a side path paralleling a stream that fell from a small valley. It was pleasant there, with small fruit trees and meadows of grass. Sulu supposed it was a grazing area for the farm animals.

  The valley ended in a bowl of rocks and weeds beneath a large crest of sandstone, with folds of red stone like ribs collapsed upon one another. It seemed [183] to gather the starlight as they climbed beneath it, fol
lowing a path that cut back and forth over the folds of stone. Halfway up, they could look back down the valley as it stretched like a blue-green gash through the stone.

  It seemed as if they could see the entire length of the river and its valley with its peaceful orchards and sleepy fields of amma surrounding the slender thread of the river. Overhead, small puffs of cloud edged with red were floating gently over the valley.

  “This is how I remember your valley,” the prince murmured to Urmi. “It’s all so peaceful and serene.” He stared at the valley as if trying to fix it in his memory. “I wish all Angira could be like this right now.”

  Urmi slipped in front of him so she could stare at him wonderingly. “Part of you wants to stay, doesn’t it?”

  “Despite everything that I’ve seen, yes,” the prince sighed. “But it’s only a very small part of me that wants to stay.”

  “Maybe it’s the crucial part.” Urmi tried to take his arm. “Why don’t you bring peace to Angira. You’re the one person who could unite the royalists and the common folk against Rahu and the other nobles.”

  “I have neither the desire nor the training to do so.” The prince watched Urmi pass the food pack to Sulu. “I was supposed to advise whichever brother sat upon the throne—a walking library, so to speak. I didn’t even want to come back to this crazy place, let alone try to run it. Gram for gram, I don’t think there is a world that is lovelier than Angira; but its customs make it such a madhouse that it’s difficult for one of its inmates to grasp how much kinder things could be.”

  She tossed her head back challengingly. “Then [184] change our customs if you don’t like them. Bring that other way of life to Angira.”

  “I thought you didn’t want the prince on the throne?” Sulu slid the pack straps over his shoulders.

  “Now that I know him better, I don’t think he’d turn the world backward to a time when we had no rights. On the other hand, Rahu would terrorize the people into submission. It would be the torture in the dungeons on a worldwide scale.” Urmi’s sandals scraped over the rocks as she stepped up to the prince.

  “I’d like to, Urmi. I really would. But the task is just way beyond my powers. It’s ... it’s like trying to lift Angira all by myself.” He backed a step further up the slope. “I’m not a masochist.”

  Urmi turned sideways so she could motion to the valley. “Who said anything about doing it alone? Don’t make your father’s mistake. Ask for help and advice from the people.”

  The prince hesitated, staring into the distance as if he were trying to look beyond Urmi and her valley toward something more remote in space and time. But finally, as if he’d given up, he shook his head doubtfully. “They wouldn’t help me. It’s like I told you before, Urmi. I’m almost as much of an outsider as Sulu is.”

  “You might be able to leave Angira,” she warned him, “but you’ll never be able to escape your memories. They’ll haunt you wherever you go.” She reached over to a nearby shrub and scrabbled at its roots for a moment so she could hold up a handful of dirt. “Your flesh comes from this, is sustained by this and”—she flung the dirt down—“goes back to this.” She looked from Sulu to the prince as if daring either of them to contradict her.

  The prince raised a foot and shook off the few bits of [185] dirt that had landed on it. “Let’s not be ghoulish, Urmi. I’ve spent a good part of my life on other worlds. I don’t fit in here anymore.” He paused and then added pointedly, “If I ever did.”

  Sulu was torn for a moment between his obligation to Vikram, the prince, and Vikram, his friend. But in the end, Sulu had seen so much suffering that his conscience would not allow him to remain silent. “Look, you can tell me if I’m out of line, but so far all your complaints have been about the society here, not about Angira itself. I think you’d like to stay here if there was a place for you.”

  “And Rahu has quite a nice little spot already reserved for me in the cemetery.” The prince jabbed the toe of his sandal downward like the blade of a shovel.

  Sulu suddenly felt an immense sadness—as if he were burying a loved one. And perhaps he was in a way, as he tried to lay some of his boyhood fantasies to rest. “I learned one thing from this visit: Life isn’t simple just because the technology may be. And after all the squalor and trouble I’ve seen, I think it’s time for you to take your world into the twenty-third century.”

  “You disappoint me, Sulu.” The prince looked at him resentfully. “Maybe you’re willing to give up on your dreams, but I’m not. I just finished this argument with Urmi.”

  But some of the things Mr. Spock had said to the prince had struck certain responsive chords in Sulu as well. At any rate, he found it easy to identify with someone who had an entire world to change. “You said you didn’t fit into Angira, but you can turn that into an advantage.”

  [186] “What do you mean?” The prince leaned his head to the side as if he were intrigued by what Sulu said.

  “It’s like Mr. Spock said: Change begins on the borderline between two cultures.” He felt guilty in a way, knowing that he was beginning to speak as much for the fulfillment of his own wishes as for those of the prince. “Your father and his advisers were too involved in Angiran society to correct its flaws objectively. It takes someone with enough emotional distance from the society to see what’s wrong.”

  “Someone like an offworlder?” the prince asked ironically.

  “Let me finish.” Sulu moved his hand back and forth through the air as if he were polishing something. “It’s both in your strength and your weakness that you’re unique. You’ve got an outsider’s perspectives and you also know what programs have worked on other worlds. And yet you care enough about Angira to enact those programs with more compassion than any offworlder could.”

  “But I don’t see you taking your own advice,” the prince objected.

  “I have the Enterprise,” Sulu said, “but I suspect you wouldn’t be happy with its equivalent.”

  “You don’t have to live in that glass cage if you stay here,” Urmi said, warming to the idea.

  “You can do even more than that.” Sulu thrust his stiffened fingers as if chiseling an invisible block of wood. “You’re in a position to carve your own niche for yourself—and change this whole world in the process.” And as he spoke, Sulu felt easier in his own heart—almost at rest, in fact. It was as if, after all these years of searching for something, he had finally discovered it.

  [187] And though he could not claim Angira as his own home, he could take a vicarious pleasure in helping it.

  “And not just for yourself,” Urmi was quick to elaborate, “but for all of us. And even if you don’t keep Rahu from taking the throne, you’ll at least show people that there’s another alternative. It will be true panku: new shoots from old roots.”

  The prince ran his fingertips over his chin. “At the very least, I could see to it that they kept more of what they grow.”

  “That would inspire people for sure.” Urmi nodded her head.

  “A bucolic version of Camelot?” The prince cast an amused glance at Sulu. “But I’m no King Arthur—even on a modest scale.”

  Sulu leaned his head back and lowered his eyelids slightly. “How do we know the real Arthur wasn’t as ragged and dirty as you are now?”

  The prince rubbed his palm over the pommel of his sword. “How indeed?” He raised his head like someone who has just been relieved of an immense burden. “You’ve shrunk the task down to a manageable size. As Mr. Spock says, I can’t really help what people make of me. But,” he added, “I can help what I make of myself.”

  “Of course, you can,” Urmi encouraged him.

  The prince gave an exuberant hitch to the strap of the water sack. “And perhaps it’s as Puga said: Heroes begin with simple, average people trying to perform their duties.”

  “Then you’ll stay?” Urmi asked.

  The prince pursed his lips for a moment while he considered the matter. “I’m beginning to think tha
t [188] while life in front of a library viewscreen would be an easy enough existence, I could never enjoy it. I would always be feeling guilty about the situation I left on Angira.”

  Sulu’s tone was polite but firm. “One person like you could make a difference on Angira.”

  “Sulu, you’re still a romantic after all.” The Prince’s laugh almost seemed to bubble out of him. “But I must admit that it’s catching.”

  They traveled for two more days through the badlands, pausing for only a few hours’ rest at night. The morning of the third day found them standing on one side of a river gorge very near the “back door” to Kotah, as the prince called it.

  Urmi put down her pack and stretched. “It’s a pity the sides are so steep or we could use the river to go into Kotah. It’s five kilometers by water, ten by land.”

  Sulu walked over to the edge and looked down. The gorge was some eighty meters wide and some hundred meters deep. Nothing grew on either of the steep, sheer sides.

  The prince joined him there. “Beyond that bend in the gorge, this river feeds into a larger one that we call Kotah’s moat.” The prince swung his arm in an arc to take in the horizon. “Another eight kilometers and we’ll be at a small post that guards a drawbridge.”

  Sulu surveyed the ridgetops. “A few warriors could hold off an army then.”

  “They can and have,” the prince said. “Our province may be counted as backward compared to the plains, but we have never been conquered.”

  “Though they’ve given in a few times,” Urmi laughed.

  [189] “Acquiesced,” the prince corrected her with a shrug.

  They walked eastward along the gorge until it narrowed to a point only forty meters broad and fifty meters deep. The river, channeled into a deeper, narrower bed, roared and foamed beneath them.

  A simple rope bridge spanned the gorge at this point. Two large cables, each as thick as Sulu’s arm, hung from posts hammered into the stone on either side of the gorge. From these two cables hung smaller ropes that held a third cable suspended in the air.