At first it felt as if they had bounced, as if the ship were now rising, but then Amy realized that was just higher gravity. Base One had artificial gravity set at one Imperial gee—which was less than Earth’s gravity. Earth, she had been told, had a gravitational field approximating 1.15 gees, by Imperial measurements.
And Shadow’s conquered world was 1.3, which, she was sure, was what they were now experiencing. That heavy feeling, as if they were in an ascending elevator, was not going to go away.
Once she was convinced they weren’t going anywhere, she groped her way up the wall and found the porthole. Carefully, she lifted the porthole cover slightly; light spilled in. This was not the incredible eye-scorching glare of the space-warp, however; the light that now shone around the rim seemed quite manageable. In fact, it looked like ordinary daylight—perhaps a bit thin and watery, but daylight.
Amy swung the cover aside and looked out at Shadow’s world.
She couldn’t see much. The trunk of a huge tree, standing no more than two yards away, blocked most of her view. Turning slightly, she could see that broken branches and foliage were scattered across the ship’s fin, a few feet aft of the port. The fin itself was bent and battered, its pink paint scratched and scraped, revealing black primer and shining steel. Yellow sunlight slanted down, glittering coolly on the pink paint and green spring leaves—the sun here in Shadow’s realm, in what she and some of the others had taken to calling Faerie, was paler than Earth’s, its light not the warmer hue Amy would have expected back home.
Although she had no reason to think she could tell the difference, the light seemed to her like morning light, rather than afternoon.
“What the hell happened?” an unfamiliar male voice demanded of no one in particular.
Amy turned away from the port and peered into the gray gloom of the main cabin.
“We landed,” she said. “Hit a few trees on the way down.”
“Trees?” a timid voice asked.
“Big plants,” a more confident voice replied. “Some of them get to be a hundred feet tall, or more. They’re what wood comes from.”
“We know what trees are, idiot!” a new voice snapped.
“Not all of us, we don’t,” another retorted. “Or at any rate I’ve never seen any!”
“Well, you’ll see plenty of them here,” Amy called, while wondering how anyone could have grown to adulthood without seeing a tree.
Then she remembered what she had seen of the Galactic Empire—the backwater world Psi Cassiopeia II, which was mostly lifeless desert and entirely treeless; the rebel colony on Zeta Leo III, where she had been held captive on an immense corn farm where the only trees were a handful of six-foot shrubs near the house, obviously just recently planted; and the hollowed-out asteroid called Base One. She might have seen a tree or two somewhere besides that farm, but there certainly hadn’t been very many. She had to remember that these people weren’t from Earth; most of them weren’t even from the equivalent homeworld of the Empire, Terra.
Maybe trees had never evolved anywhere in the Galactic Empire’s universe except Terra. Even so, she would have expected the Imperials to have exported them to all their colonies.
Well, she had expected a lot of things that didn’t seem to have happened.
“Your pardon, milady,” Raven said from very near behind her, startling Amy. “Might I trouble you to allow me a look?”
“Of course,” Amy said, getting out of her seat and allowing Raven to lean over and peer out the port. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to see much.”
“Indeed,” Raven agreed wryly, as he took in the sight of the immense tree-trunk. “’Tis scarcely the broad panorama that one might have hoped for.”
“Any idea where we are?”
Raven shook his head. “Marry, milady, though ’tis a grand oak, ’tis hardly one I recognize—for that, how to tell one from the next, an you see but the bole, with no mark upon it save those put there by our craft’s descent? The Empire’s telepaths were consulted in the devising of yon opening ’tween worlds, and our goal was to arrive far enow from Shadow’s demesne for safety, yet close enough to approach it in time, and perchance that’s done, but that scarce names a single spot. Grand oaks such as this might be found in any number of suitable places.”
Emboldened by Raven’s presence, several of the others were now gathering around the port, trying to see out; poor Susan, in the seat beside Amy’s, was being crowded quite rudely, and was twisted almost into fetal position trying to avoid pressure on her burns.
A rush of anger swept through Amy at the sight of that. It was bad enough that the lot of them had been sent off on this stupid journey before their injuries were fully healed, but all those big, strong, healthy men crowding around poor wounded Susan…
“There are other ports you people could open,” Amy pointed out sharply.
Before anyone could reply, the door to the cockpit swung open and Colonel Carson appeared.
“Lord Raven,” he called, “we could use you up front.”
“Your pardon, milady,” Raven said, managing an approximation of a bow despite having his head and shoulders wedged into the narrow space between the back of Amy’s seat and a curving steel rib. He withdrew, made his way past the press of bodies, and strode up the aisle to the cockpit.
Without waiting for an invitation, Stoddard rose and followed his master.
* * * *
Pel took his time unclogging the porthole. After all, the ship wasn’t going anywhere—not unless the Empire had some utterly uncharacteristic surprise up its collective sleeve, some way to get the thing moving in a universe where anti-gravity didn’t work.
And he didn’t really care all that much about Shadow’s universe, except as a step back to Earth.
Ted Deranian was sitting beside him, watching as Pel uncovered the port. Ted was smiling foolishly. Looking at him, it was hard for Pel to believe the man had ever gotten through law school; he looked more like a village idiot than like an attorney.
Still, there was something he had said that tickled at the back of Pel’s mind. It didn’t really make sense unless you accepted Ted’s theory that both Shadow’s universe and the Empire’s universe were all an elaborate dream, but Pel wanted to believe it.
It had been said back at Base One, when Ted had found Pel sitting alone, on the verge of tears as he thought about Nancy and Rachel.
“Don’t worry, Pel,” Ted had told him. “They woke up, that’s all—they’re back on Earth. When you get back there they’ll be waiting for you.”
Then he had caught himself and asked, “But why am I talking to you? You’re not really here.”
He had wandered off, leaving Pel furious at his insensitivity, but the idea that Nancy and Rachel were alive back on Earth had stayed, no matter how hard Pel tried to suppress it.
Maybe they were.
He knew that this wasn’t all just a dream, all these strange things they had been through; he knew that Ted had it wrong, and the Empire and Shadow were real. They weren’t a dream in the usual sense.
But on the other hand, this was an alien universe; Nancy and Rachel did not belong here. The Empire’s universe was equally alien. Had they really, fully crossed over into these alternate realities?
What if they were all really doing some sort of astral travel? Wouldn’t Nancy and Rachel snap back into their own world when their astral selves were destroyed?
Or even if the physical bodies made the transition, was time the same here?
Pel had read plenty of science fiction and fantasy as a kid; he had seen hundreds of movies over the years. Wasn’t there always something somehow unstable about someone who had been removed from his or her proper place? What if that wasn’t just a literary convention, but a deep subconscious understanding of some fundamental fact about reality?
Mightn’t there be some way to change the past, to make Nancy and Rachel have never left Earth?
He and the others were in another dimens
ion, a parallel world, an alternate reality; they were, as Amy put it, in Faerie. The very existence of such a place went against all common sense and previous experience; it threw Pel and Amy and Susan and Ted into the realm of legend, of myth, of fantasy. How could they know any more what the rules were? Back home, dead was dead, and nobody came back—but here? Who knew? Death might be different.
Hadn’t someone written a story about a land like that? “Death Is Different,” that was it—by Lisa Goldstein, perhaps? About a small country somewhere where death wasn’t permanent, where the dead could be seen strolling about.
What if that author had somehow known a truth about this place where Shadow ruled? After all, the worlds of Empire and Shadow so resembled the settings for any number of stories that Pel found it hard to believe it a coincidence; it made more sense to credit it to some sort of psychic leakage between universes, images from one realm finding their way into the subconscious minds of writers in another.
And if that were so, what about all those stories where people rose from the dead, where the protagonist awoke at the end home safe in his own bed, everything restored to what it was before? Were those based on truth?
What if death was different?
On one level he knew that was nonsense. He knew this was all hard fact; Nancy and Rachel were dead. Cartwright and Godwin and Peabody, Grummetty and Alella and Squire Donald, they were all equally real, and all equally dead, and all really dead. He had seen Grummetty’s corpse himself. He had seen Cartwright bleeding as the monsters overwhelmed him. They were all dead, and would stay dead until Judgment Day.
But somewhere, in the back of his mind, where he wanted so much to believe Nancy and Rachel were alive that he could believe anything at all, he still hoped.
He swung open the porthole cover and stared out at the green and gold and deep gray of the forests of Faerie.
Chapter Four
Raven of Stormcrack Keep had seen many strange things in the hard, sad days since his brother had betrayed the clan and yielded the Keep and its lands to Shadow. He had fled through haunted forests by night, and had seen creatures there whose nature he still did not know, things he dared not contemplate too closely. He had lived for a time among the little people of Hrumph, the people his grandfather had called gnomes, before they were driven into exile; he had dwelt like a giant among them, and had been amazed by their ways and customs. He had fallen in with a handful of the few remaining wizards, had seen them in their own strongholds, where they lived unhampered by the dictates of the nobility and used whatsoever magic they might please. One of those wizards, Elani, had opened for him portals into the Galactic Empire, and into the world of Earth, where he had seen wonders that even the mightiest magic could not equal. He had been slave and supplicant in those other worlds; he had been beaten and abused, and still bore scars and wounds not yet healed from those encounters. He had thought that nothing could faze him any more. But now, as he stared at the men who had piloted the Imperial vessel, he discovered that he had not lost his capacity for surprise.
It was not any new marvel of science or magic that astounded him, but the depths of idiocy to which allegedly intelligent men could sink.
“Colonel,” he said, “what might those two be about?” He pointed at the two men crouched beside an open panel, poking at the tangle of wires and baubles inside.
“They’re trying to fix the engines, of course,” Carson replied edgily.
“Be your engines broken?”
“Well, of course they are!” Carson snapped. “Why else would we have crashed?”
Raven considered this question for a moment, admiring its magnificent ineptitude. “Prithee,” he asked eventually, “has none told you the nature of this realm?”
Carson glared at him. “What do you mean?”
Raven hesitated, then waved the matter away. Perhaps it would be best if he were to leave the man’s ignorance intact for the moment; an opportunity might arise to exploit it at some other time. “Mayhap later,” he said. “Erst, you sought my favor in some matter?”
“Yeah,” Carson said, looking distastefully at the broad forward viewport. “I want to know where the heck we are. I’d figured on reconnoitering from the air, taking a look around—but then the drive quit on us. In fact, nothing seems to be working; must be a break in the power system somewhere.”
“I fear, sir, that I know not where we be,” Raven said. “Did they not tell you where the great portal would be?”
“They told me we’d come out around two hundred miles from this Shadow thing,” Carson said. “I didn’t listen to all the damn details; I figured we could straighten that out from the air once we came through.”
Raven nodded. “And I’ve no more than that.”
“You know this country, don’t you?”
“Aye, for the main, an I’ve landmarks…”
“Well, then, take a look, damn it!” Carson waved at the viewport.
Raven looked.
The view here was a good deal more extensive than that from the porthole by Amy Jewell’s seat, but it still revealed little more than that they were in a mature forest somewhere. Broken branches and scattered leaves were everywhere, signs of the ship’s fall strewn in a web of sunlight and shadow; oaks towered overhead, while moss and fungus flourished below. The light was the clean sweet white of home, not the hot glare of Earth’s sun, or the harsh blaze of the lights of Base One. He judged from its angle that the day was just short of mid-morning.
“’Tis a forest,” Raven said, “and I and mine drew best we could a map for you ere we left, and thereon we indicated those forests we knew—and some would put us your two hundred miles from Shadow’s stronghold. How to tell one forest from another, who can say? Saw you aught before we fell—a keep, a mount, any such as that?”
Carson turned and glared at one of the pilots.
“No, sir,” the man replied. “We didn’t have time to see much of anything. Just trees.”
“There might have been mountains off that way,” the co-pilot offered, pointing to the left.
Raven considered that, studying the angle of the sun and the patterns of the moss on the trees. “Then, an those were the Further Corydians, we might be in the West Sunderland,” he said at last, “but I’ve no certainty.”
“All right,” Carson said. “If we’re in Sunderland, where do we go, and how will we know if we’ve got it wrong?”
Raven bit back a retort; he took a second to calm his voice, then replied, “An we’re in the Low Forest of West Sunderland, we need but make way to the west, and in due time we should either strike the Palanquin Road, or reach the edge of the forest and the Starlinshire Downs. If it be the road, turning south will bring us in time to the River Vert; if it be the Downs, we should find landmarks enow.”
Carson nodded. “And then what?” he demanded.
“And then? Why, then we strike out westward for Shadow’s keep, should our plans be made and the omens favorable, and if they be otherwise, then seek we shelter with those who yet serve the cause of the Light.” Raven’s own plans were already made, and consisted mostly of the latter choice, locating a surviving part of the resistance to Shadow’s rule; he had no intention of flinging himself against Shadow’s keep in some pointless, suicidal raid.
However, throwing Carson and his men into such a raid might be the best way to rid himself of a nuisance, and to provide the evidence needed to convince the Empire to devise a serious attack. And who could say that they might not learn something from such an assault? To Raven’s best knowledge, no one had been foolish enough to attempt anything of the sort in centuries.
“You can contact these others?” Carson snapped.
“Certes, I can,” Raven replied, meeting his eye. He had developed the knack of lying straight-faced as a child, and had never lost it, but in this case he spoke very nearly the truth. Contact could be made, though it would best be done by a wizard, rather than by himself.
“And they can contact th
e Empire?”
Raven hesitated. “Aye,” he said, “that’s within their powers.” That was beyond question; the hesitation was due to uncertainty as to the wisdom of letting Carson know it.
He didn’t mention that in plain truth, either Elani or Valadrakul could doubtless make contact with others in the anti-Shadow network at any time, now that they were once again in their native realm, where good magic worked as it should. In truth, Elani could most likely make contact with agents in the Galactic Empire at any time, and they could, in their turn, carry messages to the Imperial authorities.
Of course, that would most probably put an end to their usefulness as spies. Furthermore, Raven did not trust the Empire. He would communicate with it only on his own terms, not at the urging of this arrogant oaf of a commoner.
He had not yet fully settled upon his own preferred course of action to be followed once he had found a new place in the resistance. That the Empire had some fool notion of using him as native guide in their assault on Shadow’s keep he knew; that he had assented to the Empire’s instructions, however, did not mean he would actually obey them. He had agreed because such an agreement was his only way to leave Base One and return to his own world.
Here, though, he was in command. Colonel Carson might not have realized that yet, but Raven knew who was master here, in the natural world, away from the topsy-turvy Empire. He was the heir to Stormcrack Keep, and as such he need take no heed of such as Carson.
* * * *
Carson glared at the damned foppish barbarian who called himself Raven, trying to decide whether or not he could be trusted.
He didn’t really trust any foreigner—none of them could think straight, they all had minds as twisty as their infernal streets in those little outworld colonies or the Azean backwaters on Terra. He had been told to cooperate with this Raven, though; the savage was supposed to be sworn to fight Shadow, and it was Shadow that really scared those pissant politicians back home, especially that twit Bascombe in the Department of Science, with his fancy title that he’d made up and got his father-in-law to make official.
In the Empire of Shadow Page 4