In the Empire of Shadow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She forced herself up onto her feet, bracing herself against the tree she had sat beneath, and was about to flee when Carrie’s mental voice called to her.

  “Prossie, they want you to continue the mission, to go on to Shadow’s fortress.”

  Prossie stumbled, and looked up at the monster overhead.

  She hadn’t been transmitting, there was no way that Carrie could have known what was going on here, but still, the message seemed so irrelevant as to be ridiculous. A dozen dead monstrosities were scattered across the landscape, she was bleeding from a dozen cuts, Elani had been killed, and a nightmare with a quarter-mile wingspan was fighting its way down through the forest, trying to get at them—who cared what a couple of pompous idiots back at Base One wanted? She turned to run.

  As she turned, she glimpsed Valadrakul as he flung his spell at the gigantic creature; eldritch energy flashed upward from his raised hands, and sparks flickered across the monster’s belly—but that was all. Nothing exploded; no tattered bits of black monster-flesh fell.

  A faint whiff of something unpleasant reached her nose as she ran, but Prossie could not tell whether that meant Valadrakul’s attack had singed the thing slightly, or whether it was the monster’s natural aroma.

  Prossie glanced back over her shoulder, and saw Susan point her pistol at the thing. The lawyer looked at the weapon in her hand, then up at the descending horror; she let out a quick bark of laughter, then dropped the gun in her handbag, turned, and ran, following Prossie.

  Most of the others were scattering now, as well, and Prossie could only see a few of them; the rest had vanished behind the trees. Valadrakul was standing his ground, chanting; Ted Deranian was lying where he had fallen, watching everything, not moving; but all the others were departing or already gone, at paces ranging from a slow, backward-facing, step-by-step retreat to a full-tilt heedless run.

  Prossie’s own pace was somewhere in between; she was moving at a brisk trot, but watching where she was going and glancing back every so often. She didn’t need any more scrapes or scratches, and she didn’t want to leave a trail of her own blood for any of Shadow’s creatures to follow. Right now, she really didn’t want to think about the fight against Shadow itself, or what was happening back at Base One, or long-term plans of any kind; she just wanted to get away, to stay alive and in one piece.

  * * * *

  Amy had panicked. When she had seen that thing coming down through the trees, had seen its shadow block out the sun, had been showered with twigs and leaves as it broke past the treetops, she had frozen for an instant, and then she had screamed, and she had turned and run.

  It was all too much, Colonel Carson’s death, and the hellbeasts, and Elani falling on top of her and dying there, and then that gigantic horror appearing overhead. She had gotten used to the relatively sane and normal life at Base One, and this succession of shocks had broken her nerve temporarily.

  But only temporarily; as she stumbled across the uneven floor of the forest she was slowed by the irregular footing, by mounting nausea, and by a wave of guilt.

  She knew better. Running away didn’t solve anything, that’s what the counselors and therapists all said. A person must face her fears. The others were still back there, fighting that thing.

  She forced herself to stop and turn around.

  For a moment, as she stood sweaty and panting, her gashed arm throbbing, she couldn’t see the monster or the ship, only trees—she had covered more ground than she had thought. In her unthinking panic it had seemed as if the creature was right behind her, just inches away; that it was not seemed somehow miraculous.

  And then an entirely new sort of panic set in—she was alone, lost in the forest, wounded, with no one to help her and no chance at all of finding her way home. For an instant, from sheer terror, she stopped breathing.

  And when the sound of her own breath stopped, she could hear the sounds from the ship—wood breaking, people shouting. She followed them with her gaze, and spotted first the hellbeast’s shadow, then the spaceship, and finally the creature itself.

  It was at that moment that Valadrakul flung his new spell; Amy could see it spilling upward from a tiny figure she had not realized was there until the orange plume of fiery magic burst forth.

  The scene was so distant that it didn’t seem entirely real; framed between two tree-trunks, it was like a tableau, like some sort of outdoor drama staged for her amusement. The spell was a special effect, something midway between smoke and flame, vividly painted across the image but not entirely convincing It wove upward through the air, into the monster’s open mouth, moving not with the speed of fire, nor the slow grace of smoke, but like the ascending trail of a skyrocket on the Fourth of July.

  And then it entered the creature’s mouth, and something exploded, and for a moment light and smoke seemed to obscure everything; Amy had a glimpse of what looked like glowing green crystals where the creature’s eyes should be.

  The sound of the explosion reached her, a dull thud that echoed and re-echoed through the forest; she blinked, and when her eyes were open again the monster was falling down through the air, covering the spaceship and the wizard in a lumpy black shroud.

  Amy blinked again.

  The wizard—that was Valadrakul.

  The other wizard, Elani, was dead; with a shock, Amy realized that she still had Elani’s blood on her, in her hair and on her borrowed T-shirt, smeared down her right arm and across the back of her hand.

  Elani, the wizard who had agreed to send them home to Earth, was dead.

  And Valadrakul, buried under the dying monster, was the only other wizard in the group.

  “No!” Amy shrieked. “No, no, no!” Her feet seemed to move of their own accord, and she found herself running back toward the clearing, the ship, and the monster just as desperately as she had fled a moment before.

  * * * *

  Upon first spotting the hellbeast above, Raven had known instantly that this gigantic manifestation of Shadow’s malice could only be fought with magic; his makeshift club could be of no effect against a beast the size of a castle.

  This was Valadrakul’s fight, then. Elani was fallen, and her skills had never lain in the area of combat, in any case.

  “An I can serve,” Raven called, “you need but speak!”

  Valadrakul ignored him—and quite rightly.

  A woman screamed, and Raven heard running feet. For his own part, he bethought him that a cautious retreat might be advised, lest he be struck down by the monster’s struggles, all unintended. He began pacing slowly back, away from the wizard and the arena.

  The first spell was launched, to no effect, but that troubled Raven not a whit; Valadrakul was but trying out his foe, using against it the spell that had sufficed to destroy the lesser beasts. Raven had seen wizards do the same upon many a previous occasion.

  Debris was falling freely now, leaves and branches; Raven retreated farther. He judged that the monster was free of obstructions, and stared upward, trying to determine why it did not fall, in all its fury, upon those below.

  Men were shouting—undoubtedly the odious Dibbs and his underlings, but Raven spared no glance for such as they.

  The beast, he could see, was gripping the great trees with its claws, holding itself aloft as it studied what lay below. It could see the sky-ship, but surely knew not what it might be. Likewise could it see Valadrakul; did it know him for what he was? If so, it might strike him down before another spell could be cast.

  Raven hesitated. Valadrakul was too intrigued in his magicks to move of his own choice; should one then try to pull him thence, out from beneath his foe, ere disaster might arrive? An it might disrupt a casting, yet would it save the wizard to fight again.

  Ere he could decide, another spell went up—no mere bolt like the last, but a torrent of glowing force, orange and gray, smoke and fire bound into one. It leapt up from the wizard’s hands and into the beast’s gaping maw.

  The thing, in anticipat
ion of the attack, had released its hold upon the trees, had drawn in its claws and begun to fold its great wings.

  And then all happened with such speed that Raven could not follow. Valadrakul’s fire caught at the inside of the monster’s throat, and its head seemed to be burnt out from within, the glow of the flames visible for an instant through its crystalline eyes; smoke and fire billowed forth, obscuring all; and the creature fell.

  Sound and wind forced Raven back; he flung up his arms to protect his face, and thus did not see the actual impact. The rush of air knocked him back against a tree; his head struck hard against the wood, and for a moment his thoughts were scattered.

  When he could see again, and understand what he saw, the spaceship was gone from his sight. The clearing, too, was gone. Valadrakul was gone, and Colonel Carson’s remains, and poor Elani’s. The demented Earthman, Ted Deranian, had vanished as well.

  And in the place of all of them was only a great black heap.

  It needed a moment ere Raven understood that that heap was the remains of the fallen bat creature.

  And that Ted Deranian and Valadrakul lay somewhere beneath it.

  Chapter Seven

  Pel approached the dead monstrosity carefully. The thing was obviously dead or dying; Valadrakul’s fireball, or whatever it was, appeared to have burned out the entire interior of its skull, and surely even one of Shadow’s magical creations couldn’t survive that.

  But on the other hand, with a thing that size, even a final spastic twitch of a wing could probably break a person’s neck.

  He saw no twitching, though. He couldn’t hear if the thing was making any sounds; Amy was screaming as she ran toward him, drowning out almost everything else.

  Her screaming was not particularly piercing, just loud; Pel judged that she was not so much frightened or hurt as working off accumulated tension. He ignored the screams and looked the situation over.

  The body had fallen directly atop I.S.S. Christopher and then slid partway down the far side, but the outstretched wings seemed to cover the entire area; the bony claws had gouged huge raw yellow chunks from the surrounding trees on the way down. Pel kicked aside a curl of bark the size of his head from one such wound; he stepped over a fallen branch and stopped a few feet from the black membrane of the wing.

  It looked like thick rubber or polished leather. At first Pel thought he could see the shapes of tree-branches showing through from beneath, but then he realized that those were veins within the wing itself.

  He started to reach out, then stopped. He didn’t really want to touch the thing.

  Ted and Valadrakul were underneath it, though. They might even still be alive. Forcing himself, Pel reached out, grabbed for the edge of the wing, and tried to lift.

  It was still warm, and it felt horribly like human skin with a thin coating of fine fuzz. It was thicker than he had realized; when he slid his fingers underneath he couldn’t get his hand all the way around the edge to close his thumbs over the top. Prying upward with just his hands did nothing at all; the wing did not budge, and his fingers slid out from beneath.

  That black fuzz was as smooth and soft as cat fur; it didn’t give him any easy purchase.

  “Someone give me a hand!” he called.

  He tried again, thrusting his arms under the wing as far as his elbows and heaving upward. His muscles strained; his breath stopped. The veins in his face distended, and he felt as if something would burst at any moment.

  The monster’s wing did not move.

  “You think they’re still alive under there?”

  Startled, Pel recognized Susan’s voice. He also realized that Amy had finally stopped shrieking. He relaxed and turned to Susan, who had come up behind him.

  “They might be, anyway,” he said. “But they may not have much air left, if they are.”

  “You think it’s airtight?”

  Pel waved at the huge black covering. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think you need better leverage; there are plenty of branches you could use.” She, in turn, waved at the scattered debris left by the creature’s descent, and the ship’s fall before that.

  “More men,” another, deeper voice said. Pel realized that Stoddard was standing at Susan’s shoulder. “Sticks are well enow, but this needs more men than one.”

  “You’re right,” Pel said.

  “We’re two, then,” Stoddard said.

  “Three,” Susan corrected him.

  Stoddard looked down at her from his six feet or so of height; she smiled crookedly up at him from an inch or two over five feet, her still-bandaged arms folded across her chest, and corrected herself, “Two and a half.”

  Pel called, “Lieutenant Dibbs!”

  * * * *

  Dibbs had wanted to find all his men before attempting any rescue efforts; four of them had not returned yet. Only when Prossie Thorpe had reported a decision from Base One would the lieutenant agree that uncovering Valadrakul and Deranian was more urgent.

  And only Prossie knew that she had lied—there had been no decision to report. The people back at Base One had completely lost touch with the situation; they were still talking about whether Colonel Carson might not be completely dead, and what medical assistance might be appropriate. Bascombe and Hart were concerned with an attack on Shadow’s stronghold, with setting up a proper chain of command that they could duck out of to avoid accountability if they had to. Even Carrie had not really followed the sequence of events after the arrival of the first group of hellbeasts; she was far more concerned with assurance that her cousin was safe, that there weren’t any more monsters lurking somewhere nearby, about to leap out and eat everybody. No one at Base One understood about the black wing, about how big it was. No one there appreciated that Valadrakul was the only wizard left, and that magic was their only hope, both in any fight against Shadow, and as a way home.

  Valadrakul had to be saved, or they were all trapped here, all as good as dead. And no one was listening, no one at Base One, none of the Imperials in Faerie. Pel had tried to explain, but Dibbs had almost ignored him—Brown was a civilian, a passenger, with no authority. Raven argued that the two should be freed, but he said nothing about a need for magic; he spoke only of how Valadrakul was a faithful servant and owed loyalty. Amy and Susan babbled of a common humanity that meant nothing to an Imperial soldier.

  And Prossie could not speak on her own account; she was a telepath, and a woman—a mutant bitch. She had been called that all her life; she knew that that was how Dibbs saw her. No one would listen to her as herself.

  But they would listen to her as a relay.

  So Prossie had lied. She knew that Valadrakul and Ted needed help immediately, that saving Valadrakul was vital, and she had said they should be saved.

  And by doing so, she had committed a capital crime. The technical term in the Imperial Articles of Service was “usurpation of representational authority by specially-empowered communications personnel,” and it was an offense invented as a direct result of the widespread fear and mistrust of telepaths. No non-telepath had any way to verify what a telepath reported, but telepathic communication was too valuable to leave unused; the Empire had responded to this dilemma by setting up draconian rules for all telepaths. From birth, they were trained to tell the truth, to obey non-telepaths, never to venture their own opinions—they were communication equipment, not people; spies, not soldiers.

  And one reason that the Empire had only four hundred and sixteen telepaths, out of thirteen billion citizens, was that in the years since telepathy first appeared, forty-three telepaths had died for violating those rules.

  If the Empire ever learned what Prossie had done, she would be the forty-fourth.

  And since one of the other rules required that any telepath who learned of a violation and failed to report it was subject to the same penalty as the person who committed the original violation, she had dared not let Carrie know what she was doing.

  Pel Brown had started
it, asking for a decision from Base One, and Dibbs had objected; he didn’t need to have headquarters overseeing his every move.

  “What do they say?” Pel Brown had demanded, as Dibbs continued to protest.

  Carrie was not listening in; she was still asking if there might be more monsters, and ignoring Prossie’s own questions.

  “Carrie, calm down,” Prossie had sent, trying to hide what she intended to do, “I’m fine. We’re busy here right now; I’m going to break contact for now. Find me again in about twenty minutes, all right?”

  “Prossie, are you sure?” Carrie’s concern was touching—and also annoying.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Now get out of my head!”

  No telepath ever refused that order; it was a family rule. Carrie broke conscious contact.

  “We might as well settle this,” Dibbs had said. “Thorpe, report!”

  “Yes, sir,” Prossie had said, snapping to attention, long habit overcoming her weaknesses.

  And then she had lied. “General Hart says that the survival of extrauniversal personnel is absolutely essential and must take first priority, sir! Please use all efforts to uncover Raven’s man Valadrakul and the solicitor Deranian.”

  “Damn,” Dibbs said. “I think they’re making a mistake, but an order’s an order. All right, Singer, Wilkins, the wizard was right by the ship, he could be under the curve of the hull—see if you can crawl in there and find him. Maybe take a couple of those branches to shore things up. Hollingsworth, Moore, you others, we’ve got half a dozen lumps under the wing—some of them are wood or rocks, but that one by the rib must be the Colonel, and those two close together are probably the dead woman and the one we’re after. See if you can pry up the edge and get a look at them.”