In the Empire of Shadow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Besides, her feet hurt too much, and she was too tired, to go any farther.

  Now she needed to decide just when to tell the others that she wanted to stay here, not to go on and beard Shadow in its lair.

  She glanced around, at Raven and Pel and the others. Raven was frowning angrily, though Amy had no idea why; Pel was staring at the town like a baby studying a new toy, trying to see every bit of it at once. Susan had the wary look of a prowling cat; Prossie had on one of her distant expressions, and Amy wondered whether she was talking to someone back in the Galactic Empire, or whether she was just woolgathering.

  The other Imperials weren’t paying much attention to the town at all, but simply walking on, chatting amongst themselves. Ted, as usual, wasn’t paying attention to anything at all, and Amy couldn’t see Valadrakul’s face from where she walked.

  Nobody was saying anything, which suddenly struck Amy as somehow wrong. This was the first town that any of the Earthpeople or the Imperials had ever seen in this stupid world of Raven’s; didn’t it deserve some sort of comment?

  “Raven,” she called, “what’s the town called? Is that whatsit, Starlinshire, that the Downs are named for?”

  Raven turned and glowered at her for a moment before remembering his manners.

  “Nay, lady,” he said, “’tis but some lesser town, the local market, perchance; Starlinton be greater by far.”

  “Do you know its name?” Amy persisted.

  Raven shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “Who’s to know every hamlet and village?”

  “I just thought you might, where it’s on the highway,” she said.

  “’Tis in Shadow’s inner domain, and that’s all I wot,” Raven answered, turning his gaze forward again.

  The road curved as it descended the slope, and trees grew along the verge, so that once the party left the ridgetop Amy could only catch occasional tantalizing glimpses of the town; each time an especially good view presented itself she would pause and stare, then hurry to catch up to the others.

  Every time they passed a farmhouse, Amy thought it might be the outskirts of town; every time, she knew she was being foolish to be disappointed when it was not, but she was disappointed all the same.

  The sky was beginning to darken, as well, and the already-thick air seemed to be growing heavier; Amy wondered if they might be caught by a storm before they could reach the town and shelter.

  At last, however, one house was followed closely by another, and then another, and then by a smithy—the open-sided building with the open-hearth forge at the center was very much like those Amy had seen in historical recreations at Jamestown and Sturbridge Village, and at Renaissance fairs. The fires were banked, however, and the smith nowhere to be seen.

  Three large dogs were chained just below the big bellows, however, black dogs of a breed Amy didn’t recognize; these beasts watched the party intently as it passed, obviously ready to defend the smithy against any thieves or invaders. Amy was unsure whether she heard one growling, deep in his throat; whether she did or not, none of them barked, nor made any overtly hostile move.

  She could smell them, a hot, doggy smell that she did not care for. She could see muscles tense in the nearest dog’s forelegs.

  These were serious watchdogs, she decided, not pets. She was careful to stay on the highway and not take so much as a single step on the smithy’s grounds.

  This was hardly a warm welcome to the town she hoped to make her home. This did not appear to be the sort of place where people left their doors unlocked.

  But then, most people didn’t leave the doors unlocked in Goshen, either.

  Beyond the smithy was a row of houses, small and old but reasonably well-kept. Two old men sat on a bench out front of the third one, staring at the group of strangers.

  Amy realized that her party must make a curious sight, with only Raven dressed in anything resembling the local garb—and at that, his velvets were the attire of a nobleman, and there was no sign of a castle or palace or manse anywhere in this town, so even he was out of place. Valadrakul wore his embroidered vest, but over an Imperial uniform, and with his hair cut short, where every other native of Faerie Amy had seen wore it long. The five Imperials were all in their gaudy purple uniforms, now somewhat the worse for wear—especially Prossie’s, with the ruined sleeves and the slashes in the side. The four Earthpeople were in old, ill-fitting slacks and T-shirts—if that; poor Pel was bare-chested.

  Which probably made him the least-alien of the lot, Amy thought. And even bare-chested he was hardly intimidating; Pel Brown was no Arnold Schwartzenegger, by any means. He was taller than any native of Faerie Amy had seen with the single exception of Stoddard, but he was also pale and flabby and narrow-shouldered.

  “Should we ask them for directions or anything?” Amy heard Pel ask Raven quietly.

  “Nay, why trouble them?” Raven replied. “I’d sooner we sought an inn or public house, that we might eat a decent meal for once, and wash the dust from our throats, and perhaps even from our clothes. When that’s done, our hosts will surely tell us if our road’s the one we seek.”

  Pel nodded, and the party marched on past the seated pair in uneasy silence. The four soldiers stopped talking, for once, and no one else spoke, neither visitor nor native.

  Past the two on the bench the highway turned a corner, around an immense oak tree. From that point on the road became a street, lined with houses and shops—though the shops had none of the broad display windows Amy would have expected, and were distinguished from the houses mainly by signboards and what was behind the windows, rather than anything about the architecture. Doors and windows were all closed, many shuttered. The houses were relatively crude—rough-hewn heavy wooden corner posts and lintels exposed, the walls between the posts some sort of yellowish, not-very-smooth plaster that reminded Amy of Bavarian postcards, or beer ads, but without the traditional German decoration. Some walls were patched, some stained, some speckled with mildew or just with dirt. Not a single structure in sight stood more than two stories in height, and many were only one.

  The signboards did not have writing on them, but only crude pictures—this one of a loom, that of pottery; Amy supposed, with regret, that most of the locals couldn’t read. Maybe, she thought, she could make a living teaching reading and writing—but it still didn’t bode well for quality of life here.

  The highway had become a street, but it had by no means straightened out; it turned and twisted its way through the town, for no reason that Amy could see. There were no sidewalks, no front lawns, very few trees—and those trees there were were just as likely to be in the center of the street as along the side. The buildings were built wall to wall, broken every three or four houses by a narrow alleyway; most of the alleys were closed off with gates, either of wood or black iron. The whole place smelled of cooked meat and cabbage, of dust, and of urine.

  The entire place should have been quaint, Amy thought, but mostly managed to be ugly, instead. She wondered whether Shadow had anything to do with that, or whether it was just the prevailing style in this world.

  She also wondered whether those recreated villages and medieval towns back on Earth had been prettied up; none ever looked as ugly as this.

  There were people on the street, but most of them, upon spotting the strangers, stepped aside, pressing themselves against walls or ducking out of sight completely, into doorways and alleys. No one invited conversation.

  This was not, Amy decided, a friendly place—but maybe that was just as well; if people here minded their own business, then they wouldn’t bother her, once she settled in, would they?

  Besides, if Shadow was the local equivalent of Hitler, every town was probably like this.

  Then they rounded the next corner, and came in sight of the town square.

  For a moment the party became utterly disorganized as most of the group stopped dead in their tracks, while a few—Raven, Valadrakul, Wilkins, and Marks—kept going. Ted and Susan veered to one side, rather
than simply stopping; Ted began babbling quietly to himself, while Sawyer said softly, “Oh, my God.”

  Amy stood and stared.

  The platform in the town square was a gallows, a square perhaps a dozen feet on a side, raised seven or eight feet above the street. At either side a post rose well above the platform, supporting one end of a cross­beam.

  Three men were hanging from the beam—three corpses, rather. At first, Amy thought that the nooses had been made with extra rope, and that that was what dangled down past the dead bare feet, but at last her mind acknowledged what her eyes were reporting—that the three men had been disembowelled, their bellies sliced open from breastbone to groin, and that those were loops of rotting intestine that dragged on the wooden planks below.

  And the black haze around them wasn’t in her mind, it wasn’t a sign that she was on the verge of fainting. It was a cloud of flies.

  The smell, which had been merely an unnoticed unpleasant whiff a moment before, hit at the same moment as the realization of what she was seeing, and she almost vomited. Perhaps because she had been toughened up by her earlier bouts of nausea, or perhaps for some other reason, she managed to fight it down—a small personal victory, but one she appreciated.

  When she could think more clearly again, one thought repeated itself over and over in Amy’s mind as she forced herself to walk on down the street.

  She wasn’t staying here. She wouldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stay here.

  * * * *

  At first it appeared that they might have to physically drag Amy to get her into the grubby little tavern, and Pel didn’t really blame her—the place faced on the town square, which would have been reasonable enough if it weren’t for that bloody gibbet standing there with those hideous rotting things hanging from it. Pel was none too enthusiastic about going anywhere near it himself; quite aside from it being a sickening sight, the stink had made him gag, and he was amazed no one had thrown up.

  Raven was far less patient; while the others stared at the corpses, or struggled to say something about them, the velvet-clad aristocrat shrugged and said, “And what would you, then? Shadow deals with its foes thus; ’tis no surprise. ’Twas ever so.” He pointed out the tavern, with its sign of a foam-topped beer mug, and urged them all onward.

  Susan nodded, and seemed to accept the situation without further comment, but Pel noticed that she carefully avoided looking at the dead men.

  Ted, on the other hand, stared at them openly, swallowing occasionally, and then remarked, “I never realized what a sick mind I have. I wonder if that’s what they’d really look like? And smell like?”

  Valadrakul ignored the whole matter, and simply waited for the others to get on with it. Prossie looked ill, but said nothing, and followed Raven’s lead into the tavern.

  Wilkins started to make a joke about how the hanged men resembled beads on a string, but when he saw the looks on his companions’ faces he decided not to finish it. Marks darted quick little glances at the gibbet and said nothing. Sawyer went white, looked quickly at the others, then hurried to the tavern door.

  Singer muttered, “Poor bastards,” and thereafter kept his head down.

  Amy, though, stood frozen in the street, refusing to approach. Raven, standing in the tavern door and waving the others in, saw her and began, “Friend Pel…” He pointed, but didn’t finish the sentence.

  Pel nodded, and hurried back up the street. He took Amy by the hand and said, “Come on. Let’s get in off the street.”

  She shook him off and took a step backward, all the while staring at the hanging viscera.

  “Come on,” he repeated, catching her arm again. He almost said something about getting a decent meal, but caught himself; given Amy’s recent bouts of nausea and what she was now looking at, it was a wonder she wasn’t already vomiting, and the mention of food might be the final straw.

  She shook her head.

  “Look, I want to get out of here as much as you do,” Pel told her, “maybe more—but if we’re ever going to get anywhere, we need to go through this town and out the other side, past that… past that. And we need to get some f…some supplies. And I think maybe we need to talk some more. So come on into the tavern with us, and we’ll find someplace away from the windows, where you can’t see…can’t see anything.”

  Amy hesitated, then said, “I’m not staying here.”

  “Of course not,” Pel agreed. “Come on.”

  She swallowed, nodded, and came.

  Once inside the tavern, Pel found Raven standing by a table near a window and said, “I think we want someplace quieter.” He jerked his head toward the open shutters, hoping Raven would take the hint.

  Raven did. “Indeed,” he said, “so public a place as this is scarce fit for the ladies among us. Your pardon, all, I beg, that I’d not seen this sooner.” He turned and led the way to a large table in a back corner of one of the others of the tavern’s three rooms.

  The entire operation, however, was not particularly large, and even from this rearmost area anyone who wanted to could see out through the archway, the front room, and the windows on the square.

  A large man in a grubby apron had stood by, watching, as the party squeezed themselves into the back room, crowding around two tables and occupying all but one of the dozen chairs there; when everyone appeared settled he approached.

  “What can I fetch you?” he asked, none too politely.

  “Drink,” Raven called in reply. “Whatever you have that’s fit to be drunk.”

  The innkeeper, or whatever he was, grunted. “First I’d see the color of your money,” he said.

  Pel had been anticipating a cool drink, maybe some decent food, and at the innkeeper’s words his stomach knotted in frustration. They didn’t have any money.

  Raven frowned, glanced at Valadrakul, and then began to say something, but before he got the first word out Susan had hauled her big black purse onto the table and was rummaging through it.

  Raven paused, staring at her.

  “Susan,” Pel said, “I don’t think…”

  Then he stopped, as she hauled out a wallet and unsnapped the change compartment.

  Pel felt suddenly foolish; he had assumed that Susan was going to pull out her pistol and demand a meal at gunpoint, which would hardly have been a good idea—even with a gun, they were eleven against an entire town, without even mentioning Shadow. Furthermore, the locals might not even recognize the little revolver as a weapon.

  Susan pulled out two quarters and silently held them up. The innkeeper squinted.

  “Silver, is it?” he asked.

  Susan tossed the coins on the table, still without a word. The innkeeper reached to pick one up, and Raven’s hand shot out, catching him by the wrist.

  “Our drinks first,” the nobleman said.

  “I’m no thief,” the innkeeper said, “but I’ve not seen coins the likes of these before, and I’d study them, to ascertain their worth.”

  Reluctantly, Raven allowed the man to pick up one of the quarters. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, ran a finger around the milled edge, and looked it over.

  Pel waited, wondering what the man would make of the copper sandwiched between layers of whatever the silvery metal was—Pel knew perfectly well that there wasn’t much actual silver in modern American coins.

  “Most peculiar,” the innkeeper said, “and whilst ’tis surely worth something, changing it’s not to be simple.”

  Susan fished more coins from her wallet.

  In the end, eleven mugs of lukewarm ale cost a dollar and fifteen cents in coin, leaving Susan’s change-purse almost empty.

  * * * *

  Amy sipped her ale and stared out the window, ignoring what little conversation was going on around her. The sky had gone grey and the daylight was dim, but it was still far brighter than the tavern’s interior, and the gallows stood out vividly.

  Those three men had been hanged and disembowelled—hanged by the neck until dead
. The evisceration was just an extra; they had died of hanging. Their necks were twisted, their features puffy, their tongues thrust out and swollen; flies were crawling on their faces, on the dark protruding tongues. Their hands were out of sight, presumably tied behind their backs. And Amy couldn’t forget the odor that came from them, a thick, heavy odor she never wanted to smell again.

  She didn’t think this had been the sort of quick, one-snap-and-it’s-over, break-the-neck hanging that she had always heard about; she thought this had been slow strangulation. She shuddered, and sipped at her ale, and wished she had something else to drink.

  She had never seen a hanged man before. It wasn’t like the movies or TV, where the person still looked like a person, just hanging; the features were distorted, and the body and legs seemed somehow thin and stretched.

  That might have something to do with how long they’d been hanging, of course, or with having their guts pulled out. The ale suddenly tasted sour at the thought, and she put her mug down.

  She wondered why the three had been hanged; were they murderers? Or rapists, perhaps? Was rape even considered a serious crime here?

  Or maybe a crime didn’t need to be serious to merit hanging, here in Shadow’s country. Maybe they were up there because they’d stolen a few apples, or a loaf of bread, or talked back to the local magistrate. Maybe they were hanging there just because Shadow didn’t like them. Had they done anything as serious as Walter and Beth had?

  She swallowed, not drinking, but just trying to keep down what she had already drunk.

  She had sent Walter and Beth to their deaths at the hands of Imperial troops, and she suddenly found herself imagining the two of them hanging side by side like that, on a gallows, necks twisted, faces discolored, tongues lolling, bodies stretched. She could see just what Walter’s face would have looked like, a parody of what she had seen so often when his features flushed and distorted with anger or lust.

  But he was a rapist and a murderer, he had killed that other girl, he had beaten Amy repeatedly. He had known what would happen if the Empire ever caught him. He had brought it on himself; nobody had told him to keep slaves, to rape women, to strangle poor Sheila, whom Amy had never met, whom Amy had replaced. He’d thought he wouldn’t be caught, that he could get away with it forever, but the Empire had come looking for Amy and the other Earthpeople, and she’d told them what Walter had done, and he’d been hanged for it.