In the Empire of Shadow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Tell us, then, what you see,” Raven said, stepping up close behind Valadrakul. His left arm shielded his eyes; his black clothing seemed to absorb the light, to be the only solid and unchanging thing in the shifting images.

  “The matrix,” Valadrakul said. “The heart of Shadow—and what name is that, for this is no feeble shadow, but power incarnate! See, each light a strand of the web, woven gloriously together—why, that beam we passed on the stair, I see now how it fits!” Suddenly, the wizard was striding forward into the room, into the light and color; Amy reached out, tried to catch him as he passed, and missed.

  “Look you all,” he cried as he marched, “whosoever sits at the center, upon that throne, there is the center of it all! I could no more construct a matrix such as this than a sparrow could swim, but oh, I see how it works, I see what every finest fiber must be! You, who sit there, let me try, I beg you—for but a moment, but the merest instant, give me your place!”

  “Who sits where?” Amy asked, squinting, trying to see through the glare. She could see no one sitting anywhere; Ted was only a vague, dark blur, and Valadrakul, too, was fading into the brilliance.

  “Fool,” a voice said, a voice none of them had heard before, rich and loud, but not particularly deep. “The matrix does my will, not thine, thou pitiful semblance of a wizard. It centers not upon this seat, but upon me!”

  The words came from somewhere further in the room, deeper in the blaze of light, beyond Ted and Valadrakul, but Amy still couldn’t see anything of the speaker.

  “Oh, but let me share it,” Valadrakul pleaded. “I could learn so much…”

  “Too much, perchance,” the voice said. “Begone, wizardling; another step, and perish.”

  “Oh…” Valadrakul began. He stepped forward, hands outstretched, reaching for the glory he saw before him.

  And then he burned; the initial golden flash was scarcely noticeable amid the lights, but Amy had been watching Valadrakul, staring at him, and the flames were plain enough.

  After the flames the blast struck the wizard, and flung him backward, directly toward Amy; she let out a noise, a choking, gasping noise that might have been a scream had she been able to breathe more deeply before it came out.

  An instant later a flash of pure white, pale and almost lost in the polychrome glory of Shadow’s presence, burst from the flying remains of Valadrakul—Amy remembered the flash when Elani had died, when her magicks had shattered, and knew that Valadrakul, too, was dead.

  The body skidded to a halt by her feet, and Amy looked down through flickering colors at the blackened remains of the mage Valadrakul of Warricken.

  His vest was reduced to a few scorched threads; the Imperial uniform had held up somewhat better, and was still mostly intact, but every bit of it was charred black, not a trace of purple remaining. A few beard hairs were still sizzling, and the stench of burning hair made Amy gag even before the blackened ruin of the wizard’s face registered on her consciousness.

  Something white showed through at one spot, and when Amy realized she couldn’t tell if it was exposed bone or exposed eyeball she turned away and decided against bothering to keep down whatever wanted to come up. Her life was turning into a horror; vomiting seemed a perfectly appropriate reaction.

  Very little did come up, though; a thin spatter of yellowish fluid, nothing more.

  * * * *

  They were all dead, Pel decided as he looked at Valadrakul’s smoking remains. The wizard had been blasted just as effectively, and a good deal more quickly, than the Nazis in “Raiders.”

  Which meant that while this was plainly Shadow, and not a merciful God, this Shadow, to all intents and purposes, was as powerful here as God.

  The smell of burned meat reached Pel’s nostrils, and he came to the conclusion that this wasn’t an adventure story he was trapped in, it was a horror novel, a Stephen King nightmare.

  He should be screaming. He should be fleeing in terror—but there wasn’t anywhere to go, and after everything that had already happened, after the long walk and the disembowelled corpses hanging in every town and the deaths of Nancy and Rachel, Pel didn’t have the emotional reserves to scream or yell or be shocked by Valadrakul’s death.

  Something in him was already dead, he thought.

  And in a few moments, if Shadow’s whim ran that way, all of him would be dead, body and soul.

  They were all dead.

  There was nothing more to lose. He turned back to face Shadow, if that was what sat before them in that polychrome glare, and asked, “What did you do that for?”

  For a moment, everything was almost silent, save for odd unidentified rustlings, like those that they had heard when the doors first opened, and a faint popping and hissing that Pel realized with a dull, belated shock was the sound of Valadrakul’s corpse cooling. The quiet was so total that it seemed as if the surviving humans were holding their breath, and Pel supposed that some of them were.

  The shifting labyrinth of light and color seemed to slow and dim slightly.

  “Durst thou address me thus, then?” Shadow’s voice asked; Pel thought he heard a note of amusement.

  “Why not?” Pel replied. He supposed that monsters weren’t used to questions like that, but he didn’t care. He was too far gone to really be frightened. “You’ve got us; we’re all dead anyway.”

  “Think’st so?” The amusement was definite now, and the voice was higher than Pel had realized.

  Pel didn’t bother to answer, and Shadow continued, “I’truth, some among you might yet live to see daylight more.”

  “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?” Pel said. “Any whim that strikes you, there isn’t anything we can do about it, is there?”

  “Nay,” Raven shouted suddenly, lurching forward, his still-bandaged fingers raised in a defiant gesture. It occurred to Pel, apropos of nothing, that they ought to be healed by now. “’Tis the duty of all free men, of all who love the Goddess, to resist this thing!” Raven called. “Friend Pel, yield not your soul to it!”

  For an instant, Pel thought that they had finally arrived at the climax of the story, that it was an adventure with a happy ending after all, that Raven, the storybook hero, had found some secret weakness, some way to resist Shadow’s power. He would draw a magic sword and cut through Shadow’s spells, or fling some prepared spell of his own.

  Then he realized that that wasn’t it at all; this was no simple fantasy. This was more horror. Raven had no secret weapon; he had simply cracked under the strain and done something stupid, not something heroic. He had done something stupid, and he would die for it. If there was any hero here, it wasn’t Raven after all.

  And Pel didn’t really think there was any hero. Not after Valadrakul’s death. This was real life, and in real life last-minute rescues didn’t always come, sometimes innocents died horribly, sometimes the good guys were slaughtered. Just like a horror story. Real life didn’t need to be fair, or just, or satisfying; where was the justice in a plane wreck or an earthquake?

  Innocents and good guys died meaningless deaths all the time.

  He didn’t really know anything about Raven’s past, didn’t know if Raven was an innocent or a good guy, in any sense of the terms, but right now it looked as if Raven was about to die a horrible and meaningless death.

  He was. Pel turned as Raven’s velvets flared up, in a blaze of fire and spark; black smoke billowed upward around the man’s burning black hair into the golden shafts above, spilling into the light like ink into clear sparkling water. The swarthy skin reddened, then blackened, then disappeared.

  There was no shock-wave like the one that had flung Valadrakul’s corpse at Amy’s feet, and although the self-proclaimed rightful lord of Stormcrack Keep had time to give a brief, anguished cry before the flames consumed him, there was no recognizable corpse, but merely a flurry of black ash.

  “I’d worry not of souls, little man,” Shadow told the smoking, drifting remains and the shocked survivors. “I deal
not in souls; the flesh of this world is enough to concern me.”

  Pel stared for a moment; he heard Singer make a strangled noise somewhere nearby. He knew he should be shocked, horrified, something, but he wasn’t. It occurred to him that Raven had been the last of their native companions; everyone who still stood before Shadow came from either Earth or the Galactic Empire.

  He doubted that would make any difference if they ran afoul of one of Shadow’s whims.

  * * * *

  One by one, Al Singer thought, it’s picking us off one by one and there isn’t anything we can do about it.

  This was not what he’d joined the military for. This wasn’t anything he’d ever imagined.

  And he couldn’t even fight back. Oh, he still had his blaster, but it wouldn’t work here except for whacking someone over the head, or maybe cracking nuts.

  He glanced at Prossie Thorpe, the expedition’s Special—but she didn’t work here, either, or at least that was what she said. She couldn’t call for help, couldn’t read the enemy’s plans. She could maybe still talk to Base One, but they couldn’t send help in time, if at all—and what’s more, they wouldn’t send it.

  Colonel Carson, Lieutenant Dibbs—the officers hadn’t been much use on this expedition. And Thorpe said that General Hart had written them all off.

  What kind of military solidarity was that? The Empire was supposed to stand behind its men, protect its troops just as the troops protected the Empire.

  It looked like that was just another lie, like Father Christmas or virgin brides.

  He was beginning to wish that he’d never joined up, had never seen little Laura Bailey mooning over the fancy uniforms at the port and had never decided that the best way to get into her pants was to sign away a couple of years of his life.

  It wasn’t fair, the six of them up against this…this force, this thing.

  And they didn’t even know what it was.

  “Hey,” he called, “if you’re concerned with flesh, why don’t you show yourself, anyway? Do you need all these colors and lights? Are you afraid to let us see you? Are you that ugly? Is that why you killed the wizard, because he could see through this stuff?”

  “Wouldst see me unveiled?” Shadow asked, and Singer thought it sounded surprised.

  He remembered some of the stories he’d heard as a kid, whispered around a campfire or read aloud by the hearth, about unspeakable monsters—but he didn’t care. He was tired of not knowing what was going on. He wanted to see the thing.

  “Well, yeah, why not?” he demanded. “You think we’ll go mad at the sight, like in the old stories?”

  “I’d hope not,” Shadow said. “As you will, then.”

  Abruptly, the colors faded away, the buzzing in Singer’s ears was gone, and the blazing lights faded to a soft golden glow from somewhere overhead. His head hurt; whether he had developed a headache in the glare and simply not noticed, or whether the shift had triggered it, he wasn’t sure.

  He blinked, his eyes trying to adjust to this sudden change, and then took a good look at what the chamber really looked like.

  The walls were white marble, ornamented with gilded carvings, behind twin colonnades—but some of the gilt was flaking away. The floor was covered in faded carpets, most of them dark red patterned with darker blue. Before them, in the center of the room, was a low stone dais, and on the dais was a dark wooden throne, the straight back and arms carved with strange flowers and impossible beasts.

  Slouched in the throne was a woman.

  She was fat, but not obese; aging, but not yet old; unattractive, but not really ugly. Her hair was long and dark brown and somewhat disheveled, spilling over her shoulders in tangled curls; her face was soft, with an unhealthy pallor. She looked to Singer as if she should be sitting behind the counter in some inexpensive shop somewhere, shortchanging customers and chasing children away from the candy.

  Someone giggled. Singer heard Pel mutter, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” but he had no idea what the Earthman was talking about.

  “You’re Shadow?” Singer asked.

  “Indeed, I am,” the woman said, and it was the same voice, though not quite as loud.

  This was Shadow.

  This frumpy, middle-aged woman was the all-powerful Shadow.

  “Oh, come on,” Singer said.

  “Judge not by appearances, child,” the woman chided him. “The matrix yet stands, and I am yet at its heart, though thou seest it not; I’ve but rendered it invisible, not impotent.”

  “But you’re just an old woman!” Singer blurted.

  And in his last instant, as he saw the old woman frown, he knew that she really was Shadow, that he had seen Raven and Valadrakul killed for displeasing her, and that now he had displeased her. Just because the lights were gone, that didn’t mean her power was.

  His last thought was to wish that he had never seen Laura Bailey at all, because then he wouldn’t be about to die so stupidly, in this horrible alien place. He didn’t have the time to think anything more profound.

  He didn’t even have time to think that at least it was quick.

  * * * *

  Pel watched Singer die, as Raven and Valadrakul had died; the flames seemed more impressive now that the light show was gone.

  When only smoldering ash remained, he turned back to Shadow. “Was that necessary?” he asked.

  Shadow shrugged. “Necessary or no, ’twas my wish,” she said.

  “And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.” Shadow made no attempt to keep the self-satisfaction out of her voice.

  “Can we get this over with, so I can wake up?” Ted asked.

  Shadow glanced at Ted, at the filthy remnant of bandage on his head, then asked Pel, “Is he deranged?”

  Pel hesitated, trying to think which answer would be least likely to reduce Ted, too, to charred fragments.

  They were all dead anyway, and maybe he would wake up back on Earth, and he couldn’t second-guess Shadow, anyway; he didn’t know enough about her. There wasn’t any reason to lie. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “Amusingly so?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Then he lives; I’ve need of amusement betimes.”

  “Is that why you brought us here, then?” Pel demanded. “For your amusement?”

  “In part,” Shadow answered.

  “And the three you killed weren’t amusing enough?”

  Shadow waved a hand dismissively. “What amusement in a hedge wizard who thinks he might wield my power? Many of them have I seen, i’ these many years, and all in the end I’ve slain. And a displaced lordling, in his towering rage? Scores have I seen and slain. The soldier, in truth, was new, but scarce new enough; in these past few days I’ve seen his like a dozen times over. You saw his companions at the gate, an you troubled to raise your eyes.”

  “We saw,” Pel agreed. “So you’ll kill us all, one by one, when we bore you or annoy you?”

  “Perhaps,” Shadow said, “but perhaps not. I did guide you here, as thou sayest, and ’twas purposeful. Serve me well, and thou shalt live, each of you.”

  Pel puzzled for a moment over the pronouns in that sentence until he realized that Shadow was using “thou” as singular and “you” as plural; he supposed it made sense. Raven and Valadrakul hadn’t used “thou” at all, that he could recall; it was confusing.

  Then he forced himself to stop thinking about such trivia. She had just said they might yet live.

  It was a story after all, an adventure story. It was real life, but it was following the stories. He recognized it now. This was the part where the villain explained herself, where she revealed her whole evil plan and offered them a chance of some kind, and the hero was supposed to refuse it.

  Raven hadn’t been the hero—he had died, while the villain still lived, so he hadn’t been the hero; heroes could only die while heroically saving others, they couldn’t throw their lives away in stupid frontal atta
cks that left the villain untouched.

  Who was the hero, then?

  He glanced at the others—at Amy Jewell, clutching her belly and looking nauseated; at Ted Deranian, standing to the side looking bored and impatient; at Susan Nguyen, hanging back warily; at Prossie Thorpe, confused and frightened.

  It might be Susan; it might even be Amy. Either of them could be the unexpected hero, the ordinary person who finds unseen strength—Susan with her history of suffering, Amy with her unborn child for inspiration.

  Somehow he couldn’t see poor mad Ted in the hero role, nor quiet Prossie with her muffled telepathy, her military pose not hiding her general vagueness.

  Amy or Susan might fit, but the most likely candidate was himself. He was the one doing the talking, after all. He was the one who had insisted they come here.

  He didn’t feel very heroic, but then, he’d heard that heroes usually didn’t.

  Well, if he was the hero—and he still wasn’t convinced—he might as well carry on with the role.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s hear about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Amy was impressed with Pel’s courage, to stand there and argue with the woman who claimed to be Shadow, or at least to represent Shadow. She wasn’t sure it was really very bright, but it was certainly courageous, after three out of eight of them had been murdered.

  She couldn’t believe how calmly she was taking it, that the three had been…had been fried. She had been traveling with those people all this time, and now they were dead, horribly dead, burned; she wanted to scream and cry and faint, but she didn’t dare even do that, because the thing that killed them was still here, all around, and if she did anything it might kill her.

  And she did not want to die.

  Yet Pel was talking back to it—he was brave, but maybe stupid.

  She had resisted Walter, but she had known when to shut up, so as not to be killed; she hoped that Pel knew as much.

  And for now, she wasn’t going to say anything. She didn’t want to die.

  No one else was saying anything any more, either; were they all as terrified as she was?