In the Empire of Shadow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Dost think so little of me, then?” Shadow said, in a voice that was strained and terrible. “Thinkest thou I’d have no protections left without the full matrix about me? Did think me such a fool as that?” She took another step, and stood over Susan, who made no answer. “I have endured for centuries, ’gainst wizards, warriors, and time itself; thought thou some simple machine could slay me?” She kicked the revolver aside; it skittered away.

  And then Susan slumped forward, fell in a heap at Shadow’s feet and lay still.

  “Die, then,” Shadow said.

  Amy sobbed, a deep, bone-shaking sob.

  “I don’t understand,” Pel said hopelessly.

  Shadow turned to face him, and glared directly down at him from her throne.

  “Dost thou not, then?” she asked. “’Tis plain enough. This wench tried to slay me, with that device from your world, whilst I was distracted and had set aside much of my power; and this other hoped the attempt might succeed. Thus I’ve stopped the heart of the assassin, and would slay the other—but I think thou’dst have it otherwise, and thus I restrain myself.”

  Pel blinked.

  “Me?” he said.

  “Look about you, sir,” Shadow replied. “See my choices. A corpse, a madman, and two women, the one who longed for my death, the other a trickster who can hear thoughts—and you, who called out in outrage when that weapon spat its pellets at me. Who, then, shall stand in for me, shall hold the matrix in my stead while I venture forth?”

  Pel swallowed hard.

  He was no hero. He was just a spear-carrier, someone along to help fill out the party.

  But then, this wasn’t really a story at all. This was real life. He was being offered his chance. If everything was as Shadow said, it was a chance—his only chance—to have everything he really wanted.

  He glanced at Prossie, who lay on the stone floor, drawing deep, gasping breaths and shivering with cold.

  The telepath looked up at Pel, swallowed, and spoke.

  “She isn’t lying,” Prossie whispered, but the expression on her face was a clear warning.

  A warning of what, Pel couldn’t guess, and without further thought he ignored it.

  “All right,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Pel had somehow thought that it would all be over in a matter of minutes, that Shadow would transfer the matrix to him then and there, with Susan lying dead on the floor and Amy weeping and Ted giggling and Prossie trying to stop shivering as she brushed the ice from her uniform. He had thought that he could send Shadow through to the Galactic Empire, and then she would come back in a few moments, and he could collect on her promises.

  That was nonsense, of course. Shadow, whose appearance was blurring weirdly as she let her suppression of the matrix’s appearance continue to slip, explained the situation.

  Before Pel could even begin to hold the matrix, he had to become an actual wizard, rather than a potential one; before he could send her through to the Galactic Empire, he would have to learn the portal spell. Shadow would teach him, of course, but it would hardly be instantaneous.

  Pel began to wonder if it might have been quicker if Susan had succeeded in killing Shadow after all, and they’d had to track Taillefer down, instead of going through this abbreviated apprenticeship.

  “How long will it take?” he asked.

  “That depends upon thine own talents,” Shadow answered from somewhere inside a halo of shifting colors. “With only a little good luck, three or four days; if thou hast the true talent, as many hours; but if thou’rt such a fool as thou sometimes seemest, then perhaps ’twill be years.”

  “Are you planning to feed us?” Pel asked.

  Shadow flickered, and Pel saw her face glowering through the colors.

  * * * *

  Amy had to admit that the food was good, and the service, provided by odd-smelling black-clad people who never said a word, never opened their mouths at all, was impeccable.

  Much of the decor was ghastly, though; she took professional affront at it. She would never have allowed one of her customers to decorate a room the way Shadow’s dining hall—if that’s what it was—was done; she’d have walked off the job first, and to hell with the customer always being right. Punk was all very well, but to line an entire wall with human skulls, several hundred of them…

  She almost giggled at the absurdity of her aesthetic concerns. Shadow didn’t care what the place looked like; she probably had some reason for the skulls. Maybe they were from old enemies, all lined up there as a reminder that she’d killed them all. Maybe they were from servants who’d messed up, to encourage the current crew not to spill anything.

  There was no question that they were all genuine human skulls, though; these were not fakes. These were dead people; when Amy thought about it, she had to conclude that to all intents and purposes they were eating in a tomb.

  But the heavy, chewy brown bread was rich and filling; the roast beef was tender and had been cooked with onions and some sort of spice that gave it an exotic tang; the wine reminded Amy of the Chianti she and Stan had drunk at that little restaurant they’d gone to when they were dating. She skipped the boiled cabbage—she had never liked cabbage. There were oranges for dessert, and nuts and cheese afterward.

  Despite the skulls and the gloomy servants, it was unquestionably the best meal she had had since I.S.S. Ruthless almost fell on her in her own back yard. She hoped she’d be able to keep it all down.

  Ted and Prossie ate well, too.

  She didn’t know about Pel, though; he was off with Shadow somewhere, starting his training. She saw servants carrying plates past the table on their way to the workshop, for Pel—and Shadow? Amy didn’t know whether Shadow ate, or whether she got all the energy she needed from her magic.

  And she wondered about the servants—were they ordinary people, or were they monsters Shadow had made in the shape of humans, homunculi, or whatever they were called?

  Or were they something else—zombies, maybe? Shadow had talked about raising the dead at one point, and there was that odd odor.

  These people didn’t smell bad, though, and they weren’t black—all of Shadow’s monsters, from the stovepipe things to the dragon that had chased them up the stairs, seemed to be black, and none of the servants were any darker-skinned than Raven had been, let alone black black. Amy preferred to think that the servants were local people who had found themselves in Shadow’s service in perfectly natural ways.

  She didn’t look at them too closely as she ate, though.

  * * * *

  Prossie worried about what Pel was really going to do. He had ignored her warning—he must have seen it.

  Maybe, she thought as she wiped her mouth and winced at the friction on her frostbitten lips, she would be able to warn him once he held the matrix, while Shadow was making her first venture into Imperial space.

  She wondered if Pel had thought this through; did he really think that Shadow would ever let him go, alive? She would want to go back to the Empire again and again, she had almost said so—every time she went, every second she was away, she would need someone trustworthy back here in Faerie, holding her matrix together and keeping the space-warp open. She would want Pel here forever, and if he ever refused she would kill him and fetch someone new. After all, once she knew that her idea would work, what would stop her from sending her homunculi to kidnap people from Earth or the Empire?

  And there was no question at all about Shadow’s callousness or ruthlessness. Susan’s cooling corpse had still lain on the floor of the throne room when they were all led away to be fed, and the skin was peeling from Prossie’s own ears and mouth and fingers from the cold of that asteroid Shadow had sent her to; no one could expect generosity or kindness from Shadow.

  Maybe Pel had some scheme of his own, but Prossie did not entirely trust him to outthink Shadow.

  She rose cautiously from the table, cast a final glance at the wall of skulls, and followed a
beckoning servant.

  * * * *

  The privies were primitive, by Amy’s standards, but functional; the beds appeared luxurious, but she found that if she stretched out her feet stuck off the end, and she had never thought of herself as unusually tall.

  At least there weren’t any skulls in the bedchambers.

  She wondered whether Pel was getting any sleep.

  She wondered if wizards needed any.

  * * * *

  Pel never remembered just how the whole thing was done. Whether this was inherent in the process or the result of some spell on Shadow’s part, he had no idea. By morning, as he sat on the rough wooden stool in Shadow’s workshop, he simply knew, without being able to put any of it in words, just how one drew upon magical currents, how one manipulated and directed them, how one bound them to one another or to one’s own mind. He could sense the currents, could feel and see them; he understood what Valadrakul had seen beneath the haze of color and light, and knew how to ignore that haze himself, if he chose to. He could see the dull lumps of rock on Shadow’s crude wooden shelves as glittering foci for magical forces.

  He was, in short, become a matrix wizard.

  Maybe it was hypnosis, Pel thought when he realized that he didn’t know how he had become a matrix wizard. That conjured up unpleasant thoughts of lurking post-hypnotic suggestions.

  “Have you…I mean…” He looked across the dim, dusty workroom at the shimmering darkness that was Shadow’s current visible incarnation, and decided against finishing the question.

  Shadow guessed more or less what he had been going to say, however. The lone candle flickered as she answered, and the room darkened further; there were no windows, no skylights, no natural light in here at all—only the single candle and whatever magical glow Shadow allowed.

  “Aye, I’ve placed a geas upon thee,” she said, “that thou shalt never turn my magicks against me, that thou shalt do me no harm with either thine own hand or through magic the hands of others, and that upon my request thou shalt yield up to me whatsoever I ask of thee.”

  “That’s…” That wasn’t exactly what he had been going to ask, and it hardly seemed fair to have done that without his permission, but Pel decided against protesting. Shadow wasn’t much on fairness, and if she hadn’t asked a lot of questions of him while he was in her thrall, so much the better. “That’s okay,” he said.

  He got the impression that Shadow was smiling, though he couldn’t see anything resembling a face. “Though ’tis wearisome betimes, Pellinore Brown,” she said, “yet I’d never wish to be other than I am, if only because none talk back o’erboldly to me.”

  Then he realized how he knew she was smiling; he could feel it through the magical matrix.

  The candle puffed out, but he could still sense where everything was in the little stone chamber, despite the utter darkness.

  A warm golden glow flooded across him, pouring from Shadow’s face.

  “Come, thou hast the foundation,” Shadow said, “and far sooner than I’d hoped; thou hast the true talent, Pellinore. Now, let us build doorways upon that foundation.”

  There were other spells Pel was far more interested in learning than he was in creating doorways—the spell to raise the dead primarily, and secondarily the spells to create homunculi—but he was in no position to argue. Shadow didn’t want him to know all that; she wanted him to serve as her doorman between worlds.

  She was looking at him expectantly.

  He had the true talent?

  He slid off the stool and stood up.

  She had said he did, and he had no reason to doubt it, really, but it seemed so odd. He wasn’t anyone special; how could he have had some special talent all his life without knowing it? How could an Earthman have a talent for wizardry at all?

  Maybe he’d been the hero all along, the young innocent who turns out to be the greatest wizard of all time…

  But he was no innocent, and not much of a hero, even if he did have the talent. It was more likely that all Earthpeople had the talent than that he, Pel Brown, was somehow fated to have come here.

  But here he was, fated or not, and Shadow was going to leave him holding her matrix, was going to teach him the spell to open portals to other worlds.

  And he would have time to experiment with other spells on his own while she was away exploring the Empire.

  * * * *

  There were no eggs at breakfast, no coffee, no orange juice, but Amy was satisfied with ham and tea and buttered toast; she passed up the sticky little cakes, and the gooey brown lumps that might have been candied dates. She hadn’t thrown up that morning, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  Prossie ate a little of everything, though, and Ted ate whatever was put in front of him as if he didn’t know or care what it was. None of them paid any attention to the wall of skulls; familiarity had bred contempt.

  After the meal, the servants either went away or simply stopped moving and stood where they were; no one gave any sign of where the three were to go or what they were to do. For several minutes they simply sat, looking about the room or at each other, not speaking. Amy looked over the skulls, but they gave no clues—she would not have been very surprised, under the circumstances, if a skull had started talking, but none of them did.

  The remaining servants simply stood, and Amy tried for a moment to identify the peculiar scent they produced—a faint chemical smell, vaguely reminiscent of doctor’s offices—but she couldn’t place it.

  And nobody was paying any attention to them; she and Ted and Prossie were being utterly ignored.

  She wondered if something had gone wrong somewhere, if Pel had died, or Shadow, and that had shut everything down—but there was no evidence of anything like that.

  “Now what?” Amy asked at last.

  Ted didn’t answer, or even look at her, but Prossie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Do you think we missed a signal or something?” Amy asked.

  Prossie shook her head. “No,” she said, “I think we’re being ignored. Shadow doesn’t care about us any more, at least not for the moment. When she needs us, she’ll summon us.”

  “So what should we do?” Amy glanced uneasily at a servant, at the black suede tunic he wore, his motionless hands and expressionless face.

  Prossie shrugged. “Whatever we like, I suppose.” She hesitated, then added, “But if you were thinking of doing anything Shadow wouldn’t like, I wouldn’t advise it—she can hear anything, anywhere in Faerie, when she chooses, and she can see through other people’s eyes—or for that matter, anything’s eyes. She could be looking through mine, or Ted’s, or yours, right now—or the eyes of a rat under the table, or one of these servants.”

  “How do you know that?” Amy asked, startled.

  “From when I read her mind yesterday,” Prossie explained. “I only had a few seconds, and I was sort of desperate, so I wasn’t very selective, I just grabbed at everything I could. I picked up a lot of odd bits, so now I know something about how her magic works.” She grimaced. “Not enough to be any real use, I’m afraid; you can’t learn skills that way. I just picked up a few random memories of using that matrix thing. She’s got centuries of memories of that.”

  “So she might have been spying on us the entire time, from when the ship crashed until we got here?” Amy asked. “She could have watched us through the eyes of squirrels in the trees, or something?”

  Prossie nodded. “I don’t know any details, there may be limits, and I didn’t hit any memories of anything like that, but yes, she could have been spying on us. Not just through squirrels; she could have used your eyes, or mine; we’d never have known it.”

  Amy shivered. “Did Raven and Valadrakul know she could do that? Or Elani?”

  Prossie shrugged.

  Amy looked around uneasily, and still found no clues as to what she should do; accordingly, she just sat.

  * * * *

  There was a trick to the portal spell, Pel d
iscovered, even for a wizard; it required one to look in a direction that wasn’t there, and then draw enough magic into one’s perceptions to make the direction real. It was no wonder that no one had discovered it before Shadow, or that it had taken Shadow herself several centuries to come up with it.

  It was, in fact, much harder to learn this single spell than to acquire all the basics of matrix wizardry; he had to work at it for most of the day. Shadow let him pull as much energy from her matrix as he needed, so much power that the air in the stuffy little workroom seemed to vibrate with it, the walls glowed pale green, the stones on the shelves buzzed and chimed—but even with all that power, it still took some time before he begin to get the hang of it.

  It seemed so strange—as if he had found himself in a funhouse, one where he had to learn to work all the tricks just by wishing. Shadow never explained why the walls glowed green, what the stones were for; she forced him to concentrate on the portal spell.

  He tried very hard to concentrate, and at last, in a way he had no words to describe, he began to sense how it would work.

  Shadow forbade him to make any attempt to contact Earth, but she guided him in finding the Galactic Empire, in scanning through the worlds therein, in choosing one, and in opening a gateway.

  The stone walls fluoresced blue, then vermilion; stones crawled and twisted; but at last he managed to create an opening.

  And once the portal was there, holding it open was fairly easy. He simply had to not let the currents of magic slip away.

  Colors shifted oddly around him, and he ignored them. He had succeeded in creating his first portal, creating a hole into another world!

  Pel marveled at it. He had worked magic. He had opened a path between universes! The feeling of power, of accomplishment, and most of all of strangeness, was overwhelming; he found himself weeping with no idea why.

  Shadow summoned servants from somewhere; the single door of the workroom swung open and admitted one of her silent, black-clad people. She ordered him through the portal, to test it; the man stepped through, vanishing, and a moment later reappeared unhurt. He bowed before Pel.