In the Empire of Shadow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Don’t they talk?” Pel asked, when the man did not speak, did not say a word about where he had been.

  “Not well,” Shadow replied.

  * * * *

  The remains of breakfast had congealed into an unappetizing mess; no one had ever cleared them away. Amy thought it was time for lunch, past time, though it was hard to be sure when the only light came from a shaft overhead, a square opening in the ceiling that obviously opened to daylight, but which was angled so that she could not see the sky.

  No lunch came. Maybe Shadow had forgotten, or perhaps the folk of Faerie only ate two meals a day; Amy could only guess.

  She and Ted and Prossie had made no attempt to leave the dining hall beyond visits to a privy that was just up a short corridor; she and Prossie had discussed leaving, had twice almost decided to go back to their bedchambers, but both times they had lost their nerve.

  Ted hadn’t said anything; most of the time he had just sat there, staring at his thumbs, occasionally glancing around disinterestedly.

  All three of them, even Ted once or twice, had walked about the room, stretching their legs; all three had spent some time just sitting, as well. Amy and Prossie had talked a little, and several times Amy had found herself starting to slip into confessions and confidences, only to veer away whenever she remembered Ted’s presence. Despite his silence, she thought he might be listening, and she did not care to share her memories, and her concerns about her pregnancy and Stan and Walter and Beth and Susan and all the rest, with a madman sitting a few feet away.

  For that matter, while the three servants still in the room gave every appearance of being inanimate, she didn’t know whether they might not be listening. Amy was now convinced that whatever the servants were, they weren’t fully human; ordinary people could not possibly stand so still for so long. These things might be some sort of magical robot, or people under some sort of spell, Amy didn’t know; but whatever they were, they might be listening.

  And of course, Shadow herself might be listening—any time, any place, Shadow might be listening.

  So Amy kept her conversation vague and general, or else trivial.

  She was just about to suggest, for the third time, that they return to their bedchambers, when the abandoned servants suddenly jerked to life. Two simply turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind them; the third beckoned for Amy and the others to follow her.

  * * * *

  The two of them had moved from the workshop back down to the throne room, where Pel had practiced, opening and closing a portal into the Empire unassisted three or four times, using power drawn from just one strand of Shadow’s web; Shadow wanted to be absolutely certain that he would be able to let her back into Faerie.

  Pel had discovered some interesting things in the process of this practice.

  For one, he had found that Shadow’s geas, or post-hypnotic suggestion, or whatever it was, worked; if she told him to open a portal, he had no choice in the matter. He began the spell whether he wanted to or not.

  There was no compulsion with other requests or commands, but there certainly was with the portals.

  He supposed this was intended to ensure that he wouldn’t strand her in another universe. It seemed there was a problem with this in that Shadow would be unable to give him orders from the Galactic Empire, but he supposed she would have thought of anything that obvious and found a way around it.

  He had also discovered that it was very difficult to open a new portal—each time, after a moment of wild gyration, the spell tried to settle on the exact same spot he had used the time before, like machinery settling into a well-worn groove, or an animal on a familiar path, and had to be forced away. It was downright impossible to open a portal near, but not at, one that had been used before. That explained why Elani’s spell gateway to Earth had always come out through Pel’s basement wall.

  And he couldn’t control exactly where a portal would come out; he didn’t understand why, and Shadow did not explain it, but even when he thought he knew the exact location where his portal would appear, even when he could sense the shape of the other world so clearly he felt as if he ought to be able to step right through without any portal at all, the portal might come out a hundred feet, or a thousand, away from the intended target.

  That might explain why Elani’s spell had come out in his basement in the first place, instead of somewhere more useful.

  Of course, he couldn’t really see where it would come out, he could merely sense certain characteristics of the place, characteristics for which he had no words—he could feel them magically, but had no idea how to explain them in words. He guessed that they might relate somehow to magnetic fields, but he didn’t really know.

  He knew the spell, though, which was the important part. He could open portals.

  When Shadow was satisfied that Pel did, indeed, know the spell, she began making her final preparations for departure; Pel leaned against a wall of the throne room and watched.

  Every so often he glanced at Susan Nguyen’s corpse, lying in a corner where Shadow had left it—she had had her servants remove Valadrakul’s scorched remains, and there hadn’t been enough left of Raven or Singer to trouble about, but she had perversely left Susan’s body. Each time he looked, Pel shuddered slightly.

  He had never seen Nancy’s body, or Rachel’s; he had grieved for them, but he had also been almost numb in some ways, had struggled through moments of disbelief.

  He could hardly disbelieve in Susan’s death, when the poor little Vietnamese lawyer’s corpse was lying right there.

  He hadn’t known Susan well; he suspected almost nobody had. She had been so quiet, so reserved, so determinedly self-sufficient—and so brave, to attack Shadow like that.

  Pel felt a certain shame at that. He had been trying to make deals with Shadow, trying to get himself home, or to get Nancy and Rachel resurrected—but wasn’t it Shadow who had been responsible for their deaths, who was responsible, in a way, for his being here in the first place? It was Raven who had brought Pel through the portal into Faerie, but it was Shadow who had driven Raven to it, who had first made contact with other universes and made that contact a hostile one, of spies and saboteurs and plans for war. It was Shadow who was responsible for the disembowelled corpses in every town and village, for the dead soldiers dangling above her castle door.

  And Susan, the survivor, the one who simply lived through whatever life through at her, had done a brave thing and tried to kill Shadow, and Pel hadn’t helped her, he had protested.

  How could he have done that?

  At the time it had seemed perfectly reasonable, but now he was ashamed and angry at himself, and angry at Shadow.

  Shadow was a monster. She might be his teacher, she might look like a bored housewife, but she was a monster, a ruthless conqueror, even, it might be argued, a genocide, the exterminator of her own kind, the other matrix wizards.

  And she held limitless power; he had tasted a little of it himself, and he knew how dangerous she was.

  If anyone had ever deserved to die, Shadow did; as long as she lived, no one in Faerie was safe—and now, no one in the Galactic Empire, and Earth would presumably follow.

  And quite aside from preventing further deaths, or any abstract interest in justice, Pel wanted revenge. Geas or no, he wanted vengeance—for Susan, for Raven and Singer and Valadrakul, for Nancy and Rachel, and for all the others.

  And he intended to have it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The throne room was full of people, but eerily silent. No one coughed, no one spoke; they all simply stood there as Shadow’s patterns of light and color played across them. Amy stopped in the doorway and looked uneasily in, her eyes adjusting to the glare, her ears starting to ring with the odd sensation of pressure that Shadow’s presence usually provoked.

  The unmoving people were more of Shadow’s black-clad servants, dozens of them. Amy was more certain than ever that whatever they were, they weren’t rea
lly human.

  Prossie stopped behind her, but Ted ambled on past them and began pushing his way through the crowd.

  “Come you,” Shadow called, and the servants shoved back against each other, opening a path. Watching them move, Amy noticed for the first time that they all wore belts bearing sheathed swords.

  What was that about?

  Uneasily, Amy followed Ted, Prossie trailing behind, and the three of them made their way to a wide clear space before Shadow’s throne.

  Shadow’s glory was relatively restrained just now, so they were not blinded, and they could vaguely see a human outline within the glimmering matrix. Pel was standing to one side of Shadow’s seat, partially obscured by the shifting colors. In front of the throne was an area of open floor about twenty feet across; all the rest of the vast chamber seemed to be jammed full of servants—homunculi, walking dead, whatever they were, there were hundreds of them, all of them outwardly human.

  There were no obvious monsters anywhere to be seen, which struck Amy as a bit odd. Shadow used so many monsters outside her fortress, and in that huge entrance hall; didn’t she use them in here?

  “Welcome,” Shadow said, as Amy stepped into the open area.

  Amy stopped.

  “You see before you,” Shadow announced, “my personal bodyguard. Never in this realm have I had any need of such, but I go now to visit thy land, Telepath, where my magicks cannot protect me.”

  Amy glanced around at the expressionless faces. That explained the swords, anyway—Shadow didn’t have any guns to give her guards. And Shadow’s monsters couldn’t live in Imperial space, which explained their absence, as well.

  “In a moment,” Shadow continued, “your companion, Pellinore the Brown, will open a portal to a small, pleasant world in the Galactic Empire; my escort will precede me thereunto, and make ready my way. And likewise, you two Earthpeople will step through.”

  Amy started. “Why?” she asked. “Why aren’t you sending us home?”

  “Because,” Shadow explained, “though I have taken what precautions seemed good to me, yet am I wary that our good Messire Brown may not act for love of me. Thou and this madman shall serve me as hostages for his good behavior—an he faults in any way upon my desires, shalt first the madman, and then thyself, be slain.”

  Amy felt tears stinging her eyes. This just went on and on, world after world, but never Earth. “What about Prossie?” she asked.

  “The telepath? Nay, nay, I’m not such a fool as that; an she came, the Empire’s soldiers would know my plans and my whereabouts in a trice, and they’d not be troubled by the loss of a handful of you, nor greatly slowed by my swordsmen. I’d flee safely hither, but ’twould be a misfortune best avoided. She’s to stay here.”

  Amy blinked at the indeterminate shape on the throne, and at Pel, there beside it. For a moment she thought an odd expression seemed to appear on Pel’s face, as if he were struggling not to smile, but Amy could not be sure through the haze of color.

  “Now, Pellinore,” Shadow said, “let us begin.”

  * * * *

  Pel watched as the black-clad creatures Shadow had called fetches marched, one by one, into the portal he had opened.

  Raven had mentioned fetches—weren’t they supposed to be the walking dead?

  Did that mean that these were dead people brought back to life, or live people condemned to a sort of half-death? Pel didn’t know.

  He didn’t know the name of the planet they were appearing on, either, but he thought it was a green and pretty place, and that the low towers of a city would be visible in the distance from the other side of the portal. He could not really explain how he had found it, or how he knew what it looked like—one didn’t see through a portal, rather, one put a portal through to what one saw, and Shadow had told him through the matrix, in ways words could not describe, where she wanted this one.

  He supposed that this troop of black-garbed swordsmen was really a scouting and raiding party, as much as Shadow’s bodyguard; he was certain she intended to fight the Galactic Empire eventually, and he supposed she might well conquer it all in time.

  And after that, she would probably go after Earth. He really was face to face with a world-conquering menace, just as in all those stories, and one that didn’t have any ring to throw in a volcano, nor sword to be broken, nor plug to be pulled—but one he wanted to kill.

  He couldn’t harm her, though, nor ask another to, and he couldn’t refuse her instructions regarding the portal.

  He could think about harming her, of course; he could imagine her hanged and disembowelled, or torched and burning, or beaten to death, like some of her victims—but he couldn’t do anything directly to make his imaginings come true.

  The throne room was emptying; he could see Susan’s corpse again, no longer hidden by Shadow’s slaves.

  And he could see Prossie, standing to one side, waiting, as the crowd trickled away through the portal, until finally the last four slaves took Ted and Amy by the arms and led them through.

  That left Shadow, himself, Prossie, and Susan alone in the throne room.

  “Now, Pellinore,” Shadow said, “thou shalt hold this portal open ’gainst my return, and shalt open no others lest they distract thee; understood?”

  “I understand,” Pel said, annoyed that he could not deny her orders about it. He had been wondering if he might be able to maintain two portals at once, once he was holding Shadow’s incredible matrix. It certainly wasn’t possible with the little dribble of eldritch power he had access to so far, but Shadow’s power was so vast that he doubted the limitation would have held. He had been thinking of opening a portal to somewhere else…

  But she had forbidden it, and the geas was irresistible.

  “’Tis well,” she said. “Be ready, now.”

  And then Pel felt power pouring into him, and felt himself spilling out of his body, as Shadow’s magical matrix was transferred to him. The line between himself and the huge network abruptly blurred, and for an instant he was everywhere, all through Faerie, in the currents of magic; he felt the winds and the earth, the seas and the forests, he saw from a thousand eyes at once. An entire world was within him and around him, all at once.

  With an effort, he tried to recollect himself.

  Maintaining the portal, which mere hours before had seemed a major task, and mere seconds before had taken a conscious effort, was now as thoughtless and automatic as breathing.

  Light and color were spilling out around him, he realized once he had managed to relocate himself as being in a specific place, in the throne room of the fortress.

  And beside him, a pudgy dark-haired woman rose from her throne and announced, a trifle unsteadily, “’Tis done. Fare thee well until my return, Pellinore Brown.”

  He was still trying to gather his wits and get a firm grip on reality, and said nothing as she walked, a trifle unsteadily, into the portal.

  * * * *

  Prossie watched the matrix transfer with interest, as far as she could; at first it didn’t seem as if Shadow were giving anything up, but merely as if Pel were developing his own shifting and colorful aura.

  Pel’s aura grew brighter and brighter, however, far past the level Shadow had been maintaining herself, and Prossie had to look away.

  In seconds, Pel blazed with a brilliance fully as unbearable as Shadow’s had been when first the party—eight of them, then—had entered the throne room. (Had that really only been the night before?) Prossie closed her eyes against the glare, flung an arm across her face, and turned away, pressing up to the wall.

  And still the light grew brighter.

  Then, finally, it stopped, though it was so intense that Prossie thought she could see the bones of her own arm silhouetted, black against red, right through the flesh and through her closed eyelids, and that was merely from the light that reached her with her back to the source, light reflected from the gray stone wall.

  She heard Shadow’s voice, sounding oddly weak,
say, “’Tis done. Fare thee well until my return, Pellinore Brown.” Although her ears were ringing and blood was roaring through them, she heard footsteps.

  And then she heard them stop.

  And then Pel’s voice roared out, loud as thunder, “Prossie? Are you all right?”

  * * * *

  The two men, or whatever they were, pulled Amy forward a few steps, and then released her arms, leaving her standing there in the open air of a meadow; Amy looked around warily.

  Shadow’s black-clad servants were fanning out across the meadow, stamping down the tall grasses and wildflowers without so much as glancing at them; tiny insects, or at least creatures that resembled insects, whirred and buzzed about as the invaders trampled their habitat, flittering through shadow and oddly-dim sunlight.

  There were insects, but there were no birds, and no trees anywhere to be seen; just grasses and flowers and stalky things like oversized weeds. In the distance she could see what appeared to be rooftops, but of an architectural style she’d never seen before.

  The sky was a peculiarly purple color, and utterly cloudless above the gently-rolling hills; the sun was far up the heavens but as orange as if it were setting, and its light seemed almost thick, somehow—syrupy and rich, but not as bright as sunlight should be.

  The air was fresh and cool and spicy, and she felt light on her feet; her back felt straight and strong, and she realized for the first time that it had been aching dully for days, an ache that was now fading rapidly. She took a step, and almost lost her balance.

  Clearly, the gravity here was less than in Faerie, and probably less than on Earth—though it had been so long since she had been on Earth she was not absolutely sure of that. The change took some adjustment.

  Ted, beside her, tumbled to the ground; quickly, he sat up again and looked about. The four servants who had brought the two of them through the portal were a few steps away, standing as if waiting for something, completely ignoring the two Earthpeople.