by Larry Niven
The grounds were quiet. And then the men applauded.
Jade smiled. As did the general, who came down off his horse.
“Well done. Rules: stick with the sword. Otherwise, things may get a bit … unpleasant. For you.”
“At your pleasure,” Aros said.
The two men squared off. The swords touched. And then—an amazing blur of motion, forcing Aros to give way before a superior swordsman. His reflexes were cat-quick, and several times he would have contacted the general if not for the older man’s brilliant efficiency of motion and flawless positioning. But the general was playing with him, and with a corkscrew motion, disarmed him. With the same motion, his sword ended at Aros’s throat. “I’m dead,” the Aztec said merrily.
A thin sheen of perspiration glistened on the general’s lip. Aros had the distinct impression that he was unused to even this much competition. “Very well done, indeed. Sergeant!”
The sergeant rubbed his head but seemed to hold no rancor. A fighting man. “Yes, General.”
“Horseback,” the general said. “And then”—with a glance at Jade—“swimming.”
In perfect formation, four men rolled past on double-wheeled devices of the same design he had seen two nights before. Their feet worked pedals driving thin chains around gears. Somehow, the devices stayed upright. The men wore metal tubes resembling horns with handles across their backs. What in the world?
“Keep your mind on your business,” the general said.
For the next hours, the men were jumping, running, horseback riding. Aros was faster, stronger, simply better than the others. And Jade’s pleasure was growing. The general was beginning to feel something as well.
“He rides like a centaur,” the general murmured.
The wind caught Jade’s hair. “Yes. Doesn’t he.”
By the time the sun was directly overhead, they had moved to the river. The men stripped down. Jade was watching very closely now, and General Silith was growing irritated. It was unseemly!
Aros was neck and neck with another man in a swim across the river but, on the return passage, exceeded him. Until now, Aros had worn a tunic, or his back had been to them (revealing only a small faded tattoo that might be a girl’s face), or he had been in the water. But now …
As Aros turned, the general saw the tattoo on his upper chest. A sunburst in faded gold ink. Jade’s eyes flew wide. The general’s eyes narrowed.
“Hold!” he said. “Bring this man to my quarters.”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant said.
Aros continued to dry himself, long black hair streaming, his perfect body engraved with that tattoo …
While the general and his wife could do little but stare.
* * *
In the capital, the wizard Neoloth had made his way through the markets and byways, talking to people while in the guise of buying supplies. The Tower, an imposing structure at the edge of the barracks and the black forest, continued to draw his eye.
He returned to the rooms. A map of the capital was laid out.
He used the talisman to charge a little divining stone. He dangled it over the map until it began to bend toward the Tower.
Neoloth sprinkled powders in a circle on the floor, making a complex magical symbol. He carefully stepped into it, lay down, and closed his eyes …
He was viewing the capital from a killing height. Neoloth floated above the roofs, beak toward the Black Tower, gliding, gliding …
Then he was repelled by a sharp shock, as if the entire tower was protected by fire that burned fiercely, briefly. Neoloth plunged helplessly toward the ground and smashed—
Awakening, breathing hard, the wizard got shakily to his feet. He looked out the window at the Tower. “Someone has shielded you,” he said. “Protected you well. I wonder why?”
TWENTY
Drasilljah
In the Tower, Drasilljah, the princess’s woman, reeled against the wall, her mouth wide and straining in her angular face, uttering a silent scream.
The princess was aghast. “Drasilljah! Are you all right?”
Her faithful servingwoman shook her head. “Princess. I do not know. Something happened.”
The princess made room on one of the room’s two chairs for her friend. “Here. Sit down. What was it?”
“I do not know,” Drasilljah said. “I was simply performing my daily meditations. Quieting my mind. I felt as if I was slipping into a dream, and in that dream … something familiar occurred.”
“What?” the princess asked.
“I cannot say.” She was bent over, sucking breath. “The memory worms away from me.”
“Like a dream,” the princess said. “Perhaps a dream?” She said this wistfully. Almost playfully, if there had been anything at all amusing about the situation. “Who was in this dream?”
“You will laugh at me,” her lady said.
The princess laid her head on the older woman’s shoulder. “Not I. Not you. Not ever.”
Drasilljah kissed the smooth, troubled forehead. “Well … it was the magician.”
The princess frowned. “What magician … Neoloth?”
“Yes.”
The princess considered. “And what was he doing?”
“Searching for you,” she smiled.
“Oh, Drasilljah…” The princess held her lady’s cheeks in her hands and kissed them both. “Your powers might be strong, to reach all the way home to…”
Drasilljah grasped the princess’s wrists. “Here. He’s here.”
“Here?” the princess said, eyes wide. “Oh, Neoloth! I knew it! I knew he would find me!”
“What do we do?” Drasilljah asked.
“If he is here in Shrike, surely he can find us within the Tower.”
“I’m not sure,” Drasilljah said. “There was contact … just for a moment. And then … nothing. We’re cursed, I think.”
“A barrier of some kind?”
“Yes,” Drasilljah said. “Intelligent. Someone or something very powerful at work.”
The princess mused. “You have said that you feel things. Different things, since we’ve been here.”
“Yes, Princess. I don’t know what to think of it. Let me try to describe. At home, I was confined to potions and mental tricks. The magic is simply not as strong as it was in my grandmothers’ time.”
“Yes.”
“It is as if the soil itself is depleted. But something else is happening here. I can feel it. In the woods behind the barrier, beyond the Black Tower. What they call the ‘black forest.’”
“What are they doing?” the princess asked.
“Something that tears the soul. We are magic, at the core of us, the same magic that lived in the stars at the beginning of time. And this is why necromancy—the magic of death—is so strong. There is one thing that troubles me most deeply.”
“And what is that?”
There was a pause, in which the Tower’s hollow silences consumed them.
Then, “As we age, we lose this magic. The most powerful are the youngest.”
“And you feel this power?” the princess asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“And can you use it?”
“That is what my people do, Princess. The magic is in my blood. That … may be the one mistake they have made,” Drasilljah said. “I think they are doing something … huge. Larger than my mind can hold. But they are drunken with their power and have begun to waste. To spill. Imagine that they have set an enormous blaze and grown careless of where the sparks fly. I … have been able to collect a few sparks.”
The princess considered. “Then this is what you must do…”
* * *
The guards outside their door had been fully occupied for a time. Playing at dice.
“Ah!” one said, watching the knucklebones bounce off the wall. “I knew my luck would change. Hold on to your pay or your children will starve.”
“As if you know your children,” the second said. �
��Big talk. I’ll have you for breakfast—”
Suddenly, a scream came from the dungeon.
“No, no!” It was the princess’s high, sweet voice. “Back to the forest with you! In the name of all that’s holy, NO!”
The guards looked at each other questioningly. “Be quiet down there!” one yelled.
There was a last groan of fear and pain … and then … nothing.
They stared at each other. “What in the world? Some kind of trick?”
No sound. Nothing.
They drew their swords and walked down the corridor, none too confidently.
“Princess Tahlia?” the taller asked.
“What is going on in the forest?” the shorter man whispered to his companion.
“That’s not for such as us to know.”
They reached the door. Looked in. Nothing. Empty.
The guard announced, “Princess Tahlia, I will now open the door.”
The key turned. The door opened with a creak. The two guards stood looking through and in. Nothing. The cell was empty; the straw-covered floor, soaking under a puddle of blood. Shocked, they looked up at the ceiling. Nothing. Around the corner. Nothing.
Except …
A fragment of clothing against the far wall. A torn blouse. The guard approached it, picked it up. Rubbed his fingers on the red liquid smeared on it.
“Blood—” he began.
Behind him, the straw on the floor rose up in two large lumps, one behind each of the guards and then: Thwack! Thwack!
Both of them fell. Thump. The air shimmered, and the princess and Drasilljah appeared. Drasilljah staggered against the wall, gasping.
“Did you have to use so much blood?” the princess asked.
Drasilljah nodded weakly. “Even in a place like this, magic has its cost.”
“I love you,” Tahlia said, holding her old friend as tightly as she dared. “Come. Do you think you can follow your sense to Neoloth?”
“Yes. But first we have to get out of here.”
“Come. Take the swords.”
Each of them took a sword. Drasilljah was still wobbly.
“How many more times can you do that?” the princess asked.
Drasilljah’s red-rimmed eyes told the story. “I hope it won’t be needed even once.”
Carefully, they made their way down the corridor. There was a room with sounds of laughter coming from it. They ducked under the door’s barred window and kept going.
They wound down the stairway. The way was narrow and dark.
* * *
Neoloth wandered in the marketplace. He could feel it: something was calling to him. He looked at the Black Tower and took steps toward it … and then turned away. Not that direction at all. Something more than instinct was pulling him into the market …
* * *
The princess and Drasilljah were making their way along a balcony, staying within the shadows. But there was absolutely no way to pass the final stretch, leading to a door, without passing in plain sight.
“What now?” Drasilljah whispered.
“The Black Tower of Shrike was built by the same masons’ guild that designed the tower in Quillia. And they had a trick. A secret exit and entrance to be used in emergencies by members of the royal family. The designs are similar aboveground. I think they may be similar belowground as well.”
“Good. Lead me.”
The princess replied. “We need to cover the distance between us and that wall. If I’m right, if the plans are sufficiently similar, the door is there.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I don’t know what else we can do. Can you…? Just one more time?”
“Yes, my princess.”
And she knelt and sliced her wrist. The blood poured out upon the ground, and Drasilljah murmured an incantation.
One slow inch at a time, the druid and the princess gained that odd camouflage, blending into the light and shadow.
Breathing shallowly, walking as if afraid to put their full weight upon the ground, they began to cross the gap.
In the dining hall below them, the guards ate boisterously. A few odd objects were splayed around the table, things the princess did not recognize: tubes, wheels, things that looked like miniature cannons. She yearned to inspect the objects more closely: something told her that there were answers here and possible tools that could ease their plight. No time. She moved on, praying thanks that Drasilljah’s magic reduced visible signs of them to mere ripples against the wall.
Even to her own sight, her own arm was invisible unless she focused carefully. To see her friend and protector’s face required even more concentration. The ripple would finally yield to focus, and like a suddenly dissolving mirage, a gasping, trembling woman appeared. Drasilljah smiled wanly and motioned her onward.
The druid was using up the last of her strength, using everything she had, possibly more than she could really afford, because they believed that there was the possibility of an ally just outside.
A voice from below: “Did you even take a good look at her? I’m telling you…”
“I don’t know what they want that woman for, but she has meat on her bones, I’m telling you,” the other said.
“Well, maybe after they’re through with her…”
It seemed to take forever, but the two women finally reached the safety of the far wall. Tahlia’s nervous fingers found the panel’s hidden catch, and a door swung open. They slipped within, finding themselves in a dark tunnel.
Her fingers cast this way and that, finally finding a torch and a tiny leather pouch containing flint and steel. She struck them eight times before the sparks lit the oil-soaked torch, and they had light.
“How are you, Drasilljah?”
Her handmaiden gasped, straightening herself. “I’ll be fine, if your wizard is really here.”
“He’s here. I can feel it. I know it.”
“Then we’ll be all right. I hope.”
She stumbled, and the princess put her arm around her, helping her down the tunnel. The tunnel wound and twisted and then split.
“Which way?”
Drasilljah was woozier than she could possibly feel comfortable admitting. “This way, I think. What do you remember of the tunnels?”
“I used to hide and seek in them as a little girl. I knew them. I just have to hope that the plans are the same.”
“We can both hope. It is rare that our youthful indiscretions come back to advantage, Princess. Let us consider this a good omen.”
* * *
In the crowded marketplace beyond the Tower’s walls, the wizard Neoloth was indeed nearby. He was bickering with an oil merchant over rare scents and unguents, but his attention was split. Several times in the last hour he had sensed … something. A presence. A faint voice, hovering just below the threshold of recognition.
Neoloth drifted further east, where he found a café next to a cutlery shop. He found an empty stool and sat down, unsure why he had been attracted to this spot.
A waiter approached. “Welcome to the Happy Orc. Today we have some excellent roast bison.”
“Yes,” the wizard said vaguely. “Yes. That will be fine.”
From his seat, he could see the castle wall clearly. He looked around, uncertain. He was supposed to be here; he knew that. But … why?
* * *
In the tunnels, the princess and Drasilljah rested. Drasilljah’s wounds had drained her.
“Did you hear that?” the princess said.
“What?”
“We’re not down here by ourselves.”
“That would have been too easy,” Drasilljah sighed.
“Come on.”
The tunnels were narrow and cramped and twisty. They heard a distant voice: “I see a light!”
“Damn!” the princess hissed, and put out her torch.
“What are you doing?” Drasilljah asked.
“I know the way. I’m sure. Do you trust me?”
“With my
life.”
The two women felt their way through the tunnels. A bit of glowing moss in the shape of an arrow gave them direction at a branching tunnel, and it was gratefully taken.
The voices were closer now. And then closer still.
The princess fell, and then got back up again.
“Here! Over here!”
They were tense, all was lost—the lights got closer … and then faded away, running into the distance. “Thank the gods,” Drasilljah sighed.
“Here. Here it is.”
A ladder. From above them, a tiny ray of light.
* * *
The waiter reappeared, lugging a platter with a cold joint of roast bison beef, and shook the table by depositing it in front of him. Neoloth jumped. His nerves were burning.
And then … Aros appeared. “I thought that I saw you!” the Aztec crowed, eyeing the fragrant platter.
“How did you find me?” the wizard said irritably.
“Pure accident. I was coming out of the parade grounds and thought I noticed that loping gait of yours in the crowd. Meat looks good.”
“Help yourself.”
“Well, you are buying it with my money, after all.”
Aros cut himself a huge wedge of meat and began to chatter. “You haven’t asked me what happened today.”
“Mmm.”
“What happened. You know, how things went in the tryouts today.”
Neoloth was distracted, not engaged. “Yes. Yes. What … um, what happened.”
Aros was leaning close to Neoloth, chewing. “And you should have seen her gasp when she saw that sunflare tattoo! I have to admit that I didn’t believe it would work, but, well, you know your stuff!”
“So … what now?”
“I am invited to their personal lodgings this evening. I think that it would be reasonable for me to bring my servant, don’t you? And while they are having whatever conversation with me they wish to have—”
* * *
“There it is!” The princess climbed up the ladder. This led her to another tunnel, but here there was light … and sound. “We’re under the street. Come.”
“I’m … coming.”
The princess and Drasilljah moved toward the light as swiftly as possible. As they came closer, it resolved into a doorway, and although the door was closed, they could hear voices and smell fresh bread and roast meat. A kitchen.