Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  Daros’ mouth was open. He shut it. “He made the—You’re sending me to the emperor? I thought he was dead.”

  “He is very much alive,” his father said.

  “Gods,” said Daros. “He must be ancient. When did he hand the empire over to his granddaughter? Was I even born yet?”

  “Barely,” his mother said. “He is still emperor, though he’s surrendered his priesthood and given the regency to Daruya and her consort. He is also still the greatest of the mages, and a master of Gates. You’ll walk soft in his presence, child, and accord him the respect he deserves, whether or not it suits your fancy. Am I understood?”

  Daros bent his head. “I understand you,” he said.

  Her glance was distrustful, but she held her peace. So, perhaps by her will, did his father.

  “You leave now,” she said after a pause. “The guards will take you where you must go.”

  She had dismissed him. No embrace, no kiss, no farewell of mother to son; only the cold words and the cold stare. She was a mage of Gates; he had transgressed the laws by which she lived. What he had done was unforgivable. Only now did he begin to understand the meaning of the word.

  His father’s wrath he had expected; Prince Halenan was notoriously short of patience where his son was concerned. But the Lady Varani had never been so cold before, never kept so remote a distance. “But I did no harm!” he cried to her, hating the whine in his voice.

  “You did more harm than you could possibly comprehend,” she said. She turned her back on him: rejection so complete, and so mortally wounding, that he could only bare his teeth in a grin, salute them both, and bid his guards conduct him where they would.

  TWO

  DAROS’ DEPARTURE HAD BEEN ARRANGED TO ATTRACT AS LITTLE notice as possible. The guards quick-marched him through the more obscure portions of his father’s palace, down dusty corridors and through empty rooms, to a court in which he had played as a child, far from his nurse’s quelling eye. He had thought to find a Gate there, or mages prepared to open one, but instead there were a company of menat-arms and a string of packbeasts and a gathering of mounts and remounts.

  They were profoundly ordinary animals, the lot of them. He did not see one of his own fine seneldi anywhere, nor any that might have been worthy of a prince. Not only, it seemed, was he to travel the whole of the long journey into the north as simple men did, on foot or on the cloven hooves of seneldi, but he was also to be forbidden any mark or privilege of rank.

  At least he was not to go in chains—or not in chains that men could see. When he stretched out a tendril of magery to test the minds and mettle of his guards, he met a wall. It surrounded him completely, and confined his magic to the narrow borders of his unassisted self.

  Ah well, he thought as he greeted the guards—none of whom returned the greeting—and mounted the nondescript senel that waited for him. It was a gelding, and one of its stunted horns was crooked; its brown coat was drab, its amber eyes profoundly disinterested in anything but its task of plodding along with its nose to the tasseled tail of the senel in front of it.

  Indaros set himself to endure the ordeal. It was a long way to the Fells, and a senile old man at the end of it. If he could not escape before he came to Han-Uveryen, surely he would have no difficulty there. The Emperor Estarion was older than mountains, and had long since withdrawn from any semblance of imperial rule. Some even whispered that he was dead. Great mage and emperor he might have been, but that was long ago. He would be no match for the young and determined heir of a line of mageborn princes.

  Daros had frequent cause to remember that as the journey stretched from days into Brightmoon-cycles. His guards were all mages, and all chosen for their strength of will; they sustained wards that prevented any rescue, or even recognition. He had nothing to do but ride and think and try to charm his guards—and charm them he did, at least into offering conversation. They would not loose the mage-bonds; even his best smile and his sweetest words failed to budge them. But it was not as grim an ordeal as it might have been; when they camped in the nights, they were rather convivial, and more so, as they left civilized places behind.

  The world grew bleaker the farther they rode; although it was still summer in the Hundred Realms, in the Fells it was well advanced in autumn, with chill wind and cold rain and an occasional grudging glimmer of sun. The land was no more delightful than the weather: an endless expanse of grey-green moor, surging into ridges and dropping suddenly into black tarns. Nothing stirred here but, once in a great while, a hawk wheeling in the grey sky. What quarry it pursued, they never saw; birds there were none, and creatures of earth were too small and quick to catch. They ate what they had brought on the packbeasts, and drank from rills and tarns. The land suffered them to cross it, but gave them no part of itself.

  Of human creature they saw nothing. There were people in this country, Daros had been assured: dour tribesmen, kin to the lords of Ianon. But his escort kept well away from their forts and walled villages. If they had need of anything from the towns, a company rode to fetch it. He was never let out of sight, nor suffered to walk among people who might, gods forbid, have granted him relief from the relentless companionship of his guards.

  On a day in which the rain was edged with sleet and touched with spits of snow, the captain of guards drew rein at the summit of a hill. “There,” he said. “Han-Uveryen.”

  Daros peered through veils of rain. As if to oblige him, they lifted for a moment, uncovering the long rolling slope and the track of a little river. The river flowed into a lake; by the lake rose a crag. On the crag squatted a hill-fort.

  Its walls were of stone as grey as the sky. A low square tower rose above them. No banner flew there; no light, either magewrought or earthly fire, burned to welcome the travelers.

  Maybe, thought Daros, its lord was dead and his servants long gone. Then all this journey would be in vain; he would be forced to return through Gates to warmth and light and the arms of his friends and kin. Maybe even his mother. Maybe even she would speak to him again, since he had served as much of his sentence as he could.

  It was a lovely dream as they rode in the bite of sleet, with wind working edged fingers through coat and mantle and chilling him to the bone. He could warm himself with a fire of magery if he chose, but he did not. He wanted the whole of the misery, to remember; so that he would never have to endure it again.

  Han-Uveryen rose above them at last, perched on its crag. Ice dripped down from its battlements; the road that ascended to it was steep and slippery. They dismounted and led the seneldi, heads bowed against the wind that swooped down off the crag and did its best to fling them into the lake.

  The gate, for a wonder, was open. There were people within, northern tribesmen, tall and dark, with grim faces. They had been warned of his coming and told of his crime and its punishment. They surrounded him, neatly easing out the guards who had brought him to this place. Those he was not to see again; they would rest and restore themselves, then return to the blessed warmth of the southlands.

  He had no such fortune. These new guardsmen towered head and shoulders above him: true northerners of pure line, with hair to the waist and beard to the breast, and skin as dark as Mother Night. They were not to be charmed by a sweet smile or a ready tongue, nor had he any part in their canons of beauty. He looked into those cold black eyes and saw a manikin cast in bronze and dipped in copper, worthy of nothing but their contempt.

  He grinned at the image. These were not mages. They were common mortal tribesmen, schooled in war but not in magic. The bonds upon him had all but fallen away. He could raise lightnings, walk in minds—but not open a Gate. He knew; he tried, and ran headlong into a wall. It was some little while before the headache passed from blinding to merely excruciating. Its message was abundantly clear. The one power he wanted and needed most, he was not to have.

  He had expected grim stone, soiled straw on cold floors, stark barracks full of smoke and unwashed men. He was startled t
o find himself in a haven of warmth and light. The walls were stone, yes, but hung with tapestries of remarkable quality. There were rugs on the floors of the smaller rooms, and woven mats in the hall, and furnishings that would not have looked out of place in the hunting lodge of a prince in the Hundred Realms. The fire was contained in a broad hearth that funneled most of its smoke up out of the keep and away; what little remained served only to impart a pleasant pungency to the air of the hall.

  The high seat was empty. The man who sat nearest it was younger by far than the emperor; he was pure northerner as the rest were, clashing with gold and copper in the antique style, with no garment but a kilt to warm him in the winter chill. Beneath the beard and the braids, Daros saw as he drew closer, the man was hardly older than himself.

  He must be royal kin: he had the look, and the arrogance, too. The guards bowed to him. Daros did not deign to.

  The northerner’s expression was impossible to read, obscured as it was in curling black hair, but his eyes had narrowed slightly. “The emperor is waiting,” he said without greeting or preliminary. “Raban here will direct you.”

  Raban was the tallest and grimmest of the guards. Was that satisfaction on his face behind the beard?

  Daros’ shoulders hunched. He straightened them with an effort. Something that he had done—perhaps as petty as his failure to offer proper obeisance to the nobleman in the hall—had hastened the time of reckoning. He rebuked himself for the stab of fear. The emperor was only an old man, however lofty his legend.

  The old man, Raban informed him with rather too much pleasure, no longer lived in Han-Uveryen. “He’s gone up the mountain,” he said. “You’ll find him there.”

  The mountain rose on the far side of the lake. Clouds and rain had veiled it, but as Raban brought Daros to the battlements to see where he must go, the wall of cloud lifted.

  He caught his breath. This was a land of plains and sudden mountains, but this high peak he had never expected. It reared up and up, cleaving to heaven. The jagged summit was white with snow.

  “He’s up there,” Raban said. “You’d better leave soon, if you want to be on the mountain before dark.”

  Daros considered all the possible things that he might have said, and rejected them all. He only said, “Show me the road.”

  He had not won the northerner’s respect, but maybe he had lessened the man’s contempt by a fraction. He was allowed a cup of spiced wine, almost too hot to drink, and a fresh loaf and a wedge of cheese, before he was cast out into the cold.

  There was no escort. He was alone. They had saddled a senel for him—a considerably better beast than he had ridden from Han-Gilen—and filled its saddlebags, but given him no packbeast. If he did not find the emperor before his ration was gone, he would be thrown upon his own resources.

  The sleet had stopped, at least. But the road was treacherous, and the cold was closing in, promising to be bitter once the sun’s feeble warmth was gone.

  The senel had been blanketed with a thick mantle of the northern wool that was the softest and strongest in the world. Its price in the markets of Han-Gilen would have taxed even his princely purse. He was simply glad of its warmth now, wrapped about him and trailing over the mare’s rump. The striped dun trod lightly on the icy track, wise and surefooted and impervious to the cold. She picked her way round the lake, rising to a smooth trot where the track allowed it. He let her do as she chose; she knew this country better than he.

  He had never been alone before. Even at his most solitary, he had been surrounded by the appurtenances of a prince: servants, guards, hangers-on. Now he was the only human thing within his eyes’ reach.

  He was forbidden Gates, but there was nothing at all to prevent him from escaping as any mortal could do, well mounted for a run into the Fells. But he was less tempted than he might have been. He was curious. He wanted to see what was on the mountain. A tomb, he would wager, and old bones in it, and mocking laughter at the boy who had gone so trustingly into the jaws of the jest.

  Let them have their pleasure. He was not quite as soft as they thought, nor as ignorant of the world beyond the walls of a tavern.

  He had ample opportunity to regret his foolishness as the dun mare carried him up the mountain. The way was steep and the sun sinking fast, and the road was long still before him.

  He lit a fire with his magic to warm himself and his mount and to light the way once the dark had fallen. He was beyond weariness. He would find the tomb or the house in which the ancient was kept, pay his respects, then run, and be damned to the consequences.

  He climbed from sunset into starlight, on a track that grew ever steeper. Greatmoon rose in a tide of blood; Brightmoon ascended like a white jewel in its wake. In that doubled light he saw as easily as by day.

  He paused at intervals to rest the senel and to let her drink from rills that ran headlong down the mountain. She grazed a little then on bits of green hiding among the rocks; he fed her handfuls of grain, but for himself he took nothing but a little water. He had left hunger down below in Han-Uveryen.

  Exhaustion hovered on the edge of awareness. He refused to give way to it. He would sleep when he found the emperor. The sooner he did that, the sooner he could escape.

  He came on the shepherd’s hut at dawn. The storm had cleared in the night; the cold was bitter enough to crack bronze. The hut stood against an outcropping of cliff, overlooking a surprising expanse of green, a deep bowl of meadow in the mountain’s side. A chain of springs and pools surrounded it, steaming in the frosty air; the reek of sulfur was strong, but that of green things came close to overwhelming it. Even from the track, the heat of the springs was unmistakable, a waft of warmth and scented breeze.

  The shepherd’s flock grazed in the meadow, long-fleeced grey creatures too dim of wit to notice a stranger above them. As Daros paused on the track, the shepherd came out of his hut: a tall man, broad of shoulder, wrapped in a cloak of the same rich wool as the one Daros wore. He was a northerner: Daros glimpsed his profile, like that of a black eagle. His hair was thick and long, black threaded lightly with grey; his beard was a little greyer but still more black than white. He had a pair of buckets on a yoke, with which he drew water from the spring nearest the hut; if he was aware at all of the one who watched him, he showed no sign of it.

  Daros slipped from the mare’s back and left her rein dangling, and stood in the man’s path. He trudged up it with his head down, lost in his own thoughts.

  Just before he would have collided with Daros, he halted. The buckets were large and must have been heavy, but his shoulders barely bowed with the weight of them. He had the look of a man who had never known a moment’s sickness, though he was small as northerners went: no taller than Daros. There were no marks of age in his face; he was in his prime, and strong with it.

  He raised his eyes. Daros fell back a step. The man’s lips twitched. He must be well aware of the shock of first meeting: that face so purely of the north, but those eyes of another tribe and nation altogether—eyes of the Lion, startling yet unmistakable. The Lady Merian had them, softened somewhat, like golden amber. These were the true pure gold, bright as coins in the night-dark face, large-irised as an animal’s, and full of wry amusement.

  Ancient, Daros thought as he fell on his face. Senile. Oh, indeed.

  The Emperor Estarion lifted him with easy strength and set him on his feet, and said in a voice like a lion’s purr, “Sun and stars, boy, I can’t be that appalling a prospect!”

  “You can’t be,” Daros said. The words tumbled out of him through no will of his own. “You can’t be a day over thirty.”

  “Forty,” said the emperor. “Don’t be charitable.”

  “But you’re at least—”

  “Oh, I’m as old as this mountain.” The emperor straightened as if to belie his own words, and stepped around Daros, toward the hut.

  Daros followed him. The shock was wearing off. It would be a while before he recovered completely, but he could th
ink again, after a fashion. Here was a jest indeed: a man not only strong enough to keep him in hand, but young enough, in body at least, to give him a fair fight. In magery …

  He was strong. Daros staggered with the strength of him. Tales that called him the greatest of mages had not gone far off the mark, at all. He was so strong, and so sure in that strength, that he did not even trouble to conceal his thoughts.

  For an instant Daros looked out of those eyes and saw himself as the emperor saw him: young and callow and altogether feckless, but with just enough spark of native wit in him to make him worth the uproar he had caused. The emperor was relieved at that. He had risked much, and gambled somewhat wildly, in suffering Daros to live.

  “You decided my sentence?” Daros burst out.

  “They all wanted you dead,” said the emperor. “I reckoned it worth letting you live for a while longer, to discover what this gift of yours is, that eluded every mage who might have brought you into a temple.”

  “I have no calling to that life,” Daros said. “My father says I have no calling to anything but trouble.”

  The emperor grinned. “I always did like your father’s way with a word. Come in to breakfast. You must be famished.”

  Daros had felt no hunger at all until the emperor spoke of it; then his stomach clenched into a knot. The emperor grinned even more widely at his expression, and led him into the hut.

  Breakfast was woolbeast stew, hot and savory with herbs and a tonguesearing hint of western spices. The emperor warmed it over a stone hearth while Daros tended his senel; they sat in the hut with the morning sun slanting through the open doorway, and ate in silence that was, to Daros’ startlement, companionable. He was an easy man to keep company with, this lord of Sun and Lion.

  Daros ate three bowls washed down with remarkably palatable ale, sat back and belched politely, and said, “I thought I’d find a tomb or a deathbed.”