by Judith Tarr
He swallowed bile, gagging on it, and forced himself to look at what crouched above. It was a fortress of age-worn stone, built into the crag. He counted a score of living beings within—men, he thought, though he could not be sure. They were bound with cords of darkness.
He was not hunting men, even men whose souls had been walled forever against the light. He needed knowledge—truth of what had overwhelmed the worlds. If not a book, then an image, a song, an inscription, anything at all.
The mages had recovered: he sensed them behind him. He did not turn to look at them. Wordlessly he began to climb.
Long before he came to the top, he knew that this place needed no protection but itself. The track was narrow, and in places sheer. It needed the agility of a mountain cat, or of a mage, to ascend that path. The slightest slip or slackening would cast him down a thousand manlengths, and shatter him among the crags.
The castle was aware of him. Its people, no; he would have sworn to that. But the stones themselves, and the darkness woven through them, knew that a stranger had come.
He made himself as small and as harmless as he could: innocuous, insignificant, no danger at all. He cloaked himself in that surety. He was a breath of wind gusting up the mountain, a glimmer of sunlight falling across the gate.
A firm hand of magic closed about him. “Let me,” Kalyi said. He resisted; he had not learned to trust anyone else’s power. But he was not altogether a fool. He relinquished the wards and the shield to her, however reluctantly, and turned again to his hunt.
The gate was wrought of iron, enormous and impossibly heavy. Yet it was balanced so lightly that if it happened to be unbarred, the thrust of a hand could shift it. Perel and Irien moved past the rest, laying hands on it, raising powers that made the small hairs prickle along Daros’ arms and down his spine. The wall and tower above them seemed to stir in its sleep, half-rousing, opening a blurred eye and peering down.
They passed through the gate as if through a wall of mist. There was darkness within, thick and palpable, and a faint charnel stink. The mortar that bound these stones had been mixed with blood.
They paused in a shadowed court. At a glance from Kalyi, the twins slipped away along the colonnade. Adin and Irien went ahead. Kalyi, with Perel, stood still by the gate, enfolding Daros in the cloak of their magic.
Daros sighed faintly, trying not to breathe too deep of the tainted air. The walls, the tower above him, even the brightening sky, weighed heavy on his spirit.
He turned slowly. The heaviness was stronger—there. Ahead and to the left, toward a corner of the colonnade. His guardian hounds went with him, Perel ahead, Kalyi behind. His shoulderblades tightened. But her knives were not for him—not while he served her order’s purposes.
It was a great effort to set one foot in front of the other, to go deeper into the maw of the castle, and not turn and run. He was aware in his skin of the twins in a dim hall, wrapped in shadows, watching as a skein of men with shaved heads and black robes wound, chanting, among the pillars. The shiver along his ribs was the presence of Irien and Adin, seeing to it that the way ahead was clear: dim passages, sudden turnings, ascents or descents that seemed set at random to catch the unwary.
They had begun to veer off the track, diverted without knowing it, shifted subtly aside by the power that waited in the castle’s heart. He could warn them, or he could follow the straight way and let them be drawn to some semblance of safety.
His own guards slowed little by little, almost imperceptibly. He caught a hand of each, and set a spark in each mind: a binding to follow him wherever he led. Perel yielded to it with a twist of wry amusement. Kalyi resisted; but Daros was in no mood to be gentle. She, thank the gods, had wits enough to give way before she broke, though he would pay for his presumption.
Better to face her wrath later than to pay for her weakness now. His companions’ rites and vows made them vulnerable. The power here knew mages and priests of the Sun, and turned on them as on an enemy. Daros it seemed not to perceive at all. He was small, he was harmless, he carried no taint of the Sun’s priesthood. It took no more notice of him than of a rat in the wall.
Even ignored, he felt the power growing darker, deeper, eating away at his memory of light. He must come to the center of it, but whether he would be alive then, or sane, he did not know. He could only press forward.
These halls were deserted. The order must once have been numerous and strong: the castle was ample to house hundreds, even thousands. The score that were left huddled together in a tower near the outer wall.
There were guards ahead of him, but they were not human. They crouched like great beasts athwart the path that he must follow. Their eyes were shut, their bodies still; they might have been carved of stone. Yet they were alive, although they slept. Their dreams were all of the terrible light, how it burned, how it destroyed what they were bound to protect.
He was a shadow, a breath of wind, a skitter of leaf across the floor. The sun did not stain him. The light did not rule him. He was utterly a part of this place and this darkness.
The guardians of the secret crouched on either side of its door. To the eye they were a pair of stone lions, each sitting upright, one paw uplifted, one resting on the globe of the world. Their eyes were living darkness.
Daros paused between them. They focused outward, not on him at all, and yet the force of their watchfulness buckled his knees. It was all he could do to shield himself and his companions, and walk forward, and keep both his fear and his purpose buried deep.
The door had no earthly substance. It melted before him. The heart of the darkness was almost painfully ordinary. It was a room, bare, with no beauty of carving or gilding. There was no inscription, no carving or painting, no book, nothing that might contain knowledge as his people understood it. Only a wooden table such as one might see in any poor man’s house, and on the table a bowl no more beautiful than the room. It was made of unfired clay, the color of drab earth, and not well shaped, either; its rim was crooked, and it sat awry.
Kalyi moved away from Daros. He reached too late to pull her back. The shield stretched and snapped. She staggered and fell to her hands and knees in front of the table.
The thing that came down had neither shape nor substance. It seemed to grow out of the bowl, pouring over the table, hovering above Kalyi’s bent head. It reared like a snake. Daros cried out, scrambling together his power. The dark thing struck.
He leaped, not at Kalyi, but at the table. The bowl writhed in his hands like a living thing. He could see—he could feel—know—understand—
He thrust the bowl at Perel and spun. The dark thing coiled about Kalyi. He struck it with an arrow of pure light.
It burst asunder. The floor rocked underfoot.
“The book!” Perel cried. “Where—”
Daros gathered all six of them together, wherever in the fortress they were. Something was surging up from below, some child of old Night, waking from a long sleep to a terrible wrath.
“Take the bowl,” Daros said to Perel, quite calmly. “Bring it to her. The secret is in it. Tell her.”
“But—”
Daros silenced him with a lift of the hand. The truth was as clear as daylight, as sharp as a sword. It was in the bowl, which contained all the world. He knew where he must go. What he must do … that would come to him in time.
The Gate in him was open. It must be shut before the child of Night came up out of the earth. He thrust Merian’s mages through, and the bowl with them. The floor bucked under him; he struggled to keep his feet. The Gate had begun to fray.
His heart was hammering. He sucked in a breath and leaped. Even as the Gate swallowed him, the tower crumbled in ruin. A vast maw opened below, jagged with teeth. The castle whirled down into the oblivion to which it had been consecrated.
Daros too fell into dark, but it was no earthly night. The devourer of Gates had found him. Only one spark of light offered refuge. He spun toward it. Darkness clawed at him. It
burned like hot iron, shredding flesh and spirit. He twisted wildly. The spark was close—so close—if he overshot it—if he fell short—
Hope was all he had, and knowledge that had flooded into him when he touched the bowl, knowledge more complete than could ever have been written in a book. He clung to it as he whirled down through the darkness.
TEN
THE TOWN WAS CALLED WASET. IT WAS A GREAT CITY IN THIS country, this narrow line of green between the river and the desert. To Estarion’s eye it was little larger than a village, full of small brown people like none he had seen before. They were somewhat like the people of the Nine Cities, but browner, thinner, with long dark eyes in sharp-cut faces. They chattered like birds as he passed, staring, pointing, running after him. And yet the oddity of his breeding that had vexed him all his life, Asanian eyes in the northern face, did not frighten them at all.
They were calling him a god. Gods to them wore the bodies of men and the faces of beasts and birds; he, taller than any man they knew and darker by far, with his eagle’s beak and his lion-eyes, was perfectly in keeping with their belief.
Tanit was the queen of these people. There was sorrow in her, for she had lost her husband to the things that ruled the night, but she was not consumed by grief. Estarion, searching in her eyes for the image of a memory, saw a man rather too much older than she for easy companionship, loved more like an uncle than a lover, but she had felt herself well served by the bargain.
Estarion understood royal marriages. He had had nine properly noble wives, and had loved a commoner whom he could not marry. Of all the things that made a man, love was the one he had thought of least since he left his empire behind. Now he could not help but think of it; he had thought of it since first he saw the queen bending over him, with her odd and striking beauty and the clear light of her spirit shining through.
This was a hot country. The women dressed sensibly for the heat: wrappings of thin white cloth about their bodies, baring the breasts more often than not, or if they were young or servants, they went naked but for a cord about the middle. They were easily, casually delighted to be women, and they loved to be admired. Those whose eyes he caught were more likely to smile than to turn away.
Tanit would not meet his glance, unless he startled her into looking up. Yet of them all, only she drew his eye, and she held it for much longer than was proper. She was not the most beautiful and she was far from the most alluring, but when she was there, he could see no other woman.
She saw him settled in her palace, which would have been a middling poor lord’s house in his empire, but it was reckoned very great here. Her servants were as adept as he could ask for, and the house was clean—bright and airy, with painted pillars and a courtyard full of flowers. The food they served him was simple, harsh gritty bread and thin sour beer; they promised a feast later, but this was part of the rite of welcome.
He ate and drank for courtesy, and because he was hungry and thirsty. The servants kept changing. They were all making excuses to wait on him, to look on the god who had come from beyond the horizon.
It had been a long while since he was in a palace, but old habits died hard. The manner, the smile, the habit of charming servants, because servants could make a lord’s life either effortlessly easy or unbearably difficult, wrapped about him like an old familiar mantle.
He was offered a bath and a clean kilt; the servants there were women, and young, and frank in their approval. They made him laugh, and be as glad as ever that his blushes never showed.
The queen found him so, clean and decorously kilted, with a pair of maids taking turns combing his new-washed hair. It was thick and it curled exuberantly, even wet; it gave them occasion for much merriment. On a whim he had let them shave his beard with their sharp flaked-stone razors; it had been long years since his cheeks were bare to the world, but in this heat he was glad of it, even as odd and naked as it felt.
He was rubbing his newly smooth chin when she came. Her stride checked; her eyes widened a fraction. That surprised him. He did not share the curse of excessive beauty that beset the boy from Han-Gilen, but it seemed that the canons were different here. She was frankly enthralled; and that made him blush.
She recovered more quickly than he. He was a god, after all, her shrug said. Her words were properly polite. “I trust my lord is well served?”
“Very well, my lady,” he said.
She bowed slightly, regally. She had not the piquant prettiness so common here; her features were more distinctly carved, her face longer, more oval, her nose long and slightly arched. Her skin was like cream intermixed with honey. She was beautiful, and yet she did not know it at all. In her own mind she was gawky, gangling, too long of limb and plain of face to be anything but passable.
He would change that canon. It was fair recompense for her conviction that he was as beautiful as a god. He smiled and bowed slightly where he sat, and said, “Your pardon, lady, that I can’t rise to do proper reverence. Your maids are lovely tyrants.”
“I did command them to do their best for you,” she said with her eyes lowered, but her voice had a smile in it.
“Sit, then, lady, and ease my captivity.”
She sat on a stool near the bath, perched on its edge as if poised for flight. As she settled there, a small brown animal came stalking through the door.
It was a cat, or a creature like a cat; but unlike the palace cats of Starios, who had been large enough for a child to ride, this one was hardly longer than Estarion’s forearm. Nonetheless it had the same keen intelligence and the same white-hot core of magic. It, unlike the humans here, would meet his eyes, gold to gold; it blinked slowly, deliberately, and said, “Mao.”
“Mao,” he replied gravely.
The cat blinked again and crossed the room in three long leaping strides. The third launched it into his lap. He hissed as it landed; its claws were needle-sharp. But he did not recoil, nor would he ever have flung the cat off.
It unhooked its claws from his stinging thigh and sat, and began to bathe itself with great concentration. It did not mind that he ran a finger down from its ears to its tail, finding its fur smooth and pleasingly soft. He found a spot that itched; it began to purr, as loud almost as one of his long-gone ul-cats.
As if that were a signal, a second cat, larger and somewhat darker, appeared from a corner that had been empty an instant before. It coiled about his feet, purring even more loudly than the first.
“The god and goddess welcome you,” Tanit said. She sounded unsurprised and rather pleased.
The maids were less circumspect. “Now we know you’re truly to be trusted,” said the impudent one with the flower in her hair.
“I’m honored to be approved by such noble judges,” Estarion said.
“So you should be,” said Tanit. “These are the divine ones, the gods who walk in fur. They graciously accept our service, and bless us with their presence.”
“Yes,” Estarion said. “I see the fire of heaven in them. They’re powers in your world.”
“They are gods,” she said.
He inclined his head and slanted a smile that caught her before she was aware. She smiled back. It was a wonderful smile, brightly wicked, though all too swiftly suppressed.
It was not time yet to touch her, but he could say, “Beautiful one, you should never hide your splendor. It well becomes a queen.”
Her lips set in a thin line. “There is no need to flatter me, my lord.”
“I tell you the truth,” he said.
She rose abruptly. “Come, my lord. The feast is waiting.”
His hair was combed but not plaited. He bound it out of his face with a bit of golden cord, and let the rest be. She was already at the door. He followed her with an escort of cats: both of the gods-in-fur of this place had elected to follow him.
It was good to be favored by cats again. He would like to be favored by the queen; but that, the gods willing, would come.
The court of Waset was waiti
ng for him in a hall of painted pillars, seated at tables banked with flowers. The mingled scents of flowers and unguents and humanity were almost overpowering. He did his best to breathe shallowly as he walked down the length of the hall, beside and a little behind the queen.
The courtiers were not as open in their admiration as the children of the city, but they were wide-eyed enough. He saw the marks of grief on many of them, scars of loss and remnants of shadow. As fierce as the sun of this world was, it still had to give way to night; and in the night came the terror.
But it was daylight still, and they gathered in a guarded city. They dined on roast ox and fresh-baked bread and fruits of the earth, flavors both familiar and unfamiliar, and one great joy of sweetness. This world like his own had honey, and that was very well indeed.
They did not have wine; he regretted that. Their beer was a taste he had no great yearning to acquire. But he endured it. He had eaten and drunk worse in his day, and lived to tell of it.
He was not asked to entertain this court. That was for the musicians and the dancers, the singers with the voices like mating cats, and last of all, as the shadows lengthened, the small wizened man in the white kilt, whose voice was larger than all the rest of him put together.
He told the tale of the darkness. “It began to come upon us in the days of our late king, may he live for everlasting. There had always been walkers in the night, powers that had no love for the day, but this was a new thing, a terrible thing. It came out of the lands of the dead, from the horizons to the west, running with jackals in the night and vanishing with the coming of the day.
“For a long while no one knew it for what it was. The night was as dark as ever, and there are lions, crocodiles, nightwalkers and things that snatch children from their mothers’ arms as they sleep. But this was stronger, darker, hungrier. It crept through villages and stole all the men and women who were young and strong, and slaughtered the weak and the children. Men would wake to find their gardens stripped bare or their herds gone, and the herdsmen gutted and cast before the doors of their houses.