by Judith Tarr
Merian lashed them with light. Her bolts struck shields. They cracked and buckled. She struck them again, again, as the forces behind them smote the walls. It was a battering of hammer on hammer, anvil on anvil.
Hani’s magic poured like water beneath hers. It melted away the shields and lapped at the feet of the darkness. Light stabbed through the rents that it had made.
The enemy’s slaves burned and died. But the darkness had swallowed the stars.
Hani raised wards about the walls. The remnant of the enemy retreated. The defenders stood alone in darkness impenetrable, lit by their feeble sparks of fire.
Merian was almost startled to see the sun rise. It burned away the dark, and showed a ring of blasted heath round the walls. Seahold was still safe—Perel’s wards had held—and nowhere else, as she cast her mind afar, had seen attack. She had succeeded: she had drawn the enemy’s attention to this one place.
She could not keep it there forever. If it were possible to divide the enemy, to lure them to a number of guarded places, that might be a wiser course—“Now that we know they can be lured,” she said to her brother.
Hani was looking bruised about the eyes. He had worn himself thin in a long day of building and a long night of magical battle. Still, he kept his feet reasonably well, and he seemed to have his wits about him. “Another council?”
“In a while,” she said. “I need to think. Will you ride out with me?” He had strength enough for that. Batan, gods be thanked, had let go his iron resolve at last, and dropped into the first tent he happened upon. The camp was under the command of one of his seconds, a man in utter awe of the mages. He would never have presumed to object to their desertion.
They rode past the circle of the enemy’s attack to the place where their track began, and then a little beyond it. There was a hill of sere grass and a ring of ancient stones: another place of power, such as seemed unwontedly common in this harsh country.
“Maybe we should have studied the mages of Anshan,” Merian said. “Were they as old as the dark brothers of the mountains?”
“Older, I would think,” Hani said. “Even the stories are dim and all but forgotten; all that’s left are ruins like these, spread in a wide circle within the borders of the country, and a name for them all: the Ring of Fire. I can’t remember anything of any enemy they may have fought, or whether they knew Gates. Mostly they fought one another and subjugated lesser mortals. They might have been gods.”
“They drew their power from the earth,” Merian said, “and from the fires far below. It’s still here, waiting to be tapped. What if—”
Merian broke off. Hani’s eyelids were drooping shut. He kept his seat on the senel’s back as an old campaigner could, with no need of conscious awareness.
She let him sleep. She was fiercely, almost painfully awake. The longer she was in this place, the more its power filled her. She was drawing it as a tree draws water from the earth, through every root and vein.
It was not lightmagic, but Hani seemed to have no awareness of it. The enemy must not, either, or they would never have come here. She was conceiving a plan, but she needed time and solitude—which through Hani’s exhaustion she had won for herself.
She left her mare, and Hani slumped in the gelding’s saddle, and sought the center of the stone circle. The sun was warm inside the ring. Buried in the grass she found another stone, flat and smooth, somewhat hollowed in the middle. It was like a shallow basin filled with clear water, though no spring bubbled through the rock, nor had it rained since Merian came to this country.
The water was full of light. Merian dipped her hand in it, found it icy but not unbearable. She laved her face and sipped a little. Its taste was cold and pure, but as it sank to her stomach, it warmed miraculously. She drew a long wondering breath. She felt as if she had slept the night through.
The warmth settled deep within her, below her heart. She sat beside the stone, basking in the sun, and let her thoughts drift free.
Visions stirred in the water. She bent toward them, drawn through no will of her own. She saw a ring of cities, and foregatherings of mages, and great battles against powers that came by sea and land and air. Some were dark, though she could not tell if any was darkness absolute. They forged weapons of light and shadow, and wielded them against their enemies, and sometimes won and sometimes lost, but always kept their pride and the pride of their cities.
They were all gone long ago, sunk into the grass. Powers faded, cities died; wars destroyed what weariness and neglect did not. Mages were seldom born now in Anshan.
The water shivered, though no wind had touched it. The ancient visions dissolved. A face stared up at her, a very strange face, somewhat like an owl’s and somewhat like a man’s. The round yellow eyes blinked once, slowly. “Help,” it said clearly. “Help …”
Merian bent closer to the water, but not so close that her breath disturbed it. The vision moved likewise, until its face filled the basin. “You are the rest of him,” it said. “You must meet. The worlds that float in void—they must touch. You must bring them together.”
“Who are you?” Merian asked of the creature. “What are you?”
“Mage,” it said. “He knows. Listen! Speak to him. He knows.”
It was not human, this vision. It did not think as humans thought. Merian struggled to understand it. “He? Who is he?”
“The rest of you,” the Mage said. Was it ever so slightly impatient? “You can end this. But you must listen.”
“I am listening,” she said as respectfully and patiently as she could.
“Listen,” the Mage said.
Its eyes flashed aside. It gasped. Before Merian could speak again, the vision vanished. Darkness filled the basin, darkness absolute.
She recoiled from it. Something caught her. She whipped about.
Hani blocked the blow before it knocked him flat. He seemed much rested and blessedly strong. She rested for a moment in that strength, before the power in the earth and the heat of the sun began again to restore her.
“Shall I call council?” he said.
“No,” she said. “After all, no. But I need more builders, and more mages. The Ring of Fire will rise again.”
“Have we time for that?”
“I think we do. We’re not the heart of their war yet. These are raiding parties. I’ll wager that the army itself is still worlds away.”
“I hope you win your wager,” Hani said.
So did she; but she was not about to confess it. When she mounted the mare, Hani was close behind her, swinging onto the gelding’s back.
By day mages and makers rebuilt the Ring of Fire, the chain of hill-forts and sea-holdings round the rim of Anshan. By night they stood guard against the dark.
Merian remained in the first of the ruined cities, which had a name again: Ki-Oran, Heart of Fire. That had been its name in older days, the men of Seahold assured her. A fort had risen within the walls, a small citadel and quarters for a garrison.
The enemy had begun to raid abroad in Anshan, in the smaller towns and the fishing villages. Those, unlike the forts and cities, had no mages to ward them. They fell in black ash, their strong people taken, the weak slaughtered. What had become of those who were stolen, mages feared they knew: Batan’s twelve wounded men were still in Asanion, healing slowly and incompletely when they healed at all.
Yet there was no lack of men to offer themselves for defense. Men in Anshan were all either pirates or bandits at heart, and they knew no fear. Given a fight, even a fight they could not win, and faced with a fate that truly was worse than death, they laughed long and hard, and brought their brothers and cousins to join them in the villages. They were bait, the lure that kept the sea-dragons away from the fish, and it was their pride to be so.
Merian had not forgotten the strange vision in the water, but its meaning eluded her. There was too much else to think of: finding mages to ward every village without weakening the guard and the wards outside of Anshan
; building forts and strongholds; raising a wall of lightmagic that would, she hoped, keep the raids within its circle.
The gaps in the web of lesser Gates were closed, except here. It was a monstrous task, and strained the mages to the utmost. They were warding a world. Everywhere that human creatures were, they must be, and be strong.
Winter deepened. In the deepest of it, the raids grew less frequent. Then for a while they stopped. But only fools celebrated a victory. The world was still under shadow. The greater Gates were gone, the Heart of the World destroyed. A few brave souls had tried to raise the nexus again, or find some sign that it could be restored, but those that survived the attempt would never heal completely. Where the nexus had been was a maw of darkness, growing inexorably wider, deeper, stronger. It swallowed magic; it devoured mages. It was beyond any mortal strength to conquer.
With the first breath of spring, the shadow-warriors came back. Already in sheltered valleys, fighting men had turned farmer and were plowing the steep rocky fields. When Greatmoon waxed again, they would plant.
“Man’s got to eat,” one of them said to Merian. She had ridden out of Ki-Oran to the village where the enemy had struck anew. The raiders had taken five men but injured none; the village’s young mage had driven them off.
He was in his house under a healer’s care, with his magic half burned away. The enemy had new shields, stronger and more deadly. Merian would speak with him when—if—he came to his senses. Meanwhile she had left her escort to walk through the fields, past the men and oxen engaged in the plowing.
It was one of these who had paused to greet her. He was not as young as some; he had a stocky, sturdy look to him, and a roll to his stride, as if he had just come off a ship. Yet he seemed at ease with the oxen and the plow, and his furrows were straight and clean.
He was not in awe of her, and he was frankly admiring of her beauty. It gave him clear pleasure to stand with her, looking out across the rolling field. “Fighting’s good,” he said, “but a man’s got to eat before he can fight. We can’t stop farming just because there’s a war over us.”
“We could feed you from the rest of the empire, if it were necessary,” Merian said. “You are our shield and bulwark. There’s no need to trouble yourselves with lesser things.”
“We’re proud to be your defense, lady,” he said, “but we take care of our own.
He was not to be shaken. Merian accorded him respect and let him be.
She strode on round the edge of the fields, alone for the first time in quite some while. She was a little tired, a little light-headed; it was not an ill sensation, but it was rather odd. If she stopped to think, the lightness was not in her head but in her center. She almost felt as if, if she spread her arms, she could lift and fly.
There was no more magic here than in any other tract of earth. The closest fortress in the Ring of Fire was a day’s ride distant. Yet she was brimming with light, drinking the sun. The Kasar in her hand was burning so fiercely that she kept glancing at it, expecting to find a charred ruin. But her hand was its wonted self: slender, narrow, with long fingers; ivory skin, golden sun.
She was quite startled when her knees declined to hold her up, and even more so when her head decided that, for amusement, it would expand until it had encompassed the sun.
It was dim suddenly, and cool. There was a roof over her, low and thatched, and a light hand laving her face with something cool and scented with herbs. She struggled to sit up. The hands became suddenly iron-strong.
They belonged to a burly man in a leather tunic, one of the warrior-villagers. A woman appeared behind him, so like that she must be kin; she carried a wooden bowl, from which wafted the scent of herbs. She set it down beside the pallet on which Merian was lying, and looked hard into her face. “Good. You’re awake.” She flashed a glance at the man. “Let her go.”
The man ducked his head and backed away. She nodded briskly and dipped a cup in the bowl. “Drink,” she said.
It was a tisane of herbs. The taste was faintly pungent and faintly sweet; it cleared Merian’s head remarkably. She saw then that her escort crowded outside the house, which must be one of the larger houses in the village. Two of them stood on either side of the door, glaring at the pair who nursed her.
“Out,” the woman barked at them. “Out! When she wants you she’ll call you back.”
They growled but retreated. The woman returned to Merian’s side as if nothing had happened, and went on pouring the tisane into her.
Merian endured three more sips, but the fourth gagged her. She pushed the cup away. “Tell me what you don’t want my men to hear.”
“What, did you want them breathing down our necks? This house is small enough without those great louts in armor.”
“I am not dying,” Merian said. “I’m not even ill. I’m a little tired, that’s all. The sun made me dizzy.”
“You certainly aren’t dying,” the woman said. “Do you really think it isn’t obvious?”
Merian did not understand her. “What isn’t—”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You honestly don’t know, do you?”
“What don’t I know?”
The woman paused, breathed deep, lashed her with a question: “Do you remember when you last had your courses?”
“Yes! They were—” Merian broke off. It had been—cycles? Since the morning that she woke and—
“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s impossible.”
“So they all say,” the woman said dryly. “I’ve been stitching cuts and birthing babies in these parts since before my own courses came, and believe me, royal lady, it is possible.”
“But I have never—”
“I took the liberty of examining you,” said the woman, “and lady, you have. If you don’t kill yourself running hither and yon, you’ll bear the child in the summer.”
Merian sat dumbfounded. Those had been dreams. She had not gone to him in body. She had had no slightest inkling—
Had she not? That great well-being, that sense of doubled strength: was that his child in her, doubly mageborn and conceived in magery?
Impossible.
Her hands spread across her belly. Was it a fraction less flat than it had been before? Was there a spark of life within? Was it floating, dancing, dreaming, waiting for her to become aware that it existed?
She truly had not known. She had dreamed of him again thrice—gone to him, loved him, lain in his arms. They had spoken of little beyond one another. It was not for knowledge that she had sought him.
The last dream had been but a handful of days ago; he had been nursing wounds, remembrance of a lion-hunt. He had killed the lion, and been lauded for it, too; its skin had been their bed. She had kissed each mark and scar, and healed him as much as he would allow, which was not much at all.
“I want to remember,” he had said, “to remind myself why prudence is a virtue. And why I should try harder to practice it.”
“There are those who would faint if they heard you now,” she said.
He laughed. “Wouldn’t they? It would almost be worth it, just to see their faces.”
She had laughed with him, and made love to him gently, to spare his hurts.
It had not been a dream. None of it had been.
But how—
She escaped the village and the sharp-tongued healer with the tookeen eyes. Her men had heard none of it, gods be thanked. She assured them that her brief indisposition was only lack of sleep and magic taxed to its limit. They pampered her, fussed over her, and tried to slow their pace back to Ki-Oran, but that she refused to submit to.
Her mind was a roil of confusion. This she had never expected or planned for. Later, yes, if he lived, if he came back to this world, if what she had dreamed was true. But not now. Not in the middle of a war.
Yet now she was aware of it, there was no denying it. She was carrying a most royal child: heir at one remove to the princedom of Han-Gilen, and at two removes to the empire of Sun an
d Lion. She had done her royal duty at last, done it well and most thoroughly—and her lover had met with her mother’s approval, too, which was as great a marvel as any of the rest of it.
TWENTY ONE
THE DARKNESS HAD BEEN GONE SO LONG FROM THE VALLEY OF the river that people began to believe that it was gone forever. The gods had done it, they said: the two who were in Waset, who had come from the far side of the horizon with the sun in their hands, to drive back the powers of the night.
They tried to build temples, to worship their saviors. Estarion put a stop to that with firmness that struck even Daros to awe. But he could not stop the steady stream of people who came to leave offerings on the palace steps in the mornings, or the crowds that followed both of them wherever they went, bowing and praising their names. Nothing that they could do would lessen it, least of all any display of magery.
It was rather wearing. Dreams were no refuge: she was seldom in them. Daros needed further distraction, but there was little allure in taverns or in the arms of women who were not she.
He approached the queen one morning, half a year of this world after he had come to it. Estarion was elsewhere; she was preparing for the morning audience, being painted and adorned like the image of a goddess. She smiled at him, somewhat to the distress of the maid who was trying to paint her lips, and said, “I hear that your recruits are doing well.”
“They are,” he said. He had been training young men in the arts of war, finding them apt pupils, as farmers and herdsmen went. Weapons were not particularly easy to come by; they had no steel, not even bronze, and copper was rare. But what they could do with stone and bone and hardened wood, they did well enough.
He said as much. The queen nodded. “These things that you have, it’s a pity we can’t get them. But we make do. You do expect the enemy to come back?”
“The shadow is still there,” he said, “on the other side of the sky. But I didn’t come to speak of that. There’s another thing that’s struck me strangely. Traders are coming back, plying the river. People are even traveling again. But there have been no embassies. Why is that?”