by Judith Tarr
“Will that be of use against what comes?”
“I hope so,” said Daros.
“You hope? You don’t know?”
“Prophecy is not my gift,” he said.
She sighed and rested her chin on her hand, narrowing her eyes, searching his face. “My eldest son says that when you go, you’ve asked him to go with you. As what? As a hostage?”
“As an ally,” said Daros.
“Will you do that in every kingdom? Take the heir to serve your cause?”
“I will do what the greater gods bid me, lady,” Daros said.
“It would be a wise thing,” she said, “to take such royal hostages, both as threat and promise. But if you take my son, I would ask something in return.”
“Yes, lady?”
“Give me what you would give my husband.”
Daros had expected that. It was not easy for him to say, “Lady, to kindle a fire, I need a spark. Your lord has it. You, alas, do not. You are mortal. But,” he said before she could speak, “this I can give you: I will keep your son safe. While I live, while I endure in this world, he will come to no harm because of me.”
She read the truth in his face. It did not please her, but she was no fool. She bowed to it. “I will accept that,” she said.
The king of Gebtu received his gift on the last day of Daros’ sojourn in his city. It was given him in the court of the highest temple. Seti-re served as priest of a rite that Daros would have preferred to avoid; but Seti-re insisted.
“Gods live in ritual,” he said. “A god without a rite is no god at all.” There was a great deal of chanting and incense, passes of hands and turns of a sacred dance. When Daros was close to eruption, Seti-re’s glance gave him leave to do the small thing, the simple thing, that all this mummery was meant to conceal.
The king knelt in the center of the court. He had taken off his crown and his wig, and bowed his bare and gleaming head in submission before the god. Daros laid his hands on it. The spark within the king was no greater than ever, if no less.
Daros gave the king what he had to give. It was not the shining flood that had filled Menkare, but a glimmer of light, a gleam in darkness. It fed the spark, swelling it into a coal.
He withdrew then, before the coal burst into flame. Kamos was trembling violently. Daros soothed him with a cool brush of magery
The rite rattled and droned and spun to a lengthy conclusion. The king remained kneeling through all of it. Only when it had ended, when silence had fallen, did he rise, staggering, but he shook off hands that would have supported him. He walked out of the temple, eyes blank, face exalted.
That exaltation carried him through the feast of parting. Daros managed to avoid speaking with him. Seti-re did what talking was to be done, chattering of anything and everything, and seeming oblivious to the silence on either side.
Only at the end did Kamos cut through the babble, reach across the priest’s ample body, and grip Daros’ wrist. “Tell me what I can do,” he said.
“You can bring light in the darkness,” Daros said, “and fill hearts with hope.”
“Yes,” the king said, rapt. “Yes.” He raised his free hand. Light flickered in it, feeble enough but unmistakably there. He laughed with a child’s pure delight.
“Remember also to bring hope,” Daros said, “and to look after your people. That is the price I ask, lord king. Will you pay it?”
“Yes,” said the king. “Oh, yes.”
Daros did not believe him, but chose to let be. He had what he needed: an ally, and the king’s son beside him when he set sail again on the river.
He left that day, though the sun was nearer the horizon than the zenith. The king did not try to keep him, nor seemed inclined to keep his heir. The lesser princes were more than glad to see their brother go.
Menkare did not look back once he had set foot on the boat. “My father is a happy man,” he said as they sailed in the long light of evening. He, like Daros, had a fondness for the solitude of the prow rather than the close quarters of the deck.
“One may hope he will remain happy,” said Daros.
Menkare smiled thinly. “His new toy will keep him occupied for a while. By the time he discovers that you gave him a single dart and me the whole quiver, we can hope that he’s inclined to be forgiving.”
“The alliance has been sworn in the temple, witnessed by all the lords and priests,” Daros said. “I sealed it in other ways, which will become apparent if anyone tries to break it. It will hold at least until the enemy comes back again.”
“I won’t ask how you sealed it,” Menkare said after a pause, “only be glad that you did-and hope it holds as long as you say.”
“It will hold,” said Daros, as much prayer as assurance.
“And meanwhile? Will you give godhood to every king’s heir from here to the river’s delta? Can you do that?”
“Only if there is a seed of magery to nurture and grow.”
“I have a thought,” said Menkare. “Men of this kind—they’re drawn toward temples, yes? My father was. I was; I never went, because my mother didn’t wish it, but the call was there. If you search in temples, you may find what you need.”
“I have thought of that,” Daros said. “I can’t give this gift too often—its cost is too high. But if I can give it even a dozen times, that’s a dozen more mages than this world had before. I can teach them as we go—then bring them back to Waset, where is a greater master than I. Then, if the gods give us time, each of you can return to your kingdom and raise walls against the enemy. Then—”
“I think,” Menkare said dryly, “that it’s enough for now to think of learning to use what I’ve been given. Let the rest come later—and other godlings with it.”
Daros bowed to that. He had run ahead of himself; not wise, but sometimes he could not help it. There was a grandeur in it, a plan that was, without doubt, divine. But whether he could accomplish it before the shadow came back—who knew? Certainly not he. He was not prescient. He merely clung to hope, and left the rest to the gods.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE SEA OF THIS WORLD WAS GREEN, AS TANIT HAD SAID—WAS IT indeed a year since last Daros had seen her? He stood on the edge of the vast delta, in a land of marshes and reeds and breathless heat, and there before him the waves surged and sighed. They were salt; he had tasted them to be certain. Yet they tasted also of the river, the black mud and the myriad reeds, and the cities that ran in a skein from the cataracts to this wide green ocean.
He had a small fleet of boats now, and a retinue to rival a king’s, of every nation from Waset to the shores of the sea. Twelve of them were mages, a dozen out of hundreds that he had seen in temples and palaces, cities and villages. Only Menkare was a prince. To Menkare’s surprise, only Kaptah and Ramse were priests. The rest were lords of courts, royal or noble guardsmen, men of cities or villages. They had come in a dozen ways, but this they had in common: they had been drawn to him, called by the flame of magic in them.
Two of them were women, and both of those were villagers. Merit’s husband had been taken in the last raid before the enemy withdrew. Nefret was to be married, but she left her young bridegroom and her kin and her village in the delta, and came to Daros with as much a gift of magic as he had ever seen in this world. She was almost a mage in his reckoning, a healer—even as young as she was, she had been the herbhealer and midwife for her village—and, as the gods would have it, a seer.
She stood beside him on the shores of that grey-green sea, and said in her light child’s voice, “We should go back tomorrow.”
“I had intended to,” he said.
She shook her head slightly. Her eyes looked far out over the water, but she was not seeing waves or spume or sky. “All the way back. Back where you came from in this world. Back to Waset.”
Daros’ heart constricted. “What do you see? What—”
“It’s coming,” she said. “Not tomorrow. Not in a few days. But soon. It’s coming back.”
He did not need or want to ask what she meant. He knew. Even without prescience, he could feel it.
The others had drawn in close. The rest of the following, the guards, the priests, the crews of the boats, were scattered across the sand. All those nearest Daros were mages, and all sensed what he sensed. How not? Their gift had come through him; he had taught them what they knew. They were raw, young, no better than callow recruits in a sorcerous army, but this was difficult to mistake.
The enemy gathered on the other side of the sky. Gates were stirring. All too soon they would open. Then this world must be ready; must be armed and prepared for them.
Seti-re was sitting on a stool that one of his acolytes had brought, with the waves lapping his bare feet. He started slightly as Daros came to squat on the sand beside him. To the eye he had changed little in this year. He was still smooth, plump, slightly sour about the eyes. But the sourness within had turned perceptibly bitter. High priest of Daros’ putative cult he might be, and much feted and feasted by kings because of it, but he had had to see the gift of magic given to others—to villagers, even women—but never to him. There was nothing in him from which it could grow.
He was still besotted with Daros’ beauty, which he maintained had only grown greater with the passage of time. But for that, Daros might have found this new bitterness disturbing. Bitter men knew no loyalty, in the end, but to themselves.
“My lord priest,” Daros said after a while.
“My lord,” said Seti-re. For once he was not staring at Daros, but at the restless face of the sea.
“We’re going back to Waset, my mages and I,” Daros said, “to build walls of light before the enemy comes back.”
Seti-re bowed where he sat. “As you wish, my lord.”
“I have a thing to ask of you,” said Daros, “if you will do it.”
“Whatever my lord wishes,” said Seti-re.
“No,” said Daros, sharply enough that the priest’s eyes flicked toward him. He held them with his own stare, willing the man to see what he needed to see. “This must be your free choice. We are not going back to Waset in boats. We are going as I came to this world—by magery. I can take you and any other who will go, but if you choose, there is another thing, a greater thing, that you can do.”
Seti-re had brightened in spite of himself. Maybe Daros’ smile had something to do with it—he had armed it and aimed it for conquest. “What can I do, my lord?”
“We will be building walls of light in Waset,” Daros said, “but if the alliance is to hold and the kingdoms are to sustain their defenses, we need an anchor—a second place of strength. Will you go to Sakhra, and speak for me there?”
Seti-re frowned, in thought rather than in bitterness. Sakhra was the northernmost of the skein of cities, the stem of the lotus before it fanned and flowered into the delta. “Why are you asking me to do this? Shouldn’t it be one of your godlings? Perhaps the prince from Gebtu?”
“We need strength,” Daros said, “and loyalty, and a talent for speaking to kings. Sakhra’s king may come to think that since his city is so far from Waset, he may not be so firmly pressed to observe the terms of alliance—and once the enemy comes, it will be all the more tempting to withdraw within his borders again.”
“The same may be said of every king from Sakhra to Esna.”
“Yes,” said Daros, “but if my high priest is in Sakhra, and I am in Waset, and there are visible proofs of the power that runs from end to end of the river—might he not think twice before he breaks his oath?”
“Visible … proof?”
The eagerness in him was almost as strong as magery. “I cannot make you a mage,” Daros said, “but I can give you a working that will serve you, when you have need.”
“Such as you gave the king of Gebtu?”
“Not quite the same,” Daros said.
He stooped and sifted the sand. A pebble came into his hand, smooth and round and silver-grey. A hole had worn itself in the middle. He made a cord of sunlight and shadow and the coolness of spray, plaited it tightly and made it solid and lasting, and set it in the priest’s hand.
Seti-re stared at it. Daros saw how he did not quite dare laugh. He was thinking of a moment with Estarion, a promise—a gift given and received, and power bestowed where there was no power to match it.
“When you set your will on this,” Daros said, “it will let you summon light. But have a care. If you use it overmuch, or use it against me or mine, it will feed on your spirit as fire feeds on dry tinder.”
Seti-re closed his fingers over the stone. A shudder ran through him. It had begun to thrum in harmony with that other one which he kept always about his person, which held within itself the essence of Estarion’s spirit.
Daros had given him nothing so powerful, but he need not know that. His bitterness was sweetened somewhat. He was reminded yet again that he had power, real and solid: power over the lives of the gods themselves.
Of all the kings and lords and priests whom Daros had met and wooed and cozened in this long journey, this one remained the most difficult. The power of a name and the promise of divinity had carried him down the river. He had raised the princes of the dead in Abot and called down the sun in Henen. Kings had begun to come to him almost as soon as he began, either in their own person or through noble emissaries. His task had been done for him as often as not by the power of rumor and the terror of the few magics that he had been pressed to perform.
This strange country, many days’ journey long and yet hardly wider than its wonder of a river, lay ready and waiting to be brought together. But Seti-re was never as wholly won as even the most doubtful of the kings.
He was a key, of sorts. In Waset he stood highest save only the queen. On the embassy he was second to one whom men called a god. Even without magic, he held power.
Daros had no prescience. That was almost an article of faith. But in giving this man such power, he had done a thing that could not be undone. Whether it was good or ill, he did not know. He only knew that he had had no choice but to do it.
When dawn touched the sky, rising over lush and level green, the fleet gathered to sail upriver. But Daros and his mages did not embark on the boats, nor did Seti-re and the company of his priests. While the boatmen and the guards from a dozen kingdoms watched, Daros opened a Gate.
He had not known until he did it, whether it was wise or even possible. But although the shadow pressed hard upon the borders of the world, the light still ruled within.
He sent the priests first, wrapped in living light. As far as they knew, they simply stepped from shore of reeds to court of the temple in Sakhra, before the astonished eyes of priests performing the morning rites. Seti-re would be pleased: he had appeared as gods were rumored to do. No doubt they would be calling him a god, too, after this.
Daros brought his mages to Waset with much less fanfare, drawing in the circle of them, binding them with power, and setting them in a dim and quiet hall within the palace of Waset.
Estarion was waiting for them. Daros had sent no word ahead, but he had not expected to need it. Any mage in this world would have known what Daros had done, the moment he opened the Gate.
He stood in the midst of his huddle of startled and speechless magelings, and looked into the eyes of the Lion. Estarion had not changed in the slightest. After so long among the people of the black land, Daros was somewhat taken aback by the emperor’s size and strangeness; but then, he thought wryly, if he could have seen himself, he would have been no less disconcerted.
“My lord,” he said lightly. “Well met again at last.”
“Indeed,” said Estarion. Several of the magelings had flung themselves flat. He raised them gently, soothed them as if they had been children, and handed them off to the servants who had come in behind him.
They all went willingly except for Menkare, who would not shift from his place at Daros’ back. Estarion smiled at him, which could not have reassured him at all, and said
, “Your lord is as safe with me as he can be in this world. If I promise not to eat him, will you go to the place that has been prepared for you?”
Menkare opened his mouth to refuse, but Daros said, “Go, my friend. This I must face alone. I’ll come to you after.”
“Will there be anything left of you to do it?” Menkare muttered. But he went as he was bidden.
After he was gone, there was a silence that Daros had no intention of being the first to break. He took advantage of it to shut and secure the Gate, and set his magery in order, and brace himself against whatever blast Estarion might level upon him.
There was little he could do against the force of those eyes on him, raking him to the center and taking from him everything he had done since he left Waset. He let it go freely, with neither shame nor guilt. Most if not all of it, Estarion already knew; Daros had spoken with him often. But he had never quite got round to telling Estarion the full extent of the magelings’ power.
At length, Estarion let him go. He stiffened his knees before they buckled.
Estarion’s voice when he spoke was remarkably mild. “You’ve grown,” he said.
He did not mean in body, though Daros was not quite the child that he had been when he came to this world. “I know of no laws against the making of mages,” he said.
“There are none,” said Estarion, “because no one knew it was possible.”
“No one needed to know,” Daros said. “When any village child may be born with magic, and most of the royal and noble houses are thick with mageborn lines, what need for anyone to make mages where there were none?”
“There is a rumor that you’ve been making gods in order to challenge the powers that exiled you.”
“That’s true, isn’t it?” said Daros. “The enemy exiled us both.”
“You think a dozen untrained magelings will be of any use against what we face?”
“I’ve taught them the art of raising wards,” Daros said. “That’s useful enough.”