Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  It was a peculiarity of this very peculiar country that if one wished to travel downstream, one rowed; but to travel upstream, one raised a sail, because the river flowed northward and the wind blew from the north. On this hot bright morning, the wind was like a blast from a furnace, carrying them swiftly upstream toward a village near the border of Esna. The queen had chosen it; she had had kin there before the enemy took them. This would be revenge, after a fashion.

  Daros was very calm. He had never fought in a battle, but he had trained long and hard enough, for a layabout. He had lived two years in this country, training fighting men, making and training mages. He was as fit and as ready as he would ever be.

  The village was a trap, handsomely baited. Its storehouses were brimming with barley; its cattle-pens were full. The men who appeared to dwell in the houses had the look of soldiers, and their women were sturdy and strong. They greeted the newcomers with respect, and Daros and Estarion with somewhat more than that.

  The boat could not linger if it was to return to Waset before sunset. But Estarion did not give the order for it to depart.

  Tanit had said that he loved Daros as a son. Daros did not doubt it. He loved this man—as a father? Perhaps. As dear kin certainly, and as his lord, and yes, his emperor. He offered the obeisance of a prince of the Hundred Realms to the Lord of Sun and Lion, and rose into a long and tight embrace.

  “Stay alive,” Estarion said in his ear, soft as a lion’s growl. “Stay as sane as it’s possible for you to be. Come back with all your limbs intact.”

  “Keep this world safe, my lord,” Daros said in turn, “for your son if not for me.”

  “For both of you,” said Estarion.

  Then he would go. He took his place not on the deck but among the oarsmen as they prepared to row downriver against the wind. As the river bent, bearing them out of sight, he flung up his hand in a last farewell. The flame of gold dazzled Daros even from that distance, as if the sun had come down to rest upon the water.

  The boat of the Sun sailed away. Daros’ tiny army remained like bait in the trap. They settled as best they could. There was no time to teach them more than they already knew; that would never be enough, but it would have to serve.

  They had their shields, and their small workings of illusion, so that when the enemy looked at them, he would see what he wished to see. They could not hope to carry weapons with them, but Daros had a gift from Estarion, a steel knife such as this world knew nothing of, and with it the Mage’s feather that he had brought from the place between worlds. He had hung them both on a cord about his neck, and concealed them with a small working.

  Apart from those few things, the only weapon any of them carried was his magery. They rested if they might, slept if they could. The seeming villagers went about the daily tasks of tending the cattle and the fields, baking bread, brewing beer. At the time of the daymeal, there was bread, beer, roast goose, a bit of green stuff, and dates from the palms that grew tall around the village.

  Daros ate for strength, as did they all. None of them knew when they might eat again. All too soon the sun set; they set wards enough to escape suspicion, but weak and ragged as they had been in other villages when the enemy struck.

  Kaptah sang the sun to its rest. He had a pleasant voice; it was comforting, in its way, but there was great sadness in it. Only the gods knew when any of them would see sunlight again.

  The magelings drew in a little closer. They were all in the same house near the western edge of the village, as the enemy was wont to come from the west. It was small and the air inside was close, but no one wanted to open the door. That would be done for them soon enough, if their trap was laid as well as they hoped.

  Khafre ventured a little magelight as the night closed in, but Nefret damped it with a flick of magery that won murmurs of respect from the rest. “Have you forgotten?” she said sharply in the darkness. “They hate the light. Use the eyes you were given!”

  Khafre ducked his head, abashed. She had reminded him, and the rest of them, too, that they had mage-sight.

  They did not see Daros swallow a smile—he made sure of that. “Sleep if you can,” he said, “but remember to keep your power on guard.”

  They all nodded. Each was a soldier in his own fashion; they knew the wisdom of hoarding their strength.

  The enemy came in the deep night. Daros felt the opening of Gates like the opening of wounds in his own body. They were out in force: they struck up and down the river, not only here. Elsewhere they met stronger wards, though not yet as strong as they would be once the enemy had taken the bait.

  All the magelings were awake. Menkare and Khafre had risen, setting themselves shoulder to shoulder nearest the door. Daros was farthest back, cut off from escape save past the others.

  When the dark fire struck, their shields were up. The door puffed into ash; the roof of woven reeds vanished, leaving them open to the stars. Daros caught his breath at the force of it, even through shields. Ay, just out of his reach, gasped and crumpled.

  Daros reached for him—too late. His shields were broken. Ay convulsed, and began to scream.

  Daros seized Ay’s brother and dragged him off, caught the next mageling who was near—Nefret, who would have tried to heal a man who was past healing—and swept the rest of them out into the roiling darkness.

  Shapes of shadow swarmed upon them. First Nefret, then Huy was ripped from his hands. Bands that felt like iron closed about him and clamped tight.

  He sensed the spell in them, strong as a drug, invoking sleep. His shields held, but he went limp as they expected. He could not see through the dark shapes that surrounded him, to discover what had become of the others. Except for Ay—Ay was dead. He had felt the spirit’s flight even before he left the broken walls.

  He was remarkably calm. It was a terrible thing to be helpless, bound and blinded even to mage-sight. Yet he had wished for this, and planned it, though he had hoped not to be separated quite so swiftly from his magelings.

  Slowly he made sense of the darkness. Two robed figures were carrying him, gripping the bands about him as if he had been a bundle of reeds for a boat. They were moving: from the scent of mud and water and reeds, away from the village and toward the river. There were others nearby, moving likewise. Their gait was human, and steady, undismayed by the blind dark. None of them spoke. His captors were on foot, but some of those beyond them were mounted on the strange scaled beasts that he had seen before.

  Their Gate lay across the river, and the road to it was not quite in this world. If he strained, he could hear the river running below. His captors’ booted feet trod air above the glide of the current.

  They passed into the dark world, into perpetual night, and cold that bit deep before his shields closed it out. They did not carry him far. He felt the loom of walls, heard the deep creak of hinges in a gate.

  He dared open his eyes to mage-sight. His captors appeared to sense nothing: they paced onward as they had before, through a vaulted corridor and a roofless court, then up a long stair. There were others behind and before them. Not only his magelings had been taken. From the sound of many feet, the captives were numerous. Nor could they all have come from the village outside of Esna.

  The stair ended at last in a high wide gate and a cavernous hall. It was not the one in which he had been before. There was nothing royal about this. It had the look and smell of a barracks.

  It was vast. Its edges were lost in gloom, even to mage-sight. Broad galleries rose toward the roof, and a webwork of ladders connecting one to another.

  The train of slave-takers coiled in a skein round the hall and stopped. Daros’ two captors lowered him to a floor of grey stone. The bonds about him snapped free. Hard hands heaved him to his feet. All about him, others did the same. Khafre, Menkare, Nefret—all there, and alive. Huy, then Kaptah: they were somewhat farther away, among others of their country.

  Only they had eyes. All the rest were blind, every one—within as without. Th
ey were bound by a slave-spell, their souls lost, all will taken away: row on row of blank and eyeless faces.

  There were hundreds of them in this one room, of many in this city, on this world. Thousands all told; thousands of thousands. The sheer magnitude of it went beyond horror. There was no word for what had been done here, to the folk of world after world.

  The takers of slaves withdrew. Something in the way they moved made Daros certain: they too were slaves, bound like all the rest. Slaves taking slaves—there was a hideous economy in it.

  The soul-lost formed in ranks and stood still. Daros’ magelings managed in that surge of movement to set themselves about him. They were pale and shaking, but they were masters of themselves still. Their shields had held, even Huy’s, though he was rigid with grief for his brother.

  They stood so long, so motionless, that Daros began to fear that they would not move at all for hours, perhaps days. If that was the case, he would have to make his move long before he had intended to, slip away and pray that he could find a hiding place in a world he did not know.

  But there was, at last, movement. Figures emerged onto the first gallery.

  These were not slaves. Even the guards, great looming figures, walked with volition. Those whom they guarded wore robes that Daros remembered, like darkness cut and sewn into garments.

  The robed ones were men. He who led them had let fall his hood. He was white-skinned like a man of Anshan in Daros’ own world, but as pale as such a man would be who had never seen the sun. His hair and beard were black; heavy black brows lowered over dark eyes.

  He had eyes, though they were all dark, whiteless and strangely blank. It seemed that he could see, though he was not a mage. He looked out over the hall and the ranks of slaves. His face wore no expression.

  He was not a mage, but great power was on him. He wore it like a cloak. Perhaps, Daros thought, that was precisely what it was. And if that was so …

  The man spoke. His words meant nothing. Daros could not shield himself, protect his magelings, sustain the illusion that he was as eyeless and witless as all the slaves about him, and wield his gift of tongues, all at once. Even his power had limits.

  The words must have been a spell of command. Daros felt the tug of it. Others near him began to walk, trudging out of the ranks of slaves, toward the far end of the hall. Menkare too was moving, and Khafre, and Nefret, but not Huy or Kaptah.

  There was nothing he could do but hope that whatever he went to, he could come back to this place, to the rest of his mages. Those chosen seemed the strongest. They had the look of warriors, or of warriors’ women.

  He walked where the spell bade him. In so doing, he had to pass beneath the gallery. The man on it was a cold presence, a power that was not magery but was not entirely human, either. It was almost like metal—like a machine.

  Daros had that to ponder while he walked slowly out of the hall and down a corridor, then a stair. They went far down, much farther than they had come up. Still he did not sense the weight of earth overhead. They must be descending the steep face of a crag.

  They came out into the lightless air, in a reek of smoke and heated metal. There were forges nearby, vast perhaps beyond imagining, but this court showed only the loom of a wall and the waiting presence of the guards. As each of the enslaved approached, he was stripped of whatever garment or ornaments he might possess, swept with cold fire as if to cleanse him, and dressed in a long dark garment rather like that of the men in the gallery. Then he was led, not into another hall, but through a gate and out onto the plain that Daros remembered.

  Daros had kept his hidden weapons through stripping and cleansing. The knife was cold against his breast, the feather too light to be called weight, but the presence in it was as strong as the darkness itself.

  The place that they had come from was a city behind a high wall. The place that they went to, he remembered all too well: the citadel on the crag, high above the dark plain. The way to it was long and steep, but there was no pause for food or water. Slaves and soul-lost must have no need for such. Daros and his remaining mages were still mortal; they could only grit their teeth and endure.

  The citadel swallowed them. As the gates of iron clanged shut, Daros knew a moment of pure and craven terror. To be free, to be away from there, to be in the light, any light—he would have unleashed the lightnings, if a vanishingly small part of him had not kept him sane. This was precisely what he had wished: to be in the heart of this realm, within reach of those who ruled it. The gods were looking after him; this was proof.

  It seemed they were to be soldiers in the guard of the dark realm. They were taken to barracks less vast than those in the city; these were like enough to guardhalls in castles of Daros’ own world. A hearth in the center radiated heat without light; bed-niches lined the walls. A second hall past that boasted long rows of tables, and benches on which the ranks of slaves all blindly sat.

  Here at last was food and drink: harsh dry bread, salt meat, flagons of clear liquid with a distinct, astringent taste. Except for that strangeness, he would have said that it was water.

  It restored his strength considerably. Menkare next to him, and Khafre and Nefret beyond, sat somewhat straighter and seemed less grey about the face.

  They dared not speak, even mind to mind. Blinded slaves crowded close. Most of those nearby were men and women of Menkare’s world, but round about them Daros saw casts of face that he had not seen before. There were perhaps people of half a dozen worlds, all human in some fashion, but none was of his own kind. Nor was any a mage, even to the minute degree that he had found in the country of the river. Magic was a rarity in the worlds, it seemed.

  That, even apart from the shadow that had cut off world after world, would explain why Gate-mages did not meet their own kind wandering the worldroads. If there were others, they were vanishingly few. People of the worlds shunned Gates, out of lack of understanding or, if they knew of the dark armies, out of fear.

  He fought down the surge of despair. This army of slaves was a single night’s harvest. There would be myriads more in this citadel alone, and more to come as each band of raiders returned through Gates. Merian’s mages would come. She had promised; he could trust that she would fulfill it.

  There was no reckoning night or day in this place. It was always dark, unlit by moon or star. They were fed at what must be regular intervals. They were taken to the barracks and expected to sleep after every second meal. In between, they served as menials in the citadel.

  Others like them, who Daros suspected had been there longer, stood guard at doors and gates, or accompanied various of the lords both within and outside of the citadel. Yet others were taught to ride the scaled beasts with their vicious jaws, and to fight with weapons both familiar and alien.

  The lords had eyes, all of them. The slave-soldiers did not, but they were not truly blind. Daros, finding occasion to sweep a corridor that led to one of the practice-courts, marked how lethally swift they were, and how faultlessly the best of them struck targets with throwing-spears and darts and, most fascinating of all, the weapons that hurled the dark fire.

  Both teachers and overseers were blinded slaves, but they seemed to have more will than the ranks they commanded. The ranks were mute, but the overseers could speak; they gave instruction and issued orders, speaking a language that must be that of the lords; but it addressed itself to each slave in his own tongue. Daros heard it in the tongue of Shurakan, which was rather strange; his mother had spoken it to him when he was small, but once he was grown, he had spoken chiefly the common speech of Keruvarion.

  Daros had not yet managed to approach the lords. They kept to themselves in the upper reaches of the citadel; if they had servants, none was of Daros’ company. Newcomers were not permitted in the lords’ halls; the doors between were heavily guarded.

  He wondered what they feared. Their slaves? All of those seemed utterly subjugated, except his tiny band of mages. The Mage was not on this world; it dwelt ap
art in its prison. If he turned his thought toward the feather on its cord, he could sense that potent presence, and see, if briefly, that strange face with its eyes bent upon him.

  The Mage was aware of him. He took a little comfort from that in this darkest of places. What good it would do, what help it could be, he did not know, but any hope was better than none.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DAROS COUNTED DAYS BY THE NUMBER OF TIMES THAT HE LAY down to sleep in that lightless place. His sleep was dark, his dreams unformed. After the second—night, he supposed he could call it, though the night here was perpetual—his magelings had begun to lose their courage. They had managed to stay together through the times of labor, and had claimed bed-niches side by side. They gave each other strength. But night unbroken, even with mage-sight, was a terrible burden on the spirit.

  On the third night, Daros woke from a restless half-doze to the sound of weeping. It was silent; it sounded within his mind, with a flavor of the guardsman Khafre. He had seemed the strongest of all, but the soul that opened itself to Daros was deeply horrified by the dark and the eyeless slaves and the strangeness of this bleak world. He, like all his people, was a creature of sunlight. Even in death they sought the light.

  “That is your strength,” Daros said to him. Daros had brought sunlight into his dream, setting them both in Khafre’s own world, standing in a field beside the river, under the pure clean blue of the sky. Menkare was there, and Nefret, and Kaptah looking somewhat shocked. Huy—

  “Gone,” Kaptah said heavily. “He broke. They killed him.”

  Daros had not known. He had been shielded too closely. His fault; his folly.