Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  “A plan,” said Daruya, “that you think I may not like.”

  “I know you will not,” Merian said. “It requires one of us in this world, and one of us in his—and one between, in the dark world.”

  There was a pause. Daruya’s understanding was swift. “He was going to rely on the Gileni. Yes?”

  “The Gileni is lost,” Merian said, though the words knotted her belly with grief, “and in any case it should be Sun-blood. We were born in and of the light; the light is alive in us. It fills us. Who better to break this thing that shatters worlds?”

  “Who better to rescue the father of your child?”

  “That supposes that he needs rescuing,” Merian said with a hint of sharpness. “Mother, we need you to hold this world as he holds the other. I’m the youngest, the mage of Gates. My place is in the dark world.”

  “Your place is here, as my heir.”

  “There is a newer heir,” Merian said. “If I don’t come back, I trust you to see that she lives to inherit.”

  “You’re sending her to me after all?”

  “No,” said Merian. “She’s going to Han-Gilen. But—”

  Daruya rose. Merian braced for the blast, but her mind-voice was soft and dangerously mild. “You would send my granddaughter there, and not to me?”

  “Elian is the prince’s granddaughter, too. And,” said Merian, “he, unlike you, is not in the vanguard of the war. He can keep her safe until all of it is over—for good or for ill.”

  Daruya liked that little, but she had ruled an empire long enough to recognize sense when she heard it. “Were you planning to tell me any of this?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Yes—and telling me to mount the attack without delay. What were you afraid of, that if I had time to think about it, I’d find a way to stop you?”

  “Something of the sort,” Merian admitted. “But, Mother, there really isn’t—”

  “I see no other way,” said Daruya. The taste of the words must have been bitter. “Tell me what the emperor would have us do.”

  Merian was almost too startled to reply. “Swear you won’t stop me before I pass the Gate.”

  “I will not stop you,” Daruya said. “I will hate every moment that you are gone, and dread every outcome until you come back. But when have I ever stopped you from doing as you pleased?”

  That, for her, was tenderness. It tightened Merian’s throat. “I will come back. We will win this war.”

  “You do that,” said Daruya.

  “You will call the muster tonight?”

  “Today,” said Daruya.

  “Then you trust—”

  “I trust you. Now go, or we leave you behind.”

  Merian went. Even as she retreated into her own body again, the call thrummed through her. It was the Great Summons, that she had not heard in all her years: calling every mage of this world to the muster. Mages passed the summons to mortal lords and commanders. The armies of the Sun began to move.

  Almost without willing it, Merian sent the summons winging outward through the darkness, toward Estarion on the far side of the night. She did not know whether it came to him; she could only hope.

  Men were stirring in the fortress. Half would stay to guard it; half would go. So too with the mages who had come to her here. Some must ward the world, but some would take the war to the enemy

  She would go in armor, and armed. Her greatest weapon was her magery, but she would fight if she must. Her mail was shimmering steel, the surcoat over it the violet and grey of her order. Gold shimmered through it; Sun-brooches clasped the shoulders. It was rather too splendid for her taste, but the army needed to see that Sun-blood marched with it. It was a price she paid for the rank she had been born to.

  Elian’s nurse was ready, in a guard of strong mages. She surrendered the child into Merian’s arms, for a little while. Merian clasped her close to breasts that still ached in their bindings, and breathed the sweet infant scent of her. It was more than difficult relinquish her into Jadis’ care again, to open the lesser Gate, to send them to the prince in Han-Gilen. When they were gone, Merian’s heart was as empty as her womb.

  She straightened with an effort, and steeled herself. She would come back; she made it a vow, sworn on the searing pain in her hand. She pressed that hand to her heart. “May the gods witness it,” she said.

  The sun was still high as the last of the armies gathered and waited. Mages linked mind to mind across the face of the world. Merian gathered their power together within the Ring of Fire, in the heart of Ki-Oran. She forged of it a key, and set it to the Gate within her.

  Darkness resisted, surging against the Gate like a tide. She set all their conjoined strength against it, to break its power, to open the Gate.

  It was too strong. Without the Heart of the World to bolster the rest, all the mages, even with Merian, were not enough. If she had been Estarion—or Daros—

  Despair was the darkness’ weapon. She countered it with the Sun within her. It shrank away—then roared back like a wave of the sea.

  Just before it would have drowned her, it broke. It frayed and shredded and melted into mist. Astonishment froze her in the last act of defense.

  Now! cried the Mage’s voice. Desperation sharpened it, and yet it sounded faint and growing fainter. Go now!

  There was no time to waste. Before the dark could come back like the swing of the tide, she thrust open the Gate. The armies of the Sun poured into the dark world.

  Estarion sat bolt upright in the queen’s council. Her chamberlain told the tally of cattle and fodder, barley and storehouses. Those were vital matters, matters of the people’s survival, but they were deadly dull; and the news was all bad. The enemy was stripping them bare.

  The Great Summons rang in Estarion’s skull. It was so strong, so compelling, that it was all he could do not to leap to his feet and run to a muster on the other side of the sky. Even some of those in the council sensed it, however dimly. Tanit sat as stiff as he, eyes wide, staring into the blank and singing air.

  He rose. “It’s time,” he said.

  Lord Bes droned on, but the rest welcomed the distraction. The more warlike rose to face him. He addressed them through the buzz of the chamberlain’s voice. “The battle has come. Arm and prepare your men. Tonight, we fight.”

  Some of them were pale, some flushed with excitement. They were all firm in their courage. They were not a warrior people, but they had learned to fight. Daros had taught them. His legacy in this world, Estarion thought fleetingly. There was no time for sentiment.

  He bowed over Tanit’s hand and kissed it. It was steady, strong. Only a mage would know how hard her heart was beating. “One stroke,” she said to him. “One hard blow. That’s all we have in us. Guide it well, my lord.”

  He should go, but he lingered. He had every intention of surviving this as he had so much else, and yet he could not leave before he had impressed in memory every line of her face. He ran his finger down her cheek, and kissed her softly on the lips. “Until morning,” he said.

  “Until morning,” said Tanit.

  The defenses of the city and the string of cities from Waset to Sakhra were as strong as mages and cats, priests and warriors, could make them. Estarion tightened the weaving of the wards and saw that the mortal guards were armed and ready. When that was done, and the land of the river was as well protected as it could be, he turned his steps toward the temple of the sun-god.

  Seti was waiting for him. The old priest had summoned a handful of priests whom he trusted, and instructed them in their duties. They had prepared the room for him in the house in which he had met Seti before. The bed was moved to the center and hung with clean linen. Lamps stood at head and foot, ready to be lit when the night came.

  There was a light meal waiting, as Estarion had requested: bread, cheese, clean water. He ate and drank carefully. Fasting was no part of this: he needed to be strong. When he had had his fill, he suffered the priests
to surround him with their chants and incense. It did nothing for his magic, but it consoled them greatly. It comforted him, too, in its way. He had left his priesthood with his empire, laid it all aside to become a shepherd in the Fells. Yet when all was done and said, he was still what he had been born to be: mage, priest, lord and king.

  As the last chant died away, he lay on the bed, which had been made long enough for him. Seti sat in a chair beside him. The others divided: half to retreat to the inner room, to rest; half to take station about him. They would guard him while he journeyed to the heart of his magic.

  He settled as comfortably as he might, and steadied himself with long, deep breaths. Each brought him closer to his center, drew him deeper into his power. He was aware of the priests watching over him, of Seti’s blind eyes that saw clearly to the soul. The world beyond them, the people, the river flowing forever to the sea, all that had become a part of him since he fell through the Gate, wrapped him about and made him strong. Strongest of all was the queen in her hall of audience, and their son in his nursery, playing contentedly in a patch of sunlight. He gurgled at the touch of his father’s mind, and laughed, teasing it with flickers and flashes of power.

  Strong young mage. The joy of that rode with him into the heart of this world, and so outward through the memory of Gates. He bore with him the light and power of the sun, and the splendor of stars, and the cold glory of the moon that ruled the night in this world.

  The dark had retreated somewhat. It had not faded or died; it hung like a wave about to break. But some strong blow had weakened it.

  He sought the Mage in its prison, passing swiftly through the paths of the night. He found the chamber, the many Gates pulsing uncontrolled, and the long strange shape limp and lifeless in its bonds. It was not dead, not quite, but its power had broken, and all the structures of its making had collapsed. The dark world swirled with confusion. Slaves rose up; lords who had never dreamed of such a thing were fighting for their lives.

  The Mage’s power mustered one last feeble flicker. It touched Estarion’s and held, gripping like a soft hand. Time is short. Be swift. He cannot fight forever.

  “He?”

  The Mage slipped free. Swift, it said. Be swift.

  The last of it was no word at all, but a vision as the Mage sank down into death: a shape of shadow caged in steel. Another mage. Another captive. Fighting—resisting.

  Estarion did not want to set a face to that shadow. Yet there was no escaping it. No other mage anywhere had that particular strength, that core of bright recklessness.

  His long cry of grief and rage echoed through the worlds. Did Daros hear it? There was no telling. He was bound beyond escaping: from without by the dark lords, and from within by the bitter battle to destroy his magic before the dark lords seized it.

  There was no time for mourning. Estarion must find the sun in the dark world, and through it bind the sun on the world in which he was born. Threefold power, threefold strength. Sun-blood to Sun-blood.

  Merian passed the Gate into the dark world. In the same instant, his power leaped through her to Daruya in the world of his birth. It was remarkably like the skein of mages along the river: each one reaching to the next, and binding all the rest together. They wove and bound and locked. Without pausing to ask leave, he made himself their master. This binding was his. He ruled it as he had ruled empires, with no more effort than it took to draw breath.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  MERIAN PASSED THROUGH THE GATE INTO THE DARK WORLD. Armies crossed with her, armed with light. They brought a dawn that this world had not seen in ages beyond reckoning.

  Battle raged on the barren plains, in the fortresses and the slave-cities, and across the beds of the dry seas. Slaves had risen against their masters. Mages urged them on. For weapons they had whatever they could find: stolen knives and spears, miners’ picks, cooks’ knives, even bricks and stones. Anything that could be lifted to strike or hurl, they had. And if that failed, they had their teeth and fists and feet, the power of their bodies, and the sheer weight of numbers.

  Merian’s forces came through the Gate in the heart of that world, before the king’s citadel. The battle was fiercest here, the dark lords most numerous, and not all their slaves had joined the revolt. The warrior slaves fought, many of them, for their lords. Their weapons were strong and their anger terrible. They blasted the lesser slaves with dark fire, mowing them down like grain.

  Light alone was not enough against those. Too many wore helms without eyes, shielding them from the searing pain. Freed slaves, who had no such protection, burned and died, but those whom they fought, fought on unharmed.

  Merian was aware of Estarion within her, his grip on her power, his enslavement of its will. But she had expected it; she knew him, and she had had the same thought. She had divided herself; her power held its own deep realm, but her body’s will kept its freedom. She led the assault on the citadel, mounted on a senel that, being blind, had no fear of the dark.

  But she had not come to command these armies. The chief of the Olenyai had that honor here, and at his back the commander of the imperial armies—great lords and generals both, and far better versed than she in the arts of war. Her art was another altogether. She had come for that. The rest, little as the armies might have liked to know it, was diversion.

  As the rams rolled through the Gate, driving toward the gate of the citadel, she took a handful of mages and went in search of the postern that Daros’ message had promised. She damped the light about them, dimming it to nothing, calling up mage-sight to make her way through the dark. Glimmers of light from the battle cast a fitful glow on the sky, and limned in deeper shadow the curves and corners of the walls.

  There was war in heaven. The darkness overhead roiled and surged. The earth rumbled underfoot. The fabric of creation had begun to fray.

  Merian thrust down fear. Her companions had enough of their own; she must have courage for all of them. She pressed to the fore. The wall of the citadel stretched endless before her. It was wrought without mortar, stone fitted to stone with no gap between. There seemed to be no gate, either, but that which the armies beset, now far behind her.

  The way grew impossibly steep. They had to leave the seneldi; even afoot, they struggled on sheer slopes. Merian began to despair. If there was no way in but the one gate, even an assault of magery might not win them through soon enough. The dark was not yielding to the threefold attack upon it. Something, some force, had risen against them.

  She must come to the heart of the citadel. The heart of it all was there—and hope, if any at all was to be had.

  She halted on the narrow track, turning to face the rest, taking their measure one by one. If any could not bear the force of dark and fear, she would send him back now.

  They were all strong, all firm in resolve. Strongest and firmest of all was one who hung back, almost invisible even to mage-sight. Even as Merian’s eye fell on her, she raised power to blur it. Merian struck aside the working with a fierce slap of temper. “My lady!”

  The Lady Varani sighed, perhaps in relief, perhaps in resignation, and lowered the hood that had concealed her face. “Lady,” she said coolly.

  “I never summoned you here,” Merian said through set teeth, “nor would I have allowed it if you had asked. What possessed you to—”

  “My son is here,” Varani said. “Is there time to debate this, lady? If my ears tell me true, the enemy is holding all too well against your armies. His walls are strong and something else rises within. Something that—I fear—”

  Merian would not let her go on. “Go back. Now. Urziad, look after her. Don’t let her—”

  “With all due respect,” Varani said, “you need me here. There is a gate ahead. It’s well hidden, but I can sense it: there’s the dying glimmer of a beacon on it. Let Urziad and the rest go, if you must, but let me lead you. This art is mine, to find what I look for. Would you lose it out of folly?”

  “Out of policy,” said Merian
. “Your rank forbids—”

  “As yours does?”

  “Lady,” Kalyi said before Merian could erupt, “time’s passing. The enemy is not growing weaker. If we have to fight our way in, we’d best do it quickly, or we lose all element of surprise.”

  If indeed there had ever been any, Merian thought grimly. “Very well,” she said. “But if your death incites a civil war in the empire, I refuse to accept the blame.”

  “My lord will cast no blame on you,” Varani said. “That will be entirely mine.”

  “I do hope so,” said Merian.

  Varani had the grace not to be excessively satisfied with herself. She turned and led the way, surefooted in the dark, on that sheer track. The others, none mountain-born as she was, followed more cautiously. Merian elected to take the rear. Her heart was full of doubt: dangerous in a mage at war, deadly in a commander. If she had erred in giving the lead to Varani, she would lose it all, war and world both.

  The postern was indeed well hidden. Merian would have passed it by. But Varani halted, questing like a hound after a scent, and ran her hand along the bend of the wall. It yielded with a sound like a sigh, sank inward and froze.

  “Your key,” Varani said to Merian. “Here.”

  “What—”

  “You have that which opens all doors. Will you use it?”

  A riddle. Merian’s wits were thick and slow. Her power was not her own; nor, it seemed, was much of her intelligence. Much too sluggishly, she remembered the thing that burned incessantly in her hand. She set the Kasar to the door. The flare of white heat left her blind, dizzy and stunned.

  The door slid open. The passage within was black dark. Kalyi kindled a spark of magelight, a dim blue glow to light their feet. Sparks echoed it, a track laid by mages: vast relief to them all, and a glimmer of hope. Perel and his mages had prepared the way for them.

  Varani led. The others were there to shield and ward, and to keep watch for the enemy. Merian had nothing to do but follow and keep silent, and try not to stumble.