by William King
Conscription, Tamara told them. Every able bodied serf had been pressed into service. Normally a certain percentage was exempt or could buy exemptions, but not this time. It was a mark of how seriously this war was being taken. This was to be the final conflict between East and West. Many of the peasants thought that the end of the world was upon them and that soon the Saints would come to judge humanity and send the deserving to the Light and the wicked to the Shadow.
Rik could understand how they could think that. The undead were everywhere, and more and more people were dying every day. Those that were not burned would often rise again and lope off into the West seeking to answer some dreadful summons. The plague was not sparing the Sardeans but so far it had only struck humans. He wondered if he would prove to be immune. That would be the true test of his Terrarch heritage.
He had heard so much of the suspicion of the Sardeans for outsiders that he was surprised how easy their progress had been. They were not challenged as they moved through the vast empty plains, and the few living souls that saw them tended to avoid them as much as they themselves tried to avoid other people. It was as if a whole nation shuddered with fear and shame, and sought to avoid the company of others for fear of its mark becoming visible on their brow.
There were things he saw that sometimes moved him to wonder: vast rivers crossed by wooden bridges along which monstrous barges sailed, doubtless bearing supplies to the armies marching West; ancient towns whose temple spires seemed like lances aimed at heaven. Sometimes the sound of distant hymns and bells drifted on the wind, ghostly reminders that there will still godly people in the world, even if their worship took a different form from the one in which he himself had been brought up in.
Once they came across a madman standing at a crossroads ranting at them and accusing them of being dead. He thought himself the only living man left in the world, and they ghosts come to torment him. From his ravings Rik worked out that the plague had struck here in Sardea and recently. Its effects had not been limited merely to Taloreans and Kharadreans. It was not some scourge of the Eastern God sent to scour the earth of heretics. It was something stranger and more vile, a disease used as a weapon by beings who did not care how many they killed, for whom mass death was only part of the process that would leave them in possession of a world, and able to remake it in their own image.
When Rik thought about that, he found hot searing hate in his heart. What sort of people would do this, he wondered? And the answer that came back was not reassuring; people so certain of their fitness to own the world that they would take any steps to make it so. In some ways such thinking was the logical extension of the doctrine that gave the Terrarchs the right to rule over humanity. People might choose to attribute such things to the Princes of Shadow and the power they served, but he knew that the possibility of such actions was bred into every Terrarch and quite possibly every human as well, if only they had the power.
As they travelled Tamara had continued to school him in the basics of the Shadowblood’s art, while Asea listened with a mixture of wariness and fascination. She had a professional’s interest in all forms of magic, and had most likely rarely had the chance to study something so far outside her range of proficiency. And Tamara was a good teacher; patient, calm and with a gift for expounding her points clearly.
Rik found her fascinating company, a charming, witty and intelligent woman with something haunted in her eyes and ferocious in her manner. There were times when he felt sure that this too was not just another mask, when he saw the cruelty that was in her when she spoke of the peasants and humans, or when she became again the giddy young Lady from the East. Perhaps it was simply that she had a multitude of people in her, that they were all facets of her personality which sparkled depending on which one was in the ascendant.
It was something he could sympathise with. The voices whispered within him, hungrily. The more he learned of shadow magic, the more they did that.
Sardec did not like the look of things. Some of the children were coughing and feverish. Rena looked pale and far more sweat beaded her forehead than even the hard route through the hills called for. Toadface too looked weak, shuffling along like an old man with the ague. A few other soldiers looked in a bad way. They’d been walking for days now and they did not seem to have made any progress.
“What do you think?” Sardec asked Weasel. He had taken him to one side, off the track so that no one could overhear their conversation. He knew what was on everyone’s mind, but no one was prepared to say it.
“Doesn’t look good, sir. Half the force is sickening and I don’t think it’s with the flux. They’re showing the symptoms of the plague. I would not be surprised if they broke out in spots soon. After that we might be burning a few corpses or else be looking at planting a few dead men.”
Sardec nodded grimly. That exactly agreed with his own assessment of the situation. He did not see that there was anything to be done about it. If Asea had been here, he would have asked her to try her magic, but she was not, and there was no sense in wishing otherwise.
“We’re running short of food as well, sir. The Barbarian and me are doing our best, but game is scarce and these hills are pretty barren. It would be hard enough to feed half-a-dozen of us on what we get let alone this whole crew. If we had some of the old Foragers with us we might do a bit better but some of the new lads are not so good at scrounging and the kids and the women are no use at all.”
“You’re not suggesting we abandon them, are you?” Weasel shrugged.
“It’s more of a choice between them starving quick or starving slow, in any case. Hunger will be like torture for them if we don’t get more supplies soon. There’s no way around it, sir.”
“You said there’s a town not too far from here.”
“The Barbarian spotted it when we were scouting this morning. Place looks dead and it would not surprise me to find corpses walking in the street. Parts of it are in ruins. Fire would be my guess. Don’t know whether it was put to the torch or it was an accident. The result’s the same in any case.”
Sardec weighed Weasel’s words and came to a decision. They needed to investigate the town. They might find food there and there was a remote possibility of finding a magician who might be able to help the sick. If Rena was coming down with the plague, Sardec was prepared to take any risk if there was any chance of saving her. He could not see what further purpose would be served by skulking in the hills anyway. It looked like the Sardean army had bypassed them.
“I think we should investigate the town. At very least we might be able to pick up some supplies there.”
“What if the locals are not friendly or they’ve gone over to the Dark Empire. We were none too popular when we passed through this country before, sir. I doubt the natives have come to love us any better now that the Sardeans are swarming all over their country and the walking dead are everywhere.”
“We’ll just have to keep our eyes open and deal with those contingencies if they arise, won’t we, Sergeant?”
“If you say so, sir. If you like the Barbarian and I could scout ahead and try and get a feel for the place. He’ll need someone with a brain with him to keep him out of trouble.”
“I need you here now, but you could send him with Toadface or Handsome Jan.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rik stood by the abandoned mansion in which they had taken refuge and listened to the sounds of the night. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted and something moved through the underbrush, perhaps a fox in pursuit of prey. He felt alone, like the last man in the world, for once not even the voices in his head troubled him.
Tamara touched him lightly on the arm. “We’d best proceed if we are going to get these lessons finished by a respectable hour. People are already starting to talk.”
He could tell from the tone of her voice that she was making a joke, but she was also impatient for some reason to begin. He knew he should be ete
rnally suspicious around her but he found he was incapable of it. He suspected that it was just that she had a talent for teaching and was pleased to be able to use it, although as ever that seemed far too mundane a notion when applied to Tamara to be really plausible to anyone else but himself.
They made their way along a path, deeper into the surrounding wood. Rik glanced around to make sure they were not about to be ambushed.
Tamara moved quietly ahead, pausing occasionally to take deep breaths of the night air. Odd scents were there, unfamiliar blooms that grew in these lands but not in his own mixed with more familiar fragrances such as bitterblooms and witch roses. Overhead the moon beamed down through the leaves, its ancient face a skull.
They found a quiet spot in a clearing where some large boulders emerged from the earth, and Rik set the lantern down on top of one of them. Tamara looked thoughtful for a moment. “On a night like tonight who would believe the Servants of Shadow are abroad in our world or that the dead walk the surface of the earth.”
Rik could have done without that reminder of potential danger but he could see what she was getting at. There was a stillness and beauty to the night that moved him, and it came to him that even if the whole world fell to the Shadow that places like this would still remain, and that there would still be mountains and deep forests and seas untainted by evil. At that moment it seemed to him that evil was a very human concept, that it was a property unique to living beings to see things in those terms.
Somewhere nearby a mouse screamed as an owl dropped upon and broke its back. Perhaps he was wrong. The natural world was savage in its own way, and perhaps the Princes of Shadow would say that they were just owls preying on mice.
He had heard people argue that way before, robbers in Sorrow among them, just as he had heard others argue that it was the duty of the strong to prey on the weak, to winnow them out from the race. Those were easy arguments to make when you saw yourself as the strong one. Most such people never seemed to imagine there was someone stronger than themselves.
“You’re right,” he said to Tamara, bringing his mind back to the present. “I suppose in the end even the Princes of Shadow will pass. “
“Apparently they have not managed to do so on Al’Terra yet. They still seek new worlds to conquer.”
“Would it make a great deal of difference if they did?” he asked suddenly. “For most people in this world, I mean?”
“Did Asea put you up to asking that, to test me?”
“No. I came up with it all by myself. I am curious about what you think, that’s all. Would rule by the Princes be so different for most folk than the present regime?”
“I don’t see how you of all people can ask that? They propose to use humans as cattle.”
Rik felt a sourness rising up in himself. “People die anyway, of illness, of overwork, will the method of their death really make much difference?”
“I suppose that depends on whether you believe they have a soul, and whether having that soul eaten by a cosmic vampire is a fate worse than death.”
“It’s possible that people don’t have souls. That thanatomancy works simply by extracting nutrition from their bodies in a way analogous to the way we gain nutrition by eating food.”
“Is that what the voices in your head tell you?”
“Perhaps — but I suspect that I came up with that by myself too.”
“It might work that way, but then again it might not.”
“Looked at on a cosmic scale does it really make that much difference? One being will not live for a very long time. The other will pass in its normal span or something close to it anyway.”
“You are in a strange mood tonight, Rik,” said Tamara. She sounded wary. “Are you saying that you want to join with the Princes?”
“No. I am not. I hate them for what they have done. I hate what they are doing. I hate the fact that they have killed friends of mine by their actions and would kill me if they could. I am just wondering whether, in the long term, opposing them will make any difference.”
“I am not sure whether that’s a question that’s even worth asking?”
“What do you mean?”
“As far as we are concerned we can only affect what happens in our time.”
“You are not concerned with future generations then?”
“That’s a very human way of thinking, Rik. Take into account that I am a Terrarch. It’s possible my life will be scores of human generations.”
“That is not a problem I think I will have,” he replied.
“You do not know that. In any case, we should leave the philosophical discussions to one side for the moment and consider other things. I believe that you are ready to shadow-walk. You have mastered the basics.”
Excitement filled Rik. He had long envied her the gift that let her come and go seemingly unstoppably and without passing through the space between. The former thief in him appreciated how useful that talent could be and all the manifold uses he could put it to.
“I am willing to try,” he said.
“You should just do,” she said. “The secret and the ability is in your blood. It should come to you like breathing does to a baby.”
“After a sharp smack on the bottom?” he asked.
“Spare me the feeble jokes,” she said. “This is not the time. Of all the things I have to teach you, this is the one you most need to master. It is a power that may save your life and mine in the days to come.”
The seriousness of her tone affected him and he gave his full attention to what she said. He let himself relax and reach out with the other senses she had taught him to access. The night grew quieter, as if he had only a limited store of awareness available to his brain, and what he gained by concentrating in one area, he lost in another. The shadows became clearer to his sight and more than that, he became aware in some strange way, of what they contained. They were more vivid to him than objects he could see. He perceived them as if by an odd admixture of sight and touch, a mingled awareness of their weight and mass as of their shape and size.
He found that if he concentrated, he could pool his perceptions within one shadow, and become aware in much greater detail of all that was within it, although at a loss of his awareness of what was going on in the surrounding shadows. It was like concentrating on something through a magnifying glass. He was still conscious vaguely of what was happening elsewhere, as a man would be of objects moving in his peripheral vision. With an effort he could wrench his perceptions from shadow to shadow, moving it further and further away until he reached the limit of his ability perhaps a few hundred strides away.
He allowed his mind to jump to the fireside where Asea and Karim huddled over the rabbits they were stewing. He was aware of their conversation in part as if he was overhearing it and in part as if the very outlines of the words in the air were pressed into his thoughts. In some ways it was an experience similar to the ones he had undergone when he had taken some of the wizards drugs that Asea had given him.
Asea shivered as Rik concentrated his awareness on her, and Rik wondered if her sorcerer’s senses were so keen that she knew that she was under supernatural observation. According to what Tamara had told him, some people had a talent for that. Why not? Rik himself could detect a shadowgate being opened.
Rik wrenched his awareness back closer to hand. Aware that Tamara was shaking him by the shoulder and talking loudly in his ear.
“You’ve got to be careful of that,” she said. “You can get lost in the seeking, and waste hours shifting your consciousness from shadow to shadow.”
“How long was I out?”
“A few minutes.” It had happened before but not for so long, and Rik could see the danger at which she hinted. He had no idea how much time had passed since he had started the process, but he would not have guessed it was that long. It seemed there were subtle dangers in shadow magic, and that it was like a drug in more ways than one.
“Now,” said Tamara, “concentra
te on the shadow beneath that tree on the far side of the clearing.” Rik did so, throwing his perception forward to the deep pool of darkness Tamara had indicated. Immediately he was aware of the shape of the ground around him, and mass of the tree above.
It was like being two people, divided, with one part of him living breathing flesh standing beside Tamara, the other a shadow outline in the place he perceived, and it came to him then that it was so. Somehow he had sent his shadow into the distance. He knew that if he looked down at his feet now, there would be no shadow there.
“Good,” Tamara said, her voice seeming to come from a great distance away.” You have completed the first part of the sending. Now you must complete the second. You must open the way.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked. Forcing each word from his lips was like lifting a very heavy weight. He would not have believed how much the effort would cost him if he had not experienced it.
“Let yourself feel the space around your shadow-self. Be aware of it, as you would be of water around your hand if it were plunged into a pool.”
“I am doing that.”
“If you concentrate hard, you will become aware of something else, of a sensation of things underlying what you can feel, of a somehow distant chillness.”
He was immediately conscious of what she meant. It was as if his shadow were on the outside of something, part of the final layer of skin on an onion, and he was aware of something beneath, a different space, a tunnel into elsewhere. It was like rapping with his hand on a secret panel and becoming aware of the echo beneath. He could feel the energy there as he sometimes could when he was working sorcery.
“Do you have it?” Tamara asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“Tear a hole between your shadow self and the shadow realm.”
“Are you sure that is wise?”
“Wise or not, it’s the only way you will open the gate.”