Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

“But Elani did!”

“Aye; in that, she was far my better. The worse for us, that she’s no more.”

Prossie heard all this with growing unhappiness. She had not consciously known that only Elani knew the portal spell, but somehow she felt none of the shock the Earthpeople felt; perhaps she had telepathically sensed the truth, on some subconscious level, back at Base One.

Still, it was very bad news.

And while Valadrakul was admitting his impotence, Carrie had received Prossie’s report and was relaying parts of it to General Hart and Under-Secretary Bascombe. Prossie suspected, from the flavor of Carrie’s thoughts, that it was not going over well.

That was no surprise. Hart and Bascombe did not want anyone coming home bearing tales of disaster and incompetence.

Well, it looked as if they might not have anything to worry about; without magic, it appeared that no one was going to leave this universe. The Empire’s own space-warp was up above treetop level, where they couldn’t get at it. Dibbs and his men were not going home any time very soon-and neither, that meant, was Prossie.

“Raven,” Amy demanded, “where can we find another wizard who knows the portal spell?”

“I’ve not the slightest notion,” Raven replied. “Wizardry is none of mine.”

“Valadrakul?” Pel asked.

The wizard frowned deeply, then winced as the movement affected his injured jaw.

“The brotherhood of magicians is scattered and broken in these sad times,” he said. “A handful survives here, another there, but we’ve no central councils, no trustworthy messengers, canny or otherwise. For the most part, we dare not use the greater lines of power, for those are Shadow’s. The portal spells are likewise Shadow’s; they were stolen from Shadow, and taught quickly to those few who could learn them well, who could draw down those strands from the web of powers; there was Elani, and likewise Taillefer, who served us betimes, but of others, I know not. ’Twas thought unwise that any should know too much of others’ skills, lest we be captured and questioned by Shadow.”

Prossie nodded slightly to herself; she had known that. While the wizards didn’t follow the system of revolutionary cells as carefully as the other members of the resistance did, they did keep plenty of secrets.

“This Taillefer,” Pel asked, “where can we find him?”

Valadrakul considered that carefully.

“You don’t know,” Amy said. “Do you?”

“Nay,” Valadrakul admitted, “I do not.”

The Earthpeople accepted that, but Prossie, watching Valadrakul carefully, wondered if the wizard might be concealing something. She was no expert at reading facial nuances, really, because she had never had to resort to such crude methods in her own universe, but still, something seemed wrong about Valadrakul’s answer.

Could she be remembering something she had learned from Valadrakul’s mind earlier, without realizing it?

“Well, damn it, if you can’t find him, we better start looking for him!” Amy shouted.

“You go right ahead,” Dibbs said. “Meanwhile, I’ll be rounding up my men and calling for pick-up. Wilkins, Moore, Dawber, I want you three to take a look around, see if you can spot any sign of where our missing men went. Stay in sight, we don’t know what’s out there; you see anything moving, you call it in, don’t play hero.”

“Right, Lieutenant,” Wilkins said. He picked a direction and started walking; the other two Dibbs had chosen followed him.

“Uh… permission to speak, sir?” Prossie said uneasily, glancing after the three.

“What is it, Thorpe?” Dibbs stepped away from the rest of the group, and Prossie followed.

“I’m not sure there’s going to be a pick-up, sir.”

“You aren’t,” Dibbs said. “Why not?”

Prossie hesitated, wishing she felt better and stronger; what she really wanted to do was curl up somewhere and rest, not argue.

But she had to warn Dibbs if she could.

The real reason she was fairly sure there would be no pick-up was that Bascombe had shown her once before that he felt no compunction about abandoning a failed mission, rather than risking further complications; the Under-Secretary had left Prossie and the rest of Joshua Cahn’s crew in jail on Earth without a second thought, and in that case there hadn’t even been evidence of incompetence or mismanagement, where the current expedition had been a disaster right from its inception.

Telling Lieutenant Dibbs this did not seem like a good idea, though. He didn’t like cynics-and for that matter, he didn’t like telepaths. A telepath accusing a superior of callous political gamesmanship was asking for trouble.

“Technical reasons, sir,” Prossie said.

Lying really wasn’t very hard at all, she was finding, despite all her years of training.

“Go on.”

“The Department of Science has confirmed earlier theories, sir-anti-gravity cannot operate outside normal space. This world we’re on is not in normal space; that’s why Christopher went down. And any rescue ship would lose all lift, too. We’d need a vehicle that can fly in the distorted space here, and Base One hasn’t got any. So they can’t pick us up.”

“You sure of that, Thorpe?”

Prossie hesitated. She had sinned once; she would resist the temptation this time. “It’s not relayed, sir, it’s my own conclusion,” she said.

Dibbs nodded slowly. “Got a reason they can’t just drop a rope through that space-warp up there, Telepath?” he asked sarcastically.

“No, sir,” Prossie answered truthfully. She had no idea whether a rope was possible or not. She could see no reason that it would not work, but then, she didn’t understand space-warp science. If the warp was as open as that, wouldn’t air from Faerie be boiling off into Imperial space right now?

She didn’t know. Maybe a rope would work.

But she was quite sure nobody would be sending one.

* * * *

“As you wish,” Raven said, with a tight little smile. “We’ll away, then, in pursuit of Taillefer. For that, we must make our way westward, as there lies the fastest route from these woods, to clear air where Valadrakul’s spells might best work, to summon his compatriot, that a portal to your Earth might be opened. An you be safely home, we’ll arrange a thousand of these ‘guns’ be sent. Then see we will whether the things of Shadow can withstand them!”

“You’ll not be marching hence to beard Shadow in its lair, then?” Stoddard asked. “If this be Sunderland, Shadow’s hold lies to the west.”

“Nay,” Raven answered. “What good of that, with a band such as this-fools and fainthearts and women, with only you and I and the wizard that would stand fast? We fare west only to be free of the forests.”

Stung by Raven’s words, Pel said, “It’s not my fight, you know-there’s nothing wrong with my running away. And I’ll do you a lot more good buying guns back home than getting myself eaten by monsters here.”

Raven turned to face the Earthman, caught sight of his battered and bloody appearance, and hesitated. Then he smiled ruefully. “True enow, friend Pel,” Raven admitted, “and you’ve my apology that I spoke ill of you.”

“Where are you going to get a thousand guns, Pel?” Amy asked. “And where are you going to get a thousand men to use them?”

“I’ll buy them,” Pel replied. “A few at a time.”

“I’ll help,” Susan said.

“And for men,” Raven said, “perhaps the Empire has better than our friends to offer.” He waved his bandaged hand at Dibbs and his men. Dibbs was talking quietly with Prossie; the others were chatting amongst themselves, leaving the Earthpeople and the natives alone.