Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

“Hi,” the Earthman said. “You two doing okay, back here?”

Prossie glanced at Amy, who was in no hurry to answer. She shrugged and said, “I’m fine, I guess; I’ve been thinking, and keeping Amy here company.”

“I’m okay,” Amy said. “At least, I think I am. Tired, but otherwise I’m okay.”

“Not throwing up any more?” Pel asked.

Amy grimaced at this grotesque lack of tact. “Not throwing up,” she said. “Not feeling real good, maybe, but not throwing up.”

“I’ve been thinking about this Shadow thing,” Pel said. “I think maybe I had a wrong idea about it.”

Amy had been staring at her own feet, willing them to keep moving; now she looked up at Pel. “What sort of wrong idea?” she asked.

“Well, I’d been thinking of it as really being this all-encompassing evil that Raven claims it is-a big supernatural force, like in a horror movie or something. Like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings.”

“Yeah, so? Maybe it is. Raven seems to think so.” She jerked her head in Valadrakul’s direction. “And we know there’s real magic here.”

“But if it were,” Pel said, “then would everything here look so normal, here in Shadow’s own territory?” He gestured at the evening sky, the darkening fields, the looming ruin atop the ridge.

“Normal,” Amy said, glaring at him. “The sun’s the wrong color and everyone talks funny and we all weigh about half a ton and I’m getting sick for no reason, and we’re going to meet a wizard, and you’re saying everything’s too normal for you?”

“No, I mean…I mean if this is Shadow’s country, shouldn’t the skies be dark?”

“They are getting dark,” Prossie pointed out.

“No, I mean all the time,” Pel persisted. “Shouldn’t it be a wasteland, all smoke and ash?”

Amy stared at him, then shook her head. “You’re being silly, Pel,” she said. “This isn’t some stupid movie, like that one, ‘Wizards’…did you ever see that? It was an animated film…”

“I saw it,” Pel said. “That’s the sort of thing I was thinking of. I mean, we’ve fallen into a story like that, haven’t we? Wizards and Galactic Empires and all the rest of it, it’s all a story-so why isn’t the bad guy acting the part?”

“How do you know he isn’t?” Amy said. “How do you know who the bad guy is? This isn’t a story, Pel; this is real life.”

“Then you don’t think Shadow’s really evil?”

“I didn’t say that,” Amy protested. “I don’t know anything about Shadow. It could be just as bad as Raven says.”

“But then why doesn’t the countryside show it?” Pel asked, waving an arm at the farms behind them.

Amy sighed. “Pel,” she said, “suppose someone popped you through a magical portal into some nice, quiet rural area in Germany in 1943-would the skies be dark? Would the landscape be all twisted and evil?”

Pel frowned. “I guess not,” he said. “Not necessarily, anyway, if it was someplace that wasn’t getting bombed, and away from the camps. But Hitler wasn’t a wizard, there wasn’t anything supernatural about him.”

“So maybe Shadow isn’t supernatural evil incarnate,” Amy said. “So it’s not Sauron. It could still be Hitler.”

“Or it could be nothing much. Maybe it’s Raven who’s Hitler-or Napoleon returning from Elba.”

“And it could be that we don’t have any idea what’s going on, and we shouldn’t worry about it, we should just all go home,” Amy replied, exasperated.

Pel looked uncomfortable and didn’t answer. Instead he turned away, and the party continued silently up the ridge in the gathering twilight.

“And where is he, then?” Stoddard demanded, directing his question equally to Raven and Valadrakul.

Valadrakul shrugged. “I know not,” he replied. “He gave the sign for nightfall, I am certain; thus, I understood he would be here by nightfall.”

“He will come, I am certain,” Raven said.

“Night has fallen,” Stoddard pointed out, gesturing at the darkening sky overhead. Stars were beginning to appear.

Pel, standing a step or two away from the Faerie folk, looked up at the sky and shuddered.

The stars were wrong. The constellations were strange, and the patterns and groupings just didn’t seem natural. He remembered what Valadrakul had said once, that the stars here were not unimaginably-distant spheres of gas, burning by atomic fusion, as they were at home; instead, they were mere thousands of miles away, and burned by magic.

That shouldn’t really make any difference, he told himself. After all, that was what people had believed back on Earth, for thousands of years. They had learned better, eventually.

But Valadrakul said that the wizards here had gone up and looked, that they knew the stars were small and near.

Something dark moved across the sky, and Pel blinked. He stared.

Then, as he watched, the dark object suddenly flared into light, and Pel saw that it was a man, a man holding a staff, and the end of the staff was ablaze with something that wasn’t quite flame and wasn’t quite sparks.

“We must give him time,” Valadrakul was saying. “Perchance some delay has befallen…”

“’Scuse me,” Pel said loudly, “but is that him?” He pointed.

Raven and most of the others whirled, or at any rate snapped their heads around quickly; Stoddard turned more deliberately.

“Aye,” Valadrakul said, “’tis him; Taillefer a’ Norleigh.” He raised a hand, and a yellow glow shone from his palm, casting a weak and uneasy light over the entire party as they huddled in the ruined castle.

The flying figure was approaching rapidly; now, seeing the light, the man waved, and adjusted his course to head more directly for Raven’s party.

“Can you fly?” Pel asked Valadrakul.

Startled, the wizard glanced at him, then turned his attention back to his incoming compatriot.

“Aye,” he said, “an some, though none so well as yonder.”

“I haven’t seen you do it,” Pel said.

“I’ve had no need,” Valadrakul answered.

Pel’s mouth opened, then closed.

No need, perhaps, but wouldn’t flight have been useful against Shadow’s hellbeasts? Wouldn’t it have been useful in scouting ahead, in finding food and water, in ensuring that at least one member of the party would be at the ruin by nightfall? Pel could see a dozen ways in which flying might have been convenient, yet Valadrakul’s feet had always remained firmly on the ground.

If nothing else, wouldn’t it be a way to avoid blisters and aching feet? Pel’s own feet were certainly suffering, and he assumed that Valadrakul’s hurt, too.

Still, he reminded himself that he shouldn’t pry. It wasn’t any of his business. If Valadrakul didn’t care to fly, he presumably had a reason; there might be a cost he didn’t want to pay, or some danger inherent in it.

Or maybe, despite his claim, he just couldn’t fly, any more than he could open the interdimensional portals; wizardry was obviously not all a single skill. There was nothing wrong in that, either, and Pel could hardly question Valadrakul’s power or value, since the wizard’s magic had saved Pel’s life when the hellbeasts had attacked.

And then Taillefer was coming in for a landing, not in a slow upright descent like a movie superhero, but in a headlong tumbling plunge; at Raven’s direction Stoddard and the four Imperial troopers were preparing to catch him, Stoddard at the point of a V, the soldiers two on either side of the big Faerie native, obviously a bit unsure of what they were doing.

“I’d aid, as well, an I could,” Raven said, holding up his bandaged hand, and calling to the others. “Friend Pel, here, stand you ready by the side. Ted Deranian, would take this side with me, and be my other hand? And the women, though you be frailer, stand to the rear and watch, lest any fall.”