Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

Pel stepped up, taking a position behind Wilkins and Sawyer, not at all sure what he was doing; then, before anyone else could react, before anyone could ask any questions, Taillefer came plummeting into the wide end of the V, headed straight toward Stoddard.

“Catch you him!” Raven and Valadrakul called in near-perfect unison, as Stoddard stepped forward, arms out and knees bent, and the four soldiers thrust out their hands.

The flying wizard hit Stoddard hard; Pel could see that he had curled up as best he could, and Stoddard had positioned himself to have an arm under each shoulder, but still, Taillefer’s head drove into Stoddard’s belly hard enough to knock the wind out of the big man. The wizard’s legs flew up, and the Imperials grabbed at them.

And then Stoddard and Taillefer and Singer were all in a heap on the broken flagstone floor of the ruin, and the others were all crowding around at once, trying to help them up.

All except Amy, that is, who was leaning against a broken wall, looking sick.

* * * *

The ruins had been a castle. That had not been obvious at all until they actually reached the outer wall and fought their way through the entangling vines, but once they were inside, even Amy could see that the structure had once had a central mass, an encircling wall, and guardian towers at the corners.

It had obviously never been a graceful fairy castle like the one at Disney World, or the one that crazy Bavarian king had built on a mountaintop; from the look of it, this had been a practical and very ugly fortress, with thick walls of heavy gray stone, few windows, and little in the way of comforts or ornamentation.

Whatever it had been, however, not much remained. The curtain wall, as Raven called it, was broken down into rubble in several places; the courtyard was overgrown with weeds and thornbushes; the roof was gone entirely, the supporting arches and columns broken off short. The great hall had one side missing, the other three jagged remnants.

Oddly, the tower at one end still stood, apparently almost intact, though it was hard to be sure through the thick layer of ivy that covered it. That tower, and the adjoining mass of stonework, had been what they had seen from afar, what they had steered for.

When they had reached it, though, no one had shown any inclination to enter the tower or most of the rest of the structure; they had simply gathered in the ruined hall, where the remains of a stone floor had kept the undergrowth from getting out of hand.

When the men had begun arguing about why Taillefer wasn’t there yet, Amy had almost suggested that perhaps he was, maybe he was in the tower somewhere-but then she had thought better of it. She didn’t want anyone to go in there; she didn’t want the group to be split up into search parties. She just sat down and waited; if this Taillefer was in there, he’d come out sooner or later.

And he hadn’t been in there; instead he’d come falling out of the sky. Amy had stood up when Raven called for help, but the move had upset her delicate stomach-except her stomach had never been delicate back on Earth.

It was delicate now; she struggled to keep down the supper they had stolen from that poor woman and her children, and as the wizard tumbled into the others and knocked them sprawling, like some horribly unfunny clown act, Amy stood by, off to the side, making no move to help. As she watched the men get to their feet she thought it was a miracle that nobody had broken any bones, and that Stoddard hadn’t gotten a concussion from whacking his head on the stones.

At least, she hoped no one had a concussion; in the sickly yellow glow from Valadrakul’s hand and Taillefer’s staff, none of the faces looked particularly healthy.

“And look what the wind’s blown us,” Raven called cheerfully, using his good hand to help Taillefer up. “Come you, one and all, and greet him who is come to aid us in our hour of need!”

Amy stayed in her place by the wall; she didn’t want to bother greeting the new arrival. With any luck, he’d be creating a portal back to Earth in a few minutes, and she could go home and make an appointment with her doctor and never see Taillefer or any of these other people again.

She couldn’t help looking at them, though.

Taillefer was short for a man, no more than her own height, and fat-not really obese, but thick and rounded everywhere, the sort of fat that Amy associated with the word “stout.” He was dressed in black, a long fur-trimmed coat over a black tunic and black tights, with gold rings on his fingers, and more gold rings on the carved five-foot staff of dark wood he held in one hand. The rings on his fingers looked ordinary enough, but the gold bands on the staff were glowing dully.

Wizardry at work, Amy supposed. She didn’t much care any more; she just wanted it all to be over. At this point she found it more amazing that he hadn’t whacked anyone with the staff when he came plunging down out of the sky than that the gold fittings glowed.

And why had he done that plunge, anyway? Why hadn’t he just landed by himself? This was the wizard they were trusting to send them home, she thought sourly, a magician who couldn’t land on his own two feet?

Singer helped Taillefer brush off the dust, then slapped at the dark smudges on his own uniform; the purple fabric looked dark and ominous in the yellow light.

Amy shuddered. She was starting to get the creeps. Pel had been complaining about how Shadow’s country didn’t look evil enough; what about this place, then, this ruined castle, with its dark stone walls and black shadows and nasty thorns and vines growing everywhere? In the entire place she hadn’t seen a single flower, or an honest blade of ordinary grass. What about right here, where even the silly Imperial uniforms could look threatening?

But that was the peculiar light, and that came from the two wizards, who were supposed to be on the good guys’ side.

“The blessings of the Goddess to you all,” Taillefer said, in a surprisingly high-pitched tenor and with an accent distinctly different from the peculiar Australian-New York intonation of the other Faerie folk Amy had met. “My brother Valadrakul, I greet you; for the rest, come, let us know one another! Pray, someone among you, make us a light, that my fellow wizard can cool his hand, and I my staff.”

“I’ll fetch something,” Stoddard said; he turned away and began looking for dead brush.

While he and the Imperials set about building a fire, Raven stepped up to Taillefer and announced, “I am called Raven of Stormcrack Keep, and I welcome you to this place, whatever it might be.” He held out a hand.

Taillefer clasped the hand and smiled. “Ah, Lord Raven, as you would surely have it,” he said, “I’ve heard much of you. But know you not what this place is, then? Did not my brother in the arcane arts tell you that much?” He turned to look at Valadrakul.

“I saw no need,” Valadrakul said, “and we’d more urgent concerns.”

“Indeed, I dare say you did, yet ’tis worthy of note where we meet, is’t not?” Taillefer grinned in a way Amy did not find comforting.

“Where are we, then?” Raven asked, a trifle annoyed. Stoddard looked up from the armful of brush he and the Imperials had collected.

“Why, this is Castle Regisvert, none other!” Taillefer’s grin broadened, then slipped somewhat as most of his audience failed to react.

Stoddard and Raven reacted, however; Stoddard’s face went blank, as if he had just decided not to believe what he was being told, and he continued stacking the firewood.

Raven started, then looked about at the ruins with new interest. “Truly, say you?” he asked.

“Aye, truly,” Taillefer said.

Prossie and the four Earthpeople still didn’t respond, since none of them had ever heard of any Castle Regisvert. Two of the Imperials paused in their efforts.