Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

Sawyer hesitated. “Whatever you guys decide,” he said.

“Then we go,” Wilkins concluded.

* * * *

Amy listened to Pel and Raven argue, listened to the soldiers make their decision. When Susan said she would go with Pel, Amy felt as if something had fallen out from beneath her insides somewhere-how could Susan say that without even a glance at Amy, to see what she thought? Susan was betraying her.

No, she wasn’t, Amy corrected herself; Susan was looking after herself. She wasn’t really a friend, after all-they’d been acting like friends for weeks, but that was because they were the only two American women around; they didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Susan wasn’t really her friend, Susan was her attorney ; she had to remember that.

And Susan was right, anyway; they had to go to Shadow. If Taillefer was right, if Amy was really carrying Walter’s child-she thought she must be, she realized now that she hadn’t had her period since early in her captivity on Zeta Leo III, and a baby would have to be Walter’s, she hadn’t been with another man in almost a year-then she had to get home, back to a civilized world, where she could abort it, or put it up for adoption, or do something. She didn’t want her dead rapist’s child. And she didn’t want to go through pregnancy and labor and childbirth in this stupid primitive world, this place out of some horrible old fairy tale where for all she knew leeches were the latest thing in medical care.

And she wasn’t a young woman, she had no business having a first child at her age-she was used to being childless, she liked it, she didn’t want a child.

And if she did, she wouldn’t want it to be by that sadistic bastard Walter.

She had to go to Shadow with Pel, even if it meant risking death, because just staying in this world meant risking death. She could catch a plague, she could die of something in the water, she could bleed to death.

She had to get home, by any means possible.

“I’ll come,” she said.

* * * *

Prossie had begun to drift away into her own thoughts again, but when she heard all the different voices speaking up, saying whether they would accompany Pel Brown, she listened, she thought back to what she had heard without paying attention.

Going to confront Shadow-that was insane! She had seen and heard memories, back at Base One, from Raven and Valadrakul and Elani and Stoddard; even allowing for added coloration, she knew from those memories that Shadow was cruel and ruthless, willing to commit atrocities to further its ends or remove those who opposed it.

But they were all going along-Susan and Amy and Bill Marks and all of them. If she didn’t agree, she would be left behind, with Raven and the wizards, the only foreigner among them.

That would be awful.

And maybe she could convince the others to turn back. Maybe they would come to their senses.

“I’ll go,” she said.

If she hadn’t been trained since childhood not to venture her own opinions, she would have added, But I don’t like it.

* * * *

Raven watched with annoyance as voice after voice spoke up, hand after hand raised, agreeing to accompany Pel Brown on his mad errand.

He didn’t really have any great need for this oddly-assorted group, but he was reluctant to let them go heedlessly and needlessly to their deaths without some further attempt to save them, perhaps to win some benefit from all this disastrous series of events.

And of course, the lot of them might come to their senses when they learned just what they had taken upon themselves. When they saw Shadow’s fortress, and realized that none could penetrate it to confront Shadow itself, the survivors might well be valuable additions to the forces of resistance.

They might also, in their madness, learn something useful of Shadow’s defenses-surely not enough to allow them to enter Shadow’s keep, but something that could be turned to use someday, by those wiser and mightier than themselves.

“All of you are fools,” he said, “and I feel I must accompany you as far as I dare, that I might do what I can to save you from your folly.

* * * *

Taillefer watched with mounting astonishment as one after another in the party announced his or her intention of bearding Shadow in its lair, of marching in wide-eyed innocence to certain destruction.

When even Raven and a reluctant Valadrakul agreed to go along, at least for some part of the way, Taillefer flung his hands up.

“May the Goddess preserve me!” he shouted. “You have, every one of you, lost your senses! I’d call on the Goddess to save you all, if I thought it possible even for Her! And as ’tis not, I’ll take my leave of you all, lest this madness be catching! Go, then, and die, and I’ll pray for your souls!” He spread his arms and spoke the Word of Power he had prepared, and the wind rose, filling his cloak.

He felt the air pressing him upward, felt the currents of power beneath this place, power that led to Shadow, he knew, but power that he could turn to his own ends, at least for now. He drew upon it to conjure the wind that roared about him.

He grew lighter and lighter, until at last the air, and the magical power behind it, lifted him off his feet.

A moment later the others watched as the wizard literally blew away, up into the sky, bound for his distant home.

“You’re sure there’s no magic ring, or mystic gem, or something?” Pel asked Raven as they walked down the western slope, away from the thorn-covered ruins of Castle Regisvert, and down into a broad green valley. Grey clouds hung on the horizon before them, but where they walked the sun shone warmly. A bird sang somewhere in the distance, and the rich scents of late spring filled the air. “Maybe Shadow keeps its heart in a bowl somewhere, or something like that?” he suggested.

Raven shook his head. “I’ve heard naught, in all my days, of any such device. Shadow draws its power from the magic that flows through earth and sky, and weaves that into its web; it needs no rings nor jewelry, any more than does our own Valadrakul.”

“Does Valadrakul weave these same currents, then?” Pel inquired, looking back at the wizard.

“Indeed, he draws ’pon them,” Raven agreed, “though not as Shadow does; Valadrakul and the other free wizards, as they tell me, make their magic but from the crumbs that fall from Shadow’s table, as it were. They weave no webs outside their own bodies, hold no elaborate traceries at the ready, own no patterns save those in their own minds, but instead pluck away what they can when chance allows, and shape the magicks within themselves.” He hesitated, then added, “Ah, in truth, I’ve most probably made nonsense of it, for ’tis none of mine that we speak of here, friend Pel. If you’d have it right, you’d best speak with Valadrakul, and not myself.”

Pel nodded, and dropped back a pace to where the wizard walked.

Valadrakul turned and stared silently at the Earthman as they marched a dozen steps farther down the highway.

Pel realized that this was the first time he had deliberately and directly addressed Valadrakul in normal conversation, and he wasn’t sure just how to begin. At last, though, he said, “You’re a wizard, right?”

Wilkins, a few feet away, snickered.

“Have you not seen for yourself, Pellinore Brown?” Valadrakul replied.

“I suppose, yeah,” Pel admitted. Wilkins snorted, but Pel ignored him. “So tell me about wizards.”

Valadrakul blinked, then smiled crookedly. “You’d have me open to you all the secrets of my kind, the mysteries we hold dear, the teachings I struggled for a dozen years to absorb, here as we walk? Think you, perhaps, that what you ask might not be so simple as that?”