Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

He could hardly disbelieve in Susan’s death, when the poor little Vietnamese lawyer’s corpse was lying right there.

He hadn’t known Susan well; he suspected almost nobody had. She had been so quiet, so reserved, so determinedly self-sufficient-and so brave, to attack Shadow like that.

Pel felt a certain shame at that. He had been trying to make deals with Shadow, trying to get himself home, or to get Nancy and Rachel resurrected-but wasn’t it Shadow who had been responsible for their deaths, who was responsible, in a way, for his being here in the first place? It was Raven who had brought Pel through the portal into Faerie, but it was Shadow who had driven Raven to it, who had first made contact with other universes and made that contact a hostile one, of spies and saboteurs and plans for war. It was Shadow who was responsible for the disembowelled corpses in every town and village, for the dead soldiers dangling above her castle door.

And Susan, the survivor, the one who simply lived through whatever life through at her, had done a brave thing and tried to kill Shadow, and Pel hadn’t helped her, he had protested.

How could he have done that?

At the time it had seemed perfectly reasonable, but now he was ashamed and angry at himself, and angry at Shadow.

Shadow was a monster. She might be his teacher, she might look like a bored housewife, but she was a monster, a ruthless conqueror, even, it might be argued, a genocide, the exterminator of her own kind, the other matrix wizards.

And she held limitless power; he had tasted a little of it himself, and he knew how dangerous she was.

If anyone had ever deserved to die, Shadow did; as long as she lived, no one in Faerie was safe-and now, no one in the Galactic Empire, and Earth would presumably follow.

And quite aside from preventing further deaths, or any abstract interest in justice, Pel wanted revenge. Geas or no, he wanted vengeance-for Susan, for Raven and Singer and Valadrakul, for Nancy and Rachel, and for all the others.

And he intended to have it.

The throne room was full of people, but eerily silent. No one coughed, no one spoke; they all simply stood there as Shadow’s patterns of light and color played across them. Amy stopped in the doorway and looked uneasily in, her eyes adjusting to the glare, her ears starting to ring with the odd sensation of pressure that Shadow’s presence usually provoked.

The unmoving people were more of Shadow’s black-clad servants, dozens of them. Amy was more certain than ever that whatever they were, they weren’t really human.

Prossie stopped behind her, but Ted ambled on past them and began pushing his way through the crowd.

“Come you,” Shadow called, and the servants shoved back against each other, opening a path. Watching them move, Amy noticed for the first time that they all wore belts bearing sheathed swords.

What was that about?

Uneasily, Amy followed Ted, Prossie trailing behind, and the three of them made their way to a wide clear space before Shadow’s throne.

Shadow’s glory was relatively restrained just now, so they were not blinded, and they could vaguely see a human outline within the glimmering matrix. Pel was standing to one side of Shadow’s seat, partially obscured by the shifting colors. In front of the throne was an area of open floor about twenty feet across; all the rest of the vast chamber seemed to be jammed full of servants-homunculi, walking dead, whatever they were, there were hundreds of them, all of them outwardly human.

There were no obvious monsters anywhere to be seen, which struck Amy as a bit odd. Shadow used so many monsters outside her fortress, and in that huge entrance hall; didn’t she use them in here?

“Welcome,” Shadow said, as Amy stepped into the open area.

Amy stopped.

“You see before you,” Shadow announced, “my personal bodyguard. Never in this realm have I had any need of such, but I go now to visit thy land, Telepath, where my magicks cannot protect me.”

Amy glanced around at the expressionless faces. That explained the swords, anyway-Shadow didn’t have any guns to give her guards. And Shadow’s monsters couldn’t live in Imperial space, which explained their absence, as well.

“In a moment,” Shadow continued, “your companion, Pellinore the Brown, will open a portal to a small, pleasant world in the Galactic Empire; my escort will precede me thereunto, and make ready my way. And likewise, you two Earthpeople will step through.”

Amy started. “Why?” she asked. “Why aren’t you sending us home?”

“Because,” Shadow explained, “though I have taken what precautions seemed good to me, yet am I wary that our good Messire Brown may not act for love of me. Thou and this madman shall serve me as hostages for his good behavior-an he faults in any way upon my desires, shalt first the madman, and then thyself, be slain.”

Amy felt tears stinging her eyes. This just went on and on, world after world, but never Earth. “What about Prossie?” she asked.

“The telepath? Nay, nay, I’m not such a fool as that; an she came, the Empire’s soldiers would know my plans and my whereabouts in a trice, and they’d not be troubled by the loss of a handful of you, nor greatly slowed by my swordsmen. I’d flee safely hither, but ’twould be a misfortune best avoided. She’s to stay here.”

Amy blinked at the indeterminate shape on the throne, and at Pel, there beside it. For a moment she thought an odd expression seemed to appear on Pel’s face, as if he were struggling not to smile, but Amy could not be sure through the haze of color.

“Now, Pellinore,” Shadow said, “let us begin.”

* * * *

Pel watched as the black-clad creatures Shadow had called fetches marched, one by one, into the portal he had opened.

Raven had mentioned fetches-weren’t they supposed to be the walking dead?

Did that mean that these were dead people brought back to life, or live people condemned to a sort of half-death? Pel didn’t know.

He didn’t know the name of the planet they were appearing on, either, but he thought it was a green and pretty place, and that the low towers of a city would be visible in the distance from the other side of the portal. He could not really explain how he had found it, or how he knew what it looked like-one didn’t see through a portal, rather, one put a portal through to what one saw, and Shadow had told him through the matrix, in ways words could not describe, where she wanted this one.

He supposed that this troop of black-garbed swordsmen was really a scouting and raiding party, as much as Shadow’s bodyguard; he was certain she intended to fight the Galactic Empire eventually, and he supposed she might well conquer it all in time.

And after that, she would probably go after Earth. He really was face to face with a world-conquering menace, just as in all those stories, and one that didn’t have any ring to throw in a volcano, nor sword to be broken, nor plug to be pulled-but one he wanted to kill.

He couldn’t harm her, though, nor ask another to, and he couldn’t refuse her instructions regarding the portal.

He could think about harming her, of course; he could imagine her hanged and disembowelled, or torched and burning, or beaten to death, like some of her victims-but he couldn’t do anything directly to make his imaginings come true.

The throne room was emptying; he could see Susan’s corpse again, no longer hidden by Shadow’s slaves.

And he could see Prossie, standing to one side, waiting, as the crowd trickled away through the portal, until finally the last four slaves took Ted and Amy by the arms and led them through.