In the Empire of Shadow. Lawrence Watt-Evans
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be different.
Hadn’t someone written a story about a land like that? “Death Is Different,” that was it—by Lisa Goldstein, perhaps? About a small country somewhere where death wasn’t permanent, where the dead could be seen strolling about.
What if that author had somehow known a truth about this place where Shadow ruled? After all, the worlds of Empire and Shadow so resembled the settings for any number of stories that Pel found it hard to believe it a coincidence; it made more sense to credit it to some sort of psychic leakage between universes, images from one realm finding their way into the subconscious minds of writers in another.
And if that were so, what about all those stories where people rose from the dead, where the protagonist awoke at the end home safe in his own bed, everything restored to what it was before? Were those based on truth?
What if death was different?
On one level he knew that was nonsense. He knew this was all hard fact; Nancy and Rachel were dead. Cartwright and Godwin and Peabody, Grummetty and Alella and Squire Donald, they were all equally real, and all equally dead, and all really dead. He had seen Grummetty’s corpse himself. He had seen Cartwright bleeding as the monsters overwhelmed him. They were all dead, and would stay dead until Judgment Day.
But somewhere, in the back of his mind, where he wanted so much to believe Nancy and Rachel were alive that he could believe anything at all, he still hoped.
He swung open the porthole cover and stared out at the green and gold and deep gray of the forests of Faerie.
Chapter Four
Raven of Stormcrack Keep had seen many strange things in the hard, sad days since his brother had betrayed the clan and yielded the Keep and its lands to Shadow. He had fled through haunted forests by night, and had seen creatures there whose nature he still did not know, things he dared not contemplate too closely. He had lived for a time among the little people of Hrumph, the people his grandfather had called gnomes, before they were driven into exile; he had dwelt like a giant among them, and had been amazed by their ways and customs. He had fallen in with a handful of the few remaining wizards, had seen them in their own strongholds, where they lived unhampered by the dictates of the nobility and used whatsoever magic they might please. One of those wizards, Elani, had opened for him portals into the Galactic Empire, and into the world of Earth, where he had seen wonders that even the mightiest magic could not equal. He had been slave and supplicant in those other worlds; he had been beaten and abused, and still bore scars and wounds not yet healed from those encounters. He had thought that nothing could faze him any more. But now, as he stared at the men who had piloted the Imperial vessel, he discovered that he had not lost his capacity for surprise.
It was not any new marvel of science or magic that astounded him, but the depths of idiocy to which allegedly intelligent men could sink.
“Colonel,” he said, “what might those two be about?” He pointed at the two men crouched beside an open panel, poking at the tangle of wires and baubles inside.
“They’re trying to fix the engines, of course,” Carson replied edgily.
“Be your engines broken?”
“Well, of course they are!” Carson snapped. “Why else would we have crashed?”
Raven considered this question for a moment, admiring its magnificent ineptitude. “Prithee,” he asked eventually, “has none told you the nature of this realm?”
Carson glared at him. “What do you mean?”
Raven hesitated, then waved the matter away. Perhaps it would be best if he were to leave the man’s ignorance intact for the moment; an opportunity might arise to exploit it at some other time. “Mayhap later,” he said. “Erst, you sought my favor in some matter?”
“Yeah,” Carson said, looking distastefully at the broad forward viewport. “I want to know where the heck we are. I’d figured on reconnoitering from the air, taking a look around—but then the drive quit on us. In fact, nothing seems to be working; must be a break in the power system somewhere.”
“I fear, sir, that I know not where we be,” Raven said. “Did they not tell you where the great portal would be?”
“They told me we’d come out around two hundred miles from this Shadow thing,” Carson said. “I didn’t listen to all the damn details; I figured we could straighten that out from the air once we came through.”
Raven nodded. “And I’ve no more than that.”
“You know this country, don’t you?”
“Aye, for the main, an I’ve landmarks…”
“Well, then, take a look, damn it!” Carson waved at the viewport.
Raven looked.
The view here was a good deal more extensive than that from the porthole by Amy Jewell’s seat, but it still revealed little more than that they were in a mature forest somewhere. Broken branches and scattered leaves were everywhere, signs of the ship’s fall strewn in a web of sunlight and shadow; oaks towered overhead, while moss and fungus flourished below. The light was the clean sweet white of home, not the hot glare of Earth’s sun, or the harsh blaze of the lights of Base One. He judged from its angle that the day was just short of mid-morning.
“’Tis a forest,” Raven said, “and I and mine drew best we could a map for you ere we left, and thereon we indicated those forests we knew—and some would put us your two hundred miles from Shadow’s stronghold. How to tell one forest from another, who can say? Saw you aught before we fell—a keep, a mount, any such as that?”
Carson turned and glared at one of the pilots.
“No, sir,” the man replied. “We didn’t have time to see much of anything. Just trees.”
“There might have been mountains off that way,” the co-pilot offered, pointing to the left.
Raven considered that, studying the angle of the sun and the patterns of the moss on the trees. “Then, an those were the Further Corydians, we might be in the West Sunderland,” he said at last, “but I’ve no certainty.”
“All right,” Carson said. “If we’re in Sunderland, where do we go, and how will we know if we’ve got it wrong?”
Raven bit back a retort; he took a second to calm his voice, then replied, “An we’re in the Low Forest of West Sunderland, we need but make way to the west, and in due time we should either strike the Palanquin Road, or reach the edge of the forest and the Starlinshire Downs. If it be the road, turning south will bring us in time to the River Vert; if it be the Downs, we should find landmarks enow.”
Carson nodded. “And then what?” he demanded.
“And then? Why, then we strike out westward for Shadow’s keep, should our plans be made and the omens favorable, and if they be otherwise, then seek we shelter with those who yet serve the cause of the Light.” Raven’s own plans were already made, and consisted mostly of the latter choice, locating a surviving part of the resistance to Shadow’s rule; he had no intention of flinging himself against Shadow’s keep in some pointless, suicidal raid.
However, throwing Carson and his men into such a raid might be the best way to rid himself of a nuisance, and to provide the evidence needed to convince the Empire to devise a serious attack. And who could say that they might not learn something from such an assault? To Raven’s best knowledge, no one had been foolish enough to attempt anything of the sort in centuries.
“You can contact these others?” Carson snapped.
“Certes, I can,” Raven replied, meeting his eye. He had developed the knack of lying straight-faced as a child, and had never lost it, but in this case he spoke very nearly the truth. Contact could be made, though it would best be done by a wizard, rather than by himself.
“And they can contact the Empire?”
Raven hesitated.