At the Gates of Darkness (3 page)

Jim nodded a return greeting and said, “Jason.” He glanced around. “Where is everyone?”

“Scattered,” said Jason, running his hand through his long blond hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “Pug’s sent many of the younger students home or to Stardock, while most of the rest of us have been moved to safe locations.” He indicated the others in the room. “A few of us stay here to keep a lookout for any more trouble, and convey messages. What do you require?”

“I require to speak to Pug,” said Jim, not masking his impatience. He held up a sphere of dull golden metal. “This doesn’t work. I had to take a fast ship from Durban to get here.”

The magician took the sphere and said, “The Tsurani transport spheres…we’ve not had any new ones in years.” He looked at it and his tone was one of regret. “I fear most of the artificers who made them perished on Kelewan. The few who survived…” He shrugged.

Jim knew Jason meant those few were struggling with the rest of the Tsurani survivors on their new home world, or perhaps were living quietly in LaMut. And, without saying as much, implied that if the Conclave had access to newer devices, they would have them. “Most of those we have are decades old, my friend,” Jason said softly.

Feeling a fool, Jim said, “Yes. You’re right. Now, may I speak with Pug?”

“Pug’s not here,” said Jason.

“Where is he?”

As he glanced over at his companions, the young magician’s tone was apologetic. “We don’t know. We haven’t seen him for nearly a month now.”

Jim said, “Then I need to speak with Magnus.”

“He’s gone as well,” said Jason. “Come, sit by the fire and rest. We have means of sending word, but it may take some time.”

“By ‘some time,’ do you mean hours or days?” asked Jim,
pulling off his leather gauntlets and moving to a stool near the fire.

Jason only shrugged, and Jim felt his frustration return in full. He knew his crew would wait until he either sent word or returned, so he felt little need to move away from the warming fire. Thinking of nothing better to do, he sat back against the cold stones and wondered just where the two magicians might be.

L
ightning flashed across the sky.

Amirantha silently counted, and then came the distant boom of thunder. Looking at his old companion, Brandos, the Warlock of the Satumbria said, “The storm is moving away from us.”

The fighter nodded, remaining silent as he sat on a low stool, attentively cleaning his armor. He hunched over near the fire burning in the ancient keep’s fireplace, barely able to fend off the chill in this tiny room, perched near the top of the occupied tower.

Amirantha had been amused the first time he had come here, to visit the legendary castle of the Black Sorcerer. Now he found it old, drafty, almost stifling
in its familiarity and a place locked in the grip of sorrow. After a year of living with these people, the usually solitary Demon Master felt a sense of understanding their pain and anger. Whatever had passed for normalcy before the attack on Villa Beata and the death of Miranda, her younger son Caleb, and his wife Marie, along with a score of students, that normalcy would never return.

Among the very few bright moments over that year was the return a month previous of Brandos, who had traveled down to their home near the city of Maharta in Novindus, with his wife Samantha. But even the unrelentingly cheerful woman had been unable to do more than momentarily lift the pall of gloom that constantly hung over this place.

Pug and his surviving son, Magnus, would come and go, and at times there were interesting discussions on matters common to their interest. Amirantha was forced to concede he had broadened his understanding of demons and the demon realm more in the last year than he had in the previous fifty years of solitary study. Often it was a case of having similar information, but interpreting its significance in a faulty way, and he had helped Pug identify misapprehensions in his knowledge.

But those times were growing more infrequent, and Pug and Magnus were absent for longer stretches, as they saw to the matters pressing upon their secret organization, the Conclave of Shadows. Amirantha and Brandos had not been invited formally into that organization, but there was a tacit understanding that they were now part of this effort, willing or not. Amirantha had no doubt they had the means to ensure he didn’t leave with the vital knowledge he possessed, so he considered having a choice in the matter moot.

He stood and stretched, making a small motion with his head indicating Brandos should look out the small window. The old fighter put aside the leather jerkin he had been cleaning, stood, and walked over to his friend—a stepfather as much as anything else, despite the fact he now looked ten
years the old magic-user’s senior. “What?” he asked softly.

“Rain is going to play out soon,” answered the Warlock as he looked out into the late afternoon murk.

“You look bored.”

“Constantly,” said the Warlock. “When I first came here, I will concede I did so with some anticipation, finding those I counted kindred souls, and thought for the first time in my life I might have colleagues with whom I could share my knowledge as well as learn from, and at first it was like that, but lately…? Now, what do I find instead?”

“Children.”

Amirantha smiled. The magicians remaining here with Pug and his son, Magnus, were hardly children, yet his foster son reminded Amirantha that he had a tendency to be dismissive of most everyone he met because of his long life and the perspective it offered. Yet Pug was even older, as were others who came and went from this island. Miranda, Pug’s late wife, also had been older, and her sudden death had been a grim reminder to Amirantha that long life and experience are not defenses against mortality.

“Hardly,” said Amirantha. “Still, for the most part they’re in the formative stages of their education, training, and power. None of them have been practicing their arts for more than twenty years.”

Brandos returned to his stool and took up the leather he had been cleaning. Applying a generous dollop of leather soap to his weapon’s belt, he said, “Sort of makes you wonder where all the grown-ups went, doesn’t it?”

Amirantha stared out the window. “Indeed.” He craned his neck a bit and looked out and up. “I’m ready to go outside. Being cooped up here is hardly a treat.”

Brandos sighed, looking at his unfinished cleaning. “Well, a short walk. I could use a leg stretcher.” Looking at his friend, he added, “Samantha says I’ve been as irritated as a bear woken from hibernation lately, so maybe it’ll do us both good.”

“It’s been four days of rain.”

“It’s an island in the middle of an ocean, Amirantha. It’s late fall. There’s going to be a lot of rain.”

Muttering as he opened the door, Amirantha said, “Not an ocean. It’s a sea.”

Brandos shook his head but said nothing.

Amirantha descended the stairs to the common room below, and let out a long silent sigh. He knew his foster son understood his argumentative impulse was born of frustration. After the destruction of the villa used by Pug, his family, and students, there had been a flurry of activity. The dead were burned, the wounded tended, and there had been conferences among Pug and his most trusted advisors. Those conferences and discussions had animated the Warlock in a way he had rarely known, and had never shared with another; he had discovered he was happy.

Continuing down the stairs, Amirantha realized that part of his annoyance was the stark contrast between that early energizing period of reorganization here on the island and what he endured now. One night two months ago, everything changed. Pug and Magnus vanished, as had more than thirty of the most powerful of his magician colleagues. Abruptly what had been a somewhat crowded keep was occupied by less than a dozen souls.

The month when Brandos had traveled south to fetch Samantha had been the loneliest time in Amirantha’s life, and he was vexed at discovering that fact. He had a strong opinion on matters of his own conduct and appearances, and missing his foster son did not mesh well with them. More than once he had cursed himself for letting another person grow close to him, especially one he was destined to outlive by a very long time—assuming they both survived the coming struggle.

Reaching the floor of the tower, they entered the common room and saw an unexpected presence.

“Jim Dasher!” said Amirantha in greeting.

Jim rose from his stool before the warming fire and said, “You still here, Amirantha?” He extended his hand and they shook.

He then exchanged greetings with Brandos, as Amirantha said, “My lingering here was at Pug’s request. He can be persuasive.”

“Ah,” said Jim, nodding. “He wouldn’t let you leave.”

Brandos snorted, and Amirantha said, “He was insistent, and truth to tell I found many things here to be interesting.”

Glancing around the stark hall, Jim said, “Really?”

Amirantha smiled. “Well, not so much lately, but the first nine months were fascinating.”

He motioned for Jim to move toward the large doors. “My quarters are adequate but hardly commodious, so I thought to step outside for a breath of air now that the rain has nearly stopped.”

Jim nodded and fell into step behind him. “I just came in from the…” Jim began, then he stopped himself. “Actually, I’m supposed to report directly to Pug on this matter.” He looked hard at Amirantha, then said, “Still, there is much about what I’ve seen that concerns you.”

“Really?” said the Warlock, then he fell silent, content to let the mysterious noble-turned-spy-turned-thief speak when he was ready.

As they reached the entrance to the yard, they paused on the verge of the doorway, feeling the occasional raindrop blown in by the freshening wind. Jim motioned for the Warlock to continue and they left the relative warmth of the keep entrance for the soggy ground of the ancient marshaling yard. As Amirantha had judged, the rain had fallen off to almost nothing and the wind was freshening a little; it already felt drier.

“So, you were about to say?”

Jim appeared annoyed. “I can never tell who knows what around here.”

Amirantha laughed. “I can tell you this much, my friend: no one left here is without some power and ability, despite appearances to the contrary. Pug ensured all the students were safely away within a day of…”

“The attack,” finished Jim.

“I was going to say the death of his wife and son.” Amirantha sighed. “Never having children, I can only imagine a bit of what he’s going through. I certainly had nothing to fairly compare what he was like before that, scant hours really, but…” He shrugged.

“There’s been a change,” said Jim. He looked to the west where somewhere behind the clouds the sun was lowering toward the horizon. “He knew I was about some business of consequence, yet there’s apparently no means for contact; that is unlike him. It’s as if he’s…” Jim shrugged.

“Distracted?” offered Amirantha.

“More,” said Jim. “Distant in a way that troubles me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jim smiled slightly. “I don’t expect you to. I hardly know the man well, despite our somewhat tenuous kinship.”

“Kinship?”

Jim said, “My great-grandmother was his foster daughter.”

Amirantha’s eyebrows went up slightly as his expression indicated surprise. “Tenuous by blood, yes, but otherwise?”

“We are not close. It is a long story, a family matter, and really not pertinent to the discussion at hand.”

Amirantha shrugged, to convey that if Jim didn’t think it important enough to speak of, that was enough. “Perhaps, but apparently we have ample time. Enlighten me.”

Jim stared off into the darkening afternoon gloom and said, “While Pug and I may not be close, I do know a great deal about him, for his role in Kingdom politics has been significant, since long before I was born.”

“Obviously,” agreed Amirantha. “Given the rank and
status of those who have been to visit since I was first made aware of the Conclave’s existence.”

“So in my…other duties, to the Crown, I’ve been required to read a great deal of history, much of it penned by my own forebears.

“Pug is, if anything, a man of strong convictions and he pays attention to details. He is not the sort to let important things slip by. Yet lately…” Jim took a deep breath. “…this is unlike him.”

“By this, I expect you mean
this,
” Amirantha said, indicating the cold, nearly empty castle with a wave of his hand.

“I would have expected the man I knew, the one I studied, to have begun reconstruction on the villa at once, almost defiantly, as if telling his enemies that they would not prevail.”

Amirantha nodded, pursing his lips as if thinking, and remained quiet for a moment, then asked, “How much time do you think his enemies spend studying him?”

Jim inclined his head slightly as if conceding the point.

“Would it not seem, given what has happened here, that Pug also realizes he’s under a great deal of scrutiny? By all reports, in one form or another, these enemies of his have been coming at him for years.”

“If you assume that there is one intelligence behind a series of assaults on this world going back more than a century and a half, yes. But that is an assumption.”

“A better one to make,” observed the Warlock, “than thinking this land is merely beset by a string of coincidental afflictions.

“I may not be the master of magic on Pug’s scale, but I know enough about the other realms to know this is not a series of odd happenings.” He paused, and Brandos recognized his expression. Amirantha was frustrated. “Over the last year I’ve heard enough references to things such as the Pantathian Serpent Priests—with whom I am familiar—and
the Riftwar, and the Great Uprising, and all the rest of it to believe there is one intelligence behind all of this, one agency that has targeted this world, perhaps this nation, even perhaps this island, for reasons known only to them, but irrespective of those reasons, the consequences for this entire world are dire.”

“I agree,” said Jim, “but tell me your reasons.”

“The Pantathians exist in the distant mountains to the west of my home, yet stories of them travel; they are a strange race, and they have been thought to be obliterated numerous times, yet they linger.

“They serve an ancient hate, a woman symbol they call ‘mother of us all’ and kill without remorse any who will not serve her.

“The Emerald Queen, whose army savaged my homeland before traveling halfway around the world to come to the Kingdom, was a demon in disguise.” Suddenly Amirantha became animated. “Do you have any notion of how remarkable that is?”

Jim shook his head.

“I will bore you with a long lecture—”

“And he will,” interjected Brandos.

“—some other time, but suffice it to say that demon possession on that level, of an already powerful magic user…it’s unknown to those of my calling.”

Jim said, “I still don’t see the connection.”

Amirantha seemed to fight for words. “I can’t explain…I mean, it’s as if I’m on the edge of understanding something, but I’m not quite there yet. Just, it’s more than a feeling, Jim.” He looked at Brandos and said, “Am I one to leap to conclusions?”

Brandos shrugged, then realized it wasn’t time for a jape; it had been a serious question. “No, you occasionally become convinced of your own brilliance, but you are hardly rash.” He paused, then added to Jim, “He’s gotten us almost killed several times through miscalculation, but
that’s the point; he was wrong, not unconsidered. If he says he’s on the edge of understanding something larger than is apparent, I’d believe him.”

“Well, then,” said Jim Dasher. “Is there any way I can help?”

“Only if you can supply more information than I’ve been privy to lately.”

Jim was silent a long moment, staring out into the fading light.

Brandos cleared his throat and said, “I’m going to be inside; I should ask Samantha to hustle up something for you to eat. I imagine you’re hungry.”

Jim smiled. “Thank you, Brandos. That would be fine.” After the old fighter had left, Jim said, “He should be a diplomat.”

Amirantha laughed. “Hardly, but he can be discreet at times.”

Jim paused, then said, “Very well. I expect that Pug will ask you in to listen to my report anyway, as you are the expert in demons.”