At the Gates of Darkness

  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.”

  Amirantha nodded. “That elf, Gulamendis, is the only being I’ve met who knows as much or more.”

  Jim looked uncomfortable. “Those Star Elves make my skin itch. But they’re a matter for another time.” Jim told the Warlock what he had witnessed in the distant Jal-Pur desert, and when he was finished he asked, “What do you think?”

  Amirantha said, “I think we need to find a way to fetch Pug back here as soon as possible.”

  “Why?”

  Turning toward the keep, Amirantha said, “Come with me.”

  He didn’t wait to see if Jim followed, but hurried inside the keep. He glanced around the common room and asked the four younger magicians there, “Where is Jason?”

  One of them pointed toward a door that led to a small room Pug had occasionally used as a private office. Amirantha went to the door and knocked once, then opened it. Jason sat behind the tiny desk that Pug had installed in this former storage room and was squinting at a paper under the dim glow of a single candle. The tiny window above hardly admitted any light on the brightest of days, and on a day such as this, it might as well be midnight. “Yes?” he asked, apparently untroubled by the sudden entrance.

  “Pug,” said Amirantha. “You need to summon him at once.”

  Jason sat back. “And how am I supposed to do that, given I have no idea where he is?”

  Amirantha glanced sidelong at Jim, then said, “I count Pug many things, but fool is not one of them. Even if you don’t know where he is, I’m certain he’s left you means to contact or summon him, should the need arise. The need has arisen.”

  “Really?” asked the younger magician. He looked at Jim for corroboration.

  “I think so, as well,” said Jim.

  “Very well,” said Jason, rising from behind the small desk. “Come with me.” He picked up the candleholder.

  He led them out of the room, across the floor of the keep’s great hall. Brandos stood near his wife beside the large hearth where a pot of stew was simmering. The old fighter shot a questioning look at Amirantha, but with an inclination of his head the Warlock indicated to stay where he was.

  Jason led them up a flight of stairs to the upper floor of the main building, and down a long hall that traversed the building, to the tower opposite the one in which Amirantha resided. The single candle Jason held was the only light on that floor. To the best of the Warlock’s knowledge, that tower was empty, save for an enchantment on the top floor that caused an ominous blue light to glow whenever a ship approached sight of the castle.

  They walked up a circular staircase, to the second to the last floor, and Jason opened a door. The room was bare, save for a construct of wood, two curving poles that sat atop a base of what looked like metal. Amirantha glanced at Jason and said, “Tsurani?”

  The young magician said, “Design. Pug built it.”

  “What is it?” asked Jim.

  “A rift gate,” said Amirantha. “What our friends the Star Elves call a portal.”

  Jason went to a small shelf near a shuttered window and pulled down a small cloth bag. He handed the candle to Jim, then knelt and carefully opened the bag. Reaching inside he pulled out an odd-looking device, a square box with odd designs and some strange levers and wheels on it.

  “This was created by some artificer up in LaMut, of Tsurani heritage, but not a Tsurani. It’s a little ungainly compared to the old Tsurani devices.” He shrugged as if what he was saying was merely trivia.

  He put it on the base between the two poles, tripped one of the levers, and stood back. “I have no knowledge or ability when it comes to rift magic,” said the magician. “It is difficult and outside my interests. Only Magnus and a few others know much about it, and no one knows what Pug knows. Against the need of summoning him, he had this constructed.”

  Suddenly a whooshing sound filled the room, and a crack of energy, followed by a shimmering between the poles. Then a grey void, with scintillating colors faintly running over the surface, like oil refracting light on water, could be seen.

  “Pug will get the alert in a moment. He should appear as soon as he is able.”

  “Do you know where he went?” asked Jim.

  Jason said, “We only know what he tells us.”

  Long moments dragged by, then suddenly a figure stepped through the rift. A short man with a closely trimmed beard, Pug still wore the ancient fashion of the Tsurani Great One, a simple black robe and cross-gartered sandals. “What is it?” he asked as soon as he was through.

  Jason inclined his head toward Jim and Amirantha, and it was the Warlock who spoke. “We’re being played for fools, Pug.”

  Pug’s brow wrinkled as he asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll explain,” said Amirantha, “after Jim tells you what he saw a few days ago in the Jal-Pur, but it would help if we had another with us.”

  “Who?”

  “We need an expert on death.”

  Pug looked slightly amused. “I know just the fellow.” He turned and held up his hand, and the Warlock could feel shifting magic in the room, though Jim only perceived it as his “bump of trouble” starting to act up. After a moment, Pug said, “You two, follow me.” To Jason he said, “Put away the toy when we’re through.” He stepped into the rift and Jim turned and said, “Send word to Captain Jenson to weigh anchor and make for Krondor. I’ll find him there.” He turned and followed Pug.

  Just before he entered, Amirantha turned to Jason and said, “You also might tell Samantha that Jim and I will be missing supper tonight.” He then followed the other two into the rift.

  CHAPTER 3

&n
bsp; SERGEANT-ADAMANT

  Creegan motioned with his hand.

  Sandreena entered his quarters still covered in dust from the road and feeling hunger pangs. She had paused long enough once she had given her horse over to the stable boy to drink deeply from the well behind the temple, but she hadn’t eaten anything but a handful of dried fruit and some nuts since leaving Land’s End. Her order was mendicant and there was no shrine or temple in Land’s End, so she was still surviving on what she had purchased in Durban with the last of her coin.

  The moment she handed her documents to the Father-Bishop she knew something was wrong, something that had nothing to do with the message she had just delivered. He waved her to sit in a chair across from his desk and said, “The Grand Master has passed.”

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and made a short prayer to the Goddess to care for the old man on his way to Lims-Kragma’s domain. He had been a good man, almost saintly, and Sandreena had no doubt he would be rewarded with a place higher on the Wheel of Life.

  The Father-Bishop remained silent while she prayed, and then when she opened her eyes, she discovered him staring intently at her. “Father-Bishop?”

  Creegan smiled and it was not a friendly or warm expression, but rather that of a man finding humor in a very dark place. “The end of life is not necessarily a cause for sorrow, daughter,” he said, using the form of address usually reserved for minor members of the Order—it clearly communicated the difference in their ranks. She was uncertain why, but knew he did nothing without a reason. “The Grand Master served the Goddess well, for many years, and earned his final rest.

  “But the timing of it is…inconvenient.” He stood and said, “I must leave at once for Rillanon, for the convocation is only a week after the funeral, and the selection of the new Grand Master is now more critical than is usual.”

  She knew he was referring to the matter of the demon host, the “Legion” as it was called, that was out there somewhere, threatening to bring its ravages to this world. Few within the temple, and even fewer outside, even knew the threat existed. Sandreena did only because of circumstances, and the trust in which Father-Bishop Creegan held her. And fewer still knew of the relationship between the Father-Bishop and the Conclave of Shadows led by the magician Pug.