“You speak treason,” Raven said quietly, his hand falling to where his sword-hilt should have been.
“You’re calling me a traitor?”
“Aye…” Raven began.
“Traitor to what?” Pel demanded, cutting the aristocrat off short. “I’m a citizen of the United States of America, I’m not one of your underlings, Lord Raven! And even if I were-where’s Stoddard this morning? For that matter, where’s Donald a’ Benton, or Elani, or Grummetty, or any of the others? Isn’t Shadow the government around here? Seems to me that you’re the fugitive from the law, and anyone who follows you and doesn’t have the sense to give up like Stoddard did is just buying an early death. Where’s my wife, Lord Raven? Where’s my daughter? They’re dead, from following you…”
“They’re slain by Shadow, Pel Brown,” Raven countered. “Would you join your wife’s murderer, then?”
“Who says it was Shadow?” Pel shouted. “You do, and your buddies in the Galactic Empire! I don’t know who killed her-hell, I don’t even know she’s really dead, I just have your word on it, yours and the Empire’s-I never got to see them! I didn’t see the bodies!” He had stepped forward, as had Raven; the two of them stood with their noses an inch or two apart, shouting in each other’s faces.
“Pel,” Susan said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Pel fell silent, but stayed face to face with Raven, glaring down at the shorter man, for a long moment. At last, though, he backed away.
“I don’t care what you say, Raven,” Pel announced. “Or any of the rest of you, for that matter. Prossie says the Empire’s abandoned us, and Taillefer won’t send me home; well, the only other person-or thing-that can send me home is Shadow, so I’m going to go see Shadow, and if I can’t make a deal with it, I’ll do my damnedest to kill it, and if I do that, my price is Taillefer’s portal spell. So I’m going looking for Shadow. Now, who’s coming with me?”
He looked around at the faces, at expressions of confusion, dismay, and even fear.
“You’re mad,” Taillefer announced loudly.
“I’ll come,” Susan said quietly. “At least for now. You may want the pistol, after all.”
“Makes no difference to me,” Ted said with a shrug. “I’ll come.”
“Whaddaya think?” Wilkins asked, turning toward Marks and Sawyer.
“I’ll go along for now,” Singer said.
“I’m in,” Marks said.
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.