“So you don’t think they made a pact with the Shadow?”
“Al’Terra was not the way the priests taught you it was, Rik. This I know. I was there. For reasons of politics, the Temple tells humans things that make them easier to control. But whatever else they were, the Princes of Shadow were real, and they were wicked, and I do not think it really matters whether they made a pact with the Shadow of God or not. The end result was the same.”
“And yet you say you were once like them, or they were once like you — what changed them?”
She looked at him long and hard. He said, “You told me never to apologise for asking questions. I am merely taking you at your word.”
“There are questions and there are questions, Rik, and there are ways of putting those questions that make them easier or harder to answer. There are ways of making questions weapons as well.”
“I did not mean them so.”
“I know that, but the effect may be the same whether you mean them or not. There are times when I ask myself what the difference was between myself and the Princes of Shadow, and there are times when I do not like the answer.”
“You are not like them. You are not some Lord of Darkness.”
“And you think that is what they are?”
“That is what I have always been told. If you know differently, I will listen.”
“Rik, you will get me burned for heresy yet. I could almost believe Inquisitor Joran put you up to this.” She said it as a joke but for a moment he could see her taking the idea seriously. She waited as if she expected him to say something. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference so he remained silent.
“The Princes of Shadow were like your father, Rik. They were eaters of souls. They devoured their fellow Terrarchs because they needed the power to work magic, and the energy that made magic possible was going away.”
She had alluded to this before but had never seemed to willing to go into details. “So the magic was fading before ever you came to Gaeia.”
She nodded. “In truth I hoped when we came through the Eye of the Sun that we might find the magic once again, a new world with all its magical potential untapped, but it was not so. There was less magic here than on Al’Terra.”
“Why did the magic go away?”
“No one really knows, Rik. My theory is that we simply used it up. Imagine a great forest. Woodcutters come and cut down the trees, to build their houses, to make their fires. It takes trees decades to grow, but more and more people come and build more and more houses. Eventually the forest is gone. Perhaps it was that way, or perhaps it was like a well that runs dry. In any case the magic went away. The Princes of Shadow found another way of acquiring power. They mastered techniques for draining it from living things.”
“Malkior said he wanted to use human beings as cattle. Is that what he meant?”
“Humans possess less magical energy than Terrarchs so you would need far more of them, but it is a similar plan. Unsurprising really since Malkior was a follower of Shadow.”
“The Princes of Shadow killed a lot of your people then.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t someone stop them?”
“Because at first no one knew, and then they were too powerful. They could still work the great magics when most of us could not. And there were those who hungered for power and followed them because of it.”
“You think it could happen here?”
“I think it has happened here, and that it is still happening here. What alarms me is the thought that the Terrarchs might come to look on humans as cattle.”
“A lot of them already do.”
“There is a difference between looking on something as property and something as food or wood or some other source of power.”
“You think that really might happen?” Rik was prepared to believe many bad things about the Terrarchs but he found it hard to imagine them keeping people in herds.
Asea seemed to follow his thoughts. “It does not take too many people to think that way to have the Princes of Shadow come again, Rik. The ones who do will acquire power that in this world could only be described as god-like.”
The words burned in Rik’s mind, and he hoped their effect was not visible. The Quan had made him privy to such techniques. If he could find a way to tap into them the way Asea claimed then he too could possess such powers. He was not sure he wanted power acquired that way but the temptation was there.
“Were you ever tempted to walk that road?”
“The problem with walking that road is that it drives you mad eventually. You can’t absorb another sentient being’s memories without being affected by them. Your own experiences must have shown you that.”
She was right. He thought of the voices and tried to imagine thousands of them, all crying away in his mind at once. That was not a pleasant prospect.
“Surely there must be techniques for controlling the side-effects.”
“None that I have ever heard of.”
“Why did the Princes of Shadow continue then, if they knew the results?”
“I am guessing that they thought as you did, and did not realise what was happening until it was too late. And Rik, it is worth remembering that the Princes of Shadow were Terrarchs, with hundreds of years of experience, and among the best trained sorcerers of their world.”
The warning in her voice was unmistakable. She obviously could see the way his thoughts were running. “Were you ever tempted?”
“Not once I saw what would happen.”
“Did you look for other ways of casting magic?”
“Of course, but then war was upon us and the Princes of Shadow conquered the world.”
“How did they do that? If someone wanted to devour my soul I would fight against them. I cannot imagine that the majority of Terrarchs were any different.”
“As I am sure you must have realised, things rarely appear that clear cut. The Princes lied about the source of their power, they confused the issue with political arguments. They bound servants with spells. As they gained power, their secret police terrified most folk. If only one in a hundred people vanishes then you can convince yourself that it won’t be you, and that maybe they deserved it anyway. You can build systems where people will co-operate with those who oppress them, Rik. You have seen it here on Gaeia.”
Rik could see the sense in what she was saying. He thought about the world in which he lived. He had been a soldier of the Queen. He had helped put down the Clockmaker’s rebellion. This was a world where humans fought against humans at the behest of Terrarchs. When Talorea clashed with the Dark Empire most of the dying would be done by human beings.
“And yet you want us to fight against the Sardeans?”
Her smile was sour. “I want a better world. But of course that is what a Prince of Shadow would say as well.”
“Why would people follow those who called themselves the Princes of Shadow?” He saw the stupidity of the question even as he said it, and answered it for himself. “They did not call themselves that, did they?”
“They called themselves many things; the Illuminated, the Enlightened Ones, The Brotherhood of Peace. It was their enemies who called them the Princes of Shadow. It’s what they called us.”
“The same way we call Sardea the Dark Empire.”
“Indeed. In all of history I cannot think of any nation that ever called itself the Dark Empire.”
“The Sardeans probably call us that.”
“They call us the Scarlet Empire, the Bloody Handed Empire and a lot worse.”
“Whichever side wins will get to name the other.”
“It was ever so, Rik. I have no doubt that now on Al’Terra, they refer to Gaeia as the world of Shadows.”
He thought about what the Terrarchs had done since they came here, and of what Malkior and perhaps others like him still planned to do. “Maybe they are right.”
Chapter Ten