Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Read online

  As Arton returned to his inward reflection, a puzzled look drew down over Ky’s features. “But even though a shadow must be tuned to an aura to go between, and even though no two auras are the same, it seems that demonkind has found a way to overcome the stricture, for did they not all ride through the same shadow to return to the demonplane after slaying the gnoman?” Ky looked around at the other Foxes, but none had aught to say. “I must think on this,” said Ky, “but not now.” She turned to the bard. “Rith, please do go on with the tale of the demonwars.”

  Rith paused as Eavy returned bearing a tray laden with a pot of tea and a flagon of milk and six cups and a stone jar of honey. With great deliberateness the child served. And as Kane unconsciously spooned seven daubs of honey into his full cup, the bard sipped her drink and then continued:

  “Well, concerning the puzzle over how more than one being can use a given shadow, it was fully a mystery then just as it is now, for during the demonwars, in some fashion Atraxia managed to overcome the constraints of shadow, and she succeeded in sending an entire demon army from that plane to this. Night after night the demons burned and pillaged and slew. First this place, then that. Night after night. Her armies arriving just after dusk, and disappearing just ere dawn. And it seemed that they had no limitations on where they would appear, just as long as it was nighttime. The High King, though, simply could not match her tactics, for he could not have standing armies everywhere, each ready to meet her invasions, while she could strike anywhere his armies were not.

  “All this we know is true. What we don’t know is how the DemonQueen was defeated. History and legend both are silent on that point. It is as if some great secret were being kept, as if all knowledge of Atraxia’s defeat has been deliberately suppressed, buried, concealed, hidden. Some say that High King Ranvir and his army and mages invaded the demonplane and cast Atraxia down from her throne. Others say that the mighty champion Valdor rode alone into her land and slew her. Yet others say it was Jaytar, the greatest thief the world has ever known, who guided Moonshadow into the demonplane and stole Atraxia’s magic.”

  “But my mam says Moonshadow is woven of moonbeams,” protested Eavy, the child sitting at Rith’s feet. “Ask her. She’ll tell you. She says that Moonshadow can only come to the world when both Phemis and Orbis ride the night. Else there aren’t enough strands of light to weave the horse. So how could Moonshadow have been where the demons live, where there is no Phemis, no Orbis?”

  Kane took a sip of his tea and shuddered at its sweetness. “She’s got a good point, Rith. The kid’s got a good point. How can you plait the mare if you don’t have enough moonbeams, hey?”

  Rith laughed and ran her hand through Eavy’s golden ringlets. “The myths do not say, child. The myths do not say. They are just as silent on this as they are on how Atraxia was defeated so very long ago.”

  Arton’s eyes lighted up. “Hoy now, wait a moment. I think I’ve got it.” He held out a hand to the bard. “Rith, let me see that dagger. The gnoman’s.”

  Rith reached into her jerkin and pulled out the dagger, the blade now sheathed in a leather scabbard, and handed it to Arton. Quickly he palmed open the hilt and fished out the parchment note and studied it.

  >urdab ~ suirab nop

  >cakinyw ynwep einezczsinz ajezdan yt uk ono cisonyzrp ynwep ceinalzop
  “Aha!” crowed Arton as he placed his finger on a word in the note and turned it about so that the others could see. “Look here. Way down in the bottom line. If I am not mistaken, this is the name of the DemonQueen, only it’s spelled backwards. Look, the last a is slaunchwise, or, in this case, since it is written backwards, the first a is the slanted letter in the word aixarta. So, if we turn everything in this word back to front, it spells atraxia, the DemonQueen’s name.”

  Lyssa studied the message closely. “Do you suppose the whole thing is written hindwards?”

  Arik glanced at her and then back to the note. “Perhaps it is, love. But now that Arton has pointed out Atraxia’s name, what’s caught my eye are these two words up here at the top—Pon Barius and Badru—assuming they are backwards, too, and that a slanted letter indicates a capital.”

  Both Ky and Rith gasped, and Rith said, “Pon Barius? Why, he’s one of the mages said to have opposed Atraxia in the demonwars. But as to this”—she looked at the missive—”this Badru, I’ve never heard of him.”

  Kane jabbed a finger to the note. “Here’s three more words written in the same fashion—um, Odkrywac, Niszczyc, and Pozlaniec.”

  Arton turned the note around so that he could see, mumbling, “Maybe the whole damn thing is written upside down and hindwards.” After a moment he said, “Castle rats! I still can’t make heads nor tails of the rest of this message. Forwards and backwards both, it is either written in a language I don’t know, or in a code.”

  Ky looked at the others. “Well, we do have one clue—Pon Barius. They say he is a syldari, like me; and if that is true, he may yet be alive. If he is, then he’s the one we ought to see about this. Hm, I seem to recall that he lives—or lived—in some wood somewhere, but just where, I don’t know. It could be any forest in Itheria.”

  “I’ll bet the Blue Lady would know,” piped up Eavy. “She knows everything.”

  Arik looked down at the tot. “The Blue Lady? What is this person . . . and where does she live, child?”

  Eavy shrugged and twisted back and forth under Arik’s gaze and said softly, “I don’t know, but my da does.”

  At that moment, Veyar came rushing back into the Ram’s Horn. “Argo’s coming,” he gasped out. “He’s right behind. And he says that he can flash your blades with silver if you have any of it for him to use. He doesn’t have any silver of his own.”

  Arton laughed and shook his head, then reached into his jerkin to pull forth a jingling leather pouch. “Dump out your coins, Foxes. Dump out your coins.”

  “Ar, it’s just some rivermen’s lore I tell Eavy,” said the innkeeper. “Though like as not there’s truth behind the tale.”

  Arik glanced up at the innkeep. “Is she really blue, like Eavy says?”

  “Well there’s some as call her the Blue Lady and some as call her White, but for me, I could not say which is true.”

  “Tell me then, where does lore say this Blue Lady lives?”

  “South along the river somewhere, though just where, I can’t say. You might ask one of the bargemen down to Bend.”

  “Bend?”

  “It’s where they on- and off-load cargo what’s come down from the gap or is going up through it instead. Ten, twelve miles down the Byway”—the man jabbed a thumb over his shoulder southward—”you’ll come to the village of Bend along the River Gleen.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Arik. “How about Pon Barius, Badru, Odkrywac, Niszczyc, or Pozlaniec? Ever heard of anyone by these names?”

  The innkeeper scratched his head. After a pause he said, “Not that I can recall. —No, wait a mo’, seems as if this Badru is a hillman or some such. More I can’t say ’cause I don’t know. Oi now, when the supper crowd comes I can ask about.”

  Arik slid a bronze across the bar. “I’d appreciate it.” The coin vanished under the innkeeper’s quick hand.

  Early the next morning the Black Foxes purchased grain and comestibles to replenish their supplies and rode away from Gapton. All weapons but Ky’s were glazed with silver flash-coats, and where exposed they glinted in the sunlight. The Foxes were headed for Bend, where they hoped to find someone who knew the whereabouts of the Blue Lady, for no one who had come to the inn had known exactly where she lived other than somewhere south along the Gleen. Neither had anyone known where Pon Barius lived, nor Badru, Odkrywac, Niszczyc, or Pozlaniec, though there were those who seemed to recall that Badru was a mountain man or some such.

  In any event, the Blac
k Foxes rode from Gapton down the Southern Byway. And as they left the limits of the town, Kane looked back over his shoulder and waved, for he could still see Eavy and Veyar standing at the entrance of the Ram’s Horn. When they waved back, Kane smiled and faced the downsloping road once more.

  And on the porch of the inn, Eavy and Veyar grinned at one another as if sharing a secret, then turned and went back inside.

  16

  Solipsism

  (Coburn Facility)

  “My god, this is marvelous,” breathed Doctor Greyson. “Just like the old conundrum.”

  Mark Perry looked at the philosopher. “What? What conundrum?”

  Greyson turned to Perry. “Well, let me ask you, Mark: now that the Black Foxes are on the road, what happened to the Ram’s Horn?”

  Perry looked at the holo. Down a rutted dirt way traveled the six Foxes. Behind them, rolling hills could be seen, rising up to meet the mountain range at their backs. “Why, nothing, John, nothing at all. It’s back up that road. Back in Gapton.”

  Greyson raised his eyebrows. “Oh, do you really think so?”

  “Certainly,” responded the lawyer. “I mean, they just came from there.”

  “Yes, Mark, but do you really think that Avery spends computational power maintaining the Ram’s Horn or even Gapton now that the Black Foxes are out of sight? I beg to differ. I say that neither currently exists; they’re gone.”

  “Well, what if the Foxes turn around and ride back, John? Surely they’ll find Gapton, right? The Ram’s Horn, too. Otherwise they’d be living in chaos.”

  “Oh yes. If they turn about, Gapton will be where it was.”

  “Well then, doesn’t that prove my point?”

  “Oh no, Mark. Gapton is only there when needed. Otherwise it doesn’t exist . . . except in Avery’s memory.”

  “Well, if that’s the way you wish to think of it, John, Gapton has never existed except as a product of Avery’s mind. I mean, it’s not like a real Gapton is actually in there. Never has been, never will be.”

  Greyson laughed. “Tell that to the Black Foxes.”

  Timothy Rendell stood at his console. “If you could go inside and tell the Black Foxes that Gapton wasn’t there, they would believe you were crazy.”

  “Yes,” added Greyson. “Just as if the person who escaped Socrates’ cavern came back and told the remaining prisoners of what he had discovered when he had gotten free, hah! they would think him insane as well.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Mark. “But let me ask you, how does this tie into a conundrum?”

  Timothy stepped to the coffee urn and filled a cup. “Let me ask you, Mark, just where is New York City right now?”

  Greyson laughed and clapped his hands.

  “Why, on the east coast, Tim,” answered Perry.

  Timothy shook his head. “Uh, I hate to tell you this, but no, it’s not there. At this very instance it doesn’t exist.”

  Mark snorted. “Look, I can prove it.” He pointed to a nearby netcom. “One call to my office and your case collapses.”

  “Ah, but Mark, that will only prove that someone—or some thing—will tell you that New York is there,” answered Timothy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it really isn’t there till you go there,” answered Timothy, sipping his coffee. “Until then, it’s merely a memory in your mind . . . and of course in the mind of the one who sees that it springs back into existence when needed.”

  Mark smiled. “This is one of those trick problems, eh? Like the tree falling in the forest?”

  Greyson chuckled. “Mark, did you ever stop to think that we and Tucson, and for that matter, the entire state of Arizona, do not exist when you are in New York?”

  “Yes,” chimed in Timothy. “In fact, everything you think is real in truth does not exist unless you, Mark Perry, are actually there to perceive it.”

  “And even then,” added Greyson, “what you see is for the most part nothing but sets, facades, put there to look real; but they are hollow shells instead, all placed there to fool you. They are totally empty unless you personally step inside.”

  Mark laughed. “Lord, this has to be the greatest conspiracy theory since the assassination of Kennedy, or the government cover-up of flying saucers and of alien abductions by these visitors from outer space.”

  Greyson smiled a wicked smile. “Perhaps so, Mark, yet let me ask you another question: was there history before you were born?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. Was there anything here before you were born or did it spring into existence at the moment of your birth?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “Hell yes what?”

  “Hell yes there was something here before I was born.”

  “How do you know?”

  Mark paused in thought. At last he said, “Look, what about the dinosaurs, radioactive decay, light from the stars? I mean, the stars are millions of light-years away, and if they sprang into existence at the moment of my birth, well, most of the heavens would be dark and seem virtually empty, ’cause beams from the stars more than forty-three light-years away would not have gotten here yet.”

  Greyson smiled. “All that you have conjectured is part of the conundrum. Radioactive decay sprang into being at the moment of your birth, with exactly the proper proportions of isotopes to make it appear that it had been going on for eons. The dinosaurs and other fossils were put here in a similar manner merely to fool or to test you. The stars were created at the moment of your birth, most with their light beams to earth already in place—though perhaps some are yet to arrive, such as nova explosions—hence making it appear as if they have been in existence for billions of years.”

  Mark took up his cup and stood. “A person would have to be utterly naïve, stupid, or absolutely mad—paranoid, schizoid, psychotic, take your pick—to believe in such twaddle.”

  Timothy laughed. “Mark, m’lad, where is your faith? Don’t you see, when you were created, so was everything else.”

  Mark grinned. “Damn, Tim, and here all along I thought that the creation took place in four thousand and four b.c. On October the tenth, to be exact.”

  “Oh, that seven days thing, eh?”

  “Yeah. And I have a book to prove it.”

  Greyson smiled and said, “In any case, Mark, you cannot readily disprove the myth we’ve created for you—fronts, facades, empty shells, people you think are real, a false history, radioactivity, fossils and stars, whatever. Why, son, it’s just like trying to prove or disprove any godmyth. They all take a leap of faith—and since there are an infinite number of directions in which you can leap, the chance of choosing the perfect truth is infinity to one.”

  “You mean the one true way is hard to find?”

  “Oh no,” Greyson answered, “it’s truly easy. All you have to do is believe without question.”

  “Believe what?”

  Greyson laughed. “Believe, truly believe, in whichever particular one you select from among the infinite number. For you as well as all others of a like mind, it will become the one true way if you believe without question, and you and your companions will become the enlightened, the elite, the elected, the chosen—no matter what you pick—just as those who choose differently will be ignorant, deceived, lost, doomed.”

  Mark walked to the coffee urn. As he added cream and sugar to his replenished cup, he called back to Greyson, “I said it before and I say it again, this has to be the greatest conspiracy of all.”

  Turning, he took a sip, then asked, “But tell me, John, what does this have to do with the Black Foxes?”

  Greyson looked at the holo. The Foxes rode toward a thicket huddled against a bluff. “Just this, Mark, those folks in there are no different from us. But because we on the outside know the truth, or at least know what we think is the truth, we can see that they are surrounded by facades, empty shells, nonexistent people, a completely false history, whatever. Their world does n
ot truly exist outside what they can immediately apprehend. Yet they are comfortable in this existence, believing that all is right with the universe . . . including their faith in a god named Arda.

  “Likewise, we believe that all is right with our own universe . . . including our faith in whatever deity or deities we choose to believe in or not.

  “Yet perhaps there is someone on the outside of our own actuality who is even now looking in on us and wondering how anyone could believe in the reality we perceive.”

  Silence fell in the control room, each person lost within his own thoughts.

  Long moments passed, but at last the quiet was broken as a young male technician in a Coburn Industries laboratory smock came through the outer doors and stepped across to Toni. “Doctor Adkins, I think you ought to know that the storm outside has grown significantly worse.”

  17

  The Blue Lady

  (Itheria)

  The old man sat on the west bank of the Gleen, the stem of an unlit briar pipe clenched between his teeth, a fishing pole in one of his palsied hands. “Well, son,” he said, taking the pipe from his mouth and using it as a pointer, “you ride straight on through Bend and follow the riverbank. Near ten miles down you’ll come to some high bluffs, and the Gleen’ll enter a canyon. Y’stay on this side and ride into the gorge. A mile or so in, you’ll go through some narrows, where the walls draw in tightlike. There, you’ll have to take to the river itself, ’cause there ain’t no shore on either side—just water running through the stone slot.” His rheumy eyes scanned the sky. “If it’s raining, take care. Don’t enter. You might get drownded dead.

  “After another mile or so, the ravine opens up again, and you can go along the shore once more. Some way past the narrows, on t’other side, you’ll see a great deep archway set in the cliff. It’s where a monstrous stone slab fell away from the wall ages ago. Behind a grove, a thicket, back in the hollow of the arch, well, that’s where the White Lady lives.”