The Council of Shadows (25 page)

She hadn't liked brandy before she met Adrian—in fact, with her family history, she'd been at least mildly prejudiced against anything distilled.

A taste of dried fruits slid across her tongue, nuts, candied oranges, and a wash of cacao and flowers and soft spices; it made you think of hot tropical sunrises seen past the curve of a sail,with the sea breaking white beneath your bowsprit.

Étienne sighed. “Eighteen eighty-eight was a marvelous year. . . but perhaps I recall it so because I was young, eh? And this . . . like all the greatest pleasures, it is fleeting, impermanent. Little of this remains; perhaps only a few bottles, and once they are gone it will exist only in memory. As one accumulates experience, more and more resides there.”

“I can see that you have reason for cultivating such an outlook,” Adrian said carefully.

“Perhaps we come to the meat of the matter with the
digestif
, eh?”

Ellen took a deep breath. Adrian went on, calm, his tone conversational.

“I have no interest in who is selected to fill the vacant seats on the Council,” he said. “Save as it affects the plans for Operation Trimback.”

“You are acquainted with that?”

“Yes. Ellen received the details from Adrienne, and I have had Seeings.”

“Ah.” Seraphine lifted her brows. “Strong ones? Apparently you remember my teaching.”

“Very high orders of probability, and tied to my sister. Our world-lines were deeply entangled at the time.”

“And which do you favor?” Étienne said. “The plague, as your sister did, or this rather drastic use of nuclear weapons to shred the humans' electronic devices?”

“The EMP attack,” Ellen supplied.

The Shadowspawn master waved a hand. “I have no interest in the terminology.”

“You should be interested in the effects,” Adrian said. “Have you Seen?”

“Nothing immediate. That is a matter of subtlety rather than raw Power; dear Seraphine has always been more sensitive, doubtless you derive it from her. I have had glimpses of the far futures that might be. Quite pastoral and attractive, most of them. A few rather grisly—”

Christ, what would
he
consider grisly?

“—but those of much lower probability.”

“Great-grandfather and lord, I do not think you appreciate just how
much
would be destroyed if the structure of the technological world were removed at once. Runaway nuclear reactors—scores in France alone!—ruptured oil refineries. . .”

The older Shadowspawn began to laugh. Adrian merely raised a brow, but Ellen felt a surge of fury. It died as she realized that this wasn't, or wasn't merely, the usual schadenfreude and sadism. There was a genuine irony here.

“I laugh, my dear boy, because I did
not
grasp the implications. I was quite taken with a return to the medieval period, with us as the
noblesse
. After all, the Power can do a great many of the same things as the humans' technology. Until your sister carefully explained the problems to me.”

He shook his head. “The al-Lanarkis are the primary advocates of the, ah, EMP. Trimback One. She demonstrated convincingly that they argued so because
their
primary territories would be least affected, and so all the other Shadowspawn would be weakened. They would probably have done it themselves, if I had not strongly hinted we would exterminate their clan down to the babes in arms if they did.”

“And the humor?”

“Well, Adrian, you
did
kill her. And here you are, repeating her soconvincing arguments to me!”

Seraphine sighed. “I will rather miss Adrienne. She reminded me of myself at that age, so passionate and enthusiastic about her causes, yet so carefree and merry and natural.”

Yeah, she longed to unleash a tailored supersmallpox on the world so she could take it over and be worshiped as a goddess, and she had a deep, carefree, merry enjoyment of. . . actually
doing
things to people that would be squicky even if you just played them. Doing them to
me
, in particular. And I'm not puritanical about that sort of thing
at all
.

Étienne continued: “But something must be done. The humans are breeding like cockroaches and threaten to destroy the Earth. And while I could . . . how did Adrienne put it . . . turn myself into a guinea pig, walk into a steel box, and have Arianespace launch me to the moon, there would be no food and little amusement there.”

Ellen surprised herself by chuckling. That
was
the sort of thing Adrienne would have said. It was easier to appreciate her sense of humor when you weren't having your head held underwater as foreplay or being chained up and flogged.

Though she was actually pretty good at the chaining and flogging. It was just the knowledge that she might decide to go on until I was dead or crippled. God, I'm glad
she's
dead. How many times have I thought or said that? Not enough, dammit! I expect to spend the next sixty
years
being glad she's dead.

Adrian continued earnestly: “Yet you are the grand master. The human governments are under your control. Surely you could take other measures, slower and surer? Our great advantage is that we are not pressed for time.”

Seraphine laughed again. “This is a game of intellectual musical chairs! Now you are taking
my
part, when we discussed this with Adrienne. I thought that the plague scenario was also somewhat risky. Things rarely go as smoothly as one plans, and we would be relying on human scientists doing work we did not understand ourselves.”

Her husband looked at her with a crooked smile. “True. Since we are all Brézés, I suppose it to be expected that we find ourselves echoing one another's thoughts. Though in Adrian's case, I suspect his deplorable sentimentality about the cattle is involved.”

Adrian shrugged. “True.”

“But that does not affect my argument. Why take the hideous risks, when slower and surer methods are available?”

Étienne shrugged again; it was worthy of Charles Dullin, and Ellen dropped her eyes to her brandy. The gesture was entirely natural, and it reminded her of how
old
this. . . manlike creature was.

And Adrian will not die when his body does either, and he could Carry my soul forever.. . . Stop that! You don't have to think about that for
decades
yet! The world may end in the interim. In fact, it probably
will
end in the interim.

“It has been tried. The Chinese one-child policy, for example, which our good
taotie
allies implemented. But while we can make any particular government perform any particular action, we cannot force most of them to adopt
many
consistent policies over many
years
, which they are violently unwilling to do. Our puppets would be overthrown, and if we forced their successors to do the same then
they
would be overthrown . . . and meantime, our existence would become painfully obvious.”

Seraphine sighed. “It is a paradox; we have all power, but only so long as we do not use it very often. It would be much more convenient if we were worshiped openly. Of course, that would also have certain dangers.”

“Our existence will become very obvious indeed, if
either
of the Trimback options is used,” Adrian said.

His ancestor nodded. “Yes, but by then the humans would be much weaker. We would be in a position to use the crisis to take control more directly.”

Ellen swallowed. Adrian had shared his Seeings with her. They weren't exactly prophecies, the future was a spray of alternate possibilities and not one fixed path, but they did represent the trend of events, the balance of possibilities. Most of them showed a wrecked world; many a world under the open rule of the Council of Shadows. Those were like Hell come to earth, in ways more horrible because they were quiet.

“And besides,” the Shadowspawn archimage went on, “Adrienne also convinced me that if the humans are allowed to play with their scientific tools and toys much longer, they will stumble across us anyway. Neglecting to keep an eye on that monkey curiosity of theirs let them develop nuclear weapons, to which we are so vulnerable.”

“Which was the result of the Council's starting the world wars,” Adrian said. “Shadowspawn perceptions of the future do not altogether free us from the law of unintended consequences.”

“Granted. Though the wars were amusing as well.. . . But that is all the more reason to end the project of science. It will let them acquire far too much understanding of the Power. That we cannot allow, and killing too many individual scientists again risks revealing presence by absence.”

“Then you will back the EMP attack?”

“No, no. You—and your sister—are quite right there. Far too dangerous. Let it be the plague; we and our servants—” He smiled grimly. “Our
renfields
, as the younger generation put it . . . Did I ever mention that I met the man Stoker? He was invaluable to us.. . . In any case, we will be prepared, and when the humans despair we will step forward and stop the pox . . . when their numbers have been culled sufficiently. Onesixth or one-fifth the current total, that would be more than sufficient. As many as there were when I was your age.”

Seraphine smiled; the long, lean, aquiline face of the Somali girl she wore made it extraordinarily wolflike, and her yellow eyes glowed.

“And then the world will be as we wish it, wild and free. Enough humans for servants and food and amusement, enough to make the things we need. Few enough that once more the world will be sweet and uncrowded, the air and water clean, with many plains and woods and mountains empty save for great numbers of beasts.
We
will have the jets and yachts and things for our palaces and estates, and the humans will have just as much as we choose to give them, and they will worship us. As we wish it, forever.”

Ellen sipped more of the brandy.
The horrible thing is, that isn't even the worst possible alternative.

“Ah . . . would you need science for that?” she asked. “Ignorant serfs wouldn't be much use in keeping the central heating going.”

“No, no,” Seraphine said. “Not science. Only engineering, really. Science we could gradually abolish. A tiresome thing, in any case.”

Adrian sighed. “I suppose I must support your position, then, Great-grandfather,” he said. “Option two it is.”

He and his progenitor locked eyes for a moment, and then he finished his brandy.

“It will be useful to have your support in Tbilisi, my descendant. You inspire a good deal of fear, which is of course in the end the basis of all respect.”

Adrian's bow was graceful. “Thank you for the excellent dinner.”

“You would not care to join us for other fare?” His molten-gold eyes paused on Ellen. “Your . . . wife could participate, in a number of different ways.”

“A thousand thanks, but not tonight,” Adrian said.

 

 

Ellen buried her face in her hands and huddled against Adrian in the back of the limousine.

“Oh,
Christ
,” she said.

“You were splendid, my sweet. You were brave as a lioness.”

His arm went around her shoulders, and she could feel the chuckle rumble through his throat. “And it is because of
you
that we know about the plague that Adrienne and her conspirators developed. And even now the Brotherhood is preparing.”

She took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. Will they have enough vaccine?”

“Enough, and knowledge of how to make more. The Council may plan to step in as saviors; instead they will be exposed, and their numbers are so few that even the Power would not be enough, not against a humanity knowing what they are and united against them. Nothing is certain, but it may be the turning point in this long war!”

“Well,
that's
good to hear. At least this wasn't a complete wash.”

“No. And—” He frowned.

“Aha! That's your
portentous
frown.”

“I had a flicker. When Étienne mentioned the children. Something. . . yes, portentous. A shadow from the future. Something involving them; some decision I will make concerning them. That is . . . is becoming. . . a crucial point on which much will turn.”

“What sort of decision?”

He smiled. “That is impossible to know at this point.”

She punched his shoulder; it was like striking a layer of resilient hard rubber through the fine cloth.

“In other words, you know it'll be important, but not
how
. And you don't know whether deciding one way or another will make things good or bad!”

“It is often that way when many adepts surrounded a nexus. The most fortunate choice will gradually become clear.”

Ellen made an exasperated sound, and then a little squeak as his hand gripped the nape of her neck.

“Perhaps you worry too much, and about the wrong things, my sweet.”

Ellen fluttered her long fair lashes. “Why,
whatever
could you mean, good sir?”

The sense of sick dread got worse as the flames erupted through the door and Eric Salvador was flung back to lie helpless in the dust of Afghanistan that had eaten so many soldiers' bones in so many wars. This time he could see the figure who walked through the fire.