The Reign of the Brown Magician. Lawrence Watt-Evans

      Bascombe nodded. He turned to the doctor beside him. “How long’s he been dead?”

      “Well, Mr. Secretary, that’s hard to say…” The doctor fumbled with the buttons of his white lab coat.

      “Try,” Bascombe said tartly.

      The doctor sighed. “Well, sir,” he said, “there are conflicting signs. Some of the evidence of overall decay indicates a death within the past three days, while tissue desiccation would seem to indicate a much earlier demise. Seems to me that despite what the sergeant here says, someone’s made partially-successful attempts to preserve this fellow’s remains. Either that, or he was not at all well for some time before his death.”

      That figured, Bascombe thought; the entire thing was confusing, so why should even so simple a detail as time of death be any different?

      The corpse did prove a few things, though.

      First off, it was real—something mysterious had happened where the telepaths reported it, it wasn’t all a fabrication. Everything the telepaths had reported that could be readily checked on had been checked on, and it was all true.

      If there was some sort of conspiracy or rebellion under way among the telepaths, it was undetectably subtle—and since there was no obvious way the telepaths could have obtained these mysterious corpses, the plotters must also have hitherto unseen, unknown resources.

      Second, the corpse was dressed in the manner of some of the people who took part in previous incursions made by Shadow, and armed with a sword; there was nothing to connect it in any way with Earth. No one had ever found any evidence that Earth had inter-dimensional capabilities; the Empire’s own crash program had taken five years to produce the space-warp generator once they knew it was theoretically possible to travel between universes, and Earth, which had no anti-gravity, no blasters, and little semblance of the Empire’s applied science, had supposedly known of the Empire’s existence for no more than a few months.

      If Earth was involved, then the Earthpeople had hitherto unseen, unknown resources, and were being undetectably subtle.

      In other words, if either the telepaths or the Earthpeople were behind this, the Empire was outmatched—but all the evidence pointed to Shadow.

      Shadow was definitely up to something.

      The question was, up to what?

      Chapter Four

      One man had died of fright.

      Pel hadn’t expected anything like that; for a few moments guilt closed his throat, and he blinked away tears.

      He should have expected it—the poor sucker had been abducted without warning, captured by a pair of zombies and dragged off to the fortress of a world-conquering evil power, a power well known for hanging and disembowelling its enemies.

      Nobody out there knew that Shadow was dead, that her replacement was one of the good guys—or at least, tried to be one of the good guys.

      Not that he was very good at it, he thought as he wiped his eyes and tried to swallow. The storybook heroes never made such stupid mistakes, never accidentally killed innocent bystanders.

      Maybe, when he had learned how to resurrect the dead, he could bring this poor fellow back, too.

      “Take him to the kitchen,” he told two of the fetches when he could speak.

      The other involuntary guests all shuddered, glancing at one another and at the corpse as the fetches carried it away.

      Pel silently cursed himself, and his eyes teared up again, this time more with frustration than grief. “That’s where it’s easiest to preserve him until I can revive him,” he explained.

      It would take some effort to always remember that these people were accustomed to assuming the worst. Under Shadow, assuming the worst was the only way to avoid disaster.

      He looked the survivors over.

      There were eight, so far, and more on the way—that was really a pretty promising result. None of them were wizards or Imperials; most of them were scruffy and dirty and looked like peasants, but still, this was a good start.

      He looked them over, standing or crouching at the eastern end of the throne room, faces averted or eyes shielded against the glare of the matrix and blinking anyway. They obviously had no idea what was going on.

      He had debated waiting for the last few, but he had already kept the first arrivals in suspense for over an hour while this group collected, and the others wouldn’t reach the fortress for some time yet; it was time to begin.

      “I assume you think that I’m Shadow,” he said, and without meaning to he let the matrix amplify his voice, so that it boomed and echoed; one man clapped his hands over his ears, and others flinched, but they all turned to listen.

      “I’m not,” Pel continued. “Shadow is dead. But before she died, she turned her power over to me.”

      He paused, unsure what to say next; he hadn’t gotten that far in preparing a speech. He’d assumed he could just wing it, make it up as he went along—he’d done that often enough in presentations—but he’d been disconcerted by the one who died, thrown off his pace, and now he was struggling to remember what he’d planned to say. He had figured that he would tell these people that the hangings and other executions were to stop, that they were free now—but how did he get to that from the announcement that Shadow was dead?

      And if they were free, how could he order them to stop hanging people, or bring him wizards, or do anything else?

      And somehow he had pictured himself speaking to a group of well-dressed, dignified village elders, rather than a bunch of terrified farmers who were cowering against the wall in confusion, too scared to speak.

      “Shadow is dead,” he repeated.

      One of the men blinked, and ventured a whispered, “Shadow is dead; long live Shadow.”

      His neighbors turned to stare at him, then quickly looked back at the blaze of color and light that was all they could see before them.

      When Pel, too startled to react immediately, said nothing, about half of the men mumbled, “Shadow is dead, long live Shadow.”

      Pel slammed a fist onto the arm of his throne, and outside, unheard, magically-driven winds whipped around the fortress walls; Pel could sense them through the matrix. Within the throne room his glow shifted toward reds and blues and shadows, away from the lighter and warmer colors. This was so slow and frustrating! These people didn’t understand, and he didn’t know how to explain it to them.

      “No, no,” he said. “Shadow is dead; there is no more Shadow. I am not Shadow!” He fought down the light and color, so that the men could see him. “I’m just a man, a man who has Shadow’s magic.”

      The peasants peered at him through the lessened glare, then glanced at one another, and after a moment one of them called unsteadily, “Who are you, then?”

      “My name is Pel Brown.”

      Feet shuffled and voices muttered. No one spoke.

      Pel realized that his name wasn’t much of an answer.

      “I came here from another world,” he said. “Shadow wanted me to help her with something, but she lied to me, and…and I killed her.”

      It was surprisingly hard to admit that, and for a moment he wondered whether a trace remained of the geas Shadow had placed on him, the magical compulsion not to harm her.

      But it was probably, he knew, just guilt. He didn’t like to admit to being a murderer, even if it was justified homicide, even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself. He’d seen Shadow kill his friends for no reason, so even though he couldn’t harm her himself, he had set up a situation where Prossie Thorpe would kill her.

      He’d conspired to commit