Free Tides of Darkness by Judith Tarr

knew that she had erred; that he was too far gone. He sank down through the water, limbs sprawling, slack and lifeless.
    Just as she was about to dive to his rescue, he jerked, twitched, thrashed. Eyes and mouth opened; he surged up out of the pool, gasping, choking, striking at air.
    She moved back prudently out of the way and waited for him to find his sanity again, such as it was. He scrambled to the pool’s edge and lay there, breathing in gasps, skin pebbled with cold.
    When it seemed clear that he would refrain from attack, she wrapped him in a cloth and rubbed him dry. His eyes were clouded still; he submitted without resistance. Only slowly did he seem to see her or to know who she was; even then he only stared at her dully.
    Her heart constricted. Not, she told herself, that she cared overmuch whether he lived or died, but she needed him alert and sane, to hunt for the emperor. Indaros with his mind gone was of no use to her.

    Little by little the light came back into his eyes. He straightened; he shuddered so hard that she heard the clacking of teeth. When he spoke, his voice was raw. “How long—”
    â€œPart of a day and most of a night,” she said.
    â€œNot so bad, then,” he said with a small sigh. “Lady, what I saw—” He was shaking uncontrollably. “Armies, lady. Wars. And something … I don’t know what it is, how they raise it, what sustains it, but it rolls ahead of them. We aren’t strong enough, lady. Not even all of us together.”
    â€œWe are going to have to be,” she said grimly. “Show me.”
    He opened his eyes wide. They were as dark as the night between stars, and shimmering with bubbles that were worlds. Before she could speak, move, think, she was deep within his memory.
    He was strong, she thought distantly. Stronger even than she had imagined. As strong as she. Untrained, yes, but far from undisciplined. He had taught himself—really, rather well.
    She gathered everything that he had told her, found Urziad where he drifted on the tides of dream, and sent it all to him, whole, as it had been sent to her. His shock knotted her belly.
    There would be no doubt among mages now. Not after this. She struggled free, raising every shield she had.
    In the silence, alone within herself, she stood staring at the boy from Han-Gilen.
    No—let him be the man and mage that he so evidently was. Let her give him his name, Indaros Kurelios, prince-heir of a small and yet powerful realm. “Why?” she asked him. “Why hide yourself so completely?”
    â€œI never wanted temples,” he said, “or orders of mages. It seemed they never wanted me.”
    â€œI am thinking,” she said slowly, “that it’s great good luck for us all that that was so.”
    â€œWhat, that I’m a coward and a layabout?”
    â€œStop that,” she said. “This needed someone outside the walls. Someone who could see unimpeded; who could go where none of us was able to go.”

    â€œDoes that mean my sentence is commuted?” he asked sweetly.
    â€œYou still broke the law,” she said.
    He sighed, shrugged. The color had come back to his face, the insouciance to his manner. She was growing used to it; it grated on her less now than it had. “And the emperor is still missing. I know he’s somewhere on the shores of the shadow—but where, I can’t tell.”
    â€œWe will find him,” she said, “if we have to walk on foot from world to world.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s time for that,” he said.
    â€œWhat else can we do?”
    He bit his lip. It was odd and rather gratifying to see him so far removed from his easy insolence. “I can track him. I think … . if you ward me and protect me from the dark, I can find the trail he left. It’s still there; I can almost see it. But it will fade soon.”
    She searched his face. He was speaking