Keyes, Sci-fi and Fantasy Library

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EMPIRE OF UNREASON
Book Three of
The Age of Unreason
J. Gregory Keyes
A Del Rey® Book
THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP • NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it
may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author
nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edition of The Shadows of
God by J. Gregory Keyes. This excerpt has been specially set for this edition only and may
not reflect the final content of the hardcover edition.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2000 by J. Gregory Keyes
Excerpt from The Shadows of God by J. Gregory Keyes copyright © 2001 by J. Gregory
Keyes
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto.“
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random
House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001116711
ISBN 0-345-40610-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Hardcover Edition: May 2000 First Mass Market Edition: June 2001
10 987654321
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For Veronica Chapman
CONTENTS
Prologue
PART ONE
Magnetisms
1. A Matter of Gravity
2. A Death
3. Flint Shouting
4. A Ghost
5. Snares
6. The Scalped Man
7. Pretender
8. Taxonomy
9. Mask of the Sea
10. The Iron People
11. Seraph
12. Assembly
13. Sun Boy
14. Direction
PART TWO
Cartographies of Darkness
1. Fort Moore
2. Bargains
3. A Tale
4. The Margrave
5. Irena
6. Ambassador
7. Siberian Vision
8. A Box of Snakes
9. Mongols
10. Suspicions and Ribs
PART THREE
Dark Engines
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1. First Blood
2. A Question of China
3. Coweta
4. SintiLapitta
5. Lines of Supply
6. New Moscow
7. The Frames
8. The Prophet
9. Keres
10. Red Paths
11. Apollo
12. Cavalries
Epilogue: Weeping Lightning
Acknowledgments
Belated credits to Bob Kobres for his pointers on how to destroy London with an asteroid.
Thanks to Steve Saffel, who had to jump on this boat in midstream, and in a pretty swift
current. My appreciation to Kris Boldis, Ken Carleton, Professor Nell Keyes, and Nancy
Landrum for reading. Thanks to Duane Wilkins of University Books in Seattle and Mary-
Elizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, not just for their dedication to science
fiction and fantasy, but for their friendship. Finally, my thanks to Heather Ramsey, Tony
Selto, Bill Nary, and everyone else at Salle Auriol Seattle for bruising my body but
lightening my spirits.
Prologue
His body closed like a fist, each muscle trying to tear free of bone. He snarled through his
teeth, watched the angel with slitted eyes.
“You can still change your mind,” the angel said reasonably, “and obey me.” It raised its
feathery wings. Its face, as always, was a mask of light.
Peter tasted blood in his mouth, but he managed to get the words out as he wanted, clear
and measured. “I am Peter Alexeyevich! I am the tsar of Russia. You cannot command
me.”
“I am an angel of God.”
“You are not. You are a betrayer and a liar.”
“I saved your life. I saved your empire. I helped you control your Old Believers. You were
happy to tell them I was an angel.”
Peter scooted against the cabin wall and dug his hands into the deep pockets of his coat.
His face, which often slipped his control, spasmed terribly. “What do you want?” he
demanded. “What do you devils really want?”
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“Only the one thing I asked. Have I ever asked for anything else? Any reward for my
services?”
“It isn’t one thing. It’s everything. I know you now.”
“I doubt that. But, very well, if you insist on dying.”
Peter pulled something from his pocket—a small cube with a circular depression in the
top. It was humming, a single clear note.
The angel paused. “What is that?”
“Something a friend gave me. A wise friend, as it turns out.” He placed a sphere the size of
a musket ball in the depression, and a shriek cut through the fabric of the universe. Peter
felt it in his bones. The angel felt it, too, and dripped fire into Peter’s veins, even as a wind
came that tore it apart, each feather dissolving into a line of smoke.
The death of the angel did not stop the pain. A wave of agony crested over Peter’s head and
dragged him under; and suddenly he had no weight at all, as if he were falling from a
height with no end.
Red Shoes jerked awake to find himself already on his feet. He swayed there for a moment,
trying to remember where he was, but the otherworld sight was still wrapped around him,
making the trees, the earth he stood on, the stars themselves too strange to recognize.
He found his pipe and a pinch of Ancient Tobacco and lit it from an ember that had
strayed from the remains of the fire. The warm, musky smoke strengthened the breath in
him and curled from his nose. Gradually the world came clear.
He was Red Shoes, war prophet and miracle maker of the Choctaw people, and he stood on
an earthen mound in the Natchez country, near the Great Water Road. The mound’s top
was as broad as a village, and around it lay swamp, the underworld kissing the earth from
beneath.
A soft cough came behind him, and he turned to regard Skin Eater.
Skin Eater was a Natchez man, a descendant of the Sun, his dark skin mottled with even
darker tattoos, blurred by the eighty winters of his life.
“I felt it,” Skin Eater murmured. “Do you know what it was?”
“No,” Red Shoes admitted. “Something important, something strong. My shadowchildren
died bringing it to me.”
“From the West.”
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“Yes. Since the strange news from the West began, I have sent my children out to watch.
Now they have seen something.”
“West is a big place,” Skin Eater observed.
“I know. But my shadowchildren tell me no more than that. If only I knew where in the
West…” Red Shoes trailed off, thinking.
Skin Eater reflected for a moment as he lit his own pipe. “You are more powerful than ever
I was,” he said, “perhaps the strongest there has ever been. But your people are younger
than mine—there are things the Natchez remember that the Choctaw do not.”
“I acknowledge that, great-uncle.” It was a title of respect, only. He was not related to the
old man.
Skin Eater swept his arms around. “This place is an image of the world—do you see? The
deeps of the beginning times below and around us, the earth raised up with a face for each
direction. The flat top here is the whole surface of the middle world. Like those paintings
on paper the French use.”
“You mean a map? But maps have things marked on them. Rivers, mountains, towns—”
“But if a town should move, will it move on a French map? Not unless they draw another
map, yes? Here, however, you have only to know how to look. Here, the world can always
be seen true.”
Red Shoes frowned slightly as the implications of the old man’s words sunk in. He took
another puff of his pipe, and began chanting, walking in widening circles upon the top of
the mound, giving smoke to the directions. His feet sank back into the world of spirit, of
dream.
As he walked, the appearance of the mound changed. Below his feet, plains, mountains,
and forests appeared and vanished, as if, indeed, he walked on an enormous and
incredibly detailed map. Excited now, he strode west, looking for what he had seen. He
crossed the Great Water Road, which the English called Mississippi. He towered above
thinning trees, and then there were no trees at all, only grass. There, at last, he found an
obscure place he could not see, a patch of nothing on the image of the world. This was the
thing, the place where his shadowchildren had heard the scream, felt the strange power.
He made his way back, memorizing the directions as he went. The Natchez country was
easy to find again, for it was in the middle of the mound; and for a moment he was dizzied,
standing at the center of the center of the center. Then he shook himself alive again.
“Did you find it?” Skin Eater asked.
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