The Gods Return coti-3

by David Drake

  Ilna grabbed Ingens' collar with her left hand and leaned back, bracing her feet again on the side of the boat. Ingens' eyes had no more intelligence than those of a fish, but his muscles moved with an instinctive urge to survive. His right hand scrabbled blindly in the boat until it closed on a thwart; then, with a colossal lurch, he rolled over the gunwale and into the belly of the vessel. Ilna toppled back, but her grip on the lasso kept her from falling over the other side. The humor of the thought struck her. She didn't laugh often, but she barked one out now. The boat crashed down, bouncing Ilna upright again. Ingens had his arms and legs wrapped around the mast as though he was adrift in the waves. The boat scudded forward more swiftly than any normal current could drive it, lifting on the next throbbing pulse. The landscape was brown and splashed to either side, mud-choked water merging imperceptibly with land shaken to a liquid. The earthquake throbbed, mastering the land the way a winter storm rules the sky: harsh, merciless, overwhelming. Ilna gripped the thwart she'd been seated on and looked in the direction the cataclysm drove them.

  Ortran was a rocky wedge thrusting from a landscape that otherwise was no more solid than the sullen yellow sky. A pulse lifted theBird of the River again, rushing the vessel toward an end of the disaster's own choosing. Ilna thought of a squirrel being sucked slowly and inevitably down the gullet of a snake. The dark mass of Ortran loomed close ahead. Ingens' eyes were closed as he prayed in a singsong; Ilna could hear his voice only as rhythm woven into the roar of the earth tearing itself apart and reknitting. Her own face was calm. If this was death, well, then she'd die. She'd have regrets, but the thing she'd regret most was that she'd ever been born. When she was dead, she wouldn't have to remember Chalcus and Merota laughing, or Chalcus stabbed through a dozen times and falling beside the corpse of Merota.

  The boat scraped and skidded up the slope of coarse gravel which had been Ortran's shoreline. The shock didn't break Ilna's grip, but it lifted her over the thwart and slammed her numbingly to the planking on the other side. Like a squirrel going down a snake's gullet…

  Chapter 6 It seemed to Cashel that the moon was bigger than it ought to be, but this way it threw plenty of light on the sandy hills even though it was just in the first quarter. Liane's shadow stretched back toward him, and ahead of her Rasile's did also. The moon phase bothered him more than its size did, because back home it was only two days past the full. He knew that was silly: he was in a completely different world from where he'd been last night. But a shepherd takes the moon and stars as certain when nothing else, not even the seasons, ever is. Something croaked from line of horsetails in the low ground to the right. It might've been a frog, though Cashel didn't suppose it was. To see wild animals, all you really have to do is sit in one spot and not do anything at all. If you were moving, though, even somebody as sharp-eyed as Cashel was would be lucky to catch sight of more than a squirrel on a high branch or maybe a rabbit. Rabbits didn't have any more sense than sheep did. Rasile's slender legs scissored along quicker than a human's, which made it seem like she was really striding out in the lead. She took short steps, though, so really they weren't moving any faster than Cashel would when he was following a flock of sheep. Liane suited her pace to the wizard's. Cashel looked at the thick woolen socks she was wearing and tried again to understand why. He guessed it wasn't just being nosy since they were going to be together in any kind of condition, so he said, "Liane, are your legs cold here?" She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. "No," she said, "but my feet aren't used to the kind of walking I thought we might be doing." She smiled even wider. "Walking like this, in fact. I wore the socks so that the sandal straps wouldn't chafe my feet, especially in loose sand." "Thank you," Cashel said. "I should've guessed that." Though thinking about it, he wasn't sure that was true.

  There weren't a lot of people like Liane. She usually rode horses or even in a carriage, but she was willing to hike across a wasteland if she thought that might help other folks. Cashel didn't doubt having Liane along was going to help. He saw movement. At first he thought he'd seen a reflection from the surface of a bog a couple furlongs to the east, but the gleam shook itself together and paced along parallel with them. "Rasile, we've got company on the left," he said, just loud enough to be sure the wizard heard him. He wasn't nervous. This wasn't a new situation to Cashel, and it might not even turn out to be a bad one. Because itwasn't new to him or any shepherd, he turned and scanned the hills to the right instead of focusing on the thing that'd let him see it. Sure enough, another gleam was there behind a reverse slope. Just the top of it showed now and again as it followed along beside Cashel and his companions. "And the other side too," he said.

  He began spinning his staff in slow circles. Blue sparkles spiraled off the iron butt-caps, bright enough that they raised purple reflections from the sand. "Wait," said Rasile quietly, pausing on a dune that something the size of a rabbit had crossed recently. Tracks like little hands marked the wind-scallops. To the thing moving on the east she called, "Come join us or take yourselves away. If you choose to follow us, we'll treat you as enemies." The creature laughed and walked toward them. "We're not your enemies, wizard," it called. "We know our strength; we do not challenge such as you." Shecalled, Cashel thought. The voice was female and perhaps even human. "And the other," said one of the figures who'd come out of concealment on the right.

  There were two of them, much closer than the first. They looked like women wrapped in shining gray silk, but they moved too smoothly to be walking on human feet. "Yes…," said her companion. "He's magnificent. Can you imagine…?" They both burst into laughter as shrill as the cries of screech owls. "Stay where we can see you,"

  Rasile said harshly. She resumed walking southward with quick, steady steps. Liane followed, tilting her head toward the figure who'd spoken to them first. Cashel kept his staff spinning and watched all directions as he brought up the rear. Every few circuits he fed in a figure-8 just to keep his wrists supple and show whatever the figures were how quick he could make the heavy hickory change direction. "What are you doing in this place, wizard?" asked the figure on the left.

  "Are you hunting? There's little to hunt here." "So very little," said one of her fellows. "We're hungry," said the other. "We starve, we always starve, and there's nothing here to hunt." "They're empusae!"

  Liane said. Then, to the creature on the left, "You're an empusa."

  "What do names matter, little one?" the empusa said. She'd come close enough to touch with the quarterstaff and was moving parallel with Rasile. Her passage didn't mark the sand. "She would be our prey if she were alone," said one of her sisters. "Easy prey…," the third creature whispered. "Not easy," Liane said. She flicked a hand toward the speaker, the point of her knife glittering like a jewel. "I have a charm against your like." The empusae fell into shrieking laughter. Cashel noticed that they backed away, though. "What do you hunt, wizard?" said the figure on the left. The empusae's voices were cool but sweet, like they were speaking through silver tubes-except when they laughed. "We have business in another place," Rasile said.

  "And our business is none of yours." The wizard didn't turn her head to either side when she spoke to the creatures, but Cashel didn't doubt she knew exactly where each of them was. If she wanted to, she'd finish the things. Just as Cashel would, though they'd use different ways to do it. The empusae laughed, but they drifted outward by a half pace or so. Rasile's course took her companions along the edge of standing water as broad as a millpond. The empusa on their left slid through the horsetails without making their stems waver or touching the surface. When the moon shone on the creatures, they looked like human statues polished out of blocks of lead. In reflection from the water- "Duzi!" Cashel said, turning to send the staff through where the empusa had been an instant before. There was a blaze of blue wizardlight but the creature swirled to the other side of the pool without evident motion, more like a puff of breeze than anything physical. The reflection he'd seen was tall, twice as tall as Cashel an
d taller than anybody could be. It was dead, too: strips of skin were hanging down like bark from a sycamore tree, and some places he could see through gaps in its rib cage. But it wasn't human anyway.

  The limbs had too many joints, the skull slanted up a high forehead to a point at the back, and the long fangs in the upper and lower jaws crossed like a crocodile's. "You are not our prey, splendid one," called one of the pair of empusae in her clear, liquid voice. They'd dropped back only a pace when Cashel swiped at their fellow. "We bow before you," echoed her companion. "You are our lovely master…"

  Cashel grimaced. "I'm not your master," he muttered. "But I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry." He'd swished his staff out without thinking, because what he'd seen was ugly beyond his mind's ability to grasp. He didn't think he was wrong, exactly, because he didn't have the least doubt that the empusae were evil; but Rasile didn't think they were worth the effort of killing, and he knew he'd struck because he was startled, not because of any better reason. That wasn't something people ought to do. "Did the Gods of Palomir send you, wizard?" asked the creature that Cashel had swung at. It'd moved closer again now that they were past the pond, but it was drifting along with Rasile instead of staying beside Cashel at the end of the line. "They have returned, you know." "They are great and powerful," another empusa said. "The old Gods are dead," chorused the third.

  "They banished us to this hungry waste, but They are gone." "The Lady is no more!" the empusae sang together in triumph. Their voices were beautiful. "Franca and His Siblings rule the waking world, and we will return to feast on men!" Rasile looked at the pair of empusae, then toward the single creature drifting along to their left. Her tongue lolled out in the Corl equivalent of laughter. "Not yet, I think," she said. "Not quite yet." Turning back to Liane and Cashel, she said,

  "This is where we will return to the waking world. I'll step forward, and you follow me." Liane nodded. Her face was fixed like an ivory carving, and the little knife was steady in her hand. "Yes, ma'am,"

  Cashel said. He didn't see anything different about this place-a ridge of sand with a low outcrop a furlong to the right and a pool and dark vegetation about the same distance to the left. He didn't worry, though: Rasile knew what she was doing. The wizard paced forward, blurred, and disappeared. Liane followed just as steady as could be-and blurred, and disappeared. Cashel kept the staff spinning and his head swiveling from one side to the other. He didn't trust the empusae, not even a little bit, and if they tried to come close- He stepped into fog. He couldn't feel the hickory in his hands for an instant. He was back with Liane and Rasile, and the stone walls of a city loomed before them. The shrieking laughter of the empusae still rang in Cashel's ears. *** "There's something out there, lad," said Carus. The ghost's hand caressed the memory of his sword hilt. "I can feel it." We know they're out there, Garric thought. But we've got pickets out and a palisade. If the rats attack tonight, we'll be in better shape than any time in the past three days. "I don't like it," Carus said, then laughed and added, "But maybe it's just that when I'm on campaign like this, I miss the flesh more than other times." "I wonder what kind of tree this is," Garric said aloud to Tenoctris, looking up in the moonlight as he kneaded the backs of his thighs with hard fingers. The grove of tall trees on this slope had branches that came out straight from the trunk, though some turned upward at a right angle; they were covered with needles for their whole length. "There were a few in the garden of Duke Tedry," Tenoctris said. The moon silhouetted the strange branches, making them look hairy. "They weren't native to Yole, though; an ancestor had planted them. I heard a gardener call them monkey-puzzles, but I don't know if he'd heard the name or made it up." Lights shone below, hundreds of yellow-orange campfires sprinkled across the darkness like dandelions in a meadow. The army was camped on what before the Change had been a nameless rocky islet in the Inner Sea. Now it was a forested limestone ridge rising from rolling plains. The ground was better drained than that near Pandah a few days previous, so the marching was vastly easier. The soldiers slept in their cloaks, but none of them would've objected if Prince Garric had travelled with not only a tent but a full entourage of servants. They knew Garric led from the front. If he lived as well as a man could on campaign, that was what a generalought to do. "Servants are a Sister-cursed bother," Carus muttered in Garric's mind. "And a tent doesn't help a bloody bit unless you're going to skulk in it all day, in which case you may as well have stayed home!" Garric grinned and seated himself carefully. His back was to the low limestone cliff that ran down the spine of the former island. Blood Eagles were on guard ten feet above him on top of the ridge, and there was another detachment on the slope below with lanterns on poles. Nonetheless, the solid rock behind Garric provided a slight illusion of privacy. Aloud he said, "I've been thinking about how nice it would be to be home in Barca's Hamlet. I'd probably be worrying about whether I need to drain the cesspool this fall or if it can wait till spring. And thinking what a terrible job it'll be." He, Tenoctris, and the ghost of his ancestor all laughed. Garric ached in muscles which two years before he hadn't known existed. Carus' reflexive skill made his descendent as good a horseman as an experienced Ornifal noble, but Garric's muscles hadn't been hardened by a lifetime of daily exercise. Sure, he was strong-but the particular stresses of horsemanship were different from those of walking, digging, or any of the other things that a peasant did. His mind slipped away from the simple physical problems that he'd been unconsciously trying to keep it to. "Tenoctris?" he said.

  "We've-the kingdom has, but you and I have too… we've survived a lot of things." "Yes, Garric?" Tenoctris said. The lanterns were twenty feet away, sufficient to see by but without the detail of bright sun. In the soft yellow glow, Garric could imagine that Tenoctris was the aged wizard she'd been when she washed up on the shore of Barca's Hamlet. Her new youth and vibrancy were positive advantages in all ways, and it was that rather than vanity which had impelled her to regain that youth. But- Garric had grown used to the old woman. The additional change, even though it was for the better, was disturbing at a level well below his consciousness. The thought was so foolish that he grinned. It was good to do that, but it didn't lead his mind away from the question. "Every time we survive, something new comes at us," he said. "Eventually, wewon't survive. You and I won't, and the kingdom won't. Isn't that so?" Tenoctris laughed.

  She'd laughed often throughout the time Garric had known her, but this full-throated, youthful chortling was new. And a little embarrassing, truth to tell, because Garric had the strong impression that he was more the subject of her good humor than the person she was sharing it with. The guards didn't face around to watch, but he could see their heads turn slightly in hopes of learning why the pretty young woman was laughing so hard. "I think, now that you've suggested it…,"

  Tenoctris said. She'd choked off a giggle and seemed contrite at her behavior. "I think that perhaps Icould become immortal. That's certainly one of the things the wizard whose powers I've borrowed intended to do. But I don't believe I could remain human, or that anyone human would want what immortality entails if they understood it as well as I do." She pressed three fingers of her left hand into the palm of her right while she considered how to proceed, then looked up with an affectionate smile. "The kingdom will be replaced, yes," she said. "Not necessarily fall, but no human creation lasts forever. Nor does anything else last forever, of course. Even cliffs-" She patted the face of rock. Light reflected from the pale limestone softened her silhouette, thrown onto it by the moon. "-will wear down to dust, then be squeezed up again in a different shape and place. Yes you'll die, Garric, though I hope it will be 'full of years and wisdom.' Certainly that's the result I'm striving for, for mankind's sake. But death's a natural part of life, not the triumph of evil." "But that's what I mean," Garric said with more heat than he'd intended. "Chaos, evil, will eventually win, won't it? We have to win every time, but if chaos wins even once, the fight's over. Forever." "Ah," said Tenoctris, nodding with a look o
f understanding. "Garric, these past few years have seen a great deal of disruption-a unique amount, even for the thousand year cycle, because this time it brought us to the Change.

  But the preferred state of the cosmos isn't chaos, it's stasis: things remaining more or less as they are. I think-" She paused, apparently looking down past the scattering of strange trees to the encamped army. Garric doubted she was really focusing on her immediate surroundings, though. A trumpet blew, announcing a change in the guard detachments. "-Ihope, Garric," she said, "that when the Gods of Palomir have been returned to their rest, this world will rest also.

  Now, I don't mean there'll be perfect peace!" Garric laughed. "Not unless people vanish too," he said. "Which I wouldn't regard as a good thing, though I suppose one could." "Yes," Tenoctris said. "But if-"

  She waved a hand in the air. "-the priest-kings of Seres raise an army and conquer the Land, it doesn't matter in a cosmic sense. The Serians are human, and they'd be fighting for human reasons-the same kind of reasons that cause dogs to fight or boys when they're let out of school." "The Serians!" Carus snorted. "Not in this world or any worldI'min!" Which is missing the point, Garric thought, or perhaps illustrating it perfectly. Aloud he said, "I'll fight ratmen or lichs or demons, I suppose. I've fought them, and other men have fought them and won. But I hope if there're Gods to be fought, you'll handle the business, Tenoctris. I don't…" He rubbed his cheekbones to give himself a moment to put into words the thought he was struggling with.