by David Drake
They'd reached the top of the bluff. "We'll roll back the stone first.
Ingens, set the rope by the post. You can tie it later." Two guards sat by a fire which had sunk to a pile of white ash and the ends of billets smoldering around it. The men were as stiff and mute as Brincisa's servant. A spear, a wicker shield, and an iron cap sat on the ground behind either man, but their real purpose here was the large bronze bell hanging from a yoke nearby. A stroke on the bell with the mallet beside it or even a flailing hand would rouse the whole town to deal with tomb robbers. The silence made Ilna uncomfortable. Unlike her brother she didn't think much about nature, but its chorus was a constant backdrop to night in a hamlet: birds calling and rattling their flight feathers, the varied trills of insects, and frogs making every sound from the boom of a bullfrog to narrow-mouthed toads bleating like a herd of miniature sheep.
Brincisa's wizardry had stilled all that. Though Ilna didn't particularly care for the sounds, she disliked being without them. The stone closing the entrance wasn't a slab as Ilna had assumed. It was a roller as long as she was tall, a large version of the querns women used in villages that didn't have watermills to grind grain. It was limestone like the hill beneath it, pierced through the center so that the thick hardwood pole sticking out on either end acted as a handle for the men moving it to and fro. A fist-sized rock waited on either side to chock the tomb open while bodies were being lowered into the cave. "We have to move that by ourselves?" Ingens said doubtfully.
"We'll manage," said Ilna curtly as she eyed the situation. Ingens probably hoped that Brincisa would use an incantation to open the tomb. Very probably the wizard could've done that if necessary, but Ilna knew that wizardry was better left for matters which nothing else could accomplish. Physical effort was less draining for any task that you could do either way. Brincisa turned to the stone roller. The pole extended far enough that two people could push on either side if they didn't mind rubbing shoulders. "Mistress Ilna," the wizard said, "help me on the left side. Your secretary can take the right." Ilna looked at her. Brincisa was still breathing hard. She hadn't stopped to rest on the climb up the hill, but she was far from having recovered her strength after the incantation. "Ingens and I will move the stone,"
Ilna said. "You brought along a lantern for me? Light it now." She squatted and braced both hands on the pole. It was smooth from long wear, fortunately. Even if it hadn't been, Ilna's palms weren't soft like a fine lady's who might be gored by a splinter. "Ready?" she said to Ingens. He nodded. Behind them, metal clicked on stone; Brincisa was striking a spark with steel on a chip of pyrites instead of using wizardry to light the wick of the candle she'd taken from the lantern.
Ilna and the secretary shoved forward together. The roller moved more easily than she'd expected; though the track sloped very slightly upward, years-centuries?-of use had polished it. Ilna's only problem was that she was too small to easily extend to the stone's resting position, but by hunching forward from her squat she was able to get the chock in place on her side. She stood and looked back at the hole they'd uncovered. There'd been gaps big enough to stick an arm through when the stone was in place, but now that it'd been removed the opening didn't look any too big. She could crawl through without difficulty, but she wondered how much trouble it would've been to bury her Uncle Katchin-a pig in all senses. She frowned. The air inside the cave was dank, like the interior of a well. She didn't smell rotting flesh, however. Three days even deep in rock should've been enough for Hutton to turn, quite apart from the reeking corruption of centuries of previous dead bodies. "Mistress Brincisa," Ilna said, "I don't smell death." What she really meant was that she didn't smell corpses, but she was being polite since the woman's husband was one of them.
"There's a special property of this cave," Brincisa said with a flash of irritation, there and then gone. "It's of no consequence. Master Ingens, tie the rope around this post. And you, mistress, may want to tie the other end around your waist." The 'post' was a thick bollard.
Ilna rang it with her knuckles and found what the moonlight had led her to expect: it was bronze, not wood or even iron. It was set too deeply in the rock to quiver when she threw her weight against it.
Lowering bodies into the cave was obviously so familiar a practice that considerable preparation had been made to make it easy and dignified. More dignified than simply tossing them down a hole in the rock as though they were so many turds falling into a close chest.
Ingens threw his rope around the post. He started to loop the free end around the main length, then paused. "I'll take care of that," Ilna said, trying to keep the disgust out of her voice. Ingens could read and write, after all. She'd have to be out of her mind to trust a knot he'd tied, however. "Since I'm the one who'll be hanging from it."
Ingens stepped out of the way obediently. Brincisa rested on one knee, her face set; presumably she was still recruiting her strength. Ilna let her fingers run over the rope for a moment; it was linen, new and easily strong enough for Ilna's slight weight even though it was the diameter of her fourth finger. It would do. She tied it with two half-hitches, simple and satisfactory, then rose. "I'm ready," she said. "Give me the lantern." "Mistress, how will you carry it?" Ingens asked in concern. Ilna glanced into the hole. The moonlight showed that it slanted slightly for about the length of her body before dropping away. She couldn't see beyond the initial slope. The rope would rub, but not badly; and anyway, it was new. She wore a silken lasso around her waist in place of a sash. Now she uncoiled a two-ell length and tied it around the lantern's loop handle. "I'll carry it in my hand till I'm over the drop," she said to the secretary. Brincisa remained silent, watching like a cat attending the actions of human beings but holding aloof from them. "Then I'll let it hang so that it lights the floor of the cave before I reach it." "It's not far," the wizard said. The fact she spoke was by now a surprise. "Twenty feet, no more." "Fine," said Ilna, "but I still want light." She supposed she'd be dropping into putrid corpses, the remains of centuries. She wasn't squeamish, but if she could avoid putting her weight on a spike of rotting bone, she would. "Shall I lower you, mistress?" Ingens said softly. He seemed genuinely concerned, which made no more sense to Ilna than the other parts of this puzzle. Well, her own task was simple enough. "No," she said. "I'll climb down myself." She turned and started down the rope backward. The linen filled her mind with memories of terraced fields rising from a broad brown current-not the North River, at least not the North River of the present. The sun was bright and hot, and little blue flowers nodded from long, kinked stalks. It was good to have the rope to touch, because it insulated her from the narrow rock about her. Below, waiting for her, was ancient death. But for now, flax flowers smiled at the sun. *** "Since you have an oracle here…," Liane said. "Please sit down, milady," Amineus said, gesturing to the cushions along the left wall of the single round room. He must've been sitting on the other side, for the table there had a bowl of fruit, a wedge of deep-yellow cheese, and a lidded silver flagon with matching goblet.
"Ah, would you like some refreshment?" The door across the room had three lock plates in it, all set together in the middle. The panel looked heavy enough to be the street door in a city where folk had to worry about robbers smashing their way in. "There's no need of that,"
Liane said, flicking the suggestion away with her left hand. "Nor time, I dare say. My colleagues and I need to question the Tree Oracle. And what I was saying-" She froze the start of the priest's protest with a raised finger. "-is that since you have an oracle, you are aware that the Worm is approaching Dariada. The city is doomed unless we stop the creature." Other than the second door, the room didn't have much to see. Solidly joined storage chests sat along the walls, two and two, and above the cushioned seats the plaster'd been frescoed with pictures of fountains. Cashel liked paintings; they were the one thing he'd found in cities that he'd have regretted missing if he hadn't left Barca's Hamlet. There didn't seem much reason to paint a fountain when you might'v
e had the real thing about as easy, though.
"You don't understand the difficulties in what you're saying," Amineus said, shaking his head in slow frustration. "The College of Priests-all three of us, not just me alone-has to consider the petition and-" "I don't care about the difficulties," said Liane, slapping the words out. "I certainly don't care about your procedures-and neither should you, since you and your whole city will be destroyed unless my associate Lady Rasile-" She gestured to Rasile, who grinned but kept her tongue inside her long jaws. "-who is a wizard, is able to find a solution. To accomplish this, she believes she needs to see the Tree." "Awizard?" Amineus said in amazement. He stared at Rasile, then back to Liane. "You mean this-" "Stop!" said Liane. "If you use the word 'animal' again to refer to a friend of mine, Master Cashel will knock you down. You can do that, can you not, Cashel?" "Yes ma'am," Cashel said. A cudgel would be handier, but short-gripping the quarterstaff would do the job too. He figured he could probably handle the big man without a weapon at all, but wrestling around inside chanced squashing the women like shoats when a brood sow rolls over. "As to your question, yes," Liane continued more calmly. "Rasile is a wizard. Now, take us to see the oracle." Amineus sighed and set the bread and knife down on the low table. "You may as well," he said. "It's improper, but what does that matter if the danger's as bad as we think? As bad as you say, milady. But I warn you-" He looked around the three of them. "-we've tried ourselves, following all the rituals. And the Tree has told us nothing. Nothing!"
"We'll go now, if you please, Master Amineus," Liane said. She wasn't near as harsh as she'd been a moment before, but she didn't expect an argument. "Yes, yes," the priest said tiredly. He turned to his servant. "Ansco, go tell Masters Hilfe and Conwin that I'm taking a noblewoman and her retinue into the Enclosure. If they want to join us, they'd best hurry." He paused, frowning. "Better see Conwin first," he said, correcting himself. "I can't imagine Hilfe will be willing to tear himself away from his counting house so early in the day." The servant nodded and trotted off. From his look of disappointment, Cashel guessed the fellow wanted to watch whatever happened next. Amineus lifted the key he wore chained to a heavy leather belt. Cashel expected him to go to the back door, but instead he knelt beside one of the storage chests. "The priests of the Tree are elected to three-year terms, you know," he muttered as he fitted the key to chest's lock. Maybe Liane knew that; Cashel certainly didn't. "One a year, and the senior man is high priest. I took it for an honor and thought it worth the trouble, but this business now…" He lifted the lid. There was nothing in the chest but three more keys. "Idon't know what to do, none of us do!" Amineus said. "An army of ruffians coming toward us with a monster-everybody says they're coming for the Oracle! We've got refugees from Telut, they tell us what's going to happen. I'm responsible and I don't know what to do!" He rose with the three keys in his hand. They were the kind that had thin pins sticking out from the end to fit and turn in arcs cut in the face of the latch plate. "We're each supposed to keep our key with us at all times," he said, "but the gardeners have to go in and out at any hour. That's, well… There's always one priest in the office. That's inconvenience enough." "You're doing what you needed to do, Master Amineus," Liane said firmly. "You're putting the problem of the Worm into the hands of those who may be able to solve it." The priest sniffed. "Am I?" he said, fitting the three keys into the locks. "Well, I hope you're right, but it doesn't really matter.
Since I don't know of anything else to do that would be better." He turned and looked at Liane. From his expression, he might've just learned that his whole family had died. "I don't know anything at all to do!" Amineus said. "Except run, and I won't do that." Liane stepped past the big priest and turned the keys one after the other. Each bar withdrew with a solidclack. She looked up at him. "We won't run either, Master Amineus," she said. "That's why we're here. Now, lead us to the Tree." Instead of pushing the panel herself, Liane gestured and stepped aside. Amineus smiled crookedly and opened the door, leading them through. Beyond was what seemed like another room, only this one was as big as a stadium and the roof was the branches and leaves of trees growing around the inside of the wall. The one tree.
Each trunk was joined to the trunks on either side, just like it'd looked from outside the wall. The limbs arched overhead like the beams of an impossibly great hall, linking to one another in a wooden spiderweb. "This way," the priest said, taking them to the left around the curve of the enclosure. "The Stone of Question is across the enclave." The ground was bare, dry and packed from ages of exposure.
The only undergrowth Cashel saw, if you wanted to call it that, was moss in places where rock had broken through the top of the dirt. The soil under these leaves and branches didn't get any more sunlight than it would on a thatched porch; that was why it was barren, not because the gardeners Amineus talked about had dug out everything but the Tree's own roots. Though the roots were everywhere. Amineus kept wide of the boles by longer than Cashel could touch with his staff; even so it was like they were walking on a floor of ridged wood, the roots lay so thick. Cashel would've avoided stepping on them, but there wasn't any way he could; and the priest wearing leather-soled sandals-Cashel was barefoot-didn't seem concerned about it himself. The reason for going around the side of the enclosure was to avoid what was left of a building in the center. It'd been a temple, Cashel guessed, but not a very fancy one even before it'd all fallen in. A foundation course of rough limestone showed a rectangle three times a tall man's height on the long sides and not quite that wide on the front and back ends.
There'd been two stone pillars framing the doorway at the front, but extensions of the side walls had carried the ends of the porch roof.
There wasn't any sign of a roof or the rest of the walls, either one.
If there'd been a statue, it was gone too. All there was inside the base course was a litter of fallen leaves and husks from the Tree's seedpods. "Sir?" Cashel asked. "The temple there in the middle? What is it?" Amineus had been lost in his own thoughts. He gave Cashel a look that was peevish if not quite angry. "That's no matter of ours," he said. "It's a temple, yes, but it's very old. Nobody knows who it was dedicated to." He cleared his throat. "We avoid it," he added,
"out of courtesy for those who worshipped here in former days."
"You're afraid of it, Master Amineus," Cashel said, as polite as he could be while calling another man a liar. It wasn't something he often did, but he couldn't take the chance that Liane and Rasile would mistake what was going on before they spoke to the oracle. "It sticks out all over you. I'm sorry, but it does." Amineus stumbled but caught himself the next step. His face went red, then white. He didn't say anything or even look over his shoulder at Cashel. "He is right to be afraid, warrior," said Rasile calmly. "There is much power focused here, power that could turn this universe. Power enough perhaps to put the very cosmos into a spin." Her tongue lolled in laughter. Either she thought the priest was smart enough to understand she wasn't slavering for his blood, or maybe she didn't care. "When we came beneath the walls of this great place made of stone," the wizard continued, "I thought the great power I saw was the oracle. It made me doubt our success, for power like that would make nothing of such as me. It was too great for any person, of the True People or of the Monkey People. Who are true in their own way, as I now see." She cocked her head to look at Amineus. He must have felt her foxlike sharpness, but he didn't turn to meet it. "But it is not your tree that has the power, elder," she said. "The tree has grown here because of the power of the temple in its center. And you fear it." "The temple is very old," Amineus said softly. "Its walls were mud brick.
They've been gone, crumbled to dirt, from long before records. And the records of the priesthood of the Tree, the questions and responses, go back to the age before the age before the Old Kingdom." He stopped and turned to face the three of them. "I didn't lie to you, Master Cashel," he said. "We know nothing about the temple beyond what you yourself see. And if you prefer to think that
I would not act respectfully to a site of ancient worship if I didn't fear it, then you go ahead and believe that. But you're wrong." Cashel felt uncomfortable. He wasn't sorry for having brought the business out in the open, but it now seemed that the priest hadn't had any bad intention in not wanting to discuss it. "I don't think that, sir," he said. "You've showed yourself polite to us, for which we thank you."
"Yes," said Amineus, "but perhaps less forthcoming than a man in fear of his life should be to his rescuers, eh? My pardon to all of you."
He turned again and gestured with his left hand. "Milady," he said.
"This is the oracle itself." Cashel hadn't known what to expect. There was an aspen grove in Cafardstown, three days north of Barca's Hamlet.