The Gods Return coti-3

by David Drake

  "Oh, my!" he'd murmur, and, "Now, who'd have imagined that?" Sharina thought of asking the rat what was of such interest in this grubby city, but she figured he'd tell her if there were something he thought she should know. She had enough on her mind already. Sharina was in the middle of a group of twenty men, all of them soldiers except for Dysart and three attendants. She'd been wrong to expect that at least a few of the troops would still be wearing the hobnailed sandals which on these stone pavers would send a ringing warning several blocks ahead: they'd donned either soft boots or clogs. Prester and Pont, the regiment's camp marshals, weren't with this detachment, but Sharina suspected the way the troops were prepared for their assignment had a lot to do with those old veterans. The clop of wooden soles-Sharina wore clogs herself-could be heard at a distance also, but noise alone wasn't a problem. The clang of many hobnails together cried "Army!" to everyone in earshot. Captain Ascor was at her side. He wore a grim expression and she didn't need to be a soothsayer to know that the hand he kept under his cloak was clutching a bare sword. Ascor had winced, but he hadn't argued when Sharina told him what she was going to do. She'd offered him a plan which, though he probably thought was insanely dangerous for Princess Sharina, showed a willing to compromise with a bodyguard's sensibilities. The Blood Eagles had learned that guarding Garric and his sister was a different business from the days when Valence III hunched in his room and drank morosely with friends. Dysart glanced over his shoulder to check where Sharina was, then paused for a moment so that she came alongside him. "The graveyard where they're meeting is to our right at the next intersection," he said. "Less than a half block. There are three other teams approaching at the same time." Or so we hope, Sharina thought.

  They weren't concerned with the individual worshippers, who had nothing to tell. She was hoping to catch the man preaching, though.

  According to Dysart, he was a former priest of the Shepherd named Platt. Where Dysart or Tadai could identify particular leaders, they'd been priests of the Shepherd before being won over to the new heresy.

  Aloud she said, "I'm surprised that there's a graveyard within the city. They've been outside the walls everywhere I've been in the past.

  I guess the pirates who ruled here weren't so superstitious." "They weremore superstitious than honest folk," Burne said unexpectedly.

  "Well, what passes for honest folk. This graveyard's newer than the rest of Pandah." "Master Burne," Dysart said quietly. If he felt any emotion about what he was saying, he certainly kept it concealed. "The Sultans of Pandah back for seven generations are buried on this particular site." "Yes, but ithad been outside the walls before the Change, when the sultans of your age ruled a sleepy trading port,"

  Burne said sharply. "You know how graveyards concentrate power, though. This burial ground and several others ripped through the fabric of the past. That's why they're in the middle of an ancient pirate fortress now." The rat laughed. "If you found human teeth in a hog's stomach, Master Dysart," he said, "would you claim that they'd grown there?" "That's enough," Sharina said as the party reached an irregularly shaped plaza with a dry fountain in the middle. She spoke to end the squabble, but as soon as she did she heard the preacher they were hoping to arrest. "Brothers and sisters in the one God, in the true Lord of Existence," Platt whined in a nasal voice. "The gods of the past are dead. The future is Lord Scorpion's!" There must be a hundred or more listeners crowded close to the preacher. Low altars were built out from the fronts of the large tombs in the middle of the graveyard. The family of each deceased was expected to use them for offerings of wine and on the anniversary of his death. Platt stood on one of them, wearing a bleached wool robe that seemed to glow in the moonlight. The soldiers carried truncheons for this raid, though they wore their short infantry swords as well. From all reports, the Scorpion worshippers were planning the violent overthrow of the kingdom. Sharina wasn't going to order a massacre of frightened, deluded people-but neither was she going to disarm soldiers who might be facing deadly weapons themselves on the kingdom's behalf. "Only those who serve Lord Scorpion will be spared agonizing stings in this world and eternal torment in the world to come," Platt cried. He seemed to be looking upward, not toward the crowd beneath him. "You are the chosen, brothers and sisters! You are the wise ones who see the truth already." The ashes of the common people of Pandah-those wealthy enough to have memorials at all-were buried in loculi, stone boxes three feet long and a foot in width and depth. They were clustered as near as possible to the row of sultans' tombs, but after generations they covered most of the field set off for burial. The boxes were carved from Pandah's soft yellow limestone and weathered quickly. Within a few generations most had crumbled to shards and loose gravel that Sharina couldn't tell in the moonlight from the calcined bones of those interred. Burne leaped from the fold in Sharina's tunic. She caught a flash of him darting among the boxes; then he vanished among the legs of the crowd. She grimaced in surprise, then drew the Pewle knife. She probably should have done that sooner. "Sons and daughters of Lord Scorpion!" Platt called in a cracked, wavering voice. He sounded insane… and perhaps he was, but his shrill periods cut through the normal layers of doubt and common sense. "Our Lord's day is coming. On that day we will rise to glory with our God!" The spectators were staring at the preacher with rapt attention. Dimly Sharina could see movement converging on Platt from the other directions. She stumbled and stumbled again. Around her soldiers cursed under their breath as they turned ankles or barked shins. "The enemies of God are around us!" Platt cried. "Flee, my brethren!" "Get him, boys!" bellowed a soldier in the group approaching from the opposite end of the cemetery. Everybody was lunging and crying out. As the preacher shouted his warning, he'd turned and jumped off the side of the altar. Sharina lost sight of him, but she ran toward where he had to be. The stone boxes and terrified spectators made it an obstacle course rather than a normal race, but as expected she saw Platt an instant later; the bleached robe stood out like a flame. "There!" shouted one of Dysart's men, snaking between two soldiers and grasping the preacher by the arm.

  "Don't hit him!" cried another of the civilian agents, grabbing the other shoulder and tucking Platt's head under his own arm to keep the soldiers from clubbing the fellow. "We want him able to talk!" Dysart said, his hands raised to prevent more soldiers from piling on enthusiastically. "We've got him! Stay back out of the way!" "We've got him!" called someone from the other side of the large tombs.

  "Master Dysart, we've got him!" "Herehe is, by the Shepherd!" shouted a soldier well along to the east end of the cemetery. "Tell Marshal Prester we got him!" Sharina jerked the captive's white hood back. A soldier clacked open the shutter of the dark lantern he carried, throwing yellow candlelight over the prisoner's face. He was an unremarkable man with a weak chin and high forehead. "Is this Platt?"

  Sharina demanded. "I'm Platt!" said the prisoner. "I'm the voice of Lord Scorpion!" "Well, I don't know, your highness," Dysart said, wringing his hands. "He matches the suspect's description, but I've never seen Platt myself." He obviously hated to make the admission, but he hadn't hesitated. As Liane had said, he was a good man. "We got the man, your ladyship!" said Prester, patting a hardwood marshal's baton into his left palm. The veteran looked like a section of oak root himself, old and supple andvery tough. "We'll need to carry him, I guess, but we didn't mark the face any." The man two soldiers were carrying behind Prester was shorter than the captive Sharina's group had caught, but his face-allowing for the spasms of agony that transfixed it at intervals-would've fit the same verbal description.

  At least one of his knees had been broken. "No, I'm Platt!" said the man at Sharina's feet. "Your ladyship," chirped Burne in a thin voice that nonetheless pierced the night's confusion. The rat must've learned to project when he was with the troupe of mountebanks. "I have the real Platt here, but I can't very well bring him to you." "Who's that?" said Prester, turning his head. "Did we grab the wrong one, then?" "If you did, you weren't alone in your mistake
," said Sharina, clambering over a solid rank of loculi, many of them with broken lids or no lids at all. Dysart and Ascor were at her either side. A man in a dark blue cape had fallen between two of the sultans' tombs. He was trying to crawl away. His right foot flopped loosely behind him: he'd been hamstrung. "He threw off the white robe," said Burne, perched in an alcove of the dome-topped tomb, "and had the dark one on under it.

  He couldn't change his smell, though." The rat licked blood off his whiskers with apparent relish. Sharina suspected that was partly an act, but it was a very good one. The fallen man certainly thought so, because he twisted to snatch at Burne. The rat hopped away, then leaped to Sharina's shoulder. "I think we've found the real priest,"

  Sharina said. "Tie his hands," Dysart said brusquely to the squad of his men now gathered around him. "We'll take him to my office in the palace." Men quickly stepped to pinion the captive. Frowning, Dysart added, "And check his foot. We don't want him bleeding out from a nicked artery before we question him." "Lord Scorpion will infallibly smite you!" Platt cried. "The true God will avenge His prophets!"

  Burne laughed. "I quite like scorpions, Master Platt," he said. "They taste even better than shrimp."

  Chapter 11 The bluish light in the burial cavern wasn't good, but Ilna found it was good enough as her eyes fully adapted to it. Indeed, it seemed to be getting brighter as Usun found a route for them. She wasn't willing to call it a track, let alone a path, but the fact the massive ghoul obviously came this way meant it was possible for a young woman in good health to do so as well. The little man paused to bend over a litter of fallen stalactites. "There's been an earthquake recently," he said. "Well, tremors anyway. It could be that even without us, our ghoul would have to make other arrangements than living in a cave." "An earthquake brought the riverboat I was on to the shore of this island," Ilna said. "What had been an island before the Change, anyway. I suppose there must've been some effect in Gaur and here in the cave, though I believe the quake itself was Brincisa's work." "Hutton always underrated her," said Usun as he paced on ahead.

  "Still, she doesn't have the power to cause solid rock to crack. There had to have been a weakness already. Or indeed, maybe it was the Change that smashed it all like this." He laughed, though Ilna noticed that now that they were on the track of the ghoul the little man's speech and laughter were muted. He had the trick of projecting his voice without raising it. It was barely a whisper, yet she could hear each word distinctly over the rustle and deep, directionless thrumming that filled the cavern. "And one landslip will bring more, like as not," Usun said cheerfully. "Well, with luck we'll be out of here before it matters. And the ghoul, he'll be beyond worrying about anything now that we're going after him." Ilna's lips tightened in distaste. The little man was bragging, and he was bragging on her behalf as well. Many people saw nothing wrong with that. The scowl became a wry smile. In this as in so many other things, the many were wrong and Ilna os-Kenset was right. But she didn't think she was going to change their minds. Beyond the narrow throat leading to the burial cave, the cavern rose to heights that Ilna wouldn't have been able to see by the light of a torch. The rocks' own blue glow alone made them visible. Unnumbered broken stumps projected from the ceiling of smooth flow rock; some were again dripping the lime-charged water which had ages ago frozen into the huge stalactites whose shattered remains littered the floor of the cave. Many chunks were the size of tree trunks, fluted and ridged by the ages of their creation. The closest Ilna came to believing in the supernatural was to feel that stone had consciousness and that it hated her. Certainly her undoubted clumsiness in dealing with stone showed that if nothing else, its presence affected her mind. Usun could squirm under some of the columns that Ilna would've had to clamber over with difficulty, but instead the little man led by a circuitous route that required her to do nothing more difficult than stepping high or bending at the waist.

  It might've been wiser to have kept her hands free to grab or catch herself if her foot slipped on the slimy rocks, but Ilna instead knotted patterns. They weren't weapons-there wasn't light enough here for them to be effective-nor was she trying to predict the outcome of this or any endeavor. She tied a pattern would bring a smile to the face of whoever saw it, then picked out the knots and worked one that would dull hunger pangs. Then a pattern which would leach away soul-searing pain but leave the injured person's mind as sharp as it had been before they'd been hurt. Peaceful designs couldn't be seen any better in this dim glow than patterns to freeze or terrify or madden; and anyway, Ilna turned each back into raw yarn for a moment before starting the next. Regardless, they were what her instincts told her to create, and she'd learned to trust her instincts. Ahead of them was a great chasm, visible as a black ribbon through the omnipresent blue glow. A waterfall plunged into it from the other side, and a tumbling stream at the bottom filled the cavern with its echoes. A natural bridge crossed the split in the cave floor. Flow rock blobbed on the upper surface of the arch like wax that had cooled, and from the underside hung a beard of stalactites. Instead of starting across, Usun hopped onto a broken stalactite which stuck slightly out over the gorge. It looked like a barrel from a column of a fallen temple, larger in diameter than Ilna's body and thus much smaller than many relicts of the earthquake. Ilna knelt, putting her head on a level with his. "So, we've found our prey's den or I miss my guess," the little man said. "There, behind the waterfall. There's a cave, and you can see the wear on the rock going up to it." "I cannot," Ilna said, primly careful not to claim more than her due even by silence. "But I take your word for it." She had no idea how Usun saw a cave behind the thin sheet of water. Perhaps he heard a different echo? That seemed absurd, but she did things with fabric that others thought were impossible. The little man was a hunter beyond question. "Well, the cave's there," Usun said blithely, "and he's there in it. We can't get behind him, and I wouldn't care to try the cave in hope that he's asleep. I'm not sure that he does sleep any more; wizardry and his diet have changed him, I think." "I don't think we should walk straight into the creature's lair," Ilna agreed dryly.

  Though if Chalcus was here, he with his sword as sure as the sting of a hunting wasp and me with a silken lasso to tangle even a creature as big as this ghoul – Chalcus was dead. And Ilna wasn't dead, not yet, so she had duties. "There's another way, I think," said Usun. "I know you're a wizard, mistress, but wizardry won't work on him. How are your nerves?" Ilna sniffed. He wasn't trying to insult her.

  "Adequate," she said. Saying more would be bragging. The little man giggled. "So I thought!" he said. "So I thought! Well then, Ilna, this is what we'll do…" *** "The most important thing in the world I'll tell you freely," Platt said, sitting upright on the couch in Dysart's office.

  The desks at which several clerks would during the day transcribe documents had been moved into the hall, so there was room for the unusual number of people present. "Lord Scorpion is God. Worship Him or infallibly be destroyed!" "When did you leave your former position as priest of the Shepherd, Master Platt?" Dysart asked. He was quiet and polite, a clerk from the tips of his toes to his thinning hair.

  Sharina had directed-over the protests of Lords Ascor, Tadai, and Quernan of the Pandah garrison-that Dysart should handle the interrogation. She'd accept Liane's judgment on most matters, and Liane had put Dysart in charge in her absence. "I didn't leave the Shepherd," Platt snapped. "The Shepherd is dead! All the old gods are dead. Lord Scorpion is Lord of the cosmos!" "Why, you puppy!" said Lord Quernan. He raised his hand and stepped forward. Two of Dysart's agents grabbed him by the elbows and thrust him back. "Out," said Sharina with a flick of her left index finger toward the door. "But that's blasphemy!" Quernan protested. Other spectators made way for him; one of Tadai's clerks even opened the door. "As well worship a dead donkey as your Lady!" Platt cried. Sharina had been afraid that other soldiers would protest, but instead of equally clueless aides, Quernan had brought Prester and Pont. They remained at attention, as if nothing important was happen
ing. Knowing the two old soldiers, they might have brought themselves. They'd met Sharina in a hard place years ago. Because she'd performed to their approval, they seemed to have adopted her. She suspected that a number of junior officers over the years had had similarly good luck. Platt let out a broken laugh.

  "Do you think to frighten me?" he said. "The disciples of Lord Scorpion need fear nothing. I am assured of my salvation!" "But you were trying to escape us in the graveyard, weren't you?" Dysart said.

  "Your Scorpion didn't save you then, Master Platt. You're obviously a clever man. You know in your heart that he's not as powerful as what you preach to the rabble." "Salvation is of the soul, not the body,"

  Platt muttered. He was sweating profusely. His thin hair was plastered down so that his pink scalp showed through. "Is your ankle comfortable?" Dysart asked. "I'm sorry about the injury, but we had no choice. For as long as you're in my charge I'll see to it that you receive medical care, though my department's facilities are too limited for any but the most important prisoners. I can only hope that the City Prefect will be able to manage something if you have to be transferred to the jail." "Are you out of your mind, Dysart?" Tadai said in a deliberately affected voice as he inspected the curve of his fingernails. "Mybudget doesn't stretch to doctors for a lot of drunks and vagabonds." "How often to you meet with your fellow priests, Master Platt?" Dysart said as though the previous exchange hadn't occurred. He sat in the chair behind his desk; the prisoner was in the couch beside him. Everyone else stood along the inside wall. Burne padded from door to window ledge and back, his whiskers twitching. "I don't," said Platt, squirming uneasily. He'd lost his bravado. "We don't have to meet, I mean. We, ah… I do at least, I suppose the others. God speaks to me in dreams, through his acolyte Black. I've never met another priest, though I know there's many of us. Preparing for the day!" "You claim to get detailed instructions from your dreams, Master Platt?" Dysart said. He didn't raise his voice, but Sharina could hear the hint of a frown in it. "Yes, that's true," the prisoner said. He'd lost the defiance that'd begun to creep back into his tone. "Black tells me where to preach and when. But I know there are many of us, throughout the world." As far as information reaching Sharina went-both from Liane's clandestine service and the reports of regional governors-Pandah was the only center of Scorpion worship. It gave her a feeling of comfort to know that Black lied to his own acolytes-but he was real enough in her own dreams, and she was responsible for Pandah besides. "Do you send messengers to chalk notices on walls to let the worshippers know where you'll be preaching?" Dysart said. "Or does somebody else do that? We've found the notices, you see." "I…," Platt said. He frowned in surprise.