by David Drake
The Fortress of Glass
( Crown of the Isles - 1 )
David Drake
David Drake
The Fortress of Glass
Chapter 1
Tenoctris the Wizard stood in the prow of the royal flagship, staring intently at the sky. "Sharina," she said, "we're suddenly in a focus of enormous power. There's something here. There's somethingcoming here."
Sharina glanced upward also. "Is it good or bad?" she asked, but the wizard was lost in contemplation.
Cumulus clouds were piled over the island of First Atara on the northern horizon, but here aboveThe Shepherd of theIsles there was only a high chalky haze. Whatever Tenoctris was looking at couldn't be seen by an ordinary person like Sharina os-Reise.
Sharina grinned: or, for that matter, seen by Princess Sharina of Haft. In preparation for meeting the ruler of First Atara, she was this afternoon wearing court robes garments of silk brocade stiffened with embroidery in gold thread. They were hot and uncomfortable in most circumstances; here on shipboard they were awkward beyond words. The Shepherd had five oar-banks and was as big as a warship got, but the deck of her streamlined hull was no wider than necessary to allow sailors to trim the yards when the vessel was under sail.
Sometimes Sharina wondered whether she'd feel more at ease in formal garments if she'd been raised wearing them. Liane bos-Benliman, her brother Garric's noble fiancee, certainly wore hers with calm style. On the other hand, Liane did everything with style. If Liane hadn't been such agood person and so obviously in love with Garric, even Sharina might've felt twinges of envy in thinking about her.
Sharina and Garric had been raised by their father, the innkeeper in the tiny community of Barca's Hamlet on Haft. No school for the wealthy could've educated them better in the literature of the Old Kingdom than Reise himself had, but they'd grown up in simple woolen tunics and had gone barefoot half the year.
Sharina grinned. She guessed she could learn to wear court robes more easily than even Liane could learn to wait tables in a common room packed with sheep drovers and their servants, many of them drunk.
Horns and trumpets were calling, slowing the hundred and more ships of the royal fleet to a crawl. A little vessel draped with gaudy bunting was coming out to meet them with a wriggle of oars.
One of the royal triremes, the swift and handy three-banked vessels which were the backbone of the fighting fleet, had already come alongside the stranger and passed it as harmless, though that didn't explain why the island's authorities felt a need to approach Garric-Prince Garric-at sea. No reasonable official would choose to negotiate on the wobbling deck of a warship, since even people who weren't seasick would find a conference table in the palace a better location for spreading documents and consulting ledgers.
"There seem to be five-no, six passengers," Sharina said, peering down at the deck of the twenty-oared barge bringing the Ataran delegation. She frowned and added, "And one of them's just a boy."
The island's present ruler called himself King Cervoran, and his ancestors for hundreds of years had claimed the title "king" also. They'd gotten away with it because First Atara kept to itself, never making trouble for its neighbors or for the King of the Isles in Valles… and because for generations the King of the Isles had ruled little more than the island of Ornifal and eventually had ruled nothing outside the walls of the royal palace.
That'd changed when the present King of the Isles, Valence III, adopted a youth named Garric, a descendent of the ancient line of Old Kingdom monarchs, as his son and heir apparent. Ithad to change. Unless there were a strong hand on the kingdom's rudder, the same forces that swept up Garric and his sister would smash the new kingdom. The second catastrophe would finish what that of a thousand years before had left.
It was all well to say that every man should live his life without being pestered by distant officials. That's the way things had been in Barca's Hamlet, pretty much, simply because the community was a tiny backwater on an island which had ceased to be important a thousand years before.
Most of those who said thatnow, however, were local nobles. What they meant by freedom was that nobody from Valles should tell them how they should treat their own peasants. A peasant given the opportunity generally prefers a bully on a distant island to a bully in the castle overlooking his farm. Even better: Garric's governmentdidn't bully and it tried to protect its citizens.
Garric hadn't set out to conquer the other islands of the kingdom; rather, he was visiting thtem one by one in a Royal Progress-accompanied by a fleet and army that obviously could crush any would-be secessionist. As a result, the reunification of the Isles was taking place in conference rooms, not on battlefields.
Tenoctris clasped her hands and muttered in reaction to the pageant she alone saw in the sky. If there were proof that the Gods rather than blind chance ruled the world, it was in the fact that the same cataclysm that brought down the Old Kingdom threw Tenoctris forward from that time to this one.
Wizards used the powers on which the cosmos balanced. These waxed and waned in thousand-year cycles and were at a peak now. Because wizards remained for the most part as blind, clumsy, and foolish as they'd been when they'd conjured music and baubles from the air to amaze guests at a feast, disaster loomed over the New Kingdom as surely as it had wrecked the Old.
Even in these days Tenoctris could affect very little through wizardry, but she saw and understood the powers which greater wizards used in ignorance. Her knowledge and the strong hand of Prince Garric of Haft had so far been enough to reunify the kingdom; and the Isles to be unified if they were to face the threats, human and demonic, which had swollen as the underlying powers increased.
No one could look at the present world and doubt that Good and Evil existed. Those who thought they could remain neutral in the struggle had chosen Evil, even though they wouldn't admit it.
Sharina put her arm around Tenoctris for companionship. The old wizard had lived seventy years or more, and something of the weight of the ten centuries she'd been thrown forward seemed to lie on her shoulders also. Tenoctris didn't believe in the Great Gods and all she'd ever wanted from life was peace for her studies, but she was spending her life in the service of Good.
As were Garric and Sharina and their friends; as were all the members of the royal army and the royal administration. Individually they included better folk and worse, but all were on the right side in the greater struggle… or so Sharina believed.
She smiled again, broadly this time. Shedid believe that.
Sharina turned to watch the barge nuzzle theShepherd 's high, curving stern where Garric stood with Liane, a pair of aides, and a squad of black-armored members of the Blood Eagles, the bodyguard regiment. Garric's silvered breastplate made him look both regal and heroic-which was the purpose, of course; nobody expected fighting here on First Atara.
Sharina noticed he hadn't donned the helmet with the flaring gilt wings that completed the outfit, though he probably would before they landed. By the time her brother was fifteen he was already the tallest man in Barca's Hamlet, and the helmet added a full hand's-breadth to that height.
Garric was strong as well as tall, but there was a stronger man yet in the community: Cashel or-Kenset, an orphan raised by his twin sister Ilna after their grandmother died; a quiet fellow, gentle as a lamb and without a lamb's querulous self-importance. A man taller than most, broader than almost any, and stronger than anyone he'd ever met or was likely to meet.
He stood now behind the two women like a wall of muscle, his hickory quarterstaff an upright pillar in his right hand. Sharina, still touching Tenoctris with her left hand, put her right in the crook of his elbow. Cashel smiled because he usually
smiled, and he smiled wider because Sharina touched him. It would've embarrassed him to take her hand in public, but nobody seeing the two of them together could doubt that they loved one another.
Sailors from the barge had thrown lines from bow and stern aboard theShepherd; crewmen snubbed them to the outrigger that carried three of the flagship's five oar-banks. The sailing master was blasting the barge captain with remarkable curses, though, at the notion that the smaller vessel would be allowed to lie hull to hull where it'd scrape the flagship's paint. The barge captain swore back.
"We've been three months since the ships were overhauled in Carcosa," Sharina said, frowning. "I don't see that a few more scrapes are going to be noticed."
Sailors tended to carry out their business as though the officials travelling as passengers didn't exist. She and Garric had been taught to keep their affairs-the inn's affairs-secret from the guests. This slanging match the officers of the two ships offended Sharina's sense of propriety, though the curses themselves did not.
"I think what he's saying is that we're fine people from the palace in Valles," said Cashel, quietly but with something solid in his tone that wouldn't have been there if he were better satisfied with the situation. "And they're just nobodies from the sticks. Only we're not, not all of us; and I guess that fellow'd have been as quick to callme a nobody back before Garric got to be prince and it all changed."
"Not to your face, Cashel," Sharina said-and kissed him, surprising herself almost as much as she did her fiance. It was the perfect way to break his mood; Cashel's face went the color of mahogany as he blushed under the deep tan. They were in the shelter of the jib boom, though, and everybody else was looking toward the stern where the delegation was swaying aboard on a rope ladder. Nobody was likely to have noticed.
"Do we know why these people are meeting us at sea?" Tenoctris said.
Sharina jumped. The older woman had been so thoroughly lost in her own thoughts that Sharina'd forgotten her presence.
"Ah, no," she said. "We could join them in the stern if you'd like, though. They're certainly an official delegation, so I guess it's our duty to be there."
"Right," said Cashel, turning and starting down the walkway stretching the length of the ship between the gratings over the rowers. There wasn't much room, but the sailors on deck would get out of his way though they might be so busy they'd ignore the women.
Sharina motioned Tenoctris ahead of her and brought up the rear. She didn't have Cashel's bulk, but her tall, slender body was muscular and she had reflexes gained from waiting tables in rooms crowded with men.
"They may have nothing to do with what I feel building around us," Tenoctris said quietly, perhaps speaking to herself as much as to her younger companions. "But their meeting us at sea is unusual, and the way the forces are building isvery unusual; almost unique in my experience."
"'Almostunique'" Sharina said, delicately emphasizing the qualifier.
"Yes," said the wizard. "I felt something like this in the moments before similar I wwas ripped out of my time and the island of Yole sank into the depths of the sea."
***
One of Garric's guards gave his spear to a comrade so that he had a hand free to reach over the railing to the twelve-year-old climbing the swaying ladder ahead of five adults. "Here you go, lad," he said.
"Have a care, my man!" cried the puffy looking bald fellow immediately behind the boy. "This is Prince Protas, the ruler of our island!"
"All the more reason not to let him fall into the water, then," said Garric, stepping forward. "Since I'm told that right around here it's as deep as the Inner Sea gets."
He took the boy's right hand while the soldier gripped him under the left shoulder, and together they lifted him aboard. Protas tucked his legs under him so that his toes didn't touch the rail. Though he didn't speak, he bowed politely to Garric and dipped his head to the soldier as well, then slipped forward to get as much out of the way as was possible on the warship's deck.
The plump official reached the railing. Garric nodded a guard forward to help him but pointedly didn't offer a hand himself.
"That would be Lord Martous," Liane whispered in his left ear. "Protas is King Cervoran's son, but Cervoran was ruler as of my latest information."
Among Liane's other duties, she was Garric's spymaster; or rather she was a spymaster who kept Garric informed of events from all over the Isles, whether or not they took place on islands which had returned to royal control. Her father had been a far-travelled merchant. Liane of her own volition-Garric wouldn't have known what to ask her to do-had turned his network of business connections into a full-fledged intelligence service. It'd benefited the kingdom more than another ten regiments for the army could've done.
Lord Martous had an unhappy expression as he struggled aboard in the soldier's grasp. Garric shared his mind with the spirit of King Carus, his ancient ancestor and the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. Now the image of Carus grinned and said, "If I know the type, he looks unhappy most of the time he's awake. Being manhandled over the railing just gives him a better reason than usual."
Martous straightened his clothing with quick pats of his hands while he waited for the remainder of the delegation to climb onto the deck, aides or servants from their simpler dress. One of them carried a bundle wrapped in red velvet.
The delegates wore baggy woolen trousers and blouses, felt caps, and slippers whose toes turned up in points. Martous and Protas had long triangular gares of cloth-of-gold appliqued vertically on their sleeves and trouser legs; those of the other men were plain. The wool was bleached white, but it was clear that First Atara's society didn't set great store on flamboyant personal decoration.
Garric preferred simplicity to the styles of the great cities of the kingdom, Valles and Erdin on Sandrakkan or even Carcosa which now was merely the capital of the unimportant island of Haft. It'd been the royal capital during the Old Kingdom, and it remained a pretentious place despite its glory being a thousand years in the past.
Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended weren't being treated with greater deference. That implied that pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.
"Come along, Basto, come along," called Lord Martous to the aide struggling with the bundle. Then on a rising note, "No, don't you-"
The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and a man to whom Garric's safety was more important than it was to Garric himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He plucked the package from the aide's hands and unwrapped it while the aide came aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.
"I'm sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas," Garric said, smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important circumstances. "I'd expected to meet you-and your father, of course-on land in a few hours."
"King Cervoran is dead, sir," Protas said with careful formality. He forced himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.
"Yes, yes, that's why we had to come out to meet you," Martous said, pursing his lips as though he were sucking on something sour. "His highness died most unexpectedly as he was going in to dinner last evening. Quite distressing, quite. He fell right down in his tracks. I was afraid the stewards had dropped something on the floor and he'd slipped, but he just-died."
"I probablycould give you advice on housekeeping in a large establishment," Garric said, smiling instead of snarling at the courtier's inability to come to the point, "but I really doubt that's why you've met us here at the cost of discomfort and a degree of danger. Is it, milord?"
Martous looked surprised. "Oh," he said. "Well, of course not. But I thought-that is, the council did-that since you were
arriving just in time, you could preside over the apotheosis ceremony for King Cervoran and add, well, luster to the affair. And of course we needed to explain that to you before you come ashore because the ceremony will have to be carried out first thing tomorrow morning. The cremation can't, you see, be delayed very long in this weather."
"Apotheosis?" said Liane. She didn't ordinarily interject herself openly into matters of state, but Lord Martous was obviously a palace flunky, and not from a very big palace if it came to that. "You believe your late ruler becomes a God?"
"Well, I don't, of courseI don't," said Martous in embarrassment. "But the common people, you know; and they like a spectacle. And, well, it's traditional here on First Atara. And it can't hurt, after all."
"This doesn't appear to be a weapon, milord," said Attaper dryly. "Shall I return it to your servant, or would you like to take it yourself?"
The velvet wrappings covered a foiled wooden box decorated with cutwork astrological symbols. Inside was a diadem set with a topaz the size of Garric's clenched fist. The stone wasn't particularly clear or brilliant, even for a topaz, but Garric didn't recall ever seeing a larger gem.
Protas, forgotten during the adults' by-play, said in a clear voice, "We brought it to your master the prince, my man. He will decide where to bestow it."
Garric nodded politely to the young prince. "Your pardon, milord," he said in real apology. "We've had a long voyage and it appears to have made us less courteous than we ought to be."
He took the diadem. The gold circlet was thicker and broader at the back to help balance the weight of the huge stone, but even so it had a tendency to slip forward in his fingers.
Cashel had led Sharina and Tenoctris to the stern, butt now he stepped aside and let the women join the group of officials. When he caught Garric's glance over Tenoctris' head, he smiled broadly. Cashel stayed close to Sharina, but he wasn't interested in what the locals had come to discuss and didn't pretend otherwise.