The Fortress of Glass coti-1

by David Drake

  Cashel climbed carefully, placing his feet near the ladder's uprights. Salt and sunlight ate the strength out of wood, and if he bounced his weight down in the middle of the rungs chances were he'd break them to kindling.

  He could've set his staff on top of the seawall to wait for him, but instead he held it between his right thumb and little finger and used the other three to climb with. Nothing was likely to happen that he'd need the staff for; it was just a habit. Besides, 'not likely to happen' wasn't the same as 'couldn't happen.'

  A dozen royal vessels were already hauled up on shore within the harbor. The crews had made room by tossing out of the way cargo waiting to be loaded on merchant ships and pushing down sheds.

  That was inconvenient for the folks who lived in Mona, but travelling around with Garric had taught Cashel that italways was inconvenient to have an army come calling. It was just one of those things, like winter storms or your sheep getting scrapie. He figured the locals understood that, or anyway they knew better than to make too big a fuss about it.

  Four wooden wharfs reached out a little way into the harbor. They were big enough for small merchant ships, tubs with one mast and a crew of half a dozen, but they were no good for warships that had to be brought up out of the water every night. Otherwise their thin hulls'd get waterlogged and rot before you knew it.

  Mona didn't seem to be a very busy place; that fit in with Sharina saying that First Atara pretty much kept to itself. The goods Cashel saw were mostly salt fish in barrels and barley packed in burlap sacks instead of big terra cotta jars like grain came into Valles down canals from northern Ornifal.

  The pottery packed in wicker baskets had likely been landed from other islands but not moved out of the way before the fleet arrived. The owners were probably moaning about it now, but they'd soon learn that Prince Garric paid for the damages he knew there'd be just as sure as the sun rose.

  "Oh…," said Protas, looking about the harbor, his eyes wide. "Oh… I don't think I'veever seen so many people. At one time."

  Cashel grinned, following the line of the boy's eyes. Soldiers swarmed over the foreshore and more were packed aboard ships waiting to unload.

  "I never saw a place with more houses together than you could count on your fingers and toes till I went the first time to Carcosa," he said. "That was like seeing the sea, only all the little wave-tops were people. I didn't know there could be that many people."

  The ships that had landed first were starting to slide back into the water, making room for new arrivals. Protas frowned and said, "What's happening, Cashel? Why did these warships come in if they're just going to leave again?"

  "Well, they're not warships exactly," Cashel said. "They're triremes, all right, but they're only rowed from one set of benches. The other two have soldiers on them-or they carry cargo, of course, but all of these have soldiers. They're putting them ashore to, well, in case there's something that'd be dangerous to G-, to Prince Garric. The rowers will haul them out again a little ways off so there's room for others to unload."

  Two years ago Cashel hadn't seen a trireme or heard the word, but here he was talking about them like he was a sailor himself. Well, he wasn't; but he'd learned enough by being around Garric to answer the boy's question. He wasn't a weaver either, but Ilna's brother knew something about cloth.

  "What danger could there be in Mona?" Protas said in puzzlement.

  "Well, not from you folks," Cashel said. "But things do happen, that's so. It isn't that Garric worries; but you know, the people around him have their own ways of doing things and he's too polite to make a big fuss about it."

  Lord Martous had gotten to the top of the ladder, helped by two of the servants who'd climbed up ahead of him. Protas glanced at the fellow and said, "Yes, I see that." He cleared his throat and added, "Well, come along, Cashel, and I'll show you the inside."

  Protas set off for the nearest portico. Cashel paused just long enough to wave his left hand toward Sharina and his other friends onThe Shepherd of the Isles, easing toward a wharf with a lot of angry shouting from the sailing master. Two sailors in the ship's bow held a long board covered with red cloth.

  The aides and stewards with Garric didn't think it was right that the prince should climb over the side and splash to shore in the shallows. They'd made a gangplank, probably a hatch cover that they'd nailed a cloak onto or something of the sort. Like Cashel'd said, the folks around Garric had their own ways of doing things.

  Soldiers milled around everywhere, but they were all part of the royal army who'd just landed. All the local people standing in the colonnades gaping at the fleet or hanging from the upper-story windows that overlooked the harbor were civilians. The women wore blouses and trousers same as the men did but they also had bonnets, some of them dangling with ribbons.

  Nobody seemed to stand much on ceremony, even here in the palace. Cashel didn't feel at home, exactly-he never would with this many people around. But he didn't feel near so out of place as he did back in Valles.

  Protas led Cashel through the portico and into the tall building on the other side. They were connected with a little covered walk; a dog-trot, Cashel would've called it back at home, but he supposed it had a fancier name if it was made of stone and the ceiling was painted with girls and bearded men with fishtails who swam with a sea serpent.

  "King Cervoran's apartments are up on the top of this building," Protas said. A servant curtseyed to him as they walked through the central hall; there were stairs up on either side of the room. "My rooms are in the east wing. Where will they put you, Cashel?"

  "Protas, I couldn't say," Cashel said. He thought about adding, "Close to Sharina is all that matters," but he decided he wouldn't. There wasn't much privacy either in a palace or a village like Barca's Hamlet, but Cashel wasn't one to talk about things that weren't anybody else's business.

  They went right on through to the other side of the building. There was a big plaza here, bare dirt but with occasional clumps of tough grass managing to survive.

  "This is where we hold the first-day markets every week," Protas explained. "The farmers come in from the fields with produce, and people in Mona sell what they've made too."

  There were new-made bleachers along the south edge; the wood was still raw and some planks oozed sap. That was nothing compared to the three-layer pyramid in the middle of the plaza, though. It'd been built from brushwood hurdles covered with boards and bunting. On the very top was a chest or cabinet that'd been draped with cloth of gold. Something lay on it, but Cashel couldn't tell what from down below.

  The boy stopped and looked at Cashel, apparently expecting him to say something. He didn't know what that should be, so he asked, "What's that, Protas?"

  "That's the pyre," Protas said. "Tomorrow it'll be lighted and King Cervoran will rise to the heavens. He'll be a god, then."

  The boy looked desperately unhappy. Cashel put an arm on his shoulder and turned them both back toward the building they'd walked through.

  "Let's see if we can find Princess Sharina," he said quietly. It was the first thing he could think of that didn't involve looking at a wizard's corpse.

  ***

  "This is the queen's suite, ah, princess," said Lord Martous. He pulled open the door to the left at the head of the stairs. "It hasn't been used in, well, twelve years since the late queen passed over in childbirth, but I directed that it be aired out and put in order as soon as we learned that… I hope you find it…"

  Sharina stepped into the suite. Tenoctris and Cashel, the latter carrying the satchel with the paraphernalia of the old wizard's art, followed her and Martous at a polite distance. Cashel was his usual calm, solid self, but Tenoctris was as silently tense as a cat sure there's a mouse hidding somewhere nearby.

  The suite had a short entrance passage, three main rooms, and a curtained alcove for a servant; she and Cashel wouldn't be needing that last. There was a hint of mildew in the air, but the walls were freshly washed. They were age-darkened oak
wainscoting below a waist-high moulding with frescoes of fanciful landscapes from there to the ceiling. The damp had lifted out patches of plaster, leaving white blotches.

  Cashel smiled. "I like wall paintings," he said.

  "I'm sorry about the water damage," Martous said in a tight voice, "but there wasn't time to order repairs. The funeral and coronation had to be the first priority, I'm sure you see."

  "I like where the plaster's gone, too," Cashel said. "It looks kind of like clouds are drifting over the hills."

  Sharina didn't let her smile reach her lips. Lord Martous almost certainly thought Cashel was being sarcastic. Cashel was never sarcastic. Moreover, he had the perfect innocence that protected him from other people's sarcasm. What somebody else would recognize as a cutting remark struck Cashel as praise, often from an unexpected quarter.

  "Yes, this will be satisfactory," Sharina said in a coolly neutral voice. She knew the chamberlain's type well enough to be sure that he'd want to talk-and argue-longer than she'd want to be in his company. That meant the less said, the better.

  Sharina'd been raised in a garret of her father's inn, and during her travels since leaving Barca's Hamlet she'd slept rough in hedges and on the bare stone floors of dungeons. She'd been in bigger, better appointed palaces than this one, but it was nonetheless a palace.

  The central room was lighted by a glazed dome in the ceiling; the two smaller rooms on the north wall had beds, the only furniture in the suite. Martous probably assumed that the royal party travelled with complete furnishings. That wasn't correct: Prince Garric's expedition from Ornifal to the islands of the west and north was diplomatic, a Royal Progress rather than a military campaign-but it could become a military campaign in a heartbeat. Garric travelled as light as his ancestor King Carus had. While his aides and servants might complain about the simplicity, his sister didn't mind in the least.

  "Where does that go?" Tenoctris asked, looking at the door in the west wall. With her fingers tented before her, she looked more than ever like a cat hunting.

  "That leads to King Cervoran's apartments," Martous said heavily. "I've assigned them to Prince Garric, though I really wish he'd found time to approve the choice. Now, princess, I hope you'll come with me and-"

  "In a moment, Lord Martous," Sharina said. She walked to the door and opened it, finding another door behind it. That wasn't locked either; she pushed it open. Beyond were royal servants arranging chests they'd brought up from the harbor. Trousered local people looked on and tried to help.

  Sharina moved aside as Tenoctris stepped briskly past with Cashel at her elbow. He grinned at Sharina as he went by, as placid and unobtrusive as a well-trained pack pony. Of course if trouble arose, Cashel was more like a lion.

  Ignoring Lord Martous' chatter, Sharina surveyed Garric's suite. She found herself frowning. There was nothing she could point to, but "I won't speak for my brother," Sharina said, "but personally I don't think that I'd be comfortable in these quarters. What other rooms can he use?"

  At the moment Garric was with Liane and his chief military and civil advisors in what'd been a courtroom in an adjacent building; they were consulting with Ataran finance officials. Part of the reason Martous was peevish was that he had nothing useful to add to such an assembly. Lord Tadai had told him so in a tone of polished disdain that'd crushed his protests more effectively than the snarling ill-temper Lord Waldron had been on the verge of unleashing.

  Sharina could've been present if she'd wanted to be. She hadn't, and seeing to living arrangements and plans for Lord Protas' coronation the next morning was a better use of her time from the kingdom's standpoint besides. Tenoctris had asked to accompany her, and Cashel had joined them after he handed Lord Protas off to his tutors. Cashel's own lack of education had made him more, not less, convinced of its value.

  "I don't understand what you mean!" the chamberlain said. His horrified reaction was the first time Sharina recalled hearing something that could be described as high dudgeon. "Why, these are the finest rooms in the palace, the finest rooms in the kingdom! They were the king's rooms!"

  "They were a wizard's rooms," said Tenoctris, seating herself cross-legged on the floor. Cashel set her satchel beside her, open; she took from it a bundle of yarrow stalks wrapped in a swatch of chamois leather. "The work Cervoran did here leaves traces behind which can be felt by people who aren't themselves wizards. It affects Princess Sharina, and it might very well affect Prince Garric."

  The queen's suite had a floor of boards laid edgewise and planed smooth, solid and warm to the feet even without a layer of carpets over it. The king's side of the building had probably started out the same, but at some point a layer of slates had raised it an inch. Words and figures had been drawn on the floor in a variety of media: chalks, paints, and colored powders. The fine-grained stone retained them as ghostly images.

  "Really!" said Martous. "It wouldn't be proper to place Prince Garric anywhere else. These are the royal apartments!"

  "Protas said his father didn't use spells to hurt other people, Tenoctris," Cashel said. "Was the boy wrong, then?"

  Tenoctris held the yarrow stalks in the circuit of her right thumb and forefinger. She cocked her head quizzically toward Cashel with a expression.

  "No," she said, "I think Cervoran was interested in knowledge for its own sake rather than for any wealth or power it could bring him. I'm of a similar mind myself, so I can sympathize. Only… only I've gained most of my knowledge by reading the accounts written by greater wizards than I. Cervoran searched very deeply into the fabric of things himself. He gathered artifacts as well as knowledge-"

  She nodded toward a rank of drawer-fronted cabinets against the west wall. Above them hung a tapestry worked mostly in green. It showed a garden in which mythical animals strutted among the hedgerows.

  "-and stored them here. To me these rooms are a clutching tangle, like being thrown into briars. Even to laymen, at least to a sensitive layman like Sharina, I expect this would be evident and uncomfortable."

  "It's like shelling peas in bed," Sharina said, speaking precisely to emphasize her point, "and then lying down on the husks. Milord, I've becomequite sure that my brother will require other accommodations."

  "This is very unfortunate," the chamberlain said, hugging himself in obvious discomfort. Sharina couldn't tell whether he was complaining about her decision or if he felt the whirling sharpness of ancient spells also. Martous might not know himself. "Very. Well. I'll give orders. There are rooms in the west wing, though that'll mean…"

  He caught himself and straightened. "Be that as it may," he resumed in a businesslike tone. "Are you ready to go over the arrangements for the apotheosis and coronation, in lieu of the prince?"

  "Tenoctris?" Sharina asked. The old wizard was looking into a drawer she'd just opened, holding her hands crossed behind her back as if to prove that she had no intention of touching the contents. The yarrow stalks lay on the floor where she'd been sitting. So far as Sharina could see, they'd fallen in a meaningless jumble.

  Tenoctris pushed the drawer shut. She looked up and said, "I'm done for the moment. There's nothing acute to be dealt with, though-"

  She turned her head toward the chamberlain with her usual birdlike quickness.

  "-Lord Martous, I suggest you have these rooms closed until I've had time to go over the collection. There's nothing that I'd consider dangerous in itself, but there are a number of items which could be harmful if misused. Also there's a chance they could drawactively dangerous things to them."

  The servants had stopped working and moved to the south wall when Cashel and Sharina entered. Sharina made a quick decision and said to the steward in charge, "Master Tinue, please move Prince Garric's impedimenta back out of here and carry it to the west wing. Lord Martous will give you specific directions. I'm ordering this on my authority."

  "I'll take them!" one of the locals said eagerly. She looked at Martous and said, "You want them in the rooms over the old banquet
hall, that's right, isn't it?"

  "Yes, yes," said the chamberlain unhappily. The locals were already grabbing chests with far more enthusiasm than they'd showed previously. "If the princess insists, we have no choice."

  He shook his head as the servants bustled out. "It won't be hard to keep them away from this suite if that's what you want," he said in a low, bitter tone, the first hint that Sharina'd heard that he had normal human emotions. "The problem was getting them to go in and clean the suite decently. And King Cervoran was no help, no help at all! He didn't seem to care if cobwebs and dust covered everything!"

  "I can imagine that would be frustrating," Sharina said with honest sympathy. "Regardless, the real uncleanness was a result of your master's art rather than mere dirt, so the lack of ordinary cleaning didn't make much difference. There'll be time to correct the problem after Lord Protas becomes marquess."

  Sharina'd been chambermaid in her father's inn while she was growing up. It was a job you could only do well if you convinced yourself that it mattered, that you were really making the world better instead of performing a meaningless ritual which the events of the coming night would completely undo. Martous didn't have her personal experience with the work of cleaning, but they could agree that it was a worthy end in itself.

  "Yes, of course," the chamberlain said. He opened both hands in a gesture that was just short of shooing the visitors to the connecting door. "We'll do that now."

  Tenoctris bent to retrieve her yarrow stalks; age asserted itself and the motion caught halfway through. Cashel touched her shoulder to indicate he was taking over, then swept up the spill with his left hand. He handed the stalks to Tenoctris, then lifted the satchel while she wrapped them again.

  Martous opened and closed his mouth. He was obviously fuming, but he had enough control not to say something which, when ignored, would underscore his complete lack of importance.

  "I thought a divination might direct me to the source of the power that surrounds us here," Tenoctris said, shaking her head wryly as she put the stalks away. "It completely overwhelms me. I can't determine a direction."