by David Drake
The entrance to the room where Cervoran did his wizardry was by a full-length window. The casement was open. Ilna stepped through, looking not at Sharina but to the tapestry on which Sharina's eyes were focused.
It was a panel as tall as she was and half again as long. Warp and weft both were silk; they'd been woven with a sort of soulless perfection.
Normally a room's rugs or hangings would've been the first thing Ilna examined, but this piece had been an exception. Bad workmanship merely made her angry, but the coldness of this undoubtedly artful tapestry had caused her to avoid it the way she would've stepped around the silvery pustulence of a long-dead fish.
If she'd looked at the panel carefully, Chalcus and Merota might be at her side right now. If.
Sharina and some soldiers were speaking, explaining that the child and Chalcus had vanished into the tapestry. Ilna ignored them, concentrating instead on the fabric itself.
The design was of a garden maze seen from three-quarters above. Greens and black shaded almost imperceptibly into one another, just as foliage and stems do in a real hedge. There were fanciful animals: here a cat with a hawk's head, there a serpentine creature covered in glittering blue scales, many others. They were what Double had sent Chalcus and Merota to count, but Ilna realized that they didn't really matter. What mattered was The maze had no exit: the outer wall formed a solid cartouche around the whole. The inner hedges twisted and bent, creating junctions and dead ends which seemed to blur from one state to the other as Ilna shifted her attention. In the center was a lake fed by tiny streams that zigzagged from the corners of the fabric; in the lake was an island, reached by a fog-shrouded bridge; and on the island was a circular temple whose roof was a golden dome with a hole in the middle.
But the temple was only the end. Ilna needed the beginning, and she found it in the shape of the hedges. Their twists gripped the mind and souls of those who looked hard at the tapestry, making them part of its fabric. Ilna could've stepped back, but she knew now what had happened to herfamily, her real family, and she had no choice but to join them.
"Double, what do you know about this?" Sharina shouted in the near distance. "Chalcus and Lady Merota walked into the wall! I saw it happen!"
"Why do you ask me?" said the wizard's double, a wizard itself.
Ilna had no time for Double at the moment. He'd laid a clever snare. He'd known he couldn't catch her in it, but he'd known also that she'd follow those she loved. Loved more than life, some would say, but Ilna'd never loved life for its own sake.
She saw the pattern. She took a step forward, not in the flesh but between worlds that touched at a level beyond sight.
"Ilna!" Sharina said.
As Ilna's fingers brushed the prickly branches of densely-woven yew, she heard the wizard pipe from a great distance, "I was Double. Now I am Cervoran."
And then very faintly, "I will be God!"
***
Garric remembered how depressing he'd found this land when he first arrived in the rain. It was raining again, generally a drizzle but off and on big drops slashed across the marsh. Nonetheless his spirits were as high as he ever remembered them being.
He laughed and said, "Donria, we're free. That's better than being an animal on somebody's farm in sunlight, even if we're kept as pets rather than future dinners."
Donria gave him a doubtful smile, then looked at the Bird fluttering from stump to branch ahead of them as a bright moving road sign. "Where are we going, Garric?" she asked.
"We are returning to Wandalo's village where Garric has friends," the Bird said in its dry mental voice. "The Coerli will track us, but not soon. Smoke blunts their sense of smell and anyway, fire disconcerts them. It will be days before they pursue."
And what next? Garric thought, suddenly feeling the weight of the future again. It'd felt so good to escape that he hadn't been thinking ahead.
A tree had fallen beside the route the Bird was choosing. A dozen spiky knee-high saplings sprang from its trunk. As Garric trotted past, he became less sure that it wasn't simply a tree which grew on the ground and sent its branches upward. Several blobs-frogs? Insects?-slid from the bole into the water. If they hadn't moved, Garric would've thought they were bumps on the bark.
"Bird?" Garric said aloud. "Where do you come from?"
"I come from here, Garric," the Bird said. "My people are coeval with the land itself, created when the rocks crystallized from magma. We lived in a bubble in the rock, all of us together. When the rock split after more ages than you can imagine, we continued to live in what was now a cave. We could have spread out but we did not, because that would have meant being separated from our fellows."
He laughed, the audible clucking sound Garric had heard before. It sounded like a death rattle in this misty wilderness.
"Was the cave near here?" asked Garric. He didn't care about the answer; he'd spoken instinctively because of the sudden rise in emotional temperature. He was asking what he hoped was a neutral question to give the Bird the opportunity to change the subject. Garric would've done the same out of politeness if he were speaking to a human being he didn't know well.
"I was the different one," the Bird said, apparently ignoring the question. "The daring one, a human might call it; but we are not human. To my people and myself, Garric, I was mad."
The rain had stopped and the sun was a broad bright circle in a dove-gray sky. The Bird fluttered above a creek too wide to jump. The water was black and opaque. Garric tried it with his foot; Donria simply strode across.
Garric followed feeling a little embarrassed. The water was mildly cool and only ankle deep. Well, I didn't know what might be living in a stream like that.
"I went into the depths of the cave," the Bird continued. "This is the shape I wear now-"
It fluttered its gauzy wings.
"-but I can take any shape I choose. I followed the fracture into the rock until I was a sheet of crystal with granite pressing to either side. I wanted to experience separation, you see. I was mad."
Garric's lips shouldn't have been dry in this sodden air. He had to lick them anyway.
"I could barely feel my people," the Bird said. "They missed me, but they did not object to my choice. My people did not coerce: they were part of the cosmos and lived in their place and their way. They had no power because using power would have been out of place and therefore mad. As I am mad."
"Were," Garric said. He didn't amplify the word or put any particular emphasis on the way the Bird had used the past tense in referring to his people.
"Before I decided to return to the bubble and my fellows, my birthmates, my other selves," the Bird said, "two wizards arrived. My people ignored them, continuing to contemplate the cosmos and their place in it. The wizards killed them and took away their bodies to use in their art."
Garric licked his lips again. "I'm very sorry," he said. When you're told of a horror, words may not be any real help to the victim; but words, and the bare truth, were all there was. "Who were the wizards?"
"They were not of this world," the Bird said. "They were not human; they were not even alive as humans judge life. They came and they killed my people, then they left with our crystal bodies. I wanted to sense separation. For five thousand years now I have known only separation."
He gave his terrible rattling laugh again. "Is it a wonder that I am mad?" he asked.
A breeze bringing a hint of cinnamon rippled the standing water to either side, clearing the air briefly. Ahead was a solid belt of cane waving ten or twelve feet in the air. The stems were as thick as a big man's finger, and the bark had scales. We'll have to go around, Garric thought; but the Bird fluttered into the cane, weaving between the closely spaced stems.
Donria continued forward without hesitation, plowing into the wall of vegetation, breaking the canes like so many mushrooms. Either there were no windstorms in this place-and Garric hadn't experienced any, now that he thought about it-or these plants grew to full height in a day or two.
Perhaps both things were true.
"Bird," he said aloud. "You've helped me escape from Torag. If I can help you, I'll do my best."
"I have purposes, Garric," the Bird said. "Your survival suits my purposes. I am not human."
A stone's throw down the path was a plant whose trunk looked like a pineapple with four leaves crawling from the top and across the ground. The Bird lighted on it and rotated its crystalline head to face back at Garric.
"Thank you for treating me as though I were human, however," the Bird said. "It does not matter to my people, but it speaks well of you and your race; and perhaps that matters to me after all. After so many years alone I am no longer wholly one of my people."
"I smell smoke," said Donria abruptly.
"Yes," said the Bird, shimmering back into the air again. "Before sundown we will reach Wandalo's village."
In a mental voice that wasn't attenuated by distance, the Bird added, "The cave in which my people were created and died still focuses energies. The Coerli wizards use that cave to come to this place far in their past where they hunt. Some day I will revisit it myself."
The Bird clicked its laugh. "I have purposes, Garric," it said.
***
Cashel backed a step and raised his staff as the demon leaped into the air, beating its wings strongly. Something so big-and all right, the demon was thin as a snake, but it was still man-sized-shouldn't have been able to fly on wings no longer than Cashel could span with his arms spread, but it did.
Hanging like a hummingbird over Cashel and the boy, it called angrily, "Fly, then! You can fly, can't you?"
"Cashel, what do we do?" Protas said desperately.
He's afraid of failing, Cashel thought. He can't do what the demon just told him to.
Knowing that, and knowing that the demon didn't really believe they could fly-it was bullying them, making them feel guilty-Cashel said harshly, "Come down, you! You're to guide us, you say. Stop playing the fool and come do your job."
"You can't command me, human!" the demon said, still hovering.
"Maybe not," Cashel agreed. "That's between you and whoever set you to guide us. But as Duzi's my witness, you can't give us orders. If you won't come down and do what you're told, we'll go our own way."
"Fools!" said the demon, but it cupped its wings and landed beside them. "We'll go on foot, then. But it'd be easier to fly."
The business'd gotten Cashel's back up quicker than it ought to've, maybe because of the noise the musicians were making. He wouldn't call it music, not a bit.
Instead of letting the demon's posturing go, Cashel reached out quick with his left hand and pinched the flat scaly nose between his thumb and forefinger. The demon shrieked on a climbing note and tried to jump backward, which it had no more chance of doing than a snared rabbit has until Cashel opened his hand.
"Remember who set you the job of guiding us, fella," Cashel said, breathing deeply to calm himself down. He'd had his staff poised in his right hand so that he could use the short end as a cudgel if the demon'd tried to bite him. "And remember I'm Cashel or-Kenset, so keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to me and my friend."
"Yes, yes," said the demon, sounding conciliatory now. A man would've massaged his bruised nose with a hand, but the scaly blue thing just shook its head. "Let's get it over with, then. There's risk for me too in this, you know."
They set off walking-eastward, judging from the way the sun'd moved in the little while since Cashel had come here. Protas put the crown on his head. It fit there, which surprised Cashel a good deal. It'd fit the much larger Cervoran as well.
When they got a bowshot away from the grove and the musicians, Cashel felt a little embarrassed at the way he'd gone after the demon. All it'd been trying to do was save face.
A fellow as big as Cashel was got a lot of that, people pretending they weren't going to fight him just because they didn't feel like it. He'd learned to let it go, mostly from temperament but also because if you humiliated or knocked silly everybody who got too much ale and started mouthing off, you got the reputation of being the sort of man Cashel didn't like.
This time the demon'd gone after the boy, though. Bullying kids was the wrong thing to do. Doing it in front of Cashel wasreally the wrong thing to do.
"Master Demon?" Protas said. He was a courteous little fellow, which wasn't true of every nobleman's son Cashel'd met since he left the borough. "How far are we to go?"
"An hour, walking," the demon said. It turned to glower over its narrow shoulder at Cashel and Protas. "If nothing happens."
Cashel nodded, just showing he understood. He figured the demon might be trying to scare them over nothing, but in this place it wasn't hard to imagine there were real dangers. He'd have been keeping his eyes open regardless.
The ground was dry red clay. Grass grew on it on it in a sere yellow blanket; seed heads scratched at Cashel's knees. Trees were sparse, and their gray leaves curled around their stems.
Because Cashel was busy looking in all directions, it was Protas who first saw the town on the southern horizon. "Look, Cashel," he said, pointing.
At first Cashel thought it was a range of low hills, but as they walked along a little further he decided the humps were just too regular to be natural; they must be domed buildings. Something glittered on top of one, but it was too far away for even Cashel's excellent eyes to tell any more than that something was shining.
"Who lives in that city, Master Demon?" Protas asked. At least for as long as they held up, his trousers were better for this country than Cashel's tunics and bare legs.
The demon looked back again. "We have no business with them," it said. "You'd better hope that they have no business with us, either. If you believe in Gods, boy, pray that reaching toward them doesn't call them to us!"
Protas jerked his hand down. Cashel frowned, then decided to let it pass. From the way the demon turned its sharp-featured face away it'd seen the frown and knew what Cashel'd been thinking. Maybe it'd remember to be more polite the next time it warned Protas.
A grove of trees lay close by to the left of the line they were taking. They were bigger than those Cashel'd seen when they arrived here, but they were dead instead of just dry: most of the bark had sloughed away from the trunks and branches.
Something could still be hiding behind the trunks, though. Cashel didn't let the trees keep his whole attention, but he made sure his eyes flicked back to them often enough that nothing could rush out unnoticed even when they were within a stone's throw.
A woman's hiding in that hollow trunk!
"Halloa, mistress!" Cashel called, bringing his staff up crosswise. In a lower voice he growled, "Protas, get clear of me but don't go too far!"
She was clutching the trunk with her hands, her body pressed against the wood. She lifted her face in surprise, then smiled broadly. She's not wearing any clothes!
"Who are you, stranger?" she said, speaking to Cashel and completely ignoring his companions. She moved a step out from the hollow. "My, today blesses me as I never thought to be blessed again in this life!"
Duzi, the tree's been making love to her! Or likely she's been…
Cashel turned away. "Demon," he said, "let's walk on. This is no place for decent people."
"Where are you going, stranger?" the woman said. Her voice'd started out a pleasant coo like doves in a cote but it went all shrill. "You've come here and you'll not leave until you've pleasured me!"
"Demon, I said go on!" Cashel said, because their guide was standing on one leg with the other foot resting against his knee. He had clawed toes like a bird's.
"Go ahead and service her," the demon said. "We're not short of time, and it's too dangerous not to now that she's roused."
"I said goon!" Cashel said, thrusting the iron butt of his staff at the demon's face. It jerked back or its nose'd have gotten a knock and no mistake.
"Are you mad?" the demon cried incredulously. It sprang into the air again, hovering like a
sparrow over a sunflower. "If you're killed, what will happen to me?"
Cashel poised the quarterstaff to prod again. The demon flapped higher, then turned and flew off in the direction they'd been going.
"You must run, then," it shrilled over its shoulder. "You're a fool and worse than a fool!"
"I guess we run, Protas," Cashel said. "It shouldn't be too far to where we're going, given what he said at the start."
"Yes, Cashel," the boy said. He put a hand up to hold the crown and started sprinting, though before Cashel could say anything he'd slowed his pace to a gentle lope.
They didn'tknow how far it was; lying on the ground throwing up at the end of your strength was the wrong way to be if something really was chasing them. Though Cashel figured his staff could deal with the woman if he had to.
He looked back. The circle of dead trees were pulling their roots up out of the ground. The one she'd been making love to had bent down a big branch and lifted her up in it.
"It's too late now!" the demon cried. "You'll regret this for the rest of your short life!"
"I don't guess I will," Cashel said as he stumped along beside Protas. "Short or long, I don't guess I will."
He concentrated on running. It wasn't something he'd ever been good at, though he could move quick enough when he had to. Not for long, though; he wasn't built for it, and watching sheep hadn't given him practice.
Cashel looked over his shoulder, just a quick glance. He faced front again so he wouldn't stick his foot in what might be the only gopher hole in shouting distance.
There wasn't much he wanted to see going on behind them anyway. There were more trees than he could count on both hands. They didn't seem to move fast, but their roots were each longer than he was tall. There were covering ground as fast as Cashel did trotting, and maybe covered it a little faster.
He glanced back again. Faster for sure.
"Run!" the demon called. "Run! You have to reach the rocks!"
There was an outcrop up ahead, a lump roughly a man's height in diameter every way. It looked natural, but the top and one side were flattened. Most of it was pebbly gray, but the hot sun'd flaked a slab off. Where that'd happened, the surface was pale yellow.