The Fortress of Glass coti-1

by David Drake

  "Wait," said the Bird. "I will accompany you to your world. I must arrange the forces in a fashion that will serve your purpose and mine as well, that is all."

  Garric turned away from his guide. The play of light in the Bird's body disturbed him in fashions he couldn't put words to. The rhythm was like the low vibration that heralded an earthquake. He thought he saw figures moving within the mirrored walls, but he couldn't be sure.

  "Are you a wizard?" he asked. Speaking to hear a voice, but hehad to hear a voice in this inhuman, lifeless place! "Are you, Bird?"

  The Bird's cluck of laughter broke Garric's tension. "I am a mathematician, Garric," it said. "I move points on a scale and adjust potentials. There is no mystery to what I do, and no art."

  Therewere figures in the walls, but they weren't identifiable; they weren't necessarily even human. Some were superimposed on others the way a painted canvas may show ghosts of earlier pictures beneath the present surface.

  "How is what you do different from what Marzan does?" Garric asked. "Or Sirawhil?"

  "Marzan can achieve effects that I cannot," the Bird said. He clucked again. "But then, I know what is really happening, and he does not."

  Black spots appeared in the walls and floor. Garric thought they were where the points of light had first glittered. Beams of red and blue wizardlight, thin as spider web but of densely saturated color, spread to weave the spots together.

  Lines pierced Garric's chest and left forearm. Moving put him in the path of other lines. He couldn't feel any contact; if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't have known they were there.

  He transferred the dagger to his left hand for a moment and wiped his right palm on his tunic. The coarse cloth was sodden, but the touch helped somewhat. He flexed his right hand several times, then took the dagger in it again.

  "Prepare yourself, Garric," the Bird said. "We will accomplish your purposes, and then I will accomplish mine."

  The hair stood up all over Garric's body; the web of wizardlight burned even brighter. The Bird clucked, louder than before.

  The mica walls vanished, plunging Garric into a plane of interweaving figures.

  ***

  Ilna followed Chalcus and Merota off the cold, polished stone of the bridge. The grass between her toes felt good by contrast.

  The round temple was in front of them, brightly sunlit in a grove of pines. The roof was gilded-or simply gold? She didn't suppose it mattered-and had a circular window in the middle. There were tall columns around the outside and half as many thinner columns in an inner ring. Both numbers were too large for Ilna to count without a tally, but she was instinctively sure of the proportion.

  Merota looked back at Ilna but her eyes then drifted past. "Oh," she said. "It's gone."

  Ilna glanced over her shoulder. The bridge, a solid mass of pink and gray, had vanished into the wall of curling white. Only here and there could Ilna see above the mist the top of a tree growing from the maze beyond.

  "There's nothing in the hedges that we wanted, child," said Chalcus, giving their surroundings a different sort of look from the ones he'd been shooting about him from before he stepped off the bridge. Instead of looking for dangers, he was now considering the island as a place where a young girl and her companions might want to be. "The sun's clearer here. And should we wish to go back, why, our Ilna would have us there in a flick of her fingers. Would you not, dear love?"

  "I don't think that will be necessary," Ilna said austerely. She walked toward the temple, letting her mind drink in not only the shape but the reasons behind the shape of the building in every detail. She'd laid lengths of yarn parallel in her left palm and clamped them with her thumb, but she didn't start tying them yet.

  The island had plenty of vegetation-the pines surrounding the temple and the flowers and grasses covering the ground. It was all pretty enough, if you liked that sort of thing, and Cashel would doubtless tell her it'd make a fine pasture.

  There was nothing here for human beings to eat, though. Well, Ilna had no intention of staying on the island longer than it took to find their way back to their own world. She had business there with Double.

  She walked up to the temple. It stood on a platform of three low steps. The floor within was a mosaic of tiny stones in a pattern as delicate as the interlocking fibers of a bird's feathers. From any distance the floor would've looked gray; in reality it was black and white, always one or the other. Only the eye of the viewer mixed the colors.

  Chalcus was taking Merota around the structure, keeping himself and the child out of Ilna's way. It wouldn't have mattered: when she focused on a difficult pattern, nothing intruded on her concentration.

  And this was avery difficult pattern. This was every leaf and rootlet of the tapestry garden, and it was more.

  Ilna began to knot her bits of yarn, using them to work herself through the greater pattern in the stone. She stepped into the sanctum proper and concentrated on a tiny segment: a piece small enough to cover with the palm of her hand.

  She looked up at the roof opening. It was the eye of the building, not only part of the pattern but the garden's window onto the wider cosmos. The grating over it was woven from gold wire so fine that it blurred in sunlight like the sheen of oil on water. There could be stories in an oil slick, too, and the soul of the garden was in this golden eye.

  The beasts who called themselves Princes had spoken of the One who created the garden. If the One existed, he'd left his mark in this eye; but increasingly Ilna believed that the garden, the tapestry, had woven itself while the cosmos congealed out of chaos.

  There was danger here.

  Merota screamed. Ilna looked out from the light-shot complexity of her mind. Merotawas screaming, probably had been screaming, but Ilna hadn't noticed until the pattern she was visualizing warned her of what was going on in her immediate surroundings.

  Chalcus stood beside the building, in the curved shadow of the roof. His sword and dagger slashed in bright arcs-through nothing, dark shadowed nothing that formed about him. The Shadow was separate from what lay on the ground in normal fashion. His face was set and his lips were closed in a taut line.

  Ilna acted by instinct, sweeping off her outer tunic and spinning it to a part of the mosaic floor that no one-not even her with her eyes and intellect-could have told from any other part of the interwoven design. The soft wool fabric settled silently, blocking the pattern in stone from the pattern in the light streaming through the grill over the temple's upturned eye.

  The Shadow vanished. Chalcus tumbled free. Only now did he shout: wordlessly, mindlessly-the bellow of a great beast loosed from a trap. His blades danced again, rippling the empty air and plowing razor-fine furrows in the soil. Grass and a dozen buttercups fell, yellow victims of the flickering steel.

  Chalcus looked at Ilna, his eyes wide and full of horror. "Dear one?" he said.

  "It's all right," said Ilna. "It's a-"

  She nodded to her tunic. She'd woven the cloth herself, a simple fabric as fine and soft as the best silk.

  "I disrupted the pattern," she said. "The Shadow's a part of this temple, really. Part of the tapestry, a necessary part, I see. I can deal with it."

  Ilna looked at the knotted pattern in her left hand. She hadn't dropped it when she took off her tunic. She had no recollection of how she'd moved, just that she had. Her… her soul, she supposed. Her soul had known what to do and her body had done it, without her mind being involved.

  "While your tunic's there, the thing's trapped? Is that what you're telling me, dear one?" Chalcus said. He jerked his head in a nod toward the garment she'd flung with deceptive ease to the pavement. "Is it then, we're safe?"

  Merota stood silent, biting on the knuckles of her left hand and staring at Chalcus. She twisted her eyes for an instant to Ilna, then returned them to the sailor.

  "We're safe, yes, I told you," Ilna snapped. She walked to the tunic, picked it up, and shrugged into it with more trouble than she'd had taking it off. "N
ot because of this-"

  She tapped the pavement with her big toe. She disliked stone but she could use it. She could use the thing that laired in this pattern, too, though it was as cold and heartless as the tiny chips that gave it life. Gave it existence, at any rate.

  "-but because I see it whole. It won't dare to bother us again." Ilna started to smile but swallowed the expression; that would have been boasting. She went on quietly, "Another time I might have to cover another part of the pattern here in the pavement; but I could. It won't be back."

  "Then, dearest…," Chalcus said. "Dear one, dear heart-let us go out of this place now, may we not?"

  "I want to leave," Merota whispered. "Please. Please."

  "If you'll be quiet," said Ilna sharply, "we'll be able to leave that much sooner. The exit's in the eye overhead. It shouldn't take me very long to find a way to open it for us."

  "I'm not afraid to die, dear heart," Chalcus said. He smiled, but his face showed as much sadness as Ilna had ever seen him express. "The place that thing was taking me, though… If there's a hell, my love, that's where it was taking me."

  "There's Hell," said Ilna, remembering infinite grayness and the voice that had whispered to her. She looked at Chalcus, then down to the yarn in her hand. She began to pick out the knots and rejoin the strands into a different pattern.

  "Master Chalcus," she said, eyeing the interwoven mosaic as her fingers worked, "I think before I open the door for us, I'll leash the Shadow. That way it won't come back while I'm occupied with getting us out of this place."

  "That would be…," Chalcus said. His face spread into a rollicking smile. His curved sword and dagger slid into their sheaths over his left and right hips with the same liquid ease that Ilna showed while weaving. He stepped toward her, swept her into his arms, and kissed her hard.

  Ilna frowned in amazement when the sailor backed away, still smiling. "Master Chalcus," she said, "this is scarcely the place for such."

  "And what better place could there be, my dearest?" Chalcus said. "It's where you are and I am, and both of us living. Life's a chancy business, love; and what a fool I'd feel should I die in the next moment without having kissed the love of my life once more when I could have. Not so?"

  Ilna sniffed, but she didn't snap back at his foolishness. He'd put it as a joke, but in her heart she recognized the simple truth of what he'd just said.

  She stepped to Merota, hugged her, and then held an arm out to Chalcus as well. The three of them stood tightly together for a moment; then Ilna backed away.

  "Now," she said, "don't disturb me. I can do this thing-"

  "You said you could, Ilna," said Merota. "Of course you can!"

  "I can do this thing," Ilna repeated, "but I can't start and not finish."

  She allowed herself a slight smile.

  "If that happens, the Shadow will finish me and I suppose all of us, because it will be very angry. Do you understand?"

  Chalcus nodded and grinned. Merota opened her mouth to speak-to agree, almost certainly-but Chalcus touched a finger to the girl's lips before a sound came out. He moved with the grace of falling water and the speed of light itself…

  Ilna looked at the golden grating over the eye. That was where the key was, not in the floor itself but in what the grating's shadow threw onto the mosaic. She began to knot her cords, making herself a part of the pattern.

  She could feel the Shadow's strength. It was aware of what she was doing, but she had it now. There was no way it could escape unless she let it escape, and she would die before she did that.

  Ilna's lips were tight with concentration but she smiled in her mind: she would certainly die very shortly after the Shadow escaped, should that happen. From what Chalcus said-and more from what she'd seen in his eyes as he said it-that would be a very bad way to die.

  Chalcus and Merota had gone outside the temple. The child was picking flowers. The sailor watched her pick flowers and watched Ilna knot yarn and watched every other thing around them that might become an enemy or hide one.

  She was very close to completion; a few more knots and the fabric-yes, she was not only binding the Shadow but bending it to her absolute will. The tapestry was even more marvelously complex than she'd realized before she wove herself into it. Only a master could have created the Garden, and Ilna os-Kenset was that One's equal to be able to reweave what He/She/It had The domed roof of the temple shone and became unnaturally clear. The eye and the grating still existed, but not in the universe that was forming itself over the temple. Ilna continued to weave, her fingers carrying out the understanding of her mind.

  Merota cried out; Chalcus had drawn his blades. Cashel, Protas, and the dead-alive Cervoran were standing beside Ilna in the center of the temple.

  Cashel had his quarterstaff raised to strike. Rushing toward them were cats the size of men, snarling in fury with their weapons raised.

  Ilna wove.

  ***

  Cashel couldn't move as quickly as his leaping opponent, but reflex honed in many fights jerked him back at the same time as the quarterstaff rose in his hand. He didn't so much hit the cat man as lift the iron-bound hickory into a place the cat man leapt through. Leapedinto, at any rate, because Cashel was arm's length back from where the creature'd thought he'd be when it lunged.

  Air and bloodwhuff ed from the creature's mouth as the staff smashed its ribs. It flew upward into the mirrored ceiling, hitting hard enough to flatten its skull. It'd already been dead.

  Another cat man was bounding down the entrance passage toward Cashel. There was no other way in or out of the domed room. Cashel stepped forward, again confounding his attacker.

  This cat man carried a spear whose springy double point was barbed on the inside to grip and hold. A fishing spear Cashel would've said, but bigger and stouter; this was meant to catch men. He couldn't dodge the spear-thrust so he stepped into it, knowing that a head like that wouldn't stick him too badly.

  The twin cane points burned like hot coals as they gouged Cashel's chest, but that didn't slow him. The cat man easily avoided the straight thrust of the quarterstaff, but it wasn't expecting the side-stroke that crushed it against the wall of the passage. The lithe body slipped to the gleaming floor, flat as a discarded rag.

  Cashel backed, breathing through his open mouth. Additional cat men filled the passage, more than he could count. They stayed two double paces back, warned by what'd happened to their fellows.

  Cashel had room to move, while the attacking cat men were bound by the passage. Soon one would get past him, though, and it'd all be over. They moved like light glinting from silver, too quick for thought.

  The mirrored walls let Cashel see Protas standing with the topaz crown in both hands. The boy's face was set in a death mask. This would be a good time for wizardry…

  To Cashel's surprise, Protas hurled the crown against the floor. The great yellow jewel shattered-not the way a stone breaks, but rather like a soap bubble vanishing. Where it struck, the wizard Cervoran stood-wearing the same garments and the same sneer as he had when Cashel last saw him in his room in Mona. He pointed his bone athame toward the cat men and chanted, "Nain nestherga!"

  A cat man with a short-hafted stone hammer in one hand and a wooden dagger in the other sprinted toward Cashel, ducked low, and sprang. It easily avoided Cashel's lifted staff, but it hadn't expected him to kick upward with his left foot.

  Cashel's soles were hard as a horse's hooves, and he'd put as much muscle in the blow as an angry mule could've. The cat man's cry became a startled bleat. It hit the passage ceiling, then the floor, and was thrashing in its death throes as it bounced back toward its fellows.

  The remaining cat men paused. There were many of them, too many.

  "Drue," Cervoran said. "Nephisis."

  Protas was staring at his father, not paying any attention to Cashel. That was all right, since there wasn't a lot the boy could do regardless.

  A cat man twice the size of any other bulled his way to
the front of the group filling the passage. He was snarling at them, just noise to Cashel but words to the other cat men, that was sure. The big leader sorted them out, mostly by growling but once with a slap with the hand that didn't hold a wooden mace; his fingers had real nails and drew streaks of blood across a smaller cat man's scalp

  Three of the creatures poised. Their big leader was right behind them, his mace lifted as much as it could be in the passage. It was easy enough to figure how things would go: one springing high, one low, and one straight up the middle.

  Experience and strength had saved Cashel this far, but he knew he'd had good luck besides. His luck was bound to run out and anyway, he couldn't stop three of the creatures coming at him all at once; especially not with the big one following to finish the business with his mace while one or two of the little fellows chewed on Cashel's throat.

  "Stherga!" Cervoran shouted. Cashel lunged forward, trying to catch the cat men off balance. They were too quick, launching themselves at him like so many arrows.

  The chamber and passage vanished. For an eyeblink, Cashel was in a circle of pine trees. Ilna was there, grim-faced as her fingers tied bits of yarn that went on forever at the corners of Cashel's eyes. The cat men were coming at him and Cashel was alone in a flash of red wizardlight. He was blind, but he could feel each of his bones and muscles.

  The light vanished. Cashel was back in the domed chamber with Protas and Cervoran.

  Cervoran continued to chant, his face a mask of puffy triumph. The circle of trees and the cat men, living and dead, were gone. Figures formed in the mirrored walls.

  Chapter 16

  Chalcus moved like a wraith, facing the cat men. His sword licked out. A leaping cat man somehow managed to get its spear up in time, but the slender wooden shaft couldn't block the steel: the edge sheared through the spear and throat both.

  Two others were springing toward Chalcus at the same time. He kicked at one. The cat man dodged in the air like a hawk striking but the thrust of its stone-pointed spear missed also.