The Fortress of Glass coti-1

by David Drake

  The third had leaped high. The sailor's dagger blocked the swing of the cat's stone hammer, but the wooden poniard in its other hand plunged home. It was withdrawing from Chalcus' chest when his return stroke swiped a bloody smile the width of its furry throat.

  Ilna was gathering the threads of this garden, of this small universe, into her mind; the knots of her pattern fastened them. Everything was connected: every stone, every flower, every life. To stop now would be to fail; to loose the Shadow on herself, which didn't concern her, and to loose it on her friends, which she would not do.

  She'd never doubted that she would die one day. She wouldn't willingly die because she'd failed, though.

  The cat men ringed Chalcus and Merota. The big one, the leader, ducked past the curved sword like water curling around a bridge piling, but Chalcus caught the creature's mace on his dagger and kicked it in the groin. Two cat men speared the sailor in the back as his sword beheaded their maned leader.

  Merota screamed and grappled with one of the cat men as Chalcus turned. Another crushed her skull with a stone hammer. Chalcus stabbed the killer through the heart, put his dagger point through the temple of the creature which the child continued to hold as she convulsed in death, and then thrust behind him to kill the cat man clinging to the spear whose thin flint point poked through the front of the sailor's tunic.

  I never imagined they would die, Ilna thought. I would die, but not them. She finished the task she'd set herself; too late, of course, but that couldn't be helped now.

  Chalcus opened his mouth to speak. Blood came out but no words. He smiled, though, before the light went out of his eyes and he fell over Merota's small corpse.

  There were still as many cat men as Ilna could count on the fingers of both hands. They'd paused, perhaps doubting that Chalcus was really dead, but now they eyed Ilna.

  You should have killed me first, she thought, and she opened a knot of her pattern.

  Darkness formed around the cat men. They looked startled, then began to howl. They must've been trying to move, but their limbs wouldn't obey them. It was like watching them dissolve in acid, flesh melting from the bones and then the bones themselves dissolving.

  Ilna retied the last knot and put the fabric in her sleeve. She was smiling. Odd. I didn't think I'd ever smile again.

  Chalcus and Merota lay where they'd fallen. The dead cat men remained also, but the Shadow had taken its prey out of this universe.

  Ilna carried the bodies of her family into the temple and placed them under the golden screen. Chalcus weighed more than she did, but it wasn't a difficult task. She was quite strong. People in Barca's Hamlet had commented on that, how strong the little orphan girl Ilna was.

  She knelt beside her family and thumbed their eyelids closed. After kissing them for the last time, she rose.

  Chalcus' blood was on her lips. She licked it carefully away and took out more yarn.

  Looking upward to the eye of the temple, Ilna began to tie another pattern. Everything was clear to her, now. Everything except for the question of why she was still alive.

  ***

  The cat men were gone, even the musky smell of them. Cashel turned his head slightly so that he wasn't trusting the reflection in the walls to tell him what was happening behind in the chamber.

  Protas was staring at Cervoran, who chanted, "Iao iboea ithua..," with strokes of his bone athame. Ruby light flooded the world at the final syllable. Cashel felt himself squeezed-not in his body or his mind either one, but some third way that he couldn't explain.

  The pressure released. He wasn't in the domed chamber any more; neither were his companions. Protas and Cervoran shimmered in the mica walls, gray and as dim as if Cashel was seeing them through morning mists. Ilna was in the mirror also, and Garric with something on his shoulder that looked like a bird made of quartz.

  "Sal salala salobre…," piped Cervoran's voice though his lips didn't move. His body was as stiff as a painting on the shining wall, but he and Cashel and the others in the mirror spun around a dimly-glimpsed dirt field where the center of the chamber had been.

  Sharina stood there beside Tenoctris. A shield lay on the ground nearby. Sharina's there! The women looked up, frowning like they saw something nearby and couldn't be sure what it was.

  "Sharina!" Cashel called, but his lips didn't move; he couldn't even feel his heart beating. Though the cry sounded only in his mind, he thought he saw Sharina smile in dawning understanding.

  "Rakokmeph!" Cervoran shrilled, though his image in the mirror was as frozen as Cashel's own.

  Red wizardlight, searingly cold, divided Cashel's body into atoms and reformed him on mud thawing under a bright sun. He staggered, paused to be sure of his balance, and took a single step forward to enfold Sharina in his arms. He held his staff clear so that it didn't rap her on the back of the head.

  "Cashel," she murmured against his chest. "Cashel, thank the Lady you've come back!"

  They were on a flat wasteland. Garric was holding Liane, both of them talking. Garric looked like he'd been between the millstones, but Cashel guessed whoever'd been making trouble for him looked worse. The bird on his shoulder was alive, turning its head quickly like a wren hunting dinner.

  Soldiers, maybe the whole army, stood in noisy formations across the plain; the air stank of salty mud and rotting vegetation. There was Ilna, a knotted fabric in her hands and her face as thin and hard as an axe blade.

  Cervoran looked around with dazed incomprehension. "Where…?" he said. "Why am I here?"

  The double Cervoran'd made before he went off with Cashel and Protas stumped toward them. Both wizards held athames, but Double's was of old oak instead of a rib bone.

  Tenoctris stood with an expression Cashel couldn't read, wary and reserved. She was looking out to sea. On the horizon, glittering brighter than it should've been even in this sunlight, was the Fortress of Glass. As Cashel followed the old wizard's eyes, he saw blue wizardlight flash from the crystal mass.

  ***

  Sharina felt herself relaxing for the first time in days, safe within the circuit of Cashel's muscular arms. His presence made her feel as if she stood in a stone-walled castle. It wasn't just protection-though Cashel with his quarterstaff was protection enough-but also a feeling of solidity, of permanence.

  Lords Waldron, Attaper and Zettin-the admiral of the fleet-were talking simultaneously to Garric; their aides stood in a ring about the commanders, looking eager but keeping silence in the presence of their superiors. If Lord Tadai hadn't been back in Mona, he and his clerks would be part of the scrum pressing Garric too…

  Sharina squeezed Cashel's hand and stepped back from him. Aloud she said, "I felt sorry for my brother when I saw the way he was pestered before. Now that I've been regent myself, I pity him with the benefit of experience."

  "I should be inside the Fortress!" said Cervoran, facing Double and glaring with his bulbous eyes. Double glared back, a mirror image on a slightly smaller scale. "Did you drag me here, you fool?"

  Cervoran pointed his athame toward Ilna. "Come here, you!" he snarled. "I will teach this puny simulacrum what it means to thwart my plans. I will crush it! I am Cervoran!"

  "I am Cervoran!" piped Double, tone and diction identical to those of the wizard who'd made him. "You cannot rule me now. No one can rule me!"

  "No, by Duzi!" Garric said, blasting the words out like thunderclaps. "This willwait!"

  He pointed to a junior officer, one of Admiral Zettin's aides. "Lord Dalmas, I'll take your sword if I may," he snapped. "If I may" was a polite form but the tone was an order. "Until I can get my own back. This-"

  He held out what Sharina first thought was a tent peg, then recognized as a wooden knife of some sort.

  "-was well enough when there was nothing better to be had, but I'll feel less naked with the weight of steel on my hip again."

  Sharina touched Cashel again. Garric was her brother, but he was no longer the child of a rural innkeeper-and neither was she.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons she so needed Cashel's presence: hehadn't changed from the solid, imperturbable youth she'd grown up with.

  Dalmas and three other soldiers started to unbuckle their sword belts. Garric gestured curtly to the others, then took the gear-waist belt, shoulder strap, sword, and dagger sheathed on the other side for balance-from the named aide and put it on with remarkable ease. Moments like this reminded Sharina that Carus, the warrior-king, shared her brother's mind.

  The commanders had moved back slightly. "A man's at a disadvantage without his clothes on," Cashel murmured to her. "And the clothes this lot cares about is a sword. Garric's really smart."

  Sharina glanced at him. Yes, my love, she thought. And in this way and so many ways, so are you. You don't miss the things that go on between any kind of animals, people included.

  Cervoran and his Double stood arm's length from one another, no longer speaking verbally but from the look of it communicating in some other way. Their expressions reminded Sharina of dead carp glaring at one another.

  In the bustle and excitement of Garric's reappearance, Ilna continued to stand alone. Sharina stepped over to her friend and hugged her. Ilna was never demonstrative, but today Sharina felt as if she were embracing a marble statue. Something was badly wrong…

  "Haven't you been able to find Chalcus and Merota yet?" Sharina said.

  "I found them," said Ilna. Her voice was clear and precise, as always; and there was anger underneath it for a friend to recognize, again as always: this was Ilna os-Kenset.

  But Sharina had never heard anger as cold and consuming as what was in these clipped, simple words.

  "I wasn't quick enough," Ilna said. "They were both killed by things that looked like cats the size of men, on their hind legs. I wasn't good enough to save them."

  "I-" said Sharina. She fell silent with her mouth still open, backing a step away. She felt as if she'd been drenched in ice water.

  "The cat men attacked you?" Garric said, breaking away from the officers to stride over Ilna and Sharina. "The Coerli, they're called. Were you in the Land too, swamps and rain all the time?"

  Sharina stared in horror: Garric was a prince, a leader, but this wasn't the time Garric's hard expression melted. He put his arms around Ilna and held her. For a moment she remained the same block of frozen anger that Sharina had held; then her arms went around Garric and she clung like a drowning woman to a float. Her face didn't change, except that she closed her eyes for just a moment.

  Liane had followed Garric. She held a wax tablet and a writing stylus; a soldier walking behind carried her travelling desk. She looked at Sharina and mouthed the word, "Killed?"

  Sharina nodded. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and bit it hard.

  Liane turned and started to walk away. The soldier with the collapsible desk couldn't get out of the way in time; Liane bumped into him. She hurled her writing instruments at the ground, put her hands over her face, and began sobbing. Ilna watched her dry-eyed.

  Cashel stiffened. He shifted his hands on his quarterstaff, spreading them as they'd be at the start of a fight.

  "Master Cervoran?" he said. His voice trembled. Cervoran and Double remained where they were, locked in a silent staring match.

  Garric glanced at Liane but he continued to hold Ilna. His eyes were anguished, but his lips were in a tight line.

  "Cervoran!" Cashel shouted. "Look at me or I'll tear your head off!"

  Cashel doesn't shout. Cashel doesn't threaten.

  Garric put Ilna behind him and turned, facing the wizards but keeping Cashel in the corner of his eye. He flexed his arms. He had a wound all the way through the muscle of his right shoulder, but you'd never guess that by the way his sword arm swung.

  Nearby soldiers were bracing themselves. Some of them touched their weapons but took their hands quickly away lest they precipitate what they felt in the air.

  Cervoran and Double both looked at Cashel. Their heads turned slowly, as though they were swimming in honey.

  "There were cat people where we were," Cashel said. He wasn't shouting now, but it was hard to tell the words because of the way they slurred out through his stiff lips. "Then I saw Ilna and they were gone. Where did you send those cats, Cervoran?"

  "This body must live," said Double.

  "Nothing else matters," said Cervoran.

  "I am Cervoran!" said both wizards together.

  "Cervoran died a week ago," said the bird on Garric's shoulder. "The creatures you see before you are one of a pair of wizards from a place and time too distant to imagine. They fell here. This one animated the corpse of Cervoran."

  Everyone stared at the bird. Its beak didn't move, but Sharina was as certain as she was of the sun that the words in her mind came from the shining creature.

  "Its former partner fell into the sea," continued the bird. "Having taken for itself alone the treasure the two had stolen together-the bodies of my race, all but me."

  "Look," said the mirrored wizards together. They pointed toward the sea.

  The Fortress of Glass had risen higher from the sea on three crystalline legs. It took a step toward the land with the deliberation of a stalking mantis.

  "The Green Woman is coming," said the wizards. "But I will crush her!"

  ***

  Garric's shoulder had been throbbing as though a mule'd kicked him there. Now he didn't notice it.

  "It's always like that in a fight, lad," said Carus, his eyes focused on something far away in time. "There's time enough to hurt afterwards; or there isn't, and it doesn't matter either way."

  "Master Cashel," said the Bird. As usual, every mental syllable seemed to have been cut from hard steel. "Did you think the one called Cervoran took you with him for protection?"

  "Yes sir," Cashel said, polite to a stranger-even an inhuman stranger-even now that he was as close to blind rage as Garric had ever seen him. "I was to protect him and Prince Protas, I thought. Wasn't that it?"

  "Not in the way you think, Master Cashel," the Bird said. "That one needed a twin present so that he could through his art shift danger from himself to the other twin. To your sister and her companions, that is."

  "It was necessary," the wizards said. "Any price you humans pay to preserve me is cheap. Look!"

  They pointed again to the Fortress of Glass pacing toward land. Garric knew the water that far off-shore was at least a thousand feet deep. The glittering mass was larger than he'd realized, far larger than the cave the Bird and its people had occupied.

  "What you see is thin as a soap bubble," the Bird said with its usual dispassion. "But it exists in many universes at once, so nothing in this world alone can harm it."

  "Only I can defeat the Green Woman," the wizards said. Their paired voices were slightly apart in timbre, creating a shrill dissonance more unpleasant even than those voices separately. "The two humans who died do not matter. No number of dead humans matter. I-"

  Garric drew the borrowed sword, a long horseman's weapon like the one Carus had carried in life and Prince Garric had learned to use under the tutelage of his ancient ancestor. It came out of the scabbard smoothly, despite the blinding jab of pain when the blade came clear and Garric's right arm rose above the shoulder.

  Cashel was already moving, the staff out like a battering ram. His left hand led and the whole strength of his massive body was behind the blow. The iron ferrule was within a hand's breadth of Cervoran's swollen, smiling face when it stopped.

  Cashel froze as though turned to stone; his shout of effort ended with a smothered grunt. Ruby light dusted the air.

  Garric brought his sword around in a whistling arc. His body tingled as it had an instant before lightning blasted a tree nearby when a summer storm had swept the pasture while he watched the flock. The blade stopped above Double's head; he couldn't make the blade move any farther. Garric felt as though he'd been buried in hot sand, the grains individually yielding but together a weight beyond the ability of even his strong yo
ung body to force through.

  "-will crush the Green Woman!" the wizards said. "I will be God!"

  They turned to face the oncoming Fortress, raising their athames. "I alone matter!" they shrilled. "I will be God!"

  Chapter 17

  Ilna watched the Fortress of Glass walking toward them. It was easily the most complex-and therefore lovely-pattern she'd encountered in the waking world, though when she entered her reveries she glimpsed the threads of the cosmos itself. Occasionally Ilna had even followed those threads far enough to imagine the existence of the Weaver through Her work.

  Considering herself as a thread in another's pattern, Ilna felt her lips twist in a wry smile. To her surprise, quite a number of things now struck her as amusing. That in itself amused her.

  Everyone was talking but almost nobody seemed to be listening. Because Ilna was silent, no one paid attention to her. She was used to that, and indeed it was the state that she preferred.

  The wizards who'd been responsible for the deaths of her family had set a fallen brazier upright on its tripod legs and lighted the charcoal with a spark of wizardlight. They were chanting, ignoring the humans about them.

  Ilna looked at their dead, puffy features. Only the bodies were dead, of course. The inhuman spark within them used the flesh merely for transportation, no more a part of the real being than a sailor is part of his ship.

  A sailor… Well, Chalcus had never doubted that he'd die someday. Merota would've said the same thing if she'd been asked, though she was probably too young to understand just what that meant. Perhaps not, though: she'd been a clever child, and she'd stood beside Ilna and Chalcus in places where death was a more likely outcome than life for all of them.

  As Cervoran chanted with his Double, Ilna remembered the feel of the cold, waxen flesh as she'd dragged the wizard off the pyre which would otherwise have consumed him. What would've happened if she'd let the fire have its way? Certainly that flesh, that form, wouldn't have loosed the Coerli on Ilna and her family; but would that have changed the result? As the thing of crystal marched toward them from the sea, it was easy to imagine a being of fire facing it and the whole island beneath a blackened waste.