The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  Her groom vanished. The people in the square vanished. The fountains dried up, the grass in the square turned to dust, and the lively city fell silent. Then, the air before her began to sparkle and glimmer, and the wild-haired white-eyed Shaman appeared He clutched a gold torque, crusted with fire opals and sapphires, and bowed to her. "Lady, Fateborn, daughter of Chance and Destiny—the gods await your voice." He slipped the torque around her neck and said, "Ask of them what you will."

  "How do I use this?" she asked.

  "Take the key, and press the curved end of it into the hole between the gemstones. Then simply address the gods you would have hear you,and…"He stopped "Why are you looking at me that way?"

  "What key?" Karah asked.

  "The key! The key! I had that idiot law-speaker get it—from a god, no less. I don't suppose he forgot that, do you?"

  Karah shook her head. No answer seemed particularly good.

  "So where is it?"

  Karah snapped, "Well, he didn't give it t' me, so you need not shout like that!"

  "World coming to an end, and you're upset because I yelled at you. Hah! Well, we're in for it now. Nothing to do but get back quick as we can, and get the key from that idiot." He turned and walked away from her, down the side of the wall, muttering, "The Three tell me to get you, get him, get the captain and bring you along to pick up the Theophone, and I'm damned if you don't mess the mission up from start to finish."

  "Hey!" Karah yelled after him. She stood at the top of the wall, looking down the steep face of it, watching the Shaman disappear down the path toward the sea. "Hey! Wait! How am I supposed t' get down from here, blast you!" The Shaman kept walking. The full skirt of the green dress blew around her ankles. She could just imagine scaling a wall in that She lifted up the front hem of the skirt and stared at her feet. She was wearing dainty court shoes—little gem-crusted slippers with raised heels and pointed toes. "Pig shit," she muttered. "Nothing is ever easy."

  She took off the slippers, pried off the tottering little heels with her dagger, and put them back on again. Then she went to work on the skirt, splitting the front of the skirt, and then the back. She hacked off the train and ripped two strips of material from the silk, and used them to wrap the split skirt around her ankles. She was left wearing ludicrous ballooning pantaloons and silly shoes—but, she thought, at least I can ride and run.

  She looked down the steep face of the wall. And climb… I hope. She nibbled thoughtfully at her lower lip. The stones of the wall were uneven—and the wall leaned inward a bit as it rose. She might be able to climb down it She would have a better chance in bare feet, though, she decided.

  She slipped over the edge. Her left leg throbbed She hadn't thought about that until she moved—but that gash in her thigh was going make the trip more dangerous. Her left shoulder hurt, too, but the abrasions of the skin weren't anywhere near as serious as the lacerated muscle. She climbed, struggled—and hated Amourgin all over again. How like him not to give her the key—she could have summoned the gods and brought the war to an end already, if it hadn't been for him.

  Another volley blasted out from Willek's ranks. Damn, how did they cart that much ammunition this far? Bren thought, rising on one knee.

  The tribesmen caught most of it; they were in full charge, an astonishing loping run that might well have kept up with cavalry at the canter. The heavy bullets ripped through them; Bren thought he would never be able to erase the horror of the sight from his mind. In a volley battle, where lines stood and blasted at each other all day, a quarter of a regiment could die in ten minutes. But these innocents had never seen firearms before. Still they kept on, leaping over their own dead and wounded with catlike agility, sweeping past Willek's troops—Imperial troops, obeying orders, Bren reminded himself—and then turning just beyond the bristle of pikes to strike at the junction between the Imperials and the Tseldenes.

  The tribesfolk struck, a flurry of throwing axes and javelins sparkling in the sun before them; the crash of onset sounded, screams and howling wolf cries and the unmusical clash of metal on metal, the flatter sounds of weapons slamming into leather shields. Bren used his telescope and his lips shaped a silent whistle. So that was what our ancestors were like in battle, he thought. They had no discipline, as he understood the term, but they moved in pack-unison like wolves, each aiding their neighbor, stabbing and slashing in a blur of speed A spray of broken weapons and bodies marked the spot where they hammered a wedge into the enemy line. And—

  "Yes, by the Three," Bren said.

  The two forces were recoiling, each away from the other; whatever arrangement their leaders had come to, Tykissian and Tseldene were not going to trust each other much. In battle, distrust was worse than acid.

  "Now!" he said crisply.

  Greatly daring, he'd drawn up his musketeers only three deep, along the reverse slope of the hillcrest on which he knelt. The first rank stood and set the rests of their muskets.

  BAMMM.

  They walked six paces backward, downslope, making themselves invisible to the enemy on the other side of the slope, and began to reload. The second line stood and fired in turn, then the third. By then the first was nearly ready again. The enemy formation staggered at the impact, losing a half-step. Men and women dropped, thrashing or twitching or still. The tribesmen were pulling out and falling back to the flank, moving with the same tireless wolf speed. Another series of volleys; here and there one of his musketeers fell to enemy fire, but they could not reload as quickly while they advanced Closer, and he could see the set faces under helmets and hats, the bristle of points coming down. He looked to either side, at the pikes and halberds crouching below the lip of the ridge.

  "Ready," he said, drawing sword and pistol. "Hold fire."

  The enemy came on more rapidly, jog-trotting as Bren's musketeers stayed crouched below the ridge. Far behind the front rank, the Imperial house standard fluttered, the life Guards around it in a clump. Good thing they're there, Bren thought. Otherwise Willek would have had the Emperor… my aunt—the thought was still strange—in the front. He didn't know whether he could have ordered the XIXth to fire on the Emperor, or whether they'd have obeyed Darkist's well to the rear too, he noted sardonically. It was tempting to order a volley at him, but no. Shooting at an alerted, high-powered magician was a waste of ammunition.

  "Wait for it," he called. The enemy were close now, only a hundred meters. Bullets whined about him. "Now!"

  All three ranks rose and fired at once. The enemy charge faltered, soldiers going down all along their front, throwing up their arms and dropping or rolling back down the hill. Smoke hid the action for a second.

  "Charge!"

  His halberdiers and pikes came up off the ground with a howl and ran down the slopes. The musketeers followed, drawing their swords or clubbing muskets. On either flank the tribal warriors swept forward Bren ran with them, through the smoke. A pikehead came in at him. He knocked it aside with his sword and pistoled the bearer, and her face vanished in a red splash while her helmet rolled away. A halberd chopped at him; he caught the shaft on the braided guard of his sword and clubbed the wielder across his face with the pistol, then turned and thrust a swordsman through the body. Troops of the XIXth closed around him.

  Then the tide of battle shifted against Bren and his troops.

  "They're coming in on the flanks," Captain Tagog shouted in his ear, over the screams and shrieks and clanging. "We'll have to form square—too many of them."

  Bren nodded Outnumbered, flanked, and with superior magic on the side of their enemies… Karah, you're about to be a widow before the marriage. He wished they'd found a way to go after the Theophone. He'd let down his people, his world, his gods.

  The XIXth was going to go down—but it was going to go down fighting. "Form square!" he bellowed aloud.

  "Keep low," Amourgin growled He reloaded his carbine and crouched behind the boulder. Eowlie crouched next to him and reloaded as well.

  "We'
re cut off," she said.

  He watched Willek's flank sweep in and pin most of the XIXth down against the side of the hill. His people were losing, and losing badly. He said, "We're out of sight. If you want, we can sit this out—try and escape after it's over. We're back of the action now—the main part of the fighting seems to be moving down toward the beach."

  He looked at the dead sprawled across the ground below them.

  "This is what you want to do?" Eowlie looked at him, and her eyes narrowed Her expression was thoughtful. Amourgin saw her claws flex and retract.

  He took a deep breath. "I'll do whatever you want to do. You just ought to know, if we try to join up with them, we're going to die. We might take out one or two of them first, but we're going to die. If we stay put, we have a chance to live through this."

  "And what after? What a'vout our friends?"

  "Eowlie, I'll fight beside you if that's what you want I'll die beside you, and die a happy man. But I won't drag you into something you don't want to do." He looked down at those dead bodies again. His hands tightened around the butt of his musket, and he swallowed hard. "I love you, Eowlie."

  The yellow eyes stared into his, wide and startled. "I love you, too. I wonder what my farents would think." She pressed her cheek against his chest and sighed, then pulled away. She checked the load in her musket then held it up, sighting down the barrel. "But my farents are never going to know." One dark eyebrow arched, and her smile quirked. "Yours, either. I suffose you can ve glad avout that."

  He imagined his wealthy, snobbish, upper-class parents meeting Eowlie as a prospective daughter-in-law, and grinned back at her. "You'd be good for them," he said Not that they were ever going to get a chance to see the truth of the statement Eowlie was already putting the match to her weapon and aiming at one of the enemy officers.

  Amourgin nodded and gave his own weapon a last-minute check. It figured—for the first time in his life, he'd found love. And the day he became sure of it was the day he was going to die.

  The explosion of Eowlie's weapon blasted in his ear. She dropped beside him and began to reload. Amourgin eased his own carbine over the top of the boulder and picked out a suitable target.

  "When we run out of ammunition," she said, ramming the powder tight, "we charge behind them with claws and teeth."

  "Knives and swords," Amourgin corrected. He fired, and another of Darkist's Tseldene fanatics fell over dead.

  "Claws and teeth." She flashed him a smile as he dropped down to reload and she stood to aim and fire.

  He looked up at her, at her lithe body leaning along the boulder, at the sharp angle of her jaw and the way the shadows fell across her eyes. And the only thing he could think was, I do not want to lose you.

  Karah caught up with the Shaman at the seashore. The ghostly figure stood looking out over the water at the storm that still pounded on the far shore.

  "Why didn't you help me down t' wall?" she shouted. "Why did you just leave me there? I had t' climb down with that gash on my hand from marrying that man, and the cut in my leg from t' damned big fish…"

  He turned and stared through her with milky eyes. "Why didn't you have the key? If you'd had the key, you would already be back and the war would be over. Now…" He waved his hands in circles and turned his back on her in apparent exasperation.

  "Pig-futtering fatherless son of a dog." She glared at his back, then turned and whistled for her horse.

  Windrush had been out of sight. He trotted toward her. Karah noted that he wasn't favoring a foot anymore, but that his movements in general seemed gangling and stiff. She'd seen the horse born, by the gods—and in all his life, she'd never seen him display a gait that rough.

  She frowned, watching him. Jerky, off-pace, like he was set wrong on his legs. The Grenlaarins would never have bred such an ugly mover. He reached her and, still frowning, she checked the brand on his flank and the tattooing on the inside of his lip. They were Windrush's. The scars, the markings, the way the hair on his chest grew in the pattern of a horned diamond—all were the same. She lifted his right foot and saw where she'd pared through the horn to let the pus out. He was her horse, and yet he wasn't She stood and brushed his forelock back and sighed.

  He looked at her, and the way he looked at her seemed cunning somehow—crafty. At that instant, she realized something was wrong with his eyes. They glowed faintly in the bright sunlight, and instead of the rich dark brown they should have been, they were the deep blue of the autumn sky.

  Her nagging certainty that something was wrong with Windrush returned, and she tried to remember why she'd thought that. "Shaman," she yelled, keeping her eye on the horse.

  She got no answer. She turned, and discovered the Shaman was missing. This is all wrong, she thought. Why did he leave me?

  "You're trapped here," a soft, feminine voice behind her said.

  Karah spun and saw pale wraiths of light and fog curling out of her horse's nostrils. They formed themselves into the head of a woman:—and then she remembered the dream from the other beach, where she'd killed a man. She remembered all of it clearly, as if a curtain had hidden the events until that instant, and someone had moved the curtain. "You! I remember you! You made me forget, didn't you?"

  "Of course. Give me the Theophone."

  "What?"

  "I was going to dump you into the sea, but you started to figure things out I can leave you here just as well. Give me the Theophone."

  "When the hells break loose and swallow me."

  "If you wish." The woman's lips curled up at the corners in a sweet, childlike smile, and the Theophone at Karah's neck began to tug and pull, trying to get away.

  The woman was a wizard, and Karah had no magic. How am I to keep the Theophone from her?

  She began backing away as the horse, and the cloud-woman in front of it, moved toward her.

  "I control the horse," the woman said "I can have it trample you in an instant if you don't give me what I want. I don't want to damage that trinket you wear—but I'll take the chance if I must" Her eyes narrowed.

  Trampled, Karah thought Trampled… She kept backing.

  Her horse had trampled that vicious killer, and the woman had come out of the man… tried to go into her… failed…

  That's IT!

  She drew her dagger and lunged, not even allowing herself to think about what she did. She lashed with the knife across the horse's throat, slashing open his windpipe and cutting through arteries and muscles. Windrush reared and his eyes rolled white. The cut at his throat bubbled blood—he made a horrible, strangling sound Karah knelt beside him, tears rolling down her cheeks—and the woman shrieked "No! No! Nothing by all the gods, that's MINE."

  She rushed Karah, talon-like fingers forming from the mist that made her. But for all her wizardry, when she touched Karah, the vapor sizzled and she vanished with a loud pop and a flash of light.

  Karah stroked Windrush's cheek, crying. "I'm so sorry," she told the dead horse. "I'm so sorry."

  "Thou had no choice, sweetmeat Thou didst the one thing that could have won thy battle."

  Karah turned, expecting to see the Shaman behind her. Instead, her mouth dropped open. A naked, round-bellied, chubby-cheeked little being with a cock that would have done one of her stallions proud stood watching her. He grinned insanely.

  "Nice. Very nice. Thou'rt as smart as thou'rt fair. Yon bitch had a spell bound to the horse—let her work her magic, let her control things. Had thee not killed the horse, had been here a long, long time. Or dead, which I think was her next plan. Good thinking. So, would thou choose to be one of my worshipers? The duties are few and the pleasures many." He arched an eyebrow and smiled a lascivious smile.

  "Who are you?" Karah whispered.

  "Ah, sad, sad is the day when the daughters of women forget the lustiest of the gods. Sad for the daughters, that is. They don't know what they're missing. I'm Heinous. The god Heinous. Used to be the big god, but business has been slow. And what is thy name,
fairest and most delectable of women?"

  "Ah… Karah. Karah Grenlaarin."

  "Akarakara. A fair name for a delicate beauty. A friend of thine has the key to that little whigmaleerie. Thou hast the lock, he has the key… so to speak." Heinous waggled his eyebrows and leered. "Locks and keys are, of a nature, specialties of mine." He made a circle of the fingers of one hand, and gestured obscenely with one finger of the other hand.

  "I'd guessed as much," Karah said Her voice gave the god no encouragement for that line of conversation.

  "Yes. Well. I noted thou had somewhat in the nature of a difficulty."

  Karah looked at him and waited.

  "Hast thought how thou wilt cross the sea to thy friends? Thy horse is dead, and thou canst not walk on the water."

  "I know. But l had to kill Windrush. I couldn't let that woman get the Theophone."

  "Mercy, no. Thou didst only as thou could have, acting quickly, and with great courage. I like those qualities in a woman." He looked away and muttered, "They tend to breed true."

  Karah heard the comment and frowned She knew a lot about breeding—but didn't care much for being looked at as a brood mare.

  The god Heinous continued "Perhaps thou wilt let me help. We can make, ah… something in the nature of a deal."

  Karah looked at him through narrowed eyes. "What kind of deal?"

  "I need worshipers. I have, at the moment… um…" He glanced in the direction of his feet, but Karah doubted that was what he was actually looking at—considering the size of everything else. He looked back at her, his expression abashed, "… one. Only one worshiper. And that one is about to do something tremendously stupid, which I, being an obscure god, no longer have the strength to undo. I need another worshiper, and quickly, before I become once again a forgotten god. Thou needest transportation. And some assistance in finding the key. I can provide both."

  "I already worship the Three. I don't think they would look kindly on another god."