by David Drake
“The idea!” Beard huffed. “Using me to chop driftwood!”
“Hey!” said Layson, who’d walked toward a lump farther down the beach. “Here’s a sea chest. What do you s’pose it has in it?”
Nothing of the least possible interest to any of us, would’ve been Sharina’s guess; but there was no need to guess. The chest had a keyhole covered by a sliding panel, but either it wasn’t locked or the lock had corroded away over the years. Layson jerked the lid open: the chest was empty.
“Tranek and Coffley, get your lines out,” Neal ordered. “With luck we can catch some fish before we lose the sun.”
He looked at Sharina and added, “We’re all right for provisions, but I don’t know how things are going to be if we keep going north.”
He and Sharina both eyed the sun. It was higher above the horizon than she’d have expected for as many hours as it’d been since sunrise. It was summertime, and they were already at high latitudes.
“Do you think we can really defeat Her, mistress?” Neal asked in a near whisper, his eyes on the horizon.
“I don’t know,” said Sharina. “I hope so.”
A seagull screamed in the western sky. It sounded like a lost soul.
“I really don’t know....”
***
The Arcade of the Shepherd was a large rectangular precinct with colonnaded shops on the lower level. The priests’ offices and living quarters were on the upper two floors. If the gates at the north end were closed it would become a blank-walled fortress.
As Garric and his troops clashed up the cobblestone street toward the Arcade, a pair of priests and a trumpeter trotted out of the watchtower into the gateway. The trumpeter blew a brassy summons. One of the priests prostrated himself in greeting while the other—a priestess, Garric thought—ran into the precinct to deliver a detailed message to the High Priestess.
“Huh!” said Lord Waldron. He’d rather have been on horseback, but when Prince Garric insisted on walking the old nobleman had refused to ride as a matter of military etiquette. “I thought maybe they’d try to keep us out.”
“Lady Estanel’s far too intelligent to do that,” Garric said. “And I’ll be very surprised if there’s a weapon more dangerous than a fly whisk in the hands of a priest. The lady knows better than to fight battles she can’t win.”
“Though she’s not one I’d push into a corner, lad,” noted King Carus. “If it’s go down fighting or simply give up, the lady’s one who’d fight like a demon.”
The troops with Garric at their head entered the gateway eight abreast. Liane in a sedan chair followed Garric, Waldron and their military aides. Four tough looking men, one of them the fellow who’d brought Liane the message in the council meeting, walked beside the chair.
The Arcade was a fashionable shopping district and fairly busy at this time in the afternoon. Civilians gaped as the soldiers appeared. Some of them were entertained but most looked frightened and ducked within shops in hope of hiding.
Garric grimaced. There was no benefit to him or the kingdom in scaring citizens needlessly, but he was going to need the troops. There wouldn’t be any trouble from the priests, but he might have to react instantly to the information they gave him.
At the south end of the plaza stood the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock itself, a shapely structure built narrower than the available space so that it would seem higher. The capitals of the six tall, slim columns across the front were more ornate than anything Garric had seen before, except perhaps for the tangle of multiflora roses which seemed to have been the sculptor’s inspiration.
“Your highness,” said Liane, jumping out of her sedan chair. “While you greet Lady Estanel, my associates and I will sequester Lady Panya, the priestess who brought the gift.”
She and her four men trotted into the arcade on the right and up the open staircase leading to the priestly quarters. Garric glanced at Lady Estanel and a gaggle of aides coming out of the low building beside the temple, detached from the arcade itself. They could wait.
“Waldron!” he said. “Tell the high priestess to join me in Lady Panya’s quarters!”
Garric and the platoon of Blood Eagles guarding him followed Liane. He heard Waldron pass the order along to a junior officer and fall in behind.
Garric grimaced, stopped, and gestured the army commander to his side. “Lord Waldron,” he said. “I was in haste and may have seemed impolite. That was not my intention.”
Waldron’s narrow face had been a mass of hard planes. It broke into an expression of pleasure. “I accept your apology, your highness,” he said.
One part of Garric’s mind was astounded at the arrogance that allowed the old man to believe he’d had a right to be angry at his prince’s brusqueness. But Garric also knew that the same stiff-necked pride meant Waldron would sacrifice his life and whole household to guard Prince Garric, his sworn liege. People weren’t simple, and it was Garric’s business to treat every one of them as an individual—for the sake of the kingdom.
They went up the stairs together. Liane and her spies had gone into the first suite off the stairhead. The Blood Eagles ahead of Garric were binding three temple servants who lay on their bellies on the floor of the third-level portico.
The higher-ranking priests of the Shepherd lived just as well as those of the Lady. Garric strode into the suite, through the reception room and the bedroom to the small water garden at the rear where Liane and two of her men stood with Lady Panya bos-Parriman.
Garric had only a vague recollection of the priestess who’d brought the cage of mechanical birds; she’d been a face among hundreds, another person whose opinions were more important to her than they were to the kingdom. She’d been good looking in a slim, severe fashion; the sort of woman who strove to be imposing rather than enticing.
Now Panya looked like a browsing ewe with her neck caught in the crotch of a sapling. She twisted furiously in the grip of the men bending her arms back and lashing her wrists with a rawhide strap.
“She was climbing over the wall,” Liane said, gesturing toward the parapet. It was only five feet above the terrace floor, but the drop to the ground beyond was a good thirty feet. “I don’t know if she was trying to escape or if it was a suicide attempt.”
“Let me go!” Panya shouted. Her eyes twitched in all directions; they didn’t seem to focus. “I’m a priestess of the Shepherd! He’ll strike you down for blasphemy!”
“I’m sure Prince Garric is acting in accordance with the will of the Shepherd in seeing to the needs of the kingdom, Lady Panya,” said Lady Estanel, startling Garric with the unexpectedness of her voice at his elbow. In between phrases she breathed in half-suppressed gasps. “Obey the prince and know that you’re obeying the Great Gods who work through him.”
The high priestess was red-faced with exertion. She must have run half the length of the plaza and then up two flights of stairs to arrive so quickly, but her expression was a calm as that of that of the statue of the Shepherd in the temple below.
“Who told you to bring the cage of birds to Prince Garric in place of the gift the temple sent you with?” Liane asked. She didn’t raise her voice, but she spoke with cold hostility. No one who knew her socially would’ve imagined the words came from sweet-natured Liane bos-Benliman.
“The temple gave me the cage!” Panya said. “I did what I was told!”
“We sent you an Old Kingdom manuscript of Celondre’s Odes, your highness,” the high priestess murmured. She frowned at Panya. “With an inscription in Celondre’s own hand.”
“Mistress?” the spy who’d entered the council chamber said to Liane. She nodded but turned her head, biting her lip.
The spy gripped Panya by the hair and kicked her feet out from under her. His fellow stepped out of the way.
Panya cried out as she fell forward. The spy thrust her face into the basin of the fountain and held her there in a flurry of froth, then lifted her again. He didn’t release her. The priestess gasp
ed and spluttered, crying uncontrollably.
Liane turned. “Mistress,” she said, “your head will go under water each time you refuse to answer me. Each time will be longer. Eventually you will answer or you will die with your lungs on fire. Who sent you with the cage of birds?”
“I can’t—” the priestess said. The spy thrust her forward.
“I’ll tell!” she screamed. “I’ll tell you!”
“Talk,” said Liane. There was more mercy in a flash of lightning than in her voice. “Quickly.”
“Count Lascarg’s twins came to me,” Panya said. She closed her eyes; her neck muscles were taut so that her head didn’t hang painfully from the spy’s grip on her hair. “Monine and Tanus. They said I had to help them or they’d, they’d say things about me.”
Garric nodded in grim understanding. His enemies had corrupted Moisin, the priest of the Lady, with money, but they’d used blackmail to control the Shepherd’s emissary.
“Go on,” said Liane. Garric was glad she had enough stomach to conduct the interview. He wasn’t sure he could do it himself.
“There wasn’t any harm,” Panya said desperately. “The birds would sing, that’s all, and nobody would tell, would say that I....”
She closed her eyes again, her lips working silently.
“Do the birds report what they hear to Monine and Tanus?” Liane asked. “Is that why you were to give them to Prince Garric?”
“I don’t know,” Panya said. She or her conscience must have felt the spy’s hand twitch. Her eyes opened again and she screamed, “I really don’t know!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Garric. “We’ll learn from the other end. Lord Waldron, I’d like you to take charge here with Lord Tosli’s regiment while I return to the palace. It’s crucial that no one leave the precinct to get word back to Lascarg’s spawn.”
“Tosli can take care of that,” Waldron said. “He’s a good officer, for all that his family’s bloody Valles merchants. And if you’re worried that this is a lot of running back and forth for an old man like me—”
That was exactly what Garric was worried about.
“—then don’t be. I can march the legs off you and half the Blood Eagles, even if I do prefer riding a horse!”
“Let’s go,” Garric said, starting for the stairway. Lord Waldron was exaggerating—probably exaggerating—but if he said he was ready to jog back to the palace, Garric wasn’t fool enough to call him a liar.
“Your highness?” Liane called to his back. “What would you like done with Lady Panya?”
“She doesn’t matter now!” Garric said. “Let her go, for all I care.”
He was out of the suite when he heard Lady Estanel say, “The temple will deal with the traitor, milady. Because I assure you, we care very much about her actions!”
Garric didn’t laugh the way the king in his mind did; but neither did he go back to insist on mercy for a woman who’d been a traitor to her God and the kingdom both. Monine and Tanus, the dimly glimpsed puppeteers who’d toyed with him and Carus in dreams, were his present concern.
“Aye, lad, it’ll be a pleasure to see them dance on a rope instead of us for a change,” growled the king through a savage smile. “Assuming we take them alive, which wouldn’t be my choice!”
***
A crimson flash from the jewel shattering between Cashel’s thumbs, turned the walls gripping him transparent. He still couldn’t move, but he could see where he was. That didn’t make him comfortable, exactly, but at least it was a change.
The demon Kakoral stood in front of him, laughing with a sound like a thatch roof ablaze. His body was a thousand shades of red, but now that Cashel saw the demon close up he got the impression that the skin had no color at all—that instead it reflected the light of a different world.
The room was vast beyond anything Cashel had seen—except the sky from the deck of a ship at sea. Girders of light slanted from unguessible heights to the walls and floor. Cashel instinctively grasped their pattern, though his conscious mind couldn’t understand it at all.
“Well, Master Cashel,” Kakoral said. “I thought I’d come myself this time, since you’ve proved to me that Kotia is not only Laterna’s offspring but mine as well.”
Besides the structural members, a spiderweb of fine lines trailed through the interior space. Where they intersected, objects hung. Some were tiny, no bigger than a pear, but others seemed the size of large buildings. Kotia hung nude in a transparent enclosure like Cashel’s own, slightly higher and a half bowshot away.
“I didn’t prove anything,” Cashel said, frowning as he tried to puzzle out the question. “I just came to get her out.”
He paused, frowning harder. “If I could.”
“He means that Kotia found you for her champion,” said Evne on Cashel’s shoulder. “Did you think that was a little thing, master?”
A gray globe was forming in the middle of the room. Cashel was good at judging sizes, but this thing tricked his eyes in a fashion he didn’t understand. If he had to guess he’d have said it was large; very large, too large even for this huge space. But he also felt he could’ve spanned it with his arms if he’d been free to climb the cobwebs of light to where it hung.
“I don’t think finding me counts for much, seeings as I’m trussed here like a chicken at market,” Cashel said.
Kakoral roared with laughter. His body seemed to swell to the scale of the room. “You brought me through the Visitor’s defenses, Master Cashel,” he said. “That was enough to suit me. It will suit him too, like a hemp collar!”
The demon reached out a foreclaw toward Kotia. The crystal cage exploded in a crimson flash, leaving the girl sprawled in the air. She rubbed her biceps; she’d been spread-eagled in her prison like a hide pegged out for drying.
The globe was now a perfect solid with the glint of steel. It stabbed a needle of blue wizardlight toward Kakoral.
Toward where Kakoral had been. The bolt ripped a deep furrow across the floor, mounding material like smelter slag up on either side. The demon was a furlong high in the air, his hands spread.
Axeblades of red fire chopped at the globe and glanced off with ripping sounds. One sheared a girder and the other sparkled through a swath of the fine cords crisscrossing the interior. A second blue needle stabbed and missed.
The demon and the Visitor’s globe rose in alternating pulses, leapfrogging one another and blasting wizardlight as they went. Neither of the opponents seemed to exist in the spaces between their successive stages.
Cashel followed the battle until even the searing flares of azure and crimson twinkled like the stars seen through horsetail clouds. He lowered his head, sighed, and gave a tentative pull at the quarterstaff. He’d hoped he’d find that the invisible substance binding him had softened since last he tried moving. It hadn’t.
“I wish Kakoral had cut me loose before he left,” Cashel said, as much to himself as to Evne. He smiled. “I guess he had other things on his mind, though.”
“So do you, master,” the toad said, pointing with her right leg. “I rather thought we’d be seeing that one again.”
Cashel turned his head. Ansache was walking toward him, down a line of light that seemed to have no more substance than the sun’s reflection in a pond. The wizard held his violet athame vertically in front of him like a ceremonial mace.
Cashel strained again. It didn’t help any more than he’d thought it would. “Ah, Evne?” he said. “Can you stop the fellow? Because I can’t, not tied up like this, and I don’t think he has anything good in mind.”
“While the Great Lord of All Worlds deals with your pet, vermin...,” Ansache said, pointing the tip of his athame at Cashel. “I will rid his domain of you!”
“Oh, I don’t think either of us need to exert ourselves, master,” the toad said, rubbing her pale belly with a forepaw. “Let Lady Kotia do it, why don’t we? She’s had time to rest.”
“Brido ithi lothion!” Ansache called, look
ing along his athame like a soldier sighting a catapult.
“Phrene noumothili!” said Kotia from behind Cashel. A web of red wizardlight wrapped Ansache. It looked like the dazzle of a faceted jewel in full sunlight, but there was a roaring crackle as well. Ansache screamed.
Cashel turned his head. Kotia was walking toward them from the place where she’d been confined. In front of her, spinning in mid air, was a golden disk—one of the objects Cashel had seen suspended from threads of light.
“Oba lari krithi!” Kotia said. The golden disk slowed perceptibly; from it shot scarlet sparks that danced down over Ansache and tightened the bonds already in place. Ansache screamed again, but on a diminishing note. His shroud of red light collapsed to a point.
Ansache’s athame clattered to the floor, blackened and smoking. Kotia frowned at it. “Rali thonou bo!” she said. The shimmering metal vanished in a thunderous crash, leaving motes of soot dancing in the air where it had been.
The disk settled with a hum that grew deeper as the spinning slowed. When it finally stopped with a liquid chime against the floor, the hum stopped also.
Kotia rubbed her forehead with both hands. Cashel waited till she’d lowered them and her eyes had cleared of the fatigue of the wizardry she’d completed.
“I’m glad to see you again, mistress,” he said. “Would you get me loose from how I’m held here? If you can, I mean.”
“What?” said Kotia, frowning. She looked at him closely, then gave a warm smile. “Yes, of course.”
She bent to raise the golden disk, then waved a dismissive hand at it. “Faugh, there’s no need,” she said. She touched the quarterstaff, apparently hanging in the air, with her index finger.
“Boea boa nerpha,” she said in a firm, quiet voice.
The staff dropped into Cashel’s waiting hand. His legs and lower body were free, and he felt like he’d just set down a heavy weight. It’d bothered him to be trapped that way; bothered him more than he’d realized till it was over.