by David Drake
Sharina felt a wash of dizziness as if her mind were a flag in the breeze. The things that’d just happened didn’t touch her—now. But they would. She’d done things before which came back to her in the third watch of the night, when dawn was a distant hope and past horrors ruled the darkness.
A slim, blond youth was dead and she’d killed him. She didn’t regret what she’d done, but she regretted very much what she’d had to do.
“Lady, may the soul of Tanus find peace in You,” she whispered. “And may the souls of those who kill in Your name find peace as well.”
“Mistress?” said Neal, his face contorted with pain as Franca bandaged his shallow wound. “Down there, the way the, this one—”
His boot spurned Tanus’ body; it was already rigid because of the way Beard had split the youth’s brain.
“—came at us. There’s more people.”
Sharina looked up. She squinted, but even so she couldn’t tell more than that there were figures. They didn’t seem far away, but the rippling azure light within the walls of this corridor distorted vision.
“All right,” Sharina said, slanting Beard’s helve over her shoulder for the time being. Her arms were tired, her soul was tired, but she knew the axe would be ready to strike no matter how she carried him. “We’ll deal with them next.”
Some of Beard’s personality was entering hers. For the present, that was desirable—and she no longer believed in a personal future.
Sharina started forward, resigned to death but unconcerned about it. She and her demon companion had more strokes to give the forces of Evil before that happened.
***
Roaring blue wizardlight left Ilna blind and deaf, but she could still feel. The winged men’s fingers were short but as strong as whalebone; they held her arms like crabs’ pincers, hard enough to cut the skin. Then the creatures released her and she fell.
She threw out her hands to catch herself, wondering as she did whether the Rua had dropped her into the pool of boiling sulfur or if there was a worse place than that. At this instant Ilna couldn’t imagine a more unpleasant death than the sulfur, but she’d seen enough of the world to know that it could always get worse.
The globe of blue light surrounding her sucked in and vanished. Her feet landed inches below, on bare rock at the edge of a dead volcano. The slope stretched down before her, its red-brown surface pitted and gullied by the rain. The shallow sea ran up on the shore and spewed foam. The water was the ultramarine hue of yarn dyed with eggplant peel.
Chalcus dropped beside her, his sword lifted and his left arm thrown back for balance. He crouched, sweeping his head right and left, taking in all his surroundings.
The Rua who’d dragged Ilna through the topaz lens hovered just beyond the rim of the cliff, their translucent vans bowed to catch the updraft. Chalcus thrust at the nearer of the pair; she canted her wings a trifle and ballooned up beyond reach of the curved sword.
“We are allies, Ilna os-Kenset!” cried her mate. His voice was squeaky and piercing, but perfectly understandable even over the moan of the wind.
Hundreds of the winged men soared and wheeled in the sky overhead, some of them so high that the wispy clouds blurred their shrunken outlines. Ilna looked behind her. The cone’s outer slope was a harsh cliff only spotted with vegetation, but grass and gnarled shrubs with gray leaves covered the far side of the crater’s sheltered interior.
“Take us back to where we belong, then!” Ilna said. She grimaced to hear the words, then quickly corrected herself with, “Take us back to where we were.”
She knew by now that she didn’t belong anywhere. This windswept cliff hadn’t much to recommend it, but considered by itself it was an improvement on Gaur’s stinking dungeon.
“We will return you to your world, sister,” said the female Rua, sliding sideways through the air so that she hung closer to Ilna but remained well beyond reach of Chalcus’ blade. “But first we must talk.”
“The only right you have to ask that is that we’re completely in your power, not so?” said Chalcus in a ringing voice.
He laughed and sheathed his sword in a curving gesture as graceful as a fish leaping, then went on, “Which is a right I’ve asserted too often myself to deny to another. If Mistress Ilna will bear with me, I’m interested to hear what you winged folk have to say.”
“All right,” said Ilna. “I don’t mind having the smell of Gaur’s den washed out of my nose. But we have business in the place we came from.”
She pointed to the ground beside her. “Come,” she said. “Land. You may be comfortable fluttering out there, but I’m not comfortable watching you. And besides, I want to get out of this wind!”
The noose that served Ilna also as a sash had burned in a pool of sulfur with Gaur. The updraft would lift her tunics completely over her head if she didn’t fight them down. In addition to distracting her, the loss of dignity made Ilna furious—the more so because she realized how absurd the concern was under the circumstances.
The Rua landed in perfect concert, the male on the other side of Chalcus and the female beside Ilna. With their wings folded to their sides they looked like walking skeletons, though they were nearly the height of the human pair.
“You brought us here to talk,” Ilna said, backing from the cliff edge and smoothing her tunics. Three steps toward the interior of the crater there was still wind, but it was no longer an uprushing torrent. “Talk then.”
She supposed she sounded curt and unfriendly, but she’d never been good at pretense. The Rua had brought her here for their own reasons. Those might be perfectly good reasons, but the fact didn’t require that Ilna pretend an affection for the winged men that she didn’t feel.
“You killed the wizard Gaur, mistress,” the female said. “He was your enemy and our enemy as well. Will you now kill Her? She is a greater enemy to your world and our world and all worlds of the cosmos!”
“Who do you mean by Her?” Ilna said. She was on edge both from fatigue and the emotions seething through her during the struggle with the wolfman. “If you can’t make sense, then send us back!”
She deliberately turned and walked toward the opposite slope to look into the crater. When she looked down at a slant the inner wall looked as green as a meadow, though Ilna knew that the vegetation was actually quite sparse. It grew only where dirt collected in pockets of the rock. There were beehive-shaped dwellings with windows of some translucent material in walls of shaped stone, but there were no fields or grazing animals. This would be good country for goats....
“She is a great wizard, mistress,” said the male Rua. “Her world is freezing because of the power She drains from it with her wizardry.”
“She is reaching into our world and yours, mistress,” said the female. “She will destroy both worlds and destroy all worlds, unless you stop Her.”
Ilna turned to them again, scowling in frustration. “But why are you telling me this?” she snapped. “You’re the wizards. I suppose we’ll help—I’ll help, that is—”
“We both will help as we can, indeed,” said Chalcus with a little bow to the female. The Rua were almost hairless; the female’s breasts were flat, distinguishable only because they softened the ridges of the flight muscles so prominent on the male. “But I think that Mistress Ilna will be far the greater help; and the pair of you think so as well.”
“We are wizards, yes,” the male chirped in perfectly formed syllables. “But we could not overcome Gaur. How could we hope to overcome Her?”
“She moved the shoals where the belemites grow from our world to yours, mistress,” continued the female, “to bring wealth to her disciple Gaur. Without the shell, the wings of our kits—”
Both Rua spread their wings. They unfolded like fans, narrow strips of skin as fine as sea foam alternating with struts of denser material that shimmered like nacre in the sunlight. Ilna remembered the belemites’ similar rainbow hues.
“—do not harden.”
�
��We could not wrest our shoals back from Her grip,” said the male. As he spoke, his struts clicked together in sequence, folding and stretching the skin between each pair. Ilna nodded in appreciation of the muscular control required to do that. “We could only open a gateway to your world so we could continue to hunt the shell our kits must have. And for our strength, even holding the gateway open was a struggle.”
“Dear heart...?” said Chalcus. Instead of pointing, he nodded outward. The Rua looked toward the sea also, turning their heads without moving their torsos. Ilna could understand the importance of so flexible a neck to a flying creature, but it was disconcerting to watch.
She sniffed in irritation at herself and let her eyes follow the line of Chalcus’ gaze to a monster undulating through the sea. Only the top of its great head showed above the surface, but because the pale water was so clear she could see the whole line of the creature’s snakelike body. It was as long as a warship. When it turned its flat head toward the land and opened its jaws, Ilna could see individual teeth.
“The thing that attacked Garric’s ship,” she said. “The whale.”
“She sent that creature’s mate to your world to aid minions of Hers,” the male Rua said.
“Not Gaur but others,” added the female. “Your enemies but not ours, save that all who serve Her are the enemies of all who do not.”
“It seems, dear heart,” said Chalcus with a lifted eyebrow, “that whoever She may be, She’s brought us into this fight.”
Ilna sniffed. “And you were going to walk away from it otherwise?” she said coldly.
“Aye, you have me there, my love,” Chalcus said, smiling in wicked merriment. “It’s not my habit to walk away from fights, that is so.”
“No,” said Ilna crisply. “Nor is it mine.”
She looked from one Rua to the other. “What needs to be done to...?”
She turned her palms up. “To overcome her, you say. To kill Her, I suppose.”
“We do not know,” said the male. “But we have watched you, mistress.”
“We could not overcome Gaur,” said the female, “but we saw you slay him.”
Ilna grimaced. “From what you say, Gaur’s mistress will be a worse knot to untangle,” she said. “And Gaur wasn’t an easy one.”
She shrugged. “Still, we said we’ll do what we can. How do we reach Her?”
“We will open a gateway for you, mistress,” said the Rua together. They turned and plunged off the cliff edge, rising on the updraft like dandelion seeds.
Ilna watched, frowning in puzzlement as the Rua spiraled to join their kin in the high skies. The air before her took on a faint opalescence in the same shape as the mirror of blue topaz in Gaur’s den.
“Ah!” she said. “Chalcus, the pattern of their flight—all of them together? Do you see what they’re weaving?”
“No, my heart,” the sailor said in a tone as silvery as the sring! of his sword against the scabbard as he drew it. “But I think shortly there may be use for the things I do understand.”
Chapter 22
The corridor ahead forked; for the seventh time, Garric thought, though he doubted he could recall the particular pattern of the branchings that’d get them out of this place by the portal they’d entered through. He supposed there was still a solid line of men behind him, marking the route better than the white pebbles of the folktale.
Carus grinned in his mind. Right, worrying about getting back could wait till they’d survived getting to where they were going.
Tenoctris’ trail of light bent to the right, down the branch whose walls glowed red like those of the corridor Garric was in at present. In the middle distance the sullen crimson became a dot of purple.
“Prester?” he said to the noncom on his right; he’d learned the men’s names as they marched together into frozen Hell. “How far do you guess we’ve come? It must be miles.”
“That’s Pont you want, your highness,” Prester said. He leaned forward and called to his partner on Garric’s left, “Pont! The Prince here wants t’ know how far we come.”
“Three thousan seven hunnert fiffee three,” Pont said. “Paces. Four, five....”
“Got it, Pont,” said Garric, breaking in on what was likely to be a very long sequence as Pont called out a number every time his right heel came down.
“Pont was in the engineering section back when he was a nugget,” Prester explained with a proprietorial nod. “His job was route measurer. The habit’s stuck with him all these years.”
A thousand double paces equaled a mile, so they’d come three and three-quarters miles. Garric had no way of guessing how much farther they had to go. Maybe he should’ve made commissary arrangements before he went charging through that hole in the world....
“Your highness, there’s something in the tunnel ahead of us!” called the Blood Eagle who’d taken charge of the front rank. He pointed his spear forward.
“Right,” said Garric, peering past the shields and helmets of the men ahead of him. He was taller than the pair directly in front, but they’d both slipped their horsehair crests into the slots on top of their helmets during the past half hour of uneventful march. Their care was commendable, but at the moment Garric wished he’d had a less-obstructed view. Not that what he saw was anything he looked forward to meeting.
There hadn’t been any fighting since they’d killed the giant scorpion. Garric hadn’t consciously expected that to be the last, but when he saw the creature ahead he realized that emotionally he’d hoped that everything would be peaceful. Now reality clattered toward him on more legs than he could count. He felt as though he’d been dropped into ice water.
“Your highness,” said Lord Escot, turning to look back at Garric past the cheek piece of his silvered helmet. Escot was commander of the second regiment to enter this ice world. He’d trotted up through the column to the front to take the place of Lord Mayne. “It’s time for you to retire.”
He was a landholder from Northern Ornifal, cut from the same cloth as Lord Waldron though thirty years younger. He wasn’t an officer Garric had ever warmed to; so far as he could recall, Escot had never said a word about anything but horses save in response to a direct question.
“Aye, lad,” agreed Carus in his mind. “He’s thick as two short planks. But he’s here where he belongs, and how smart do you have to be to stand in the front rank in a business like this?”
Point taken, agreed Garric. Aloud he said, “Carry on with your duties, milord. I will do the same—from here, where I can see what’s going on.”
“Oh, aye, lad,” said Carus with a savage grin. “And I suppose you’ll take off your sword now and give it to one of the fellows who’re fighting while we stand by and watch?”
I’ve too much of your blood for that, thought Garric as he grinned in response to his ancient ancestor. Escot took the expression as meant for him and blinked in surprise. “Of course, as you say, your highness,” he blurted and faced front again.
“Silly twit,” said Prester in an undertone.
“He’ll do to stop a spear, though,” replied Pont. Apparently counting paces was so ingrained that that it didn’t interfere with him carrying on a conversation—or fighting, for that matter. “Bloody officer.”
From the way the two noncoms talked, Garric decided they’d promoted him to line soldier... and that was a promotion, so far as Pont and Prester were concerned.
What had been a purple blur when Garric’s column entered this corridor became a circular volume beneath a dome whose surface was ribbed for strength. Eight corridors merged in it, including the one the troops were in.
The rotunda was about thirty double paces across, and as best as Garric could tell in a quick glance the room’s ceiling was the same height as the diameter. Threads of red and blue light twisted about one another at the core of the walls and of the piers framing the arched corridor mouths, turning the ice violet. The ice floor beneath must have been feet or even scores of feet thick, bu
t again Garric saw monsters twisting in the phosphorescent water.
The creature coming down the corridor directly across the rotunda was more like a centipede than anything else Garric had seen, and more like a nightmare than anything alive. It had side-hinged mandibles and a chitinous maw whose interior was a mass of jagged plates rotating against one another like millstones.
The thin azure guideline passed through the monster. The only way to where Garric needed to go was by the same route: through the monster.
“Double time!” he shouted. He and his troops might be able to block the centipede before it got to the rotunda where each of its pincer-tipped legs was a deadly weapon.
“Charge!” cried Lord Escot, slanting his sword forward and breaking into a run. As Carus said, Escot was bright enough for his present position.
The troops were happy to run also. The ranks spread to either side as the column entered the rotunda where there was room. The clear floor was so hard that hobnails skidded instead of digging in. It was much like running on stone, because the extreme cold also meant the footing was dry and not nearly as slippery as ice normally would be.
The blended wizardlight had an oppressive weight. The huge room seemed dimmer than the corridors feeding it, though that was an illusion: Garric could see the men around him more clearly than he had before.
He could also see deep into the ice walls. The vast pillars supporting the dome were hollow. Within them were plants whose roots grew through the ice floor in broad nets to reach the sea beneath. Their twisted stems and the leaves spreading against the inner walls of their enclosures struck Garric with a pathos that he couldn’t understand until he caught a glimpse of a flower that wasn’t hidden by the foliage. It was shaped like the red mouth of a woman screaming, and the petals moved as he looked at them.
The center of the rotunda allowed Garric to look down all eight corridors. He had his sword out, but as much as he wanted to kill something to wipe the image of the plants from his mind he knew he needed to act as commander rather than swordsman for the time being. His men depended on him, and so did the kingdom.