The Warslayer

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "As soon as it is light. Belegir has given me the authority to call the people together and tell them all that you have done for us, and what we must now do for ourselves. I will send others here to take my place, and in a few hands of days, when Mage Belegir is able to travel . . ."

  He stopped.

  "You braided up my hair, didn't you?" Glory said, getting to her feet again. So he was leaving. No reason for him to stay, was there?

  Ivradan nodded.

  There was another silence.

  "Thanks for taking such good care of Gordon, hey? He looks good as new."

  "I knew that was what you would want, Slayer."

  Silence.

  "I reckon you'd better shake a leg then. You've got a long ride ahead of you. Maybe— Well, have a good ride, then."

  Ivradan turned and left. Glory watched until he was out of sight, then waited until she was sure he was out of earshot. Then she kicked out viciously at the nearest bench with the side of her foot.

  Hot needles of protest raced up her leg into her back. The bench teetered and fell over with a loud and solid thud. Glory limped over to the one next to it and sat down on it, and stayed there until she was entirely sure Ivradan had ridden away from the Oracle.

  * * *

  The day after Ivradan left, Belegir was allowed to walk as far as the door of the cavern—Tavara and Cambros on either side—and Glory got her left hand rebandaged so that the fingers showed. That day's big adventure was moving the Allimir ponies down the hill to the old stables that once served the Oracle—visitors to the Oracle had always come on foot, so Belegir told Glory, but the Oracle's servants had kept some animals for their own use. Since neither of the invalids was any use in this undertaking, they were left to their own devices while the others were absent.

  "You miss Ivradan," Belegir said.

  "Doesn't matter," Glory answered shortly. Was it that obvious, or was Belegir just going all wizardly on her? "Every hero has to have a sidekick, and all. But I guess I'm out of the heroing business."

  Belegir regarded her shrewdly. Though he still slept a great deal, and tired easily, the bruises were fading quickly and he was well on the mend. A new set of pink robes, a tube of Max Factor, and he'd be back in the Mage business. "Yet it seems to me that you have some unfinished business that disturbs you."

  Glory sighed, shaking her head. "Yeah, well, you remember that night at the wellspring when you dreamed I was going to make a dog's breakfast of this whole business? I dreamed something, too."

  As best she could remember it after so long, she told Belegir about what she had dreamed: about the Dreamer of Worlds, who was somehow responsible for Glory's presence here in the Land of Erchanen. The more she told him, the more she remembered, but it still didn't really make a lot of sense to her. It all seemed a little too much like bad television.

  ". . . and she said I was being tested, but she didn't say what the test was, or how I'd know if I'd passed—just that if I didn't pass, everybody back where I come from would be toast, and that if I did pass, they'd all be admitted into the Universal Dream and have magic and wizards and unicorns up the wazoo—only that didn't sound so good either. And I don't even know if it was a real dream, Bel—maybe this Oracle-stuff only works for the Allimir, not for people like me."

  Belegir considered the matter with careful deliberation, frowning as he thought.

  "Yet you are here, and have held Cinnas' sword in your hands, and unmade the Warmother, so I think we must believe that Erchane smiles upon your people as well as upon my own. Still, this sending you speak of contains much to puzzle me. It is true that Erchane wears many names among her peoples, but never is she needlessly cruel. And never in all the ancient texts that I have studied have I seen any mention of such a being and such a test as you name—yet if such a test were true and real, the Allimir must have faced it and passed it in the long-ago, for all of Erchane's gifts are ours to wield. I cannot help you, Slayer, but there is yet one who may. Erchane herself, if She so wills, do you but seek Her counsel."

  And look how well that turned out the last time, Glory thought sourly.

  "Whether you would accept Erchane's counsel in that matter is your own decision, yet there is one more matter upon which you would do well to consult Erchane—and soon," Belegir said, breaking into her thoughts.

  Glory looked up at him guiltily, hoping her opinion of the uselessness of Erchane's Oracle wasn't as obvious as she was afraid it was.

  "Will you go home—back to your own people? Or will you remain here—with us?" Belegir said gently.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, there was no way around that one. Glory wanted to go home, she told herself—of course she wanted to go home; who wouldn't want to go home?—and that meant going off to see the Oracle again.

  She put it off as long as she could.

  Three more days. Her shoulder had been unbraced, and she had Tavara's permission to exercise it gently. She was down to a light bandage on her left hand and an only slightly heavier bandage on her right, she could wiggle all her fingers, and had even gone back to doing parts of her morning warm-up routine. She'd nagged Cambros about the importance of watching for smoke to give them warning of the mercenaries' possible approach, especially with the horses stabled so far away (though she had to admit that the cavern did smell better now) and had taken to going to the cave-mouth several times a day to look herself, but she'd seen nothing.

  Maybe they'd all killed each other. Maybe they'd all marched up to the top of Grey Arlinn and jumped off. Maybe they were all still getting drunk. But wherever they were, they hadn't come this way.

  She wondered where Ivradan was, and what he was doing.

  Tavara was the one who had mended Gordon, and she'd also resewed a couple of the acolyte's shifts so that Glory would have something to change into besides her jeans. Glory'd managed something close to an actual bath, and washed her hair, but aside from her jeans and T-shirt, everything else she'd brought to the land of Erchanen was gone: it had been with the horses when the Warmother had magicked them off the mountaintop, and hadn't survived the trip. So—no makeup, no mirror, and no aspirin. She wasn't sure which—if any—she missed.

  She was standing in the cave-mouth, watching the afternoon—more for something to do than because she believed, by now, that any trouble would come—when she saw a bright flash of red among the trees. At first she thought it was a bird, but when she saw it over and over again, coming closer, she realized it was one of the spellbirds that Helevrin had loosed the first day she'd come here. It flashed by her, arrowing into the cave.

  Glory ran after it, arriving panting and out of breath to find Belegir consulting with Tavara. The little healer had grown quite proprietary toward her charge just in the time Glory had been here. She wondered if Mages married—or whatever Allimir did to produce little Allimir. They were going to have to do something to fill up all those deserted cities.

  "You got a bird," Glory said, when she could speak.

  "Mage Helevrin sent word," Tavara said importantly. "She will come with a party to the Oracle tomorrow—for counsel. Just like— Just like Before!"

  Belegir looked past Tavara's shoulder at Glory, regarding her with as much sternness as his round pink face was capable of. They both knew that she'd put off what she needed to do for long enough. There was no more time.

  * * *

  After dinner, Glory trudged up the steps to the temple, lantern in one hand, Gordon in the other. She carried the lantern carefully, because it was already lit. She was going alone, and she wouldn't have Belegir to light it for her once she got to the Wellspring.

  But this time she was damned if she was sleeping on bare rock, and too bad if it took away from the purity of the whole experience. She wheeled one of the lustral carts out of its chamber, hooked the lantern on the side and propped Gordon jauntily up among the red velvet ropes, then went back to the sleeping alcoves beside the Presence Chamber and grabbed a mattress and several blankets a
nd loaded them on the cart. The cart wheeled easily down the hallway to the Oracle—it was designed to, after all.

  She felt a twinge of unease as she neared the armory, but the door was shut tight, just as she'd left it the last time. She thought about opening it to see if she could get her own sword back, and decided against it. If she got it back, something'd probably show up that she had to use it on, and she'd rather stick with her perfect record of victories. War, someone had once said, was hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. Well, she'd had enough terror. She was ready for several hundred hours of boredom.

  She turned away from the armory and faced the Oracle

  I don't want to go in there again, she thought, looking at the barred door. What if it shuts and won't let me out?

  Then Belegir will come looking for you, she told herself pragmatically. Belegir knew she was down here. Cambros and Tavara knew she'd come down here to do some sort of mysterious hero thing. And even if something weird and peculiar happened to all three of them, Helevrin was coming tomorrow with a whole gaggle of people who'd need water fetched from here, and she'd get the door open. There was no possible way for Glory to be trapped here.

  But her reluctance to go inside was strong.

  God's teeth, gel, y'wanna live forever? Ross always used to ask her that—at least the last part—as if the obvious answer should be "no." And when the stakes were high enough, when people were counting on her, that was the answer, the right answer, the answer she gave.

  But somehow, right here, that didn't seem to be the answer she felt like giving.

  Growling under her breath, Glory strode over, jerked the bar out of its brackets, and swung the door open. It swept back fluidly, offering no resistance at all, and banged against the wall, the sharp reverberation of its impact against the stone making Glory jump nervously.

  A regular bundle of maiden twitches, that's our Glor.

  She wheeled the cart up against the door, hoping she could trick herself into believing she was going to leave it there all night to brace the door open, knowing deep down inside that she wouldn't. Sighing at her own perversity, she unhooked the lantern and went inside to place it into its niche. It was the one Belegir had used: slide the outer sleeve up, and everything was dark. Leave it down, and you saw the flame. She thought she might leave it down. The Oracle wouldn't mind her having a night-light, would it?

  She was pleased to feel only the very faintest twinges of foreboding as she dragged the mattress down off the cart and laid it beside the Wellspring, making a second trip to arrange the blankets on her bed. It would be too short for her, but for one night, it wouldn't matter if her legs hung off the end. At least she'd had a proper dinner before she'd come, this time. Dinners and breakfasts, baths and clean clothes—she was turning into a regular hobbit.

  And here was her hole in the ground.

  At last, reluctantly, she realized she couldn't stall any longer. She pushed the cart back from the door, climbed the steps for the last time and leaned out to pull the door shut.

  It was dark. Every time, the quality of the darkness took her completely by surprise.

  She fought down the moment of automatic panic, and, just as it had done before, it subsided, leaving behind the sense of peace and comfort. Nothing bad could happen to her here in the dark. This place was her friend. She was in the presence of Erchane the Mother—who, like all good mothers, let her children go free to make their own mistakes, no matter how disastrous those mistakes might be.

  "Pity you couldn't've dropped a word in Cinnas' ear though, hey?" Glory said aloud. "How could he have done something like that to his own kid?"

  But she thought of what she'd seen in Charane's great hall, the blood and the slaughter, and thought of seeing things like that every day, of horrors taking place everywhere in all the world you knew, to the people you knew, and thought that Cinnas had probably gotten, well . . . lost. The way Dylan had lost himself at the end.

  That doesn't excuse it! she told herself angrily. But maybe it explained it, just a little.

  And maybe, if the Allimir knew the whole story about Cinnas, and how his plan to save them had come out in the end, maybe they wouldn't make that same mistake again.

  Always assuming they get the chance.

  Not my department.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the light from the one small candle now, and she found the cup in its niche on the wall. She took it down carefully and squatted beside the spring to dip it beneath the surface, remembering just too late that her hands were still bandaged.

  "Oh, well," Glory said with cheerful resignation. A little wet wouldn't hurt them. Might even help.

  She held the cup underwater until the cold made her hands ache, then brought it up again full to the brim, holding it carefully so as not to spill any. Still crouched there, she chugged it down in one go, then got up to put the cup back in its place.

  As she turned, her foot slipped.

  Off-balance, Glory took a step backward, and fell into the spring.

  She plunged straight down, deep beneath the surface, the water filling her nose and mouth, choking her. The water was icily, numbingly cold, and she could feel herself sinking. Desperately, she struggled to keep from inhaling. Her lungs burned with the need for air, but there was nothing to breathe here—only water, freezing and lightless.

  The spring seemed to have no bottom. Her eyes were open, but there was nothing to see—she was blind in the darkness, and as she flailed, she could not feel the sides of the spring. All sense of up and down had deserted her; the cold and the blackness was as disorienting as a blow, and she was no longer sure which way she was oriented. Her lungs burned for air, and her vision was fogged with false stars. In the room above, she could almost step across the spring, but down here, not matter how desperately she struggled, she could not reach the sides, as if the small opening above were only the entry to some vast and stygian underground lake . . . or worse.

  Don't panic! she told herself. Just relax. You'll float up. But would she? Or was the Oracle spring more like an underground river than a well? Was she being swept along beneath the rock even now, carried away from the only air-hole for miles, to suffocate and die in the dark? Belegir wouldn't even grieve for her—when she didn't return in the morning he'd think she'd been magicked back home—

  And Ivradan—

  No!

  That thought was too much to bear. She could feel her mind going fuzzy around the edges as she greyed out, and clasped one hand over her nose and mouth to keep herself from breathing in water for as long as she could. Kicking upward furiously—please, let it be up—she reached out with her other hand. If she could even touch rock above her head, she could pull herself back to the opening of the Wellspring and get back to the cave. . . .

  At last, when will alone kept her hand clamped over her nose and mouth, she felt her questing hand break the surface of the water, felt it slap down on the edge of the spring in the free air, felt hard stone beneath her palm. Frantically, she thrust her way to the surface and hung halfway over the edge, gagging and sputtering, sucking in air in deep furious gulps between wracking coughs. Her nose ran, and she coughed hard enough and long enough so that most of the water she'd drunk—and her dinner with it—came up to decorate the rock. Glory felt a small vindictive surge of triumph.

  "Oh, no, you don't, you old besom. You aren't getting rid of me that easily," Glory gasped at last, her voice hoarse with misuse.

  Thoroughly cold and wet—and entirely out of temper with the Oracle—she dragged herself out of the spring again and sat weakly beside it for several minutes, panting hard. She struggled out of her foul wet T-shirt and jeans—losing her bandages entirely in the process—and towelled herself dry with one of the blankets.

  What a mess.

  She supposed she couldn't just leave the place looking—and smelling—like that. Using her T-shirt as a mop, she swabbed the stone clean, and then gave her shirt a thorough washing in the spring. The Ora
cle deserved it, after what she'd put Glory through, and the water should be clean again for drinking by the time Helevrin's lot came tomorrow. When she was done, she wrung out the T-shirt and her jeans as best she could, knowing they'd still be damp in the morning despite her best efforts, and spread them flat on the rock at the far side of the cave.

  Just to remind me of why—and how much—I hate magic. Now where's that damned cup?

  For a moment or two she thought she might have dropped it into the spring—and wouldn't that have made a pretty tale to explain in the morning?—but she finally found it. It had rolled over against the wall of the round chamber. She picked it up and put it back in its place, then picked up the lantern.

  Oh, I'll sleep like a baby after this. No worries.

  She brought the lantern back over to her sleeping pallet, warily avoiding the puddles on the floor, and set it down at the head of the bed. Her heart was still hammering with the narrowness of her escape when she sat down on the mattress to blot her braid dry with the damp blanket she'd used for a towel. If she'd hit her head going in— If that had been the entrance to an underground river after all—

  But you didn't, and it wasn't, and you're here.

  Finally her hair was as dry as it was going to get unless she unbraided it and combed it out with the comb she hadn't thought to bring. Reluctantly—alert for any further tricks on the Wellspring's part—Glory lay down and cocooned herself in blankets, tucking Gordon tightly under her arm and staring up at the candle's flame. She'd never felt less like sleeping in her life.

  It was an accident, she told herself. Sure it was. Course it was. That's just a big puddle of water, that. So maybe it's deeper than it looks—and wider underneath than on the top. That doesn't mean somebody pushed you in. You just scared yourself green, is all.

  After a while she sighed, giving up, and reached out to slide the sleeve up on the lantern, plunging the small chamber into darkness. Might as well take the whole E-Ticket ride while I'm here.

  * * *