Servant of the Dragon

by David Drake

  The wizard herself rode in a litter; Cashel walked beside it, chatting with her and looking every inch of what he was: a countryman wandering in the big city. His quarterstaff was awkward on the cramped pavements, but nobody was going to complain to Cashel even if they happened to get bumped.

  Ilna was right behind her brother. She was close enough to join the conversation, but Garric hadn't noticed her do so.

  "I think we're nearby," Liane murmured to Garric. "Mistress Gudea didn't take us to see the altar on our history walks, because of the location."

  She giggled. "'Not a suitable venue for young ladies,' was how she put it, though I've seen--"

  Liane nodded demurely in the direction of the balconies on either side of a lane joining Straight Street. Bare-breasted women with cinnabar-accented eyes called laughingly to the soldiers who passed stone-faced.

  "--quite a number of young ladies since we've been in the district. We looked down from the Citadel, though, so I know we're close."

  "Here we are, sir," called Besimon, the commander of the guard detachment. A niche, half natural but improved by the hand of man, bit into the rocky bluff to the left. The first settlers of Valles had built their walled encampment on top of the steep hill for protection.

  The Citadel had remained the center of the city during the Flag Wars. After Ornifal was unified, wealth and government had abandoned the Citadel and the poorly-drained district at its foot for more comfortable climes. The Temple of the Lady of Valles still stood on the Citadel; and at the hill's base the first Duke of Ornifal had built the Altar of Harmony to symbolize the unity the island had achieved centuries before Lorcan of Haft became Lorcan, the King of the Isles.

  "It must have been lovely when it was whole," Garric said. He'd seen a lot of impressive monuments through Carus' eyes and no few on his own, in the Isles and on more distant worlds that he'd traversed while he struggled to halt Chaos; but the Altar of Harmony was unique and in some ways uniquely beautiful. "Even now...."

  The altar stood within a large, roofless enclosure entered by a ramp. The enclosure's marble walls were carved with vignettes of men and Gods within frames of acanthus vines. Age had blackened the stone except for streaks of bubbling white decay.

  The enclosure's west wall had collapsed in the distant past. A roof of rushes and a curtain wall of rubble on either end of the ornate altar had converted the remainding space into a dwelling of sorts. No, a tavern--

  "Clear this place," Besimon ordered curtly. "Mistress Tenoctris needs it empty for her work."

  The Blood Eagles were in half-armor--cuirasses and helmets--and carried their spears as well as a sword and dagger on each man's equipment belt. Six of them immediately thrust their spears butt-first into the curtain wall and levered it apart.

  "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" said the bouncer as he and four startled-looking patrons came running out into the open. He held a spiked club, but he dropped the weapon immediately when he saw the detachment of troops.

  The roof started to sag. The villainous-looking owner strode out brandishing a hook-bladed knife. He was missing three fingers from his left hand, and the way he combed his hair forward meant that he'd been branded T for Thief on the forehead. That last was a Blaise custom, Carus noted in the same detached fashion that the king judged where his first swordstroke would go if the business turned ugly.

  "Who're you to turn me out?" the owner snarled. He didn't drop the knife. A Blood Eagle gripped his arm and bent it back; bones would have broken shortly, but another soldier rapped the fellow's knuckles hard with a spearbutt, numbing the hand to release the weapon.

  "I'm a citizen," Garric said, surprised at how angry he felt at what he'd found here. "You've taken what should be an honor to the whole city, to the whole kingdom, and said it's yours because you've got a knife and a thug to enforce your claim!"

  A Blood Eagle judged his placement, then stamped his hobnailed heel on the knife. It broke at the crossguard against the cobblestones; the hilt spurted sideways, shedding its bone scales.

  Ten of the Blood Eagles were facing outward, but the gathering crowd cheered ironically at the entertainment. The taverner didn't seem popular.

  "Poor people are no more likely to want criminals for neighbors than anybody else is," Liane said from Garric's side. She counted two silver coins from her purse into her palm, then with a judicious frown added one of the double-weight bronze coins called a Crowned Sheaf for the design on the obverse. "Judging from the clientele, this was the worst sort of dive."

  "What?" said the taverner. He sounded genuinely amazed. "Hey, I paid good bronze to One-Eyed Tahsin when I took over this stand!"

  The guard released him, though Garric knew it wouldn't take much for the taverner to meet another spearbutt, this time in the pit of the stomach. That wasn't called for, but part of Garric wouldn't have minded seeing it happen.

  At Besimon's command, four of the soldiers used their spears as levers to lift the roof and throw it off the back of the enclosure. Inside was a wooden bar and two jugs of wine. Those went over the back wall with as little ceremony as the roof had.

  A soldier braced himself to lift one of the carved stone blocks being used as stools. "Leave them," Tenoctris ordered. "They were part of the enclosure wall."

  On one stone, a priest led a garlanded bullock with knob-tipped horns. It was probably part of the sacrificial procession at the time the altar was dedicated.

  "The Altar of Harmony will shortly be rebuilt into the monument it was meant to be," Garric said. "It's not yours to appropriate, nor mine either. It belongs to all the people of Ornifal. And there's never been a time in the past thousand years that people needed harmony more than we do now!"

  He stepped forward so that it didn't look as though he were hiding behind a rank of black-armored guards. Though he faced the taverner, he pitched his voice so that he could be heard throughout what was by now a considerable crowd.

  "Hey!" cried someone in delight. "That's Prince Garric! The prince is here!"

  "Prince Garric?" repeated the taverner. "What're they talking about?" He mumbled the question to the soldier who'd disarmed him. The locals--his bouncer among them--had backed well away as though from fear of contagion.

  How am I ever going to pay for rebuilding this? Garric thought despairingly. He didn't know why he'd spoken, though now that he'd said the words they would stand. Pterlion bor-Pallial, the new treasurer, would scream. There's so many better places to spend what little money the kingdom has!

  "And again, lad," King Carus whispered through the ages, "sometimes the symbol is the thing. There's worse uses for money than convincing the people in tenements that they're part of the kingdom and that the king cares about them."

  "But it's just old stones," the taverner said, protesting more at the idea than for his loss. "I keep an honest house--"

  Ilna sniffed. The taverner looked at her. He wouldn't be likely to understand the net of cords in her hand, ready to be drawn tight before him, but the sneering disbelief of her expression was as obvious as the cobblestones.

  "Well, anyway," the man muttered, "I paid--"

  "And I'm going to pay you for your loss," Garric said sharply. "But the payment comes with a warning: don't be here when the workmen arrive in the next day or two."

  Could he get the job under way that quickly? Probably. The odd thing about being king was that while for the most part Garric didn't seem to be able to do anything, the specific things that he could do happened almost before he finished thinking about them. If only harmonizing Ornifal's regional tax structures were as easy as getting an ancient building renovated!

  Liane stepped forward holding the three coins, the Double Sheaf and the two Ladies, fanned between her left thumb and forefinger. The taverner gaped to see the wink of silver. He would have snatched the money, but he noticed the way a soldier shifted to butt-stroke him into a state of greater respect.

  The taverner bowed and held his cupped hands out before him with
his face lowered. Liane dropped the coins into them and stepped back, dusting her palms together unconsciously. The taverner really was a disgusting brute, and even the almost-contact of paying him was unpleasant.

  "If you are here when the workmen arrive, still misappropriating public lands," Garric continued in a pleasant voice, "then you'll join the chain gang repairing the city wall. For the rest of your life."

  He flicked his fingers. The former taverner popped the coins in his mouth and scampered off. Scampered into the crowd, at least; there seemed to be a number of voices claiming he owed them debts. The fellow made it into an alley but not, from the sound of it, very much farther.

  Captain Besimon grinned faintly. He felt no more inclination than Garric did to interfere with the local administration of justice. Not in this case.

  The soldiers had cleared the enclosure with a brisk thoroughness that impressed Garric. Under Attaper if not before, the Blood Eagles had been more than a ceremonial force--and more even than a true bodyguard, capable of preserving the king's life on the field at the cost of their own. They were trained in all the construction and engineering duties that an army in the field required. This business, emptying a small building of the debris that choked it, was nothing to them.

  "Troops who can't fortify their camp before they go to sleep after a march," King Carus noted approvingly, "are going to wake up before dawn one day with the enemy in bed with them."

  Besimon looked at Garric for orders. Garric raised a hand to show he was aware of the situation and said, "Tenoctris? What would you like us to do next?"

  The old woman had bent to examine the remains of the central altar. Cashel stood beside her, quietly solid with his staff and a wallet on a heavy shoulder strap. Cashel didn't have the cow horn with a wooden mouthpiece that he carried to give the alarm when he watched the sheep of the borough; otherwise he looked exactly as he would have any morning back home.

  He was that same person, Garric realized; it was just that there had been more to Cashel than anybody in Barca's Hamlet had seen. He guessed he was the same Garric or-Reise as well. It was hard to remember that sometimes, when everything around him was so different.

  Liane smiled at him. Well, 'different' didn't always mean 'bad'.

  "I think if the men will keep the crowd at a distance...," Tenoctris said as Liane helped her rise. "There's nothing for anyone to do except for me. And Cashel, of course."

  "Besimon," Garric said, nodding, "Mistress Tenoctris will be working where the altar was. Please have your men cordon the open side of the enclosure to give her room."

  Besimon gave Garric a bleak grin. "That shouldn't be hard," he said. "Not when people--"

  He lifted his chin toward the spectators. Hawkers carrying doughnuts on short sticks, baskets of fruit, and a tray of amulets of the Lady and the Shepherd--"Genuine silver, or the Sister drag my soul to Hell!"--were working the spectators. The event was quickly turning into a street fair.

  "--figure out that it's wizardry going on here."

  The Blood Eagles fell in across the west and northern arc of the enclosure. Their faces were toward the crowd and they held their spears crosswise at waist height to form a continuous bar. There wasn't any serious jostling. Garric was pleased to note that the troops were doing their job in a good-humored fashion.

  He joined Tenoctris and the others in the center of the enclosure. The altar top and the four slabs of its sides had collapsed over the years. The taverner or some similar entrepreneur of time past had stacked the marble on the altar pedestal to form a support pillar.

  Across the uppermost slab walked men, women and children, wearing peaked hats and chained together with garlands of roses. Some played slender horns with out-turned bells, others shook tambourines. The children's mouths were open in song.

  Someday we'll have harmony again, Garric thought. The king in his mind grinned wryly; Garric grinned in response. Well, we'll have as much harmony as they really had when they were building the altar.

  Tenoctris took a bamboo sliver from the packet Cashel handed her. He always carried the wizard's paraphernalia when they were together. Garric noticed when Cashel opened the flap of his wallet that there was nothing else inside but a round of hard bread and a wedge of cheese wrapped in a dock leaf.

  Somebody else setting out as Cashel was doing might try to figure all the dangers he'd face and prepare against them. Cashel wasn't reckless; anybody who'd seen him with sheep remarked on the way he guessed any fool thing the beasts might do, because he'd seen them do it before.

  But there was a lot of life you couldn't plan for, you just had to deal with it as it came up. Cashel had a slow grin, a quarterstaff, and strength that nobody else in the borough could match. Cashel was very good at dealing with the unexpected.

  "This place is a focus of power," Tenoctris explained. "That makes it easier for me to send Cashel to where I hope he'll find more accomplished help. This place--"

  She glanced at the blackened marble walls, then up the bluff to the ancient Citadel. Grasses and vines swathed the coarse limestone; here and there the roots of a gnarled tree had found lodging.

  Apologetically Tenoctris returned her attention to her friends. "I was daydreaming," she said. "About the past, about the future. I suppose I'm trying to delay executing the spell. Difficult jobs don't get easier for being put off, as you all have taught me."

  She patted Cashel's arm. He smiled, but his eyes were focused on the horizon and the immediate future.

  "I was going to say," Tenoctris resumed, "that this place has a connection to Landure. That's why we're here."

  Tenoctris looked judiciously at the wand she held. "Cashel," she said, "would you cut me a fresh twig instead? Something you've made yourself will make my task easier."

  She gave her quick grin. "And I need all the help I can get."

  Cashel snipped off a sprig of lamb's tongue growing at the corner of the wall and trimmed it with the simple iron knife he wore through his sash. It was the all-purpose tool of every peasant, used to cut his bread, clear grass from a clogged plow coulter, or trim leather for a harness strap.

  He handed the wand to Tenoctris. The woody stem was thin but stiff enough for her purposes. She knelt again to scribe a circle and words in the Old Script in the hollow of the altar. The supple withy didn't leave marks on the stone that Garric could see, but they were presumably enough for Tenoctris herself. Sometimes the symbol is the thing....

  Garric stepped over to Cashel and hugged him. "I wish I was going with you," Garric said as they separated. The huskiness in his voice surprised him.

  Cashel smiled. "Well, I'd like the company, but you've got things to do here," he said. He didn't sound worried, but then he never did.

  If you didn't know Cashel well you could believe he wasn't aware of danger. Garric knew better than that. Cashel understood exactly what he was letting himself into; he just didn't let it affect what he was doing.

  Ilna murmured goodbyes to her brother. She stood as stiffly upright as Cashel's staff and looked as hard. Which she was, of course. Quite a woman, Ilna.

  Garric looked at Cashel and thought of the number of times he'd sent other people into danger. The king in his mind stirred, reminding Garric of how often King Carus had done the same in his longer life. It was so much easier to go yourself than to send a friend. And it was so much easier to be a peasant than it was to be a king.

  Though... a peasant makes life and death decisions also. In a prosperous community, which Barca's Hamlet was by its own lights, folks would help a neighbor who suffered a disaster; but there were limits. Even in Barca's Hamlet there were stories about the way babies born during an especially hard winter sometimes disappeared.

  "There," Tenoctris said as she straightened. "Cashel, if you'll stand in the center of the circle--" The words of power were barely a shadow on the stone, but the altar itself framed the spot accurately. "--when you're ready, I'll begin."

  "I'm ready," Cashel said without emphasis.
Liane hugged him in turn. She backed away and the tension went out of his expression. He stepped carefully over the markings and stood with his staff close to his body that it didn't reach over the scribed boundary.

  "Cashel, one final warning," Tenoctris said. "Landure is a powerful wizard, but by reputation he's also a very hard, haughty man. He may refuse to help you."

  Cashel shrugged. "If Master Landure doesn't want to help, then there'll be someone else who does," he said. "Or I'll find my own way to Sharina. But I will find her."

  The wizard gave a quick, birdlike nod. "Garric," she said, "I'll have to speak this spell myself. But if you could kneel with me and hold my arm so that I don't fall over, it might be a help. Perhaps I'm being unduly pessimistic."

  She smiled. Garric understood the attempt to treat the matter lightly, but it wasn't very successful. He put his big hand on Tenoctris' shoulder, noticing as he always did when he touched her that the wizard had no more meat on her bones than a quail does.

  Tenoctris seated herself crosslegged. She closed her eyes briefly to recruit her strength, then bobbed the wand in time with the syllables as she said, "Chai aphono apaphono...."

  There was a murmur through the crowd as they understood what was going on. Garric's back was to the spectators, but he'd seen the way wizardry made ordinary people draw away. Sane people didn't like wizardry. There were infinite mistakes for a wizard to make, and any one of them could cost the lives or souls of those nearby.

  "Echaipen panaitos epaipen...," Tenoctris said, her voice as measured as drips from a water clock. A faint blue haze spread about Cashel's stolid figure.

  "Semon seknet thallassosemon...," Tenoctris said. Liane was at Garric's other side, standing with her fingertips on the point of his shoulder. The touch strengthened him the way touching the stirrup leather makes it possible for a footsoldier to run alongside a cavalryman.