by David Drake
"Hey, you guys got no business here," the speaker said, coming a step farther into the alley. Two friends had joined him. The fellow didn't sound angry--or drunk, which was much the same thing. He was simply a busybody.
"Go!" Sharina muttered, gesturing Dalar to the opening. The wall above was holding together for the time being, but she wouldn't bet it would stay that way forever.
Dalar slid through the rectangular hole, leading with his clawed feet. "Hey, what's he doing?" whined one of the strangers.
"See here, my man," Sharina said, trying to sound as snooty as she could in a foreign dialect, while squatting in the filth of an alley. "You go check with the building's owner and he'll tell you that he's hired us to do this. And he'll probably put a flea in your ear for nosing into his affairs!"
She took off the belt with wallet and sheath. The rig was under her cape, so even though she'd slung it over her shoulder she had to unclasp the buckle first. It was carved from the dense bone of a sea mammal.
"I don't believe a word you say!" the first man said. He glanced back at his companions before he decided what to do next.
Sharina drew the Pewle knife, then slung the wallet and harness through the opening. "By the Lady!" a man cried. All three of them backed hastily, stumbling on one another's feet. "Hey, what is this?"
Sharina thrust her feet through the opening, then pushed herself backward with her left hand. The knife wobbled, not a threat unless one of the men decided he ought to stop her. They'd run back to the street, though, shouting for help.
Rain dampened Sharina's feet. She tensed her belly muscles against the lip of the wall and dropped to the ground no more than a foot beneath her. "Oh!" she gasped, glad of Dalar's hand bracing her.
They stood in the ruins of a city. It was early afternoon. The warm drizzle must have been falling all day, because puddles filled every hollow and indentation.
Dalar handed Sharina her belt. She sheathed the knife and took stock of herself. She'd scratched her thighs--nothing serious--and hiked her tunic up to her navel. Her cape had caught on something as she went over the edge. The wing of the cloisonne butterfly pin had bitten at her throat, but when she rubbed herself she found the skin hadn't been broken.
"I see what you meant about coming from far away," Dalar said. He clucked with laughter. "Is it possible, do you think, that you could go to Rokonar?"
Sharina noticed that as the bird spoke, his short fingers manipulated the chained weights in his right palm. He surveyed the landscape in quick jerks of his head.
"I don't think so," she said. She fitted the belt again over the snakeskin sash, concentrating on the task so that she didn't have to look at Dalar. Not that she'd have been able to read pain in the bird's expression. "I go where the person I serve sends me. All I know is that I'll continue to move until I'm where he wants me to be."
She met Dalar's eyes. He nodded; she didn't know whether that was a gesture of his own race or something he'd learned to do in human society. "A warrior of the Rokonar doesn't question where his lord takes him," he said. "It was a matter of personal curiosity that might better have remained unspoken."
Sharina took her first real look at the landscape. Behind her was a wall, limestone except for the granite slab she and Dalar had removed in Valhocca. The hard stone was noticeably worn, and half had split off on a ragged diagonal.
"I saw you crawling over it," Dalar said, nodding to the slab. "Your feet appeared, then the rest of you. Out of the air."
The granite was on top of the remaining portion of the wall, but the building of which it had been part must have been enormous before it collapsed. Probably a temple; at any rate, the stone drums of fallen pillars line what should be the front of the structure.
Dalar waited silently. He occasionally spun a weight between two fingers on an inch of chain, perhaps implying that he'd like his mistress to direct him. Sharina would like somebody to direct her, too.
"I have no idea where we are," she said. "Or where we should go next. The Dragon--the person who, whom I serve--appears as you saw."
She smiled. "Well, you saw me," she corrected. "I had no warning the first times he came to me with directions, and I doubt it'll be different in the future."
The ruins could have been of Valhocca, but the destruction was so complete that it could have been any city in the Isles--centuries after a cataclysm. "The legend of my time," Sharina said evenly, "was that a wizard destroyed Valhocca and cursed it so that it was never rebuilt. That was in the mythical past of my age, however. No one could really have known."
Dalar clucked. "Indeed, you're from very far away, mistress," he said.
His downy feathers slicked as the rain wet them; the warrior looked like a larger version of a chicken that Sharina had scalded and plucked for dinner. To keep from giggling--and because they had to do something--Sharina said, "Let's see if we can find some cover. And do you suppose there's anything to eat in this forest?"
It was past berry season and Sharina didn't see any nut trees on a quick survey of their surrounding. The vegetation was mostly broad-leafed and succulent, quite different from the woods she'd been chased through on her way to meet the Dragon.
Something hooted raucously from the forest south of them. Sharina couldn't guess how far away it might be. She started to say, "Probably a bird," but she closed her mouth again without speaking.
That would have sounded like she was hoping away danger. She simply didn't know what had been calling. And while anything could have made the sound, it hadn't really sounded like a bird.
She grinned at Dalar and drew the Pewle knife. "We'll go this way," she said, nodding northward along the line of a boulevard separating rows of ruins.
"It might be edible," the bird said. His head flicked in tiny movements as quick and uncertain as light wobbling from faceted glass.
"So might we," Sharina said.
They started off, moving parallel on either side of the street's centerline. The trees were just as large here as elsewhere in the ruins--many were too thick for Sharina and Dalar to have spanned if they linked arms--but the footing was easier than if they'd had to clamber over piles of rubble which once had been buildings.
The drizzle made it harder to concentrate on anything that was more than arm's length ahead. Sharina repeatedly reminded herself that she had to be aware of her wider surroundings, but she kept finding her eyes focused on the ground just ahead of her feet.
She giggled. The bird glanced at her and said, "Mistress?"
"It isn't fair we have to be uncomfortable and in danger both," Sharina said.
"I've been contemplating a severe complaint to the Gods about just that situation," Dalar agreed with a straight face. "All that's holding me back is deciding precisely which God is primarily responsible for the conditions. My race has ten thousand separate deities, you see, so it's difficult to correctly apportion blame."
Sharina giggled again. Not that the bird had much option about the straight face, since instead of mobile lips he had a beak as rigid as cow horn. It pleased Sharina to see that her companion not only had a sense of humor, it was a sense of humor that agreed with her own.
They heard the call again and both paused. "It sounded farther away than before," Sharina said. She spoke instead of swallowing her words because this time she could make a truthful statement instead of expressing a frightened wish.
"Yes," said Dalar, "and well to our right. Whatever it is."
A ghoul with yellow tusks and skin the color of lichened rock stepped out of the ruined building beside Sharina. It walked on two legs like a human, but it was eight feet tall despite its slumped carriage. Its broad hips were cocked back to balance the weight of its canted forequarters.
Sharina shifted slightly, settling both feet for a good grip on the soil. Dalar stepped around her right side so that they were both facing the creature.
The ghoul lifted its head and hooted to its fellows who'd been calling in the distance. Close up the sound was
deafening, like a bull roaring through a crude iron trumpet.
The ghoul's arms were long enough to touch the ground, but at present it held a headless rabbit in one clawed hand and picked bits of flesh from the teeth with the other. Six teats flapped against the creature's belly; it was a female.
The ghoul grinned and dropped the remains of the rabbit. Sharina raised the Pewle knife, gripping the hilt with both hands. Her only chance was to chop into the creature's rush with all her strength. Running would be useless.
She heard a whistling sound from the side, but she didn't dare take her eyes off the ghoul. If her timing was perfect, they might surv--
The ghoul leaped. The mushy choonk of impact sounded like an axe hitting a melon.
The creature's hairless skull twisted sideways and deformed. One of Dalar's bronze weights froze momentarily in the misty air, having transferred all the momentum of its spin to the misshapen head.
Dalar snatched the weight back into his palm and set the other one spinning on six feet of chain. After two quick twists of the bird's wrist, the bronze was a shimmer in the air rather than a discrete object. He tilted the weapon slightly so that it was safely above Sharina's head on that side of its circuit.
The ghoul hit the ground at Sharina's side, hopped backwards with its arms flailing--she jumped away but wasn't quick enough to avoid a claw-slash on her left calf--and finally flopped on its back and continued to thrash. Each of its four limbs jerked in a different rhythm.
Its jaws opened, displaying interlocking canines as long as Sharina's little finger. The tongue and lining of the ghoul's mouth were white, streaked with blue veins. It said, "Kuk kuk kuk," and stopped. The long body arched in a convulsion that made it wheeze. The limbs drummed briefly; then the ghoul went flaccid.
Sharina let out her breath. Her hands were trembling so badly that after two failures to sheathe the Pewle knife, she continued to hold the weapon as she examined the scratch on her leg. It normally wouldn't have been serious, but given the condition of the ghoul's claws she'd better clean it immediately.
She looked up at her companion. She said, "That was good work, Dalar."
"I am pleased to have been of service to my mistress," the bird said. A tone of crowing delight colored the neutral simplicity of the words. He added, "The creature was new to me."
"And me," said Sharina. "I want to rub this cut clean with a dock leaf and then see if we can find some spiderwebs to pack it with. Nonnus--"
A ghoul called in the middle distance. Another responded from farther away. Before that cry ended, at least a dozen more of the creatures were giving tongue. All of them seemed to be south of where Sharina and Dalar stood, but some sounded very close.
"Or again, the cut can wait," Sharina said. Together they began jogging northward out of the ruins.
Elfin sang somewhere nearby, though not so close that Cashel could make out the words. That was just as well, he guessed.
He thumbed the last of the pine nuts into his left palm, then dropped the stripped cone on the ground beside him. He rose to his feet, chewing the little nuts. Cashel didn't know if he'd be able to get used to them as a steady diet--they had an aftertaste of turpentine, though he didn't notice it when each mouthful was going down--but for keeping him fed here in the Underworld they were fine.
"The woods here seem really quiet," he said to the ring. "Except for Elfin, I mean. Is it always like this?"
"The other inhabitants on this level are afraid of you," Krias said. "They're still here, never fear. They'll come out when you're gone."
"Ah," said Cashel, nodding. "But you mean they're afraid of you."
"It's all the same, sheep-boy," the ring said.
"No," said Cashel, "it's not."
He smiled at the ring to show he wasn't angry or anything. He wasn't going to leave stand a false statement that touched him, though.
Cashel stretched and gave a quick spin of his staff. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the singing and called, "Hey Elfin! Come here if you like. I won't hurt you."
The music stopped, then resumed. It wasn't coming closer.
"He didn't, you know, attack me the way the rest of his people did," Cashel explained to the ring. Not that he had to answer to Krias for the company he kept. "And he sure can play and sing, can't he?"
"The rest of his people?" Krias said. The little demon cackled with laughter. "You're Elfin's people, sheep-boy. The People stole him from his cradle as an infant. Didn't you listen to what he was singing?"
"Well," Cashel said. "Songs don't really mean anything, Krias. Granny Brisa used to sing about her love across the sea or the gray-eyed lad who loved her, all sorts of things like that. Nobody'd loved her since her husband died back before I was born."
The ring demon gave a sigh that wasn't as theatrical as his usual. "Well, that's not what the People sing about," he said. "They made that song when they killed the nurse and stole Elfin--not that his name was Elfin, of course. And they've got a thousand more songs like it, every one of them true."
"Duzi!" Cashel said in amazement. "Why, that's terrible!"
Krias cackled. "They weren't singing when we last saw them, were they?" he added gleefully.
Cashel made a trumpet of his hands, leaning the staff in the crook of his right elbow, and bellowed, "Elfin! Come to me! I'll take you back home as soon as I'm done with my business here!"
The boy didn't even pause in his singing. It was awful to think that those words were real.
"Well, maybe he'll catch up with us later," Cashel said. "And anyway, we'll be coming back this way, won't we?"
"I'm a magic ring," Krias snapped, "not a fortune-telling ring. I don't have the slightest idea what you'll be doing, sheep-boy, except that it'll be stupid."
"Well, we may as well move on," Cashel said. He couldn't help smiling at the ring's fussiness.
"You know?" he added. "Back in the borough boys poke straws into an anthill and watch the ants run around in circles. I guess it doesn't hurt anybody, and sometimes it's pretty funny to watch."
Krias spluttered like a kettle on the boil. Cashel continued to grin as he walked on.
Cashel had been seeing a rocky hill ahead every time the trees overhead were thin. He stepped through a copse of beeches--almost beeches, anyway; the leaves were the right saw-edged shape but they were way too big for adult trees--and saw it rising right there, a stone's throw away.
He'd seen it before, or near enough. "This is the same place where I met Landure," he said. "Did we just go around in a circle, Master Krias?"
"Look at the portal, sheep-boy," the ring said. "Does that look like where we came through before? No! Because this is the gateway to the second level."
"Yeah, I see it now," Cashel said, walking around the spur of rock that pretty well hid the opening from the angle they'd approached. The door was wood, not bronze, true enough.
He didn't bother telling Krias he hadn't seen the door at first. The demon already knew that, and excuses weren't worth much even when they were better than, "I didn't see what was in plain sight."
It was a big, heavy door, all oak and fastened with trenails instead of iron. The workmen had been more interested in weight than craftsmanship. The staves weren't dovetailed, so despite how thick they were Cashel could see light through the cracks.
The light was a sickly green. Well, it'd be a change from the red he'd been walking under since he came through the bronze door. Neither one was a color Cashel much cared for.
"So I go on through this?" Cashel said to the ring.
"How do I know what you do?" Krias snarled. "You're free to wander like a fuzzy animal with just about enough sense to wake up in the morning. You don't have to ride on some boob's finger like I do!"
"Master Krias," Cashel said, "you're not going to get me mad, so you may as well stop trying. Besides, I guess you want Landure alive again the same as I do. Now, is this door on the way to find Landure's new body?"
"Yeah, this door and an
other one like it, if you get that far," the demon said. "That's if, remember."
He sounded peeved--well, he always did, except when he'd been talking about things Cashel wished hadn't happened, even to the People--but he was a little more subdued than usual too. It couldn't be a lot of fun being cooped up in a little ring the way Krias was.
"Thanks," Cashel said as he gripped the handle, a horizontal pole long enough for three men to hold at the same time. When Cashel pulled, the panel creaked and groaned instead of opening.
Cashel was beginning to think that it was barred on the other side when he thought to lift as well as pull. That worked and he backed up, holding the panel off the ground. It was too heavy and saggy for its hinge pegs. For all its size, it wasn't made any better than a stable door.
The terrain through the open doorway was pretty much like what Cashel had seen when he opened the bronze door earlier. The vegetation, though, was like nothing he'd ever come across.
Just inside grew something more like a young willow than anything else familiar, but it didn't look much like a willow. Its limbs were snaky like a weeping willow's, but they didn't have any leaves at all that Cashel could see. It hadn't lost them for winter, either: the breeze coming up from below was warm and wet, like a summer noon in the marshes.
Cashel hefted his quarterstaff and sighed. "Do the People live down here too, Master Krias?" he asked.
"Them?" said the ring demon. "No, not them, but there's worse things, sheep-boy. Much worse!"
"Well, let's hope we stay clear of them," Cashel said mildly. He stepped through the doorway.
"You're not going to close it?" Krias said. "What's the matter--are you so worn out already that you don't think you can move the door again?"
"No, I'm all right," said Cashel, stroking the smooth hickory. He wished Garric could be here with him, but the quarterstaff itself was a friend from home. "I just thought I'd leave it in case Elfin wants to come with us anyway. I don't think he could open the door if I was to close it."